THE THRONE OF CYDONIA by Lee Clark Zumpe 
Published in Alien Worlds #23 

cBrendan hastened down the long, dark corridor. The transport shaft buried twenty-five meters beneath the Martian surfam was usually well lit and teaming with activity. Tonight, shadows held sway here and threatened to devour even the dull gleam cast by emergency lamps. 
Brendan's flashlight parted the seas of pitch within the pressurized tube, at least for the moment; but the gloom was only one of the obstacles confronting him. He wished he had brought a more effective form of protection against the cold air. The heating coils, like most of the lights, were almost all shut down during the leisure period. His cheap leather jacket proved a poor shield. 
It took Brendan over an hour to reach the excavation site. 
An assistant to the Director of Archeology on Mars, Brendan still trembled amidst the massive ruins of ancient Martian civilization. He compared the expeditionarb, company to the first British explorers stumbling through the tombs in Egypt; he likened himself to Howard Carter who unearthed the sixteen-step stone staircase that led to the treasure of King Tutankhamun. He shook with a giddy sensation of anticipation as the beam of his flashlight crawled across the enormous statues of long-dead Martian royalty and over towering columns encircled with glyphs. 
Brendan shambled across the sandy floor of the vast cavern, his eyes waltzing over temples and edifices that had yet to be surveyed. In working hours, the underground grotto purred with the hum of machinery. Workers often reverted to digging through the ruins with their bare hands, carefully brushing away sediment as they examined and cataloged each artifact. 'The chamber often thundered with the combined sounds of shovels breaking ground, chisels liberating old stones, and voices barking directions or celebrating new finds. 
Tonight, the silence permitted nothing more than the faint echo of Brendan's footsteps throughout the sprawling cave complex. 
As he approached the Royal Palace, Brendan bowed to a specific statue he had helped excavate in recent weeks. The gargantuan icon of a Martian deity disturbed many of his coworkers. Something about its composition, something about its uncanny features made more than a few of his colleagues uncharacteristically nervous. It towered above the squat temples that surrounded it, its swarthy black surface in sharp contrast to the burnt red brick buildings found throughout the city. 
With its conspicuously humanoid characteristics, the statue might well have represented any god of the ancient Greeks or Romans. Only its over-sized and elongated head, and its long and delicate spidery fingers gave it an alien quality. Something in its expression, though, gave Brendan an intimation of omnipotence - its eyes had the eerie aspect of inducing a certain numbness on anyone who gazed at them for an extended time. More than once, Brendan had caught himself stating at the effigy imagining its voice whispering softly inside his head. 
Inside the palace, Brendan quickly began his search. After months of work, he had managed to decipher a clay tablet which provided crucial information in his quest for the fabled throne room. Such a find would further ensure his name's addition to the list of famous archeologists. 
He worked his way along corridors inside the palace, descending several levels into the uncharted and labyrinthine lairs beneath the cavern. Only a few of the scouts had braved these far-flung passageways, and little evidence could be found of their preliminary, investigations. A few workers had actually gotten lost down in this maze before his appointment to the expedition - or, at least that is what he had been told. In the early days of the excavation - before any real archeologists had been transported to the Martian colonies - two surveyors allegedly spent several days wandering through narrow channels deep in the Martian underground, hopelessly disoriented. They emerged from their ordeal shaken, fatigued, but physically intact. 
Some, however, said they seemed different, somehow. 
Brendan carefully measured each step, consulting his notes compiled from his translation of the Martian tablet. The passages twisted and turned through the Martian rook, intersecting corridors and branching off into spur trails. Some tunnels appeared to climb away from his route, perhaps leading to secreted apertures in unexplored temples; others appeared to descend even further into the planet, down into darker distant warrens long vacant and waiting to be rediscovered. 
Since childhood, Brendan had waited for this moment. 
Before the first manned expedition to Mars, before the first base had been constructed deep in the network of hardened lava tubes on the Thatsis plateau, Brendan had dreamed of walking through the lost cities of Mars. Though their existence had been detected back in the 20th Century, the extent of their complexity remained unknown until the colonization phase began - but, somehow, he always knew what lay hidden beneath the surface of the red planet. 
He had visited this palace in his dreams as a child. 
Brendan found himself paying less attention to his notes as he advanced through the maze. The corridors began to look strikingly familiar. Suddenly, he favored instinct over research. 
Hours had elapsed since he had left the self-contained base camp. Certainly, by now, it would be evident that he was missing. The Director of Archeology would report his absence to the Colonial Guard. He would be readying a team to search the ruins for his fugitive assistant. This was not the first time Brendan had ignored directives and wandered into the city - in fact, he had found the clay tablet on one such excursion. The Director had reprimanded him on several occasions, had even threatened to send him back to earth...but, each time, Brendan managed to argue his way out of trouble by claiming his scholarly devotion bordered on obsession. 
The Director usually scaled back his reprimands, usually shrugged off Brendan's roguish nature. As much as disobedience irked him, the Director allowed Brendala sporadic bursts of waywardness. He was, after all, responsible for almost every important discovery, made in the Cydonia complex. 
The thin passage through which Brendan had been traveling abruptly opened up into an enormous hall, the shadowy boundaries of which seemed almost inestimable. His flashlight stabbed ineffectually at the dusky depths of the chamber, and he momentarily cowered at the very vastness of it all. 
Hesitantly, he stepped into the throne room, eyes scanning the shadows hunting for glimpses of treasures or wonders or fabulous artifacts. He searched for anything that might turn his childhood dreams into reality, an)thing that would make tangible all of those haunting visions he had witnessed for so many years. 
From some unseen quarter, light began to flow into the room. 
Brendan froze. His breath snagged in his chest, his eyes widened. 
An almost supernatural radiance flooded the chamber, revealing colorful frescos and aisles of polished statues. A reflecting pool of glimmering water ran the length of the room; alongside it, sandstone pillars soared upwards to the brightly painted ceiling. 
Brendan half-wondered, half-shuddered at the scenes depicted in the images painted across the walls and ceiling. Each scene, Brendan knew, represented some aspect of ancient Martian life; each picture recorded some period in their history, some event that had to be documented, some face fixat had to shine through the ages long after their civilization had ceased to exist. 
Brendan recognized them. 
Their names echoed through the recesses of his mind. Some, perhaps, he had heard during his studies ofknown Martian society. Some, perhaps, he had read when translating their intricate language from clay tablets and columns and crypts. 
Some names he had heard in his dreams. 
Brendan felt himself pulled alongside the reflecting pool, drawn down the length of the stretched chamber. He walked briskly at first, still enraptured by the scale of this ancient Martian undertaking, still hypnotized by its beauty. Soon, he found himself running, racing toward the small dot on the far horizon. His breath came in short gasps, his heart pounded. He could see the throne of Cydonia in the distance, see it as clearly as he had seen it a hundred times in his childhood dreams. 
Something in his genes had lured him to Mars. Something programmed into his distant ancestors, something he had always attributed to vivid imagination and academic curiosity, something had caused him to relocate to this planet and to seek assignment on this excavation and to disregard regulations and ethics and common sense. 
Finally, Brendan scrambled up the marble steps and sat upon the throne of Cydonia. 
The weird light that had flooded the room now pulsed with vigor. Whispers drifted through the maze of corridors, and shadows squirmed in remote burrows. Ripples spread across the reflecting pool. 
Mars stirred with life. 
Somewhere overhead, the Director of Archeology had entered the city, with a small band of searchers, intent on locating and apprehending Brendan. Approaching the palace, the Director chanced to gaze upon the eyes of the ebon statue. 
Its eyes had changed. No longer the vacant, mysterious and hypnotic eyes of some gifted Martian sculptor's design, the deep cavities swarmed with inexplicable vibrancy. The Director felt the statue watching him, felt it perceiving everything about it, sensed its immediate and acute displeasure. 
The Director stopped in his tracks, halting his companions, calling off the search without explanation. They fled, retracing their steps with a horror not one of them could explain. 
Even farther overhead, on the surface of Mars, a sandstom brewed ominously. 
Brendan had finally come home. 
Soon, he would be joined as the descendants of his race climbed from their deep havens. They would reclaim their city, and their planet, and then they would return to the neighboring planets and restore their empire. The age of hibernation had come to an end, and the prophecies would be fulfilled. 
As he waited for his attendants, Brendan wandered down to the water's edge. In the surface, he saw himself. He did not know when he had transformed, but the metamorphosis did not surprise him. His long and delicate spider's fingers traced the dark contours of his elongated head. 
He smiled, as only Martians can smile, at his reflection in the pool. 
THE END 
Copyright 2002 by Lee Clark Zumpe