Champion of Mars

by Guy Haley

  To see one could be difficult, as unless they forced themselves entirely into the four lower dimensions occupied by men, they moved in their own areas of the universe and merely brushed those familiar to humanity. You would see only this or that aspect of a Stone Kin presented to you as they pressed upon the lower realms. It was like looking at a picture made with a froth of paint: one saw the bubbles as flat, broken diameters, and not as the complex three-dimensional forms they really had. An unmanifested Stone Kin could be a curve of light, a membrane, a slight bulging to the air, but it could kill you only marginally less effectively than in its fully extruded form. Thus, Moden kept a sharp watch, eyes darting around. He would not sit, turning constantly upon the spot, looking for the tell-tale disruptions of reality that might end his life.

  The fork warbled discordantly. Then the sound died along with all other noise, the wind dropped away. Moden’s perceptions shifted precipitously, and he felt all of a sudden that he viewed the world at ninety degrees to its normal plane. His head felt tight; light became attenuated and the smell of the place intensified. Moden spun around. There. Ripple light shimmered over a mound of rocks, darted around and through them. His heart hammered. It had been two decades since he’d last seen one, and with one glimmer of light, the memory of a half-dozen deaths burst into his mind.

  The first thing he’d learned was to stay calm, and never take your eyes off them.

  The light changed, became diffuse, a blue glow that died, clinging to the stone. Reality snapped back like a bowstring.

  Shouting. He followed the noise. Movement. Three men were running-sliding down the side of the depression, banners of dust flying from their feet.

  A woman ran past them, form hazy yet growing more distinct all the while, a woman with light blue skin.

  The world reeled again, and the woman blinked out of existence. The men were still at the top of the hill, scanning the horizon. He felt sick.

  A noise behind him.

  He turned around and there she was, the blue-skinned girl. She smiled at him. A maddeningly familiar perfume engulfed him: flowers, sparks and dust in the summer rain. His brain rifled madly through the accumulated memories of a hundred lifetimes. Faces he knew had once been his – days from times that time itself had little recollection of – flashed by his mind’s eye. There, perhaps, a rooftop garden, a night so very important then, but devoid of meaning now. A girl with blue skin.

  She skitter-jumped back, then sideways, then back again, her limbs moving in stuttered jerks, time writing over itself in confusion.

  “I said we would meet again,” she said.

  Moden opened his mouth to speak. There was a bang and a wisp of smoke. The woman’s smile froze to her face and she slipped to the floor, as fluid as snow sliding down a mountain. Sulman Mahoo stood behind her, a bulbous weapon in his hand.

  “There,” said Sulman Mahoo. “Not too hard, eh?” He pulled a dull cylinder from his belt, and set it beside the woman. He retired a few paces and waved his hand at Moden. “I’d stand back if I were you.”

  Moden did. Unable to take his eyes off the woman – unremarkable now, even with her bluish skin, for men had become diverse in appearance – he stumbled on a rock. The cylinder melted like ice in the sun, spreading into silver liquid.

  Mahoo directed another instrument at it, and it crept up and over the prone woman. For a moment there was a perfect silver statue upon the sand, and then it collapsed. The metal jerked and strained, pseudopods waving in the air, but Mahoo twiddled something on the device in his hand and it grew quiescent. Moving now as if under direction, the metal flowed back into the shape of a cylinder. Mahoo gestured and one of his men came forward and picked it up. Mahoo took it from him and tucked it into his belt.

  “There you are,” he said. “Service rendered. Thank you. Here is your payment.” He walked to Moden and pressed the spirit core into his hand. “It is her, you know, and I would have let you have her had this not worked out. I’m not a monster.”

  “If this hadn’t worked out, we’d be dead.”

  Mahoo made a wry face. “There is that.”

  “What is all this for?” He pointed at the cylinder. “What is that?”

  “I’m sure you’re thinking ‘why me?’ as well. I cannot say beyond your obvious role as bait. I act under the direction of the new Quinarchy, and they tell little. Just ‘Go here Mahoo, do that Mahoo, find Moden Pic, Mahoo, the Stone Kin are interested in him. It is fated that you will... fated that you will capture one. Fated.’ And so I do. Who am I to do otherwise? It is, after all, fated. And they pay well.” He patted his ample belly. “Stay safe, Moden Pic.” One of his men dropped Moden’s weapons at his feet. “I have a feeling the spirits haven’t finished with you yet.”

  As much as he hated standing in the dying Stone Intrusion, he waited until Mahoo had gone before he turned and walked out of the interface the other way. He was headed away from the camps at the foot of the mountain, their ranks of empty shacks and bunkers slipping under the sand. That didn’t matter, he wouldn’t be going back there.

  He tucked Kaibeli into his pocket, belted his weapons about his waist, shouldered his pack and went away from the mountain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Spirefather of Arn Vashtena

  I AM WITHIN the world of the city Library fragment, the domain of the machine that once ruled the lives of the men of this spire, and, in council with others of its kind, the lives of all those who once inhabited this city.

  I sit upright and open my eyes. Two objects fall from my face; small, brassy coins.

  Outside, the armour-sphere ripples and parts to form the shape of a human mouth. Yoechakenon looks to it. “I am within,” the mouth says with my voice. He nods in reply.

  I wear a spirit body. Barring our tattoos, when men and spirits meet in the Second World they are indistinguishable. I wear the form I have favoured for the majority of my long life: a woman of the old type, one of the forms of humanity when they first left Earth. When I chose it I do not know, for my memory hazes with distance. It is a landscape that loses itself before the horizon.

  I sit on damp sand beside a river. Black water slides past, silver wavelets glimmering. This is not an unusual landscape. All the greater spirits shape their domains to their whim, and many choose rivers or seas as the boundaries to their territories. But the blackness of the water is forbidding. What would usually be alive with light and noise is dark and silent. There is no way in or out of this corner of the Second World. This is a crossroads whose roads lead nowhere.

  A stench hangs on the air, coming off the river, and all is rendered in tones of grey. It speaks of a morbid mind, or perhaps it is rendered so drearily to put off unwanted guests. Judging by the smashed corpses at the base of the gravity slide, this is a spirit which does not like company.

  I stand. There is a presence behind me, but I remain facing the river. I have no wish to look upon the armour’s violent spirit. The forms the Armours Prime take in the Second World are always disturbing, and the blunt hostility it radiates chills me. If I look directly into its eyes, it may ensnare me, and then it would almost certainly tear me apart. Best to look away from it.

  “Stay behind me, at all times,” I command. “Remain unseen.”

  “Dost thou not wish to look upon me?” comes the armour’s mocking reply. Its voice is as fearsome and liquid as the armour itself, and there is a scent of blood on the air when it speaks.

  “You will obey me.”

  “Yes,” it says after a dangerous pause. “Yes. As the master has commanded me, then shall I obey.”

  “It is not a request!” I say, trying to fill my voice with authority. “You will obey me.”

  The armour growls by way of reply, its hatred of me palpable, but nevertheless I feel its attention shift from the back of my neck.

  I go to the river. My reflection stares back. I welcome its familiarity. Other spirits change their shape on a whim, dazzling their human counterparts with
their limitless imagination, but I am not as other spirits.

  My form is tall for a woman of old Yerth, but short by Martian standards. I am slender, beautiful. My skin is pale, like marble with a blush of rose, a shade not seen on Mars for many thousands of years. My hair is long and brown. I frown, and update my garment and skin patterns to something more fashionable, excepting, of course, my tattoos. No one can ever alter those; they show us for what we are, what we were, and, if one has the skill, who we will be. Whatever short-lived relations beings might choose to have with one another within the halls of the Great Library, the tattoos ensure none would ever mistake a spirit for human.

  I gaze down at the rippling, broken reflection and wonder why I never do change the way I look. I feel more real, maybe, when the face I see is always the same. Or perhaps there is more to it than that.

  I risk a glance behind me, and as commanded, the armour moves out of my sight. I catch a glimpse of a hulking shadow knuckling along the sand, a hybrid of ape and bat, two pairs of glowing red eyes its only clear feature.

  I see the doorway in, then. This world has rendered it as an archway of pale stone filled with a door of opaque green glass. It stands unsupported on the sand. The river and door aside, the desert is utterly featureless, a flat monochrome that fades into the dark.

  “Mark this place well,” I say.

  “I shall do as thou biddest me do.”

  “You will address me correctly,” I rebuke. The armour speaks in an old form, and addresses me in overly familiar manner.

  Another growl. “I will do as you bid me do. Mistress companion.”

  I can hear the armour’s contempt. “Come,” I say. “Let us see if there is a way across this river.”

  “Should we not fly across, mistress companion?”

  “We cannot, the river is a barrier. We must find the approved portal and announce ourselves. We are in a private domain now, and we must play by the host’s rules.”

  The armour snarls and snaps, but does not object.

  We walk the bank and the river winds on. The door disappears behind us. Many hours feel to have passed; I am sure this is not so, but I have no way of knowing. A sickly mist rises from the surface of the water, chilling me.

  The armour growls.

  “What is it?” I say.

  “Hearken,” it rumbles back. “Something approaches.”

  I stand quiet and still, straining to hear. There are disadvantages to donning a full emulant form. I try to alter my physiology slightly, but my will is trammelled and I cannot. So, the Spirefather knows we are here. Our fate is in its hands now.

  A creaking comes through the mist, the sound of wood on wood. A dark shape slides from the vapours: a boat, a long-prowed punt of an archaic type once used upon Mars’ canals.

  A cowled figure works a paddling-oar fixed to the back of the punt. It ceases its labours and lets the punt whisper onto the sand. A long, pale hand beckons. I step forward. The armour’s footsteps follow.

  “No,” says the boatman. “Only you.” It raises a palm to underline its statement.

  “Mistress companion?” says the armour. It is insolent.

  “I shall proceed alone. You will await my return.”

  “My instructions to guard you cannot be guaranteed to be completed,” it replies. The armour is a ferocious thing, all need and violence. It still manages to sound as if this circumstance matters to it not at all.

  “Await me here,” I repeat firmly.

  “As you wish, mistress companion.”

  Wet sand rasps behind me. If I turn around I will see the armour lying on the shore, a creature from the blackest imaginings of the technophi who created it. It stares at me now, I know, wondering if it could kill me and get away with it.

  “Come,” says the boatman. I step aboard. “Payment,” he says, and holds out his bony hand. I hand him the coins placed on my eyes at my arrival.

  The boatman’s hand closes around white-green bronze, and I find myself somewhere else.

  I stand at the edge of a plain, a homogenised version of the steppe that the city of Arn Vashtena overlooks. Far away is a mountain range, or at least, I take it for such. It is of such magnitude it can be nothing else, but then I see that no, it is not a mountain range at all, but the Library stacks, hundreds of metres high, full of billions upon billions of books.

  There is the knowledge I seek.

  I take to the air, my feet trailing a half-span above the grey heather. I draw closer to the stacks, and their full, unfeasible height is revealed. I come to one rack and settle to the ground.

  It stretches away unending. Every book upon it is ruined. Their leathern covers are white with mould, the bindings peeling away, the pages spotted. I select one at random, dust showering around my feet. I open the cracked covers, and the contents fall upon the floor in pieces, fragments of paper dissipating in a storm of information, a cacophony of sounds and shattered images going to nothing. Somewhere a crystal bell, sweet and sad, chimes in mourning. Left and right, down the ranks of volumes, I look for the source of the sound. I see nothing, and gradually the chime falls away. I let the book fall to the floor. I select another, then another; all are the same. All go to nothing in my hands, singing unknowable snatches of data as they disintegrate. I try to access a book’s data before picking it up; it is useless, it could be a song or the soul of a man. It is unreadable and leaves the taste of death in my mouth.

  The stacks are a wall of dead data. They stretch out of sight. I turn to the left, and accelerate away, rotting books blurring beside me. I come to a dead stop. Here is an aisle lined with more stacks, filled with yet more decaying tomes. I try more books, to the same end. I go on. After a time the aisle turns a corner, and I am obliged to go left. This happens many times, and I travel deeper into the stacks. I have no idea which way to go, for within this construct I am limited. This is the world of another mind, and for now I am essentially a part of it. I take random turn after random turn, wending my way further into the dead Library.

  The song grows louder. Stay away. It draws off for a while, and my sense of danger recedes.

  Aisle follows aisle, twist follows twist. The mouldering Library goes on forever. There is no end in sight until, quite suddenly, I find myself unable to proceed further, shelves looming around me. I turn back, but the way I have come is closed. Fighting down panic, I will myself upwards, but my efforts have no effect.

  I hear the song again. “Stay away, stay away, stay away,” it calls, a steady rhythm. It is closer now. I can hear the individual voices in the spirit’s choir, and there is discord to it. Its voices do not sing as one; some babble nonsense, or scream and shriek piteously. It is broken, but strong, a dreadful chorus, and I can feel the wash of its power as it comes closer. Certain lower levels of my psyche panic under its influence.

  The Spirefather, for it must be he, roars, a bellow halfway between childish frustration and torment. “Stay away!” An awful sound, voices unsynchronised, clashing and blurring. Then its voices drop, and the pounding of its breathless song starts up again: “Stay away, stay away, stay away.” The voice fades and grows and fades, as the singer negotiates the labyrinth, but it comes ever closer.

  The roar sounds again, very close. Its song comes with it, an ensemble of mad voices chanting, over and over again. “Stay away, stay away, STAY AWAY!”

  The essence of its being ripples through this Second World fragment, causing my mind to shiver into its multiple harmonies, and I must fight to pull them back together.

  I am being hunted.

  I attempt to rise into the air, but the Spirefather will not allow it. What now? I try to climb the shelves, but they crumble to wet sawdust, data tinkling as the books fall and shatter.

  I look out of the Spirefather’s domain to where Yoechakenon meditates in the Heart Chamber. I open the armour-sphere’s mouth, try to shout a warning.

  The sound dies in my throat. The words will not come.

  This is a trap.
<
br />   YOECHAKENON COMES OUT of his trance. He has no need of sleep. I think for a moment that he has heard me. My relief dies; he has not.

  He is worried. Beings that habitually communicate at the speed of thought need little time for discourse. He is weighing up the possibilities. Maybe he thinks that I have not found the Spirefather yet, or that I have and it is unwilling. I am touched by his faith in me. The armour is not back yet, and if I had been destroyed it would have returned. He has no idea of the dangers I face.

  No, his main concern of the moment is himself. Through the armour sphere I can hear sounds coming from the corridor. He listens for a moment, checking his breath so it does not dull his hearing. Nothing disturbs the sepulchral air of the chamber. He remains tense. It comes again – a bang, followed by a scraping noise. He reaches for the glaive and moves stealthily to the doorway surrounding the Heart Chamber. I watch him stand there.

  The sounds are coming down the shaft: high-pitched screeches have joined the scrape of metal on metal. The noises are distorted, echoing in the gravity slide. If the sounds are any kind of language, it is not one I understand.

  There are two defensible points available to him: at the base of the gravity slide’s shaft, and here in the doorway of the Heart Chamber. The gravity slide’s exit is promising – he can chop at whatever comes down the shaft with impunity – but if there are many of them, or if they are reckless and use the slide rather than the service ladder, they could perhaps come quickly enough to assail him in a group, and the floor there is treacherous with bones.

  The doorway to the Heart Chamber is very wide, which means he could be fighting more than one opponent at once, but at least there is room to use his glaive to its fullest effect, and he will be nearer to the armour and I when – should – we return.