The ship breasted the waves of the Boreal Sea, just off the coast of Alba Fossae. The offshore breeze ballooned Doctor Hassan’s cloak, as he stood at the tiller, and ruffled Jason’s hair as he perched high atop the mast. In the cabin below, Brother Mikal had spread his charts on the table as Orpheus and Fedorova recorded the information, each in their own way. Sanchez and Atalanta, due to go on watch later, dozed in their hammocks.
The lantern swung to and fro over the charts as Brother Mikal explained their meaning. He was perturbed by Fedorova’s angelic beauty, as she leaned over his shoulder, but forced himself to concentrate on the task.
"This voyage is already dangerous," he said. "Normally, at this time of year, ships would sail southwest along the Amazonis Coast, to trade with Utopia and Elysium, or perhaps Syrtis Major on the Bay of Isidis, where the caravans from Hellas meet the coast. The weather is fairly benign there in the wintertime. But no one sails northeast in the month of Hydra. That sign is not called the Sea Monster for nothing. The winds are unpredictable, and the mist drifting south from the ice-floes of Arctica often blots out the stars for days at a time."
"I understand," Federova said in her lilting voice, "but time is of the essence now. The Aries will be arriving in a matter of weeks, hoping to make use of the shipyard at Deimos. Captain Wang will approach cautiously, not having heard from us, but she has no idea the planet is protected by automatic defence-systems. If we can’t make our way to the Pavonis spaceport and shut down those systems, or communicate with the Aries, the future of the entire solar-system is in doubt."
Brother Mikal’s head was still whirling from the astonishing wonders he had learned about in the past few days. If he had not seen this beautiful woman leap ten feet in the air and break steel bars with her delicate-looking hands, he would never have believed her an artificial being--an android, they said, but as far as he was concerned, she was an angel.
"I understand perfectly. In fact, I’m certain your presence here is extremely important to the future of Mars, as well. But the rest of the voyage will be even more hazardous. We’ll have to sail southward into the Chryse Gulf, past the mouth of the Kasei Vallis, where pirates live, and then into the Mariner Valley, where I have never heard of anyone sailing before--at least no one who returned. There are only legends: Phobos--the god of fear--directly overhead, impenetrable jungles, armies of demons and their cannibal worshippers, winds of hurricane force that sweep the valley every day and holding sway over the entire district is the Morgh Rajah, who has eyes in the sky, and controls the weather, and raises the dead to serve him. If I understand correctly, you intend to sail up the River Coprates to its headwaters in the Labyrinth of Night, somehow cross the glaciers at the top of the world, and climb Mount Pavonis, which is said to rise above the sky itself. These are things I had always believed were faerie tales to awe young children, and now I am discussing them as if they were a voyage to Aeolis for coffee and cotton."
His companions seemed not to be listening. Orpheus placed his lyre on the table and tapped a sensor. The map that was lying beneath appeared suddenly, floating in the air over the table.
"This must be the Garden of the Hesperides that the Book of Argo speaks of," he said. "Lush and green, with the sea on one side and a great desert on the other." He turned to Fedorova. "Is the map fairly accurate?" he asked.
"Generally," Federova said, "but many of the details have been corrupted during copying." She placed a delicate finger into the translucent map and moved the Simud Coast several kilometres to the west, opening a second channel into the Hydroates. She studied the map for a moment, then narrowed the Eos and Capri channels that connected the eastern and western portions of the Mariner Sea. "This is more accurate."
Fedorova touched the glowing map again and it began to change. Land-contours appeared in various colours, racing across the surface as if it were being overwhelmed by thousands of tiny pens, tracing the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea. Then the map became three-dimensional, the seabed sinking and the mountains rising. The landscape tilted and rotated to various angles. More colours flooded across the surface, dying the sea in various shades of blue, washing the land in forests and plains of different shades of green, and painting the high plateaus in rust and brown.
Brother Mikal looked upon the transformation with mouth agape. Then he grabbed the edge of the table with sudden vertigo as the map shrank in size and expanded in scope, curling around into a sphere, until he looked upon the entire planet Mars revolving before him. Phobos and Deimos spun about it at a dizzying pace. The whole of the Boreal Sea and the inhabited lands on the coast revolved about the polar cap of the Arctic Continent. The high equatorial wastelands rose to a vast glacial plain, through which a series of volcanic peaks thrust above the atmosphere. One of them, Mount Pavonis, sat directly on the equator, and from it a thin black line rose into the sky.
"What is that?"
"I imagine none of your people have ever been close enough to see it," Fedorova said, "unless they saw it gleaming in the sun for an instant and thought it a meteor-trail. It’s a space-elevator."
"A space-elevator?"
"A conveyance," Orpheus said, "about the size of a small house, with cargo-decks and living quarters. You step inside and seal the doors, and it takes you straight up into the sky."
Brother Mikal looked at Orpheus with a grin on his face, expecting to see the gleam of a joke in the stranger’s eye. But he was completely serious.
"Thank you," Mikal said. "I’ll be going up on deck now." He climbed the ladder and revelled in the reality of wind and salt-spray on his face.
***
He was still there later, when Sanchez and Atalanta awoke for the next watch. Sanchez took the tiller; the Doctor knelt for a moment or two on the deck, bowing toward the distant planet Earth, which was still visible above the western horizon, and then he retired below. Atalanta scampered up the mast and replaced Jason. But when the boy came down, he did not go below to sleep, but joined Sanchez and Mikal at the stern. The sun had set in a glorious riot of colours behind them, and the stars were beginning to appear.
"That’s the pole-star," Mikal pointed out. "Near Deneb, in Cygnus."
"On Earth," Sanchez said, "The pole-star is Polaris, in Ursa Minor."
"I see," Mikal laughed. "That’s why it’s called Polaris. I never knew."
"Also," Sanchez went on, "there are twelve signs in the terrestrial zodiac, but on Mars you have sixteen. Pisces, Aries, and Taurus are the same, and Scorpio, but the others are different."
"Twelve signs," Mikal repeated. "Of course!" He pointed to the double evening-star of Terra and Luna, just vanishing below the horizon. "In our telescopes, we can see Luna revolving around Terra, very clearly. I believe it does that two dozen times in a year."
"Thirteen, actually," Sanchez laughed, "in one 365-day Earth-year. But I guess we rounded that off to twelve segments of a 360-degree circle several thousand years ago, because it’s so much easier to calculate. Close enough for government work, as they say."
"We’ve done something similar here. Sixteen is the operative number--four times four instead of three times four. Plus, the ratio of movement of Phobos to Deimos is sixteen to one. We divide the year into 42 weeks of sixteen days, or sixteen months of 42 days. Either way, we get 672 days. So, we drop one day each quarter to match the 668-day year. It’s not difficult to figure, once you get used to it. Of course, the seasons do vary widely in length, and there are adjustments of all kinds to be made--leap-years and the like. This is the Brotherhood’s primary obsession."
"We used a similar Martian calendar in my day," Sanchez said. "But we divided that sixteen-day week into two eight-day weeks. Five workdays, followed by three holidays--one sacred to Muslims, one to Jews, and one to Christians. It made everybody happy."
"Did you have to re-draw the constellations a bit," Jason asked, "to get a sixteen-sign zodiac."
"A little, perhaps," Mikal said. "But the sun clearly does transit The Eagle, The Dolphin, Pegasus, and Andromeda in the spring, when life is on the rise and spirits are free. And it passes through The Fish, The Ram, The Bull, and Orion the Hunter in the summer, when life is abundant. Then the Unicorn, The Sea-Monster, The Cup, and the Crow in autumn, as the weather changes from benign to deadly. And finally, The Centaur, The Wolf, The Scorpion, and The Serpent-killer in the winter, when life is hard and dangerous."
"But it would be the opposite in the southern hemisphere," Sanchez pointed out.
"The southern hemisphere is almost entirely uninhabited. The plains are so high that humans can’t breathe, and the people living around the Sea of Hellas and the Argyre Crater Valley are kind of backward anyway. They keep to themselves and their only contact with foreigners is by caravan across the desert. People say they still live in domes and caverns like our ancestors."
"That’s how I lived," said Sanchez, "when I was training to be a pilot."
"Really?"
"That was more than two hundred years ago. On the western edge of the Margaritifer. It’s under two kilometres of water now."
Both Sanchez and Brother Mikal fell silent, struggling to come to grips with the strange world in which they found themselves--familiar, and yet now altered forever. Suddenly, Sanchez looked up at the seascape around them.
"Fog is coming in," she said. "Jason, get the Doctor. Or should I say the Captain?"
Jason swung below and returned a moment later with the Doctor, who took the tiller. A fogbank was sweeping in about them, blotting out the stars.
"You were right about this, Mikal," the Doctor said. "How long do these conditions usually last."
"It could be an hour or two, this time of year. But it could be days."
"Orpheus!"
The older man stumbled up the gangway with his lyre, wiping the sleep from his eyes. "All right, Doctor. I know the drill." He placed the lyre on the deck before the tiller and fastened it down.
"Mikal," the Doctor said. "Can you find Deneb?"
"Already invisible. I can guess where it is, judging by the southern stars, but I can’t be certain." Most of the stars were already winking out about them.
"Not good enough. Is that Deimos in the Southern sky?"
"Deimos is in the shadow of Mars all night. Invisible. That’s Phobos, right there, in Pegasus. If we were a few leagues farther north, that would be invisible too." The tiny moon was moving swiftly, hugging the horizon as it raced backwards through the constellations. In another few minutes it would be setting in the East, not to rise again for eleven hours.
"Get a fix on it, quickly," Hassan ordered.
"I’ve got it," Orpheus said. He tapped a key and suddenly the entire celestial globe appeared around them, surrounding the ship with stars at first, then drawings of the constellations, and finally a grid-pattern. The swirling fog was visible through the glowing patterns, and it remained steady even as the ship rose and fell within the grid. Hassan kept the bow pointed toward the northeast.
"This is incredible," Brother Mikal exclaimed.
Orpheus grinned. "Would you like some animation? Pegasus and Aquila could flap their wings, if you like. Andromeda could sing for you or do a little strip-tease."
"I think this will be sufficient for now," Hassan said.
The ship pressed on through the cold mist, eerily illuminated by the dome of light that surrounded it like a glowing cage. Brother Mikal gazed in wonderment at the vision, noting with astonishment that the lyre had corrected some small errors in his own star-charts.
"When I first got my hands on the lyre," Orpheus told him, "it could only play and record a little music and light. As my skill developed, I found I could project a fairly convincing image. I could even use it as a weapon, blinding with a flash of light or stunning with sound. Fedorova took it away from me one day on the Aries, and when she returned it, I could do this sort of thing. I can control just about anything electronic."
"I suppose you’d like to take control of Fedorova, make her do your bidding." Mikal had noticed how Orpheus looked at her.
"Anyone can do that," Orpheus laughed. "She’s an android. She can’t refuse a command."
"I’m sorry," Mikal said. "I don’t want to discuss this any further."
Finally, after an hour or two, the fog began to lift, and the real stars appeared in the sky, almost exactly where they were placed on the grid. Brother Mikal was looking south, when he suddenly noticed a star wink into existence where none was shown on the lyre’s projection. "Orpheus!" he shouted. "Shut it off, quickly!"
Orpheus obeyed and the lights flickered out.
"What is it, Mikal?" Hassan demanded.
Brother Mikal peered at the southern sky. "That light, in Pegasus. It’s looking at us. It’s the Eye of the Rajah."
"A spy satellite," Hassan said.
"The Rajah has a dozen eyes like this. We sometimes see them occult the stars, and sometimes they reflect the sunlight and appear like a star for a second. And other times, like this, they search us out."
"What do you mean, search you out?"
"I believe the glow of the lyre’s projection inside the fog-bank created the kind of phosphorescence that the Eye is trained to investigate."
"Evidence of higher technology," Hassan said. "Any spy-system would lock onto that. And this Morgh Rajah, you believe, gathers information from the Eyes."
"He sits in the centre, like a spider, sensing every touch on the web. So often has the sighting of an Eye preceded a raid by demons that the Brotherhood watches the sky for them, then sounds the alarm if they are seen. That, and the trail of a demon ship like yours."
"You mean our cruiser? Does it resemble the demon-ships?"
"Quite a bit. This is why I suspected Jason and Sanchez of being demons, at first. Though the Brotherhood probably still does, and that you have taken me away to some terrible fate.”
Fedorova appeared from the hatch. "I have heard, Doctor. If this is true, the system that fired upon us knew it was targeting a ship and not a stray asteroid. So it was not an automated meteor-defence system, as we thought."
She turned to Brother Mikal. "We think the system was put in place as part of the terraformation process--mirrors to melt the polar-caps, lasers to break down imported asteroids into their volatile components and spread them throughout the atmosphere, and a defence-system to vaporize any incoming objects that might threaten populated areas. We thought we had been shot down in error by a malfunctioning system, because there was no response to our messages. But it may be that the act was deliberate and intelligent; it may be a quarantine system, designed to prevent any plague-carrying ships from landing on Mars. This means that the Aries is in even greater danger than we thought. It would surely be recognized as a threat by your Morgh Rajah, whoever he is."
"Mikal," the Doctor said, "I need you to tell Fedorova everything you know, in detail, about the sorcerer and the demons and everything else you can think of and have it all recorded by Orpheus. And Nadia, I need you to work with Maria to find any pre-terraformation colony which might have survived the climate-change and work out a way to get inside. We need to gather any higher technology we can find. Somehow, I don’t think a few bows and arrows and a wooden staff are going to be much help against the Morgh Rajah."
"Doctor," Fedorova said, "the most likely place to find a pre-terraformation colony intact would be the Arctic continent. The snow-cover could have preserved any technology from the corrosive effects of the oxygenating atmosphere, and the remote location could have kept it safe from scavengers."
"Mikal, do you see any reason why we can’t land on the Arctic continent, aside from the danger, that is?"
"The danger is enough, Doctor, to dissuade most captains from the attempt, any time of the year. In a month or two, it will be impossible to get anywhere near the coast, as the winds will be hurricane-force, and the seas would crush a ship like this to kindling. But I am willing to try it now, if you are."
"We have little choice. Plot a course for me."
***
The Argo Navis lay anchored off the rocky coast of the Chasma Boreale. Melting and freezing and surface erosion associated with terraformation had created a summer melt-off river-valley in the Chasma, and the ship was sheltered from the worst of the seasonal winds that were already beginning to rise. The swollen sun of late Arctic summer lay on the southern horizon, and the glacial landscape was painted in crimson light. Deimos crept slowly across the face of the sun, a black dot, but Phobos had long since vanished below the horizon. The ship’s boat touched shore and Fedorova hopped out to anchor it to the rocky beach. Oblivious to the cold, while the others huddled in their cloaks, she turned and strode up the now-dry Chasma. Records revealed that a research station, built early in the history of Martian exploration and maintained for centuries thereafter, had been placed here, in the geologically most interesting spot on the Boreal Plain.
"Mars has been melting and freezing for millions of years," Fedorova told Orpheus, who was close behind her. "Every year, another layer of dust-storm detritus was laid on top of the water-ice deposit of the previous winter, and every twenty thousand years the climate all over the planet would go through a cycle of change. The areologists loved this place. I imagine it was not abandoned entirely until the plague years, and perhaps not even then.
"Isolated spots like the poles or the southern craters could have escaped contamination, just as some of the Belter colonies did. In fact--" She turned to Mikal, who was coming up behind her. "—there are more survivors here than we expected. Immunity to the plague is very rare, but I think many of the more self-sufficient colonies were able to quarantine themselves until the plague died out entirely."
"Our scriptures," Mikal said, "tell of Sacred Gardens, where our ancestors lived in peace and communal harmony, in green oases, while the gods finished creating the world."
"This is the spot. Orpheus, we need a little laser-work here."
By the time the others had caught up, Orpheus had melted enough ice to reveal a hatch in the ground.
"Most of the colony is under the ice-cap," Fedorova said. "This would be a remote access-hatch, so scientists could check their instruments without too much exposure." She turned to Mikal. "The temperature would have been a hundred degrees below freezing and the winds hundreds of kilometres per hour."
"That doesn’t make me feel any warmer," Mikal said, wrapping his cloak tighter about his body.
The hatch was fully revealed. Fedorova felt the lock-mechanism, but it failed to respond, even to her delicate touch, and she was forced to use brute strength. The hatch groaned as if in agony as the cords stood out beneath her synthetic skin, but it swung open at last and the wind howled mournfully as it rushed out into the arctic sunlight, ruffling her blond hair. She stepped down onto an iron stairway with a clang and disappeared into the blackness.
"The rest of us can’t see in the dark, you know, Nadia," Orpheus muttered, and flicked on his lyre. In its pale glow, the explorers climbed down into the past. There was a long tunnel, lined with pipes. Doctor Hassan inspected the electric torches mounted on the wall. He flicked one on and found it fully charged. In its light, he examined the pressure-suits hanging nearby.
"They seem to be in good shape," he said. "Just the sort of thing I was hoping to find. We'll need these if we're going to get anywhere near Pavonis."
"I don’t think we have your size," Sanchez laughed.
"We might find one or two," Hassan replied. "Martians were already growing tall, after a few generations. That’s one of the reasons I went into space, you know, as a young lad."
Sanchez put her hands on her hips and looked up at him, her head somewhere between his nipples. "Why, because you were sick of dating short women?"
Hassan put back his head and laughed. The sound echoed eerily in the tunnels. "Something like that, Maria. Tall people tend to be prone to space-sickness, and I was always the tallest person on the ship. But when we put in to port, on Mars or Ganymede, I was very popular with all the lanky low-gee ladies."
"You’re pretty popular with the short ones, too," Sanchez told him.
"Doctor," Fedorova called, "you’ll want to see this."
They hurried on down the tunnel into an open, sunlit space. A glass dome, covered in ice, allowed a bit of light to filter through. Water dripped from cracks in the dome, and a pocket forest of plants and small trees flourished in the shafts of pale illumination. At the other end of the dome, beneath a stunted pine, the rest of the party was standing over a small cemetery. The names, dates, and scientific accomplishments of each person were mounted over their graves. They had all died a hundred years ago.
Sanchez crossed herself and Hassan bowed his head. Fedorova called to them from another room. "The last survivor is in here," she said.
They found a human skeleton seated at a workstation, a recording wafer in one hand and an ancient sidearm in the other. There was a neat bullet-hole at the temple on one side of the skull, and a large exit-hole at the other. After a few minutes of Fedorova tinkering with the station, lights flashed on and the walls began to hum. Fedorova took the wafer and inserted it into a player and the face of a middle-aged man appeared on the screen. He was bearded and haggard and his speech was punctuated by coughing.
"We have survived the Plague from Space," he said, "only to die one by one of illnesses and accidents that could have been treated easily, if not for our complete isolation. I can only hope that some of the colonies, large enough to maintain their own food-supplies and hospital facilities, may survive until this plague runs its course. For a time, we were able to maintain regular communication with the rest of the planet, and even to some extent with the rest of the solar system; all those records are here for the taking. Eventually the communications failed, but through monitoring our meteorological instruments, we were often able to piece together a fairly accurate picture of what was going on outside." He had a coughing fit, and it was several minutes before he could speak again.
"Mars is being terraformed. I can hardly speak the words, they are so incredible. But there is no doubt about it. Volatile-laden asteroids are being imported from the Belt and the Outer Worlds. The icecap and permafrost layers are being melted, and genetically engineered biota are spreading all over the planet. It’s a textbook-edition of terraformation, and it’s happening at astonishing speed.
"I believe the robots are doing it. My guess is that the human die-off has freed them from their normal tasks throughout the solar system and they are devoting all their energies to creating a world able to support the survivors, once they come out of their holes in the ground. So, I have reason to hope that someone, someday, will hear this message. The records that follow may be of use to you. Please bury my remains with my companions. Thank the robots for me, if you have not already thanked them for your own survival. And May God forgive the Aries and her crew for the terrible thing they have done to us all."
Hassan whipped his head about and saw the horrified expression on Brother Mikal’s face.
"Mikal..." he began.
"No." Brother Mikal put up his hand as if to ward off a blow. "Don’t say anything to me." His chest was heaving with laboured breath. Tears ran down his cheek. "What are you?" he said after a while. "What kind of monsters have I joined up with?"
"Brother Mikal..." Fedorova began.
"Tell me the truth, whatever you are. Did you bring this plague to us?"
"Our ship did, yes. We were in hibernation and knew nothing of what was going on."
"Where did it come from?"
"The Tau Ceti star-system. There were all kinds of fail-safes, but they broke down, or were violated by some of our crew, in a panic. Our hibernation team thought they could control the outbreak without reviving the crew and putting them in danger. They were wrong. Eventually most of the crew died anyway. The senior officers were never awakened, even though that was the protocol. We slept for another two-hundred years until Jason and his crew awakened us."
"The Aries is a death-ship," Mikal said, "isn't it? It’s coming here, and you want me to risk my life to save it."
"The Aries has all the knowledge of the solar system in its libraries," Hassan said. "All the medicine, all the history, all the science and technology. All the music and literature too. As a Brother, would you want to see it destroyed?"
"I don’t know. Perhaps this technology of yours is part of the evil my order is sworn to fight. Some Brothers believe that, you know."
"Technology can’t be evil. It’s just a tool. Human beings can be evil, but most of the crimes committed aren’t even because of that, but simply because people are in desperate straits or afraid to die. Anyway, the perpetrators of this crime are long dead themselves. Personally, I believe that God allowed a handful of us to survive so we might begin the task of re-building the solar system.
"Listen, Mikal. A few minutes ago, you were certain that we were here to save Mars from the Rajah and his Morgh. Well, consider this for a minute: the terraformation process the robots began is continuing on its own now, and it’s not complete. There is still more water locked in permafrost under the Tharsis Uplift than in the whole Boreal Sea. When it melts, there will be earthquakes and landslides, and one day the Tharsis will collapse. There will be floods at least a kilometre high racing down the Mariner Valley and spreading out across the plains. There could be tidal waves in every inhabited place on Mars. The only technology capable of predicting, or possibly even controlling this process, is on board the Aries."