The Aethers of Mars

by Eric Flint

  The figures inside were distorted by the shutter-sliced view. Were there four of them, or five? There were either two or three standing on the left, faced by two on the right who did not move. The thickest of the figures on the left feigned a laugh, sat down. The two on the right remained silent, standing.

  Von Harrer frowned; bad timing. Tactically fortuitous, of course: Al-Aftal—the thick figure—was distracted by visitors, and that was good. But the visitors were an unknown quantity. There was a low but undeniable chance that they were not part of Al-Aftal’s criminal traffic, that they were simply uninvolved, innocent people. More likely, they represented the tip of another monstrous tentacle from Al Qahira’s sprawling underworld. No, this was not the best time to press an attack, but it was also too late to stop. Surprise would only be on his side one time, and someone was sure to miss the steady tread of the guard. Very soon.

  Von Harrer reached into the worn haversack that hung back against his right buttock, cast a quick glance into the darkness behind. No sounds or movement there. He angled his long-magazine Mauser out of the bag.

  As he snapped the weapon’s safety to “off,” the light from the window began to waver slightly: one of the occupants was adjusting an oil lamp, which guttered as the wick receded. The bright bars that the shutters painted across Conrad’s face dimmed from yellow to amber to orange.

  He checked that the other ten-round stripper clips were snug and ready, and discovered that he was panting. Panting because entering the house meant fully embracing the old terror that had been reborn at the foot of the cistern behind it, meant doing what he had sworn he would not: become a killer once again. Ever since Cecil Rhodes had bombed Johannesburg into flinders, ever since he had staggered out of that smoking moonscape with a handful of others, the mere thought of death, or killing, made him flinch toward the closest mental or physical bolt-hole he could find. It was bad enough that destruction had become so impersonal, but that it should become so sweeping, so arbitrary, and so swift—Conrad swallowed, realizing he was frozen in front of his enemy’s window, teetering on the edge of being paralyzed by fear. Again.

  Anger welled up; he clenched his teeth, pulled in breath through flaring nostrils—and caught a stray wisp of the opium scent that was still on his clothes. His traitorous memory magnified that hint of pungence into long hours of blissful distraction, opened a trapdoor into the drug’s deep and trackless land.

  Conrad forced himself to ignore the memory. Tipping forward, he put out one hand against the wall of Al-Aftal’s house, and spent a few seconds regathering his will. His ears were ringing slightly as he fought the lingering urge for opium—which became, with a sudden, almost dizzying twist, the same detached eagerness that once again obliterated everything else: time to act.

  He pushed back carefully from the wall, noticed that the lamplight had faded to a small amber glow. Crouching, he ran his fingertips beneath the lower margin of the shutters, feeling for the eyehook that, as he had seen during prior visits, held them closed from within.

  The eyehook was fastened. Not a major concern, but it meant that there would be a moment’s resistance before the shutters swung inward. Only a fraction of a second, true, but a very risky one: he could not afford to be caught coming through the window, framed as a perfect target. No, his entry would have to be in two stages: first, open the window and clear the room; then, go inside.

  He backed up a half step, came forward again, kicking waist-high with his right foot. The shutters crashed open, one splintering off its upper hinge. Inside, four men stood stunned, gathered around the seated, extraordinary bulk of Al-Aftal. They were already turning toward Conrad, but before they did, he saw what had held their interest so intently: there was a book—a ledger maybe?—open on Al-Aftal’s commodious lap.

  Von Harrer pushed close against the left side of the window sill for cover, secured the Mauser by snugging his left hand under the barrel in front of the magazine, and began to squeeze the weapon’s trigger. The smaller (but faster) of Al-Aftal’s own two men splayed backward with a groan, his right hand flying up, interrupted in its grab toward the .455 Webley revolver which Conrad had seen him carry. Al-Aftal’s other guard took a moment longer to react, and in that second, was falling backward, two of three rounds catching him dead on the body’s centerline, just above and below the clavicle.

  Al-Aftal was rising out of his seat, puffing in rage and surprise—and sat down heavily when two more rounds from the Mauser cut through his softer flesh, both slightly lower in the chest. He quaked, grunted twice, and was still.

  But, surprisingly, it was the other two—the ones who had been nearly motionless up until this moment—who now reacted with the greatest speed. One swept an unthinkably fast hand under his jacket; the other swept up the book that had fallen from the folds of Al-Aftal’s lap.

  Even as von Harrer turned toward the first of the unidentified pair, he saw a small revolver already in that man’s hand, bearing upon him.

  Conrad rocked away from the window as the weapon spat and clipped splinters from the shutter he was sheltering behind. Without losing the momentum, von Harrer rocked back and fired four return shots from the Mauser, aiming from memory.

  Only one of the four rounds hit the man—but that one struck him almost directly in the heart. Von Harrer was preparing to shift his aim to the second figure when he realized that the man he had just undoubtedly killed was still, impossibly, upright, revolver wobbling back in his direction. Conrad, trying to remember if he had ever seen a man survive a shot so close to the heart, popped another round into the thin fellow. Then another. And another.

  Von Harrer felt a sudden flash of mortal fear—why won’t this one die?—when, just before firing a sixth round into the narrow chest, the man’s body tilted slowly, stiffly backward, almost as though it was already suffering from the onset of rigor mortis. Conrad swallowed as he tracked after the second fleeing figure, peering over the Mauser’s wand-like barrel—and was startled to see that this new target had already reached the mouth of the passageway that led to the back bedrooms. As Conrad fired, his suddenly redoubled focus explained how the second man had covered so much ground already: this one is moving too fast, faster than any human can move.

  The eerie chill of that realization was washed away by shock—and then, as if summoned forth by his own sudden panic, Conrad’s sense of detachment abruptly increased. And along with it, his physical senses suddenly burgeoned outward and attained a monstrous acuity. Despite the darkness, he saw—clearly and undeniably saw—the round he had fired at the fleeing man punch through his clothing in the vicinity of the right kidney. The wound staggered the fellow into the mud-brick wall, but the almost gaunt figure pushed away and was upright almost instantly, the book clutched under his free arm, his hips flexing to recommence sprinting.

  Von Harrer ignored his surprise—at his own suddenly sharpened senses, his enemy’s resilience, and their startlingly similar speed—and fired three more times. One round missed, one round struck his target in the left scapula, and the last one cut into the base of his neck. The book still clutched to his chest, the man toppled forward as rigidly as a felled tree. Just like the other had.

  For a moment, the house was quiet around von Harrer—except for his own desperate and startled panting. What in the name of God is happening? How is it that they—and that I—am able to—?

  From the rear of the house, muffled cries of alarm vied with excited, clumsy movement. Upstairs, sleep-thick voices were shouting questions, cursing.

  Conrad vaulted into the room, moved stealthily toward the hallway that led to the rear of the house—

  A guard—the same one that had beaten him so brutally last night—rounded that corner, raising a Lee-Enfield rifle. With an inarticulate cry of surprise, and maybe rage, the Cairene hardly bothered to aim before squeezing the trigger—but instead of loosing a wild shot, he loosed a savage oath: he had forgotten the safety.

  Conrad brought up the Mauser smoothly, tol
d himself that this was his moment of vengeance—and discovered that the ruthless doppelganger inside him did not care. Only the killing—the quick, efficient meting out of death—seemed to matter. His first shot chopped messily through the man’s chin, just beneath the teeth which had smiled down in cruel triumph over him last night. The second bullet went directly into his heart. And von Harrer swallowed, afraid—not at the man, who was quite dead—but at himself: he was a good shot, but not this good, and certainly not this swift. And stranger still, he did not feel as though he was moving particularly quickly. Rather, it felt as though the world was slowing down. And as each shot became easier, and more sure, the more distant any echoes of human compassion and empathy became. Not because the instinct of self-preservation had overridden them—as usually happened in combat—but because he found it increasingly harder to perceive any kinship between himself and the humans he was killing.

  But even that troubling realization did not deter him; as soon as the Cairene had fallen, von Harrer sank into a lower posture and resumed his sprint toward the rear hallway’s entrance. He checked the Mauser’s magazine as he ran: one round left.

  As he slid to a stop against the wall flanking the doorway, he heard movement in the adjoining hall: scrambling feet, hoarse mutters. He ejected the last round in the magazine, snatched a single ten-round charging clip out of his breast pocket, inserted it, slammed the bullets down into the gun, yanked the empty charger out of the weapon.

  As the bolt ran home with a clack, four local thugs came rushing out, knives and pistols ready—but not expecting the point-blank and unerring fusillade into which they emerged. Two were down before any of them were aware they were being fired on. Another fired a wild shot before he fell. The last—who had stumbled as his tightly packed comrades sprawled around and into him—took a bullet through the forehead as he was trying to get back to his feet.

  Some part of von Harrer’s mind stuttered distantly—and all done without effort, or fear, or a single missed shot; how is this possible?—while he watched his machine-like hands yank two more chargers out of his pocket, and push their loads, one after the other, into the Mauser.

  Von Harrer listened as he eased the bolt forward, the pistol now heavy with twenty rounds. The movement in the upstairs loft had become stealthy. There was at least one person up there, but maybe two. And then, with a clarity that he had never experienced at such a distance, he distinctly heard the soft kra-click, kra-click of rounds being loaded into a rifle. All the way up in the loft. Then, more hushed words and footfalls. Two sets of them.

  He moved into the kitchen opposite the stairs into the loft, snatched up a light chair, re-crossed to the wall, flattened against it, and set the chair down so it was just barely concealed from the stairway, tucked behind the near corner.

  Von Harrer could hear each step of each foot as they crept down, knew the moment that the first one’s foot touched the last step just around the corner from him. He waited until he heard, less than two feet away, a soft intake of breath, a rustle of rushing fabric as the man began his charge: at the same moment, Conrad brought up his Mauser and tipped the chair out beyond the corner so that it fell in front of the staircase.

  The first thug’s galabiyah became a whirl of confusion as he tumbled into and over the chair, an old Martini rifle spinning away. Wasting no time on that one, von Harrer swung halfway around the corner into the stairway, firing as he did so.

  Two of the three rounds hit the startled Arab who was standing there, hapless and the plainest possible target.

  Ignoring the body bumping down the stairs, Conrad turned back to the guard who was scrambling to get disentangled from the chair and back on his feet. One round to the sternum ended those struggles. Von Harrer stopped, rotated his head, listened for further sounds in the house.

  Nothing. Old training came back as a set of almost reflexive tasks, with which Conrad displaced an almost reflexive compulsion to find and move on to the next kill—wherever it might happen to be. So, Leutnant von Harrer, tactical review. The answer was immediate: twelve enemies accounted for, ten from this house. Probably all that were here. He could count on at least ten minutes before authorities would show up. Probably longer, but if there were any blackcoat patrols who had moved into the area after Conrad had finished scouting it during his approach, he could not count on more time—and he had to be gone long before any authorities arrived.

  Mauser held in front of him—quavering slightly now that he was no longer possessed by what felt like an alter-ego killer instinct—Conrad moved quickly through the cluttered rooms. He had not started toward Al-Aftal’s house with any clear intent other than to reclaim the monies which had been stolen from him and which he had spent on the poisoned opium. But halfway on his circuitous approach, he realized that he had to do more than simply reclaim his money: he could not afford to ignore the other resources that would be there for the taking. He would need them—all of them—to make good his escape from Egypt.

  Conrad paused, reluctant to abandon the scruples he had always maintained in regard to the dead. He had steadfastly refused to strip fallen enemies in South Africa. Conversely, the Boers had merely shrugged at his chivalry and taken “his share”: the war had taught them that the dead have no need for possessions, have no pride to injure, have no protest to offer. And the Boers could not afford what they considered his fine, aristocratic scruples.

  And now, he admitted, neither could he. Von Harrer set to work briskly; he snatched up empty bags he found in the kitchen, and began his piratical circuit of the rest of the house.

  By the time he had returned to the front room four minutes later, his primary concern lay in deciding how much of the spoils he could carry, and therefore, which items were the most valuable or necessary, those criterion not necessarily being one in the same. The money—156 pounds sterling (six of which were his, along with a shilling and tuppence), 228 francs, 531 lira, and almost 1000 dinars—was both portable and useful and therefore already stuffed in his pockets and haversack. The two British .455 Webley revolvers he had found were in good condition and supplied with a reasonable amount of ammunition; he’d sell one, but keep the majority of the rounds. The pistols went into his belt, the ammunition into his haversack. The other pistols were archaic, single action revolvers; not worth the weight of carrying, nor worth the further trouble of finding the now-rare ammunition. Of the two rifles, the Martini was both inferior and in poor repair. The Lee-Enfield was quite modern, well-maintained and had over 100 rounds, still in tidy British Army-issue boxes. But how to carry it inconspicuously?

  Memory obliged; Al-Aftal had a small paddock on the right side of the building, the side opposite the one he had used earlier. Checking the flimsy enclosure, he found two sour-looking (and -smelling) camels kneeling there. Satisfied, he moved back inside, snatching up a pair of saddlebags as he went.

  Rice, loaves, lentils, goat cheese, and water skins went into one. The other quickly bulged with a few better articles of local clothing, and the rifle’s ammunition. The Lee-Enfield found a home in the center of a hastily rolled and tied-off rug. Satisfied, Conrad gave one quick look around the outer room, ignoring the bodies as best he could. Not that he was squeamish about death; he hadn’t been to begin with, and any lingering childhood training to either fear or revere corpses had been well-purged from him in South Africa.

  What troubled him now was his certainty that, if a new threat arose, and his other, sociopathic doppelganger identity emerged again, the accumulation of even more corpses—like the bodies littering the room around him—would suddenly be of no greater concern to him than adding to a collection of broken coffee tables. And the more he added, the less they would all matter.

  Forcing himself to move away from reflection, from unfocused thoughts of any kind, Conrad scanned the room: was there anything else he had missed? Nothing but fripperies, questionable objets d’art, a few dusty tomes—

  —Wait. The book. The book on Al-Aftal’s lap. That mig
ht be worth something. It had certainly earned the rapt, even greedy attention of Al-Aftal, to whom the word “avaricious” had been applied as a comic understatement. Von Harrer turned to get the book—

  —and stopped. Getting the book involved wresting it from the hands of the fellow who had been running with frankly inhuman speed, and who had only fallen to three bullets that would each have incapacitated or killed most men.

  The hair on the back of Conrad’s neck prickled and rose at the memory. He had seen men do impossible things in the war; charging with their intestines shot away, lifting caissons off pinned comrades, throwing themselves out of second-story windows and then jumping up and running away. But finally, even those extraordinary actions had somehow looked natural when undertaken; despite the impossibility of the feat, it had been done with human fluidity, at a human speed.

  Conrad approached the book-bearer’s body: this man’s sprint had been eerily different. It wasn’t that his strides were longer, or particularly rapid. It was rather that he had looked almost mechanical, like a kinescope Conrad had once seen of a dancing puppet, run at double speed.

  As drew up to the body, he prodded it with a testing boot. No response. Reaching down, he rolled the man over; he was as stiff as a tightly rolled rug. Conrad pried the book loose from the chest-clenched arms, looked down at it.

  And started. The cover was titled in an unreadable, serpentine script. From his days at Heidelberg—where he had skipped classes in medical science to audit others in anthropology—Conrad knew enough about the globe’s many forms of writing to know that it was not Arabic of any kind or epoch, nor Sanskrit, nor even the fiery scripts of Nepal or Siam. These letters—if that’s what they were—were not merely unfamiliar; their shapes and calligraphic flow were like nothing he had ever seen before.