Orphu had one. Why are we wrapped in ultrastealth if we’re approaching Mars behind four fusion trails that will light us up like a supernova, visible day and night for sols to anything with eyes on the Martian surface? Wait . . . you’re trying to get a response. Trying to make them attack us.
“Yes,” said Koros. “It was the easiest way to assess their intentions. The fusion engines will shut off while we are still eighteen million kilometers from Mars. If they have not attempted to intercept us by then, we will jettison the engines, the solenoid toruses, and all other external devices, and enter Martian orbit with passive countermeasures hiding our location. Currently we do not know if the post-humans—or whatever entities have terraformed Mars and are currently residing there—have a technical or post-technical civilization.”
Mahnmut considered this. They would be jettisoning every form of propulsion that could get them home.
I would say that massive quantum phase-shift activity is a sign of something pretty technological, said Orphu.
“Perhaps,” said Ri Po. “But there are idiot savants in the universe.”
With that cryptic statement, the meeting ended, atmosphere was drained out of the control room, and Orphu hauled Mahnmut back to his submersible in the ship’s hold.
The four engines fired on cue. For the next two days, Mahnmut was pinned to his high-g couch as the ship decelerated down onto the plane of the ecliptic toward Mars at more than 400-g’s. The hold around The Dark Lady was again filled with high-g gel, but his living compartment wasn’t, and the weight and lack of mobility grew tiring to Mahnmut. He couldn’t imagine the stress on Orphu out in his hull-cradle. Mars and all forward images were obscured by the four-sun glare of the engines, but Mahnmut passed the time by checking on video of the hull, the stars astern, and by rereading parts of À la recherche du temps perdu and finding connections and disparities with his beloved Shakespearean sonnets.
Mahnmut’s and Orphu’s love of lost-age human languages and literature was not all that unusual. More than two thousand e-years earlier, the first moravecs to be sent out to Jovian space to explore the moons and to contact the sentients known to be in the atmosphere of Jupiter were programmed by the first post-humans with elaborate full-sensory tapes of human history, human culture, and the human arts. The rubicon had already occurred, of course, and before that the Great Retreat, but there had still been some hope of saving the memory and records of the human past even if the last 9,114 old-style humans on Earth could not be saved by the final fax. In the centuries since contact had been lost with Earth, human art and human literature and human history had become the hobbies of thousands of the hardvac and moon-based moravecs. Mahnmut’s former partner, Urtzweil—who had been destroyed in an icefall under the European ice crater of Tyre Macula eighteen J-years before—had been passionate about the King James Bible. A copy of that bible still sat in the cubby under Mahnmut’s stowed work table, next to the gel-insulated lava lamp Urtzweil had given his partner as a gift.
Watching the filter-dimmed flare of the forward fusion engines on his video monitor, Mahnmut tried to connect his image of the historical Marcel Proust—a man who took to his bed for the last three years of his life, in his famous cork-lined room, surrounded by his always-arriving galley proofs, old manuscripts, and bottles of addictive potions, visited only by the occasional male prostitute and workers putting in one of the first opera-delivering telephones in Paris—with the Marcel-narrator of the exhausting work of perception that was In Search of Lost Time. Mahnmut’s memories were prodigious—he could call up the street maps of Paris in 1921, could download every photograph or drawing or painting ever done of Proust, could look at the Vermeer that caused Proust’s character to faint, could cross-check every character in the books with every real human being Proust had known—but none of this helped that much in Mahnmut’s understanding of the work. Human art, Mahnmut knew, simply transcended human beings.
Four secret paths to the truth of the puzzle of life, Orphu had said. The first—Proust’s characters’ obsession with nobility, with aristocracy, with the upper echelons of society—was obviously a dead end. Mahnmut did not have to wade through 3,000 pages of dinner parties the way Proust’s protagonist had in order to realize this.
The second, the idea of love as the key to life’s puzzle, this fascinated Mahnmut. Certainly Proust—like Shakespeare but in a completely different way—had attempted to explore all facets of human love—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, familial, collegial, interpersonal—as well as love of places and things and of life itself. And Mahnmut had to agree with Orphu’s analysis that Proust had rejected love as a true line to deeper understanding.
The third path for Marcel had been art—art and music—but while that had led Marcel to beauty, it had not led to truth.
What is the fourth path? And if that failed for Proust’s heroes, what was the true path under and behind the pages, unknown to the characters but perhaps glimpsed by Proust himself?
All Mahnmut had to do to find out was open the line to Orphu. Lost in their own thoughts, perhaps, the two friends had communicated very little during this last day of deceleration. He’ll tell me later, thought Mahnmut. And perhaps by then I’ll see it myself . . . and see if it connects to Shakespeare’s analysis of what lies beyond love. Certainly the Bard had all but rejected sentimental and romantic and physical love by the end of the sonnets.
The fusion engines stopped firing. The release from high-g and hull-transmitted noise and vibration was almost terrifying.
Immediately the spherical fuel-engine spheres were jettisoned, small rockets carrying them away from the ship’s trajectory.
Releasing sail and solenoid came Orphu’s voice on the common line. Mahnmut watched on various hull video feeds as these components were ejected into space.
Mahnmut went back to the forward video. Mars was clearly visible now, only eighteen million kilometers ahead and below them. Ri Po provided trajectory overlays on the image. Their approach looked perfect. Small internal ion-thrusters were continuing to slow the ship and preparing to inject it into a polar orbit.
No records of radar or other sensor tracking during our descent, said Koros III. No attempt at interception.
Mahnmut thought that the Ganymedan had great dignity but also a propensity for stating the obvious.
We’re getting data through our passive sensors, said Ri Po.
Mahnmut checked the readouts. If they had been approaching—say—Europa, the displays would have shown radio, gravitonic, microwave, and a host of other technology-related emissions coming from the moravec-inhabited moon. Mars showed nothing. But the terraformed world was certainly inhabited. Already the bow-mounted telescope was able to pick up images of the white houses on Mons Olympos, the straight and curved slashes of roads, the stone heads lining the shore of the Northern Sea, and even some glimpses of individual movement and activity, but no radio traffic, no microwave relays, none of the electromagnetic signature of a technological civilization. Mahnmut remembered the phrase that Ri Po had used—idiot savants?
Prepare to enter Mars orbit in sixteen hours, announced Koros. We will observe from orbit for another twenty-four hours. Mahnmut, prepare your submersible for de-orbit burn thirty hours from now.
Yes, said Mahnmut over the common line, stifling the urge to add a “sir.”
Mars seemed quiet enough for most of the twenty-four hours they were in polar orbit around it.
There were artificial things in Stickney Crater on Phobos—mining machinery, what was left of a magnetic accelerator, broken habitation domes and robotic rovers—but they were cold and dusty and pockmarked and more than three millennia old. Whoever had terraformed Mars in the past century had nothing to do with the ancient artifacts on the inner moon.
Mahnmut had seen images of Mars when it was the Red Planet—although he always thought it more orange than red—but it was reddish-orange no longer. Coming in over the north pole, the telescopic view resolving things down
to a meter in length, what was left of the polar ice cap—just a squiggle of water-ice now, all the CO2 having long since been sublimed away in the terraforming—a white island in the blue northern sea. Spirals of clouds moved across the ocean that covered more than half of the northern hemisphere. The highlands were still orangish and most of the land masses were brown, but the startling green of forests and fields were visible without using the telescope.
No one and nothing challenged the ship: no radio calls, no search or acquisition radar, no tightbeam or laser or modulated neutrino queries. As the tense minutes moved into long hours of silence, the four moravecs watched the views and prepared for the descent of The Dark Lady.
There was obviously life on Mars—human or post-human life, from the looks of it, along with at least one other species: the stone-head movers, possibly human, but short and green in the telescope photos. White-sailed ships moved along the northern coastline and up the water-filled canyons of Valles Marineris, but not many ships. A few more sails were visible on the cratered sea that had been Hellas Basin. There were obvious signs of habitation on Olympus Mons—and at least one high-tech people-mover stairway or escalator along the flanks of that volcano—and photographs of half a dozen flying machines near the summit caldera of Olympus, and a few glimpses of a few other white houses and terraced gardens on the high slopes of the Tharsis volcanoes—Ascraesus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons—but no signs whatsoever of an extensive planetary civilization. Koros III announced over the common line that he estimated no more than three thousand of the pale human-looking people lived on the four volcanoes, with perhaps twenty thousand of the green workers congregated in tent cities along the shorelines.
Most of Mars was empty. Terraformed but empty.
Hardly a danger to all sentient life-forms in the solar system, then, is it? asked Orphu of Io.
It was Ri Po who responded. Look at the planet through quantum mapping.
“My God,” Mahnmut said aloud to his empty enviro-crèche. Mars was a blinding red blaze of quantum-shift activity, with flow lines converging on the major volcano, Olympus Mons.
Could the few flying vehicles be causing this quantum havoc? asked Orphu. They don’t register on the electromagnetic spectrum and they certainly aren’t chemically propelled.
No, said Koros III. While the few flying machines move in and out of the quantum flux, they are not generating it. Or at least not the primary source.
Mahnmut looked at the bizarre quantum map overlay another minute before venturing a suggestion he’d been thinking about for days. Would it make sense to contact them via radio or another medium? Or just land openly on Olympus Mons. To come as friends rather than spies?
We have considered this course of action, said Koros. But the quantum activity is so intense that we find it imperative to gather more information before revealing ourselves.
Gather information and get these weapons of mass destruction as close to that volcano as possible, Mahnmut thought with some bitterness. He had never wanted to be a soldier. Moravecs were not designed to fight and the thought of killing sentient beings warred with programming as old as his species.
Nonetheless, Mahnmut prepared The Dark Lady for descent. He put the submersible on internal power and separated all life support umbilicals from the ship, remaining connected only through the comm cables that would be severed when they moved out of the hold. The submersible had been wrapped in ultrastealth and a reaction-pak of thrusters now girdled the bow and stern of the sub, but these would be controlled by Koros III during the entry phase, then jettisoned. The final add-on was the blister-circle of parachutes that would slow their fall after re-entry. These would also be controlled and jettisoned by Koros III. Only after they reached the ocean would Mahnmut guide his own submersible.
Preparing to come down to the submersible, called Koros III from the control deck.
Permission to board granted, replied Mahnmut, although their titular commander had not asked for permission. He was not Europan and did not know the protocols. Mahnmut saw the warning that the ship’s bay doors were opening, exposing The Dark Lady to space again so that Koros could make the transfer by guide cable.
Mahnmut flicked on the video feed from the hull where Orphu nestled. The Ionian noticed the attention. Good-bye for a while, my friend, said Orphu. We’ll meet again.
I hope so, said Mahnmut. He opened the submersible’s lower airlock and prepared to blow the last comm cables.
Wait, said Ri Po. Coming around the limb of the planet.
Control-room video showed Koros III dogging the airlock hatch he had just opened and returning to the instruments. Mahnmut removed his finger from the button arming the commline pyrotechnics.
Something was coming around the edge of Mars. Currently it was just a radar blip. The forward telescope gimbaled to acquire it.
It must have launched from Olympos when we were out of line of sight, said Orphu.
Hailing it now, said Ri Po.
Mahnmut monitored the frequencies as their ship began calling. The blip did not answer.
Do you see this? said Koros III.
Mahnmut did. The object was less than two meters long—an open chariot sans horses and surrounded by a gleaming forcefield. There were two humanoids in the open vehicle, a man and a woman, the female apparently steering it and the taller male just standing there, staring straight ahead as if he could see the stealth-wrapped ship some eight thousand kilometers away. The woman was tall and regal and blonde; the man had short gray hair and a white beard.
Orphu rumbled his laugh on the common line. It looks like pictures of God, he said. I don’t know who his girlfriend is.
As if hearing this insult, the gray-bearded man raised his arm.
The video input flared and died the same instant Mahnmut was thrown against the restraints of his high-g couch. He felt the ship shudder twice, terribly, and then begin tumbling wildly, centrifugal forces throwing Mahnmut hard to the right, then up, then to the left.
Is everyone all right? he screamed on the all-line. Can you hear me?
For several tumbling seconds the only response was silence and line-noise, then Orphu’s calm voice came through the snarl of static. I can hear you, my friend.
Are you all right? Is the ship all right? Did we fire on them?
I’m damaged and blinded, said Orphu as the static hissed and crackled. But I saw what happened before the blast blinded me.We didn’t fire on them. But the ship is—half gone, Mahnmut.
Half gone? Mahnmut repeated stupidly. What—
Some sort of energy lance. The control room—Koros and Ri Po—gone. Vaporized. All the bow gone. The upper hull is slagged. The ship is tumbling about twice per second and beginning to break up. My own carapace has been breached. My reaction jets are gone. Most of my manipulators are gone. I’m losing power and shell integrity. Get the submersible away from the ship—hurry!
I don’t know how! called Mahnmut. Koros had the control package. I don’t know . . .
Suddenly the ship lurched again and the comm and video lines were severed completely. Mahnmut could hear a violent hissing through the hull and realized that it was the ship boiling away around him. He switched on the submersible’s own cameras and saw only plasma glow everywhere.
The Dark Lady began tumbling and twisting more wildly, although whether with the dying ship or by itself, Mahnmut could not tell. He activated more cameras, the submersible’s underwater thrusters, and the damage control system. Half the systems were out or slow to respond.
Orphu? No response. Mahnmut activated the omni-directional masers, attempting a tightbeam lock. Orphu?
No response. The tumbling intensified. The Dark Lady’s hold, pressurized for Koros’s arrival, suddenly lost all of its atmosphere, spinning the submersible more wildly.
I’m coming for you, Orphu, called Mahnmut. He blew the inner airlock door and slapped his restraint straps off. Behind him somewhere, either in the ship tearing itself apart or in The Dark
Lady herself, something exploded and slammed Mahnmut violently against the control panel and then down into darkness.
13
The Dry Valley
In the morning, after a good breakfast prepared by Daeman’s mother’s servitors at her Paris Crater apartments, Ada and Harman and Hannah and Daeman faxed to the site of the last Burning Man.
The faxnode was lighted, of course, but outside the circular pavilion, it was deep night and the wind howl was audible even through the semipermeable forcefield. Harman turned to Daeman. “This was the code I had—twenty-one eighty-six—does it seem right to you?”
“It’s a faxnode pavilion,” whined the younger man. “They all look alike. Plus, it’s dark outside. And it’s empty here now. How am I supposed to tell if it’s the same as some place I visited eighteen months ago, in daylight, with a mob of other people?”
“The code sounds sort of right,” said Hannah. “I was following other people, but I remember that the Burning Man node had a high number, not one I’d ever faxed to before.”
“And you were what?” sneered Daeman. “Seventeen at the time?”
“A little older,” said Hannah. Her voice was cool. Where Daeman was mostly pale flab, Hannah showed tanned muscle. As if recognizing that disparity—even though Daeman had never heard of two human beings physically fighting outside the turin-cloth drama—he took a step backward.
Ada ignored the prickly conversation and walked to the edge of the pavilion, putting her slim fingers against the forcefield. It rippled and bent but did not give way. “This is solid,” she said. “We can’t get out.”
“Nonsense,” said Harman. He joined her and the two pushed and prodded, leaned their weight against the elastic but ultimately unyielding energy shield. It wasn’t semipermeable after all—or at least not to physical objects like human beings.