The Aethers of Mars Read online

  “So these Thrall-Reckoner Guilds worked like … like … accountants? Auditors?”

  “Yes, auditors. But as time went on, the Thrall-Reckoners themselves became quite powerful, and were often owed money for services provided to masters whom their audits had, ironically, financially crippled.”

  “So how did they collect those debts?”

  Szurthål shrugged. “By taking over the remaining bond-time of those thralls the master could no longer afford to maintain, but whose time of servitude had not yet elapsed.”

  “So the Thrall-Reckoners became Thrall-holders, themselves.”

  “Not directly. That was deemed a conflict of interest. But the Reckoners ‘leased’ the remaining time of those bondsmen whose unresolved accounts were transferred into their keeping, and thus, their debts were paid. So, although the Thrall-Reckoners Guild has never held the bonds of a thrall for its own direct service, it has served as a bourse for the labor the thralls represent.”

  Conrad thought about how Rhodes might have manipulated this resource. “And so Cecil Rhodes has bought up all the outstanding labor, all the undischarged bonds held by the Guild?”

  “Worse than that—or better, from Rhodes’ perspective. He effectively ‘bought out’ the businesses of the individual Reckoners. First he offered them most of the opals and peridots he acquired from his rice-growing advisories if, in exchange, those Reckoners became ‘shared companies.’ Er, no that is the wrong term. Ah. ‘Shareholder companies’: that is the correct term, yes? So, once that was accomplished, Rhodes paid further exorbitant sums for the majority of the shares in each company. This is what you call ‘buying them out,’ am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “However, he did not buy the majority of these shares himself. He provided funds to his Martian vassals to make most of the purchases. And then he placed a final condition upon the original Reckoners who, although still the largest single ‘shareholders’ in their own companies, were much weaker than the unofficial cartel that Rhodes controlled.”

  “And that final condition was?”

  “That the original Reckoners, or their heirs, would continue to run the businesses for the next 15 years.”

  “Again, with a generous salary.”

  “That is an understatement.”

  Now Conrad understood. “So although the businesses are still technically held by Martians and run by Martians—”

  Szurthål nodded. “Rhodes controls them. Entirely.”

  “So, in principle, he now ‘owns’ the bond-promised labor of thousands of Martians.”

  “Many, many thousands. And there is more: think how having so much labor allows Rhodes to intimidate our leaders, or to destroy his rivals. With these immense labor reserves, and his plentiful money and natural resources, he can flood any market, any farm, any manufactory with cheap labor. So even if one of our greatest potentates, one of the PentaCruxi, defies him—

  “—Rhodes simply goes to a rival potentate—a different ‘PentaCrux’?—and provides him with almost unlimited amounts of free labor. That allows the second PentaCrux to steal the market away from the first, defiant Crux. And I suspect Rhodes did not need to do that many times before there wasn’t a single PentaCrux who was willing to challenge him again.”

  “He did it twice. Once to a mere Crux of a minor city called Thecna Chur.”

  “And the second time?”

  “He brought low the PentaCrux of Coprates himself.”

  Conrad stared: that was bold, even for Mars’ new human Overlord, even if he was trying to make a point as well as make a profit. “What was it that Rhodes wanted from the PentaCrux?”

  “Cooperation. Which turned out to be a great deal cheaper to the PentaCrux than the alternative that Rhodes threatened.”

  “Which was?”

  Szurthål turned to look at the rice paddies that were now behind them. “To starve the city into ruin and chaos. Rhodes was ready to strike a dire deal with the new independent rice-producers in the Vallis Agathodaemonis.”

  “Let me guess: in exchange for Rhodes’ free labor, they would agree to sell all their crops directly to him.”

  “Exactly. At most a generous, prefixed rate, mind you. But for the PentaCrux of Q’oodpryxos—”

  “He and Coprates City would have been hostage to whatever Rhodes decided to do: to starve it out of existence, or charge a bankrupting price for the rice. And the PentaCrux wouldn’t have had any realistic alternatives. As we’ve traveled, I’ve seen what it costs to move cargos whenever we put down in a canal town: every lock, every city, is another tariff. The cost of importation would have been almost as bad as what Rhodes would have charged. And given the number of mouths the PentaCrux had to feed in Coprates City—er, in Q’oodpryxos—he’d never have been able to get enough food into the streets in time.” Von Harrer shook his head. “We have a word for this kind of business practice on Earth: monopolism. And we have a special name for men like Rhodes, although he is arguably the virtuoso expert: he is a robber baron.”

  Szurthål started. “So, on Earth, Rhodes is actually an outlaw noble?”

  Conrad laughed. “No—at least, not a noble. And since he more or less owns the courts in England, right now, he does not need to fear being cast out from the law. He is above it.”

  Szurthål nodded absently, stared down through the grates in the weather deck at the cloud galley’s two long columns of cranksmen, who were currently leaning on their levers, enjoying a rest due to the following breeze that was moving the dirigible along nicely. “If we are not careful in our dealings with you humans, all us Martians will wind up like them.” He nodded through the grating at the narrow, glistening backs. “Slaving away for a pittance, hanging on to a few narrow threads of personal choice that we will tell ourselves is ‘freedom.’” He turned to Conrad. “No doubt you think I am overreacting, that I am starting at shadows, that I sound like a madman.”

  Conrad swallowed. “No. I think you are right.” He remembered the treatment of the African tribes in their own lands, displaced from their villages by Europeans of every nation, all spouting legitimations of every conceivable kind. “You are absolutely right.”

  Szurthål stared at him, made a long, low, contemplative hzzhh sound, and turned his eyes toward the titanic, mountain-scaling Spillway steps they were now finally cresting. Conrad came to stand alongside him, and, as he did, the cloud galley drew over the top of the last step. Appearing suddenly, the great upland reservoir seemed to roll out before them like an endless satin carpet into the darkling horizon, reflections of stars sprinkled across the water’s smooth, blue-black expanse.

  “No human—or Martian—can be Overlord of this. Not even Cecil Rhodes,” Szurthål murmured after a while.

  Conrad nodded, but did not speak: there was nothing to say.

  * * *

  After having seen the Kunamzhai Jopurti, Conrad started to become more accustomed to the immense scale of structures—both natural and engineered—that seemed commonplace on Mars. Consequently, while the journey to Thrynoo’ul was still striking, it did not so astound Conrad that he found himself at a loss for words or even adequate terrestrial analogs.

  The trip up the Oxus canal was completely unlike their prior paralleling of Martian waterways. Here, there was no benchland, no skirts of green around the usually arrow-straight channel, because it had been cut out of the native rock. The sides—which soared up thousands of feet to the tablelands above, were absolutely sheer. What few locks there were along this waterway were not furnished with cities, but simply attended by hypertrophied towns, most of them cut high into the sides of the gorge like some impossible Anansi pueblo engineered by Venetians. The rock was discolored most of the way up to the bottom tier of these overhanging gallery-villages, marking the highest level of the surge that came from the Great Polar Melt. And when the cloud galley had need of rising up out of the confines of the narrow cut of the canal, it emerged into the same forbidding tablelands that dominated the Ma
rtian surface, but here they were slightly greened at the edge of the gorge, thanks to the nighttime condensation.

  About once a day, they came to a Bowl City, the gorge suddenly widening out into a crater of immense proportions, often with a central spire. Shrines and catch basins crawled up the side of those weathered pinnacles, and at their base, palaces and villas crowded each other in some mysterious competition for pride of place—although what pride of place was to be found about the base of a wind-eaten butte was beyond Conrad’s speculation.

  Invariably, the Bowl Cities themselves were tiny in comparison to Coprates, but compared to the often decaying, lock-tending communities of the Oxus canal, they were veritable meccas of civilization. Even so, the passage of a large airship was evidently still a relative rarity. Faces tilted upward at their approach. Men in rim-kine armor and with their right cheeks adorned by tattoos watched the cloud galley pass in silent assessment. Women, pin-sized opals and peridots glittering where they were embedded along the sharp, fine bridges of their brows and noses, stared, exchanged comments behind cupped hands, stared again.

  Early on the fourth day, their ship entered another such urbanized “bowl,” but also began to descend more rapidly than on prior occasions. Conrad, who had finally recovered from his various wounds and post-addiction infirmities, glanced at Szurthål, who nodded and said, “Yes, we have come to Thrynoo’ul. I must take the book now—and put your possessions in safe keeping. Then you may meet the Triumvirate.”

  * * *

  Meeting the Triumvirate was distinctly anticlimactic. Firstly, given that it was a Triumvirate, von Harrer had expected to meet three Martians. Instead, he was ushered into an audience chamber containing only one old fellow who was finishing a meal, diffidently attended by a servant who looked more ancient than his master. A guard lolled in the shadows, his vantbrassed arms cradling a matchlock musket with a pitted black barrel.

  Szurthål made a gesture that was part salute, part bow. “Second Keeper of Truth, I have brought the Earth-being Conrad von Harrer to you.”

  The old Martian looked up from his meal—spiced canal-mullet and fricasseed mud-eel, if Conrad’s eyes and nose were not misleading him—and fixed Szurthål with a sour glare. “And why have you done such an inadvisable thing, Hand of Truth Szurthål?”

  “It was a condition the human placed upon my solicitation of his help.”

  “He helped you?” The Second Keeper of Truth put down the mouthful of food that was halfway to his thin and wrinkled lips. “In what way?”

  Szurthål recounted the events that had transpired in Coprates City. The Second Keeper did not interrupt, but did grunt twice and raise an eyebrow once. At the end, he stared at his Hand of Truth Szurthål and the stray human he had brought home. Then he sighed and turned back to his meal. “You had no choice but to bring him, I suppose. But you have discharged your obligation to him. He is free to go, and free to take his equipment, although I will make an offer for one of his rifles.”

  Conrad looked over at Szurthål, whose eyes were still respectfully downcast since the Second Keeper had not signaled that this audience was at an end. He looked back at the Second Keeper, who seemed to be choosing which piece of eel to spear next. Conrad stepped forward—

  The lolling guard was on his feet in the blink of an eye, his musket aligned on a vector that intersected von Harrer’s belly.

  The Second Keeper waved the musket down—none too stridently, Conrad was disheartened to note—and stared at him. “You have something to say?”

  “Second Keeper of the Truth, since you know my name, and since you know I was poisoned with the tainted opium, you must also know why I came to Mars: to seek you. To seek a cure; to rid my body of the Cleaner.”

  “Yes? And?”

  “And—Second Keeper of the Truth, may I not prevail upon your sense of justice to—”

  “To what? To cure an addict so he may return to the habits which will surely kill him? Better that you make a quick end of it here.”

  “Here?”

  “Well, up on the tablelands, to be precise. You will become—quite unmanageable—in the weeks to come. Within two months’ time, you will think of nothing but killing and eating. A month after that, you will lose your interest in food, as well.”

  Conrad’s arms were so chilled by the calm dismissal of his death that he could feel goose bumps jumping up with painful abruptness. “Second Keeper of the Truth—”

  “Please do not call me that; you do not even know what it means. Nor that it is an affront to our people, coming from the lips of an invader.”

  “Then—what am I to call you, sir?”

  The old man sighed and put down his utensils, glanced at Szurthål. “He’s not going to stop, or give up, is he?”

  “As I informed you, Second Keeper, he is surprisingly tenacious for a human. And resilient.”

  Conrad almost missed the Second Keeper’s assessing gaze as he realized the implicit revelation lurking beneath Szurthål’s choice of words: “As I informed you” meant that somehow, Szurthål had been sending messages ahead of their arrival here. Which meant that the Second Keeper’s apparent ignorance about and indifference to Conrad’s plight was a sham. Which made this conversation some kind of test.

  Which, judging from the improved posture of the Second Keeper, Conrad just might be close to passing. “So. You may call me Cuthur Troep’eth. And you may be interested to learn that you are the first Pink to ever set foot in Thrynoo’ul.”

  Conrad tried to copy Szurthål’s bow-salute. “I am honored.” What he got in return were snickers, but looking up, saw that there was no disdain in the Martian eyes he met; simply amusement, and even a shade of indulgence. “Perhaps a courtier—of protocol—could instruct me in the finer points of your chamber’s etiquette,” he added.

  This had a most unusual effect on Cuthur: he sat up very straight, seemed to concentrate furiously, ending with a sudden blink of surprise and then a fast, hard stare at Szurthål. “Are you familiar with what ‘von’ means in front of human names, Hand?”

  Szurthål, surprised by the sudden and unpleasantly keen attention, stammered, “N-no, Second Keeper, I do not.”

  “It signifies aristocratic origins, if my information is correct. Is it, Sir von Harrer?”

  Conrad considered, and immediately rejected, the full explanation as overly complicated. “It does, Cuthur Troep’eth, but the privileges and wealth once associated with such designations are much diminished. In many cases, such as mine, they are all but gone.” “Yet you are accustomed to the concept of court protocols, and comport yourself as if you have personal familiarity with them. Is this so?”

  “I have some familiarity with them, sir.”

  Cuthur studied him narrowly. “Well, this makes you much more interesting to me than you were a minute ago, Conrad von Harrer. It would be useful to talk to, to learn from, you. We do not understand the changes that we hear are transpiring on your Earth, even now, among your classes. In particular, we hear reports that your nobility is vastly diminished and that many who used to be aristocrats are now what you call ‘professionals’: scholars, healers, adjudicators.”

  Conrad felt thoroughly disoriented. “And why is this of interest to you, Cuthur Troep’eth?”

  “Is it not obvious? Because it is clear—at least to the Triumvirate—that whether we must work against or with humans, it is imperative we learn as much about them as we can. You are new to us. Most humans who have come to Mars are greed-driven adventurers, or their even less self-aware lackeys. But you may be different. It is said that many of your class are, and that your education has also given no small number of you broader perspectives and views. It would be wise to understand such people as well as we might.”

  Conrad wondered if it was in his best interest to point it out, but he did anyway: “Cuthur Troep’eth, your judgment flatters me, but I am sad to say it may be somewhat out of date. There are now many learned areologists—scholars interested in Mars—who a
re arriving daily in—”

  “Them?” Cuthur scoffed. “Most of them are worse than the adventurers. The adventurers are at least cognizant of why they are truly here: to steal this planet’s riches or rule its people. Or both. But the scholars? Behind their veneer of interest in our ‘unique culture’ there is a clinical detachment that they are not even fully aware of themselves. To them, we are, first and last, objects of study, not flesh and blood beings whose world could be snatched away from them. The great majority of them are no less motivated by greed than the adventurers: the only significant difference is that their greed is for fame and prestige in their field, not opals and peridots.

  “But you have come out of need, not greed. And in coming here, have helped us. I note that you did not attempt to barter with Szurthål for the book, other than to be brought here.”

  “In all honesty, Cuthur Troep’eth, I was a desperate man: money means nothing if you are dead.”

  “Ah, but that is precisely where you are different, Conrad von Harrer. Most of the other humans that set foot on Mars never stop thirsting after the objects of their greed—even when their lives are in immediate peril.”

  “With respect, Cuthur Troep’eth, I think so absolute a statement would be a misperception of my species.”

  The elderly Martian frowned, then nodded. “That is well-said. I am judging from those we have had contact with, and they may not be truly representative of the people of Earth.”

  “If I may, sir, the ones you are judging us by are typical of those groups that gravitate to new lands where there is wealth to be had by exploiting the persons already there. Not all humans are like this. And those who are will, to a one, travel long and far to capitalize on such opportunities. The hint of easy wealth draws them like flies to a carcass.”