In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (12 page)

Humanoid action seems to have at first further simplified matters. Fossil evidence shows that the first hominids were introduced by the still-mysterious “Lords of Creation” some two hundred thousand years ago; if earlier hominids had been planted, they died out before becoming common enough to enter the fossil record. These Old Stone Age archaic sapiens were dropped into an ecology dominated by a stable postdinosaurian fauna composed largely of rough analogues of birds, and like birds descended from Cretaceous therapods, and by the large and complex invertebrates of marine origin made possible by the lower gravity.

In this setting, repeated transplants of Terran mammals had had more failures than successes. The hominid strain flourished, however, and the extinction of most large land animals—never common on this life-sparse world—followed rapidly within the next twenty thousand years in a manner analogous to the late-Pleistocene extinctions on Earth. The Martian hominids became fully behaviorally modern long before our own ancestors, perhaps pushed rapidly into full sapience by the challenge of the alien environment . . .

It was after the emergence of the third wave of Martian civilizations in the Mons Olympus area that the next burst of speciation occurred. Since this was simultaneous with the abrupt development of the modern Martian humanoid type and of the beginnings of the distinctive Martian biotechnology, conscious intervention is the most probable cause.

Mars, The Deep Beyond
Southeast of Zar-tu-Kan
May 3, 2000 AD

Jeremy Wainman could see the air smoking with his breath as the
Traveler
lay at anchor, creaking slightly when a gust of icy wind made the boxy hull sway on the outriggers. Both the moons were up, small and bright, and stars larger than any he had seen from Earth were like the contents of a jewel box flung across the sky, but the Martian night was still very dark and cold, but the robe and the clothes beneath were very good insulation.

They’d anchored in the lee of a hill half as high as the mast—or perhaps a stabilized sand dune was a better description—but in any case big enough to give some shelter to the landship’s hull. A faint mist of fine dust blew from it and gritted on the planks under Jeremy’s feet as he walked; the taste of it on his lips was bitter and alkaline. There was nobody about, other than the lookout in the crow’s-nest atop the mast, and a tall figure leaning on the compass binnacle by the wheel on the forward deckhouse. He walked forward and saw her uncoil with leopard grace as he approached.

“I express amiable greetings, Jeremy Wainman,” she said.

“I reciprocate, Teyud za-Zhalt,” he replied. “What keeps you awake this diurnal cycle?”

He sat on a hatch combing. Teyud leaned back against the lashed-down wheel, looking upward again; despite the cold her face was bare, though her hands were tucked into the sleeves of her robe.

“I originally began a single-hand game,” she said, indicating the
atanj
board and pieces set on the deck. “But that palled, and now I examine the stars and speculate,” she said. “Look, there is . . . Earth.”

He followed her nod, toward the bright white star. She continued, “I speculate as to the nature of life on a world that does not die.”

Was that an ever so slight wistfulness? He answered, “All things die. In the end, hundreds of millions of years from now, the sun will expand to consume all the life-bearing worlds of this solar system, and then shrink itself to an ember. Or so our philosophical savants who study natural patterns deduce.”

He thought she smiled slightly; it was difficult to say, with starlight and moonlight casting shadows across her aquiline face.

“Truly? That is interesting; but the Real World will perish far sooner than that. The Tollamune savants deduced long ago that in as little as twenty-five thousand years from the present—”

Fifty thousand Earth years
, he translated to himself.
Roughly
.

“—this globe will no longer be capable of supporting higher forms of life. Long before then, civilization and its arts will die. In the end, not even the microbes far beneath the surface will survive. And this despite all the efforts of the Crimson Dynasty and its servants to promote
Sh’u Maz
.”

She did smile then. “But tell me something of Earth. What is your natal area like?”

He chuckled, though he kept it quiet. Martians underplayed expression.

“Oddly enough, it is not so very different from parts of Mars, apart from the biota, fauna, and the gravity, of course. I come from northern New Mexico”—he said those words in English—“and it is an elevated plateau with many mountains, low air pressure, and by Terran standards it is quite dry and, in the winter, cool. Hence, its winter has similarities to the lower, warmer, and more humid parts of Mars in summer.”

“An amusing expression of randomness,” she said. “Those of your lineage are savants?”

“My father studied atomic interactions. My mother managed machines that process information.”

He didn’t know whether his translation of “systems analyst” was accurate, but Martians didn’t have computers . . . or at least, they weren’t supposed to. Some of the documents he’d studied had suggested otherwise.

“I have four siblings.”

“So many!” Teyud exclaimed. “Your lineage must command enormous resources.”

“Well, it’s a little more affluent than most, yes.”

This
is
a dying world. Fewer people every generation, and of course they can control conception by thinking about it. And they space their kids out over a long, long life span
.

Being able to plan your births was a survival trait on this world
of steadily dwindling resources. And even if something did slip up, they could also shed a fetus by willing it. It was a major reason for the more or less equal status the sexes had always had here, as far back as records stretched.

“You mentioned this place, Los Alamos. It is a Scholarium of sorts?”

“A place for investigations, many sponsored by our government.”

She looked at him for a moment. “What was the subjective experience of socialization in the company of so many siblings? I had none. It would be rare here to have more than one preadult, in any case.”

Well, I was the youngest and they pushed me around a lot
, he thought.

“Hmmm. Well, we were at the beach once, and my sisters started to bury me in the sand upside down . . .”

For once a joke came across well, and she gave a silent, breathy Martian laugh.

“You mentioned that you were an only child,” he said.

“Yes; neither my sire nor my mother reproduced otherwise . . . there were complications. I was socialized as a Coercive by maternal relatives; I learned
atanj
, tactics, dance, the history and nature of
tembst
, logistics, calligraphy, intrigue, and weapons skills.”

“I fence myself,” Jeremy told her. What he actually said was, “I have studied formalized long-blade methods.”

“Ah!” she said approvingly. “We must engage in a trial of skills. This would be instructive.”

Then she stretched and yawned, catlike. “Regenerative slumber becomes appealing. I profess amiable temporary farewells, Jeremy Wainman.”

Faran sa-Yaji nodded as he examined the tracks of the landship they pursued, clear in the chill night’s starlight. You could tell how recently a craft had passed by how much sand had drifted into the mesh patterns its wheels left, and these showed the target maintaining a steady speed. The problem here was unusual; he did
not
want to overtake the
Intrepid Traveler
as fast as possible, but he
did
want to follow as closely as he could without alerting the prey.

Chinta sa-Rokis had presented him with an intriguing task
when he took her contract, and his own intentions added an enjoyably complex additional set of factors. Stretching one’s skills was as exhilarating as assimilating much fine essence, without the subsequent pain of dehydration and toxicity.

“Excellent,” he said. “The
Intrepid Traveler
maintains exactly the lead I wish, given the terrain ahead. I assume that they will rest at anchor in the darkness, since they have no reason for haste.”

The captains of the
Robbery With Armed Violence
and the
Insensately Vicious Plunderer
looked at him with bewilderment. One was male, the other female; one favored a dull gold robe obviously seized from a wealthy merchant, and the other a plain gray robe of double thickness; the female had a missing eye covered by a patch, and the male scars just short of that. One smelled of
odwa
and dried blood soaked into cloth; the other of neglected personal sanitation. Other than that they might have been siblings from the same ova.

The female with the eye patch glanced back at the low-slung black hulls of the two pirate landships.

“My overhead and running expenses increase with each passing day of delayed pursuit, eroding my ultimate margin of profit,” she rasped—the harsh tone a legacy of some throat injury, judging from the puncture scar over her larynx. “My
Robbery
has more sail area relative to its mass and greater speed than that lumbering freight hauler. Even the
Plunderer
does, despite an inefficient rig and suboptimal maintenance. We could have caught them long before this.”

The other captain adopted a posture of indignant refutation slanted toward his colleague, but nodded and continued. “We might already be reveling in our seizure of a valuable ship and cargo, celebrating by absorbing costly essences and engaging in brutally non-consensual erotic entertainments of a type I find deeply gratifying but which are difficult to arrange on a commercial basis. Why this delay?”

“My additional payments more than compensate for your costs,” Faran drawled. “If you wish to satisfy your curiosity and repellently deviant urges as well as your larcenous greed, a reduction in the commission could be arranged.”

The captain of the
Robbery With Armed Violence
shook her head, and the silver-and-turquoise tassels attached to the tips of her ears chimed softly.

“By no means!” she said, and glared at her counterpart with her single eye. “Larcenous greed wholly typifies my interests and those of my crew! I am earnestly businesslike in my lack of conventional ethics; my concern is solely with efficient implementation of our predatory intentions, not with frivolous amusements.”

“Anticipation adds spice to depravity,” the other captain said grudgingly. “And I am second to none in this profession where insatiable and ruthless greed is concerned. Otherwise I would have continued in my initial, parentally sponsored choice of career as a pediatric physician.”

“Then return to your vessels,” he said. “We will resume pursuit in no more than three hours.”

They did, bickering as they went. Faran’s partner snorted softly, but only when they had gone out of earshot; pirate captains were notorious for lapses into whimsical and impulsive excess.

“I would not try their patience excessively, comrade,” he said.

“They must suffer the agonies of frustration for some time,” Faran said. “Also, they are aware that we have the fungus-grenade launcher. And that all six of us are Thoughtful Grace.”

“And that their bonus waits in a banker’s safe-deposit vault and can be opened only by our
living
genetic signature,” the other Thoughtful Grace replied. “Yet the
Intrepid Traveler
is now beyond the Despotate of Zar-tu-Kan’s patrols, and a financial instrument a thousand miles away may not unduly restrain individuals so lacking in patience.”

Faran shook his head. “There is still a chance that Teyud za-Zhalt might turn the landship and evade us in broken ground. We pursue one of us . . . one who is of at least half Thoughtful Grace genome, and of a most select lineage at that. Also, consider the other half of her inheritance. It is best to eliminate all possible extraneous factors she might use against us. A flat plain of
twom
will maximize the numbers we can bring to bear and minimize possible ingenious countermeasures.”

“Her formidable talents are why we agreed to simply kill her, rather than attempt the more lucrative live capture,” his partner grumbled;
he
had argued in the Lineage council for an attempt at capture and the startlingly generous offer from Prince Heltaw. “You need not recapitulate incessantly.”

“There is still a chance of harvesting her ova, collecting Chinta sa-Rokis’s fee for her death, and then selling the contents of the victim’s uterus to Prince Heltaw,” Faran said. “But that also requires the privacy of the Deep Beyond—and to eliminate all the pirates will take some time. Space and time are interchangeable; this is a profound truth.”

“And the data known to the dead are lost to entropy. But I admit apprehension at the prospect of then attempting to defraud the High Minister by selling the Tollamune genome to Prince Heltaw.”

“Once we have the Prince’s patronage—and he stands to gain the Ruby Throne—her annoyance will be a negligible factor. And of course there is the possibility that the
vaz-Terranan
will find the treasures they are reputed to seek in the lost city. In that case we may kill them and rob them of the hypothetical treasures, then kill the pirates and so remove the necessity of sharing with or paying them,” Faran said consolingly.

“
That
might even be construed as furthering
Sh’u Maz
, since we would then be wealthy enough to become law-abiding, while the pirates never would.”

“That is one construction of our intent, and one that I intend to contemplate at length in my future prosperous, peaceful years. In the course of plundering the
Intrepid Traveler
and killing Teyud za-Zhalt she and her followers will doubtless kill many of the pirates, sparing us the effort; we can sell her head to Chinta sa-Rokis, and then her ova to the Prince. This is an elegant optimization of an admittedly brutal and unscrupulous course of action. Still, we are impoverished freelance contractors and cannot afford extreme scrupulosity.”