In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (31 page)

The door was a circle that rolled into and out of a slot by the entrance, and it had a little swinging gate through which they fed him the equivalent of bread and water—a mush of
asu
-groats laced with dried grubs, and a cupful of the mineral-tasting liquid that came out of the taps here. It was too salty but if you could forget you were eating instant mashed potatoes with dehydrated maggots, the food was tolerable—fuel, if not a pleasure.

Jeremy tried not to chew too much; the fact that he was so hungry helped. He wasn’t getting enough to eat or drink, particularly considering that the temperature was in the forties, but he wouldn’t die of it anytime soon. They’d given him back his long johns and outdoor robes, too. He suspected that if the doctor who examined him hadn’t issued special instructions they’d have just ignored him. From the records he’d read, Martian jailers usually withheld food and water, forcing prisoners in long-term containment to hibernate to avoid starving to death. They were a lot less likely to cause trouble that way and it was cheaper besides.

“Goddamn their fucking superefficient metabolisms, too,” Jeremy said, pacing the eight strides to the door and back again. “
I’m
not the product of two hundred thousand years of famine and chilblains.”

Memories were beginning to haunt him. Memories of Teyud were too painful to dwell on, but memories of lying in a hammock on a beach in Hawaii sipping a drink full of fruit and topped by a little umbrella were also pretty tormenting. Not to mention the rich, meaty taste of a burger at Bobcats’ Bite, the little grill off I-25 just north of Santa Fe, which had the best hamburgers in New Mexico. And that homemade potato salad . . .

“Or just having a book to read or a movie to watch!”

At least he wasn’t in the dark. There was a patch of clear material in the center of the ceiling that gave off a diffuse glow for about half the day; he suspected it was some sort of fiber-optic light-distribution system, linked to receptors on the surface above. That would be typical Imperial plan-for-the-infinite-future
tembst
, expensive to install but requiring less maintenance than a glow-globe system; once it was installed you could just leave it for millennia. Unless you had an earthquake, all you’d need to do would be to make sure that the upper end didn’t get covered over, and you could shut it off by putting a lid on it. So far they hadn’t done that, so he could tell he’d been in here four days.

Subjectively it felt like a
lot
longer.

He kicked the door—not hard enough to hurt, though it was tempting. That didn’t even make any sound, beyond the light scuffing of his boot hitting the synthetic stone. It felt as if he’d kicked one of the cell’s walls, or the side of the Mountain. There was no sound from outside except when the little pivoting gate in the door was opened to reveal the day’s cup and plate, which had to be returned in precisely twenty minutes. Nothing to look at except the identical walls and ceiling and floor . . .

No
, he thought, with a bit of a chill.
Not quite identical
.

He went down on his knees and looked at the floor. There were hair-thin cracks outlining rectangular plates; the walls and ceiling were solid rock, excavated by the usual enzyme-and-gnawing-critter methods and then polished smooth, but the floor was sections of extruded-digested stone laid down as a pavement.

He put his cheek to the cold smooth surface and looked. Yes, there was a worn path from the door to the sleeping platform and back . . . just barely perceptible but there.

The floor was laid as a wearing surface, so it could be replaced
, he thought.
Mother of God, how long has it been here?

He shivered. It was a couple of hours until feeding time, and he simply could not sleep anymore right now, despite being chilly and miserable. He began an exercise routine to keep in shape instead, although he resented the calories it burned; leaping back and forth from one end of the cell to the other, and standing on his hands and doing back flips back onto his feet, one-finger-and-thumb pushups, and fencing moves complete with stretches.

A slight sound came from behind him. A clicking, chittering sound. He whirled, jumping involuntarily with his head just brushing the light-fixture in the ceiling. Nothing . . .

Or is that a little movement behind the ventilator grill?

That was intriguing. He stood stock-still and stared, letting his eyes go out of focus very slightly to improve his peripheral vision. Yes, there
was
something moving there! After a moment it moved again, and he caught a momentary glimpse of two beady glowing eyes.

“Rats!” he said, smiling and relaxing. “Hey, I could tame you guys and teach you tricks.”

Although that meant he’d be here for a Château d’If length of stay, and that was another depressing thought. Despite that, he slowly inched nearer and nearer. When he was close enough he stepped up on the bench-ledge and extended a hand very slowly toward the grill.

“Easy, little fellahs, I’m not going to—”

Click! Jaws clamped on the grill.

“Shit!”

Jeremy jerked his hand back convulsively, swayed on the edge of the bench for a moment, then steadied. The animal behind the grill was about the size of a rat and he thought it was a mammal of some sort, as the body was covered with fur, not the feathers more common on Mars. But it had naked jaws with spade-shaped overlapping teeth, and a black-and-red nose above them that worked avidly as it took his scent. Paws reached through the grillwork and groped for him; the digits had black claws on their ends, but apart from that they were unpleasantly fingerlike. There was even a stubby thumb—not fully opposable, but nearly so.

“I don’t think you’re trying to shake hands, eh, are you, you little son of a whore?” Jeremy said, with a grunt of loathing. “I know what that means. It means,
That’s food, lemme at it!
”

He pulled off one of his boots to beat the thing back through the grill—and if he hadn’t already tested that it was unbreakable, he’d have been cautious about that. The ratlike beast retreated, but only after it had been whacked a couple of times. Then it squealed, a sound like
uisouisouiso
, and it was joined by others from further back in the ventilator shaft. There was a hint of squirming movement there, as if bodies crawled over each other and naked tails lashed.

Jeremy threw himself down on the bench, looking up at the grillwork and shuddering slightly, a thin film of sweat drying rapidly on his face and making him shiver a little. The thought of those
things
looking down at him while he slept wasn’t exactly calming, but there wasn’t much alternative. If he tried to block the shaft they’d probably just eat whatever he used, or take it away to line their nests somewhere in the pits.

“For that matter, they probably have some weird ecological function. Or the Martians used
tembst
to make them,” he muttered to himself. “Icky I
said
, and icky I
meant
.”

Then something else occurred to him.
Wait a minute . . . this city was here before the Cro-Magnons started giving Neandertals a hard time in Europe, probably complete with dungeons. That’s plenty of time for a new species to evolve just to fit the niche of the smaller ventilation shafts. Including hands to open latches and fiddle with doors
.

Just to be sure, he checked again that the grill over the ventilation duct was solid, not detachable somehow. It was solidly bonded into the rock of the wall.

Then his eyes went to the waste pipe. The opening was funnel-shaped, with the actual chute about the same width as the ventilation shaft . . . or possibly exactly the same diameter; that would be typical. And they hadn’t left him with a close-fitting cone-shaped plug to block it just to improve the cell’s atmosphere.

He went over and pulled the plug up by the handle molded into the upper surface, and looked at the bottom closely. He hadn’t done so before, which wasn’t surprising considering where it went. But the area was suspiciously clean, at that.

Besides a thin film of mold, there were hundreds of scratches in the bottom of the plug. As if something with small, sharp claws on its fingers had pushed and scratched and worried at it, trying to get it to move. So it could get at the food beyond.

He replaced it with a shudder, retreating to the sleeping bench with his feet up on it.

“I really, really have to be careful to use the stopper every time I’m finished with the john,” he said to the air. “Because the consequences of forgetting and then going to sleep don’t bear thinking about.”

Then he stiffened.
I have to squat to use the damned thing!

After a long moment he said aloud, “I’m
so
not going to complain anymore about how the diet here is too low in fiber.”

Mars, Approaching Dvor II-Adazar
On board the
Useful Burdens
May 26, 2000 AD

“Traffic thickens, commander,” the helmswoman said.

It had been a long time since Teyud had been aboard an Imperial warcraft, even a transport, in terms of her personal life span; not since she fled the Mountain, and that one had been damaged, several of the crew dying. This ship was very old—you could see that the frame had been regrown in patches, crystal paler than the rest in the looping girders and circular braces.

Yet the smooth efficiency of the operation was a pleasure to behold, a dream of
Sh’u Maz
in living reality rather than dusty records. The scent was clean, too, only the healthy flesh and tissue of well-cared-for machinery and an efficient waste system.

“Course twenty-two, neutral buoyancy at seven thousand,” Notaj said. “Ahead half.”

The ship turned northeast along the curving edge of the cliffs and away from the central city, and she could feel an infinitesimal lightness as it descended; behind and above, the auxiliary engines wheezed as they worked the pumps, compressing the hydrogen. Valving it was an emergency measure, and would attract attention.

Below her, the lands around the Grand Canal unrolled, mellow beauty and ancient wealth; before her was the huge, shield-boss bulk of the Mountain, the long home of her Lineage . . .

Of both my lineages
, she thought.
I must remember both the genomes that have shaped me. And the environment and other individuals who have activated that potential. It is not enough to restore that which fell; for it would fall again. A new synthesis must be made, if Harmony is to be truly Sustained
.

“We avoid the main concourses?” she asked, as the five-thousand-foot spire of the Tower slid away from the flier’s course and fell behind.

“Yes. While an isolated area is more vulnerable to direct attack, yet in congested lanes an accident is too probable. A direct attack
will attract attention and may reveal who is responsible. It is a calculated risk; an oblique move to enfilade rather than overwhelm the board. We are to dock near a country palace the Supremacy favors when he seeks solitude and quiet.”

She appreciated the ironic ear-flip that stressed the word and adopted a posture of wondering innocence. The guardsman almost smiled in response. The engines gasped and wheezed as the propellers drove the airship onward. She stood quietly, her hands in the sleeves of her robe, watching the terraces and domes and towers of Dvor Il-Adazar diminish and the natural cliff face reassert itself. Long before then, only an occasional structure showed the signs of living occupancy. The last sections to be built were usually the first to be abandoned as water levels fell and population shrank.

Then a speaker on the roof of the control gondola opened its mouth, repeating the words spoken into the ear at the other end of the neural ganglion:

“
Paiteng
approach! From the north at ten thousand feet, accelerating. Hostile action, probability unity; attack formation.”

“He dares!” Notaj said, surprised.

“A straightforward subtlety,” Teyud observed dryly. “The quality of play in the Mountain Tournament is not what it was.”

Notaj nodded, grimly amused, and barked: “Lethal Conflict Stations!”

Feet sounded throughout the transport as the crew dashed to their posts. It had been modified, and was no longer quite the peaceful cargo-hauler it appeared from without. A crew member threw open a hatch in the center of the control gondola’s floor, and lowered an openwork turret with a heavy darter mounted below the gunner’s chair. The gunner slipped into the saddle, strapped herself in, and worked the control yoke. The long barrel of the weapon rose and fell, and the whole contrivance hummed in a three-hundred-sixty-degree circle as the clawed feet of the motor pushed it around. Others would be deploying, another like this further aft, three on the port and starboard, and two atop the hull.

The main helmsman looked up. Thoughtful Grace obeyed intelligently, not in blind
De’ming
-like submission, and the whole crew was of that breed.

“He dares at the appropriate tactical juncture, Superior. The
engines are fatigued; we cannot outmaneuver the
Paiteng
riders. If we seek altitude or distance, we present other vulnerabilities.”

“Even so, he must feel that some factor protects him from personal retaliation,” Notaj said. “We must protect the Designated Successor and . . . that which she bears.”

The crew all gave slight, decisive nods. Notaj bent and put his face into a masklike depression in the control dais; she could see tendrils that frayed out into filaments too thin for visibility to settle on his temples. That would connect his vision centers with eyes scattered the length and breadth of the
Useful Burdens
. The eyes were budded from stock originally taken from birds of prey, and had considerable distance-viewing ability.

“Half the
Paiteng
are carrying foot-burdens rather than riders,” he said; the intelligent beasts could be trained to attack targets themselves. “Perhaps incendiaries.”