The Emperor of Mars

by Patrick Samphire

  He passed the second-floor landing and flung himself down the next step of stairs. I leaped after him.

  I hit the landing just as the door beside it opened. My shoulder slammed into the door, crashing it back. I tried to grab the banister, but I was off balance and already falling.

  The floorboards came up to meet me, knocking the breath from my lungs and the sense from my head.

  I flailed to pull myself up, but my knees wouldn’t hold me and everything was whirling around me.

  “Stay still,” a voice said.

  I slumped back on the floorboards. When I could see again, I saw Jane kneeling over me, looking worried.

  “Are you all right, Edward? What’s going on?”

  I groaned. “I was chasing an intruder. They were trying to break into Papa’s study.”

  “I heard a noise,” Jane said. “In the servants’ staircase. I opened the door to see what was happening…”

  “And I ran straight into it,” I said. “Give me a hand up. Did you see who I was chasing?”

  She shook her head.

  “Hellfire.”

  “Edward!”

  I looped my arm around Jane’s shoulder for support and let her help me up.

  “Come on.” At least I could make sure the intruder was gone.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, I found the hat and cloak abandoned. The man from the museum, the man who had been hanging around outside our house, had been wearing a wide hat. This one was blue, though, and floppier. Maybe the man had changed it. Maybe he had been someone else entirely. I cursed again. I’d been so close. If I’d been faster, I could have had him. We could have settled this. Instead, all I’d gotten were more bruises.

  I turned too quickly for my dizzy head and stumbled into Jane. Something fell from under her jacket with a thump. She snatched it up, but not before I saw it.

  “Is that a book?” I said. And not just any book by the look of it. A solid, heavy book on Ancient Martian history. “When did you start reading books?”

  Jane’s face turned as red as a sunset. “Don’t tell Mama! She says that if you spend all day with your head in a book, you’ll never attract the right kind of gentleman. Gentlemen don’t want wives who think, she says.”

  I shook my head, still too stunned from my tumble to think of anything to say.

  How had I missed Jane starting to read academic books? Jane! And what else had I missed?

  7

  An Indecipherable Clue

  Even at midday, when the heat from the desert gathered like an oven between the tall buildings of Lunae City, the streets were packed, dusty, and chaotic. Native Martian men and women stood by little squares of cloth they had laid out on the street, selling everything from sweetmeats and little fried birds to pots, pans, and shoes to the crowds that swirled around them.

  It was lunchtime, and I’d finally managed to escape Mr. Davidson’s lessons. Now I was picking my way through the packed bodies, and I felt like I was a prisoner who’d been let out after being locked up for years in a horrible dungeon. Even the heat and dust felt wonderful.

  Every now and then, someone of European, Turkish, or Chinese descent would pass, sitting on the back of a lizard-donkey led by native Martians or carried by automatic servants in elaborately carved palanquins. Wide, thin cloths dyed in swirling green and blue stretched across the streets, protecting us from the direct sun. In the dim light that filtered through the cloth, it felt like I was swimming through a deep ocean.

  I’d lived in Lunae City long enough that I was getting pretty good at slipping through the hordes of people. There was no point fighting the crowds; you had to slide through them like a fish.

  An enormous, old, two-legged machine, shaped like a giant bird and spouting steam and smoke, thumped down the middle of the street. The gentleman riding it kept his nose turned up as it plodded forward, scattering the pedestrians. I darted around it and hurried on.

  I reached the Museum of Martian Antiquities almost half an hour before I was due to meet Mina. The weight of her stolen key cylinder pushed against my hip as I made my way up the three low steps to the museum’s door.

  Last night, I’d been ready to hand back the key cylinder, no questions asked. Today, I wasn’t so sure. I understood that Mina wanted to impress her father—I really did—but this was a man who’d left his children as orphans for years, and when he finally turned up, he sent his own daughter out to steal for him. What kind of father did that? If I gave the key cylinder to Mina, I would be giving it to him. I didn’t know the man, but I didn’t trust him and I didn’t like him. He’d treated Mina badly.

  If anything, the museum was in even more of a flap today than it had been the day before. Under-curators scurried in every direction like digger ants in a rainstorm. I found Dr. Guzman in the middle of a shouting match with another, even more dusty junior-under-curator. The two were pressed almost nose to nose, yelling and waving hands just outside the new gallery.

  I stepped close to get Dr. Guzman’s attention.

  “Oh,” he sniffed when he saw me. “You again. This imbecile wants to place a Third Age statuette next to a pair of Fourth Age suction boots.”

  The other curator bristled. “It is a thematic connection, you miserable amateur! If you cannot see it—”

  “Amateur? Me? Why, I was educated in the great universities of Heidelberg and Vienna—”

  “Educated? Is that what they’re calling it now?”

  “Dr. Guzman,” I said, before they could start hitting each other. “You had something for me.”

  Dr. Guzman blinked. “I did?”

  “You remember,” I said. “When I was telling you yesterday about how much my sister Jane admired you, you offered to find out what had been stolen from the small gallery.”

  “You … ah … mentioned me to your sister?”

  “Of course,” I lied. “She’s looking forward to seeing you at the gallery opening tomorrow.”

  He perked up. “Indeed! Indeed! I have the record in my storeroom. Please come with me.” He shot the other under-curator a bitter look. “But I must not be away long. Some people cannot be trusted, you understand.”

  Dr. Guzman’s storeroom was in a basement beneath the main body of the museum. I followed him through the maze of narrow galleries and hallways, then down a set of stone stairs.

  “My entire collection,” Dr. Guzman grumbled as we walked. “Consigned to shelves that no one may see. It is a disgrace! I can tell you far more of interest from a single potsherd than you would get from any mechanical artifact.”

  The door to his storeroom was made of thick steel set into a solid wall. A lock larger than my head fastened the door. There was no space for a key, just seven small holes in a semicircle. Carefully, Dr. Guzman inserted both thumbs and five of his fingers into them.

  “A fine needle traces the unique patterns on my skin,” Dr. Guzman said, “while another measures the pulse in my thumbs. If the patterns do not match what is recorded in the lock, it will not open. Ah!” With a clank, heavy metal bolts retracted from the door. Dr. Guzman flung it open.

  “At least they’re concerned enough to give you a secure storeroom,” I said. “I mean, no thief is going to get in here.”

  “Ha!” he snorted. “It was the only free space. None of the other curators wish to use it. They do not approve of the stairs. And, see! Even one storeroom is considered too much for my collection. I am forced to share it with whatever junk was deemed too worthless to show in your father’s new gallery.”

  He swept a dramatic arm at the heaped shelves. Most of them were stacked with thousands of fragments of pottery, interspersed with the odd complete specimen.

  “See the variety!” Dr. Guzman exclaimed.

  Personally, I would have struggled to tell one broken pot from another.

  Several of the shelves had been cleared, and some of the smaller artifacts from the dragon tomb we’d uncovered had been placed on them. Most were pretty basic devices, the kind of
things you’d find in any dragon tomb, or even in the ruins of Ancient Martian cities or temples. Little clockwork toys and tiny fragments of ideograms. There were also smashed pieces of artifacts that had been destroyed when Sir Titus Dane had driven his excavator right into the tomb. I even spotted the miniature stone sarcophagus that had held Putty’s dragon egg. It was shoved right at the back of a shelf and had been filled with loose cogs and springs.

  Dr. Guzman crossed to his table in the center of the room and plucked off a sheet of paper.

  “The stolen artifact was a section of ideograms on a broken stone tablet,” he said. “Not large, nor greatly significant. No doubt the fellow intended to sell it for a few pennies in the market.”

  “Do you know what was on it?” I said.

  Dr. Guzman drew himself up. “I have better things to do with my time than read lists of grain or cattle owned by some minor emperor.” He shoved the paper at me. “You may see for yourself. The ideograms were copied for the archives, as all such ideograms are. Good record-keeping is the basis for a civilized approach to history. These ideograms were never translated, however.”

  I took the paper and peered at it. It might as well have been in Ancient Greek. Mr. Davidson would have been ecstatic.

  “As you can see,” Dr. Guzman said, “the tablet was badly damaged. The curator who cataloged it noted that the ideograms would likely be impossible to translate. With so many of the ideograms missing or damaged, there would be no way to retrieve the meaning. I do not suppose the fool who stole it was aware of the fact, nor cared. No doubt the artifact even now decorates the dusty corners of some tourist’s drawer.” He sniffed. “It is of little loss to the museum.”

  Maybe Papa or Putty would be able to decode the ideograms. I certainly couldn’t. I turned to head out, but Dr. Guzman cleared his throat.

  “Ah … I have been thinking about what you asked yesterday. You asked if I had seen anyone else in the gallery from which the item was stolen, and I have not. However, something peculiar did happen a few days before. I was approached by a man who wanted to talk to me about artifacts in the museum. Although I was off duty, I always consider it my obligation to inform the public about our collections, particularly the pottery. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that this man did not have an academic interest. He was, in fact, asking me to obtain an artifact from the museum. I made it quite clear that I would not do so, and I bid him what I fear was a rather short good evening. It occurs to me that this man may have been involved in the theft of the fragment of ideograms.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. Excitement was flooding through my body. This was a clue. A real clue. “What did he look like?”

  Dr. Guzman frowned. “Small, I would say, and fussy. I found his mannerisms irritating. He was accompanied by two other men. Rough sorts.”

  “Was either of them a tall man with broad shoulders and dark skin?” I said, thinking of the man I’d seen at the museum and outside our house. “Maybe wearing a wide hat?”

  Dr. Guzman shook his head. “No. Now, I must get back. I cannot trust my fellow junior-under-curators. They are incompetent!”

  “One last question,” I said. “Where did this man approach you?”

  “It was at a coffee house many of the junior-under-curators frequent,” Dr. Guzman said. “It is called The Snap-jackal. Now, good day!”

  I still had ten minutes until I was due to meet Mina. The dim light and stale heat of the museum basement were giving me a headache, so I decided to take a stroll around the square outside to clear my head.

  A swarm of sky-seeds had found their way into the museum, and their drifting tendrils had gotten entangled in the aerofoils of a large spring-powered heli-lifter the curators were using to move exhibits. The heli-lifter lurched back and forth across the foyer, trailing the squealing sky-seeds. Under-curators chased after it, shouting and tripping over each other. I slipped past and out of the museum.

  The dry desert heat brought sweat to my hands right away. But at least it was a clean heat. What with Mr. Davidson’s unending lessons in the tiny schoolroom and Dr. Guzman’s sweltering basement, I felt like I’d been boiled in a pot all day long. If I was going to meet the thief—if I was going to meet Mina—again, I didn’t want to look and smell like an overcooked cabbage.

  I’d passed a native Martian selling slices of piranha-melon on the main street only a block from the museum. I checked my watch. Just enough time. I hurried across the square. My mouth was already watering.

  But I’d barely made it halfway when a voice rang out. “You!”

  I turned to see Lady Harleston emerging from an alley not twenty yards away. She was wearing dark, smoked eyeglasses, but even so, I could see the sunlight was making her wince.

  Hellfire and damnation! How had she found me?

  Her thuggish footmen followed her out of the alley, carrying cudgels. They looked like they were suffering from the aftereffects of the photon emission globe I’d exploded in front of them last night, too. They were squinting and shading their eyes. Serves you right!

  “Get back here!” Lady Harleston bellowed at me.

  Not likely. I put my head down and sprinted in the opposite direction. Behind, I heard the two footmen set off after me.

  It took me almost twenty minutes to shake off my pursuers in the crowds, and even then, I didn’t dare go back to the museum with Lady Harleston looking for me. Mina would think I wasn’t coming.

  The thought made my chest so tight I could scarcely breathe. She would think I had betrayed her. She would think I had let her down. I trudged slowly back home, the weight of the key cylinder banging against my hip with every heavy step.

  The man was still waiting outside our gates. He was partially hidden by the thick shade of the balloon-palm, but now that I was seeing him up close rather than through Putty’s invention he was unmistakable.

  I slipped over the wall and hurried back to the house, where Mr. Davidson was waiting to torture me with a pile of old Greek books. I almost wished I’d let Lady Harleston capture me after all.

  * * *

  I didn’t get free again until six o’clock, and then only because I told Mr. Davidson I had to get changed for dinner.

  Tomorrow I’d been promised algebra. I didn’t think I could cope. I staggered back to my room, ready to flop on my bed. But Putty had beaten me to it. She was sitting on my bed, flipping through a notebook.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  She looked up. “There aren’t any ice caves in Xanthe Terra, you know. This isn’t very realistic.”

  “Hey! That’s mine.” I lunged for the notebook, but she snatched it behind her back. I growled at her.

  I’d been using that notebook to write my latest Captain W. A. Masters adventure. Captain Masters had been caught by the high priest, Karman Kel, and imprisoned in a pit of dragons in the ice caves of Xanthe Terra, and I hadn’t figured how I was going to get him out again.

  “I hid that,” I said indignantly.

  “I wouldn’t have bothered finding it if you hadn’t hidden it, would I?” She closed the notebook and tossed it over. “It’s not very good.”

  “It’s a first draft,” I mumbled. “What do you want?”

  “Jane said someone tried to break into Papa’s study.”

  “Jane should know better than to tell you about that kind of thing.”

  Putty waved a casual hand. “People tell me everything. They know I’m going to find out in the end.” She narrowed her eyes. “Most people. Anyway, I know who tried to break in. It was Miss Wilkins.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “She’s a spy. I told you. She’s probably stealing secrets to give to Napoleon. Then he’ll invade Mars and we’ll all be enslaved.”

  “She’s not a spy. Anyway, Papa doesn’t work on weapons. Papa doesn’t have anything Napoleon would want.”

  Putty gave me a pitying look. “You are naïve, Edward. I could turn half of Papa’s inve
ntions into weapons, and Napoleon has some quite brilliant mechanicians.” She looked thoughtful. “Not as brilliant as me, of course. But I bet they’d still be able to work it out. Imagine if you put Papa’s water abacus inside one of Napoleon’s great machines of war. It wouldn’t even need a driver or gunners. It could be automated. Imagine a thousand of them coming toward you on a battlefield. It would be a massacre.”

  “Except he’d have to get them to Mars,” I said, “and he can’t do that. Why are we even talking about this? Miss Wilkins is not a spy.”

  “She is,” Putty said. “And I’m going to prove it. It’s her evening off, and I’m going to follow her. I know where she goes on her evenings off. You should come, and then you’ll see.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” I said. I still didn’t know who had taken Rothan Gal, Lady Harleston was searching for me, the man in the wide hat was still spying on our house, and I’d missed meeting Mina.

  Putty’s face fell. “You always used to.”

  “And you hated it,” I snapped. “You said I got in the way and wouldn’t let you do anything.”

  “I looked for you at lunchtime,” Putty said. “I suppose you were hiding from me then, too.”

  “Actually, I was helping Captain Kol. I went back to the museum and found out what Rothan Gal had been looking at when he was attacked.”

  If anything, Putty looked even more miserable. “And you didn’t take me? Captain Kol is my friend, too.”

  “Well, you can help now,” I said. I passed her the sheet of paper Dr. Guzman had given to me. “The missing item was a fragment of ideograms. This is a copy of them. I have absolutely no idea what they mean.”

  “I’ll try,” Putty said doubtfully. “They’re kind of damaged.” She looked up. “Did you find out anything else?”

  “Maybe.” I frowned. “Dr. Guzman said someone approached him to steal something from the museum. It could be the same person. He didn’t know any names, but he said they’d approached him in a coffee house called The Snap-jackal.”