by James Axler
"I hope this picks up," said Kane, stifling a yawn.
It didn't. After the novelty of the holovision passed, the presentation became almost intolerably tedious. Sindri sensed their impatience and growing boredom.
"Keep watching," he said. "There's a little secret hidden in this documentary, and it's worth a bit of your time."
"Don't you have a fast-forward button on your remote?" Grant asked.
"Of course," replied Sindri, sounding a little peeved. "I'd prefer if you watched it through."
Exterior views of Parallax Red appeared with the narrator providing an excruciatingly detailed account of its construction and purpose. The scene shifted to the interior of a manufacturing facility aboard the station, full of forges and presses. People wearing pressure suits swabbed down thick slabs of a translucent substance.
"Utilizing zero gravity," the voice intoned, "the engineers aboard the Parallax Red station developed a method of plasticizing metals that could revolutionize every Earth industry that today depends on either material. Indeed, armaglass is already in limited usage."
The scene suddenly switched to a desolate, wind-swept landscape, with clouds of reddish dust billowing about. Figures in space suits operated heavy machinery, digging and excavating equipment.
"Employing the discoveries made upon Parallax Red ," said the narrator, "the establishment of Cydonia Compound One began in late 1990. The organic environment of Mars, in all its complexity, presented the most difficult challenges for the brave colonists."
On stage, single-storied, metal-ribbed domes on concrete-slab bases began appearing across the terrain. An interminable number of exterior-construction sequences dissolved into an equally interminable number of interior-construction sequences. Though he felt himself nodding off, it occurred to Kane that no mention of the so-called Monuments of Mars had been made.
The narrator declared, "The colonists had to adapt and they did so with great ingenuity."
The scene changed to a view of a field of rich soil, with leafy vegetation sprouting out of it. The perspective widened, showing that the field was enclosed within a pressure dome.
"Another development made on Parallax Red benefited the Cydonia Compounda method of synthesizing from ordinary soil any kind of vegetable growth. Human ingenuity, adapted to a world not native to humans. However, adapting an alien world to fit human physiologies is only one of the options open to us."
Sindri sat up straight in his chair.
"It might be more convenient to adapt the descendants of our colonists to the alien world. It is certainly more desirable, more cost-effective than terra-forming. If humans are to live on Mars, they must adapt to a low-gravity, oxygen-poor environment. They must stay warm in low temperatures and draw oxygen from the thin atmosphere."
The image jumped to a setting inside of a sterile laboratory. People in white smocks, surgical masks and caps bustled purposefully around pieces of gleaming equipment and racks of test tubes.
"If there are to be humans spending their entire lives in space or on the surface of Mars," the deep voice stated, "we must improve the body's ability to adapt itself and redesign it to suit the new conditions. To this end, Overproject Excalibur's subdivisions have proved exceptionally helpful."
A side view of an upright human skeleton appeared on the stage.
"The fact that human beings stand erect against Earth's gravity poses certain problems that have been solved by skeletal and body-mass modifications."
The image of the skeleton seemed to shrink in size, acquiring a hunched-over posture. At the same time, the length of the arms increased and the foot bones rearranged themselves, the big toe sliding down toward the heel and extending outward, transforming into a double-jointed thumb.
"In a lighter-gravity environment," said the narrator, "strain would no longer be put on the spine by maintaining an erect posture, and our heavy supportive legs would become redundant. Modifying the legs into a second pair of arms would be particularly useful because one of the problems in working in a near weightless environment is anchorage.
"Obviously such an undertaking is difficult, but in the fullness of time, it will be attempted and"
Sindri pressed a button on the remote-control unit with a stabbing motion. The image on the stage froze, and the monotonous lecture stopped. In an intense tone, he said, "You understand now."
"Understand what?" Brigid demanded. "That you and your people were genetically engineered? We pretty much figured out that much."
"But the banal perfidy of it all!" Sindri's voice hit a high note of fury. He pointed to the stage. "The way that presentation is worded, an uninitiated dolt would think the type of bioengineering discussed was far in the future, just a whim to look into when nothing more urgent was pressing. In truth, when the documentary was made, the first generation of transadapts had been born over five years before."
Grant sighed. "Your point being?"
"My point, Mr. Grant, is that generations of human beings had their birthrights denied, born into government-sanctioned, -funded and -institutionalized slavery. Mr. Kane, remember what I said to you about the Cy-donia Compound's long tradition of abduction? The raw genetic material used to create the first generation of transadapts was provided by people taken forcibly, against their will, from Earth. Victims, not volunteers! Can't you grasp the monstrous injustice of it all?"
"Hell, yes," snapped Kane. "Of course we can. Things haven't changed all that much on Earth."
Sindri's eyebrows quirked. "Yes, so I learned."
Kane noticed how Brigid's hands suddenly clenched into fists.
"But what might be very different," Sindri went on, "is that the transadapts were the majority in this micro-cosmic society. They built most of the compound, mined the ores, tilled the fields, maintained the machines. They were the serfs and vassals to a tiny number of royal humanstheir royalty bestowed upon them simply by dint of the fact that their antecedents weren't abducted to provide the templates for the trans-adapt program.
"Eventually, over a period of decades, the trans-adapts outnumbered them three to one. By the end of 180 years, their population continued to grow, while that of the humans dwindled."
"So far," commented Grant dryly, "this has a familiar ring."
Sindri ignored him. "The transadapts were bred to be the Cydonia Compound's manual labor, its dray animals, its mules, living their lives doing nothing more than slouching through the red dust of Mars. They did not question their place in the scheme of things. They obeyed and did what was expected of them.
"But the humans here feared their growing numbers. They already had instituted a form of apartheid, segregating the transadapts into their own habitats. But due to several factors, only a couple of them environmental, the men had become sterile, the women barren. They couldn't stand the thought of perishing while the subhuman transadapts inherited this planet.
"So, using a medical treatment disguised as necessary vaccinations, they made the transadapts as barren as themselves. It was nothing less than the perpetration of slow-motion genocide. Inasmuch as the transadapts were engineered to have far shorter life spans than human beingsvery few live past thirty years of ageit was conceivable that they could all be dead within a single generation."
" They ," Brigid argued testily. "You've called the transadapts 'my people,' yet you refer to them as they . Which is it?"
The corners of Sindri's mobile mouth turned down.
"I was supposed to be a transadapt. But I was born a mutation, with far more Earth-human characteristics. It happens occasionally."
Brigid inspected Sindri silently, glanced over at the trolls sitting behind them, then back to Sindri. "No mere accident of birth can account for the differences between you and them."
Sindri smiled bleakly. "You're quite correct, Miss Brigid. My father was a human who took a transadapt woman as a lover. Truly a horrific case of miscegenation, at least as far as my father's peers were concerned. You can imagine the reactions when I
was born."
"What happened to your mother?" Kane asked.
"She died shortly after giving birth to me. I never knew her."
"And your father?"
"He was shunned, ostracized, exiled from the Cy-donia Compound. In a twist of irony that cheap fiction loves so much, only the fact of his exile saved him from death when the revolt occurred."
No one spoke. Sindri looked at them expectantly.
"Do tell us all about it, won't you?" Grant requested with unmistakable sarcasm.
Sindri nodded gravely. "In due time. But first, a bit about myself. I obviously could not live in the trans-adapts' habitats, so I was tolerated among the humans. I made myself indispensable to them with my mechanical acumen and affinity for electronics. I was very clever with my hands.
"A little over a year ago, I was allowed into the computer database to correct a minor problem. I corrected it, but I stumbled across things of far greater magnitude that had very little do with machines or electronics."
"And they were?" asked Kane.
Sindri stared directly into his eyes. "The Tuatha De Danaan and a group with whom you have had prior dealings...the Archon Directorate."
Chapter 23
Kane said grimly, "I don't recall mentioning the Ar-chon Directorate."
"You may not recall it," Sindri replied diffidently, "but you did. All three of you, in fact. Different perspectives on similar experiences."
A fleeting memory of Sindri's words came back to him "I will walk in all your minds, looking at your memories, strolling here and there among the ruins of your broken dreams. Make no mistake about itI will find what I need."
Kane lunged to his feet in an angry rush. The trolls rose just as quickly, but Sindri's reaction was to wag his walking stick like a chiding finger.
"An outbreak of violence will accomplish nothing, Mr. Kane. It will not bring our business to a satisfactory conclusion, nor will it get you back home."
Kane scowled around the theater. "Maybe not. But I'm tempted to give it a try just to see what will happen."
Brigid tugged at his sleeve. "He's right, Kane. We've gone this far, let's hear the rest."
Sindri nodded to her gallantly. "Ever the orderly mind."
Kane dropped back heavily in his seat. "What do the Danaan and the Archons have to do with your revolt?"
"In a direct, one-on-one way, almost nothing. But the war they fought here, long ago, still echoes. Evidently the war was more of a skirmish, the continuance of hostilities that began aeons before between the Da-naan and the Archons' root race. What did you call them again?"
"The Annunaki," interjected Grant tonelessly.
Sindri nodded. "Just so. They weren't given a name in the data I found within the computer. According to it, a Danaan colony from Earth had settled here, observing the terms of truce wherein both races agreed to leave the planet." r
Kane recalled what Brigid had learned in Ireland of the hostilities between the reptilian Annunaki and the humanoid Tuatha De Danaan, which had broken out millennia before. Mankind became embroiled in the conflict, and the conflagration extended even to the outer planets of the solar system, immortalized and much disguised as a war in heaven.
Finally, when it appeared that Earth was threatened with devastation, the war abated under terms. The Danaan and the Annunaki agreed to end it for the sake of all their intertwined futures.
A pact was struck, whereby the two races intermingled to create a new one, to serve as a bridge. Extrapolating from information imparted to her, Brigid had speculated that the Archons might be the spawn of Danaan, Annunaki and even human genes.
The reign of both races came to an end, and they left Earth, yet legends of their long-ago war were retold by various religions, and they themselves were diminished in stature by fanciful myths.
Still, all of it was oral history, legend as reinterpreted through scientific conjecture with only a handful of ar-tifacts as supportive evidence. Kane didn't necessarily believe it.
"The Danaan," continued Sindri, "came here to Mars. When they were attacked, their cities destroyed, they fled again. Where to is anybody's guess. Nor did this war and exodus happen all that long ago."
"If there really was a war between the Annunaki and the Danaan," put in Brigid, "it happened so long ago that even the people who claim descent from them have only the vaguest notion of a date. If the Danaan were driven from Mars, by the Archons and not the Annunaki, you're probably talking in terms of tens of thousands of years."
"No," Sindri responded smoothly. "More like hundreds, as in the midnineteenth century. Beginning in the 1860s and continuing to the 1870s, astronomers on Earth reported monstrous explosions occurring on Marsvisible even with the primitive telescopes of the day. The phenomenon ended rather abruptly in 1872.1 believe the astronomers were witnessing aerial bombardments and missile attacks."
"What's this got to do with your revolt?" asked Grant darkly.
"I'm getting to that. I learned that only by following the dictates of the Archon Directiveas it was called in the twentieth centurywas man able to establish more than a tenuous toehold here on Mars. They wanted us to plant a colony here."
"Why?" Brigid sounded skeptical. "From what we know of them, the Archons mastered not only hyper-dimensional travel, but physical space travel, too. Mars and all the planets in the solar system shouldn't be any more difficult for them to visit than Earth."
Sindri smiled a secret, mocking smile. "True, as far it goes. But unlike Earth, the Danaan turned Mars into awhat was your quaint term?hellzone, deadly to the Archons."
Interest instantly replaced hostile impatience, and three pairs of eyes locked intently on Sindri's face. The little man chuckled appreciatively.
"I thought that might revive your flagging interest. As all of you are aware by nowparticularly you, Mr. Kanethe very essence of Danaan science stemmed from music, the controlled manipulation of sound waves, perhaps the 'music of the spheres' as referred to in legend.
"The Danaan, before they left Mars and perhaps even the realm of three dimensions, left a parting gift for the Archons."
"Which is?"
"A song," stated Sindri with a smug simplicity. "A song that plays eternally, borne by the winds, serenading and blanketing this entire planet. The melody is too subtle for our human ears, yet not only can the Archons hear it, but it is deadly to them. It prevents them from ever putting a foot on Martian soil. And that is the real reason for the Cydonia colony...to locate the source of the song and stop it."
He looked levelly at Kane. "You saw the pyramid?"
"Yes."
"It is more than a monument. It is a gigantic broadcasting tower, transmitting the song of the Danaan to every nook and cranny of the planet, forming an invisible sonic wall which forever bars Archon entry.
"That is why they supported and abetted a Terran colony here, and aided the bioengineering process. We would, by proxy, conquer Mars for them, reclaim it from the Danaan. A precious ruby in the crown of the cosmos."
Brigid furrowed her brow. "If the song is deadly to Archons, but not to humans"
"I didn't say that," Sindri broke in sharply. "True enough, the sonic frequencies were keyed to set up disharmonious resonances in the Archon metabolism. But that was before."
"Before what?" asked Kane.
"Before arrogant human interference altered the modulations and turned the song into a doomsday dirge for the planet. Remember what I said regarding the factors which caused sterility in the men and women of the colony? The change in the harmonics was one such factor, the primary one."
Sindri sighed, running a hand over his face. "When I learned all of that, a year or so ago, I knew swift and decisive action had to be taken to save the colony, humans and transadapts alike. Extinction for both groups was less than a generation down the road. I double-checked all my data, correlated it, made sure there was no error. Day upon night, pausing for little sleep and less food, I worked on the findings, to make them utterly convi
ncing to the so-called Committee of One Hundred. But I also knew I could not go to them with the tragic news without bringing a solution. In the database, I learned of Parallax Red , and of the gateway unit which linked the colony with it. What I didn't know until later, was that I was not meant to know of either one."
The man's lips twitched, as if he had a nervous tic. "Do you know what the committee did? First they laughed at me. Then they claimed I had lost my mind. In brief, they could not and would not believe me.
When I mentioned the mat-trans unit and the space station, their decision was for me to join my father in exile. Since I saw no way to make them understand, I was determined to make them relinquish their decision-making powers.
"I reached out to the transadapts, persuaded them that we must leave and find a safe new home. They supported me. Since they were the majority of the colony's population, I had hoped the humans would bow to their will."
He shook his head sadly. "They preferred death to ceding to the wishes of creatures they considered inferior. That made a revolution not only necessary, but inevitable. The true tragedy of it all was that no neutrals were permitted in the conflict. Transadapts who wished no part of the revolt were slaughtered by humans as potential foes. The handful of humans who were sympathetic to my cause were killed by enraged transadapts.
"Once the first blood was spilled, there was no turning back. Blood called for blood, vengeance followed vengeance. It lasted a month. At the end of it, all the humans in the Cydonia Compound and three-quarters of the transadapts were dead."
Sindri exhaled a weary breath. "Mars, the god of war indeed."
Grant stated, "Then you went to the gateway and made the jump to Parallax Red ?"
He shook his head. "If only it were that simple. First I had to find it. When I did, the mat-trans controls defied all of my early attempts to activate them. The process of trial and error lasted for months."
"The jump chamber was hidden?" Kane asked carelessly. "Where?"
"It was in" Sindri broke off suddenly, favoring Kane with a slit-eyed stare. "Very clever, sir, my congratulations. You almost had me telling you its location. Never fear, if all goes according to plan, I'll take you to it soon enough."