series 01 05 A Prince of Mars Read online

  He had thought of all that, but had not thought to bring a warmer coat for himself and a rug for Annabelle. The desert was damnably cold once the sun disappeared.

  Harnessed to the travois, he walked on in the soft blue glow of starlight, the land empty to the horizon and silent except for his own heavy breathing and the hiss of the sledge runners in the sand. The small twin moons of Mars, when they appeared, added little to the illumination, but the sky was so marvellously free of clouds that the stars themselves shed enough light he could almost imagine casting a shadow. He had never seen stars this luminous, nor had they ever seemed so close overhead, nor the sky itself so enormous. The featureless expanse of the desert, the silence, the stars, all combined to make him feel tiny, and to give this alien world an even more surreal aspect than would simple unfamiliar rock formations and coloration. Nathanial felt as if time stood still. He walked, but nothing around him changed. Perhaps they had died in the crash and this was purgatory.

  What did change was his endurance. As the hours passed he became increasingly aware of the thinner Martian atmosphere. His lungs burned, as if he were walking on a sharp winter morning, and each lungful of air, necessary as it was, hurt more than the last. His legs began to fail as well. This was not a simple matter of fatigue, at least in the sense he knew it—a physical discomfort to be endured and overcome by force of will. It was genuine and mounting physical incapacity.

  After two hours his legs became sufficiently weak that the small irregularities in the ground, dips and rises which before had passed without notice, now became obstacles which arrested his progress, and which required redoubled effort to surmount. He no longer had the goal of walking until morning, or walking for another hour. Now he simply thought in terms of one more step with this right leg, one more with his left, one more with his right… He had no idea how long he continued in this manner before he tripped over a rock and fell to the desert floor.

  His heart raced, he felt the pressure of his blood pounding in his head, felt his vision dim, and for a terrible moment he feared his heart would burst. He lay there for a moment and then lifted his head, only to receive a sharp crack on the back of his skull which left him dazed and his vision filled with starbursts. He felt several more bumps against his head, less severe, and then a tug at his harness rig which drew him forward a foot or two through the sand, then stopped.

  Mass, he reminded himself, was not the same as weight. The liftwood vanes cancelled most of the weight of the travois and its cargo, but none of its mass, and so it had the same momentum as it would have under normal circumstances, but hardly any friction to slow its progress. Well, he had served admirably as an anchor.

  “Are you all right?” Annabelle asked as he crawled out from under the platform

  Her voice sounded strange to him after so many hours of silence. He took a moment to catch his breath, and then he began laughing softly.

  “What is it?” she asked. She raised herself on her good elbow, turning to get a better view of him. Her face, already lined with pain, darkened further with concern. “Why are you laughing?”

  “I was just recalling, not that long ago—well, about five months, I suppose—I expressed a preference for exploring Luna over Mars. Do you know why? Because Luna is deserted, but Mars you see, well,” and he swept the horizon with his arm, “Mars is simply teeming with people. How can you explore some place where you can’t take five steps without stumbling over a temperance meeting, or at least a family picnic?”

  She smiled weakly and lowered herself to the travois. She shifted her position, trying not to move her wounded leg or irritate her left arm, still secured in the sling Doctor Holmes had provided for her.

  “Not much padding on those pipes, I’m afraid. It cannot be comfortable,” Nathanial said.

  “I am fine,” she answered. “You must be very tired dragging me along. Perhaps later I’ll walk a bit.” She sighed and her eyes fluttered closed.

  Nathanial pulled his goggles—necessary to protect his eyes from blowing sand—down around his neck and took another look at her leg, as much to put off walking again as anything. Her leg seemed swollen now, the skin tight around the wound.

  He poured water in a tin cup and drank it slowly, one sip at a time, letting the water sit in his mouth before swallowing. He refilled the cup and added a scoop of sugar, let it dissolve, and then roused Annabelle and helped her drink it. She had no hunger but she needed nutrition and the sugar was all he could think of.

  The feeling had come back to his legs, along with at least some strength. Time to walk.

  4.

  Kak’hamish sat waiting for his final, or perhaps next-to-final, sunrise. Although his stomach no longer protested its emptiness, he had grown weak from lack of water and food. He did not mind the weakness, welcomed it in fact, the way a tired man, once his daily work is done, welcomes drowsiness, the prelude to his rest. His night vision had failed him, however, and he regretted that. All night long he had been unable to see the carved horn he had finished two days earlier, the carving he had named in his soul “Gillsa’s Shadow-Scent”, because it lingered after her departure as her scent had after she left their bed in the morning. When the sun rose, he would see it again. It would be a good day. A perfect day.

  The horizon, indistinct from soon-to-burn-off night mist, first grew grey and then pink. The line separating land from sky became more distinct, perfectly level, perfectly straight, unbroken—except for a tiny bump directly between Kak’hamish and where the sun would soon show itself. Kak’hamish stared at the dot and it seemed to move, even grow after a few minutes, the way a speck on the wall will seem to creep across it and sprout tiny legs if stared at long enough.

  But this was not his imagination’s work. This was a person. The person trudged toward him, growing larger and more distinct with every step. This person, this interloper, annoyed Kak’hamish. This interloper marred Kak’hamish’s view of his last, perfect sunrise, and if the interloper reached him, the interloper would want to talk, would want to fill the perfect stillness of the morning with the noisy chatter of its voice.

  Kak’hamish closed his eyes, breathed slowly and regularly, shed his irritation by force of will. He did not come to this place to have his final thoughts poisoned by ill feelings toward another. He had enjoyed many splendid sunrises. One more or less meant little, and his hope for a perfect final day was really no more than vanity, wasn’t it? What had he done to earn a perfect day?

  So Kak’hamish sat with his eyes closed, silent and unmoving, feeling the warmth grow on his face and chest, and he imagined the sunrise which caused it. He imagined it without the interloper—the interloper who did not annoy him. Soon he heard the sound of the person’s footsteps and the irregular hiss of something dragging in the sand. The sound grew louder and closer, and when it seemed to thunder in his ears, when it seemed an avalanche which would sweep him away, it stopped.

  Silence. No, not silence. Heavy breathing.

  “What is it? Why have we stopped?” a soft, weak voice said.

  “Some sort of Martian johnny just sitting here in the sand,” a second, stronger voice answered. “He’s not dead; I can see him breathing.”

  Kak’hamish thought about all the things he might do to reduce this distraction to a minimum. Perhaps if he did not move, did not open his eyes, they would continue on their pointless death march and he would again be at peace. But lives cross, lives touch, and pretending otherwise never brings peace.

  “He looks pretty far gone, and I can’t imagine he speaks a word of English,” the stronger voice said.

  Kak’hamish opened his eyes. “I do, actually,” he said.

  The Earthman was tall for his species, no more than a hand’s width shorter than Kak’hamish himself. The female’s face was pinched and lined with pain, illness, and anxiety. Both of them had characteristically Earth-human faces—squat and unattractive—but Kak’hamish was in no position to judge other people by their physical beauty. The man
appeared tired, but for all the weight he drew in his improvised sledge, he also looked healthy and his clothes, a single dull-blue covering, were in good repair. They had not walked far, and yet, here they were. Very curious.

  “You have crashed in the desert,” Kak’hamish observed. It was obvious after a moment’s consideration. How else could they have arrived here in this state?

  The Earthman’s eyes grew wide and for a moment he gaped. “Hallo! How did you know that?”

  Apparently he was not very bright, this Earthman. Kak’hamish smiled in reply. “I would stand to greet you, but I am too weak. I have been here without food or water for three days.”

  “Nathanial, give him some water. Did you crash as well?” the Earth woman asked, concern in her voice.

  “You will need your water,” Kak’hamish said, and the Earthman hesitated.

  “In the desert, share,” she said. The phrase sounded awkward on her lips, as if she was accustomed to speaking it in a different language. Regardless of the language, her words were flat, absolute, not subject to negotiation. For a moment the Earth woman reminded him of Gillsa, and in that moment Kak’hamish knew he was lost. He sighed and took the canteen the Earthman offered.

  5.

  Annabelle trusted this odd fellow they’d stumbled across, but for the life of him Nathanial could not see why, unless her injury had put her completely off her head. There were too many unanswered questions about him, and his willingness to actually answer them did nothing to ease Nathanial’s suspicion. How had he come here? Brought by a giant flying lizard. Why? To sit and watch the sun and stars pass overhead until his eyes closed and never opened again. How did he know English? Travelled widely in his youth. These answers told them nothing. What sort of chap just sat down in the sand to die? That’s what Nathanial wanted to know. More to the point, was that the fellow from whom you wanted to take survival advice?

  Several modest meals, a good deal of water, and a long day in the shade of their awning had partially restored the Martian’s physical strength, although he still looked as if a good wind would blow him over. His appearance did nothing to improve Nathanial’s confidence. A few rags barely covered his nakedness, and his only possessions were an old knife, a delicately carved ivory horn, and a small leather bag worn on a thong around his neck—some sort of medicine bag or fetish, Nathanial supposed.

  But the fellow’s face was most arresting. He had clearly been horribly beaten at some point in his life, beaten with heavy solid objects, because human hands simply could not do that sort of damage without destroying themselves. His nose angled to the left and then back to the right. His left cheek bone was lower than the right. His lower jaw sat at perhaps a ten degree angle to the upper jaw, as near as Nathanial could tell, although it was difficult to be certain with most of the man’s teeth gone on the left side, along with some on the right. The fellow had the disconcerting habit of moving his jaw from side to side as he thought about something, scraping his few remaining teeth together, clack-clack. It reminded Nathanial of the sound a horse made worrying at its bit.

  Beyond that, he made Nathanial feel…well, stupid. Kak’hamish—if that really was his name—had mentioned local herbal remedies which might help Annabelle’s wound. Nathanial had no faith in that sort of mumbo-jumbo, but to be polite had asked if they could find any nearby. To be polite. Instead of answering, Kak’hamish had looked to the right, then the left, his gaze taking in the featureless dead sand which stretched to the horizon in every direction, and then he had just looked at Nathanial with what might have been a smile on his grotesque face. He had said nothing, of course, but that was an insult in its way as well, as if the answer was so obvious it was not even worth voicing.

  Nathanial had shown Kak’hamish his derringer, to let him know he could protect them from predators. Kak’hamish smiled again.

  “We have nothing to fear from animals in the deadlands. Anything large enough to eat us would have starved long ago.”

  That made perfect sense, which was all the more infuriating.

  Now the bugger had drawn some sort of map in the sand.

  “You see, we are here, in the Elzaam Deadlands, southeast of the city of Abak’hn, which the British call Aubuchon.”

  “How far from the city are we, Kak’hamish?” Already Annabelle spoke to him as if he were a trusted friend, although Nathanial could not think of a reason why, save the unhinging of judgment consequent to an injury.

  Kak’hamish studied the clouds for a moment and clacked his teeth in thought. “Perhaps one hundred English miles.”

  Annabelle seemed to wilt, lying back onto the canvas sheet Nathanial had stretched for her.

  “Perhaps you say?” Nathanial asked.

  Kak’hamish clacked his teeth again and shrugged.

  One hundred miles! How far had they already come? How far could he drag their aero-travois? How long would their water last? Surely not that long.

  Kak’hamish added five lines to the map radiating from the city.

  “Dry canal, northwest to Alclyon and the Aetherian Steppe beyond. Dry canal northeast to Hyblaeus. Dry canal, southwest to Siruahn. Dry canal due south to Olayaa. Dry canal, southeast to Sharranus―I think the British call it Cerebus.” The last line he drew seemed tantalizingly close to the X he had drawn marking their position.

  “What is a dry canal?” Annabelle asked.

  “One whose foundations broke generations ago,” Nathanial answered quickly. “They no longer hold navigable water but still serve as aquifers, as I recall.”

  Annabelle looked at Kak’hamish who nodded in confirmation.

  “What you call an aquifer is perhaps what we call a gardenway,” Kak’hamish said. “You must walk south, not west, and find the dry canal. There are occasional pools of water, but also many succulent plants. Herbs for your leg as well. Caravans follow the gardenways. You will find one, but if not, walking to Aubuchon is easier from there. It is a longer walk, but there is food and water along the way.”

  “Shall you accompany us?” Annabelle asked.

  Kak’hamish looked away, and for a change did not clack his teeth together. Suddenly the extent to which he and Annabelle were in an alien land struck Nathanial, washed over him like an icy wave. He knew about dry canals from reading a paragraph in Conklin’s, and that was nearly the sum of his knowledge of the Martian deserts. He did not know which plants had medicinal properties, or even which ones were edible. He could not speak a single word of any Martian language, so how could they even negotiate with a caravan, or tell them where they wanted to go?

  “We…ah, would be most grateful for your assistance,” Nathanial heard himself say.

  Kak’hamish looked at him, then at Annabelle, and he sighed.

  6.

  they trudged south for two nights, resting in the day. Nathanial sensed they should have found the dry canal bed by now, but they had not, and their water grew short. Nathanial drew the travois while the Martian ranged a bit ahead, making sure no irregularities of ground hazarded Nathanial’s progress. Kak’hamish hardly spoke, which was rather unnerving. To be precise, he had said nothing aside from, “there is a hole here,” and, twice, “careful for this rock.” Nathanial had begun to suspect that he might have betrayed them, deliberately led them in the wrong direction. Perhaps by now they would be at the city he saw from the air, had they but continued west.

  With every step his suspicion grew

  “You’re one of those Worm chaps, aren’t you? Worshipping death and all that? Not that I’m in a position to criticise anyone else’s religious practice. I only ask because I’ve heard your lot doesn’t care much for people from Earth.” Nathanial wasn’t sure why he’d said all that. The question should have been enough.

  “I do not follow the Worm,” Kak’hamish answered. “If I did, you would not still live.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Nathanial answered. “You were in a rather bad way when we found you, and I am armed, you know.”


  The Martian did not reply, which Nathanial at first interpreted as acceptance of his argument, but as the silence drew out he became less certain.

  “So if you don’t mind me asking, do they worship some mythical giant worm?”

  “The worm they worship is neither mythical nor giant,” Kak’hamish answered. “It is the worm which consumes us all when we embark upon the eternal sleep. They embrace the sleep.”

  “As do you,” Nathanial said, “or at least so it seems to me.”

  Kak’hamish did not answer for some time.

  “That is true,” he said finally, “and I see where you might draw the conclusion you have. Time is a turning millstone. As surely as it grinds down the mountains, it wears all of us as well. You from Earth are a young people, full of energy and intoxicated by the promise of the future. We are a much older race. We have already fulfilled our promise, and then lost it, as will you in time. We have used our world up, and used ourselves up, so as a people we are preoccupied with endings. You will find a thousand theologies and philosophies here, all of them different, and yet all of them about the End of Things.

  “But while my choice was personal and particular, for the followers of the Worm it is universal. While I have come to accept the end, they make a fetish of it, and then dole it out as if it were medicine for the world’s soul.”

  That was the longest speech Nathanial could remember hearing from the chap. The words by themselves did not reassure him—anyone can speak words. His tone of contempt when describing the Worm cult, on the other hand, made Nathanial reasonably certain he was not a practitioner of that religion. But if, as he had said, there were thousands to choose from, and they all led to the grave, what consolation was that? The Wormy chaps might have killed them out of hand; perhaps this fellow’s beliefs involved dispensing false hope first.