Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy (19 page)

“You mentioned Five Worlds?”

“Oh, yes, Earthmen colonized Venus and Titan
and Pluto besides Mars, and then, of course, there were great wars
between them. And at the end of those wars Earth, which had been
decimated by plague as well as conflict, became livable again. And
also, there was a messenger of sorts from beyond the Solar
System...”

She seemed to be trying very hard to
remember.

“There were many things that happened in my
time.”

“Why did you stay on Mars?”

“I was too frail to make the trip home, so I
consented to be turned into...this,” she said, indicating herself
with her strange, large hands. “I loved Mars, so it was not a
difficult choice. It was thought that Earthmen would return before
long, and try to live here again. I was to welcome them back. But I
see that it has never happened.

“So tell me,” she continued, her hands on her
knees again as she leaned over us eagerly, “what has happened in
the last one and three quarter million years on my beloved Mars?
How has it fared in the Age of Cats, as opposed to the Age of
Humans, when war and strife and hatred were rampant upon this land
and others?”

So we told her, and as our story unfolded her
eyes became misty, and her face clouded over with dismay and
sadness.

W
e stayed there for
two days, until our hunger overcame us. There was nothing to eat in
Stella’s (for that was her Old One, or ‘human,’ name) domain, and
only water to drink which Darwin produced by melting ice. The
hardtack was gone, and hunger began to gnaw at us like a living
thing.

Stella could rise, and walk around her room,
but was unable to leave its walls. She explained in essence how she
was preserved, and it was in line with what Newton had known, and
deduced, when my grandmother Haydn and my father had been saved –
only, in their case, as Stella surmised, the equipment had not been
as well protected or preserved as this had been. It turned out that
Stella had a secret, but she would not tell us what it was.

She was curious about my name, and that of my
father and grandmother. When I showed her my most precious
possession, the Old One book of composers, she was delighted.

“Ancient Earth composers!” she cried. “I
loved their music!”

“All they ever were to us were pictures. My
great-grandmother loved music in general, and that’s where the
naming tradition began.”

“Wait,” she said, and closed her eyes.

In a moment a sound wafted from the corners
of the room, and then built into a full-blooded roaring of
instruments, some of which were unknown to me. But the sound was
wonderful.

“That’s a symphony of Haydn, one of his later
ones,” Stella said with delight.

We sat and listened to this strange
cacophony, which, in its own way, made delightful sense.

When it was over, there was a pause while
Stella once again closed her eyes, and then a single singing
instrument, which sounded as though there were strings involved,
came into the room, followed by others of the same. The sound was
sweet and ethereal. A glorious chill went up my spine.

“That’s Johann Sebastian Bach, his Air on a G
String,” Stella explained. The look of happiness on her face was
surely mirrored on my own. “It’s nice to see that he can still have
such an effect after almost two million years.”

When it was finished she said, “And now
to your own namesake,” and produced a piano (which sounded much
like the tambon I had labored over since I was a kit) work by Clara
Schuman, whose husband, I was informed, was also a musician.

A
nd then, on that
last day, as we prepared to leave, she gave us her secret. I had
sensed a growing fondness for her, and I could tell at this last
audience that she had made some sort of decision.

“If what you have told me is true about Mars
losing its atmosphere, and I have no reason to believe it is not,
then you must do everything you can to preserve life here. And
every tool must be made available to you. If humans have indeed
abandoned Mars, then it is up to you felines to protect what you
have and have inherited here. It is obvious to me that your
technology is in the primitive stages. What advances you have made
have been through the haphazard discovery of what we humans left
behind. This ‘Newton’ you have described sounds like a brilliant
fellow, and I will be happy to meet him. But in the meantime, I
have decided to turn over to you my storehouse. You must pledge to
use it for good and to eradicate this Frane creature you have
spoken of once and for all. We humans have always periodically had
to deal with evil forces bent only on destruction, and it is an art
learned only through blood and sorrow. Any help I can give you I
must.”

And then she told us where to go to
find her treasure.

A
s we took our leave
of her, I was overcome by affection and drew her large body to my
own. She put her long fingers into the mane on my head and petted
me there as if I were a dog.

Suddenly she laughed, and pulled her strange
fingers away. “I’m so sorry! It’s just that the last time I saw a
feline, it was my own house pet!”

H
unger was catching
up with us, and I wondered if we would reach our goal, still deeper
into the polar ice cap, before it overcame us completely. But
Darwin proved heartier than I, and with his encouragements we at
last stood before the doors of the fortress Stella had described.
Being white, they nearly blended in with the surrounding ice
walls.

Taking a deep breath, we pushed the doors
open.

At first we saw nothing but a huge empty
room. The ceiling and floor were also white. It looked like a
massive empty warehouse.

And then there was a shimmer, and the
camouflage unit we had been warned about deactivated, revealing the
true contents of the space.

We stood with our mouths open.

There in the center of the room was a space
ship, long and sleek and wedge-shaped. It vaguely resembled the air
ships that Newton had constructed with clues from Old One
technology – but this machine was not meant to fly in the
atmosphere of planets alone but between them.

“With this, we could visit other worlds,”
Darwin said dreamily.

“And save this one,” I said, trying to sound
practical as I sought to find the entry port which Stella had
described to me. The underbelly of the craft seemed to be of a
seamless design, with no crack or gap –

But then my claw scratched across the slight
recess I sought, and there was a hiss of ancient mechanisms and a
doorway pulled in and away, leaving an oval high opening.

“Darwin,” I summoned, and he retreated from
the aft, where he was studying the monstrous propulsion tubes.

We entered together.

It smelled flat and stale, but even now
another hidden system was activated and I heard the ssssss of air
being freshened and circulated.

Lights, recessed in the walls and ceiling,
went on as we walked, our boots echoing hollowly on the deck of the
ship.

An animated voice crackled into life.

“What is it you wish?”

“Guide us to the main cabin,” I ordered.

“As you say,” the voice commented, and the
wall and ceiling lights dimmed as a row of lit lines formed beneath
our feet.

We followed them through a huge lounge, a
sleeping area containing twenty comfortable big bunks, an eating
area and attached galley, rows and rows of storage lockers and
then, finally, the cabin. A thousand lights and gauges and switches
were arrayed around two contoured chairs, with a third chair set
behind them. The front windows were thick but clear, floor to
ceiling, showing the white room we had just left.

Darwin sat easily in the captain’s chair on
the left.

“What is it you wish?” the animated voice
asked.

Darwin looked at me, and I sat gingerly down
in the companion chair.

“Shall we?” Darwin whispered to me, and then,
without waiting for an answer, he said, out loud, “Take us out of
here.”

There was no response.

Darwin frowned, and then he looked at me and
held out his paw.

“The code Stella gave us,” he said, and I
suddenly remembered and dug the written numbers out of my tunic and
handed the paper to my husband.

Darwin read the numbers out loud, and
immediately there was a subtle shift in the machine. “As you say,”
the mechanical voice intoned. I heard a faraway snicking noise,
which must be the hatch being closed. A humming began deep in the
ship which built to a rumble and then a roar.

A bright light filled the white room outside.
There was a monstrous rumbling sound. I looked up and out of the
front port to see two white doors hinging open above us, letting in
sunlight from an impossibly high distance.

“Are we going up–?” I started to say as we
did, the ship lurching forward and upward at the same time, diving
up into the atmosphere even before I had finished my words. We were
blinded by sky.

“Where are we going–?” I said, but again my
question was answered before it was asked as the ship came to an
abrupt stop.

It was dark outside now.

I stood and looked through the front
port.

“Great One in heaven, Darwin. Look.”

“Stasis position reached. Instructions?” the
mechanical voice asked.

“Stay where we are,” Darwin ordered, his eyes
already feasting on the view outside.

“Very well,” the voice replied.

“We’re in space,” I said in wonder.

“Above Mars,” Darwin said.

Below us was spread our own planet, seen from
a height no feline had ever beheld it from. The north polar cap was
far below us, a tiny insignificant thing now, and beyond it in all
directions was a red and green world with blue patches of lakes and
oceans, a million shades of red, from the lightest pink to crimson
and russet and the darkest brown rust. The green patches were vivid
in the midst of these colors, and now I spied Arsia Mons, its
massive caldera looking, from this height, small and lonely. The
world was split into night and day, and in the dark area was a weak
patch of illumination that marked the city of Robinson. I saw
another in the far distance that marked Bradbury, and its lights
were even more wan.

And enveloping it all, the thinnest blanket
of pink-yellow, the merest smudge against the edge of the world,
the atmosphere.

“It looks like a toy, so fragile,” I
remarked.

“I could stay up here forever,” Darwin
said.

It was then that my stomach spoke to me,
announcing my hunger with a pain that doubled me over, and when
next I awoke we were on the ground and dawn was breaking in the
city of Bradbury, and I was being helped from this marvelous
machine which already Newton was eyeing with delight, and brought
to a place of rest and refreshment.

A
day later found me
rested, and restless. The court physician, Mandrake, tried to keep
me in bed, citing my still healing head wound and recent bout of
malnutrition, but I overruled him, and called a council meeting for
that morning.

“But at least hold court in bed!” he
begged.

Darwin, I learned, was in even worse shape
than myself, which meant his protestations of fatigue and hunger
had been a feint for my benefit. I wanted to kiss and kick him at
the same time, but they wouldn’t let me see him.

“Get out,” was my reply, and only after he
had left did I admitted my own frailty and call for the meeting to
come to me.

Even then I felt silly, propped up by a dozen
white silk pillows and attended to by a bevy of servants bearing
trays of potions and sweet meats. The only thing I had been able to
keep in my stomach was bits of dried bread and water. Even so, I
was ravenously hungry. The dichotomy of want impossible to satisfy
was maddening, and added to my ill temper.

Finally I cried, “Get out, all of you!” to
the servants, as Newton, looking sprier than I had ever seen him,
no doubt due to the stimulation of his new toy, looked on wryly,
and as the other ministers pretended not to notice.

When the trays and their bearers had left,
Warton, now minister of war since my grandfather’s death, reported
the last sighting of Frane, which was to the north and east of
Bradbury.

There was something else, I could tell, and I
ordered the rotund feline, who had a brilliant scholarly mind but
had never buckled on a sword in his life, to tell me what it was.
He hemmed and hawed, pulling his claws through his whiskers
nervously, until I exploded with him the way I had with the
tray-bearers.

“Tell me immediately, or resign your
position!”

His light brown fur blanched, and his eyes
widened.

“Your mother...is with her,” he said.

I went cold, and said to no one in
particular, “As we thought, Frane had her secreted away during the
battle.” I turned specifically to Warton. “And you have no idea
where they are?”

He shook his head ruefully. “Only that they
are north and east of here.”

“Then that is where we will look.”

Warton began, “We are scouring the hills and
towns with—” but, impatiently, I cut him off and turned to
Newton.

“Can we utilize the space ship?”

The old scientist shook his head. “It is too
fast for use in the atmosphere, and its tracking instruments are
strictly for navigation. We are using every air ship at our
disposal, of course, and are checking on reports from local farmers
and townspeople – but, as you know, your majesty, Frane is crafty,
and sometimes locals are loath to talk to officials. We do know
that the area she is in is free from underground passages, which
means she is somewhere on the surface. But the going is hard–“