The Aethers of Mars Read online

  The tome’s scent was equally unique. The first whiff suggested—unsurprisingly—the extreme age of the volume; a slow, murky odor that left him with images of tombs and dark places that have never seen the sun. But then, upon bringing his nose closer, Conrad detected—what? A strange mix of cloves, almonds, and cardamom, blended with what smelled like rotting incense. It was simultaneously compelling and repulsive.

  Wondering if there were any answers to be found on or in between its pages, Conrad carefully thumbed at the cover, found it held fast. He soon found the cause: each side of the volume was secured with what looked like a brass lock—or perhaps a Byzantine puzzle-box?—of unusual design. And more of the same serpentine script adorned each.

  Von Harrer held the book back from him for a moment. Was it an ancient artifact? Perhaps the treasure of some archaeologist-turned-grave-robber, now fallen into the clutches of the black market antiquarians who were reputed to be as ruthless as they were obsessed? There certainly were enough of them about, these days. Some of them were even sending their larcenous lackeys to Mars, eager to find objects that would command thousands of pounds—at the very least—from the new, richly funded Areology departments of many of the world’s most prestigious universities—

  “It does not have the answer you seek.”

  Conrad felt his hairline yank backwards, felt his lungs cease in mid-breath, discovered that he had leaped at least four feet to the rear without having any thought—or awareness—of doing so.

  Because the dead man had spoken.

  Well, not dead, obviously, but from all appearances, he ought to have been. His pallor and the rigidity of his flesh evoked childhood stories of the dead that prowled the night, hungry for the flesh of living humans.

  But ghouls did not bleed, or swallow with a sound like cardboard grinding, or smile. A smile made horrible by its inhuman calm and certainty.

  “I—I don’t seek any answer,” von Harrer stammered down at the near-corpse, peering over the barrel of his Mauser.

  The smile widened. “Yes. You do. You just do not know it yet.”

  Strange. The man’s English was accented, but he was no Arab. Nor an Asian or an African: European. And not merely thin, but gaunt. “So if the book does not have the answer I seek, what does it contain?”

  “It sets forth the question.”

  “The question I have not yet discovered I am asking?”

  “That. And all other questions, as well.”

  Von Harrer frowned. “I have no time for pointless riddles.”

  “When a small child hears a scholar speak on his chosen subject, it sounds like pointless riddles to the child. Doesn’t it, Herr von Harrer?”

  Conrad felt a rush of heat run up his body, then a wave of cold chase it back down. He shuddered. “How do you know my name?”

  “The Cleansed always know the names of those they would Clean. So you are known to us.”

  “And who are you?”

  The man’s smile became more terrifying: it was as beatific as that of a true-believing Inquisitor boiling a heretic in oil. “I, we, and now you, are the Cleansed.”

  Conrad tried to keep his pistol hand from shaking. “I am Cleansed? Of what?”

  “You have been Cleansed of the delusions of selfhood, of community, of speciate destiny. You have been purged of the perversity of pride. Once again, you are pleasing to the Elder Gods.”

  “Maybe not so pleasing as you think. I came here tonight—killed you tonight—because I still have some pride left. And it is growing.”

  “You are wrong: it is dying. Although, in the act of killing, you feel power, and you may mistake that feeling of power for pride. No matter; it is not uncommon. I believe I had much the same journey before my Cleansing was complete, but I cannot remember. It hardly matters, anymore. Deeds do not matter, we do not matter, time does not matter. You will feel this soon enough. The Cleaner is new in you and so has had only a little time to work.”

  “The Cleaner?”

  “Yes: the substance that was mixed into your opium.”

  Von Harrer grimaced: so I’m right, I was poisoned. “What is this Cleaner?”

  “An herb infused with the effluvia of special animals. The mixture is harmless unless burned and inhaled. In that state, miniscule organisms within it—smaller than most cells—survive the combustion and settle in your lungs. Where they breed.”

  Conrad blinked. So—not a drug? A bacteria? A virus? “Is there a cure?”

  But the smiling man either did not hear Conrad or did not care to. “The Cleaner takes a month or more to complete its purging of the host, in most cases. The process may even last half a year, if the host has both an especially strong body and strong perversities of pride. But sooner or later, the Cleaner will pervade your flesh and you will know the glorious peace that comes with freedom from cares. The Freedom you feel when the Cleaner speaks to you—as it is already doing, I perceive.”

  “You call this—this senseless mania for killing ‘freedom from cares’?” Von Harrer brought up the Mauser sharply, angrily. “You aspire to live without a conscience?”

  The beatific smile grew wider than ever. “Of course we do. See: you have made the connection yourself. The only way one can be free is to live without a conscience. Without laws. Without promises. Without cares. Without worry. And so, ultimately, without fear or even want. To live without constraints.”

  “And without hope.”

  “That is the pinnacle of achievement, brother. To be Cleansed of hope is to be Cleansed of life. Then, one simply is. Until one is not.”

  “A nice way to say that you are simply walking around when you are already dead inside.”

  The man’s smile seemed to sharpen; his eyes sought von Harrer’s. “No. The truth—now and always—is that from the moment we are born, we are merely walking dust. It is our fate. And our only happiness—our only freedom—lies in accepting that truth. And final acceptance means an embrace of it.”

  Conrad heard the man’s voice faltering into thready unsteadiness, realized that he was slipping away. And realized a moment later that, when this man was finally dead, there would be no way to learn anything further about what he—and evidently others—had done to Conrad. He also realized that, by now, the blackcoats were probably on their way. “So even if I managed to—to ‘stop’—the Cleaner, it wouldn’t matter. My fate is sealed.”

  “At birth, brother.”

  “So then you have no reason not to tell me how to stop the Cleaner?”

  “No, I don’t—but I am not the one who knows how to stop it.”

  “Who is?”

  “The Triumvirate.”

  “And who are they?”

  “I do not know their names. But they have knowledge of who grows the mloolj, and the Cleaner in which it grows, that is even now Cleansing you into dust.”

  “And this Triumvirate, they have a cure for it?”

  “That is the rumor.”

  “And where can I find this ‘Triumvirate’?”

  The man’s response was hoarse; his eyelids fluttered asynchronously. “They reside in Thrynoo’ul, farthest of the Bowl Cities.”

  Von Harrer frowned. “Thrin-oo-ul? Bowl Cities? What are you talking about?” Had the man become so weakened that he was now hallucinating, or, perhaps, aphasic, spouting nonsense-words instead of the ones he intended?

  But that did not seem to be the case. His eyes swiveled around to meet Conrad’s again. “Ignorant children should not be impatient with their learned elders. Thrynoo’ul is in what you call Dirce Fons.”

  Well, that at least sounded like a place. Latin, even. “This Dirce Fons: is it an old Roman colony that I might know by another name?”

  But at the words “old Roman colony,” the dying man emitted a weak gargle of laughter. “No. Dirce Fons has known the banner of many empires, but not Rome’s.” He smiled. “That conquest would have been beyond even legendary Caesar’s ambition. He never—could not have—heard of Dirce Fons.
It is simply a prideful Latin name scribbled on a map.”

  “A map? Of what?”

  “Of Mars.”

  Von Harrer felt the sparse contents of his stomach move up quickly; he clenched his teeth, tightened the muscles in his throat and diaphragm, forced the vomit to remain where it was. “Thrynoo’ul is on Mars?”

  “Was I not clear the first time? It is …”—the man’s eyelids faltered, his mouth began to slacken—“… far. Very far. Bowl. Cities. They remember. Dust. Sleep. Perchance dream. Sleep. Sommeil. S’endormir. En poussière. Que la poussière. Poussière. [Sleep. To sleep, In Dust. As dust. Dust.]”

  His end was sudden and harsh. His body jerked once, so hard that his upper back and lower legs spasmed off the ground, his eyes suddenly wide and staring, his mouth open to scream—but the only sound that came out was a flutter of old cardboard and a faint gargle.

  The lifeless back and legs eventually sagged back into contact with the ground; the man’s face remained as fixed as a death mask, his limbs rigid, his neck cords still taut and in high relief against his wasted neck and shoulder.

  Conrad took a step away from the body. He had known that attacking Al-Aftal’s house would necessitate a flight from Al Qahira, and probably Egypt as well—but all the way to Mars? He looked back at the body, frozen in its final hideous contortion, but more terrifying for what it had lost before it died: all pride, all hope. And if there was only one way—and only one place—to avoid coming to such an end, then Conrad von Harrer had little choice as to his next destination: the Fort Napoleon aerostation in Alexandria.

  A distant street bell rang. Much further off, a blackcoat whistle—those issued to the military provost troops—shrilled an almost inaudible reply. That might be in response to any one of a dozen felonies probably under way within the surrounding square mile—but to presume that was to tempt fate. The odds were that the body of the guard he had killed outside had been seen, and, after much fretful indecision, finally reported. And now the Cairene night watch was calling its colonial overlords to the scene of the crime.

  Conrad scanned the room one last time: nothing more of interest. Hefting the last of his bags up higher on his shoulder, he stretched out a foot toward the small lamp that had silhouetted Al-Aftal and his visitors at the start of the attack. He tipped over the small three-legged table on which the oil lamp still burned low. A small but spreading blaze resulted.

  He turned and went to load the camels. Smelling smoke, they would no doubt be unusually willing to move, and rapidly.

  * * *

  Three hours later, wrapped in a galabiyah taken from Al-Aftal’s, Conrad von Harrer sat upon the sand beneath the south slopes of the Citadel of Salah Al-Din. He sighed, felt the weight of twelve more lives bearing down into his mloolj-infected lungs, and exhaled forcefully, as if that might expel both the toxic guilt and microorganisms. No looking back, he reprimanded himself; his actions at Al-Aftal’s had been regrettable but necessary. And to revisit them, to even think about them—well, down that path lay renewed cravings for opium.

  The camels stirred behind him, making a strange noise halfway between mewling and growling. He would wait for the next day’s inevitable caravan—a grandiose name for the collection of petty merchants who made a humble living by crossing and recrossing the twenty miles between Al Qahira and the town of Helwan. The new railway linking it to Al Qahira had been rushed to completion to help consolidate the blackcoats’ ready reach further up the Nile. So, for the past year and for the foreseeable future, materials and personnel earmarked to fuel the further southward extension of the railhead at Helwan had first priority on the trains.

  As a result, Helwan—population booming in response to its new importance—had more need of food and wares than ever. And the considerable population of rail workers had appetites that were both larger and more diverse than those that could be satisfied by the plain company rations, goods, and prostitutes that made the trip south along with the supplies and tools that fed the building of a railway.

  Consequently, there were daily “caravans” from the southwest extent of Al Qahira to Helwan. The merchants gathered an hour or so before sunrise so that they might travel together in accord with the unspoken and traditional axiom that strength in numbers warded off bandits. As they gathered, von Harrer would go down to them slowly, giving them ample time to assess him while pretending not to notice him. They would see his white skin and weapons and translate them into their own mercantile terms: that this infidel was probably no danger to them, but probably a considerable danger to bandits. He would be accepted, would not be spoken to. And he would not speak to them as they made their slow passage south.

  Once in Helwan, he would part from them with small, wordless tokens of his thanks—nothing so lavish as to be particularly memorable or suspicious or insulting, but enough to signify that he had been grateful for their forbearance in letting a stranger—and an infidel Frank, no less—travel in their company. And if, by any chance, that made those petty merchants a shade less willing to report him to whatever authorities might possibly drift south to seek a German national for questioning up in Al Qahira, it would be money well spent.

  For the two days after that, von Harrer would sell his wares to company employees, who always had some European currency and enough of it to afford to spend more than the regular residents. He would take one used English suit in exchange, as well. Keeping only the best of the guns, he would book a common fare on the return train to Al Qahira, but also, buy a continuing ticket that would take him all the way up to Alexandria. It was likely that by the time he returned to Al Qahira, the blackcoats would no longer be watching the main rail station, having presumed that anyone intent on fleeing the city by train would have done so immediately. They would also have presumed that a fugitive would not flee south, but north. Where, of course, an outlaw would long since have disappeared into one of the populous cities of the Mediterranean coast, in which further avenues of escape and opportunities for hiding were plentiful.

  Fortunately, the train from Helwan came in just across the platform from the Alexandria line, and Conrad would make the switch between them just a few minutes before the departure of the latter. Of course, his luggage would already be on board waiting for him, carried over by a porter well beforehand and checked through to Alexandria. Conrad was loath to let so much fine equipment leave his immediate possession, but on the other hand, he conceded that no matter how casual he kept his movements, a man hurriedly carrying a rifle and ammunition-laden bags just might attract official attention. With all the soldiers, mercenaries, and corporate troops in the area, the portage of arms themselves was not noteworthy—unless a single individual was carrying a disproportionate amount and in haste.

  Once in Alexandria, von Harrer would waste no time: he would head straight to the Fort Napoleon aerostation and book swift passage to Mars. It would be expensive, but if he traded well in Helwan and lived as simply as possible, he would be able to afford the ticket that would allow him to climb aboard one of the air ferries that would take him almost a mile and a half up to the mid-air transfer station. And once on that station—part balloon and part aether-lifted platform—he would witness for himself what the whole world had been talking about for two years, in tones at once admiring, awestruck, and anxious: he would see a true aethership. A marvel of engineering that traveled between the planets. A liner that carried tourists and troops, investors and adventurers, to see, and often seize, the ancient wonders of decaying Mars. A ship that was simply a larger version of the craft which, from unthinkable altitudes, had announced the achievement of spaceflight to the world by dropping flurries of penetrator rods on Johannesburg—and so, wiped it off the map in five minutes’ time.

  The camels mewl-growled again, made a grating noise as they settled into the sand to sleep. Conrad admitted that sleep seemed like a good idea, particularly since, at this particular moment, he was free of the withdrawal symptoms of the opium. So, resolving to get any res
t that his unpredictably rebellious body allowed, he stretched slowly out upon the sand, wrapped himself tighter in the galabiyah.

  He did not reflect upon his past deeds, or uncertain future, but simply concentrated on what his senses reported to him. He smelled the musky stink of the camels, felt the light breath of the wind, and saw the stars clear and unblinking overhead. He stared at them gratefully, wondered how he could have forgotten how reassuring they could be.

  Reassuring enough to give the gift of untroubled sleep.

  * * *

  Part Two: Red Dust

  As the winged, wedge-shaped aetherboat broke free of the thin clouds, a growing hum rose to match the faint, harmonic vibration now running down the centerboard of the observation gallery, from which Conrad von Harrer stared down at the surface of Mars.

  Despite all the detailed tourist circulars and after-dinner areology lectures by the academics on board the SA Agincourt, Conrad still found his first glimpse of the so-called Red Planet arresting. Firstly, seen up close, its surface was not a uniform red at all, but a dull, mottled mélange of ochre and dusty brick expanses. At a distance—particularly during the last four days of approach—these details had still been invisible to the naked eye, and so the color had been a bright roseate glow, thanks to the play of the sun upon the whole hemisphere—clouds and all. But now, with the thin, tapering clouds behind and the irregular ground rising up, the almost metaphysical beauty of Mars as seen from deep space had suffered the corrupting effects of closer observation. Its coloration was not only patchy and distempered, but stretched across a surface that appeared to have been savagely scarred by both smallpox and machetes.

  Directly below, the largest of these geological cicatrices yawned impossibly wider as they approached: it was the immense Vallis Agathodaemonis. Despite the Latinate label that had been affixed to it by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli, it was not, in fact, a valley at all, but a steep-sided tectonic rift that dwarfed equivalent terrestrial structures. Whereas America’s famous Grand Canyon was up to 18 miles wide and slightly over a mile in depth, the Vallis Agathodaemonis was 120 miles wide and almost 5 miles deep in places. And whereas the Grand Canyon meandered over a course slightly greater than 250 miles in length, its Martian analog was visible even to terrestrial telescopes as a 2500-mile gash in the dirt-red surface of that dry world.