In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (23 page)

“Exactly,” Teyud said.

She gave Jeremy’s hand a gentle, careful squeeze and released it. He flogged a brain that felt stupid with fatigue, and drugged with the endorphins of relief that had flooded him like a bath of warm water. Then something clicked.

“And which began when they lost it. Wait a minute! Wasn’t . . . wasn’t the Invisible Crown linked to the Imperial bloodline? Wasn’t it supposed to kill anyone who touched it without the right?”

“Without the genome of the Kings Beneath the Mountain, yes,” Teyud said.

Her breathing quickened, and she sat up; he leaned forward quickly to put an arm behind her, and she rested against it.

“There’s something you haven’t been telling us, Teyud za-Zhalt,” Sally said grimly.

Teyud turned her head until her cheek touched Jeremy’s for an instant.

“Which I have not informed
you
, Sally Yamashita,” she said, her voice proud as a sky full of eagles. “I told Jeremy Wainman that my mother was of the Thoughtful Grace, and this statement was truth.
I told him that my father was of the highest caste and ruler of a city . . . and that statement was also truth, though incomplete. He was Sajir sa-Tomond, and the city he rules is Dvor Il-Adazar.”

“Ooohhh,
shit
,” Sally said, almost reverently.

Jeremy simply stared. She smiled again.

“I am of the Tollamune line, to an acceptable degree . . . acceptable to the Invisible Crown, and since I bear it, I am rightfully Emperor and King Beneath the Mountain, holding and swaying the Real World. Or at very least, the Designated Successor.”

“You find the Crown, that makes you Emperor?” Jeremy asked.

Uh-oh, you meet a nice girl and suddenly she’s a planetary princess. Life just sucks sometimes
.

“The Invisible Crown is not found. It finds
you
,” she said. “And chooses its own moment to depart. Often, if ancient records are accurate, at the most inconvenient of moments for the bearer. It has its own purposes.”

Then her eyes snapped wide and she leapt to her feet; she staggered and would have fallen if he had not jumped up as well, and caught her by the arm.

“Danger!” she said. “We are in great danger. We must depart
now
.”

Teyud allowed Jeremy to support her as they shambled back toward the
Intrepid Traveler
, even though strength flowed back into her with every pace. His touch seemed to bring strength of another sort, of a kind that defied easy definition. Sally Yamashita snatched up her portable as they left the antechamber; nothing else remained except the bedding—even the portapotty had gone back to the landship.

They were halfway down the sand-choked avenue toward the ship’s hiding place when the alarm wailed from the tower where she had set the lookout. It went on wailing in the lookout’s arms—they did, once you’d twisted their tails sharply—as the scout herself dove off the window and into space. The parachute blossomed out above her, a rectangular thing of boxes of fabric fastened side by side, swooping and circling down toward the street. One of the
Paiteng
swooped over itself to examine the strange thing that invaded
the air, then sheered off at the high-decibel wail that hurt its sensitive ears.

By the time they reached the shattered wall of the gas storage plant, Teyud felt strong—stronger than she ever had in her life, as if her brain was moving like a mechanism of jewels and steel precisely formed. The
conviction
that the two hostile ships were close was strong; for now, she simply accepted that. With Jeremy at her side, she halted until the parachutist landed; as they did, the cable came taunt and the stern of the
Traveler
began to emerge.

Activity boiled on deck as the fifteen remaining crewfolk made ready to depart, but the crew took a brief moment to do obeisance—going to one knee and bowing with right hand on the ground. They had heard, and even the most ignorant knew what the Invisible Crown meant.

“Two landships approaching from the northwest, Supremacy, currently approximately eight miles in that direction,” the lookout said, pointing. “Two-masters, large and low-built, apparently fast.”

They must have waited out the storm
, Teyud thought.
Probably in a hollow, and then had to dig their hulls and outriggers free of accumulated dust. They are between us and Zar-tu-Kan
.

“What is your command, Supremacy?” Baid said.

“We run,” she said succinctly.

The engine gasped as the landship came free of the building, then subsided into a shuddering, panting wheeze beneath their feet as they vaulted over the rail.

“Get my harness and weapons,” Teyud said to the scout.

It was not factually of much importance, but she felt more
natural
as she buckled the straps around herself and settled the sword and pistol. The quarterdeck gun was crewed and charged.

“Set all sail,” she said, and looked up; the sun was a little past noon, and the wind was out of the northeast, about seventeen knots, she estimated.

The hands bent to the winches, sending the long, triangular sail up the mast and the V-fork the upper boom formed with it. The sail thuttered and then snapped taut as the impermeable sheet caught the breeze, wasting nothing. There was a burring sound of sealed bearings turning in their races as the ship leaned against its suspension and began to move.

I earnestly hope that no dust penetrated the suspension
, she thought.
Spontaneous combustion at this point would be a very negative factor
.

Jeremy was beside her—not touching, but close enough to feel the odd, comforting warmth radiating from his warmer than natural body.

“What is your plan?” he said, offering her something.

She took it, and peeled back the odd metallic foil that covered it. Most Terran foods were either boringly bland or disgusting, but
chocolate
. . . well, that was a different matter.

“We run,” she repeated, as she bit into the bittersweet, nutty stuff. “Anticipation: that we run until full dark, and then elude them by a cunning maneuver in which you will be of great assistance.”

A sudden enormous hunger made her want to gobble, and she suppressed it with an effort of will. Her digestive system was probably in partial shutdown mode.

“What happens if they catch us first?”

“My custody of the Invisible Crown becomes the briefest in all the annals of the Real World,” she said, and looked at him with her face blank.

He stared back, and then slowly began to grin. “You have quite the sneaky sense of humor,” he said.

She smiled back.
I am not excessively apprehensive
, she thought.
Remarkable. Is that caused by the Invisible Crown . . . or Jeremy?

Jeremy looked back at the four black sails behind them, holding on to a stay and shielding his eyes as the cold, desiccating torrent of the wind blew into them. Rema-Dza’s towers had dropped out of sight, and the enemy landships were as far away as you could be on Mars and not drop below the horizon, which wasn’t as distant as it would be on Earth. They were spread far apart—forty-five degrees if you used the
Traveler
as the central point of a circle.

And they were catching up. Slowly, but surely; a stern chase was a long chase, but this would be barely long enough.

“What, exactly, are they trying to do?” he asked.

“They are forcing us out into the plains of Tharsis, farther into the Deep Beyond,” Teyud said. “Rather as in the
atanj
move known as “isolate-to-destroy.”

“Dvor Il-Adazar is that way, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, it is three weeks sailing
that way
. Between here and the edge of the civilized zone is the most desolate portion of the Deep Beyond in this hemisphere.”

“Oh.”

“Their disposition makes it very difficult for us to turn back, because if we do—”

She held her hands out, palms vertical and one pointing to each of the pursuers. Then she brought them together with a slap. The gesture had an unpleasant finality.

Sally glared at the Martian. Jeremy suspected she had the same feeling that he did, that events were spinning out of control, but reacted to it more strongly, mainly because she was more used to making things happen than he was.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“Options are limited. No hills are immediately available. We might try to get past them in the dark, but our heat will be very conspicuous at night. Once we are in the
twom
, the flatlands, their superior speed will enable them to close with us. However, steep dunes would do, and after the storm there probably will be mobile dune fields sufficiently near.”

“I don’t think they’re pirates, somehow,” Sally said.

Teyud sighed slightly. “Perhaps not; though the ships are such as one would expect in that trade. There is a high probability that they are commanded by Coercives in the employ of political opponents of my father. I would leave the ship, but it would probably do very little to alter the fate of ship and passengers. If those opponents have pierced the deceptions surrounding my identity, they will leave no associate of mine alive.”

“Isn’t that . . . Invisible Crown . . . supposed to
do
things?”

Teyud nodded. “Unfortunately, from our immediate perspective, few of the things which it does are presently useful. I felt it . . . touch . . . my father, and some others. There is some chance that he will attempt to aid us. But it cannot control shiploads of those determined to be hostile.”

“You’re taking it very calmly!” Sally said.

“Displays of agitation would not increase the probability of a favorable outcome to this situation. The reverse, in fact.”

Sally made an inarticulate sound and stamped away. Teyud shrugged, but Jeremy had a strong suspicion that the Martian had been teasing.

“You
don’t
seem very concerned,” Jeremy said.

“I am moderately apprehensive,” Teyud said. “However, I find that the Crown tends to reduce this emotion. Also it has opened up—what was that Terran expression you told me? Ah, yes: an itch I cannot scratch. I have a distinct impression that there are great powers just beyond my reach. This is frustrating and distracting. It holds out the possibility of restoring
Sh’u Maz
, but my information is incomplete.”

“I suggest concentration,” Jeremy said, and then chuckled. “I also feel surprisingly little apprehension. I attribute this to feelings of relief that you were not injured.”

She looked at him quickly, and then smiled—broadly, for her. “I find that one thing the Crown
can
do is determine the veracity of statements,” she said. “Therefore I am certain of your sincerity. Your feelings of emotional bonding and commitment are reciprocated.”

Even though he’d been thinking in Demotic for weeks now, it took him a moment to realize that she’d said something like
I love you, too
.

“What can we do?” he said after a moment of just reveling in that thought.

“For eight hours until sunset, we—interpreting “we” in the sense of this ship and crew—can do nothing except flee before the wind. There are no convenient terrain features here and we need darkness. Further east, perhaps. In the interim—”

“Yes?”

“In personal terms I suggest we go below and—what was your English expression?—fuck like bunnies.”

Her voice lost that tinge of playfulness. “We may not have another opportunity.”

Encyclopedia Britannica, 20th Edition
University of Chicago Press, 1998

MARS
:
Tharsis

The Plains of Tharsis (Martian Demotic:
Ferwarh
) are an elevated lava plateau on the Martian equator, the upper portions of which are primary examples of the Martian highland ecotone (qv) and possess the only remaining continental glaciers on Mars; the lower and middle portions, however, are among the most productive life zones on the planet, and have long been among the primary centers of civilized life. The closest analogue in Terran geology would be the highlands on either side of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa; and the long fissure of the Valles Marineris (Martian Demotic:
Tomek’a
, the Long Sea) has riftlike characteristics.

The rain-shadow effect of the giant volcanoes and the highland mass in general, however, also produces an unusually abrupt drop-off into extreme aridity, the condition known on Mars as
the Deep Beyond. In earlier periods of Martian history, a unified global authority and slightly more humid conditions allowed irrigation to push back the fringes of the deserts.

Notable features of eastern Tharsis are the great volcanoes of which the largest is Olympus Mons.

Mars, The Deep Beyond
Tharsis Plain, west of Dvor II-Adazar
May 22, 2000 AD

The land had been tending upward all the long day of pursuit as they skimmed eastward before a twenty-knot wind; now the terrain rose in high, steep dunes, sand that had walked when the storm came. The temperature had dropped with the rising altitude, and the air had thinned. Not as much as it would have on Earth for a similar rise, because of the weaker gravity, but enough to notice and to make Jeremy feel a little short of breath; they were up to a level equivalent to the Tibetan plateau, or the Bolivian altiplano.

Now that the sun had vanished behind the heights ahead, it was very cold; he estimated it at about forty below without the wind-chill, and still dropping fast. The occasional atmosphere plant was curled up into a tight, tennis-ball shape, like a man hugging himself to keep warm. Even the multicolored glitter of stars added to the chill, in a way he remembered from winter nights at home. Teyud stepped up onto the rail and looked east, toward their pursuers. Jeremy couldn’t see anything except perhaps moonlight on an occasional plume of dust, but she was wearing those disturbing-looking octopus goggles. When she spoke, her voice was flat.