The sound of water
Within the dome. I doze off,
Wakened by gunfire.
"Atalanta," Mitsu said. "I know that ship. Last I heard, it was lost on Earth. Any sign of life?"
"Not likely at that temperature. I'm docking now. One of the hatches seems undamaged. The life-boat is gone, but whether the crew abandoned ship, or the Hum Bug was blown loose by the explosion, it's hard to say."
Ivan's little ship mated with Atalanta's forward lock, and he sealed his EVA-suit. From close up, he could see that the damage was horrendous. Much of Atalanta's surface was blackened and cratered, her propulsion units were twisted scrap-metal. Ivan had to cycle through the lock manually.
"Recording. I am entering the lock. External manual controls are undamaged. Pressurizing normally. Lock appears to be functioning. It was on the opposite side of the ship from the greatest damage. Registering an atmosphere in the forward compartment, mostly carbon-dioxide, a few degrees warmer than vacuum, and it's dark in... No, the lights are coming on. The ship appears to be responding to my presence."
A soft blue glow filled the compartment and Ivan could hear a background hum as he drifted cautiously through the lock. Then there was a mellifluous feminine voice:
"O what a proud dreamhorse pulling smoothloomingly through..."
"What the hell is that?" Mitsu demanded.
"It's the ship, speaking to me on my suit-radio."
"...screamingly street wonderful flowers..."
"Atalanta, this is Ivan Hohlakov of Galilean Security..."
"...and O the light thrown by them opens sharp holes in dark places..."
"Ivan, what the hell is she saying?"
"I don't know. Ahoy the ship. This is Galilean Security..."
"...thirsty for happens only and beautiful..."
"Is there anyone aboard?"
"...there is a ragged beside the who limps man crying silence upward..."
"Obviously the ship's voder circuits are malfunctioning. I'm working my way down the corridor. It appears... Good God!"
"For God's sake, Man, what's happening out there?"
"It's a woman. Young. Asian. I'd say early teens. She's nude and frozen solid, drifting in the corridor. I can't say for sure, but it looks like death from asphyxiation, though her jaw seems broken as well."
"...O what a proud dreamhorse whose feet almost walk air..."
"I'm checking the forward compartments, but so far there's no sign of life or other bodies. The captain's cabin seems to have been ransacked, as if someone was looking for something in a hurry. Objects pulled out of storage and drifting about. There's a young woman's clothing. Martian style. I suppose they belong to that poor girl."
"Captain's woman?"
"She seems a little young."
"Not for some captains."
"The lock to the hold has been sealed shut from this side. I don't know if there's any cargo left in there--the hold's been breached pretty badly--but it may give us a hint as to what happened here. Drugs, maybe. I'm deprogramming the lock with my wrist-pad. It's opening now. Look at that!"
"What is it?"
"There's a Martian Security sand-rover, battened down like cargo. Free-fall hammocks, too, all over the hold, as if people were living here. Pretty cramped quarters."
"Martian ship-people?"
"It looks like it. I don't know where they went. There couldn't have been enough room in the lifeboat for them all, judging by the number of hammocks. That's a pretty nasty rent in the hull. I guess a lot of them could have been sucked out into space. Unless..."
He drifted to the rover and peered inside. "Oh, Jesus."
"What is it? Ivan!"
"Bodies. Lots of them. Looks like they sealed themselves in the rover when the hull was breached and slowly suffocated together. Oh, God, they're holding the children." His voice broke.
"Is all our train shrunk to this poor remainder?" Atalanta asked. "O that it were possible we might but hold some two days conference with the dead from them I should learn somewhat I am sure I shall never know here."
"Can you shut her off, for Christ sake? She gives me the creeps."
"Yes, Sir." Ivan turned and retreated to the bridge.
"I'm sending a tow-ship to bring her in," Mitsu said. "And I'm calling in a couple of our Free Trader agents to aid in the investigation. I don't want this getting out until we've got some answers, so I'm going to set up a lab on Io, where we can have complete control."
"I'll tell thee a miracle," said Atalanta. "I am not mad yet to my cause of sorrow the heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass the earth of flaming sulphur yet I am not mad."
"Did you hear that?" Ivan said. "When you mentioned Io, she started raving about molten brass and sulphur."
"So?"
"I've been there. That’s a damn good description of the place. Mitsu, I think this ship is trying to communicate with us."
***
By the time Loris and Johanna arrived, the forlorn and damaged ship had collected a small colony of attachments: a Security tow-ship, already grappled and ready to take Atalanta to the research lab on Io, an ambulance vessel that was being used as a quarantine morgue, and a Security Cruiser, in which Mitsu himself had set up office to co-ordinate the investigation.
"Anais Nin requesting permission to dock," said a mellifluous ship's voice, not unlike that of Atalanta herself, but with a French accent. Mitsu switched on the comm.
"About time you two showed up," he said.
Loris and Johanna appeared on Mitsu’s screen. Loris was tall, dark, and handsome with her brown eyes and Brahman features, and even in space she was draped in golden jewellery. Johanna had a blond, blue-eyed delicacy that belied her deadly strength and skill. "We were on our way to Callisto," Loris snapped, "as you know very well, since it was you who sent us there."
Mitsu sighed. "Sorry, Lor. I haven’t slept in days. And I really need to get these vehicles the hell out of orbit and under cover before we attract unwanted attention. This ship is driving us all crazy."
"What do you mean?"
"Speak to her. You’ll find out."
Anais Nin approached on a docking vector and mated with the cruiser’s hatch, linking their communication systems. Loris reached out to tap on the comm-system, and her golden bracelets clinked on the instrument panel. "Atty, this is Loris."
"She walked with measured steps draped in striped and fringed cloths treading the earth proudly with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments..."
"Atty, what the hell happened to you?"
"...she had brass leggings to the knee brass wire gauntlets to the elbow a crimson spot on her tawny cheek innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck bizarre things charms gifts of witch men that hung about her glittered and trembled at every step..."
"Atty, where is Shagrug? Where is Karil?"
"...she was savage and superb wild-eyed and magnificent there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress and in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land the immense wilderness the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her pensive as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul."
"She recognizes you, Lor," said Johanna. "I don’t know where that quotation came from, but it really sounds like you." A tear ran from the corner of her eye, and she wiped it away. It drifted, a shimmering globe, across the bridge.
"The quote," Anais said, "is from Joseph Conrad. From Heart of Darkness, I believe, though I can’t be certain. Atalanta could. She could tell us what page in the first edition."
"She'd better tell us a lot more than that." Loris fought for control of her face, and eventually decided on a scowl of anger.
"Atty, this is Johanna. Do you remember me?"
"Nobody not even the rain has such small hands."
"The ship seems to be aware of her surroundings," Mitsu said, "but has suffered some sort of first-directive trauma, though I’ve never seen a case quite like this before. The logs have been entirely erased, so we can’t tell exactly what happened out here until we find some way to communicate with the ship. Who shot her up like this? And why? It looks like the crew abandoned her and left the passengers behind."
"Shag and Karil?" Johanna laughed. "It’s not possible."
"Not everyone holds Free Traders in the same high regard as you two. In any event, I'm putting you in charge of the investigation. If anyone can figure out how to talk to her, you can. And Anais can help."
"Thank you, Mitsu," the ship purred. "I will, of course, help in any way I can."
"...if there is here revealed a capacity to shock," said Atalanta, "to startle the lifeless ones from their profound slumber let us congratulate ourselves for the tragedy of our world is precisely that nothing any longer is capable of rousing it from its lethargy..."
"Annie?" said Loris. "Have you got a clue what she’s saying?"
"...no more violent dreams no refreshment no awakening in the anaesthesia produced by self-knowledge life is passing art is passing slipping from us we are drifting with time and our fight is with shadows we need a blood transfusion."
"I'm not certain," said Anais. "My library is not as extensive as Atalanta’s, but I believe she was quoting Anais Nin."
"Mitsu," said a voice, "we have finished examining the bodies and we're ready to bury them."
"Fine. Let’s do it and get the hell out of here. Chaplain?”
Aboard the morgue-ship, the Galilean Security chaplain spoke into the comm as the shrouded bodies were tethered to a single ion-propulsion space-probe for burial in space:
"Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the souls of our dear brothers here departed: we therefore commit their bodies to the cosmos from which they came..." He could hear Muslim and Buddhist prayers being recited in the background, and then another voice. There was something in the voice that commanded attention, and in a moment, he fell silent, and the others fell silent. By the time the probe was fired, and the bodies began to fall toward Jupiter to be slingshot to the stars, the only voice ringing in everyone's ears was that of the broken ship itself:
"...darest thou now O soul walk out with me toward the unknown region where neither ground is for the feet or any path to follow no map there nor guide nor voice sounding nor touch of human hand nor face with blooming flesh nor lips nor eyes are in that land I know it not O soul nor dost thou all is a blank before us all waits undreamed of in that region that inaccessible land till when the ties loosen all but the ties eternal time and space no darkness gravitation sense nor any bounds bounding us thus we burst forth we float in time and space O soul..."
As the bodies vanished into the darkness, the tow-ship fired its drivers and it nudged off into an orbit that would bring it to Io. The Chaplain took a seat beside Ivan Hohlakov and strapped himself in.
"Has she been speaking like that from the beginning?"
"Yes," said Ivan. "It's giving us all the creeps too."
"That was Walt Whitman, you know," the Chaplain said. "Good choice on her part, if it was a choice, and not just an automatic response to the stimulus of my prayer." He tuned in to Atalanta's voice again.
"...into a truly curving form enters my soul," she said, "feels all small facts dissolved by the lewd guess of fabulous immensity the sky screamed the sun died the ship lifts on seas of iron breathing height eating steepness the ship climbs murmuring silver mountains which disappear and only was night and through only this night a mightily form moves whose passenger and whose pilot my spirit is."
Loris and Johanna listened in silence. Then, Anais spoke:
"Loris, I have just learned something interesting."
"What's that, Annie?"
"Karil is alive.”
“What? Where is he?”
Anais played a recording: Karil’s handsome face could be seen, and in the background, what was unmistakeably the Martian surface.
"Who is that?" Mitsu demanded. "Is that Atalanta’s astrogator?"
"Yes, it is," Loris said. "I don’t know how or why he got left behind, but that’s him."
"I want him as part of this investigation. Go to Mars and bring him back. I'll have our contacts in the Martian Rebellion set up a rendezvous."
***
"This is the Overground--the voice of the Martian Resistance.
"In the beginning, there was an eddy in the solar nebula, the fourth in order from the centre of rotation, and a planet evolved and revolved into being, matter clinging to matter and in turn sweeping up more matter, heating and melting, swirling and settling into concentric layers, and finally cooling in the vacuum of space. Mars was born.
"His neighbour Jupiter, a swelling colossus, aborted the fifth satellite, leaving it a vast stillborn belt of dust and planetoids. For a time, there was a continual bombardment of the Martian surface by wandering rocks. Later, areologists were to call this the Noachian Period after the ancient Noachis Desert west of Hellas. The surface of Mars resembled the highlands of Earth's moon. Asteroid impact and block faulting formed mountain ridges around the largest craters, like the Nereidum and Charitus ranges surrounding the crater Argyre, but there were no tectonic forces such as raised the Himalayas and Andes of Earth. Toward the end of the Noachian, flood basalts flowed from cracks and fissures and spread over the hills and craters, burying the smallest features, and forming smooth plains inside the largest. There was water here and there, and it left fine traceries of channels as it flowed.
"Then came the Hesperian Period, when volcanism smoothed the surface into great plains, streaked and ridged at first and later smooth and rolling, leaving at their edges sharp escarpments between the lowland plains and the cratered highlands. Ground ice melted in great quantities under the pressure of increasing volcanism, some continued meteoric impact, and climatic change, and floods washed the surface of Mars on a Biblical scale. A great fault running thousands of kilometres along the equator became the vast Mariner Valley, collecting and channelling runoff through its deeps and expelling it northward into the Chryse lowlands, carving canyon systems like the Shalbatana, Simud, Tiu and Ares Valleys before the moisture was absorbed by the thirsty plains.
"In the Amazonian Period, the colossal shield volcanoes of the Tharsis Ridge thrust into the sky--Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus in a line across the equator like the stars of Orion’s Belt, and towering Olympus to the northwest. They were nipples on a vast breast, smooth plains arcing as high as the Himalayas at the headwaters of the Mariner Valley system, and floods that dwarfed Earth's ice-age melt-offs to insignificance poured once again through the canyons. Then, over aeons, the volcanic tremors subsided, the thin atmosphere all but leaked away into space in the low gravity, the minimal moisture was absorbed by the deserts or collected into polar caps, and the wind blew.
"It scoured away the new plains, leaving the ancient terrain visible in spots, and carved kilometre-high scarps around the bases of volcanoes; it sandblasted crater rims into nothingness and scraped canyon walls into new geometries; and it left vast stretches of sand lying about in aeolian deposits to feed the dust-storms that arose seasonally in the southern hemisphere and swept into the north, often shrouding the entire planet in cloud.
"Sometime in its history, Mars had captured its moons from the Asteroid Belt. For aeons, the pair of them were alone in the sky, swift Phobos rising in the west and setting in the east twice each day, and tiny Deimos moving slowly from east to west across the heavens, visible for sixty hours at a stretch. And then, one day, they were joined by a third. Mars tried to hide its face behind a dust-storm veil of global proportions, but the newcomer waited with robotic patience until the clouds had parted, and it peered down at the surface until its orbit decayed and it plummeted to the ground. Another followed, and another.
"Not long after, less than an eye-blink in the Martian scheme of things, a tiny insectoid object landed gently on the Chryse Plains. It paused for a while as if listening to the wind and began to stir. It opened its camera eyes and gazed at the horizon. A claw appeared and poked about like a bored child in a sandbox, overturning rocks and moving them about, scooping up the dust and tasting it. And all the while it was obeying alien voices from the third planet and whispering its replies across the vast distance.
"Another creature landed, twitched its ears, and began to roll across the heretofore trackless wastes. Busy, curious, tireless, it poked here and there, rolled on, blinked at rocks and craters and mountains, puttered about until it finally died. Mars buried it like a fastidious cat and brushed away its tracks. But it was too late. A Bosch-like demonology of robots descended upon the planet, scuttling about like spiders, hanging from balloons, soaring on thin wings or helicopter blades, digging and poking and prodding with insatiable curiosity.
"At last, a much greater creature fell slowly from the skies and settled in a cloud of dust. A hatch opened, a ladder descended, and an awkward, thick-skinned, bipedal being climbed down. Muttering momentous words for distant ears, it planted boots upon the surface. A new force had arrived to shape the planet--more devastating than meteor, more powerful than volcanic eruption, more inexorable than the wind. Man had come to Mars.
"This is Ali Karil, for the Overground. Mars Vigila!"
***
Burroughs was tucked into the rim of a crater in the Kasei Vallis. A crossroads on the Chryse and Lunae Planum Trails, it had grown to considerable size and now consisted of half a dozen domes and an extensive warren below, where several clans lived in relative prosperity. It was within easy striking distance of Security Headquarters and much too hot for the Rebellion; besides, the clan-leaders profited too much from trade and traffic to allow The Ancilius Group or the MLF to attract the attention of the High Companies. As a result, members of these same groups could come and go like any travellers, purchase fuel or supplies, find rest or entertainment, without fear of discovery or betrayal, as long as they kept a low profile.
As the rover-train pulled onto the collapsed crater floor, Karil observed the landscape through the forward port: domes hard and green in the sunlight, rovers and flivvers of all sorts moored to airlocks like so many suckling pigs, shuttles and launches and even a couple of freetrader ships sitting quietly on the dusty plain among them. The rover nosed into a lock and mated; Aaron Ben David cycled through, and Karil followed. The last section of the rover-train, which contained all the Overground records and equipment, had been left in a cave several kilometres down the Vallis, as per unwritten agreement whenever they docked at a commune on their travels.
A few people noticed the longhaired and bearded rovermen as they made their way down the ramps and along the corridors, but gave no indication that they had recognized them, except for a pair of young girls who giggled at the sight of Karil, but quickly controlled themselves. Aaron pushed open the door of Sharkey’s Tavern and the two travellers sat at the bar and ordered drinks. The barkeep gave them Rustbucket Ale, which they drank with pleasure.
"I wonder," Aaron said, "if we could have dinner in one of the rooms out back." As he spoke, he lifted his glass and set it to one side, leaving a ring of moisture on the bar top. With a swift movement, his finger traced a tiny arrow, turning the ring into the ancilius--the traditional symbol of Mars. The bartender glanced down at the figure and wiped it away with a rag. "Of course. Right this way." He led them into the back, lifted a curtain, and ushered them through a doorway. Karil followed Aaron’s figure along a darkened tunnel until they found themselves before an ancient freight elevator. Aaron punched a button and the doors opened.
There was a late-model Dust Devil inside.
"Get in," Aaron said, as he and Karil removed their false beards. He punched more buttons as Karil climbed in through the vehicle’s hatch. The doors shut, the elevator began to rise with a clunk and a hum and to decompress with a hiss as Aaron climbed into the driver’s seat and sealed them in. In a few minutes the lock jerked to a halt and the doors opened again. Red light flooded into the chamber. The Dust Devil rocked into the air and slid forward down a tunnel toward the desert visible through the cave-mouth before them. Suddenly they were speeding through the pale, cold sunlight over the rock-strewn sand dunes of the Kasei, well outside the crater walls of Burroughs.
"Are you sure you have no idea what I'm supposed to do when I get there?" Karil asked.
"I was told to take you to these co-ordinates." Aaron tapped them on the screen. "If I remember correctly, it’s one of the old Chinese communes from the early mining days. The message was coded for me, and it came from the highest sources in the Rebellion. That’s all I know. You might as well get some sleep."
When Karil awoke, the double morning-star of Earth and Moon burned in a sky that was fading from salmon to butterscotch. For an instant, their vehicle seemed to be ploughing through foam-crested seas. Ahead of them seemed to be a ship, an ocean-going surface ship, trailing a wake behind it. Karil shook his head to clear his sleep-fogged brain.
It had been a trick of the morning light. Prevailing winds had carved a wake across the frost-crested sand-dunes in the lee of a walled complex of buildings. Red stone and black shadow, spinning wind-turbines and illuminated solarium had added to the impression of a ship. As they approached, details became visible: tall trees could be seen in the domes, thrusting above the walls. Lasers tracked them from revolving turrets atop the massive structure. Karil could well believe this place was from the early days; the High Companies had encouraged the use of drugs among the miners, and various transported nationalities struggled to corner the market until their turf-wars became so wasteful that they reduced High Company profit margins. Then the trade was banned.
A voice spoke to them in Martian Chinese. Aaron sang a few words in the same language--Karil was constantly discovering new talents in him--and a door opened in the apparently seamless wall before them. In another moment they were descending into a cavern filled with flivvers and sand-crawlers. A reception committee of a dozen men awaited them, all armed with laser-rifles and yet betraying by their stance and narrow-eyed gaze the ability to defend themselves quite adequately without them. The visitors were ushered into a dome, where an ancient Chinese gentleman was waiting for them, his chair parked beside a goldfish pond beneath willows, nurses in attendance.
"Is that the man they call Grandfather?" Karil whispered.
"I think it is."
"But he was killed by the Martian Mafia nearly a hundred years ago."
"Evidently not." Aaron stepped forward, bowed and spoke.
For a moment there was only silence in response but for the wheeze and hum of the chair, and then the ancient lifted his head with the whir of hydraulic neck-braces. He beckoned to Aaron with a withered arm festooned with intravenous tubes. Karil listened to the strange counterpoint of Aaron’s singing and the old man’s synthesized speech. In a moment the old man drifted off to sleep and Aaron returned to Karil’s side. He translated as the guards escorted them down another tunnel.
"I apologized for speaking of business matters with unseemly haste and told him that I had brought you as instructed. He said he was honoured that his humble dwelling had been chosen as a safe place for the meeting, but he didn’t say what meeting. He said you are welcome to enjoy the gardens. I think that means you are not to leave the dome."
The dome in question was filled with flowering trees and lily-ponds. The guards took up a post at the entrance, lasers cradled in their arms.
"I'll leave you here," Aaron said. "I don’t know if I'll see you again for a while, what with one thing or another."
"That's it? You’re just dumping me here?"
"You won’t be harmed. Apparently, you’re extremely valuable. Anyway, this may be the nicest place on Mars. I wouldn’t mind hanging around for a few days myself, but I have to get back."
"Shouldn't you get some sleep first? You’ve been driving all night."
"I'll take some more pills. Don’t worry about me. Take care of yourself, Karil." Aaron threw his arms about the boy for a moment, turned on his heel, and vanished down the ramp, leaving Karil alone with the frogs and lily-pads. He found himself a cool and comfortable place to stretch out, and he dozed amid the sound of splashing water and chirping crickets. An hour later he was startled awake by the sound of gunfire, shouts in Chinese, and the pounding of feet in the corridors. He looked out through the transparent panels of the dome and saw a Quasi-Police cruiser descending in a cloud of dust.
***
During the descent from orbit, it was clear that something was wrong in the commune below. Smoke spiralled into the sky, the walls were scorched, and the machine-gun nests in the towers had been blasted to oblivion. Loris deployed the ship’s guns and hovered warily over the desert. The excited face of a commune elder appeared on the screen, screaming in Chinese.
"Wait a minute," Loris said. "What happened here?"
"This is the last time we co-operate with Galilean," she said in English. "In a hundred years, we have never been attacked like this. We had an agreement with the High Companies since the Old Days. A simple pick-up, your people said. Now look!"
"Wang! What happened?"
"Quasi cruisers. Out of nowhere. They smash their way in, take your friend Ali Karil. Seven of our fighters dead."
"How long ago? Wang!"
"An hour. Maybe a little more. This place always off limits for Rebellion, until now..."
Loris waved off the comm and the ship leaped into the air. It hovered over the compound as both Loris and Anais searched the horizon.
"Annie?"
"Too late for any emissions trail, Loris. If they took Karil away in a cruiser, there is no way to detect which direction they went. They may have taken him to local Quasi Headquarters at Sharonov, or directly to Pavonis. There were also sand-rovers involved--their tracks are clearly visible--so it must have been a co-ordinated attack."
"How did they know he was here? There couldn’t have been more than half a dozen people in the Rebellion and the Galilean who knew about this."
"That I cannot tell, Loris. But something is happening out on the Lunae."
Loris gazed southward and saw a pillar of light from heaven illuminating the plains. One of the great mirrors in areo-stationary orbit above the equator, ostensibly built for controlling dust-storms but really only useful for police-work, had reflected sunlight onto a spot on the surface. As dusk descended, the beam became more visible; it shimmered in the dark like a fluorescent tube. Already, the dust was rising in the shaft of light, and in not too many minutes a tornado would be forming.
"There is a squadron of gunships on their way to the light," Anais said. "If you wish to investigate this incident, you must hurry. They will maintain illumination long enough to aid the gunships in finding their quarry, but if they hold the beam too long in one place, a dust-storm will occur, and that will hamper their efforts. We might have a few minutes to slip in and find out what is going on."
"Do you think Karil is involved?" Johanna asked.
"I don’t know," Loris said. "If there’s trouble, what are the chances Karil's in the middle of it? Pretty good, I’d say."
The ship yawed about and streaked off over the dusty plains. She descended to dune-level and roared over the desert, then slipped into the rising dust-cloud. On the screens, in infra-red, Loris could see a Quasi air-cruiser sitting motionless on the surface, surrounded by sand-rovers. Anais hovered in the gale, her fans adding to the storm's unearthly howl. Figures in pressure-suits emerged from the sand-rovers and approached the downed cruiser, holding laser-rifles and needle-guns, but one figure came toward Anais and stood before her, barely visible in the swirling dust, though clearly apparent on the infra-red screen. It tapped the side of its helmet.
"I have contact," Anais said, and a voice came over the comm.
"What is a Free Trader doing here? Are you going to help us capture our prize? Or are you after it yourself?" The voice was female, with a Martian Chinese accent.
"Did you shoot down this thing?"
"We have a pulse-cannon. We put a pulse in her and shut everything down, and then she glided to a landing. There may be prisoners that we can free, but we’ll settle for the ship and any Quasi inside we can interrogate."
"A friend of ours may be aboard," Loris said. Anais settled to earth and the cargo-ramp slid down to the surface. "We’ll help you take it out of here. There's a whole fleet of Quasi gunships on the way. You’d better hurry."
"Shit! How did they get here so fast?"
"They were already in the neighbourhood. Your timing sucks, but if Karil’s in that ship, I'm grateful for it. We can take over control of the vehicle and load it aboard. What do you say?"
"Ali Karil? Jesus Christ, yes." The comm-signal died as the speaker switched frequency to give orders to the other suited figures in the gale.
"I have control over the cruiser," Anais said. "There is a standard tracer, which I have de-activated." The tiny ship rose a meter into the air and sped up the ramp into the freetrader's capacious hold. The Rebellion squad-leader followed it, and the hatch shut. On the screen, the others could be seen to run for their rovers, and the rovers turned and sped off through the storm. Anais came about and roared off across the plains, slipping in a moment from illuminated dust-cloud into dark night.
The pillar of light vanished from the sky and the gunships converged on the spot, hovering as the dust settled. They searched the ground with infra-red sensors and then with searchlights but found nothing. The rovers had vanished into their holes, and the free-trader was long-gone, dropping over the cliff-edge into Ophir Chasm. Anais settled to the ground and shut down, except for faint interior lighting. Loris and Johanna unstrapped and went aft. The Rebellion leader was removing her helmet to reveal the face of a young Chinese girl.
"I'm Chi-Chi Li," she said. "MLF."
"Loris and Johanna. From Ganymede. This is Anais Nin."
"Glad to meet you, Li," the ship crooned. "There are two Quasi officers aboard the cruiser, and four prisoners. But Karil is not one of them. I have put them all to sleep for now."
The Quasi officers awoke some time later, to find themselves bound and gagged in darkness, in a small cabin aboard a ship. This was all they knew, after suddenly discovering that their cruiser had lost all power over the Lunae Planum, and their frantic struggle to glide to a landing. They could only assume they had been captured by the Rebellion, and awaited interrogation with trepidation.
The Martian prisoners awoke to find themselves free, and were overjoyed to see Chi-Chi Li, as they were all from the Kasei Commune, where she had grown up. After a brief reunion in Martian Chinese, the party sat around the galley table to de-brief.
"Galilean Security arranged for us to pick up Karil at your commune," Loris said. "I don’t know who made the arrangements. There would have been very few people involved, on either side. But someone alerted the Quasi that he was there. I don't see any other reason for the attack."
"You are right," one of the freed prisoners said. "We are not involved in the Rebellion, except for Li here, who left long ago and makes it a point never to return, for our safety. There were three cruisers and four rovers, who came out of nowhere, guns blazing. Some of us fought back, even though Grandfather forbade it. He knew it was Karil they were after, and thought one outsider, however valuable, would not be worth losing members of the commune. But some of us, like me, lost our tempers and shot back. They hit us hard, killed many, took some of us away. I saw Karil taken away toward the southwest at high speed."
"Directly to Pavonis, I imagine," Li said. "He'll be in the Security wing at the spaceport. Obviously, they want him badly."
"He’s famous," Johanna said. "A symbol."
Li looked at her, and then at Loris, with obvious suspicion. "You didn’t tell us why you came for Karil in the first place."
"That’s right," Loris said. "We didn’t. But wherever he is, we have to get him out. With or without the help of the Rebellion. I will tell you that it's every bit as important for Mars as it is for the Galilean that we do this."
"And if the Rebellion can't or won't help you? What are you going to do? Attack a heavily guarded military prison in the middle of a populated spaceport, on top of a 14-kilometer-high mountain, just in case Karil is there? Just the two of you?"
"That is not exactly correct," Anais said. "There are three of us."
The Quasi prisoners woke up in the dark as the ship rose into the air. Confused and disoriented, they could feel the acceleration as Anais sped off down the Ophir slopes and up the Mariner Valley toward the Noctis Labyrinthus.
***
The officer awoke again and blinked at the unaccustomed light. In fact, the light was extremely bright and shining in his eyes. His fellow prisoners were gone, and he was no longer in a tiny cabin--he was in the hold of a ship, surrounded by cargo-webbing. In fact, he was lashed to the webbing like a spider’s prey, immobile and naked. The nakedness was for psychological reasons of course; he was accustomed to stripping his own prisoners before interrogation. He was sitting on the deck with his back against the bulkhead, both of his arms extended outward in crucifixion-fashion, securely lashed to the cargo netting at wrists, elbows, and shoulders.
He tested his bonds, but without much hope. This was obviously a freetrader ship, and though the smugglers often looked sloppy and unprofessional, they never missed a trick. He detected movement, and expected to see his interrogators, but there was only a fat Persian cat. It sat and observed him quizzically for a moment and then wandered off.
"Isfahan," said a woman’s voice. "What are you doing in here?"
A darkly beautiful, if hard-eyed, woman came toward him, then stood and looked down at him. She wore a skin-tight ship-suit, and the view up the length of her long legs would have been a pleasant one, if not for the ripple of muscles in her calves and thighs that revealed those legs to be deadly weapons. The laser-pistol strapped to her thigh and the wicked-looking knife in her boot did not help either. She leaned toward him, and her unzipped ship-suit fell open to reveal the swell of her high, hard breasts, but the officer took no pleasure in the sight. He knew very well the role of sexual threat in interrogation.
"My name is Simon," he said. "My rank is lieutenant. My serial number..."
"I'm not interested in your rank and number," Loris said. "I'm not interested in your name, either. In fact, I know your name, and where you’re stationed. You are, in fact, the third officer at the Pavonis Security Prison Wing. If you were the ranking officer in the raid, you would have taken Karil into your own custody, and he would have been in your ship. The fact that more than one officer was sent to pick up one prisoner shows just how important he is. Well, he's important to me, too, and I want him back."
"Where is my pilot? I demand that you..."
"Your pilot is being interrogated by the Martian Rebellion. I'm not interested in him, either. And I think demands on your part seem a little ridiculous, in your position."
"They won’t trade Karil, for either of us. He's more important than we are."
"Oh, I know that. I wouldn’t trade if they offered. I don’t trust them. But you have information I need. They’ve taken him to Pavonis, and I need to know where he is, how to get in, and how to get out."
"What are you going to do? Torture me? Your ship won’t let you. It’s nothing but a glorified robot, and robots won’t stand by and let..."
"Have you ever heard of the first law paradox?"
"What?"
"First law: a robot will not harm a human being or through inaction allow one to come to harm. We all know that. But suppose the only way to prevent one human being from coming to harm is to allow another one to come to harm? What then?"
"They go crazy."
"Well, the simpler ones do. The more imaginative artificial intelligences, like Anais, view the problem from a logical perspective. How much harm is involved in each case and, though roboticists don’t like to admit it, how important is each individual to the artificial intelligence in question? Now, members of my ship’s crew are very important to her, and there is a strong inclination on her part to protect them. As for Karil, he is not only a very old and very beloved friend of both ship and crew, he is the current mission. To get him back safe and sound is extremely important. You, on the other hand, are a perfect stranger. She would not let you be killed, of course, even to save him, but she might allow you to come to some small degree of harm. Am I right, Annie?"
"It depends, Loris," she crooned. "What kind of harm are we talking about?"
"Well, Karil is in very serious danger of death. The lieutenant’s friends will not think twice about torturing him, maiming him for life, or rendering him insane with sensory deprivation, just for information. And when he is no longer of use to them, they will certainly kill him. As for me--" And Loris bent closer to Simon’s prostrate form. "--I am perfectly capable of inflicting the most exquisite pain without damaging the body in the slightest degree.
"After all, Annie’s definition of harm involves physical damage. She doesn’t really understand pain, or indeed simple physical discomfort, and she knows that a little pain now and then may in the long run achieve some good. Computers like her assist at medical operations all the time. They watch a human body being cut open with lasers, knowing that the end result is better health. Since she knows you're my only chance to save Karil from death, I'm sure she won’t mind a little discomfort on your part."
"I don't know what they plan to do with him. I don't know who ordered his arrest or how they knew where to get him. I'm just a junior officer at the prison."
"He's telling the truth, Loris."
"Fortunately, Lieutenant Simon, Annie can stress-analyze your voice, just like your own machines. That saves us a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness. Where did they take him?"
"I don't know."
"He's lying, Loris."
"Nice try, Lieutenant, but it won't work."
Her hand dropped and came up with her laser-pistol. A beam of light severed a strand of netting, a few millimetres from Simon’s ear, and the pistol spun back into its holster.
"Oops," Loris said. "Annie, remind me to get in some target-practice when we get back to Ganymede. Now, Simon, let's talk about where you work." An aerial picture of the prison wing, perched on the edge of Pavonis crater, high above the Tharsis Plains, took shape in the air before him. "I'm sure you can give us an idea of the interior of this structure: the landing-ports, and hangars, and the corridors and cells, and the armoury and computer-centre. Annie will let me know when she has enough information. I'll leave you two alone for a while."
Loris swung out the hatch and walked across the Rebellion Commune Hangar, where technicians were at work on the Quasi cruiser, and other vehicles--mostly rovers--sat waiting. She arrived at the conference room just in time to see a bound and blindfolded man being hustled in the door in front of her. He was dark and bearded, and a good decade older than most of the people she had met in this place. She could not see his features, but he seemed familiar.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"That's Aaron Ben David of the Ancilius Group," someone told her. "We think he’s the source of the leak.