The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (14 page)

“So if that thing is a predator, what is it eating?”
Jane asks uncomfortably. “I mean, assuming it isn’t eating
people.”

“They usually eat mosquitoes, right?” Wei
remembers.

“And ants, flies, bees, wasps,” Lyra lists.

“Nothing I’d want to run into if they’re on the same
scale,” Wei assesses, shuddering.

I’m trying to remember my Earth biology classes,
lessons I pretty thoroughly slept through because I couldn’t
imagine any useful value to memorizing endless “orders” of things
that didn’t exist here. Except now, apparently, they do.

“What is it
doing
here?” Jane wants to know.
“And how is it that
big
?”

“Pax,” Rios guesses. “They were working on adapting a
number of species to the planet, trying to create a sustainable
biosphere. They had livestock specimens as well.”

“
Meat
?” Wei perks up. “You mean I might
actually get another cheeseburger before I die?”

I am completely confused. I remember my mother
reading me the nonsense-tales of places called Wonderland and Oz.
It’s like I’ve just fallen into such a world.

“Okay, this is interesting,” Lyra finds something on
her screen. “Dragonfly larva—the babies—are aquatic. They need
standing
water.”

The report we send to Command—with video, scans and
all—generates a buzz almost as freaked as when Colonel Ram wandered
back from the dead and morphed into a much younger and pretty
indestructible version of himself (and then turned Colonel Ava into
one too, according to scut just by “intimate contact”, which makes
me worry when I think about what he did for me, to me).

The concern here is similar: Whatever this thing is,
it’s not just some normal Earth insect let loose in a new world.
It’s been
engineered
. And that means biological nanotech, or
DNA manipulation, or both. And if this thing can breed, reproduce
itself…

We sit put for the next two hours as messages get
sent back and forth to Earth, especially to the Big Brains at
UNCORT, as they try to guess exactly what we’ve seen based just on
a few seconds of eyes-on.

So I get to sit through a lot of scientific arguments
that are almost informative: Yes, the buggers the thing resembles
are predatory. And
fast
—the tiny Earth versions can move up
to 100KPH. But the originals
do
breed in water, and while
some can tolerate cool climates, they don’t do well with freezing.
(On Earth, dragonflies would migrate to avoid winters, or survive
as eggs until it warmed up again. On Mars, they’d have to do this
every night.) But some insects do tolerate freezing conditions:
they either produce natural antifreeze or manage to survive regular
freezing and thawing. Given that the plants all around us do fine
despite the nightly freezes, the insect we saw may have similar
designed adaptations. As for the size, that might be a function of
the lower gravity, but that’s not really selling. And none of that
answers why it’s here: Why would the Pax scientists choose to
introduce a flying predator? Unless it’s been redesigned as a
vegetarian, what do they need it to eat to balance their planned
ecosystem?

Pre-Bang files say Pax had no live specimens when
everything blew up, but they did have embryos for a dozen species
that they were trying to adapt. We get a list that’s in
tongue-twisting Latin, that Lyra translates into more nonsense (for
me) names: Cows. Horses. Pigs. Sheep. Rabbits. Chickens. Sparrows.
Lizards. Dragonflies. Butterflies. Bees. Beetles. I barely
recognize some of their pictures from my childhood classes—beyond
that, I really have no idea what they are or what they do. My best
frame of reference is watching Wei’s facial expressions as Lyra
looks up each thing’s “common” name: Some of these seem to stoke
his appetite for meat. (Yes, I know meat comes from animal muscle,
but any of it that got to Mars as radiation-preserved rations was
hell-and-gone removed from whatever it got removed from.) Others
get no reaction, maybe a barely-interested shrug. But a few make
him wince, like he’s worried. The Bees seem to particularly unnerve
him. Plus, the Pax also had DNA for several “species” of creature,
which they may have been able to use to make who-knows-what.

This all implies their possible intent: Either to
create a complex self-sustaining biosphere of Mars-adapted plants
and animals, or to create engineered life for specific individual
purposes, perhaps just for the sake of experimenting.

I remember my visit to the Tranquility Gardens, which
supposedly provided the seeds for all of the wild growth we’ve seen
throughout Coprates, spread by the winds. Their awe-inspiring
facility was populated by dozens of plants specifically designed
and chosen to give us things to eat or materials to use. The only
reciprocity in that human/plant relationship was that the
Tranquility gardeners would throw the corpses of the dead in with
the human waste and other recycled organic slop they used to feed
the plants, making them grow bigger, faster. Outside the domes, the
green just grows opportunistically, and opportunistically fills our
bellies, as if put there by some incidental act of science-as-God
(a benevolent non-deity, at least when it’s not creating
weapons).

And that gets me thinking about something Lyra was
rambling to herself, thinking out loud: All the lush green
here—almost healthier than the Tranquility-grown examples—didn’t
get that way just by having more available water and thicker air
and milder temperatures. Plants need soil nutrients, food, which
apparently comes down to a cycle of death, decay and digestion.
(And she desperately wants to go out and take fresh soil samples,
but Rios is still being smartly cautious.)

What I’m waiting for are direct orders from on-high
to go diving into the green and capture one of these incredible
creatures, or at least provide UNCORT a reasonably intact corpse
for study. But they don’t come out and say that. General Richards
just gives us the prod to keep moving, to keep our eyes open, and
to report anything (he repeated “anything” with emphasis)
immediately.

We start weaving through the “forest” again, still
aiming for the Vajra.

Within the hour, we get the potential answer to one
question. When we try to push through a particularly thick growth
of Honeyflower woven into “trees” of Bitter Apple and the pervasive
Graingrass, the air erupts around us with dozens of new flapping
things:

The bodies are half the length of the dragonfly’s,
and the eyes are smaller. The wings, while shorter, are much
broader, and colored in patterns of greens and rusts that probably
blend perfectly into the foliage when they’re sitting still. And I
can see these wings without freeze-frame because they flap much
slower than the dragonfly’s, their gentler rhythm almost
mesmerizing to watch. They flutter as if weightless, then dance
away on the air.

Lyra quickly identifies them as some kind of
“Lepidopterae” or “Butterfly”, though unlike any of the myriad
variations on Earth, and—like the Dragonfly—many times larger. On
Earth, she tells me, these creatures have two active forms: The one
we’ve seen is the flying adult. The immature version is strikingly
different: a tube of undulating flesh with many short legs and a
devouring mouth. It comes from an egg (laid in large quantities),
eats plant life voraciously (there appears to be plenty to spare
here), and then enters a kind of Hiber-Sleep in a self-made sheath.
It’s during this phase that it changes into the winged adult. The
adults may still eat plants, but many prefer the nectar and pollen
of plant blossoms, thereby augmenting the wind in pollinating the
various species.

Lyra assumes the butterflies are here for their
pollinating services, though suspects the fibers they excrete to
create their sleep sheaths (apparently this is where the word
“cocoon” comes from) may be useful to humans, as they were in the
case of certain Earth variants. In turn, the dragonflies may serve
to control their population, so they don’t over-breed and decimate
the greenery. After another report back to Command, she gets some
validation. The best-guess of the Upworld brain trust is that
someone may be carefully controlling the ratios of predator to
prey, which means the entire region is a massive, managed garden.
But us finding another engineered “higher” life form only increases
Upworld concerns.

Unable to readily snag a living or dead sample, we
move on.

We decide to divert toward the southern foothills,
risking the higher ground (and who might be waiting there) for a
look at the ruins of Pax Colony. It sits just this side of a
protruding branch of the Divide Rim’s secondary foothill mountains.
On the other side of this ridgeline lies the Vajra’s western
“blades”. And following the ridge up into the Rim itself, at the
point where the valley widens southward again (creating the central
and southern “blades” of the western “trident”), is the ETE White
Station: their furthest outpost, but also their newest and most
powerful terraforming plant. Its lines likely feed the Vajra, as
well as this west-lying part of the valley. Its location explains
why the Vajra, which lies along the southern side of the valley
where it widens, is greener than its northern side, even though the
northern side is slightly deeper.

When we finally see the ruin, it’s strikingly more
intact than expected, with the spines of structures and partial
walls still visible above ground, though all of it is overgrown
like the terraces of the Tranquility garden, woven with green.

We can see more butterflies dancing in the wreckage,
and Rios considers risking a walk outside. But then Jane detects
heat: Warm blips. Dozens of them. Over a hundred meters away,
invisible in the green. Not moving.

“More insects?” Sergeant Carson—our replacement for
Horton—asks.

“Insects are ectothermic,” Lyra tells her. “At least
the ones on Earth are.”

“Maybe just people,” Jane offers.

“Earthside would find that reassuring,” Rios quips
darkly.

“Hold or move?” Jane wants to know.

“Hold,” Rios tells him. “Let’s see what they do if we
do nothing.”

So we wait. Rios flashes an update to Richards while
Lyra takes some video and scans of the butterflies, the ruins.
There’s no sign of heat in the wrecked colony, which makes me
wonder why not.

“The ETE told us that the Pax survivors had to move
after the bombing,” Rios tells me when he figures what I’m looking
for. “First into the heat tunnels under the Station, probably right
up that ridgeline—luckily it’s not far. Then supposedly they found
good real estate in the Vajra. Likely just over that ridge and
down.”

“So is this them, watching over the old site?”

“Seems like a lot for a patrol,” Carson chimes
in.

“It isn’t Silvermen,” I decide. “They’d be up in the
high ground. And they’d never let us see their heat.”

“They’re patient, whoever they are,” Jane says after
several tense minutes. None of the blips have moved.

“An animal would have moved by now,” Lyra offers.
“Especially since we aren’t.”

“Unless they’re asleep,” Wei tries.

“They weren’t there when we rolled up,” Jane
counters. “They came to check us out.”

“They’re also confident we can’t actually see them,”
Rios adds, “not without approaching.”

The canopy is too thick for a satellite or a flyover
to give us a better look. And they could outrun this beast if we
moved toward them, especially with all the green slowing us. We’d
have to go outside and meet them on foot. I’m not liking the
numbers or the terrain disadvantage. If they’re anything like the
Silvermen, anyone who goes out there will be dead or taken before
we know what hit us. I’d want superior numbers before I’d even
try.

Rios relays my recommendations up to Command, but
gets no reply either way. So he orders us to keep sitting.

We wait another hour. Nothing changes, nothing moves
but the insects and the wind swaying the plants. What I can’t help
but think is what a high-risk waste this has become: We can’t see
what we came to see, and we don’t dare go outside because we’ve
only got four shooters to do so (five if I count Lyra), since Rios
and Jane have to stay inside.

If the Vajra is worse than this…

“Let’s move off,” Rios decides after another two
hours, tired of waiting for Command to make a decision. “Slowly.
Head for the point at the end of the ridge.”

Toward the passage into the Vajra.

Our unmoving visitors stay put until we’re out of
scan range (as if they know how far our infrared can see through
the green).

27 May, 2118.

I’m up for my “shift” by 06:00 Marineris Mean Time,
not that shifts mean anything stuck in a space this size with a
crew this small. It’s just routine. Discipline. The reality is: You
go to work when you’re needed. You eat and sleep when you can. And
that’s been my life for as long as I can remember, born Legacy into
the City of Industry Peace Keepers.

It’s been a major surprise to me that the other
career warfighters didn’t grow up that way, the Old Earth Vets as
well as the Upworld Cherry New Earth Relief. They all tell me that
they didn’t enter Service until they were over eighteen, or a few
years younger if they started in what they call a “Reserve
Officers” school program (but that isn’t really Service from what
I’ve researched). I see it in the little things: Wei talking about
having a “life” somewhere someday, maybe going back to Earth after
the Quarantine lifts, “Just to see what they’ve done to the place.”
Jenovec grumbling about night watch shifts. And Carson—my newest
bunk-mate—wondering how I can sleep when we’re surrounded by
danger.