Red Rising

  “That is Andromeda Galaxy,” she tells me later as we lie on our backs. The animals make chirping noises in the darkness. The sky above me is a frightening thing. If I stare too intently, I forget gravity’s pull and feel as though I am going to fall into it. Shivers trickle down my spine. I am a creature of nooks and tunnels and shafts. The mine is my home, and part of me wants to run to safety, run from this alien room of living things and vast spaces.

  Eo rolls to look at me and traces the steam scars that run like rivers down my chest. Farther down she’d find scars from the pitviper along my belly. “Mum used to tell me stories of Andromeda. She’d draw with inks given to her by that Tinpot, Bridge. He always liked her, you know.”

  As we lie together, she takes a deep breath and I know she has planned something, saved something to talk about in this moment. This place is leverage.

  “You won the Laurel, we all know,” she says to me.

  “You needn’t coddle me. I’m not angry any longer. It doesn’t matter,” I say. “After seeing this, none of that matters.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asks sharply. “It matters more than ever. You won the Laurel, but they didn’t let you keep it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This place …”

  “This place exists, but they don’t let us come here, Darrow. The Grays must use it for themselves. They don’t share.”

  “Why should they?” I ask, confused.

  “Because we made it. Because it’s ours!”

  “Is it?” The thought is foreign. All I possess is my family and myself. Everything else is the Society’s. We didn’t spend the money to send the pioneers here. Without them, we’d be on the dying Earth like the rest of humanity.

  “Darrow! Are you so Red that you don’t see what they’ve done to us?”

  “Watch your tone,” I say tightly.

  Her jaw flexes. “I’m sorry. It’s just … we are in chains, Darrow. We are not colonists. Well, sure we are. But it’s more on the spot to call us slaves. We beg for food. Beg for Laurels like dogs begging for scraps from the master’s table.”

  “You may be a slave,” I snap. “But I am not. I don’t beg. I earn. I am a Helldiver. I was born to sacrifice, to make Mars ready for man. There’s a nobility to obedience.…”

  She throws up her hands. “A talking puppet, are you? Spitting out their bloodydamn lines. Your father had the right of it. He might not have been perfect, but he had the right of it.” She grabs a clump of grass and tears it out of the ground. It seems like some sort of sacrilege.

  “We have claim over this land, Darrow. Our sweat and blood watered this soil. Yet it belongs to the Golds, to the Society. How long has it been this way? A hundred, a hundred and fifty years of pioneers mining and dying? Our blood and their orders. We prepare this land for Colors that have never shed sweat for us, Colors that sit in comfort on their thrones on distant Earth, Colors that have never been to Mars. Is that something to live for? I’ll say it again, your father had the right of it.”

  I shake my head at her. “Eo, my father died before he was even twenty-five because he had the right of it.”

  “Your father was weak,” she mutters.

  “What the bloodydamn is that supposed to mean?” Blood rises into my face.

  “It means he had too much restraint. It means your father had the right dream but died because he would not fight to make it real,” she says sharply.

  “He had a family to protect!”

  “He was still weaker than you.”

  “Careful,” I hiss.

  “Careful? This from Darrow, the mad Helldiver of Lykos?” She laughs patronizingly. “Your father was born careful, obedient. But were you? I didn’t think so when I married you. The others say you are like a machine, because they think you know no fear. They’re blind. They don’t see how fear binds you.”

  She traces the haemanthus blossom along my collarbone in a sudden show of tenderness. She is a creature of moods. The flower is the same color as the wedding band on her finger.

  I roll on an elbow to face her. “Spit it out. What do you want?”

  “Do you know why I love you, Helldiver?” she asks.

  “Because of my sense of humor.”

  She laughs dryly. “Because you thought you could win the Laurel. Kieran told me how you burned yourself today.”

  I sigh. “The rat. Always jabbering. Thought that’s what younger brothers were supposed to do, not elder.”

  “Kieran was frightened, Darrow. Not for you, like you might be thinking. He was frightened of you, because he can’t do what you did. Boy wouldn’t even think it.”

  She always talks circles around me. I hate the abstracts she lives for.

  “So you love me because you believe that I think there are things worth the risk?” I puzzle out. “Or because I’m ambitious?”

  “Because you’ve a brain,” she teases.

  She makes me ask it again. “What do you want me to do, Eo?”

  “Act. I want you to use your gifts for your father’s dream. You see how people watch you, take their cues from you. I want you to think owning this land, our land, is worth the risk.”

  “How much a risk?”

  “Your life. My life.”

  I scoff. “You’re that eager to be rid of me?”

  “Speak and they will listen,” she urges. “It is that bloody simple. All ears yearn for a voice to lead them through darkness.”

  “Grand, so I’ll hang with a troop. I am my father’s son.”

  “You won’t hang.”

  I laugh too harshly. “So certain a wife I have. I’ll hang.”

  “You’re not meant to be a martyr.” Sighing, she lies back in disappointment. “You wouldn’t see the point to it.”

  “Oh? Well then, tell me, Eo. What is the point to dying? I’m only a martyr’s son. So tell me what that man accomplished by robbing me of a father. Tell me what good comes of all that bloodydamn sadness. Tell me why it’s better I learned to dance from my uncle than my father.” I go on. “Did his death put food on your table? Did it make any of our lives any better? Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us of his laughter.” I feel the tears burning my eyes. “It just stole away a father and a husband. So what if life isn’t fair? If we have family, that is all that should matter.”

  She licks her lips and takes her time in replying.

  “Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here.” Her face is easier to see as night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. “If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen.” She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. “It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.”

  “You repeat the same damn points,” I say bitterly. “You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say it’s better to live on our knees.”

  “You’re not even living!” she snaps. “We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives.…”

  “And machine hearts?” I ask. “That’s what I am?”

  “Darrow …”

  “What do you live for?” I ask her suddenly. “Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it for some dream?”

  “It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”

  “I live for you,” I say sadly.

  She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

  There’s a long, terrible silence that stretches between us. She does not understand how her words wrench my heart, how she can
twist me so easily. Because she does not love me like I love her. Her mind is too high. Mine too low. Am I not enough for her?

  “You said you had another gift for me?” I say, changing the subject.

  She shakes her head. “Some other time. The sun rises. Watch it with me once, at least.”

  We lie in silence and watch light slip into the sky as though it were a tide made from fire. It is unlike anything I could have dreamed of. I can’t stop the tears that well in the corners of my eyes as the world beyond turns to light and the greens and browns and yellows of the trees in the room are revealed. It is beauty. It is a dream.

  I am silent as we return to the grimness of the gray ducts. The tears linger in my eyes and as the majesty of what I saw fades; I wonder what Eo wants of me. Does she want me to take my slingBlade and start a rebellion? I would die. My family would die. She would die, and nothing would make me risk her. She knows that.

  I am puzzling out what her other gift may be when we exit the ducts for the Webbery. I roll first from the duct and extend a hand back to her when I hear a voice. It is accented, oily, from Earth.

  “Reds in our gardens,” it oozes. “Ain’t that a thing.”

  5

  THE FIRST SONG

  Ugly Dan stands with three Tinpots. Their thumpers perch crackling in their hands. Two of the men lean on the metal rails of the Webbery’s girders. Behind them, the women of Mu and Upsilon wrap silk from the worms around long silver poles. They shake their heads insistently at me, as if telling me not to be foolish. We’ve gone beyond the permitted zones. This will mean a flogging, but if I resist, it will mean death. They will kill Eo and they will kill me.

  “Darrow …,” Eo murmurs.

  I set myself between Eo and the Tinpots, but I don’t fight. I won’t let us die for a simple glimpse of the stars. I put my hands out to let them know I will surrender.

  “Helldivers,” Ugly Dan chuckles to the others. “The toughest ant is yet but an ant.” He swings his thumper into my stomach. It’s like being bitten by a viper and kicked by a boot. I fall gasping, hands on the metal grate. Electricity slithers through my veins. I taste the bile rising in my throat. “Take a swing, Helldiver,” Dan coos. He drops one of the thumpers in front of me. “Please. Take a swing. Won’t be any consequences. Just some fun between the boys. Take a piggin’ swing.”

  “Do it, Darrow!” Eo shouts.

  I’m not a fool. I thrust my hands up in surrender and Dan sighs in disappointment as he clacks the magnetic manacles around my wrists. What would Eo have had me do? She curses at them as they lock her arms together and drag us away through the Webbery to the cells. This will mean the lash. But it will be just the lash because I did not pick up the thumper, because I did not listen to Eo.

  It’s three days in a cell in the Pot before I see Eo again. Bridge, one of the old, kinder Tinpots, takes us out together; he lets us touch. I wonder if she’ll spit at me, curse me for my impotence. But she only grips my fingers and brings her lips to mine.

  “Darrow.” Her lips brush my ear. The breath is warm, the lips cracked and trembling. She’s frail as she hugs me—a little girl, all wire wrapped in pale skin. Her knees wobble and she shudders against me. The warmth I saw in her face as we watched the sun rise has fled and left her like a faded memory. But I hardly see anything but her eyes and her hair. I wrap my arms around her and hear the muttering of the crowded Common. The faces of our kin and clan stare at us as we stand at the edge of the gallows, where they will flog us. I feel like a child under their stares, under the yellowish lights.

  It’s like a dream when Eo tells me she loves me. Her hand lingers on mine. But there’s something strange to her eyes. They should only whip her, yet her words are final, her eyes sad but not afraid. I see her making a goodbye. A nightmare is coming to my heart. I can feel it like a nail dragged along the bones of my spine as she murmurs an epigram in my ear. “Break the chains, my love.”

  And then I am jerked away from her by my hair. Tears stream down her face. They are for me, though I do not yet understand why. I cannot think. The world is swimming. I am drowning. Rough hands shove me to my knees, then jerk me up. I’ve never heard the Common so quiet. The shuffling of my captors’ feet echoes as they move me around.

  The Tinpots fit me into my Helldiver frysuit. Its acrid smell makes me think I am safe, I am in control. I am not. I’m dragged away from her into the very center of the Common and tossed at the edge of the gallows. The metal stairs are rusted and stained. I grip them with my hands and look to the top of the gallows. Twenty-four of the headTalks each have a cord of leather. They wait for me atop the platform.

  “Oh, the horror of such occasions as this, my friends,” Magistrate Podginus cries. His copper gravBoots hum above me as he floats through the air. “Oh, how the ties that bind us are stretched when one decides to break the laws which protect us all.

  “Even the youngest, even the best, are subject to Law. To Order! Without these we would be animals! Without obedience, without discipline, there would be no colonies! And those few colonies there are would be torn asunder by disorder! Man would be confined to Earth. Man would wallow forevermore on that planet until the end of days. But Order! Discipline! Law! These are the things which empower our race. Cursed is the creature who breaks with these compacts.”

  The speech is more eloquent than usual. Podginus is trying to impress his intelligence upon someone. I look up from the stairs and see a sight I did not ever think to see with my own two eyes. It stings to look at him, to drink in the radiance of his hair, of his Sigils. I see a Gold. In this drab place, he is what I imagine angels would be like. Cloaked in gold and black. Wrapped in the sun. A lion roaring upon his breast.

  His face is older, severe, and pure with power. His hair shines, combed back against his head. Neither a smile nor a frown mark his thin lips, and the only line I see is that of a scar, which runs along his right cheekbone.

  I’ve learned from the HC that such a scar is borne only by the finest of the Golds. The Peerless Scarred, they call them—men and women of the ruling Color who have graduated from the Institute, where they learn the secrets that will permit mankind to one day colonize all the planets of the Solar System.

  He does not speak to us. He speaks to another Gold, one tall and thin, so thin I thought it a woman at first. Without a scar, the man’s face is coated with strange paste to bring out the color of his cheeks and cover the lines on his face. His lips shine. And his hair glistens in a way his master’s does not. He is a grotesque thing to look upon. He thinks so of us. He sniffs the air, contemptuous. The older Gold speaks to him softly and not to us.

  And why should he speak to us? We are not worthy of a Gold’s words. I scarcely want to look at him. I feel like I dirty his gold and black finery with my red eyes. Shame creeps upon me and then I realize why.

  His is a face I know. It is a face every man and woman of the colonies would know. Besides Octavia au Lune, this is the most famous face on Mars—that of Nero au Augustus. The ArchGovernor of Mars has come to see me flogged, and he has brought a retinue. Two Crows (Obsidians to be technic) float quietly behind him. Their skull helmets suit their Color. I was born to mine the earth. They were born to kill men. More than two feet taller than I. Eight fingers on each massive hand. They breed them for war, and watching them is like watching the coldblooded pitvipers who infest our mines. Reptiles both.

  There are a dozen others in his retinue, including another, slighter Gold who seems his apprentice. He’s even more beautiful than the ArchGovernor and he appears to dislike the thin, womanish Gold. And there is an HC camera crew of Greens, tiny creatures compared with the Crows. Their hair is dark. Not green like their eyes and the Sigils on their hands. Frenetic excitement shimmers in those eyes. It’s not often they have Helldivers to make into an example, so they make a spectacle of me. I wonder how many other mining colonies are watching. All of them, if the ArchGovernor is here.

  They make a show of stripping away the
frysuit they only just dressed me in. I see myself on the HC display above, see my wedding band dangling from the cord around my neck. I look younger than I feel, thinner. They jerk me up the stairs and bend me over a metal box beside the noose where my father hung. I shiver as they lay me across the cold steel and tighten my hands in restraints. I smell the synthleather of the lashes, hear one of the headTalks cough.

  “Forevermore, let justice be done,” Podginus says.

  Then the lashes come. Forty-eight in all. They aren’t soft, not even my uncle’s. They can’t be. The lashes bite and wail into my flesh, making a strange keening noise as they arch through the air. Music of terror. I can barely see by the end of it. I pass out twice, and each time I wake I wonder if you can see my spine on the HC.

  It’s a show, all a show of their power. They let the Tinpot, Ugly Dan, act sympathetic, as though he pities me. He whispers encouragement in my ear loud enough for the cameras. And when the last lash slashes my back, he steps in as if to stop another from coming down. Subconsciously, I think he saves me. I’m thankful. I want to kiss him. He is salvation. But I know I’ve had my forty-eight.

  Then they are dragging me to the side. They leave my blood. I’m sure I screamed, sure I shamed myself. I hear them bring out my wife.

  “Even the young, even the beautiful cannot escape justice. It is for all the Colors that we preserve Order, Justice. Without, we would find anarchy. Without Obedience, chaos! Man would perish upon the irradiated sands of Earth. He would drink from the blasted seas. There must be unity. Forevermore, let justice be done.”

  MineMagistrate Podginus’s words ring hollow.