At first, the mountains of Mars do not appear as majestic as those of Earth, for the mountains of Earth are puny things and easily comprehended by the human mind. Mount Pavonis seemed to sneak up on them, as the horizon gradually rose into the shape of a several hundred-kilometre-long shield volcano. It was not until they were at the mountain’s foot, and a kilometre-tall cliff thrust skyward, stretching from one horizon to another like the wall of the world, that the travellers began to grasp the incredible size of the feature.
From the mountain's peak, twenty-six kilometres above sea-level, a line was drawn in sunlight into the heavens directly above. At first, Brother Mikal thought this a search-light beam, and then he realized it was the famous space-elevator, reflecting sunlight from nearly the other side of the world. Atalanta had told him of an environment with neither air nor gravity, in which the sky was always black and star-studded, and everything was bathed in eternal ice-cold sunlight. He was about to ascend into that world, in a conveyance designed by long-dead earthborn men and built by angels.
The maglev slowed and vanished into the mountainside, and soon slid silently into a deserted station. The doors puffed open, and the strange army stepped out onto the platform.
"Orpheus?" Hassan said.
"Yes, Doctor," he replied through Federova’s voice-box.
"We have arrived at Pavonis Scarp. Shut down the system." The hum of the accelerator train died, and the lights inside winked out. The squad crossed the platform and one of a dozen elevator doors slid open in the rock wall. Hassan left a few cyborg soldiers behind to secure the station, and the rest stepped into the car. The doors puffed shut behind them and they rose inside the mountain.
There were comfortable seats in the elevator, for the climb was a good fourteen kilometres from Pavonis Scarp Station to the Martian Spaceport facilities in the volcano’s caldera. The acceleration was smooth, and the occupants barely noticed that they had reached an extremely high speed, and only the briefest queasiness of the stomach indicated that they were moving horizontally instead of vertically at times.
Hassan spoke to his astonished army, who listened with rapt attention. They learned of a Mars once criss-crossed with maglev trains and Sand Rover trails, dotted with mining colonies and residential caverns and domed cities, its sky filled with ships and satellites and delta-winged flyers, the whole of it humming with travellers from a dozen worlds and moons.
The car slid to a halt so smoothly that only the warning chimes told them the end of the trip was imminent. The door puffed open, and they stepped out into verdant forest. A dome arced overhead; through it and the tracery of the treetops they could see the vast spaceport outside, the darkened hotels and facilities buildings and control towers set into the caldera cliffs, and the huge space elevator rising to invisibility in the starlit sky overhead.
They crossed the overgrown dome, where the remains of restaurants and kiosks peered from the foliage. There was a fountain that had become a pond, and there were vine-covered stairways that vanished into dark lower levels. Hassan whirled, cocking his weapon, at the sound of a footstep. A young girl, dressed only in her long hair, emerged from a stairway and peered quizzically at the strangers. There was a boy as well, and then more children, all naked and dirty, all extraordinarily beautiful.
"Angels?" Atalanta asked.
"No, they’re human, but bred for beauty."
"Why are they here?"
"I don’t know," the Doctor said, his voice like steel. "Sex? Food? Spare parts? Take your pick of horrors." He strode through the forest to the space-elevator lobby. It was a huge area, the forest barely able to creep up out of the flagstones. The elevator shaft outside was huge and backed by freight buildings of immense size. The elevator itself, he knew, was the size of a house, and there were two of them, one rising as the other descended.
"You will take the cyborgs and search and secure this area," he told Jason and Atalanta. "There may be more medical facilities here, and some more of those Labcoat Nazis to look after these children. The Rajah has done his best to isolate himself from his enemies, but he won’t be too far from his servants. Then you will return to the dome and wait for me. Federova will come with me. And Mikal."
Jason and Atalanta protested. "Our duty is to protect you, Doctor," Jason said.
"Your duty is to obey orders. My only real protection is the arrogance of the Morgh Rajah. I have to go, because he’ll want to see me face to face. Fedorova is replaceable, and therefore expendable. I wouldn't bring Mikal except that we need him for our ruse to work. But there is no reason to risk anyone else’s life, and I need you to secure my flank."
Jason was about to protest that the cyborgs were perfectly capable of protecting an elevator door from a bunch of naked children, but Atalanta jogged his elbow. He looked at her, furrowed his brows, and fell silent.
Hassan removed most of his armour, and Fedorova ripped and dirtied the rest, then rubbed dirt on his arms and head. She hesitated.
"Do it, Nadia,"
She scratched his face until blood flowed. Handcuffs were fitted over his wrists, and he was led into the space-elevator lobby. Lights flickered into existence on the control-station in the middle of the room as the party crossed an invisible beam. There was a shimmering in the air, and the Morgh Rajah appeared, wizened and ancient and hollow-eyed.
"Who enters here?" he demanded, his voice echoing through the dome.
"Forgive me, Your Greatness," Mikal stammered. "My Captain is dead, along with most of my platoon, but he has sent you this gift. The one called Doctor Hassan."
Lights played over the three figures: the silent Morgh with its firm grip on the prisoner’s elbow, the nervous young soldier, and the exhausted prisoner himself. The lights washed over his body, searching for weapons, and paused on the handcuffs, examining their strength. Hassan stood unsteadily, his head bowed as if in total exhaustion. The shimmering Morgh Rajah stepped close to him, moving just off the ground.
"Lift his face."
The Morgh seized Hassan’s chin roughly and jerked up his head until he peered into the Rajah’s eyes. The shimmering figure laughed cruelly, then faded and was replaced by a younger version of himself--vital and healthy and tall.
Hassan’s eyes went wide in shock. "Doctor Singh!"
"Yes, Doctor," the Morgh Rajah chuckled. "You must be somewhat surprised to see me."
"I thought you were dead two hundred years ago. The last time I saw your image, you were about to commit suicide." His voice dropped. "I see you failed in that, as well."
The Rajah's face contorted into sudden rage, then he calmed himself. "Well, Doctor, I was somewhat despondent at the time, considering that I had the plague, and had failed to keep my crew under control, resulting in the breaking of quarantine. I felt I had little to live for. But before I was able to step out an airlock, I collapsed. And when I came to, I found my condition improving and realized that I was one of the few who were immune. You can imagine how this changed my outlook.
“If I had followed procedures and revived Captain Wang immediately, she would probably have destroyed the Aries rather than allow the plague to spread. I was alive instead of dead and found that I much preferred it. For a while I considered killing you all as you slept, but the ship itself would have found a way to prevent that, so I simply took a shuttle and left.
"I won’t bore you with my adventures, and my soul-searching and self-hatred, my Faustian experiments in pleasure and pain, as it were, over the course of the next century. But I finally found myself here and discovered an entire world for the taking, newly created just for me. And a bunch of gullible androids able to assist me in the endeavour. I’m quite content with my decision now, and once you and the Aries are destroyed, I’ll have nothing to fear. Soldier, remove your weapons and bring the prisoner to me. The Morgh may accompany you, to keep the prisoner under control."
The image faded and the doors slid open. The party of three entered. Corridors curved away toward passenger and freight sections. They made their way around the central core of the semi-toroidal car and found themselves in a lounge before a huge curving picture-port. The caldera of Mount Pavonis stretched away before them, and the world dropped off the edge of the mountain beneath the stars. Machinery hummed and doors shut throughout the car behind them, and they began to rise.
Brother Mikal started to speak, but Hassan put a finger to his lips, as if it was a random gesture, so the Brother subsided into silence and watched the landscape change before him, awed beyond belief. The car revolved slowly as it sped up the tower, accelerating to Mars gravity so that they remained able to sit and stand normally even as they approached orbit.
Mikal saw the Tharsis plains stretch out at the foot of the mountain, saw Ascraeus Mons roll over the horizon, saw the landscape become green as it sloped toward the Boreal Sea. On the curving horizon, he saw the Kasei Vallis and the Chryse Gulf, and the whole length of the Mariner Valley. He saw the high, cratered plains of the southern hemisphere, never seen by anyone he had ever met, though sea-captains told tall tales of the monsters there, and he saw Arsia Mons, on the southern slope of the Tharsis.
He leaped to his feet and looked about in panic as a grey shape swept toward them out of the sky, tumbling and moving swiftly. Its shadow sped across the landscape below, and as it rushed by outside the port, he saw its potato shape, its dusty cratered plains. He had been afforded a glimpse of Phobos, perhaps from only a few kilometres away--the symbol of evil itself, so near that he felt he could reach out and touch it. Sanchez had told him that the space-elevator oscillated to allow the low-orbit moon to pass safely, but he had thought it a space-farer’s tall tale. He returned to his seat, dizzy with astonishment.
Finally, through the curving port above their heads, they could see the areo-stationary satellite that anchored the top of the elevator cable-system, bristling with loading-docks and ports and hatches. The elevator had begun to slow, and Mikal felt himself drifting up off his seat. Fedorova stamped her Morgh boots on the steel deck with a magnetic click, and Mikal did the same with his own military boots. He found that he could rise and walk almost normally, though he struggled each time at first to raise his foot, and the click as he put it down again was disconcerting.
The two faux guards turned as the car stopped and doors slid open, and they hauled Hassan weightlessly between them. They emerged from the elevator car into a huge rat’s-nest of a chamber. Cargo netting had been stretched everywhere and there was a maze of wires and cables and tubes surrounding them, like the diagram of the human interior in a medical text. They were surrounded by picture-ports, and the docking bays could be seen in all directions, open onto the star-studded sky.
"Bring him here," said the Morgh Rajah’s voice, though much less stentorian than before, and with a pronounced quaver. "Around the curve to your left."
Hassan was dragged around the corner, Mikal’s and Fedorova’s boots clicking on the metal floor. They heard the sound of the elevator descending again behind them and knew they were trapped until the next one arrived.
The Great Morgh Rajah reclined in a huge regeneration tank, surrounded with the tubes and bellows that were keeping his two-hundred-year-old body alive, and this tank hung in a spider’s lair of cargo-netting and wires and electronic devices. Beautiful naked children--mostly teenage girls, but a few boys and even some extraordinarily pretty younger children--lay with him, snuggling in his arms or clinging to the cargo-netting above his tank. The contrast of their perfect skin and bodies with his ancient flesh, long fingernails, and skeletal limbs was striking. It was, Hassan thought with a shiver of disgust, like some obscene parody of a Renaissance ceiling.
"Do you like my pets, Doctor?" Singh asked. He turned and kissed the two in his arms on their bee-stung lips. "I breed them for beauty, docility, and limited intelligence. On the average, they’re about as smart as a border collie. They are completely devoted and will do anything to please me. Several have contributed livers or kidneys over the years, and at least one heart, though in fairness I must admit they didn’t know they were going to do so.
"From here," he went on, waving at the web of wires about him, "I control everything on Mars. I can watch people going about their daily lives, amuse myself by witnessing their crimes and passions, and even kill them if I choose. With the terraformation mirrors I can send sunshine and balmy breezes to those who serve me well, hurricanes and tornadoes to those who displease or bore me. I can create both flood and drought at will for entire provinces. I can appear before anyone I wish to impress, any age or any size I like. I can even wreak revenge on enemies I thought long dead. Observe."
The dome about them displayed a star-chart, not unlike the one Orpheus had created from Mikal’s data. "Pay particular attention to this area." A section flashed bright. "Do you see a new star in the heavens?"
Brother Mikal started in shock as he realized what he was seeing. He glanced Hassan’s way, but quickly recovered his wits and looked forward again, like a bored soldier.
"It’s the Aries," Hassan said.
"Yes, Doctor. It’s the Aries. And Captain Wang is already correcting for orbit-insertion. In a few minutes it will be impossible for the ship to avoid my defence-system."
Kilometres away, Orpheus looked up from the comm. "Did you hear that?" he said.
"I heard it. Come on." Sanchez shouldered open the door and raced out into the courtyard, followed by Orpheus. "Show me the...damn!"
"What is it?"
"A patrol returning. We have to put them out of commission before they can send a distress-signal." Sanchez waved to the android guards in the towers and the gate opened. A Rover trundled into the yard. Sanchez walked backwards before it, signalling with both hands for it to move forward, until the gate could close behind it. She held up her palms and it stopped. Her hands flew down and came up with her weapons, one in each hand, and a pinpoint of laser-light appeared on the foreheads of the driver and the guard. Their hands slowly rose into the air.
Orpheus went to the back of the Rover, tapped a key on his lyre, and the hatch irised open. The Morgh guard rose to his feet and turned, his laser-arm rising. Orpheus tapped another key and the Morgh collapsed, tumbling out of the hatch onto the ground, where it jerked spasmodically, then lay still.
"Put the driver and the guard in a cell," Sanchez barked to the androids who came running. "And take care of these people."
"There’s a girl," one of the freed prisoners said, "in the front."
Sanchez swung into the car and made her way forward. A young girl, naked and badly bruised, lay handcuffed to one of the beds in the crew’s-car. "Someone, get in here and take care of this girl!" Sanchez made her way to the rear of the vehicle, shouldered the freed prisoners out of the way, and strode toward the driver and the guard.
They saw her coming, and dropped to their knees, holding their cuffed hands up before them in a pleading gesture. Sanchez whipped out both weapons. An android stepped in her path and seized her wrists in a steel grip.
"Get your fucking hands off me," Sanchez shouted, as she struggled helplessly in the angel’s grip.
"I cannot allow you to do this," the android said quietly. "If you struggle, I will injure you, and we need you in good condition. They are not worth it, Sanchez. You have the Aries to defend. Please."
"All right. But make sure these two are locked up tight." The android released his grip and Sanchez turned. "Who belongs to this child?"
"Her parents are dead," said one woman. "I’ll take care of her."
"Orpheus, show me the Aries."
Orpheus tapped his lyre and a sky-chart appeared over them; he adjusted it to overlay the real stars overhead, but one extra pinpoint of light was visible among the real stars, moving slowly across the sky.
"Mark that position. Can we signal them?"
"Way out of my communication range. If we access the Rajah’s array, we’ll tip our hand and force Hassan to move prematurely."
Sanchez looked up at the huge laser-cannons in the cliff above, which had proved so devastatingly useful against the Helium Princess. "What if we put a warning shot across her bow?"
"Not visible in vacuum."
"Right. What if we blew one of the solar-mirrors out of the sky?"
Orpheus grinned. "That will attract Captain Wang's attention, all right. And the Rajah’s. He might think the Aries did it, and that should distract him for a while."
***
Hassan hung between his guards, listening to Doctor Singh’s paranoid ravings. He hoped to avoid injuring any of the slave-children if he could, but that might not be possible. One giggling blonde girl was squirming in Singh’s arms, affectionately stroking his sparse hair and kissing his spotted cheek. With one withered hand he was patting her round bottom. Other children were crawling about, coming and going everywhere, scampering over the ratlines or diving playfully across the open space, and one of them might dart between Hassan and Singh at any moment. But the Aries was fast approaching, and Hassan, unlike Fedorova, was capable of sacrificing an innocent life in the interest of the entire solar system.
An alarm went off. "Soletta Four has been destroyed," said a synthesized voice. The Rajah turned, his tank spinning with him and dumping the girl off his lap. There was a flash of light in the sky and the remains of a mirror-satellite could be seen twinkling in an expanding cloud.
"The Aries is turning away," he screamed.
"Now," said Hassan and held out his cuffs. In a movement almost too swift to follow, Fedorova cut the chain between the cuffs with her laser, ripped off her laser-arm, and slapped it into Hassan’s palm like a nurse handing a scalpel to a surgeon. Hassan levelled the laser at the Morgh Rajah and a point of light appeared on his chest. Just as swiftly, the Sorcerer tapped a key on the armrest beneath his fingers.
The deck beneath Fedorova’s and Mikal’s magnetic boots suddenly reversed polarity, throwing them off their feet and spoiling Hassan’s aim. The laser-bolt flashed past the Sorcerer and into the port behind him. A tiny hole appeared, and the wind whistled. Before Hassan could take aim again, a hatch irised open behind him and he was yanked backward by the sudden decompression. He flew across the deck toward the opening, scrambling for a grip on the steel grate beneath him, and managed to snag a stanchion. Mikal flew past him, crying out in shock and terror, as he was sucked toward the opening. Hassan let go of his weapon, which tumbled into space, and his huge arm whipped out and snagged the Brother's ankle as he slid by.
"I told you you’re not going to die, dammit."
Fedorova was crawling toward the Morgh Rajah in a perfectly logical move to access the controls of the lock. Singh put a laser-bolt into her; it passed through her shell between her human ribs and exited without damage, and she continued to creep forward. The children clung to Singh and the ratlines about him, shrieking in terror. One girl clutched at his arm, spoiling his aim; he shrugged off her grip and sent her spinning toward the open hatch. She became entangled in the web and hung there, sobbing, centimetres from oblivion.
"I should have known you weren’t Morgh," Singh said. "What are you? Androi?" He laughed out loud. "You must be Fedorova! Of course!" He put a laser-bolt through her processor and her grip loosened on the deck, as the glow faded in her eyes. She slid past Hassan and Brother Mikal, who even in their desperate situation reached out to try to stop her, and she was sucked out into space, where she tumbled into the stars.
"And you!" Singh shouted over the scream of the winds, and the shrieks of the children. "You’re not a soldier. I saw you glancing at the stars as if you knew what they were. You’re from the Brotherhood, aren’t you?"
Hassan’s grip was loosening in the gale and Mikal inched toward the yawning opening. "Let me go, Doctor," he shouted over the wind. "I’m prepared for my fate. But you’ve got to stop him."
"Of course," Singh laughed. "It's Deimos, Star of the Brotherhood, versus Phobos, the Shadow of the Morgh Rajah. And you’re the Sun itself, aren’t you, Doctor? Our Hero. With the elusive Venus at your side. Well, she’s disappeared again, hasn’t she? But where’s the Earth and Moon?"
The naked young man on his right reached out and pulled open a panel on Singh’s right shoulder, reached inside and snapped a wire. Singh’s cyborg arm collapsed, and the laser tumbled from his grasp. The naked young woman on his left snatched the laser as it floated past and neatly slit Singh’s throat with it. He had only a few seconds to glance up at Atalanta’s face, blood pouring in a cloud from his throat, and he collapsed in his tank. The fluid darkened to blood-red.
Hassan’s grip gave way. Mikal slid across the deck toward the open hatch, even as Jason punched a key on the panel beside Singh’s tank. The hatch irised shut and Mikal collided with it, grunting as the air was forced from his lungs by the impact.
***
The whole of Mars revolved below them now--red highlands, green lowlands, and blue sea, decorated with white cloud--as Brother Mikal and Atalanta stood on the observation deck of the Aries.
"It was your faith at work," Atalanta said. "You were so certain that Jason and I had to follow the Doctor that we both came to the same conclusion at the same time: we had to stow away aboard the elevator."
"You shall know the correct path by this," Mikal quoted. "There is no choice."
"You’re going to make a fine Master of the Brotherhood someday," Atalanta said. "But you’ve got your work cut out for you. A lot of Martians have known nothing but war and slavery all their lives."
"We have the records of the Old Days, now. The early communes managed to survive in peace and mutual respect in a much more forbidding environment than we have today. And we have the angels--I mean the androids--to help us."
Jason appeared in the doorway. "There you are," he said. "We have a surprise for you."
Sanchez and Fedorova stepped into the room. Atalanta ran to Fedorova and embraced her. "I’m so glad they were able to find and repair you," she said.
"There was little damage done," the android said. "My original body was in storage, and a copy of my higher functions could easily be downloaded into a new processor, with the loss of only a few unpleasant memories."
"Yes," said Sanchez, "but she’s also lost her funny bone. I’ll miss it."
Atalanta touched Mikal on the arm. "I will miss you, Brother Mikal."
"You could stay and help me found the First Commune. In Arcadia. Wasn’t that the name of your home colony?"
Atalanta put her arm around Jason. "You know I have to follow my brother. We’re the Earth and Moon. I want to see the real Earth, and the Moon revolving around it. That’s Artemis, you know, my goddess. And it’s my duty to help the Earthborn Men, just as it’s your duty to help Mars. But I’ll be back in the end. After all, it’s my destiny to marry the only man to beat me in a foot-race."
"I couldn’t have done it if there weren’t a Morgh demon chasing us. Believe me."
The Aries nosed in at the Deimos shipyards. Already, thanks to the androids, the lights were blazing in the ports of the facilities that covered the grey potato-shaped moon. Deimos was unperturbed as it made its slow round of Mars, looking down on the changing landscape below.