Sebastian of Mars

Book II in the Masters of Mars Trilogy

By Al Sarrantonio

Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2011 Al Sarrantonio

Cover design by David Dodd / Copy-Edited by Patricia Lee Macomber

Cover art courtesy of: http://dandzialf.deviantart.com/

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To my sister, Mary Jo

One

It’s not easy being a sickly kit. Especially when those around you are so strong. I watch my sister Amy at play, the way she leaps and runs and cuts at her playmates with her wooden sword, and I feel inadequate and left out.

I am left out anyway, of course, being King of Mars.

Or at least I will be, on the day of my fifth birthday.

The very thought of Regent Parum turns my stomach.

Some of the other grownups I like. I greatly look forward to Uncle Newton’s visits, since he always brings me such interesting toys.

Most of all I miss not having parents. Amy doesn’t seem to mind as much, and I’m told she takes after our father, Kerl of Olympia. I’m told by Newton and others, especially the fat cook Brenda, that I am more like my mother: thoughtful and taken to flights of dreaming. My mother was very deep, I am told, and I miss her terribly, even though I never knew her. One of Amy’s friends, the evil Charlotte, told me in one of her snits that Amy and I were in the same room when my mother was murdered, on the very day of her coronation. This is a horrible thought, and I was successful in having Charlotte banished for a short time from the royal grounds. But her father, Senator Misst, is an important person and my ban did not last. In fact, at Xarr’s urging, I was forced to apologize to Charlotte in front of her father, a stern shriveled old man with a wizened face and sharp distrustful eyes. It was for the good of the realm, I was told. While I was doing it I felt a burning anger within me that almost came out – later I discussed this with my teacher and guardian, Thomas, who laughed.

“You have just taken your first bitter pill,” he said, eyeing me with amusement.

“The funny thing is,” I answered, “that while I was doing it I wanted to scream that this was not right, while at the same time I understood somewhere in the back of my mind why it had to be done.”

He continued to look bemused, and I asked him why.

He answered: “You have had your very first lesson as a king, and you taught it to yourself!”

I suddenly felt very proud of myself, and strutted around for the rest of the day practicing bestowing favors, even if no one took me seriously. I even pardoned Charlotte from the death sentence I had, in my imagination, condemned her to. But, as usual, she had the last laugh, pulling a wire she had strung taut across a hallway as I passed in my faux royal robes (made of quilted bedding) and tripping me up.

“A fine fall for a king!” she shouted, laughing as she ran away. The bruise I ended up with landed me in bed for the rest of the day.

It was Thomas, as usual, who tried to explain things to me, pulling a stool up close to my bedside.

“You must realize, Sebastian, that you are different from the other kits. In more ways than one. There is your lineage that separates you from the rest, of course, but there is also the matter of your . . .”

He hesitated, pointing to my bandaged leg, resting on two pillows atop the coverlet I had lately used for raiment.

“My frailty?” I finished for him.

He reddened slightly with embarrassment, his whiskers twitching. “Your body is frail, but your mind certainly is not. And who knows, with your coming adolescence your body may catch up to your mind.”

I nodded. “Then, for now at least, I will have to beat them with my mind, instead of my body.”

“It is not as simple as that,” he said. “You must realize that frailness of body will be taken as weakness, in and of itself. Already Regent Parum has moved before the Assembly that your ascendency to the throne be postponed until such time that you prove your . . . what he calls ‘heartiness.’”

“Then I will challenge him in the assembly.”

“It is not so easy, Sebastian. Parum has allies in both the senate and the hall, some of them very powerful.”

“The law states very clearly that I will be crowned on my fifth birthday. And that is only a few weeks away.”

“You must understand that the law is not made of stone. It is a fluid thing. Your mother made it that way to better serve the people.”

I smiled slightly. “My mother was very wise. So you are talking of the clause, ‘unfit to rule.’”

“Exactly.”

“And Parum will use it against me.”

He edged his stool closer, and lowered his voice. “Very likely.”

“Do you fear that we will be overheard?” I said in a loud whisper.

“There is that possibility. Parum has become very secretive lately, and I have heard that there are spies who have sworn allegiance to him–”

“This alone is treason!” I shouted.

Thomas’s eyes widened in alarm. When this happened the streak of light short black fur which crowned his forehead disappeared altogether, which was usually a cause for mirth. But not today.

“Lower your voice, Sebastian!” he hissed.

“I will not! And I don’t care who hears me! There is nothing in the law that allows the regent this kind of power!”

“Perhaps not. But it is something that must be dealt with.”

“If he denies me the throne, he hordes all power for himself.”

Thomas moved his stool even closer. He was nearly whispering in my ear, now. It was then I noticed that from his eyes, and the faint odor of terror he exuded, that he was very afraid.

“Sebastian,” he said, lowering his voice even more, to a mere whisper, “you must listen to me. This may cost me my life. But as I swore allegiance to your protection, so too did I swear allegiance to your ascension to the throne. There have been plots within plots building for some time, ever since the trouble in the east began. There are those who say that Parum has not done enough in your name to quell this trouble. There are others who say he has done too much. And then, as always, there are those who do nothing. They are the most dangerous of all. In your mother’s time they caused, through their inaction and stupidity, the downfall of the first republic. They may soon cause the destruction of the second.”

Some of this I knew, or had deduced through my own observation or deduction. But to have it placed so baldly in front of me frankly frightened me. I knew there was growing trouble in my empire, but I had no idea it was so pervasive or imminent. My war games had been daydreams, my form of play since I couldn’t wield a wooden sword like my sister.

“Is it that bad?” I whispered.

“Worse. The trouble to the east has been intensifying. Parum keeps most of it out of the media but he cannot prevent whispers. It is said that Frane’rar has resurfaced.”

A chill went through me. “This is impossible. She is dead.”

He shook his head slowly. Now he did whisper into my ear. “Parum falsified her death. That was not her body that was displayed last year, but that of another F’rar. General Xarr had tests done on the body before it was cremated. Only a few know, and until now it was better for the public good that it wasn’t common knowledge. Soon, I’m afraid, everyone on Mars will know.”

I turned my gaze on him, and hoped it looked as steely as I meant it to be. I had practiced this hard, regal look many times in my mirror, when alone.

“Then I must take the throne immediately.”

He drew back. “That is impossible!”

“Anything but. It is only four weeks until I am five. In an emergency the coronation can be performed at any time after my fourth birthday. I do know the law, Thomas.”

I watched the stunned look on his face, which had lost all color. But I saw that he was staring through me, at the door to my chambers.

I turned, wincing with pain at the twist in my ankle, and saw Thomas’s page, a young feline named Fotrel, standing in the doorway.

“Fotrel, come in!” I said, trying to sound hearty. “Join our discussion, and then we can play a game of Jakra after Thomas is gone!”

“I’m sorry, my lord, but I must speak with Thomas alone.”

“Nonsense! What you say to him you say to me – that is an order!”

He bowed, which made me instantly regret my harshness. He turned slightly toward Thomas as he rose.

“There is an emergency Council meeting,” Fotrel said. “Newton has arrived from the west.”

“I will attend immediately,” Thomas said.

“As will I,” I said, hoping my voice sounded as firm as I wanted it to.

Both of them turned to stare at me.

“Sebastian –” Thomas began.

I quieted him with my stare.

Thomas looked at Fotrel. “Advise the Council immediately.”

Fotrel, still looking pained, nodded and turned away.

To me, Thomas hissed in fierce whisper, “Attend, Sebastian, but do not open your mouth.”

I had often dreamed of the Council Chamber. I had even snuck into it, once, when I was barely a year old, and barely able to stand on two feet instead of four. It was rarely unlocked, but that day a meeting held in my name (as they all were) had just concluded and the servants were late in arriving to clean up. On all fours, I had stealthily crept into the room. I had only just begun to explore when I was lifted bodily and found myself face to face with the scarred warrior, General Xarr.

“What have we here? A midget King?” he roared, and then he laughed, making the scar which ran from the crown of his head down to the edge of his lip on the right side blush with crimson color.

And then, to my shock, he hugged me to himself and sighed!

As he drew me away to place me on the floor I caught a good look of the room I had abandoned: a huge junto wood table, nearly blood red in color, covered with charts and unrolled maps and the leavings of gemel tea in their cups–

And that, until this day, was the only look that I had ever had of the inside of the Council Chamber.

I was carried in today on a litter, feeling embarrassed. I could feel the eyes on me of the Council members, and was chagrined that I could not even enter under my own power.

I was placed in a corner, where two chairs had been pushed together seat to seat so that the cushion I lay curled on could be put there.

“Move me closer to the table,” I said to the two attendants, who ignored me.

“I said moved me closer!” I demanded, and a whispered conversation between Newton and Xarr ceased, bringing silence to the room.

Thomas made a motion to the attendants, who immediately bowed and angled the chairs closer to the wooden table, which did not seem quite as large as it had when I was a little kit.

I nodded briefly, and the two servants bowed and left the room.

Parum stood and cleared his voice, an annoying habit. He tilted his head, covered in a coiffed mass of reddish-brown fur, in my direction. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a distinguished guest today.”

It sounded condescending, and I frowned, until a quick look from Thomas made me turn my features bland.

To my surprise, a host of warm looks turned my way, and there was light applause.

Thomas stood. “The Prince sustained a slight injury, or he would join us at table today.”

Again the warm looks, until Charlotte’s father, the F’rar Senator Misst, stood and announced curtly, “I am afraid that the Prince was injured during play, and that my daughter was to blame – a thousand apologies!”

He bowed his shriveled, nearly hairless pate, and the gesture, as well as the words, sounded genuine.

I was about to say something, but Thomas gave me a quick shake of his head as Parum announced – putting both of his large pawns, covered in copious fur the same color as that on his head, flat on the table and leaning forward – “Very well, then! Let us begin.” There was a gavel next to his right paw, and he grasped it and rapped it once in practiced nonchalance.

Everyone was now seated – and for the next twenty minutes I was entirely ignored.

And yet, I was fascinated. Every point that was made – by Newton, mostly on scientific matters, by Xarr, on the military angle, by the other Council members, the beautiful Rella, Speaker for the Hall, charming Pellas, like Charlotte’s father a prominent senator and also of the F’rar clan, and the others – was glorious to watch. There was an ebb and flow to the proceedings; a give and take that was impossible to describe or understand without being there. I had read of government proceedings in countless books, studied transcripts, even – but the real thing was much more dynamic and alive.

This was how representative government – what my mother had fought so hard for, and ultimately gave her life for – worked.

I was in a trance.

So much so that when the meeting ended abruptly, with Parum suddenly grasping and rapping his gavel again, I was stunned.

“Is that all there is to it?” I said to Thomas, as he approached me.

“It was a two hour meeting!” he said. “And mostly dull as porridge!”

“It went by like five minutes.”

Thomas now stepped aside as the Council members filed past me to give their best wishes, as well as condolences on my most current injury.

I noticed that Parum was the only one among them who did not do so, leaving abruptly through the same doors I had snuck into when I was little.

Newton examined my leg. “Your injury is nothing! It will heal quickly, I’ll wager. We will speak tonight about the stars, before I leave?”

“Yes, please!” I nearly shouted, losing my newly acquired royal bearing.

“Good.”

He was gone, leaving me alone with Thomas.

“A word of caution,” Thomas said. “The next time Rella addresses you, do not look at her like you would have her served to you on a plate.”

“But she is beautiful!”

He laughed, the first mirth I had seen in him today. “She is beautiful, and she is the Speaker of the Hall of Assembly, the largest democratic body ever on the planet Mars – and she is also married and also as devious as a serpent when she needs to be. And she is F’rar.”

I must have blushed slightly, and he laughed again, as he motioned the two attendants now waiting patiently in the doorway to come and bring me back to my chambers. “And you listened to my prime advice, and kept your mouth shut,” he said. “Very good.”

Two

That night Newton, as promised, came to see me.

I was tired, but brightened immediately when he entered my chambers. Though he was an old man, he moved with a grace I desperately wished to possess, and spoke always with an elucidation I envied and sought to mimic.

“My petite prince!” he announced, smiling, his lean face, lightly furred, breaking in a sly smile. “Have you been studying the night sky while I was away?”

“You know what I wait for, Newton!”

“And with my next trip back from Sagan, you shall have it. The Optical Guild artisans have been hard at work on it – as well as other things.” His face darkened for a moment.

“Tell me about my telescope!”

“Ah!” he said, his face brightening. “It is a fine instrument, better than my own, even. The lens will be 150 millimeters wide – a good diameter. Good enough to study Earth and the other planets with, as well as some of the other riches in the night sky!”

“It is cloudy tonight,” I said sadly, pointing toward the open window of my room.

“Indeed. But I have brought another useful toy that may prove instructive.”

He reached into his tunic and removed a tube with a lens on the end.

“Bah!” I said. “That is nothing but a hand torch! You brought me one last year!”

“This is a bit more than that,” he said mysteriously, and then reached out to extinguish the electric light in the room.

We were bathed in complete darkness, except for the outline of the window which let in the faint lights of the city of Wells.

“Watch,” Newton whispered.

There was a faint click and then the room was filled with stars!

“You’ve banished the clouds!”

“Not quite,” he laughed, as I reached out to try to touch the point of light nearest my bed. My hand went through it, and now the point of light was painted on my paw itself.

“You’ve shrunk the night and brought it indoors!”

He laughed louder. “You are certainly your mother’s son. Again, not exactly. But we have been able to duplicate the night sky, and project it for study on nights such as this.” In the dark, he handed the instrument to me. “I hope you enjoy it, when clouds or dust storms come.”

“Thank you!” I said, and reached up to put my paws around his neck.

He patted my back and then straightened. “You are getting too old for such displays of affection, Sebastian! Before you know it, your body will change in ways that are remarkable. Soon, you will not be a kit anymore. Now, a short lesson. Point the instrument straight overhead, so that it projects on the ceiling. And tell me which is the brightest star and what its name is.”

“It is spring . . .” I said. “Therefore, it would be in the constellation of the Big Kite. Saurus! The King of Cats!” I pointed toward a star toward the western end of the room.

“Very good! Now find the Great Ladle.”

I did so, and we continued in this fashion until I suddenly blurted, “But where is Earth and its moon? And the other planets?”

He walked to the wall switch and used it, making the faux night sky instantly disappear. “They wander, and it would be difficult to project their progress since it changes each night. The same with our own moons. But we are working on it.”

His face had assumed a serious demeanor. He pulled Thomas’ stool close to my bed and said, “May we talk seriously for a few moments, Sebastian? Or should I practice calling you . . . Sire?”

The ghost of his smile traced his lips.

I must have reddened slightly, because he quickly added, “You did the correct thing, today. I imagine you’ve heard of Parum’s ambitions. Be assured that there are those of us on the Council and elsewhere who oppose them. You have many more supporters than your advisers believe. I would have to say you put a scare into old Parum, who isn’t as smart or clever as he thinks. He has been a good if not great regent, and I have the feeling his time in that role may be coming to an end.”

“You’re talking of my assuming the throne early?”

He nodded slowly. I noticed that he was not concerned with lowering his voice, the way Thomas had been. “You must remember, Sebastian, that I helped your mother write the new constitution. She was a brilliant and far-sighted woman. She had every intention of making sure the Second Republic of Mars was successful, and impervious to the kind of corruption that destroyed the first one.” I saw his eyes cloud.

“Yet you are still worried?”

He hesitated before answering.

“I am not a little kit anymore, Newton.”

Still he hesitated, and then he said, carefully, “There will always be dangers, Sebastian.”

“Then tell them to me.”

I thought he was still studying me, but instead I sensed he was studying his own internal catalogue. It suddenly occurred to me who the real rulers and protectors of Mars had been all these years of my growing up – not Parum and his cronies but Newton, and Xarr, and probably others. Parum was the face of Mars, but those like Newton were its beating heart.

“Tell me,” I repeated.

“I will tell you something frightening, and then I will tell you something marvelous,” he said “You will doubtless do nothing but learn such things in the next months, especially if you do ascend early. But listen to this, because it has import far beyond even our own republic or our individual lives.”

It thrilled me – and frightened me – that there would be something more important than the Second Republic of Mars.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“Just this,” he said. “I will frighten you first, because you are your mother’s son and can handle dire words. I spoke once with you mother of this, years ago. Do you know the various oxygenation stations scattered around the planet, abandoned in the dim past by the Old Ones?”

“Of course!” I said brightly. I pointed across the room to a table where some of my crude modeling attempts lay. One of them was a diorama of an abandoned valley I had seen in a picture, dominated by a stand of ancient structures, decrepit buildings and a series of towering smokestacks.

Newton gave a cursory glance at my handiwork and looked back at me with a wry grin. “Yes. You are aware. Well, we may need to rejuvenate those complexes.”

“Why?”

“Because Mars is losing its atmosphere. It is leaking into space like a pinprick in a child’s balloon. No, that’s not quite accurate. Think rather of our atmosphere as a giant balloon, and millions of pinpricks letting our precious oxygen out.”

“Well, then, we will get the oxygenation stations working again!”

“It is not that simple, Sebastian. You see, we don’t quite know how.”

“What!” This came as a great shock to me. “But you can do anything, Newton!”

His wry smile returned. “I’m no magician. The fact is, we’ve been studying these structures for years, and have only begun to understand them in a rudimentary sense. The Old Ones were far more advanced than we are, if no wiser. You must remember, Sebastian, that most of our science, including the recent advent of powered airships, was gleaned from the leavings of those ancient creatures. Electricity, motor propulsion, energy production from water dams and aquifers – all of it.” His face darkened. “Even the recent horror weapons were gleaned from hints and artifacts the Old Ones left behind.”

He must have seen the crestfallen look on my face – after all, he was a hero to me, infallible and in many ways a father figure – for he brightened and said: “And so, that is the bad news! I promised you magnificent news, too, and you shall have it. We have continued our work on the new engines, and think that one day in the not too distant future, we may be able to attain space.”

I nearly jumped from my cushion. “Space! This has been my dream since I was a kit!” I pointed again to my work table, where various crude rocket ships lay in various states of completion. Most of them were from the popular press.

Newton walked to the table and picked up a particular model, made from carved junto wood, a sleek thing with fins and a tapered nose. He held it up to the light and studied it. “This is not so far from the truth,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

“I built it from a picture I saw in a publication.”

“Curious . . .” Newton said, frowning.

“Is there something wrong?”

He turned his attention to me. He smiled, but it looked forced. “Of course not. May I borrow this?”

“You may keep it!” I said.

Idly, he dropped it into his tunic pocket and again approached my bedside. He did not sit down.

“So,” he said, “You have your toy, and I have mine. You will continue to study the heavens until we next meet?”

I held up his gift. “Of course! And when you return –”

He anticipated me. “I will bring your telescope. And you and I will study Earth and the stars together!”

“Hurrah!”

Newton laughed, and then grew abruptly somber. He scratched his chin and sat down heavily on the stool.

“There is much I worry about, Sebastian,” he said. “I fear for your safety, and for the future of the world your mother died to insure. You are so young, and I fear a great burden will fall on your shoulders before you are ready for it. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this to one so young, but beware almost everyone around you.”

“Even Xarr, and Thomas?”

“They are both good men. Xarr I would trust with my life, and yours, too. But Thomas is young, and picked to do a young man’s job. And as for the rest . . .” He scratched his chin again, looking over my head at nothing at all. “I wish that I did not have to go back to the west, but I must. So let me leave you with this thought to ponder: No matter what happens, I want you never to forget that there are things greater than any of us on Mars. And dreams greater than any of us. My own dreams are what keep me going. Don’t ever forget yours.”

He cocked an eye at me. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now sleep. You look tired. I wish there was more we could do to improve your strength. You have been burdened with this weakness of body since birth, and it only adds to your burdens. But I get the feeling that in other ways, it has made you strong. As I said before, you are much like your mother. But she had the advantage of a strong constitution, also. She could fight like a devil when she had to.”

“You mean like my sister?”

He rolled his eyes. “Amy is a tiger, but I am afraid she is all claws. She never sits still! If I were to try to have this talk with her, she would be hanging from the curtains and shouting a challenge to the world while waving her wooden sword madly in the air!”

I laughed at this image, which wasn’t far from the truth.

“Anyway, Sebastian, take care of yourself and be well. I will return as soon as I can. And this time Thomas does not have to come with me.”

“It is lonely when the two of you are gone.”

He tucked me into my bedding and then, to my surprise, kissed me lightly on the forehead.

“I always thought of your mother as my daughter,” he whispered, and I detected his sadness. After I lost my own daughter, I thought Haydn would be with me into my old age.”

A tear from old Newton’s eye fell onto my forehead, where he had kissed me, as he straightened.

“Be well – Sire,” he said, still a whisper.

When he was gone and the door had been closed and then locked by the guard, I lay for a long while and stared at the clouded sky, which had begun to clear. I thought of the many terrible and wonderful things Newton had told me – and then, just before sleep descended, the clouds parted, letting in the light of a bright star, Saurus, I’d wager.

And next to it, blue and dim and mysterious, and with a small white companion, what hadn’t been shown by my toy, the Blue Lady herself, Earth, floating majestically in the dark.

Three

The next morning I was awakened by commotion outside my door. As I called for the guard the door burst open and my sister Amy, along with her friend Charlotte, rushed into the room laughing. The guard, behind them, looked in at me sheepishly and closed the door behind them.

“Brother!” Amy shouted, jumping onto my bed. She wore a bright blue tunic fringed in deep red brocade. The white fur of her face, with a single patch of amber over one eye, was stained with whatever she had eaten for breakfast. Her deep gold, almond-shaped eyes were bright.

She held what looked like a real sword up high. “Death to traitors!”

With a mad cry she thrust the sword down into my middle – and to my horror it seemed to pass right through the bedclothes and into me!

“Amy!” I shouted.

And yet I felt nothing.

She laughed wildly, and pulled the sword back. The mad gleam was still in her eyes.

“Look! A gift from Newton!”

She pressed the edge of the sword into the palm of her paw the blade retracted into the handle with a snick. As she pulled it away from her paw the blade shot out again to full length.

“Ha!” She thrust the sword into me again and again.

“Amy, I really am tired . . .” I protested.

She jumped to the edge of the bed and then back up to where I lay. “How can you be tired? You slept all night!”

Again she thrust the sword into my bedclothes, in the vicinity of my heart. “Die, traitor, die!”

Wearily, I looked over at Charlotte, who was staring at me strangely.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, giving her a baleful look. “After all, you put me here with your trip wire, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry!” she said, to my utter amazement, and then she ran from the room just as Thomas was entering it.

“Amy!” he scolded, picking my sister up from the bed and putting her on the floor, as she stabbed at him repeatedly with her toy.

“I will have to talk to Newton about giving you such things,” Thomas said wearily, pointing her toward the door, where her Nanny waited. “Now go to lessons, and leave your brother alone.”

“Hyyyyahhhh!” Amy shouted like a wild cat, and jumped up on the bed again, driving the toy sword into me one final time before jumping from the far side and scooting around Thomas and out into the hallway.

The door closed on the commotion ensuing out there, and Thomas straightened his tunic and stood before me.

“How’s your leg?” he asked.

“Stiff, but serviceable, I think,” I answered. As I said this I slipped from the bed and tested it. “Not too bad.”

“Good. Then walk with me.”

I blinked. “But what about lessons? And my breakfast?”

“They can wait,” he said mysteriously. “Follow.”

The door opened again, and I hobbled out after Thomas, who set, I thought, a deliberately brisk pace.

We stopped, to my thrill, before the doors of the Council Chamber, which I had only officially broached the day before.

The doors were opened by two attendants. I limped in after Thomas.

There was something different about the room, which I couldn’t quite focus on . . .

Thomas strode to the chair the regent had presided from the previous day, and stood behind it. “Well?”

“Well what?” I said, but even as the words left my mouth I realized what was different in the room – the chair itself was not the one Parum had sat in, but was the royal throne.

“But –”

“There was another meeting last evening, while Newton entertained you. He had already cast his vote. Needless to say, it was in favor of your early ascension to the throne.” He smiled. “There was, naturally, one nay vote.”

“Parum,” I said, as if in a dream. I couldn’t take my eyes off this huge symbol of power, its deeply polished red junto wood, the cushion of royal blue, the embroidered symbols of Martian authority – a round red circle girdled in stars – set into its back.

“Yes, Parum. Even Rella, who is F’rar, voted in favor. I’m afraid Parum will try to cause trouble.”

“We will banish him if we have to,” I said. I had slowly made my way, still limping, to stand before the throne. I stood staring at it with what must have been a stupid, blank look on my face. “My mother never sat here.”

“Yes, she did. When she was little, your grandfather used to let her curl up on it. Xarr told me the story. The King told her never to get used to its feel beneath her. He had just declared the First Republic then, and had dreams of dissolving the throne altogether. It was –”

“I know the history books,” I interrupted, running my hand over the cushion. “It was what doomed the First Republic, and sent my mother into exile. It was only by accepting her role as Queen that she was able to defeat Frane, who had stolen power in the name of her clan, the F’rar, and establish the Second Republic.”

“And you now to lead it. The ceremony will be a week from tomorrow.”

“Very well.”

I wanted very badly to climb up into that chair, to curl up on its cushion like my mother had when she was a kit.

But I suddenly knew that my days as a kit were over, as of that moment.

“Put this throne back into storage,” I said abruptly. I hardly believed that I was saying it.

Thomas was startled. “Surely you can’t mean that –”

“Put it away and replace it with a chair just like all the others. That is what I will sit in.”

“But why?”

I gave him what I hoped was a level stare. “My mother never would have done anything so ostentatious, and neither will I. If I must rule, then very well, I will rule, but I will not sit higher than any other man.”

A slow smile came onto Thomas’ face. “You really have studied the constitution.”

“I know it like I know my own self. It is all I have of my mother, and she died giving it to me.”

I saw a strange look pass over Thomas’ features, which was quickly banished. He almost spoke but then gathered himself and nodded. “Very well, Sebastian. I will have it removed. I think it a wise decision.”

I gave him a smile. “I bet old Parum didn’t enjoy seeing it, though, did he?”

Thomas threw back his head and laughed.

That night I drew from its hiding spot behind my dresser, where even prying Amy hadn’t been able to find it, my most prized possession. Newton had given it to me the year before, when, as he said, I was finally old enough to appreciate it. He could have given it to me when I was a little kit and I would have appreciated and cherished it, because it had belonged to my mother.

It was a strange keepsake, a book of the Old Ones, which made it, of course, immensely valuable. But no price could be put on this artifact, the only object in existence with a connection not only to my mother but also my grandmother, who had been a sad woman, from what I was told.

It was a picture book, of strange-looking Old One musicians. Many pages were missing, and some were brittle, and I always took great care when I handled it lest it dissolve to dust in my hands.

Three pages in particular were special.

The first was a portrait of a tall, thin Old One with a completely naked face and a high mane of hair on the top of his head (a feline book had claimed that, in certain Old One ages, this was not real hair at all but something called a wig!) standing next to a musical instrument. One of his strange, long fingered paws rested on its keyboard. The name under the picture was FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN.

My mother, I had been told, was named after this Old One by my grandmother, just as my mother named my sister and me after two other Old One Musicians.

My own picture was partially torn away, but showed most of a portrait of a rather fat, smiling Old One, also wearing what looked to be a wig. His name, also partially missing, was SEBASTIAN BACH. And Amy’s picture was of a proud looking woman named AMY BEACH.

I carefully studied each picture, and the relatively hairless creatures the Old One’s had been. So like and yet so unlike us. There was still so much mystery surrounding their origin, and also their demise. How did they relate to us? Where had they gone, millennia ago? One of Newton’s Science Guild colleagues, who had been studying the Old Ones all his life, estimated that they had died out nearly two million years ago. Why?

It was one of the questions that had always intrigued and inspired me.

This was the kind of King I wanted to be: one who gave his people answers instead of questions, and I resolved that my reign would, hopefully, begin a golden age of knowledge on Mars.

I fell asleep with the book on my lap, and was only roused, hours later, by the sound of a door quietly opening.

I knew instantly by the stealthy nature of the sound that it was not Thomas or one of my guards come to check on me. The lamp next to my bed had been extinguished. Through the opening crack in the door I saw the guard, his head lolling, asleep or worse in his chair outside.

And then the light in the hallway went out, and I could see nothing.

The door opened wider, squeaking slightly on its hinges. Holding my breath, I angled myself out of the bed, leaving the book behind.

The door closed behind a figure now inside the room.

I could feel the presence of the other. There was a heat, a slightly sweet odor, a slight breathing that announced the intruder.

Was this how my reign would end, before it had even begun, at the hands of an assassin?

The other stood silent, and now I could make out a slight shape in the darkness as my eyes became used to the dark.

The shape moved to the bed, to the lamp next to it, and stood still. It was hovering over the bed, its hand moving over the wall to the switch.

I stepped back, my hands out to shield me, as the lamplight turned night into sudden day.

“Charlotte!” I cried.

She froze, staring at the empty bed and the book on it, then at me. “Sebastian!” There was confusion and fright on her face.

I began to breathe again, but her look of fear didn’t dissipate.

“Did my sister put you up to this, to scare me?”

“No. I –”

She looked vulnerable, something I had never seen this boisterous companion of my sister’s – wild, mischievous, pretty in a tomboyish way with huge brown-gold eyes and light silver fur – look. In recent weeks she had begun to look older, less kitish. “I had to speak to you, Sebastian,” she said.

“To apologize again for tripping me up? I’m still limping, as you can see.” I took a few steps, exaggerating my affliction.

“Not that.”

“Then stop staring at me like you’ve never seen me before! You had the same stupid look on your face this afternoon!”

“That was when I found out. But I didn’t know who to tell, who I could trust.”

“What is it?” I lost my flippancy, and walked slowly forward, facing her across the bed. “Tell me what’s wrong. Perhaps I should summon Thomas –”

“No! I mean, please don’t. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble. But I had to tell you that you’re in danger.”

I almost laughed, thinking that perhaps Amy had put her up to pulling a trick on me after all. But something about the seriousness and terror in her face stopped me.

“Then if you won’t tell anyone else, tell me.”

“You must promise me that my father won’t get into trouble.”

“Your father! What has Senator Misst done?”

“Nothing! But I overheard . . .”

She lowered her voice, and I thought again of Thomas’ warning that things in this room could be overheard. Was I the only one who didn’t believe it?

We leaned across the bed toward each other, and she whispered, “Yesterday, after I was scolded for tripping you, my father said a curious thing. And it bothered me.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Soon we will not have to apologize to anyone from the J’arn Clan.’ And when I asked him what he meant he got very angry and told me not to repeat what he had said.”

“That’s it?”

She nodded. “But it was the way he said it. And I saw him talking to Regent Parum later, and thought perhaps they were plotting against you –”

She looked down.

“You thought perhaps they were plotting against me! And heard your father make an off-hand remark about our two clans, which have never gotten along anyway? That’s it?” I laughed. “You would have me put your father on trial, or thrown him in a jail cell, for this?”

“No!” She looked up at me again, her eyes very wide. “I would never want my father to get into trouble. But Amy is always seeing plots, and this was such a strange thing for my father to say, and if anything ever happened to you I would die because I love you –”

She gasped, and put her paws over her mouth. “Oh! I didn’t mean to say that!”

I was stunned. I stood up straight, and stepped back from the bed. Suddenly I didn’t know what to do. I felt self-conscious and awkward.

“Perhaps you should go,” I said.

“Sebastian, please, don’t tell anyone!”

And then she turned and fled, waking the guard in the hall, who woke up with a snort.

It was a long time before I got back to sleep. The guard was replaced and reprimanded, and I sat staring at the book of the Old Ones without further interest in it. Finally I put it back in its hiding place. I lay back in bed with my paws behind my head, the lamp off, and stared at the ceiling.

So Charlotte, my sister’s playmate, a rowdy, loud presence in my life since I was a kit, who, just the day before, had strung a wire across a hallway to trip me up, was in love with me. This was a startling and interesting development.

Those huge brown eyes, that fierce playfulness, that devilish demeanor, were all hiding a burning passion for the royal runt, Sebastian of Argyre.

And she wanted to marry me, not for political purpose, but for love!

And if our union was made, it would unite the two most historically contentious clans on Mars, and possibly seal a wound that had festered for centuries, and caused many of the problems on the planet.

It was an interesting political question, made all the more intriguing by the fact that I had been madly in love with her ever since I was small, and thought her absolutely unattainable.

An interesting question . . .

Finally, as dawn was nearly breaking, I slept, a smile upon my face.

Four

The first meeting of the Council I presided over, a week later, was quite eventful. First there was the reaction of Parum, who entered the room like a whipped dog to see not only that the throne had been removed but that he sat in an exalted position beside me, his gavel still before him. He lost most of his sour look immediately.

And then there was Senator Misst, whose face nearly imploded when I announced at the end of the meeting that his daughter Charlotte and I were betrothed, and would be married the following year, when we were both six. The shock on his face, I must admit, gave me a secret pleasure, though I did my best to hide it. After all, this cantankerous, sly eel would soon be my father in law. For his own part, he quickly doused his ire, though he did not smile.

“So be it,” he said, and his face went as blank as a chalk board, as if he was ready to move on to other things.

And we did. Thomas read a wireless dispatch from Newton, who reported that things were quiet in the west but that there was much talk of coming trouble. I could tell from his words that he was irked with the imprecision of what he reported – though the very fact that he did report it proved to me that he was worried.

Next Parum reported that all was calm in Wells, which was of course foolishness. The same sort of unease that Newton commented on was all too evident in our capital city, if Thomas and others of my acquaintance, who actually bothered to roam the streets, were to be believed.

In the North, Xarr said, things were more out in the open.

“I wouldn’t call it open rebellion just yet,” he said slowly, reading from a paper which he held painfully close to his squinting eyes – it was now that I noticed with a shock just old he had grown. After tripping over a few words he threw down the paper with a snort and drew a set of spectacles from his tunic which he set on his nose. Again he squinted, and again he dropped the paper impatiently. “Wrong damned spectacles!” he announced in a voice that challenged anyone in the room to make comment, and then the old warrior produced yet another pair of glasses. This time they must have had the desired effect, because he continued: “As I said, no open revolt but more trouble in the streets than usual. In my home city of Burroughs, which as you know was callously bombed by the F’rar in the last war; there have been lynchings of businessmen and tourists in the streets of F’rar.” He locked eyes with my future father-in-law and said, “This of course has no bearing on the cordial relationships which exist in this room, nor does it in any way condone these heartless and foolish acts. Atrocities, as we know, can be traced to all clans.”

Senator Misst nodded slightly, and Xarr went on.

“Republican forces have been dispatched, and martial law has been declared. Parum of course gave consent, in the name of Sebastian. There is much unrest in other areas as well.”

“It is as if they are all waiting for something,” I said.

Xarr stopped speaking, and all eyes were on me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know why I said that. Please continue, general Xarr.”

The old general said, “There is nothing more to say. And what you blurted out is true. There is something in the air, though we don’t yet see it.”

“Perhaps,” beautiful Rella, leader of the Assembly, offered, “we have all caught just a bit of this war fever?” She smiled, but it was a weak one. “Perhaps we are looking at shadows?”

“One shadow in particular,” Xarr growled.

There was silence, which Parum finally broke with a tepid knock of his gavel. “Let’s move on to other matters.”

We did. There were reports of bills before the Senate and Assembly, announcement of the completion of an aquifer project in Hellas which would greatly help that water starved region, tens of other matters great and small. I enjoyed listening to all of them, and found that I had not only a good memory but occasionally had something to contribute.

Then, finally, we came to another matter:

“We should now discuss the coming coronation,” Parum said, and the words sounded like they stuck in his throat.

Rella showed a beautiful smile now and said, “It will be the privilege of the Assembly to provide ceremony and, afterward, celebration, as per the constitution. It will be a special privilege because this will be the first time on Mars this has happened.”

“Here! Here!” Xarr shouted, banging his fist on the table. It was a louder sound than Parum’s gavel, which the regent used to return order.

The next half hour, plans in preparation were discussed, until finally Parum ended the meeting. To my surprise, as the others filed out he turned to me and said, with what sounded like genuine feeling, “One week from now you will lift a heavy burden from my shoulders. I thank you for it, Prince.”

Then he turned and, before I could acknowledge his statement, he was gone.

Little did I know that very soon, before that burden could be lifted, he, as well as others much more dear to me, would be dead.

Five

Coronation day dawned cloudy, with rain threatening.

I had barely slept. As the sun pushed up into a pink sky it was swallowed by a swiftly moving bank of morning clouds from the west. Soon the day was brown and dank. I stood at the window studying the Assembly Hall which my mother had helped design. A beautiful structure of sandstone, it almost made the day look bright despite the weather.

Then I felt a drop on my hand, and another, and before long there were cold sheets of water splashing the streets below me.

“Brother!” Amy said, throwing herself into the room ahead of the servant who bore my breakfast tray. She tore the linen cover away and studied the food, taking what she wanted and pushing the rest aside.

“Yech! I can’t believe you still eat dog for breakfast, after all these years. It’s not fit for a . . . dog!”

She laughed at her own joke, and went on ravaging my breakfast even as the servant placed the tray on my bed and went out, shaking his head.

“Our mother used to eat dog. It was taught to her by Great One, the legendary fighter from the north.”

“Bah! Why do you always speak about Mother as if we knew her! I’m sure she was quite wonderful – but she might as well be out of a book, like this Great One!”

“Amy, don’t you ever miss mother?”

“How can I miss what I’ve never known?”

“I suppose you’re right. . .”

Her mouth full of cereal, Amy threw her hand in the air and cried, “And today you are King!”

I regarded her stoically, and suddenly she ran to me and threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, how I love you, Sebastian! And someday I will be your greatest general, greater even than Xarr, and you will be proud to be my brother!”

“I’m already proud to be your brother – I think,” I said, and then I laughed.

She turned back to the breakfast tray, drinking the juice that was there. “It’s too bad Charlotte cannot be at the coronation today.”

I was turning back to the window, but her words made me freeze. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you hear? Senator Misst had to return to the east last night. Some crisis or other. And he dragged Charlotte with him – kicking and screaming, I’m sure. You know how much she’ll miss me. Who wouldn’t?”

Something froze in me. “Where is Thomas?”

She shrugged. “Out and about.” Suddenly she ran for the open door. “I’ll see you later, brother King!”

“Wait!” I shouted. “Amy!”

Her goodbye echoed down the hallway, and she was gone.

As if on cue, thunder broke the gloomy sky outside my window, and a flash of deadly blue-white lightning lit the room as if it were full of ghosts.

The guard outside my door had not seen Thomas, and when he was sent for he was nowhere to be found. Neither was Xarr. The palace was eerily quiet, which was understandable since many of the staff were elsewhere, making preparations for the day’s ceremony and subsequent festivities. Even Brenda, the fat cook, who was always good for a joke or at least hearty conversation, was not around.

Feeling lonely and a little fearful, with a dread I could not put a name to, I drew a servant’s cloak from its rack by the kitchen entrance, drew its hood up over my face against the rain, and walked out of the palace.

The few citizens I passed on the street looked preoccupied and hurried. I tried to stop one woman but she only hugged the kit she carried and would not talk to me.

“I must get home!” she said.

I made my way to the Hall of Assembly and passed unnoticed inside. It was strangely empty and quiet. Bunting for the ceremony had been hung. The throne lay empty and waiting. My footfall sounded hollow, unwanted.

I turned and left, passing back unnoticed through the kitchen, replacing the cloak I had taken.

As I entered my room I heard a chorus of voices in the hallway behind me.

Suddenly there were guards everywhere. In the midst of them was Thomas, looking frantic. When he spied me he rushed forward into my room with purpose.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. What –”

He looked frantically around the room as if he expected assassins to rush from every corner.

“Thomas, what is happening?”

“I will tell you later.” There was a new look on his face, a mixture of determination which tempered his obvious fright. “Sebastian, you must come with me immediately,” he said.

“But –”

“Please! I must insist on no discussion. We will talk of it later.”

“I must say –”

“Say nothing!” he nearly shrieked. “Already there were felines streaming into the room behind him – my manservant Fotrel, the fat cook Brenda, many guards with grim visages. I was lifted like so much baggage, and even my yelp of pain when my ankle was put in an uncomfortable position as I was wrapped roughly in my bedspread and spirited away did not slow their determined flight. I was carried roughly down stairs, and through corridors, and, finally, into a tunnel beneath the palace that I did not know existed. When I tried to speak I was ignored. Finally I was dumped into some sort of carriage, placed into a compartment beneath the seat which was closed on top of me. It was close and hot in the constricted space.

The compartment door opened, and Thomas’s face appeared above me. There were tears in his eyes.

“I will tell you this much,” he said. “Your sister Amy and Regent Parum are both dead. War has broken out in the east.”

And then the door slammed shut above me again, and I was left in darkness, to produce, after shock had given way to grief, my own tears.

Six

A bitter dawn.

We had traveled all night. After hours in the carriage I was transferred to an airship, which headed, I knew from the stars and then the rising dawn, due west. I was allowed to sit with the others on this part of the trip. At one point there was much commotion in the front of the craft, and through the window to the left of my elbow I studied far off lights, but after a while the commotion died down and the lights disappeared.

The sun was well up when we approached our landing site, a place I knew well from my studies, Olympus Mons. A brief thrill went through me at the sight of the massive collapsed caldera, the mile-high slope of the dead volcano. The lush vegetation at its base quickly gave way to massive plains and cutbacks, all rising gradually toward the sky. The top of the volcano was bathed in wispy gray clouds.

The airship descended.

“We’ll land here?” I said to Thomas, who had awakened beside me. His sleep had been troubled. My own had been nonexistent.

“Nearby,” he answered cryptically.

The thought popped into my head that Amy would love this view.

And then I remembered that I would never see my sister again.

“It’s a bad dream,” I said, to keep myself from crying.

“It’s all too real,” Thomas said sadly. “My mother was killed, too, and my two brothers.”

“What!” I said in shock. “How many others were killed?”

He stared at me blankly.

“I demand to know!”

“From what we know,” he said slowly, “the plot was in place for months, if not years. Frane was in personal contact with many of the traitors. Not all the F’rar she approached would comply, and these were either forced to keep quiet when members of their families were kidnapped, or murdered. Most of those lynchings Xarr spoke of were actually hangings carried out by Frane’s lieutenants.”

“They executed their own people?” I said in disbelief.

“It had the dual purpose of silencing those who could betray them to us, and inciting the rest of the F’rar population.”

My mouth must have hung open in wonder. “Frane is absolutely ruthless.”

“Oh, yes,” Thomas said. “And unless Xarr can hold her off, she will soon be in control of Wells. There were many assassinations carried out, many non-F’rar members of the government killed. We are trying to reform the assembly and Senate in the west. But I’m afraid it will be at best a skeleton government.”

“Then I must be crowned immediately!” I said.

“I don’t know if that’s wise, Sire. Perhaps it is best at the moment if she thinks you dead.”

“Why?

“As far as Frane knows, the assassin sent to kill you succeeded. Not many of her killers escaped, nor were they meant to, and you would have been killed if you hadn’t left your rooms and the palace when you did. He came in through the window, apparently just after you left. Your sister’s murderer was waiting for her in her room.”

Again a wellspring of pain rose up within me: I would never see my sister Amy again. With difficulty I overcame it. “I must be crowned. Now.”

“Sire –”

“It must be done. If the people think I am dead, they will flock to Frane, if only because they are frightened. What worked for my mother will not work for me now.”

Thomas eyed me thoughtfully, and then nodded. “Yes. I see you’ve studied your mother’s life well. And I think you are right.”

“I know I am.”

And there, with Senator Rella, the head of the Assembly, officiating, I was crowned King of Mars as I fled on an airship to a place I might never escape from.

As we finished the small ceremony, my attention was diverted by our landing. We were swooping down not, as I had expected, at the base of Olympus Mons but somewhere around half way up to the summit. There was a huge plain bordered by a sheer cliff to one side and a straight wall on the other.

“Why do we land here?”

“You will see, Sire.”

As we dropped the surface below became, if anything, even more unspectacular. There were no structures of any kind, only a flat red featureless expanse.

A plume of dust rose around us as we bumped to a landing.

“Now what?” I asked.

“We walk.”

The dust was settling, and yet I could see nothing through the window but the wall of rock leading up to the caldera of the mighty volcano in the near distance. There were strata in the rock wall, deep cuts of different colors – crimson, pink, an almost ebony color. I strained to see as far as I could upward, but the top of the wall was lost in misty clouds.

We disembarked. Immediately Thomas and a phalanx of guards surrounded me. It made me nervous that they kept studying the sky.

“We must go, quickly,” Thomas said, and led the way toward the rock wall.

Behind us, the airship took off in a roar of noise and a tall plume of dust. In a moment it was gone, a fading sliver against the sky.

“Where–?” I began.

“Please, Sire. Follow,” Thomas said.

We trekked for two hours. The wall in front of us grew incrementally taller, and more impressive.

“Is all of Olympus Mons like this?” I asked.

Thomas merely shrugged. “There are others who can answer that,” he said, finally.

We stopped for a meager lunch of bread and a sip of wine, and then walked on.

More hours passed.

Night was creeping toward us. A purple haze sat on the horizon behind, and then a sprinkling of stars began to dot the sky.

Then, finally, the massive wall was in front of us.

“I have a question, Thomas,” I said.

He looked at me, and I realized just how weary he was. “What is it?”

My curiosity overcame my kindness, which made me feel guilty for a moment. But curiosity prevailed. “Why didn’t the airship land closer to our destination?”

“Because it could not have taken off and gotten away as quickly,” he answered. “As you may have already deduced, Sire, this is a secret location.”

“Yes, but –”

“Please,” he replied, “no more question until we are settled, and rested.”

This time kindness prevailed, and I nodded. “Very well.”

The wall grew sheer above us. I had a momentary feeling that its immensity was endless, and that it was sure to crash down upon us. A kind of reverse vertigo – fear of depth? – assaulted me.

As I swooned Thomas, as always, was there to help me.

“Sire, are you all right?”

I drew myself up and said, “Yes, Thomas. Thank you.”

“Perhaps we should have carried you on a litter, had a motor car come out, even though it would have been dangerous –”

“A motor car?” I said in excitement.

Thomas smiled wanly. “More wonders than that await you, Sire.”

I couldn’t see how. The rock wall in front of us looked impervious, huge, faceless. Beside geological considerations, I couldn’t see any break in it at all.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Watch,” Thomas answered.

We approached the wall – must run straight into the wall, I thought – but then, as if by magic, it opened in front of us. There was no doorway and then, suddenly, there was – a wide, cool channel in the side of Olympus Mons that bade us enter.

As we passed in I heard a rumble and looked behind to see a huge door sliding from left to right shut behind us. It closed with a clang.

I looked at Thomas in the faint illumination, and he only smiled wanly.

“Like I said, Sire, more wonders.”

I nodded, and walked on, though my leg now had begun to ache.

We were in a cavern. The walls were lit with flowing colors – blue, red, green, yellow – in muted shades, as if from behind glass.

Thomas was beside, me, supporting me.

“Only a little farther to go.”

I nodded, and accepted his help.

There was another wall of rock before us, which irised away.

And then–

We were in the largest space I had ever seen.

I gasped – and so did others around me.

Thomas did not make a sound, and I looked over at him curiously.

“I have been here before, Sire,” he said.

“You helped design this place, yes?”

He stared at me.

“Your long trips to the west,” I explained.

“Newton was involved also, as was Xarr.”

“Where is Xarr?” I asked, suddenly afraid for the old general.

“He fights for you, sire,” Thomas replied, and when I pressed him he would say no more.

We moved deeper into the cavern. There were prodigious echoes here. Each footfall produced a booming cacophony, only multiplied by our number.

Something suddenly occurred to me.

“Why are we moving down, instead of up?

“Because that is where we are headed,” Thomas answered.

Again, when I pressed him, he was cryptic.

“You shall see.”

It was not long before I did. The first cavern opened up, after another, five times the size of the first, into a second, and even larger, space. I gasped again. We were in a world unto itself, a chamber the size of a small ocean, with the far shore well over the horizon. The floor was red rock, cracked and split like the surface of a neglected, burned, cracked pudding. The ceiling was crimson rock streaked with flashes of light like lightning. I heard a distant boom of what must be thunder.

I turned to Thomas.

“Did I not tell you that we would see wonders?” he said.

“Where are we?”

“In the bowels of Olympus Mons, if you like. The tame-able bowels of this dead mountain. There are many tubes of lava on the various terraced slopes of this volcano. There are many lava river beds, like the one we just walked. But there is only one space like this, so far as we know.”

“Is it –?”

“It is natural?” he interjected. “For the most part. There are areas along the perimeter that have been, shall we say, customized. You shall see them, of course. Most of the volcano is unexplored. It would take years. There are rumors of an ocean deep in the depths, but we were not able to find it. This is a very old place. There are even rumors of ghosts.”

I stared with my eyes open at the cathedral ceiling at least five hundred feet above me, the vast expanse.

“When did you –”

“When did we build this?” Thomas asked. “That is a simple question to answer. We began on the day of your birth.”

“But –”

“Oh, yes,” my faithful servant answered, “we always knew this day might come, sooner if not later.”

Again he was cryptic: “All of us.”

Seven

It is amazing to me that a creature, any creature, can survive outside of its own environment. We are all animals of habit. I was nurtured in relative luxury, and I became used to that luxury – and now that it was gone, I was not doing well. I knew this was mostly my fault, as well as the result of my lack of toughness, but that made it no less easy to deal with.

It was harder still to cope with because, as Thomas has said, I had studied my mother’s life. Though she was little more than a historical figure to me, someone to be read about, she was, naturally, more than that – a symbol as well as a target. Though I had never felt my mother’s arms around me (that I could remember), could not recall her face, did not have the advantage of her counsel, I still felt her pull upon me. I was her son, and very much so.

And yet I was alone. I knew that too. I knew that as easily as I breathed in hacking gasps at this great height (15,000 feet – and still barely a quarter of the way up this monstrous mountain of 69,000 feet!), as easily as I caught the looks of those around me. They expected me to fail, to succumb to frailness, to die, and yet I resolved that I would not. I would not only show all of them that I was my mother’s son, but that I was my own man! Which naturally set me back when I awoke after fainting to find Thomas’ face hovering over me like a hot air balloon.

“How long...”

“Barely a day, sire,” Thomas said diplomatically. “It is a common occurrence. I have been here frequently, during construction, and so am used to it. I should have foreseen that you would not be.” He smiled. “You are not the only one who suffered such a reaction.”

“Did I miss –?”

He gave a short nod. “Yes, you missed the memorial ceremony for my mother and the others murdered by Frane. But we waited for the service for your sister.”

“Thank you.”

“We will schedule the service for whenever you want.”

“Tomorrow morning before dawn will be fine.”

“Tomorrow morning? But protocol maintains that the daughter of a Queen be memorialized at noon during a state service –”

“We will do it the way my mother would do it.”

Thomas looked perplexed.

“You remarked that I studied my mother’s life, Thomas. Then you should remember yourself that during the time she lived with the nomad clan of Mighty she adopted their ways in many things. I don’t believe she ever renounced their burial ceremony, did she?”

Thomas said, “No.”

“Then my sister Amy will be remembered with a similar ceremony. I remember the words and what must be done. Do not worry.”

He looked at me a moment, and then nodded.

“Yes, sire.”

“Good. And thank you, Thomas.”

The way I said it must have made him cock his head in query.

“For what, sire?”

“For everything. You have been with me since I was a kit, and I’m afraid I sometimes have taken you for granted. This is inexcusable. Without you I would be dead now.” I gestured at my surroundings, a near perfect reproduction of my rooms back in Wells. The window was missing, of course, since we were halfway up a volcano and hiding like rabbits.

He bowed. “It is my service, sire. What I swore to.”

“It is more than that. You are like a brother and a father all rolled up into one. I just wanted you to know I am old enough now to understand that.”

There was color to his cheeks, behind his spare fur. “Thank you, sire.”

“You will never call me sire again. You will call me Sebastian, just like always.”

It was his turn to say something wise. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. It would not be right. Whether you like it or not, sire, you are now grown up. There are many who rely on you, and many who have already laid down their lives in your name.”

This shocked me, and it must have showed on my face. Suddenly I was weak, and looked for a chair. I curled to the floor and lay there panting.

Thomas was instantly at my side. “I’m sorry, sire, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I don’t know if I can do this, Thomas!”

I could tell from his startled look that my face was pale, my eyes wide with panic.

Again, I thought of my mother, and steeled myself.

“I would wish that no one else ever see me like that.”

Thomas said something that startled me: “I do not envy you, sire. For all the coin on Mars, I would not be in your position.”

I took a deep breath and, with Thomas’ help, drew to my feet. “I fear we have difficult times ahead.”

“Yes,” he replied. “But you have many who will stand behind you.”

I felt instantly, strangely stronger. “I know that. And you are first among them.”

“Yes.” He had a faraway look, and then he said, “Did you know, sire, that the man who betrayed your mother was my Uncle?”

It was my turn to startle him. “Yes, I knew that.”

“How –”

“There are more wagging tongues than your own, Thomas. Suffice it to say I heard it in the scullery.”

“Fat Brenda!” he said, and for a moment his lips thinned with anger.

“No, it was not her, though it might have been. It is common knowledge.”

“The thing is,” he went on, “is that I feel responsible to this day for what my Uncle did. He brought great shame on my family.”

“He brought shame on himself. No man’s actions can be blamed on others.”

“Your mother put great trust in him, and look what he did to her.”

I tried to harden my voice, the way I had sometimes practiced in front of the mirror in my room when no one was there. I had never sounded convincing. “Your Uncle was an idealist and a fool. Are you an idealist and a fool, Thomas?”

My practice must have paid off, because he nearly shouted, “No!”

“Good. Then we need not speak of this again. I must say that I will miss those days when you called me Sebastian.”

“So will I, sire.”

When I turned around he had gone, closing the door gently behind him.

My sister’s memorial ceremony was held the next morning, before the sun rose, as Phobos moved silently overhead, as I wished. In the clan of Mighty it was known as the Moon Ceremony. We assembled on the plain where our airship had landed, a quarter mile from the secret door into the mountain. Phobos was dim and strange, a faint lantern, as I muttered the same words my mother had spoken over the graves she had dug with her own hands of Mighty and his band, after they had been treacherously murdered by agents of the same Frane we now fought:

O mighty son of the sky,

Fierce night warrior,

Guardian of the dark ways,

Help me in my pursuits

If they be worthy ones,

And let me not stray

From the path of righteousness,

From the road of good deeds,

And from the way which leads

To the well being of my people.

There were tears in my eyes as I finished. I began to struggle for breath, but hid it in front of all these people. I looked over at Thomas who regarded me with alarm, but held his place. I nodded. The world went black for a moment but then I regained my composure and my breath returned.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, my voice a strong gasp, and then I turned away from the multitude of eyes that regarded me.

I turned back, drawing weak air deep into my lungs.

“We face difficult days ahead,” I said, and my voice grew louder with my words. “More difficult than those behind us. My sister was but one of those who died. Many of you have suffered greater losses. Do not think for a moment that I do not know this, or appreciate your sacrifices.” My voice grew even stronger, and for a moment I felt my mother’s blood surge through me. “Do not forget this: Frane will never win.”

Then, my strength all but exhausted, I used the last of it to walk proudly from that place and back to my simulacrum room, where I immediately collapsed.

Eight

Many weeks passed. As Thomas had predicated, my lungs gradually grew used to the thin air. After a while, I relished it, looked forward to the momentary fight when I seemed to be overwhelmed and then, summoning my reserves, overcame the crisis. Each episode seemed to make me stronger.

And I was growing stronger physically, too. The passage from kithood to adulthood was swift and, as I had been told to expect, thoroughly frightening. I grew three inches in the scant time we had been at Olympus Mons, and my stamina seemed to develop along with my age.

We held Council meetings of a sort, and the news was almost never good. General Xarr had been pushed out of Wells altogether, and had resorted to a holding action in Bradbury to the immediate west of the capital city. But now Bradbury seemed on the verge of falling.

“It is remarkable what Frane was able to accomplish from exile, and while on the run for five years,” Lieutenant Jift, the military commander of our area, reported. He was a severe feline, with almost emaciated features and a patch over one eye even more intimidating than Xarr’s own. His lips were pulled back over his sharp teeth in a natural sneer, the result of the wound that had taken his right eye. His manner was straightforward and unembellished, which I found refreshing, if frightening. “The F’rar clan was more secretive and subversive than we ever imagined. All the while they integrated themselves into the new government – at the insistence of Queen Haydn –” at this mention of my mother’s name he glared at me balefully “–they were drawing plans against the rest of the clans, and against the Second Republic.”

“We are not here to point fingers,” Thomas said mildly, seeking the role of conciliator.

“I point fingers where there is blame!” he shouted, and then immediately bowed curtly in my direction. I knew he had lost many family members not only in the first war, but in the present one, by treacherous F’rar hands. I gave him a slight bow in return.

“What would you have us do, Lieutenant?” I asked, trying to hide my own ire at his slur of my mother’s memory.

“Kill all F’rar,” he nearly spat.

“How dare you!” Rella, the sole F’rar member of the council who had come with us, replied immediately.

“Lieutenant!” Thomas pleaded.

Jift turned his evil eye on Rella. “I stand by my words.”

“This is impossible!” Rella shouted, pushing her chair back as she stood up. “Either the Commander or I must leave this room! Everyone knows I have tried to do nothing but intervene with my people to end this terrible conflict!”

There was silence, and then I stood and said, “We will all leave, as I call this meeting adjourned. We will reconvene tomorrow morning at the hour of ten.”

Both Rella and the Lieutenant sought to catch my eye, but I quickly left the room, Thomas in tow.

“You are learning, sire,” he whispered to me.

“Am I?” I said. “I fear before this is over that there will be bloodshed in our own ranks.

These weeks at Olympus Mons, though fraught with bad news and worry, were also filled with wonder.

There was the volcano itself, of course. Though my movement was restricted, it was the restriction of a man in the middle of a vast ocean. The tunnels that had been outfitted for our comfort were many, and held many pedestrian sights – but it was the outside plains, and the unexplored sections of the lava tubes, that provided me with my greatest pleasures.

To experience these delights, I had to result to a bit of subterfuge, of course. Thomas was easy to lose, lost in thought as he usually was; but there were other guards and minders that also had to be left behind. I developed a system that worked, whereby I would fake a spell or spasm (though these things seldom happened to me anymore) and, when those closest to me went for help, I would slip away. It worked for a while, but when my methods were discovered I had to work on subtle variations. For instance, after faking a fainting spell, now one of my attendants would leave, instead of both – I then had to fictionalize a second malady, more severe and usually involving unconsciousness, which could only be alleviated by the dispatch of the second minder.

Then I would wander off where I pleased.

I discovered many marvels in this fashion. Always a science buff, I found fossils that I knew would be of interest to Newton and his Science Guild. One of them at least I was sure was a partial skeleton of one of the Old Ones. For one thing it was much too long for a feline, and strangely proportioned. I was reminded of one of the pictures in the crumbling book my mother had used to name my sister and me. The torso was elongated to a strange degree, nearly half again my own height, and the fingers of the single hand that had been preserved were long and thin. The pelvis looked strange, also, as if this creature had never for a moment walked upon all fours, even in rest.

There were other treasures in this wonderland, almost too innumerable to name. There were crystals and rocks and minerals for my collection, as well as internal volcanic springs of water that, I was sure, had never been seen by feline eyes. It was near one of these that I found the Old One skeleton. Had he stumbled here in search of water, and perished on the shores in sight of his need? There were strange fish fossils beside him. Perhaps he had eaten, and been poisoned by a species of aquatic animal inhospitable to his system?

I wondered if he had been a prospector like me, in search of mineral treasures – as when I found, not far from the scene of the Old One’s demise, a cavern alight with minerals producing their own inner light, which put anything I had ever seen in a museum to shame.

And then there was what I can only call ‘the ghost’.

There had, as Thomas had mentioned, always been vague rumors about Olympus Mons – that, being the King of all mountains, it must surely be haunted. There were tales in books and popular media about prospectors and explorers who had ventured into the bowels of the volcano in search of history or treasure and never been heard of again. Every exotic place nurtured such stories, and Olympus Mons was no different.

I had discounted such nonsense, of course.

And yet, on the very day I discovered the skeleton of the Old One, I heard the ghost myself.

As I crouched mesmerized on the bank of the spring, studying the bones of this ancient Man of Mars, I heard the faintest of sounds in front of me and to my right. I thought at first that Thomas or his guards were coming for me and, even though the sound came from in front of me, that echoes were doing their work. I stood up and dusted my hands, waiting for their arrival.

But no one came.

And then I heard the sound again.

It was in front of me, for sure. There was the dark maw of a cave tributary far across the stream, but the sound did not originate from there. It seemed to come from the cave ceiling, where a group of ledges that looked like nothing so much as the faintly etched steps of a ladder were set into the lava wall.

My torch sputtered as the faint voice came again, more clearly: “Followww . . .”

The fur on the back of my neck stood up straight, and I took a step back. I reached for my torch and held it up, studying the rock wall, which rose high into the dimness. Was there an opening up there near the cave roof?

I could not be sure.

The ethereal voice called once more: “Followww . . .”

My fear was quickly replaced by curiosity, and when the voice sounded again, I sat abruptly, put the torch aside, took off my boots, and, retrieving the torch, stepped forward, into the rivulet of water, carrying my boots with me.

I shivered, feeling its chill on my feet.

“Followww . . .”

The ghostly voice was definitely coming from the top of the cave to the right.

“Who are you?” I called, hearing my own voice echo.

There came no answer.

I made my way to the wall, noting more bones on the far shoreline of the stream. I sat and re-laced my boots, then stood and was confronted by a definite set of steps leading up.

“Come...”

“Yes, I’m coming!” I shouted, and put my foot into the first solid inset in the wall–

“Sire!” Thomas’s voice shouted at me from behind.

I quickly stepped down and turned to see Thomas emerging, a frantic look on his face, from the far tunnel. He stopped, nearly stepping on my skeletal find near the shore.

“Don’t move!” I shouted at him, and he stood still. Behind him were three anxious looking guards.

“I’m all right!” I said making my way back. “Look down!”

Thomas’ did so, and nearly jumped back.

“Oh!”

“We must preserve the skeleton, as is.”

Thomas bent down and was examining my find. “This is a very fine specimen.”

I was already taking my boots off again to re-cross the stream. For some reason I did not want Thomas to know what else I had found.

There were no further whispers from above me.

I made my way across the cold water, and put my boots back on.

“There looked to be more bones across the stream. But there was nothing,” I lied.

Thomas was still studying the skeleton of the Old One. “You should not have dodged your keepers. This must not happen again,” he scolded, distractedly.

“I promise I won’t. But you must admit this is a find.”

“Yes . . .”

“We must save it for Newton.”

“Indeed...”

I followed him out of the cave, surrounded by guards, the echo of that ghostly whisper still in my ears.

Nine

Thus were my first weeks in the bowels of the great Olympus Mons spent – more in idleness and frustration, while my people fought and died in my name – than anything else.

Finally I could stand it no more, and convened a Council meeting. We met in one of the opulently appointed spaces that had been built in a particularly roomy cavern. The living and work quarters were like a city within a mountain. Even a measure of royalty had been maintained, with a copy of the table and chairs we had used back in Wells in the palace. Nothing, however, could hide the fact that our four manufactured walls were open at the top, revealing the arch of a red cavern high above.

I noticed on entering this faux Council chamber that Rella’s place was empty.

Thomas leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Be patient. We will hear of this.”

Ignoring him, I demanded, “Where is Senator Rella?”

Lieutenant Jift’s smirk was in good form today. “She has been detained. I have proof that she is a spy, Sire.”

“What!” I thundered.

Jift sat down, sated in his furnishing of surprise.

Thomas put a hand on my arm. “We will speak of these things.”

“Speak of them now!”

Jift took a deep breath, and stood. “Very well, Sire. It is not on the top of our agenda, but I would be happy to clear this up now. Quite simply, Rella of Hellas is a spy.”

My glare must have told him to continue, because he did so.

“She was caught with a message receiver in her chambers. Apparently she had been trying to contact her cohorts in Wells and give away our position.”

“How do you know that’s what she was doing?” I demanded.

“It is obvious. She is F’rar, and so must be a traitor –”

“She pledged an oath to me!”

The commander looked down at me as if I was still a kit. He slowly spread his paws. “Sire, the evidence is clear. She sought your destruction, and the destruction of the republic.”

I held my tongue, and Jift took his seat, smiling with satisfaction.

“Is there more business?” I snapped, my mind still on this revelation.

“Indeed,” Thomas said.

At that moment old general Xarr entered the room, blustering.

“Xarr!” I shouted, leaving my seat to embrace him. It was not good form, but I didn’t care.

He returned my embrace, but his features were grim. “Perhaps you will not be so content to see me when you hear my report.”

I retook my seat and Xarr went to an empty place and stood.

“The war is going badly for us, I’m afraid,” he reported. “Frane’s treachery was incredibly well planned and her influence widespread. In every city and town there were F’rar traitors just waiting for her word.”

I thought of Rella as the general went on.

“After Wells was lost, then Bradbury, the twin cities of Sagan and Shliovski quickly fell, despite Newton’s best efforts.”

Before I could interject, Xarr added quickly, looking in my direction, “Newton and his people are safe. Preparations had been made. But I’m afraid that the main facilities of the Science Guild have been lost to the enemy – even if few of Newton’s secrets were left to take.”

“He –”

Xarr nodded curtly. “Newton destroyed most of the labs and underground bunkers, rather than have them fall into Frane’s hands. But there were even a few F’rar spies in his midst, and some of the facilities are now in Frane’s hands.”

A small gasp went up around the room, and Xarr nodded. “Among them were some . . . sensitive material, I’m afraid. One of the Newton’s closest advisors turned out to be a traitor.” He took a deep breath and continued. “In other cities and towns . . .”

Xarr went on for another fifteen minutes, but I barely heard him until his summation: “So there we have it. We have been pushed from the major centers of commerce and technology, into the hills and dunes. We have become a desert army once more. And . . .”

He looked at me with his one good eye.

“. . . Frane is now heading this way.”

Another collective gasp, and I saw Jift’s smile widen ever so slightly, as if to say, ‘I told you so.’”

“How long before she arrives?”

“Weeks yet. She has headed out from Wells on foot, gathering her army to her as she goes. I would guess she knew of this fortress all along. When she gets here she will have amassed forty thousand troops at a minimum. Perhaps many more.”

“Then we will be ready for her!” I said.

Even as I uttered the words I knew they were foolish. It was Xarr who saved me from having to admit it.

“Sire,” he said, his voice a somber rumble, “we have barely three thousand at present. Another four can get here in the next two weeks when the call goes out – as, indeed, it already has. We have certain defenses, but they are not impenetrable. True, we are built to withstand siege . . .”

“Continue, Xarr,” I said.

His face, his tone, his visage, became, if anything, even more somber. “But siege is not what Frane has planned. I have a few spies of my own, still, and not every F’rar is a traitor. It seems that Frane has no intention of siege.”

There was a complete hush in the room.

“What, then?” I asked, finally breaking the silence with impatience.

Xarr turned his one baleful eye on me. For a moment he could not speak. “Do you remember what happened to my own city of Burroughs in the last war?” he asked, his voice choking with emotion.

I went cold from my ears to my toes. “Yes . . .” I said slowly.

“Apparently Frane has spent her time wisely, developing an even greater version of the weapon that wiped my home from the face of Mars. A concussion device of monstrous proportions.”

“How–?”

Xarr banged on the table with his clenched paw. “The how is irrelevant, Sire! It has been done. This is a fact. Even though your mother destroyed her evil scientist, Talon, she did not succeed in killing his knowledge. In the hills, all these years, Frane and her cohorts have been building a weapon more destructive than anything that has ever been seen on Mars.” He sighed heavily. “The good news is that it is so massive that it cannot be transported by airship. Otherwise she would have used it by now.” Again he sighed, and his voice lowered. “At least then we would have had a chance to shoot it down, or destroy it with one of our own superior airships.”

“Why can’t we destroy it on the ground?” I asked.

“Because we don’t know where it is, and because it has been broken up into many pieces small enough to hide in a massive army. It will be reassembled when Frane and her army reach Olympus Mons, and then detonated.”

Xarr paused again.

“And then,” he said, his voice cracking, “she will, in one moment, wipe Olympus Mons from the face of Mars.”

Ten

I went to visit Rella in her cell.

It was not a hospitable place. Dank and dark, with drizzles of water pooling on the floor, it was well in the bowels of the explored regions and well guarded. Jift did not want me to go there but Xarr, who was about to leave for the East, interceded on my behalf.

“It is good for the boy to see real life,” he said, which was a mysterious thing for him to say at the time. Later I knew what he meant.

She received me with courtesy, as always. It pained me to see this object of my former puppy love so disheveled and unhappy.

“Are they treating you well?” I asked, almost timidly.

She looked at me curiously. “Well enough. Why have you come here, Sire?”

“To hear from your own lips that you are innocent.”

She turned away from me, and looked up at the single window, cut high in the rock wall of the cell, which was dark. It looked out not on daylight outside the mountain but merely on the tunnel which led here.

“I had a son, your age,” she said. The sadness of her voice tugged at my heart. She sounded as if she was speaking to herself, or someone else long gone. “He was killed after the last war, when violence against my clan peaked. This was just after your mother’s victory. He was just a kit, and was in his father’s arms.”

She turned to face me. “My husband was murdered, too, trying to save my son. I had one of two roads to take, then. I could take the road of vengeance, and try to pay the republic back for what they had done to my family – or I could make sure that something like the last war never happened again.”

She took a step toward me, and her eyes flashed. “I wanted to take the road of vengeance. With all my heart I wanted to. But I did not. My father was a diplomat, and his father before him. We all opposed Frane. For their troubles, my father and grandfather were murdered by their own people. I decided to become a diplomat, too, in the new republic, and do everything I could for my clan.” Her voice became a hiss, and she took another step toward me, her eyes flashing gold, one hand thrust outward with the short claws fully extended. “But I did not betray you, and I will go to my death protesting my innocence.”

“Your death –” I said, momentarily speechless. “Do you mean to say –?”

She straightened, and her eyes lost some of their fire. “You didn’t know? The orders of execution were signed by Xarr when he arrived yesterday.”

I felt my face flush. “I will not let this happen!”

A knowing, almost kind expression came across her face. “Poor Sire. I can see now that you had nothing to do with it. This, at least, brings me peace of a sort.”

“No! This cannot be! I will not let –”

She held up a hand. “You know your own mother’s document, do you not?”

I was still frantic. “Yes! But –”

“There is nothing you can do, sire.”

She stepped forward and suddenly enfolded me in her arms. I felt like a blubbering kit, and was crying against her bosom, just as I had so many times after my sister had teased me, or some other childish fate had befallen me.

“Do you know,” she soothed, “that in a way I came to see you as my own son? The mind doctors would say that you were a substitute for my own loss, and I was one for you.”

“I will not allow this to happen!”

She pushed me gently away, and I saw that the fire in her eyes had been completely replaced by a soft look.

“I did love you as my own. I always will, Sebastian.”

I pushed myself completely away. “I will speak to Xarr!”

I stormed out of there, pushing the guards roughly out of the way at the entrance.

I caught General Xarr as he was preparing to leave. He was mounted on his horse, in full armor, surrounded by the small band of soldiers who would accompany him as he sought to rally what troops stood between us and the advancing Frane army. It was a grim task, and he looked grim.

The secret gates from our cavern entrance had been deactivated, letting in a wash of sunlight that was doubly dazzling because it had been so long since I’d seen the sun. The far horizon was layered in mist and dust, and the plains and rolling hills below, patched here and there with the green of vegetation, looked a world away, we were so high.

“What is it, Sire?” he nearly snapped at me when I stood in front of his mount, resplendent in deep red armor itself. As if to mirror its rider’s sentiments, it snorted at me.

I glared at him, and his own ire diminished. He dismounted, and drew me aside, out of the sunlight and into a small feline-made tunnel.

His one good eye stared at me balefully. “I have much to do.”

“Yes, you do. You can begin by pardoning Rella.”

He drew himself up. “Those execution orders were drawn up by Jift. And, yes, I signed them, just as you’ve no doubt heard by now.”

“Do you really believe her guilty?” My voice was shrill, and the old general suddenly gripped me by my arm, tightly, and drew me deeper into the passageway.

“With all respect, sire, shut your mouth!” he whispered fiercely.

“Wha –”

His grip tightened, and he drew his face closer. The scar which ran from his right eye to his chin looked like a dry riverbed seen from a great height.

“You march in here, in front of my men – in front of your men – wailing like a suckling kitten! What’s wrong with you! This will be all over the camp before nightfall! If you want them to respect you, you have to act like a man!”

“But Rella – they’re going to execute her!”

His grip became tighter yet, and suddenly I lowered my voice and tried to bring myself under control.

Xarr let go of my arm, and his voice grew less harsh. “I know what she means to you. I should have counseled you, but there was no time. For this I apologize. For what it’s worth, I thought highly of her, myself. But this must be done.”

“Why?” My voice rose again in anguish.

His own voice rose: “Because she is guilty! Because she did the things she is accused of! Because of her, Frane knows you are here! Jift had incontrovertible evidence! She is a spy!”

“But –”

“Because of your F’rar friend, our position here was given away almost as soon as we arrived.” Again he took my arm, and shook me. There was controlled rage on his face. “Because of that woman, every man, woman and child we managed to get here will probably die in a matter of weeks – because of her, you will die, and along with you, the hopes of this planet!”

I was silent, trying to bring my sobs under control.

Xarr turned away from me, and began to walk out of the tunnel, leaving me there.

“I’m sorry, Sire, but the power the constitution gives me in times of war insists that I do this thing. No matter what your own personal feelings are, or mine.” He walked back out into daylight, which fell on him like a spotlight. “The F’rar spy Rella must die in the morning.”

Eleven

I spent a bad night. The hoot birds that inhabited some of the caves of the area of Olympus Mons saw fit to visit, and their mocking cries kept me awake even in the fitful intervals when I might have slept. I did catch one brief moment of slumber, and was immediately assaulted by a terrible dream: Xarr and myself on trial before Frane, who stood before us in blood red robes, holding her fisted paws high and cackling like a specter. Her eyes were lit with flame, and as she pronounced our death sentences we burst into fire. I could feel the heat of fire consume me as I woke with a start. My face was damp with sweat.

This was soon mingled with tears.

No rising of the sun awoke me; it was rather a guard who whispered solemnly into my room, “Sire, it is time.”

I dressed, and arranged myself as if in a dream. I was met by Thomas outside my door, who looked solemn, and we were joined by the other council members, save Jift, whose role was a special one this day, as we made our way to an assembly room which had been cleared of chairs and converted into a hall of military justice for this day. There were no other witnesses, and Jift’s voice echoed in the room as he pronounced sentence. Rella looked at me once as she came in, and then looked at nothing at all, staring over our heads.

“Do you wish to say anything before execution of sentence?” Jift asked. I could not abide the snarl in his tone, and was repulsed by the way he seemed to be relishing this moment.

“Only that I am innocent, and go to my death with love for the Second Republic of Mars, and Sebastian, my King, in my heart.”

My chest swelled, and I almost stepped forward, but Thomas put a firm hand on my shoulder.

“It is out of your hands,” he whispered.

If she had looked at me I would have ignored Thomas’ words, but she did not, and without another word or gesture she walked to the gallows and mounted the steps. I felt my gut clench. The executioner quickly cinched the rope around her neck, and she refused the hood. She stood facing us, and then the executioner stepped quickly back and pulled the lever on the mechanism, dropping the floor beneath her.

As she fell, before I closed my eyes, she looked at me and smiled–

“No!” I shouted, unable to help myself.

I turned and ran from that place, as fast as I could.

“Sire!” Thomas called, but I pushed my way past him and bolted from the chamber. No one followed. Already I felt the clutch of the thin air in my chest, and began to fight for breath, but the image of Rella dropping to her death, the gasping sound she made as the rope went taut, played through my mind like an endless loop and I could not stop running. Even when my lungs heaved for breath I drove myself on. I was blind with pain and horror. I ran, and ran . . .

Finally, my lungs could stand no more, and I fell to the ground and lay gasping. I listened for sounds behind me but there were none. I had no idea where I was, and was half blind, all thought only on regaining my breath.

Finally, my lungs were sated and I lay breathing shallowly, thinking only of those horrible images –

I heard the faint slap and gurgle of running water nearby.

I sat up, still taking little gasps.

I looked around, and my eyes widened in wonder. I had run all the way to the cavern with the bones of the Old One by the running stream. As I looked at the skeleton it seemed to stare at me in mock accusation.

“Followww...”

My head jerked up, looking at the dark opening in the top of the cave wall.

Something flickered and moved there, then dissipated, a shadow.

“Hello?” I called tentatively, as I slowly stood.

The opening was empty and silent.

I stared at it for a long moment, then sat and removed my boots, carrying them with me as I once again crossed the chill waters of the creek.

On the other side I put my boots back on, staring at the silent pile of bones.

Without hesitation, I rose and walked to the cave wall, putting a boot toe into the first artificial rung.

I climbed, noting that the rungs were almost too far apart to accommodate a feline.

As I climbed, I kept an eye on the dark opening above me, which remained empty and silent.

I hesitated at the last rung, looking down and back over the water to the opening out of the cavern.

No one appeared to talk me out of my folly. There was silence behind and before me.

I hauled myself up from the last rung into the dark opening.

I lay there, breathing quietly, listening and looking into the gloom in front of me.

There was nothing.

No form flickered and shone before me, no sound echoed in the deep dark recesses. There were no shadows.

I stood, and began to walk.

After a few yards the tunnel turned to the right, cutting off the light of the cavern behind me. It then split and then forked again. I stood at the second fork, hesitating, but then I saw ahead to the left a faint illumination, rising, I discovered, from the walls of the cave. As my eyes became used to the gloom I saw that there were crude pictures on the walls which glimmered faintly, of birds and something that looked like the sun with circles around it. Attached to each circle was a ball.

There were, I now saw, hundreds of these drawings – things that looked like boats and others that looked like strange airships. I stopped to study one huge pictograph which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was once again of something I assumed was the sun with circles around it and balls which must be planets. Between the third and fourth of these planets was suspended a sleek airship.

I thought of what Newton had told me about travel into space . . .

There came a very faint sound in front of me.

I stood still for long minutes, waiting to hear it again, but was surrounded once more only by silence.

I proceeded, following the line of pictographs – buildings, mountains, strange machines and strange figures that looked like neither felines nor Old Ones. They were slender but small, with large heads, and their paws and feet were also too large. They walked on two legs but were strangely bent. Their eyes were too large for their faces. Some were whiskerless, others sported whiskers.

Then the pictures abruptly changed. All scenes of the sun, of mountains and desert dunes and aboveground, disappeared, replaced by renderings of caves and caverns and tunnels. There was another huge pictograph of what might be Olympus Mons itself, with literally hundreds of tunnels running through it from top to bottom, and even beneath. I wondered how accurate it was as some sort of map.

I was so entranced by this continuing line of odd figures that I did not see the end of my current passageway approaching, and bumped into a turn in the wall. The pictographs ended there.

I walked a short tunnel to another turn and then light began to glow in front of me.

I heard a rustling sound ahead, and hurried on.

I was blinded by light, and stood stock still at the opening to another massive cavern.

When my eyes adjusted to the return of illumination, I gasped.

“I don’t believe it,” I whispered to myself in awe.

Below me, on a cavern floor vaster than anything I had seen within Olympus Mons, was a sea of bright machines unlike any I had ever seen. There were so many, of so many different shapes – boxes of all sizes, and tubes and oblongs and two giant orbs with rows of windows and a silver rectangle a half block long and hundreds of others – that I could not comprehend what I was seeing. My mind was overwhelmed.

Forgetting the pain of the recent execution of Rella, I was overcome by wonder, and turned to retrace my steps, determined that I must find my way back and tell Thomas and the others what I had found.

But something was in my way, slightly smaller than myself, and I got a glimpse of huge eyes and felt hot sour breath on me before a long thin arm with a massive paw rose and came down, and I saw instant blackness.

Twelve

I awoke with a headache, and in darkness. I could hear someone rustling close-by, and again felt that wash of hot, sour breath move across my face.

In the dimness, I saw two saucer-shaped eyes regarding me. They blinked, a very slow process, and then there was a sound, like a brushing, hoarse whisper.

“Foood?”

I shook my head no, and the sour breath and massive eyes retreated a foot. I tried to sit up, and groaned.

On the back of my head was a lump the width of three fingers.

Again the figure asked: “Fooood?”

“No!” I shouted, and was surprised to hear my voice give a clanging echo. I lowered my tone. “No, I don’t want any food, you fool.”

“Foood?” the figure asked again.

My eyes had adjusted to the dimness now, and I saw that we were encased in a metal ball, perhaps one of the structures I had seen on the floor of the cavern.

“Why is it so dark in here?” I asked testily, and my companion gave a little hiss and stepped farther back away from me.

“Niiiiight,” he said.

“Oh.” I looked up and saw a dark row of windows which encircled the ball.

“Foood?” he asked again, which provoked me to anger.

“I told you –”

“Have fooood?”

My anger drained. I suddenly realized that he had been asking me if I had any food – not if I wanted any.

“No, I don’t have any food.” Again I tried to sit up, pushing myself back against the curve of the structure. My head did not hurt quite so much, and I rested the un-bumped side against the metal behind me.

“Why are you hungry?” I asked. “How do you normally eat?”

“Fishhh,” he responded immediately. “But no catch, today.” He pointed to me, and rasped out something like a laugh. “Catch youuuuu instead.”

For a moment a chill went through me, as those giant eyes once again blinked slowly.

“Surely you don’t mean to eat me,” I said, giving a short laugh.

Again the eyes blinked, which seemed to take an eternity.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

He pointed up – and again I saw how large his paws were in proportion to his body. “Topper.”

“Are you a Baldie?” I asked, abruptly realizing that I might be dealing with an offshoot of that crazy clan.

He hissed, jumping back, his mouth going impossibly wide. His eyes flashed amber in the dimness. I saw claws that must have been two inches in length emerge from his thin, long fingers.

He continued to hiss, looking from left to right.

“Hate Baldies,” he spat.

“All right, then, you’re not a Baldie. What are you, then?”

“Downer,” he said, his hiss petering out into what sounded like pride.

“Is that a clan?” I asked. I had never once heard the word.

“Not a clan – we!” He stood and pounded on his thin chest.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

He spread his arms out – and I suddenly realized that I may have discovered an entirely new clan, if not race of felines, that had never been seen before, who lived in the bowels of Mount Olympus.

Newton would be more than proud of me.

I banged on the side of the curving metal behind me and said, “And did you build this?”

He shook his head.

“Then who did – the Old Ones?”

Again, the long, slow blink.

Realizing he may not have understood the term, I said, “Did the bigger ones make all these machines – the tall ones who used to live here long ago?”

He began to blink again.

“Don’t you know anything?” I shouted in exasperation, standing up to face him.

The eyes widened in alarm, and the huge paw was raised again, and again I saw blackness.

When I awoke this time the row of windows had flooded the metal orb with strange shimmering blue tinted light. I was alone. I saw that my enclosure was outfitted with internal instruments which centered on a round panel. There were three seats clustered around it, facing the panel. I climbed into the center seat and tried pushing various buttons and pulling various levers, but nothing happened.

I climbed down, and investigated the rest of my prison, which was about fifteen feet across. The level floor had been built about one third of the way up the sphere.

There was a puffing sound behind me, and my strange companion entered through a doorway which quickly irised closed behind him. I had not seen this entrance.

He held something long and wriggling up triumphantly and grinned, showing a row of startlingly sharp teeth.

“Fishhhhh!”

For a moment I had the horrid thought that he was going to bite into the still living creature, but instead he grasped it in both hands by the tail and quickly brought its head down on the floor. The fish went limp. He laid it out gently on the floor and seemed to pray over it for a moment, then produced a long rod from his tunic and drew it over the dead creature from end to end.

In a moment the fish began to take on the odor of...cooked fish!

“How did you do that?” I asked.

He ignored me, looked at the wand and then put it back into his tunic.

“Eeeeat!” he said, moving his large paw over the feast.

He dug his fingers into the steaming flesh of the creature, which was white and flaky.

In a moment my hunger overcame me, and I was squatting beside him, scooping pawsful of the feast into my mouth.

In between mouthfuls I said, “They’ll be coming for me, you know.”

He ignored me, continuing to eat with a slurping sound I found immediately distasteful.

“Half the population of Olympus Mons are looking for me by now. Thomas will sooner or later figure out where I went.”

He paused, slowly blinking his huge eyes at me.

“Thommmmas?”

“My friend. Counselor. My . . . guardian.”

His eyes, which resembled two huge watch crystals, with steel gray irises themselves larger than my own eyes, blinked again.

“You’ll see,” I said.

“No one will commmme,” he said simply, and went back to his meal, which was almost gone.

The way he said it, the certainty, sent a chill through me.

“What do you mean?”

I had hesitated, and he had quickly finished off the last of the fish, pulling it from the bones and pawing it into his mouth, chewing it with that sucking sound.

He pushed the carcass aside and regarded me.

“One wants to see youuu.”

“Who the devil is One?”

He turned away from me, cleaning up the remains of the fish and walking to the spot in the orb where the door had opened.

When the iris appeared I rushed past him through the opening, along with the fish he tossed through.

I stood frozen in place, gasping. For a moment I thought I had stepped into blue nothingness, and held my breath. I was surrounded by water, and the shimmering light of the sea itself. A fish, much larger than the one we had just eaten, tailed lazily by and then turned to regard me dispassionately.

It bumped its snout on something invisible between us, and then turned haughtily and swam away.

“What . . .”

I reached out and touched what enclosed and protected me – a bubble of what felt like glass.

I turned around to see my companion regarding me curiously in the still-open doorway.

“Why did you stepppp into the lockkkkk?”

“Where are we?” I asked, still stunned.

He spread his hands. “Not topside, not downside. Travellll to see One.”

“Beneath the ocean?” I said. “But we were in the bowels of Olympus Mons last night! How could we be here?”

He gave me a long, slow, blink. “Travelll,” he explained, then turned away.

I brushed away the fish remains which had adhered to me when I made my heroic escape, and stepped back into the sphere. My companion had hauled himself into the center chair on the far side of the craft. He turned and when he saw that I was once more inside he hit a button and the iris closed behind me. I heard a soft whirr.

“Fishhh gone,” he said simply, and then turned to the huge circle in front of him.

He pulled a lever, pushed another button, and this opened, pulled back into two parts, revealing a huge window onto the sea.

Mesmerized, I climbed up into the chair to his right and stared out at a glowing blue world. The water grew lighter above us, but I could not see the shimmer of the surface.

“How deep are we?” I asked.

“Manyyy feet.”

“And where –” I began to ask, but was so overwhelmed with the possibilities that I couldn’t continue.

“Olympus Ocean,” he offered. “Downside.”

Which meant that there was an ocean deep in the bowels of Olympus Mons itself!

“Where is One?” I inquired.

“Continue downside. Arsia Mons.”

“Do you mean to tell me that this body of water continues underground and that Arsia Mons has its own underground sea?”

He nodded slowly.

“What is your name?” I asked.

He blinked. “Quiffff.”

“Quiff?”

He nodded.

“And where is One?”

This time he shrugged, which told me nothing.

We ate, and slept, and repeated the process. We ate more fish, which Quiff caught by merely opening the airlock and waiting for one to swim in. He then closed the airlock and opened the inner door. It was the easiest sort of fishing I had ever seen.

We ate, and slept, and ate and slept. Once we surfaced, which filled me with excitement until I saw through the window that we were in a cave half filled with water. The ceiling was only a few feet above our heads. Quiff opened a second airlock at the top of the sphere, accessed by a retractable metal ladder. I heard a deep hiss and the cabin was filled with fetid air.

In a few minutes we were underway and underwater again, with no explanation, but I determined on my own that it had been time to replenish our internal air supply. I wished it had been of a fresher sort.

I began to lose track of the days, and took to studying the fish. This is what I thought Newton would do in the same situation. There were many (and I consumed some of them) that I did not recognize, some with no eyes and others that glowed from within, like toy lanterns. One was nearly the size and shape of our vessel, but it proved timid, its flat black eyes filling with fright as it sought desperately to get out of our way.

And then we came across something nearly as large, and not at all timid.

I had been lulled into such a lax state by the sameness of our surroundings that when true danger came I did not at first realize it. I should have known when my companion became agitated all at once, and began to push buttons and pull levers at an alarming rate. We began to rise – too fast I thought – but then I saw why. The view port in front of us was abruptly filled with something roiling and black.

“What is it, Quiff?” I asked.

He only shook his head and bared his teeth. I saw true fear on his face.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

“Nothingggg,” he spat, yanking a lever toward him violently, which threw us to the right and almost on our side.

The black roiling focused into a monstrous long black thing peppered with large suckers every three or four feet.

“What in the name of –”

At that moment we were taken hold of and shaken, as a kit shakes a rattle. I saw one huge sucker adhere to the face plate of the porthole window, at the same moment something slammed us from the opposite side of the craft. I could feel us being squeezed, and heard the crack and creak of stressed metal.

“How much of this can we take?”

Quiff’s eyes were impossibly wide, staring at the port window, which had begun to splinter in a series of hairline cracks. The thing stuck to it was flexing casually, like a muscle.

“What does it want?” I shouted, over the increasing sound of screaming metal.

“Fooood!” my companion hissed.

“Isn’t there anything else we can do?” I asked.

His fright-filled eyes blinked once, slowly, and then he turned to me and said, “Yesss.”

He brought his cooking wand from his tunic and handed it to me. He pointed at the cracking view window and said, “Cooook!”

He climbed from his chair and went to a wall panel, pushing the button next to it. It popped open and he drew out three more of the wands. He threw one to me and cried frantically, “Coooook!”

I suddenly got his meaning, and thrust the two wands toward the glass of the port window. I held one in each hand, moving them frantically this way and that.

There was a shudder, but the sucker did not loosen.

Quiff had opened the airlock. I saw a drizzle of water on the floor, and something thick and then tapered, the end of a massive tentacle, wrapped around the clear enclosure. There were cracks all around it.

He pushed his own two cookers at the glass, and began to move them around rapidly.

I continued my own assault. The thing on the other side of the glass was taking on a red, unhealthy color, but still it didn’t budge. Then I saw a curl of smoke rise from its center. It convulsed suddenly, pulling away for a moment before finding purchase again. I ran the heat bars over the same spot in the center, concentrating both of them in the same spot.

The sucker pulled loose, and the entire craft moved away from it with a massive shudder.

I went quickly to the air lock. The tentacle was wrapped tightly around the glass bubble in a coil. I put my cookers in one spot, moving them quickly back and forth until the sucker reddened. The tip of the tentacle pulled away from the glass, then regained purchase. I continued on the same spot, and then my companion saw what I saw doing and did the same in another spot. Water was dripping from a score of cracks.

The spot before me glowed red, redder–

And then suddenly we were free!

Quiff instantly dropped his cooking tools and ran to the control panel, jumping into his chair.

He pulled levers frantically and we rose, pulling away.

I turned around and saw with horror that the airlock, weakened from the battle, was collapsing inward before my eyes. I jumped back and pushed the button closing it as it imploded, throwing a cascade of water at me.

The iris whined, hesitated, and then closed all the way.

I went to the front window and looked out through the cracks.

Something monstrously large, black, with two red eyes and one impossibly long tentacle, stared balefully up at us from below as we retreated.

The tentacle shot out tentatively up at us, and then recoiled, and I could have sworn the monster was nursing the spot near the end where we had burned it.

It sank from view, becoming part of the roiling sea beneath us.

I turned to look at my companion, but found to my horror that he was inert in his chair, his huge eyes closed.

He looked as though he was dead.

Thirteen

The ocean sphere continued to move without guidance from my seemingly dead companion. I checked him for a pulse, and found none. When I tried to lift the massive lid on one of his eyes it would not budge. No breath moved in his lungs.

I wondered where the uncontrolled craft would take me. Had it been predetermined? Or was I at the whims of the currents in this underground sea now, doomed to travel aimlessly until the power source of the sphere was depleted?

I had observed Quiff moving various levers, and determined to try them myself. I moved his body from the center chair into one of the flanking ones, and, now captain of my own ship, tried to affect its course. But the levers would not budge for me, and the buttons were ineffective. I did notice that certain levers moved by themselves every once in a while, which gave me some hope – perhaps this craft was in an automatic mode after all.

I looked at my companion, and despite all the anger I had felt at my abduction, I felt some measure of sympathy for his loss. After all, he had done nothing to directly harm me. He had, as far as I could determine, only been following orders of some sort. There was a certain pet-like quality to him that I found I already missed.

With these depressing thoughts in mind, I found that I was tired.The captain’s chair was comfortable, and with the gentle sigh of moving water against the hull in my ears, and the vague hum of unseen machineries, I was soon lulled to sleep.

I dreamed of my mother. Though I was a kit barely weeks old when she was taken from me, I still had a hazy picture of her in my mind, my own bare recollections augmented by the photos I had seen. In the dream I was in my kit basket and she was leaning over me. She was smiling, her beautiful face lit from within.

“You will be a great King, Sebastian,” she said.

I looked up at her, and tried to speak, but my mouth would not open and I could say nothing.

I began to panic, and reached my paws up to her.

But then she was pulled away, and another face was there, that of Frane, the usurper. Her almond-shaped eyes glowed red, and her whiskers were pulled back in a hiss, showing sharp teeth. She turned her head to the side as she regarded me, as if I was a bug or something else to be trampled.

She reached down toward me, her short claws emerging from the ends of her fingers. They had been chiseled to needle points. She opened her mouth in another hiss and touched me–

I gasped, feeling her touch, and started awake.

There was a real touch on me. I pulled back, and saw the face of Quiff not two inches from my own. I could still smell fish on his breath. His eyes blinked ever-so-slowly.

“What–?” I asked.

“Awakkkke?” he asked.

“Yes. I thought . . .”

He cocked his head to one side, just as Frane had done in the nightmare, but there was no malice in his look, only curiosity.

“I thought you were dead!” I blurted out.

He pulled back and stood before the captain’s chair. He shook his head. “You sleeeep, I sleeeep.”

“But you weren’t breathing!”

He nodded. “Wassss. Sleeeep breeeeathe . . .”

“And your pulse –”

Quiff held out his arm, and put my finger on it, at the crook of the elbow, instead of at the wrist, as I had done.

There was a pulse, low and steady.

He blinked at me, ever so slowly.

My attention was drawn away from his vital signs by a distinct bump on the bottom of the vessel.

He looked nonplussed.

There came another bump, more pronounced, and then other sounds from outside: a hum and rattle, the wash of draining water.

“What–?”

“Arrivvvved,” Quiff said, simply.

He stepped away, and I saw through the huge port window the beach of the lapping sea behind us, and a track, which we obviously were on, leading back to the shoreline. Beyond was a massive cavern, which made the one I had seen on first entering the bowels of Olympus Mons a cave, its ceiling lost in dark clouds. Creatures resembling ivory white birds flitted here and there. What looked like a rainstorm raged in the distance, and I heard a booming crack of thunder.

I thought I saw, just at the limits of vision, a single long tapering tentacle uncurl, and then slide beneath the waves, as if in farewell.

In the foreground, as another bump sounded, the sand of the shore turned to rock, and then we were swallowed by a tunnel. The opening appeared, shrinking to a lighted hole, and then there was nothing but darkness.

“Now what?” I asked.

Quiff settled into the chair next to me, and shook his head.

“How long?” I inquired.

In answer he closed his eyes, and once more feigned death.

I determined to stay awake, if only to avoid nightmares. It was not hard, for I was very hungry again, and knew that fish would not be an option. The clack of the rails below us was soothing, however, and I drifted into a doze which became, thankfully, a dreamless sleep.

Once more I was awakened by the touch of my companion.

“One is waiting,” he explained.

I had a hundred questions, and asked some of them, but now he would say nothing.

We had stopped. The port window was now closed, but light of some sort filled the row of windows near the top of the ship.

My companion walked to the airlock, and opened it.

It was framed in broken glass, but provided egress from the ship.

I blinked as I stepped out. For a moment I was sure that we had either never left the cavern I had originally entered in Olympus Mons – or, perversely, that we had merely circled the great sea and returned to our starting point. The huge rock room I found myself in was exactly like the one I had left, filled with wondrous machines as far as the eye could see. There was even an opening in the far wall that exactly resembled the tunnel opening which had led me to this place.

I turned to my calm friend. “Where are we?”

“Arsia Monssss,” he answered.

“We’re in the bowels of another volcano?”

He nodded, and blinked slowly.

“One wants to see you,” he said, and began to walk.

Before we did so, I took Quiff’s arm lightly and said, “Even though you basically kidnaped me, and I’ve been in nothing but danger since, I want to thank you.”

He blinked at me slowly, then again, and then, strangely, bowed.

“You’rrrre welcommme!” he said.

I followed him through a maze of marvelous machines. There were those – huge sleek needles and long wedges with bare wings and massive blackened round openings in their afts – that looked like they had been lit with fires like the sun and that could only be used for flying in space. There were long segmented tubes that resembled the chimneys at the oxygenation stations Newton and my mother had studied. There were monstrous boxes shined to brilliance without a break in their surfaces, and numerous smaller machines with strange dials and white clock faces circled with hundreds of unknown symbols. Things with coils. Broken things, open with shining innards of colored weird parts. A long tube, the only thing that I had seen that looked vaguely familiar . . .

We wove our way to the edge of the room. There was a door in the rock wall which opened silently in the middle as we approached. It closed behind us. We were now in a passageway with a high rock ceiling and lit at intervals by illuminated bars. They looked like larger versions of my companion’s cooking tools, attached to the ceiling. They gave an even, pleasing light.

There was another door ahead of us, and it opened at our approach, sighing shut behind us.

Now we were in near darkness. The light was purple and faint. There were shapes that appeared as shadows. High near the ceiling something revolved slowly. There was a faint hum in the room, which sounded like vast energies elsewhere filtered into this place.

Something moved in the darkness ahead of us – a shape in what looked like a throne or chair set on a high pedestal.

“Approach,” a startling, loud female voice spoke.

My companion stayed rooted to his spot, but urged me along, pushing me gently with his large hand.

I looked back at him.

He blinked once, slowly, in the dimness.

“One,” he whispered.

“Approach, please,” the too-loud voice said.

I turned and walked toward the pedestal.

The purple light intensified. Beneath my feet the walkway glowed, the same color. The pedestal took on inner light, also, as did the throne.

The figure remained in shadow, an outline.

I stopped at the pedestal, which, I saw, had a shallow set of steps built into it.

“Please, come all the way up.”

I put my boot on the first step, and my heart began to pound.

I hesitated, and then stepped back down.

“I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind,” I said.

There was silence for a moment, and then the too-perfect voice said, “We need to talk, King Sebastian.”

“Why do they call you One?”

There was another hesitation.

“Because there is only one of me.”

Now I detected the faintest hint of humor in the voice.

I saw what looked like a hand shrouded in darkness reach out toward me.

“Please come close. I want to see you. Please.” The hint of humor was gone, replaced almost by pleading.

I turned around, and my companion was gone.

I put my boot on the first step, and then went all the way to the top of the pedestal.

There was a faint electrical odor, like ozone after a storm.

The vaguest of lights moved in the shadow form, where a face would be.

Two eyes made of light stared out at me.

I saw what looked like a teardrop, made of light, trail down the shadow face.

“The technology of the Old Ones made me possible.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is too much you don’t understand. That is why I sent for you. You are more important to this planet than you or others realize, King Sebastian. If you do not succeed in this war against Frane, no one will be left alive on Mars within ten years.”

“Because we’re losing our atmosphere?”

Another, longer pause. “Yes. I see you already know this. If Frane is allowed to win, she will destroy everything to do with the Old Ones that doesn’t have to do with weapons, including the oxygenation stations to renew the atmosphere. It would be a death sentence for Mars. Frane only cares about destruction. She will get her wish in more ways than she realizes, if she triumphs. That is why you must go on a quest, Sebastian. I know something of the weapon she will use on Olympus Mons, and I know how to disable it. And I believe you are the one who must do it.”

“Why?”

“Because you are King, and because until you show your strength the people will not be completely behind you.”

“You speak of my physical weakness?” I said, becoming angry.

The lit eyes momentarily grew brighter, and One leaned forward toward me, a purple shape in the darkness, before settling back again.

“Yes,” One said, simply, the artificial voice completely flat. “Even now, there are sections of Mars that are leaning toward Frane, because they see in her a strength that they think you don’t possess. If this happens, Frane will win. And if she reaches Olympus Mons with her weapon, she will win. But you can stop her. There are others who opposed this course of action, and that is why I brought you here.”

“Why should I listen to you?” I asked.

“Because it must be done!” the mechanical voice shouted, and I trembled. “Because there is no other way to save Mars!”

Silence stretched between us. The vague light that was her face receded, and I thought that she was sleeping, or had turned herself off. But then the eyes flared back on with greater intensity – two eyeballs staring at me out of a dark and empty face.

“You must go on this quest,” she said. “Will you do it?”

I tried to look proud. “I am my mother’s son. I will go.”

“Well said. But it will take more than pride to do what you must do. You will need every ounce of your courage, and you must draw from yourself a stamina that you do not as yet possess. You must become a man, Sebastian of Argyre. Do you think you can accomplish these things?”

“Yes.”

The eyes dimmed, and when they re-lit, they were not as bright, and the voice was weaker. “I do not have much time. My powers need to be regenerated. Listen, and listen well . . .”

She told me what I must do.

Fourteen

In the days that followed, I learned just how arduous my task would be. Quiff helped me prepare, and I was happy to learn that he would accompany me. There were others of his kind, some of whom I met, including one who I took to be his spouse. They were indeed an unknown clan, who spent most of their time underground. There were two young kits, even stranger looking than the grownups, with eyes that looked startlingly large in their little faces. But I must have appeared strange to them, too, and one of them took to following me around and staring at me with a curiosity that bordered on obsession. Finally this kit tugged at my tunic and asked, “Are you a fffffreak?”

Composing as solemn a look as I could muster, I picked the goggle-eyed youngster up, looked straight into its huge eyes and said, “Yes!”

Then we both laughed.

This little friend was with me for the next few days while Quiff and I prepared.

As One had explained to me, Quiff and I would travel underground and emerge somewhere behind Frane’s army. This was not as easy as it sounded. On the maps Quiff showed me there were vast areas that no one had explored for centuries, and others, marked in bright red, that were considered nothing less than dangerous. There were allies along the way, clans akin to Quiff’s own underground people, but there were others of unknown disposition.

I spent nearly two days roaming amongst the marvelous machines in the great hall, nearly all of which would, unfortunately, be useless for our purposes, because, though the Old Ones had built them, their workings were now unknown to us. Which led me to ask Quiff a question:

“Who is One?”

He gave me an excruciatingly slow blink and then answered: “SSSShe iss One. That is all.”

“Where did she come from?”

He shrugged.

I learned that she had been discovered by Quiff, which put him in an exalted position in his clan.

Which both startled, and frightened me.

One summoned Quiff and I before her one more time before we left. She was much diminished in energy, I could tell. Her voice, though still sharp, was faded, as if a volume control had been turned down. Her eyes were barely visible in the hooded purple blackness of her face.

“I must tell you this before you go,” she said. I stepped closer, to hear her better, and again smelled that ozone odor. There was a faint crackling sound.

She reached out a faint glowing finger and set it gently on my paw, which startled me. The crackling turned to a hiss, and I felt a run of electric shock faintly up my arm.

“You may not see me again,” she said. “I am weak now, and must go. But I want you to remember me, and what I have told you. Mars was once great, and can be great again.”

Her eyes once more glowed, and I was astonished to feel a real tear on my paw. I looked deeply into her fading eyes in her amorphous face. For a moment it almost became solid, but then it turned to a ghostly image once more.

“Take care,” she said, her voice fading away, “and be strong.”

And then she was gone.

The purple lights in the room came up, showing an empty pedestal.

“Is there anything we can do for her?” I asked Quiff, whose own huge eyes were filled with tears.

He shrugged helplessly.

“Nothing that I knowwww,” he said.

After a few moments of helplessness, I left the podium, my fists clenched in anger, and stalked from the room. I felt impotent and useless.

“We must go, Quiff,” I said, and I looked back as I reached the entry to see him still facing the empty podium, his huge hands covering his huge eyes, and weeping.

We left the following morning.

My little friend, Quiff’s kit, said goodbye in the only way she knew. She climbed up my tunic, using her huge paws and extended claws, and kissed me on the cheek. I clutched her briefly, and returned the kiss.

“Your father will return safely to you,” I promised, though I wondered if I would be able to fulfill the vow.

Quiff took leave of his family, and then we departed. He clutched the first of his maps, and led the way. We had three horses, laden with supplies, one of them drawing a cart which was outfitted for our riding. As we passed into the darkness of the first tunnel opening, I felt my stomach clench, and a hard knot of worry form.

Did I know what I was doing?

Did I have any chance of success?

Why had I listened to One? Why was I so sure that she was right?

The darkness ahead of me only added to my unease.

Fifteen

Four days later, I turned to Quiff and rasped, “I can’t go on.”

I had struggled the last two days, keeping up with his pace, which was a sturdy one. And, for the most part, I had been successful in hiding my pain. But now it was too much for me, and I could hide it no longer. My lungs ached, my legs were plagued with cramps, my shoulders were shot with pain from the pack I carried. I wanted to quit, but wanted to die before I would admit it.

And I was very close to that point.

“You wishhhh to rest?” Quiff asked, blinking his eyes.

“Yes.”

And then I collapsed, and fainted into blackness.

I awoke with a cool cloth draped across my brow. There was a breeze in the tunnel, which I had not noticed before. It felt like an autumn night in Wells City.

I heard the gurgle of nearby water, and rose up on my elbows to spy a creek nearby, and a cooked fish, its steamy odor rising to my nostrils, next to me.

“Quiff?” I called, and then my companion appeared, walking down from the nearby bank to greet me. Two fishing poles fashioned from long sticks guarded the spot he abandoned.

“Do you feeeel wellll?” he inquired.

“Yes, much better, thanks. Where are we?”

He produced his map and pointed to a spot that meant nothing to me.

“Making our wayyyy,” he said.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Hourssss.”

“And you watched over me?”

He shrugged, and left me to attend to the horses, which were agitated.

He returned in a minute and said, “We musssst go now.”

“Why?” And then I suddenly had another question, as a rank odor, rising from both myself and my companion, overcame me.

“What is that smell?” I said, making a disgusted face. I noted now that my arms and face had apparently been slathered with an odious substance which smelled like rotting fish.

In answer, Quiff pulled a jar from his pack and unscrewed the top, offering it to me.

The odor coming from it was even worse than what I had already sampled. I drew back in disgust.

“Why?” I asked.

He carefully re-closed the jar and put it away.

“Protecccction,” he answered.

“From what?”

All he would say was, “Musssst go.”

“I still don’t–”

He pointed to the horses and said nothing.

I felt dizzy, and then, taking a deep breath, felt stronger. I mounted the horse cart, and we made our way out of that cool spot, and into a stifling and close cave with no light. My companion lit a torch, and the walls, I saw, were covered with a greenish slime.

I heard a noise behind us.

“They commmmme,” Quiff said in a hushed tone.

“Who?”

In answer, there was an explosion nearby, and the horse drawing our cart was blown to bits.

The cart itself turned violently to the left, and turned over. Quiff was thrown on top of me. For a moment he was inert, and then he pulled me desperately to my feet.

“Hurrrrt?” he asked.

“No.”

“Go thennnn! Followww!”

He ran, and I ran after him.

Our other two horses, burdened as they were with our supplies, had only made it fifty yards ahead of us. Their eyes were dilated with fear. I took the reins of one, and Quiff took the other. They were frozen in place, but then Quiff whispered something in their ears, each horse in turn, and they seemed to unfreeze and followed us.

Behind, there was commotion, and the sound of hissing which grew closer. I glanced back and saw the walls of the tunnel bathed in flickering, glowing light which grew in intensity.

The hissing grew even louder.

I turned to speak to Quiff, but he was gone, along with the horses.

Panic coursed through me as the lights behind drew closer–

“Heeeere!” Quiff’s voice whispered fiercely, close by me, but I could see nothing but rock wall.

His hand drew out of the dimness and grabbed my arm, yanking me fiercely into a near-invisible slit in the wall, barely wide enough for a horse to fit.

I opened my mouth but Quiff’s paw covered it and he snapped into my ear: “Look!”

I looked out into the tunnel we had vacated as a horde of horrid creatures passed by, sniffing and hissing, holding torches before them as if they were blind. They were vaguely feline, but their heads were naked and gray, elongated, the ears pressed back tightly against the skull. Their bodies were hunched forward and their paws trailed just off the ground, touching now and again in a bobbing motion, as if they could not keep their balance.

Behind us one of the horses snorted, and the nearest creature swivelled his head in our direction, sniffing, his whiskers twitching. His eyes were as large as soup bowls and flat dead black, without pupil or iris.

We stood still as statues, and the thing sniffed once more and then went on.

In a few moments we were alone again.

Quiff pushed past me and left our hiding spot, and I followed. The horses came along behind us.

“Who were they?”

“Cousins,” he said, and then added, “Balllldie cousins.”

“Those were baldies?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Worse. And morrre bad ahead.”

I said nothing, but followed his lead.

The next three days were uneventful, to the point where I became bored. The steady pace helped strengthen me, and I found that when I arose in the morning I did so with lessening fatigue and more willingness to forge ahead. Quiff promised many strange things to see, and I was eager to get to them.

Quiff, on the other hand, grew more and more cautious, which should have been a sign to me. But in my eagerness to get to anywhere that wasn’t an underground tunnel I overlooked his hesitancy.

Which, naturally, almost got me killed.

On the morning of the third day after our encounter with the Baldy cousins, we broke out into a strange cavern suffused with light. A vague, sulphur smell had assaulted my nostrils for some time, and Quiff insisted that we stop to cover ourselves in the noxious unguent he carried. Between the smell of dead fish and rotting eggs, I was dizzy with nausea when we stumbled out of a cave opening into the cavern.

I was nearly blinded. It was as if daylight shone in that place – and, indeed, when I looked up I saw, far above, a small round opening that looked to be the sky!

I turned to Quiff, whose eyes had narrowed. He was studying the edges of the space we were in.

“Bessst we go,” he said.

As my eyes grew used to the unaccustomed brightness, I saw that the yellow walls of sulphur cave we were in rose impossibly high to the opening far above us. I saw a pink patch of sky and a scudding cloud.

It had been real daylight shining down into this place.

“Where are we, Quiff?”

“Wassss . . . volcano,” he answered.

I stared in wonder at that faraway patch of sky, the first I had seen in more than a week.

I wanted to climb up those sulphur walls and get to it.

Quiff tugged at my arm as I stood staring upward.

“Go,” he said.

Reluctantly, I followed.

When we reached the far wall of the cavern, and an opening there, Quiff stood stock still, and urged me to do the same.

“Waitttt,” he whispered, and then he disappeared into the dark opening.

He was gone so long that I bent my ear to listen for him. I heard nothing. I took a tentative step into the dark opening.

“Quiff?” I called out, in a whisper.

No sound.

Then: a far-off patter, like someone running.

I was nearly bowled over by Quiff, who raced out of the darkness past me, his feet carrying him as fast as they could.

“Runnnnn!” he shouted at me,

I now saw why: a sea of bullet heads and huge dark eyes swarming toward me from the cave.

I turned and ran – but as I followed Quiff over the sulphur plain of the cavern, dodging yellow boulders and slippery stretches of sulphur sand, I now saw that the opposite cave opening, from which we had originally emerged, was now filled with swarming underground Baldy bodies.

Quiff came to a halt, and I beside him.

“Now what?” I shouted, above the growing din of hissing creatures fanning out behind and before us to encircle us.

Quiff’s face was blank with fear.

“Quiff!” I shouted. “Tell me what to do!”

“Hhhhhope!” he shouted, his head back, looking up.

I thought he had lost his mind, and all I could do was watch helplessly as the ring of Baldies closed around us.

“What will they do with us?” I asked.

“Eeeeeeat!” Quiff answered, still staring upward.

The hissing creatures drew in.

And then – I looked up, too, because above us it grew brighter.

“Yesssss!” Quiff exulted.

A sudden blinding flash filled the cavern, washing it in brilliant light.

“Ssssssun!” Quiff shouted, grabbing me. “Runnnn again!”

I blinked against the blinding light of the sun, which had filled the ancient volcano opening above us, and saw that our attackers had dropped to the ground, covering their eyes and moaning in pain. Following Quiff, we tore through them even as the brilliance behind us began to fade. We reached the far cave opening where our horses waited, and ran into it as the light seemed to blink out behind us.

The sun, the glorious sun, had moved on – but only after saving us.

Or almost, I should say. For once again Quiff pulled me into a small opening in the side of the main tunnel, and we watched as the defeated, hissing horde of Baldies, rubbing their eyes and snarling their disappointment in our escape, trooped past us.

We waited in our cutout for more than an hour, until Quiff was sure they were gone.

During that time, I never enjoyed the odor of rotting fish more.

Sixteen

A day later found us in more hospitable surroundings, within sight of the surface but unable to reach it.

It was a strange feeling, smelling fresh air but not being able to stand on the surface of the planet. We were in such a safe spot that Quiff felt confident enough to build a fire and cook our latest catch, a silvery-white fish, long as an eel, the likes of which I’d never seen. I had become used to this underground world and its mysteries, it’s rivers which appeared and then disappeared, winding out of a cut in a rock wall and into a cut in an opposite wall, or, once, running overhead and unseen. I had expressed my fear to Quiff at that time that the entire ceiling above us might come down in a shower of tons of water at any time, but he had merely laughed.

“Never happened in a milllllion years!” he said.

This latest wonder, a smooth-walled cavern so near the surface that we could see the caves leading out a mere hundred feet above us, but were unable to get to them. The walls were smooth as glass. A waterfall fed by a near-surface aquifer plunged from the mouth of a yawning cave just below the ceiling and spread in a crystalline pool of blue-white at our feet. Quiff proclaimed this some of the best fishing in all of the “downside” areas.

But we had been here nearly three days, lounging and sleeping and fishing and eating, and I was once again growing restless. My strength growing, I had taken to running sprints around the perimeter of the cavern, and swimming in the waterfall’s pool. I was bored and energized. Quiff, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease.

“It won’t be longggg,” he assured me, as he had since we had reached this place.

But he would not tell me what we were waiting for.

“Can’t you give me a hint?”

For the first time since I had met him, his eyes twinkled with amusement.

“It won’t be longgggg.”

I ate my tenth meal of eelfish, and settled down to my tenth restful nap.

When I awoke, my life changed.

The cavern was nearly filled with people. I heard laughter, and smelled something more than fish cooking. It smelled like poultry! And there was singing coming from one side of the cavern, with answering singing ringing from the other.

Was I in a dream?

Or had I awakened into one?

“He’s awake!” someone shouted, a basso voice, and there was instant silence.

I looked for Quiff, but he was nowhere to be seen.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, then threw my blanket aside and stood up.

“What –?” I began.

The hundreds of faces surrounding me looked down as one, and the hundreds of bodies bowed, as one.

One portly gentleman, who owned the basso voice, stood up close by me and locked eyes with me. Those eyes were both merry and serious.

“It is our pleasure to serve you,” he said, his voice deep and resonant as a well.

“But – who are you?”

“I am Radion,” he replied, his voice booming and deep, “and these are my people.” His accent was odd, made odder still by his deep voice: a little of the north, a bit of the west, an unrecognizable emphasis on consonants that I had never heard before.

I studied him carefully as he straightened. He was wide, with a wide, luxuriously furred face of orange and white, with thick whiskers. He eyes were golden brown. He was dressed in odd raiment’s, black boots and a brightly colored tunic, belted at the waist, as well as a bright red feathered cap.

His companions, both men and women, were dressed similarly, though with not quite as much girth.

“What clan are you?” I inquired.

Radion looked startled, and then he laughed. In a moment the cavern was filled with laughter.

“Begging your pardon if I say that we are the only clan that matters.”

My back stiffened, but before I could say anything, Radion continued:

“We are the Romeny.”

“Gypsies!”

Again he bowed, though the others retained their bemused looks.

Radion said, “Again, at your service. You speak our name as if we do not exist. No?”

“But you don’t exist! You’re a myth!”

Radion’s smile hardened, just a little. “A myth that can bite, my friend. Let us just say that we have . . . chosen to remain invisible.”

“But even Newton says you aren’t real!”

Radion’s smile was back. “We have dealt with Newton, on occasion – though I doubt he knew who we were. It has served us well to blend in, wherever we are. We can be any clan, when the need suits us. We have dealt with everyone on this planet, topsider or downsider, at one time or another.” His smile widened. “And we pay no tithe, and no taxes, by being” – he shrugged, and turned to bring his people into the joke – “a myth.”

I was flabbergasted. “Gypsies . . .”

The laughter had died down. “And,” Radion said, we have a job to do. A trade we made with One, for your safety, to deliver you to a certain place. We will leave as soon as we have eaten.”

It was then that I remembered Quiff. “Where is the fellow who brought me here?”

“Quiff?” Radion shrugged again. “He has gone home, after delivering most of what was agreed. The fellow stank of fish, so it was good to be rid of him.”

I was a little disappointed, and sad, that my erstwhile companion had left without even saying goodbye.

But I had little time to think of these things, because Radion was looming over me.

“And you stink of fish, too!” He made a motion, and two of his compatriots took hold of me and, without ceremony, drew me to the edge of the water. Radion followed, making a great show of holding his nose.

“Would you like to bathe with your clothes on, or not?” he asked.

Before I could answer, the fellows holding me had hoisted me up and thrown me, fully clothed, into the lake.

“Question answered!” Radion roared. “And anyway, your clothes stank of fish, too! Bathe well, and then eat with us! And no fish!”

At that he turned away, and almost in signal, cooking fires roared up around the camp. As I bobbed in the water, succulent smells came to me – more poultry, perhaps dog, a few other delicacies I had eaten, it seemed, a lifetime ago.

Resigned to my position, I drew off my clothes, washed them well, and then myself. I was a bit unnerved by the interest one of the species of fish that Quiff had lately cooked took in me, drawing near and rubbing against me once or twice, then turning its face up toward me and opening its many-toothed mouth.

As I climbed out of the water Radion studied the creature. “We do not eat these things ourselves, unless necessary. But I can tell you that if you had stayed much longer, he would have eaten you!”

I looked back, and felt suddenly faint. The fish had been joined by a dozen others. “Man eaters?” I croaked.

Radion nodded vigorously. “I’m surprised Quiff didn’t tell you. They could strip your bones of flesh in five minutes or less!”

Radion unexpectedly slapped me on the back. “You are a brave man to bathe in such waters.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Dress yourself, and come have a feast fit for a king!”

Now he turned his massive head toward me, and winked.

I dressed quickly, with the smell of roasting meats gaining me strength by the moment.

“One has made an odd request, this time,” Radion said, as we both sat sated in front of a smoldering fire. He was the only gypsy who commanded such respect, since the other cook fires were crowded with jostling men and women who continued to eat, drink wine from dog skin flasks, and, occasionally, break out into song:

The gypsy life!

Not for us the world of cats

In fancy pants

And fancy hats –

The gypsy life!

The road is ours

Everywhere

On planet Mars –

The gypsy life!

And so on, with verse after verse.

My belly was full, my strength returned. I had asked many questions, some of them stupid, which Radion, absorbed in his own reverie, swatted aside unanswered like flies. Others which interested him he fielded deftly, and, when I went over his answers later in my head, I realized he had told me nearly nothing about his people, their ways, where they slept, how they made their living, who they knew and who they didn’t know. The one thing I did learn is that they seemed to know everyone – the pirates, the F’rar – and my mother.

“She was a great woman, from what I hear,” Radion said. He paused to belch, which, when he did it, seemed a sign of thoughtful respect. “I did not meet her but I know felines who did. She sacrificed much for some foolish ideas.”

“Foolish!” I said, outraged. “Do you call an attempt to unify all the people of Mars in a representative and fair government foolish?”

“Has it worked?” Radion answered immediately. “Has it ever worked? Before Queen Haydn there were kings, and wars. For a time there was a first republic, and war. After her there was a second republic – and war.” He shrugged, a grand, shaggy gesture. “This is why the Romeny remain to themselves.”

“You would never be part of a true republic?” I asked. “Where your people could vote with every other clan, in equality?”

He belched, and this time it was not out of respect. “We have no need for anyone else. We never have. It is our code, and our way.”

“Do you think Frane would respect your way, if she knew of you?”

In alarm, I watched his eyes fill with anger.

“It is because of Frane that we help you,” he said, nearly growling. I noticed that the singing had stopped, and there was near silence in the camp save for the snap of meat fat over spitting fires.

“What did she do to you?”

His eyes had hardened, and his booming voice filled the cavern with an almost supernatural wrath. “Hear me!” He stood up, unsteadily, for he had been drinking wine throughout the meal and after. “And hear me well! Romeny bend to no feline! Romeny will always be free!”

There was dead silence, until Radion, breathing heavily with anger, sat down again.

Eventually, as Radion sat staring into our dying fire, the comradery around us slowly returned, and I heard the far off tinkling of a musical instrument, and the tentative beginnings of a new song:

The gypsies are free

And always they will be,

But the hurts strike deep

And gypsies, though they weep

They never forget

And yet –

Gypsies remain free!

It was a sad, defiant song, and as it was sung, gaining momentum, Radion eventually came out of his anger and introspection, and looked at me with a steady gaze.

“It is simple, my young friend. Frane has tried to enslave us, as she has every other people on Mars.” He smiled, an unpleasant sight. “She will not succeed.”

I opened my mouth to speak but he held a thick paw out for silence. His voice was subdued, but the bass tone of it still carried weight and authority. He seemed to be studying me the way he had studied that man-eating fish.

“They told me you were weak,” he said, his gaze never wavering from me. “But felines have been wrong before. Your bones are scrawny, and I’ll bet your grip is ladylike, but you have a sinewy character to you. You are physically unstrong, yes, but that might change. We will do what we can for it. It is your head and heart I wonder about, and we shall see that, too. But I have a feeling about you, Sebastian of Argyre, and I am never wrong about men.”

“So you do know who I am,” I said.

“Hm?” He waved his paw in dismissal. “Bah! Of course! Do you think the Romeny would walk with anyone without knowing him? And I’m sure you will make a fine king – even if you don’t know who you rule. After all, the Romeny are a myth, right?”

Some of his humor returned when I nodded.

“Good! Then let’s see about your brain.” He roared, “Bring the Jakra cards! Let’s see if this whelp can take a beating!”

The fires were cold and the rest of the camp, save for the sentries I saw strategically and quietly placed, asleep when we finished our last game. We had nearly worn the crude deck, pictured with the great Martian feline composers, out with our shuffling and dealing. I had to call a halt because I could not keep my eyes open and was nearly asleep myself. He was a very good player, the best outside of Newton I had ever played with.

“But we must play one more game!” Radion protested. “We are even, and cannot remain so! You know the rules!”

“Very well,” I nodded sleepily. I quickly dealt and lost, letting him beat me for the sake of sleep.

“Bah!” he said disgustedly, throwing his cards down. I had watched him drink two flasks of wine over the last hours, with no loss of concentration or stamina. “You have let me win! This will not do!”

My chin was on my chest. “It will have to do. I cannot stay awake.”

He leaned over the dead embers, and said, with, I thought, a measure of warmth on his sour breath, “Then I will beat you all the more decisively the next time.”

I nodded, and then I felt myself being lowered to the ground, a blanket placed on me.

I felt Radion’s sour hot breath at my ear.

“Sleep well, King. For tomorrow the real test begins.”

Seventeen

“A different kind of cards,” Radion said, spreading three rows of three cards from a huge pictorial deck. I only caught a glimpse of the faces as he shuffled them – dogs with cat heads, Phobos impossibly close in a dark sky, the blazing sun circled by flapping birds – but I found them fascinating.

“A real fortune teller’s deck?” I asked.

He gave a baleful eye. “That is a fool’s term. We gypsies have used the deck for a thousand years plus a thousand more. It was given to us by great powers before our time.”

“Who?” I asked, letting just the right amount of bemusement enter my voice. I had found in the last few days of travel with Radion and his people that while he barked like a dog, he often bit like a toothless grandmother. But this time I was wrong, for his look threaten to boil over into one of real ire.

“You do not jest with the cards,” he said, his bass voice a warning rumble.

I nodded, and composed myself at his makeshift table – a flat, knee high rock on an underground plain where we had camped for the night – with a look of rapt attention on my features.

“I apologize,” I said.

“Good,” he said, and pointed to the three rows in turn. “Past, present, future,” he said.

I was a bit surprised that we were still underground. I expected that we would surface into hospitable lands, where more gypsies and their allies would shelter us. But this was not so. There was danger above, Radion had explained, though he would say no more. And so we had passed through cavern after tunnel after cavern. Sometimes a shaft of sunlight would brighten our underground passage; at other times torchlight or the glow of crystal caverns lit our way. We had passed ample water and there was ample food – though, thankfully, no fish, which the Romeny seemed to dislike. After my time with Quiff, who I found I still missed, my fast from that foodstuff was most welcome.

Radion pointed again, and then again, to the three rows. Then he pointed to the three ranks and repeated three times, “Might be, will be, must be.”

‘What do you mean by that?” I asked, interrupting him, overcome with curiosity.

He drew a line down the first rank. “The things in these cards, past, present, future, may or may not be true. In the next” – and he drew his short claw down the second rank – “these things are true, though fate can interfere. And in this last rank” – once again he pulled his finger along the last three cards – “these things in past, present, and future must occur. Nothing can alter them, not the heavens themselves.”

“Nothing?” I said, and again a slight touch of bemusement crept into my voice.

His eyes, dark as coals, pinned me and made me hold my breath.

“Nothing,” he rumbled.

“Very well,” I whispered.

Radion continued to stare at me, and then opened his mouth to say something. But then I could tell he thought better of it, and closed his lips again. His dark eyes moved from me to the cards, and he flipped over the first card in the first rank with a loud snap!

His face lit up with a smile and he barked a laugh. He tapped the face of the card with his blunt claw. It was a picture of a kit with four arms and four legs and two heads, one looking to one side, one looking in the opposite directions. Fur stood up on its body as if it had been electrically shocked.

“Is this you? Is this a false image of the past?”

I became defensive. “What does it mean?”

“It means you were always falling over yourself, that you had the grace of a beast with too many limbs – ha!”

“That wasn’t me,” I fumed.

Radion leaned over the card and stared at me. There was a curl of smile on his face. “Are you sure?”

I blushed. “Well, perhaps a little. I was rather awkward –”

“I’ll bet you were! I’ll bet you were at that!”

With that he snapped over the second card in the first row, revealing a riot of colors haloing a bright yellow crown. Radion studied it for a moment.

“This is certainly you at the moment – do you need me to interpret?”

“My crown?” I offered.

He nodded. “But there is more.” He circled the halo of riotous colors. “This indicates turmoil, which is apt for a first card of this rank. So far the cards are very solid . . .”

Something dark passed across his eyes, but I did not speak.

He turned the third card.

“Ah!” he said. “And this denotes the end of our particular journey.”

I could not for the life of me see what he meant. The card was filled to the edges with green plants of every description – vines, thick stems bursting with red and yellow flowers, tall trees smothering the sky and throwing their branches out like sentries.

He grunted at my puzzlement, and pointing here and there. “We will end up, perhaps, in a place of much vegetation. Well, that is where we are headed. And the fulsomeness of the image indicated that it will be a very close thing, but that there will be success. Otherwise this would have been the sister card, with barren plants and a yellow sky.”

“I see.”

He nodded, and quickly went to the first card of the second row.

Again he said, “Ah!” It was clear enough: two crowns against a field of blue, one larger than the other. “This –” he began, but I cut him off.

“The larger crown is my mother’s, and the smaller mine.”

He regarded me. “Very good. But completely wrong. The smaller crown is your mother’s, and the larger her father, your grandfather.”

I sank a little into myself. “Sorry.”

“Not to worry. We will make a fortune teller of you yet.”

The next card showed another, firmer image of our present journey, the sun rising over a jagged red cliff. Radion nodded in approval. “Things still look well for the present,” he said. “You must remember that this second row are things that will probably happen, but can be changed by fate.”

“I understand.” For a moment the ludicrousness of this system of prophecy overcame me again, but I did not laugh. At the next card Radion became very serious.

“So.”

“What does it mean? I see an ocean, and a bird in flight, and a distant mountain.”

“It is not an ocean, it is a lake. And the mountain signifies that the bird has a home. It seems you may be triumphant against this Frane.”

“Hurrah!” I said, but then held my tongue, as Radion’s hand shot out to grab my arm in a tight grip.

“Do not make jest at this table again. These are serious matters. And this next row is the most serious of all.”

Without another word he let go of me and turned the seventh card over with the loudest snap! yet.

“The dog,” he said. “Hmmmm.”

I said nothing, but stared at the horrid snarling visage of a mongrel, larger than any dog I had ever seen. Its eyes were lit with fire, and its open mouth filled with sharp teeth like a shark’s.

“When were you born?” Radion asked me.

I told him.

“Hmmmm.

“Are you going to tell me what it means?”

“I don’t know what it means. You must remember that this card represents the past, but one that is certain. According to this card, your birth was very significant. More significant than you know. Did you know that your sister was actually first from the womb?”

“What!”

He pressed the card, as if it were a button. “This is not to be disputed. I would imagine your mother told everyone that you were first in order to save your sister from the crown. Or perhaps she sensed that you would be the stronger of the two. Or, as this card seems to state, she did so because she knew your sister would be murdered.”

“This can’t be true!”

“It is true. The dog represents false secession. That is why he snarls. He is you.”

“Impossible.”

Radion sat back and shrugged. “Very strange. All the more so because the strength of the cards does not indicate false readings. These cards are very solid.”

He took a deep breath. “And now –”

He turned the eighth card quickly, without sound, and lay it down.

He let his breath out. His brow furrowed, as again he studied the card closely. Again there was a body of water, but it was in the distance. There was a small dot over it that on closer examination proved to be a bird. Red soil, a long beach or plain, lay in the foreground. It looked to be a reverse view of the sixth card.

“Is it –” I began, but he hushed me by holding up a paw.

“In a moment. This is more interesting than I thought.”

I was quiet, for such a length of time that I started to lose interest. I looked around me and saw that most of the camp – save for the inevitable stealthy guards – were sleeping. A fire nearby, which must have been attended to quietly to provide us with illumination without sound – was the only one still burning.

“Come, look,” Radion said finally, bringing my attention back to the table.

I bent over the eighth card, which the gypsy covered with most of his paw. Only the sky, a similar darkening cast to the card’s brother, was visible.

“At first, this seems to cancel card six,” Radion said. I could tell he was fascinated. “I have never seen this kind of thing before.”

“The sky looks the same,” I commented.

“No!” he said excitedly. “It is not! Where the other sky was lit from the west, indicating twilight, this one is lit from the east, indicating dawn.”

I was blank.

He looked up at me, his eyes showing his excitement. “Don’t you see? This means that you will exact an even greater victory than card six showed. It will go even easier than you will hope. That is proved by the fact that you are already on land, and not in the lake. In other words, you will not have to travel as far for victory. And yet . . .”

He frowned, drawing his paw down and tapping the faraway bird. “This is the only troublesome point. The bird is your aspiration, and though you have reached the shore your aspirations have not.”

He closed his eyes and, with an almost violent movement which startled me, drew the last card toward him and looked at it.

His face drained of color.

“What is it? Let me see it!” I demanded.

He shook his head quickly, back and forth, and held the card to his tunic as if it were a dagger.

“What is it, Radion?”

I wanted to laugh at his excessive gestures, but a deeper dread stole into me, despite my nonbeliever status.

“It is the future that must be, correct?”

He closed his eyes and nodded once, theatrically.

I tried to sound nonchalant. “What is it, Radion?”

With trembling paws he took the entire deck and tried to shuffle it together. As he fumbled with the last card it turned over and I saw a picture of the most beautiful feline I had ever seen, with a crown of stars circling her head. She smiled, and held an olive branch gently in one paw in offering.

“Why, that’s a beautiful picture, Radion! Does it mean love?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice a cracked bass tone. He turned the card over and quickly pushed it into the middle of the deck.

“But how can this be bad?”

As he had at the beginning of the session, he was about to speak but then held his tongue.

“Go now,” he said, curtly. “Sleep.”

“But –”

Drawing the badly shuffled cards into his bosom, he rose stiffly and turned his back on me.

I noted that the fire had, as if on cue, dimmed to a pile of chuffing coals. As I watched it fell in on itself and sparked redly. Its tender nodded to me and then turned away.

I rose, feeling suddenly cold, and went to the fire, staring into it for a moment and then dropping to all fours before curling into sleep position with the warmth to my back.

I lay awake for a long time, thinking about Radion’s reaction to the last card.

Just before I dropped to sleep, I thought I heard his voice, whispering close by, say in his serious basso tones, “Love. And death.”

Eighteen

Finally, nearly a week later, we came to the surface of Mars.

I blinked like a mole, and then looked back at the yawning cave mouth we had emerged from. It gaped wide and dark, and for a moment I missed the darkness. Everything was too bright, too solid, too sharply etched in this daylight world. The landscape looked as though a hammer of illumination had beaten it into shape. There were distant crags of mountains topped with crowns of glaring white snow. Fields of pink and red sand dotted with oasis of verdant, eye-hurting green led back toward us, cut in the middle by a roaring river, the largest I had ever seen.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“In Amazonis Planitia, well to the east of Olympus Mons,” Radion replied, drawing up beside me. He looked older in the sunlight, his face not as full as it had underground, the colors of his fur muted, not as bright. He pointed due west, at the distant mountains. “That is our goal. That is where you will find Frane’s army.”

“How long will it take?” I asked.

“As long as it takes,” he answered gruffly, and then turned away from me to give orders for a meal.

After we had eaten, to my surprise we did not set out. When I asked Radion why he merely replied, “We wait.”

And wait we did. I climbed the bluffs blanketing the cave we had emerged from. My eyes were more than used to the light now. This area was similar to the south and my home, but everything was exaggerated, the lakes and streams larger, the verdant areas lusher, the dry areas more arid. I had seen pictures of this region and knew that the city of Robinson was its anchor, and that many of my own clan lived there. When I returned to the camp, which looked meager and a little sad from above, I asked Radion if we would pass through Robinson.

“Never,” he said.

He turned his attention away from me, seeming to concentrate on the music that was being played softly and which echoed against the cave mouth, and so I walked away to talk to Tyron, one of the cooks.

“Why is he like this?” I said, indicating the gypsy king.

Tyron, tall and spare of both frame and words, said, “The surface. He does not trust.”

“But surely you’ve spent much time up here.”

He spat with great feeling. “Used to. Not now.”

“Why?”

He looked at me as if I were stupid. “Trouble.”

“Yes, but –”

“He must think much of you, to do this,” he said, the longest sentence I had ever heard him utter.

Then he turned back to his work and away from me.

“Tyron,” I asked, “will you teach me to cook?”

“Eh?” He turned back to me, surprised.

“It is something I need to know.”

He shrugged. “If you ask, I teach. Watch now, and every day. You learn.”

“Thank you.”

As twilight fell, a beautiful sight as the sun, a distant glowing orange coin dropped and the western horizon purpled and darkened, pushing the violet darkness up the sky, which then began to bulb with the lights of tiny stars, I saw why we had waited, and why Tyron and the other cooks, including me, had not served supper.

One of the sentries, who must have been on the bluff above with me all the time I was there but who I had not seen, gave a hooting warning, which was answered by another and then another. Radion rose from where he had been resting and looked toward the horizon.

I saw nothing but the still darkening sky, and more stars.

And then we were surrounded.

My alarm was only momentary, because all at once Radion clasped the huge feline who had appeared before him to his breast and shouted, “Miklos! My brother!” and Miklos held him tight in kind and answered, “Radion, you dog!” The camp exploded in music and song. Cook fires sprang up like wraiths, four times as many as we had ever had, and the shouting and carousing were nearly intolerably loud. It was as if I had been lowered by balloon into the middle of a circus.

Feeling suddenly trapped, I sought to climb to the bluffs again and study the night sky – already I had spied Earth, a tiny blue gem, in the east – but as I turned to go I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and turned to face Miklos, with Radion, smiling grimly, beside him.

“So this is the whelp,” Miklos said. His voice was not as deep as his brother’s but it was louder and brasher. His fur was dark gray, streaked with black. And he was nearly a head taller, and though not fat, even wider than Radion. He was quite simply the largest feline I had ever seen.

“Yes, this is the one,” Radion said. “You will teach him to fight.”

Miklos suddenly hefted me up like I was a sack of flour, and moved me up and down as if weighing me.

“There’s nothing to him!” Miklos cried.

“But he is tough already where it counts, I think,” Radion answered, tapping his head.

Miklos stared into my eyes – his own were different colors, I thought in the firelight, one gray, one brown – and then he set me down with a grunt. “If you say so, my brother.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure of it.”

Miklos ignored me, and turned his attention to Radion’s tone of surety.

“Really?”

Radion nodded.

“Then so be it!” Miklos hefted me up again, setting me on his shoulders and striding like a giant into the midst of the mad carnival.

“Listen to me!” he shouted, and instantly the music stopped, the singing stopped, all chatter and laughter stopped. I saw from this great height that the camp was nearly surrounded by wagons, most of them covered, which had come upon us almost unheard. By me, at least. Amazing.

“And listen well!” Miklos went on. He grabbed me from his shoulder and hoisted me even higher. “And I do not jest. This boy is to be your king!”

There were gasps from the assembly, and then the deadest silence I had ever heard. Even the crackling fires seemed to cease their noises.

Miklos slowly turned, so that I faced the crowd. I knew perhaps I must say something, but I was speechless. I thought perhaps there still might be some joke to come.

As one the entire multitude lowered themselves prostrate to the ground.

“I –”

“Be silent, whelp,” Miklos ordered in a whisper. “It will be over in a moment.”

Miklos lowered me gently to the ground, and then threw himself down before me. I saw that Radion had done the same.

When Miklos arose the others did likewise, and he paused for a moment at eye level and said, with frightening solemnity, “I will never call you whelp again, only King.”

Dizzy, I wandered out of the camp, refusing every sweetmeat and dainty morsel thrust at me by these suddenly adoring felines, and made the climb, unmolested this time, to the bluffs. Earth was setting, but distant Venus, a yellow eye, hung in its place, and Jupiter, the King of Planets, was just rising in the east. The sky was full of planets. I thought for a moment of the telescope Newton had promised me, and wondered if I would ever get to use it.

It occurred to me that I had no idea what would happen to me tomorrow, or the day after that.

I felt suddenly cold and small and weak, not like any sort of King at all.

I wished fervently that my mother was alive, if only to counsel me.

She had been so strong . . .

Something flitted down in front of me, and I looked up to see Radion standing there. I could not read his face in the darkness, but he was not laughing.

He sat heavily beside me, and retrieved the card he had dropped in front of me. He turned it over, making it snap.

It was the last, the ninth, card from the reading he had done for me a week ago. He dropped it into my lap, where it landed face up, the most beautiful cat I had ever seen with the circlet of stars surrounding her head and holding what looked like a long, thin olive branch.

“I apologize for not speaking with you earlier of these things,” he said. “But it is difficult for a man to face his own death.”

“You!”

He nodded in the darkness, and seemed to study the sky for a moment. Was he looking for more portents?

I kept silent.

“You must realize that the gypsies have never recognized any King except their own. As a self banished clan we have our own king, of which I am one. This has been our way for a thousand years.

“But there is a legend, and a very old one, the oldest in fact, and it says that one day a king would come who we would serve. Call it a prophecy if you like. And this prophecy said that when that day came we gypsies would, for the first and only time, put the welfare of our world ahead of our own people.”

He looked at the ground, and then down at the rather more subdued party which was continuing below us. Then he pointed to the card in my lap.

“When that card surfaced as the last card, with all the cards before it, the prophecy came true.”

“But what does it mean?”

He sighed, and for a moment was silent. “It means that the gypsy king will die for the one King. He will lay down his life.”

“And you believe this?” I said. For some strange reason I felt I must comfort him.

“I believe it as I believe the beating of my heart.”

I held the card up to the light.

“So this last card is about you, not about me?”

“I did not say that,” Radion answered, his deep voice sounding sad. “And I will tell you no more. But let me say this. Before I knew who you really were, I was ready to take you to the mouth of the cave below us, and leave you there. That was my bargain with One, for favors owed. But now I, and all my people, will take you to the mouth of hell itself if we must.”

He started to get up and I held the card out plaintively.

“But Radion, didn’t I hear you whisper that night that this card meant love and death for me?”

“I told you: I will say no more.”

He started to move away from me, looking like an old man.

“Does this card mean that I will find love?”

He stopped, and his shoulders sagged.

“You already have.”

I felt a strange mixture of dread and delight.

“Please, Radion, tell me the rest.”

He shook his head, and would not turn around as he trudged off. And then he stopped at the edge of the path down to the food and drink and merriment and song, and turned to regard me.

“Look at what she holds in her hand.”

I gave a short laugh and waved the card at him. “Why, it’s an olive branch – a symbol of peace!”

Without saying another word, he turned and left.

And there, alone, by the light of the stars, I studied the card closely, and saw that what the beautiful feline held was not an olive branch at all, but rather the thinnest and sharpest of daggers.

Nineteen

We set out the next morning.

There were many hangovers, but mine not among them. I had learned much about cooking, and had had my first taste of gypsy wine, and found it to be bitter; Miklos, who had administered it, and who was very drunk himself, had merely laughed and said, “Don’t worry, king, someday it will taste as sweet as sugar to you.” This morning, the way he groaned theatrically and held his head, I wondered if perhaps Miklos had filled himself with too much sugar. His hangover did not prevent him from giving me my first lesson in swordsmanship, though, after which he pronounced my skills, “Merely rotten.” He then went off to nurse his head once more.

But once it was time to leave, these gypsies were all business. The wagons were packed with care and speed, and our caravan had more the look of a military campaign than a ragtag march. Scouts were sent out far ahead, and signaled from every hill ahead of us and to either side. Others, I knew, trailed in our wake.

It was a rougher country than it had looked. Though this land had reminded me of my own, it proved to be less tamed. The hills were steeper than their appearance, more rutted with red rocks and boulders, and what had appeared as oases of verdant green from the distance proved to be tangles of growth. Some of the plants were strange to me, a cross between cactus and fruit tree. When I stretched out from my seat on one of the wagons to pluck one of these strange, yellowish melons Radion slapped my hand down and shook his head.

“The skin of the fruit is poisonous to the skin of the paw,” he explained, and turned over his own left paw after transferring the reins to his right. There at the bottom of the palm was an ugly mass of scar tissue, welted and dark pink.

“My father was not fast enough to slap my own hand,” he said with a grunt.

At the end of the first day we made camp between two of these oases, in a valley protected on all sides by easily guarded hills. The mountains had looked no closer at the end of this day than they had at the beginning. But there seemed to be little tension in the camp. When I asked Miklos about this he said, “We travel through a land that no one wants.”

The next few days were the same as the first, and still the mountains drew no nearer. But the river expanded from a distant blue ribbon to a looming presence, and on the fourth day the plants became heartier, less dessert-like, and the ground showed the unmistakable richness of flood plains.

In camp that night, after another lesson with the sword, Miklos stood by me, his hands on his hips like a storybook giant, and surveyed the horizon.

“Tomorrow we will cross the river, and then things will change.”

“How?”

He smiled, but it was a grim one.

“Because then we will be in a place that someone wants.”

He left me there, imagining I could hear the rushing water and realizing that, yes, the mountains were now, indeed closer.

But our river crossing was delayed the next day.

We reached a small settlement at midday, stopping at its perimeter. Radion surveyed it through a spy scope, an instrument whose appearance much excited me. I made plans to ask him to borrow it this coming night, to study the sky with.

He was waiting for something, I could tell. Then he suddenly grunted and said, “Our scout has signaled. It is safe to continue.”

We drew into the river town, little more than a dusty street bordered with shacks and poor man’s tents. It seemed deserted. The main street ended at what once had been a dock on the river, but which was now a blasted pile of timbers.

“They’ve taken the boats, too,” Miklos reported to Radion, who nodded.

“I expected this. But there was always hope.”

Miklos laughed curtly. “Hope is for fools, brother.”

“Then we are all fools in the end. What shall we do?”

“Let us wait for Vilmos and Takrok to return from upriver. Then we will know what we must do.”

Radion nodded. “Very well. But I doubt the Drost bridge will be intact.”

“If they destroyed this baby dock, I’m sure you’re right. But it is better to know.”

Radion gave orders, and we stayed where we were.

“May I look around?” I asked.

Radion eyed me. “Why? This was just a river town. Two years ago it didn’t exist. The people are gone or dead, driven away or killed by the F’rar.”

“I’m just curious. I’ve never been in a river town.”

He regarded me with a steady eye for a moment, and then shrugged. “But don’t go far, my King.”

I started with the nearest shack, which proved to be empty and devoid of character. There were a few sticks of furniture which were now, literally, sticks; they had been savagely broken and left in piles. In the coal stove I found what looked like a feline finger bone, which chilled me.

The other shacks and tents were much the same, the tents being poorer versions of the shacks. One structure, the largest, had obviously been a saloon – there was a long bar, a rough hewn table, actually, and shelves behind it, empty now. There was broken glass everywhere.

As I was leaving I heard a sound.

I backed out of the sunlight into the center of the saloon and stood stock still.

Nothing.

Then –

The faintest sound of movement, a creak, somewhere close by.

Beneath me.

I stepped back, and studied the floor.

This spot was clear of glass and debris, and there were the merest of outlines, in dust, of a square cut into the floor.

I heard what sounded like a cough.

I turned to shout for Radion, but he was there, standing behind me. He put his finger to his lips, and drew out his knife, a long, curling blade with a nasty tip like a sharp talon.

He motioned me aside and crouched in front of the square, putting the tip of the blade into the cut and prying it up.

He kicked the square of floor away as it became free.

“Get out or die,” he said.

I peeked into the hole but was pushed back by Radion as he motioned the blade toward the hole.

“I am not F’rar,” he hissed, “but I will kill you if you don’t come out.”

There was movement in the hole, and Radion stepped carefully back as something scurried all of a sudden out of the hole and tried to scamper out the door.

Radion grabbed it by the scruff and the neck and held it up.

“Anyone else in that hole?” he asked to a dirty feline little more than a kit.

I expected a squeak, but the young fellow, dressed in a simple smock and with almost pure white fur, said in a surprisingly strong voice, “No. I am the only one they didn’t kill.”

“You won’t try to run?”

“I promise.”

“Very well.”

Radion slowly lowered the fellow and then let him go.

He immediately bolted like a rabbit for the door, where he was met by Miklos, who scooped him up, and held him like a trophy.

“A little fish!” he laughed.

Radion was grim. “I already know his story. The entire town was driven away or killed, and he hid alone.” He turned his attention to the white-furred fellow, who was twisting and growling in Miklos’ grip.

“How long ago were the F’rar here?”

“Weeks!” the young cat shouted. “Weeks! They killed my sister and mother! They killed them all!” He went limp, sobbing.

Miklos had lost his good humor.

“If I set you down, will you run? Because if you run, we will catch you.”

“You’re gypsies!” the little one sobbed. “Kill me and eat me now! Get it over with!”

Miklos put him down, and the young cat pushed himself from all fours onto his feet and ran out the door.

“Let him go,” Radion said, wearily.

“Where did he get such an idea?” Miklos said, spreading his hands. “That we are cannibals?”

Radion laughed shortly. “Probably from me. We spread such tales through this area so that we would be left alone.”

Miklos shook his head. “Shall I trap him?”

“No. If he wants to come with us he will show up on his own. Otherwise we will leave him be.”

At Radion’s insistence I gave up my explorations, and returned to the others. Miklos searched the rest of the buildings, but found nothing.

At dinnertime, after my cooking lesson with Tyron, I saw the little one, at the edge of our camp.

The two scouts had not returned from upriver, so it was decided that we would stay the night. The cook fires were smaller, less conspicuous, now, but the stew that was prepared was just as delicious, and the aroma wafted out over the camp.

Near the first building I had explored the young cat’s face appeared, like a ghostly apparition, looking our way. I had just taken my meal and stood with my steaming bowl when I saw him. He looked sad and lonely and hungry.

I walked a few feet toward him and his head disappeared.

When I stood still it appeared again.

I called, “Are you hungry?”

Again he was gone.

I walked halfway to the building and set the bowl down in the street.

“It’s there if you want it!” I shouted. I added, “And it’s not cat!”

I went back to camp and then turned around to look. The bowl was still there, untouched.

I drew another meal for myself, and returned to my original spot, a good thirty feet away from the bowl. I sat on the ground, ate, and waited. I felt like a fisherman, patiently letting his bait do the work.

“It’s delicious!” I called out, but there was no response, and the face had not reappeared.

Phobos overhead caught my eye, and I studied its silent, grim passage for a few moments, and remembered Radion’s spy glass.

When I looked back, the bowl was gone.

Some fisherman I was! I’d lost the bait and the catch.

I knew it was useless to look for him, and that Radion would not allow me to leave the camp, so I returned with my own empty bowl and asked him for use of his glass to study the night sky.

He gave it up readily, shrugging at my enthusiasm for astronomy. “Who has time for such foolishness?” he said. “The stars are to guide you at night, not to dream over.”

He handed over the instrument and I hurried back to my spot.

The bowl was back, and when I retrieved it, it was empty.

I looked to the corner of the building, and there was faint movement in the shadows.

“You can come out if you like – I’m not a gypsy myself but I can tell you they’re not cannibals.”

He stepped out into the faint light of Phobos, but did not take a step toward me.

“Would you like more to eat?”

“Yes. I’m very hungry.”

“When was the last time you had a proper meal?”

There was momentary silence. “Three weeks. Before the F’rar marched through.”

I filled his bowl and returned.

Again there was no one there, but this time I just marched forward, put the bowl down, and went back to my spot. As I studied the sky with Radion’s instrument, a very poor one for nighttime use, I discovered, though I did discern a few craters on Phobos’ surface, I heard shuffling in the darkness but ignored it.

When I put down the instrument the little fellow was standing there with his empty bowl regarding me with curiosity. There was still ten feet between us.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Studying the stars. Would you like to look?”

He shook his head, and I proceeded to ignore him, training the glass on Earth, which grew from a tiny blue dot to a slightly larger one – I did see, to my delight, that there were patches of brown and white mixed in with the blue tint.

There was a tug on my sleeve.

“I want to look.”

I looked down and there he was, nearly white as an albino, and dusty from head to foot.

“When was the last time you bathed?”

His solemn eyes softened for a moment with amusement. “The last time anyone told me to.”

“Well, if you want to look through this glass, I’m telling you to. You smell, and your appearance is not appropriate in the presence of someone like me.”

“Let me look through the glass first,” he bargained.

“You promise to bathe?”

He considered it, putting his paws behind his back, and then nodded. “I promise.”

“You’re not crossing your fingers?”

He became suddenly flustered, and drew his crossed fingers out, uncrossing them. “I promise,” he said solemnly.

“Very well.”

I showed him Phobos, which he found impressive, and then Earth, which he did not. “So small!” he said.

“Yes, but did you know that it’s actually a planet in space, just like Mars, and that it’s bigger than Mars?”

He took his eye from the spy scope, and looked at me as if I were mad.

“It’s true,” I continued. “And the blueness is all water, we think.”

Eagerly, he looked through the glass again.

“I see the water!” he said. “And the brown patches?”

“Most likely deserts and mountains.”

“And the white?”

“Ice caps, like our own.”

“Mars has ice caps?”

I tried to get the instrument away from him, but he was swinging it wildly this way and that now, trying to find more planets, no doubt.

I gently removed it from his grasp. “Give it to me before you break it. Do you mean to tell me you didn’t know that your own planet has ice caps?”

He shook his head.

“Didn’t they teach you anything in school?”

“I never went to school,” he said.

“That’s shameful. It’s time for your bath.”

He drew back, and I could tell he was thinking of running away again so I began to walk away from him.

In a moment he was beside me. “Can we look at Earth again after my bath?”

“Certainly,” I answered.

“How did you know I had my fingers crossed?”

I looked down at him.

“Because I used to be your age,” I said, and for the first time he smiled.

He hadn’t been taught geography, and he obviously had not been taught to bathe, either.

Soap was a foreign concept to him. He showed me a little safe pool naturally formed by a land cut in the river, and when I handed him soap he looked at it and frowned.

“What’s this?”

I showed him, washing my own paws in the water. “It makes you clean.”

He shrugged, and took the soap, for the next thirty minutes I waited patiently while he learned to bathe himself. When I handed him a towel he again frowned, but quickly caught on.

“What did you used to do?” I asked with a short laugh. “Shake yourself dry?”

“Something like that, in the sun” he answered, and I walked away to find him some clean clothing, admonishing him to wash his own in the river while I was gone.

When I returned I thought he was gone. The soap and towel were neatly laid out on the bank, along with his cleaned clothes. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know his name to call him.

But his head appeared as if by magic, just to my left, behind a low, wide rock.

“Another of your hiding places?” I asked, in jest.

“Yes,” he answered seriously, and after I handed him his new tunic and he emerged dressed in the overlarge garment I saw that there was indeed a hollow which had been carved out behind the rock, and that once entrenched he would be nearly invisible.

“How many hiding places do you have?”

“Hundreds,” he answered, without smiling.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I needed them.”

And then he would say no more, but pestered me to show him more of the sky.

Needless to say, when we mobilized to move the next day the little fellow, whose name was Darwin, was with us. The two scouts, Vilmos and Takrok, had returned during the night, and their report was not good. The bridge upriver had been destroyed, and there was no hope of crossing there. Also, they reported, there was now a F’rar outpost on the far side of the river, which regularly patrolled the banks, and that it was the vanguard of a larger army.

“Then we must travel down river, and take our chances,” Miklos reasoned.

Radion shook his head. “I don’t like it. We’re likely to meet Baldies, at best.”

Darwin had been standing close by me during this conversation, listening to it carefully. He seemed to have lost all of his fear of gypsies, and had even allowed Miklos to scoop him up, swing him high into the air and catch him, shouting, “Up with you, little fish! Down with you then! Ha!”

Radion and his brother went back and forth about strategy and possible crossing points, where the river was most narrow (but likely guarded by either F’rar or pirates) or wider (but certainly without boat or bridge).

Darwin suddenly spoke up, his voice sure and strong. “I know a way across.”

The two gypsy leaders stopped their discussion and turned to him.

“And how is that, little fish?” asked Miklos, kindly. “Do you mean for us to swim across?”

“Better than that. There’s a tunnel under the river, about a mile from here. The F’rar don’t know about it, so it hasn’t been blocked.” He pointed at Miklos. “You might have trouble getting through, though.”

“That still leaves the problem of the wagons and horses,” Radion said.

“There is a hidden pontoon boat on the other side. I know where it is,” Darwin said, matter-of-factly. “The F’rar are stupid, and missed many things.”

“They missed you, mountains be praised!” Miklos shouted, and scooped the little man up again, tossing him into the air and making him laugh.

Darwin was right. After a preliminary trip, made only by Radion, Darwin and myself, during which the boy and the gypsy king negotiated the tunnel while I waited for them to emerge on the other side, which they did, the entire camp prepared. It was early afternoon by the time we moved, and mid-afternoon by the time the crossing began.

Soon most of us had crossed, leaving a contingent on the other side with the wagons to wait for the promised pontoon craft. The tunnel was barely high enough to crawl through, but it was wide and well constructed. Radion’s only worry was that the crossing would not be made by nightfall.

“Then we will make the crossing at night!” Miklos, who was in a very good mood, boomed.

Darwin showed us the hidden pontoon, camouflaged in a stand of brush not forty feet from the water, and soon the rigging for the pull-boat had been strung across the water and the first crossing was made. The boat was not large, and one wagon at a time could cross, so it was indeed nearly dark by the time the last horse had been ferried over the deep water.

“I don’t want to stay here tonight,” Radion announced. He had been increasingly unhappy as the day went on.

Miklos laughed. “What are you worried about? Our King here has been getting progressively better with the sword. He will protect us all by himself!”

“Tamlos did not return from the west when he should have.”

“You know these scouts! They find something interesting, and they follow it!”

“I don’t like it,” Radion said, and his brother lost his smile. “You are never wrong with these feelings.”

“No.”

“Then we will travel by night.”

Radion nodded.

At that moment one of the other scouts, who had been one of the first to make his way through the tunnel, returned and spoke in a low, urgent voice to Radion, who nodded.

“It is already too late. Tamlos was captured by a F’rar patrol. He is dead. I’m sure he told them nothing. But the F’rar are coming this way, in force.”

“We can’t outrun them. Not with wagons,” Miklos observed.

“Even if we destroy the wagons, there are not enough horses.”

“No.”

Radion looked at me. “The King is our first priority. He will ride with the boy and you, Miklos.”

I started to open my mouth but Radion said, “You have no say in this. You are the most important thing.” The resolution in his voice quieted me.

Darwin looked at me strangely, but then he looked at Miklos and said, “I can hide all of us.”

Miklos looked down at him. “This is no time for jest, boy. You have helped us once but I doubt you can help us again.”

“We can hide, I tell you.”

“Where?” Miklos held his arms out, sweeping over the darkening plain we were on. Outside of a few stands of brush and high grass, there was nothing but prairie for miles.

Darwin turned to me. “Remember I told you I had hundreds of hiding places?”

“Yes.”

“Many of them are here. Some are big enough to hide a wagon, or a horse. If we scatter everything, then everything can be hidden.”

Another scout arrived, whispered frantically in Radion’s ear.

“We have two hours at most,” he announced.

“Then we should start now,” Darwin said evenly.

The boy was right. One of the largest hiding holes was not five yards from where we had stood discussing our fate. Some had trap doors covered with dry grass and dust; others were like the pontoon hiding place (which itself held one wagon and one horse, side by side) which were so well camouflaged that a man could walk within their confines and still not be discovered. Radion was at first skeptical, but when he saw the well-measured placement and sophistication of these hiding places he quickly assented, and we were hidden. At his insistence, the horses were muzzled, and placed with trusted companions who could handle them. All traces of our travel from the other side of the river were obliterated. It was as if we had never been there.

I found myself paired with Darwin in a shallow depression overlaid with a sturdy but light covering of stiff reeds, vines and branches. We lowered it upon ourselves and, if we lay on our bellies, we could out through a narrow slit.

Time passed slowly as we waited. For a while neither of us spoke, but rather studied the landscape before us, which provided a partial view to the west blocked by tufts of vegetation and one large junto tree.

Finally, when it became apparent that our pursuers had not yet arrived, and the night sounds of crickets and cawing birds became tiresome, I asked, “Darwin, who made all these hiding places? Surely you didn’t construct them all.”

“No. Many of them were here already, to guard against pirate raids and the like.”

“Why didn’t your family use them when the F’rar attacked?”

Still studying the available horizon, he answered, “There was no time. The F’rar came during the night, like lightning. They used airships. I was lucky to get away.”

“And your family?”

Now he looked at me, his near albino features barely visible in the deep darkness, and said, matter-of-factly, “Dead. There is a pile of bodies in a pit behind Seven Town, which the F’rar dug and then covered. Everyone is in there. My mother and sister, too.”

He looked out through the slit again.

“I lost a sister, too,” I said quietly.

Again the ghostly features turned toward me.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Sebastian.”

“I knew that. But who are you? I heard the fat one, Radion, call you King.”

“For now you can just call me Sebastian.”

The ghostly features turned back to the slit, and I saw him stiffen.

“I don’t hear –” I began, but he hushed me curtly.

“They’re coming.”

And then I did hear, a distant wash as of many boots tramping through dust, and the snort of horses which grew and grew in volume. And then they were among us, scouts first, passing like wraiths, some with lamps to study their way, which threw fitful shadows here and there.

And then came the army, for it must be that, a terrible roar of rhythmic marching–

“Get all the way down,” Darwin hissed, and I did so, in time to feel the tramp of feet on our stiffened covering which continued, by my count, for twenty minutes. There was only one pause, when I heard a distant shout of “Halt!” followed by muffled discourse between two voices, one of them shouting, the other clearly subservient.

“But you said–!” one voice insisted, and in answer the other said, “I thought . . .” and then the rest was lost to me. Then came a scream, single and piercing, and then silence. The feet above us moved slightly, side to side, as if impatient or uneasy.

Then the roar of a single voice: “MARCH!”

The feet moved on, and then, eventually, were gone.

At Darwin’s urging we stayed in the hole for another half hour, though before them I heard some of the gypsies emerging. “Fools,” Darwin hissed, and made me stay where I was.

“Lucky fools,” he spat as we finally emerged, to see the gypsy caravan fully engaged and ready to travel.

Radion approached. “There you are! I was beginning to worry!”

Miklos appeared beside him, laughing, and picked little Darwin up. “The little fish is a hero!”

“You should have stayed in your holes longer. They may have had trailing scouts.”

Miklos stopped laughing and held Darwin at arm’s length, studying him.

“The little fish is right,” he said, setting him down.

“There were no trailing scouts,” Radion said. “Our own scouts reported that.” He looked down at Darwin and then smiled. “But you are right,” he said.

“Will we travel tonight?” I asked.

“Yes,” Radion answered. “I want as much room as possible between ourselves and that army. We will travel tonight, and all day tomorrow.” He brightened. “But hopefully we will meet our brothers, then.”

“Who?” I asked.

Miklos laughed and began to speak, but Radion held his paw out for silence.

“We have brothers everywhere,” he said cryptically, and then motioned for the caravan to move.

I sat with Radion again, with little Darwin between us, and as we set off we approached a lone figure who looked to be sleeping, curled up on the ground in the dark. But as we passed it I saw that it was a F’rar soldier, dressed in red tunic and black slick boots, his own scabbard empty, his own sword thrust into his middle and out the back, his paws locked around the hilt as if, even in death, trying to draw it out.

Twenty

When we finally stopped the next day, in late afternoon, it was from wariness, not weariness. Radion, after becoming increasingly dour throughout the day, threw up his hand as we reached the throat of a deep valley between two steep bluffs.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“We should have met up with them by now. At least their scouts.”

His own scouts had been bringing negative reports for hours, and he now studied the two high bluffs ahead of us, and the land between them. The mountains in the distance were noticeably closer, looming in the distance like cool, mighty, tall and silent gods. I could almost feel the chill of their icy summits now. And just behind them, peeking like a sullen giant, the frosted caldera of Mount Olympus.

Darwin asked, “Where did these people live?”

Radion looked at him in surprise. “They are nomads, like us. They are led by our little brother, Jamos. He is not a fool. If anything, he is smarter than Miklos and I combined. He will be a better teacher than Miklos in swordplay.”

Darwin himself was studying our surroundings, and nodded sagely as he listened.

“Was he subject to betrayal?”

“Never!”

Darwin said nothing, but climbed down from the wagon, as others were now doing.

“What will we do?”

“I don’t know,” Radion said. “Jamos was to take us through the mountains. But now . . .”

Miklos joined them, and they began a spirited discussion.

I climbed down and stretched. It felt good to have my boots on the ground once more. Already cook fires were springing up along the line of the caravan, as we hadn’t eaten more than jerky in nearly a day.

I looked for Darwin, but he was nowhere to be found. But then the scent of roasting fowl caught my attention, and I wandered down the line in that direction, toward Tyron , drawn by hunger and a need to learn more about his use of spices.

The meal was a good one, and I could even claim to have contributed to it, and near its end, when I began to belch with gratitude, as was the gypsy custom, I thought again of Darwin.

He was not at any of the cook fires, as I expected. I thought perhaps he had gone off to a quiet spot to curl up and sleep. I searched under the wagon and in them, but he was nowhere nearby.

And then I saw a distant small white figure being led back to camp by one of Radion’s scouts.

I met up with them as they reached the gypsy leader, just finishing his own meal. He stood, wiping his mouth with a paw, and let out a long, low belch of his own.

“What’s wrong?” he said to the scout, who held the protesting Darwin by the arm, giving him a good shake now and then.

“I caught him behind the right bluff, trying to dig a hole! He had a long stick and was turning over the soil! I tell you, he was trying to hide!”

“Is that so?” Radion asked the little fellow. “Were you trying to hide from us?”

“No. I found them,” he said simply.

“Let him go, Nikko,” Radion said to the scout, who instantly obliged.

Darwin rubbed his arm. “You hurt me,” he said to Nikko. There was a savage look in his eyes.

Nikko laughed, and wiggled his fingers in front of the boy. “Perhaps I will eat you!” he laughed. “Since you think that’s what we do!”

“Stop this foolishness,” Radion ordered. To Darwin he said, “Tell me what you were doing.”

“I told you: I found them.”

“Who?”

“Your brother and his people. They’re buried behind the right bluff. Just like my mother and sister.”

Radion stared at him, and then said quietly, to Nikko, “Get Miklos. We will see if this is true.”

In short order our party, which had grown to most of the camp, made its way to the spot Darwin indicated. They had proper tools with them, and soon the pit had been uncovered, revealing the bodies of nearly a hundred gypsies.

Radion fell to his knees in front of the hole and wept. “Jamos! My little brother! How could this happen!”

He banged his paws on the ground, while Miklos, his face suffused with cold fire, stood beside him.

“When do you think this happened?” he asked.

Nikkos climbed up out of the grave, giving Darwin an odd look as he did so.

“Days.”

Miklos nodded. “And no doubt who did it?”

Nikkos shook his head. “We found F’rar trinkets and weapons in the hole.

“Give them a proper burial,” Miklos ordered, and Radion, recovered, stood beside him.

“Our brother is dead!” he said.

“Yes,” Miklos answered, his visage still locked as stone. “And he will be avenged.”

The ceremony was a simple one, with individual graves replacing the mass one they had suffered. This was not the elaborate Moon Ceremony of One and his people. They were nomads, with no homeland, and would be buried with honor where they had fallen. Even their brother Jamos was accorded no more honor than the others. They did not own the land, but used it while alive, Radion explained, but now the land owned them and used them. It was a fair bargain, and every gypsy expected it in the end.

“And now we must talk, my King,” Radion said to me, after the ceremony. He drew me aside, away from the others, and sat across from me. He showed none of the superiority of our earlier meetings – in fact, I was uncomfortable with his inferior attitude.

“You must understand something,” he began. “There is only one thing more important to a gypsy than allegiance, and that is blood. It is the only thing, by gypsy law, that can allow a man to break his solemn oath. And this is what I must do.

“My brother must be avenged. My brother and I, and my people, must find the F’rar who did this thing, and pay them in kind. There can be no discussion.”

He looked embarrassed, and looked at the ground for a moment. His deep voice had taken on a measure of sadness that made it sound funereal. “It is for this reason that I cannot take you through the mountains, as I promised One.”

“I will go with you,” I said.

He shook his head. “This is not possible. I vowed to put you in a position to infiltrate the F’rar, and I will do that. This vow I cannot break. It would have been easier for you if I brought you across the mountains so that you could mingle with their rear elements. What I must now do is bring you to the outskirts of Robinson City and leave you there. My scouts tell me that it is well stocked with F’rar stragglers at the moment.”

“Then this is what we will do,” I said, trying to make it easy for him.

His eyes found mine. “I don’t think you quite understand, my King. Your task will be harder.”

“Then I will do what needs to be done.”

“I will not forget this.”

I gave him an ironic smile. “And you see? Your fortune telling cards were wrong. We will part ways, and you will still be alive.”

He didn’t smile. “When my task is done, I will find you again. And then we will see.”

“I have much to thank you for, Radion.”

He suddenly fell to the ground, and took my paw in both of his own. “My King! I have lost a little brother, but I feel as if I have been given one in return!”

I was touched, and didn’t know what to say. He looked up into my eyes and vowed: “When Jamos is avenged, I will return to you.”

“I will go with you,” Darwin said.

“You must stay with Radion and Miklos. You will be safer with them.”

“I don’t want to be safe. I want to help my King.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “You heard my conversation with Radion?”

The slightest of smiles came to his lips. “I was not four feet away, hiding. It is the kind of talent you can use. And besides,” he boasted, “I can help you with your cooking, whatever that’s for. I’ve been hiding close by during your lessons with Tyron.” He shrugged. “I will follow you anyway. No one here can stop me.”

I considered this. “You must realize, Darwin, that we will be going to a dangerous place, and that we must pretend to be F’rar.”

He nodded.

“And you must also realize that if we are caught they will torture us, or worse.”

Again he nodded.

“And still you want to come with me?”

“If I stay with Radion,” he explained, “I will get to see the F’rar who murdered his brother, and my family, brought to ground. I could tell by the signs I found that they are the same. But if I stay with you I may get to see the whole F’rar army destroyed. This is what I want. And besides,” he added, “you’ve already used the word ‘we.’ Which means you’ve made up your mind that I can come.”

I was not surprised to learn that only Miklos would accompany Darwin and me to the outskirts of Robinson. Radion and the rest would begin the track the F’rar who had murdered Jamos. This meant an imminent parting. I went up and down the caravan, saying good-bye to my gypsy friends, and was surprised at the outpouring of emotion. Many cried, and clutched my paws and kissed them, or gave me huge bear hugs before kissing me on either cheek.

“Miss you!” the thin cook Tyron, always at a loss for words, cried, dropping his wooden spoon to embrace me. “Good student!” He fumbled something into my tunic, explaining, “Spices.”

And then it was time to say good-bye to Radion. I put out my paw but he took me in the roughest of hugs and said into my ear with emotion, “We gypsies have a saying: ‘there are no good-byes.’ So I will not give you one now.” He gave me an impassioned kiss on my cheek, presented me with his spyglass as a present, and let me go.

“Ride,” he said to Miklos, and we mounted our horses and turned to the north.

Twenty One

After a two day ride, during which Miklos said barely a word, we saw Robinson City rise on the horizon.

“It doesn’t look like much,” I said, studying the skyline with the spyglass that Radion had presented me with.

Miklos humphed. “It isn’t. It is little more than a pigsty, packed with pigs. The river men come here to gamble and comport with women, and the women come here to get rich by taking their money from the gambling tables or in bed. There is little in the way of law here, and now that is in F’rar hands.” He made a sour face. “I was here years ago, and didn’t like it. Thin pickings.”

“I take it your own pickpocketing and fortune telling didn’t do well, then?” I teased.

He looked at me, and snorted again.

We rode another hour, and the town’s silhouette grew: a few tall buildings, dark colored and mean looking, and clusters of squatter structures.

When we reached a copse of junto trees, within hailing distance of the front gate, Miklos said, “This is far enough for me, my King.”

He removed a bundle from his pack and tossed it to me. Inside was a red tunic, along with a belt, scabbard and sword.

“From the unlucky fellow who told his F’rar commander that we were near the river. If you need the sword, I have taught you enough to get by. You are not as bad as you think. There is also food enough for two days in there.”

I studied the now-clean sword, and the large hole in the chest of the tunic which had been sewed.

“It will get you inside the gates. Pretend the little fish is your prisoner, or your little brother. Whatever you wish.” For the first time since we had discovered his brother Jamos, he showed a smile. “I would prefer prisoner.”

Darwin narrowed his eyes at the giant.

“And now,” Miklos said, reigning his horse around, “I will take my leave. But not before wishing you the luck of the gypsies. It is powerful luck, my King.” Again he smiled. “It may even rub off on the little fish!”

He kicked his horse, and was gone, the way we had come.

Through the trees ahead of us I eyed the gate of the city of Robinson, just visible. There was a guardhouse and a barrier.

I climbed down from my horse and donned the crimson F’rar tunic, which fit well enough. When the scabbard and blade were in place, I remounted my horse.

“Are you ready?” I asked Darwin, who nodded.

I took a deep breath and said, “Then let’s go.”

To my surprise, the guard barely looked at us as I rode by his mean hut, and the barrier, which was a vertical post worked by way of a rope pull, was raised without a word.

And then we were in Robinson, which was dirtier and viler looking than it had looked from the horizon. The main street, for there was only one with a network of alleys, was a muddy mess, red and viscous looking. Abandoned wagons were stuck in it up to their wheel hubs. Our boots were immediately covered in the muck, and we quickly learned that there were safe places to walk, as well as the other kind. Boards were laid over this quagmire in front of establishments, and for the most part the interesting citizenry of Robinson kept to these walkways.

The tallest building, which I had seen from a distance as a mud-colored spire, proved to be a saloon and boarding house. It had been appropriated by the F’rar, so we avoided it. I instead entered a building across the street, which itself looked to be hiding in the shadows. There was sawdust on the floor, and a bar the length of the small room. Behind it was a bored looking fellow wearing a filthy apron that might once have been white. He was smoking a long-stemmed briar pipe and nodding over a newspaper which lay open on the bar before him. A lone customer at the far end looked asleep, head resting on his folding arms, eyes closed.

“A room?” I asked, trying to sound gruff.

The barkeep didn’t even look up from his paper.

“Hour, day or week?” he asked, puffing his pipe.

“Day.”

“That’d be two, both in advance,” he said, still not meeting my eye. But I felt eyes on me, and looked down the bar to see the asleep customer eyeing me, though his head still rested on the bar.

I put down the money and waited for a key, but the barkeep, still without looking up from his paper, jerked the thumb of his paw upward.

“Twelve,” he said, smoke rising in a perfect circle from his pipe bowl.

I looked down the bar and saw that the resting customer looked to be asleep again.

In room number twelve upstairs, which proved to have only an inside lock, which I enabled, I quickly stripped off the F’rar tunic. Darwin was trying to look out of the room’s window, which was coated in dust on the inside and grime on the outside, and proved to be immovable. Finally he found a merely occluded patch, and stood eyeing this way and that.

“Nothing unusual on the street,” he reported. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a visit from that paying customer downstairs.”

“You noticed him looking at us?”

“It’s a common saloon trick,” Darwin said breezily. “The reason the barkeep can act so nonchalant is that the customer, who also works in the bar, is his eyes and ears. Anything bad starts to happen and the customer gives the word. Then the barkeep, still acting nonchalant, reached casually under the bar and takes out his length of pipe or firearm. It happened in River Town all the time.”

I must have been regarding him with interest, because he beamed. “I told you I would come in handy.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

He continued to squint through the cloudy opening in the window. “This place is nothing but a larger version of River Town. And I noticed some good hiding places on the way in, if we need them.”

“Good.”

He turned from the window. “What will we do now?”

“We’ll try to hire ourselves on to the rear of the F’rar army, which is spread between here and halfway to Olympus Mons. That group we hid from the other night was only part of the F’rar rear guard. I’m sure they’re always in need of a good cook or two.”

“Ah, hence the lessons.” He went back to the window.

“See anything now?” I asked.

“That fellow who was asleep at the bar is now talking to two F’rar officers outside in the street.”

“Good,” I said.

Leaving the tunic and sword behind, and bringing only our backpacks, we unlocked the door, slipped out of the room, and made our way down the hall in the opposite direction from the stairway we had used to get up here.

The hallway turned, and then ended in another short passage and a door, which opened into an empty room identical to the one we had just left.

“No back staircase,” I said in alarm.

“Then we’ll make our own,” Darwin replied calmly.

Quick as a rabbit, Darwin tried the smudged window in the room. It opened a crack, and then stuck. I helped, with my own meager strength, and we were able to nudge it open halfway before it stuck for good.

“We’ll just have to get through,” Darwin said, peering out into a side alley. He moved to the single bed in the room, and tore off the sheets, knotting two of them together while I moved the bed itself next to the window. Darwin tied one end of the makeshift rope to the bedstead and dangled the other out the window.

We heard steps coming down the hall toward us.

“You first,” Darwin said, and, gripping the sheets, I squeezed myself with some effort through the narrow opening and then found myself dangling in midair.

Darwin’s face appeared above me. “Climb down!”

I edged my way down, as the little fellow clambered out of the window like a monkey above me. Suddenly I felt the sheet begin to rip in my hands, and my downward progress was accelerated.

I hit the ground with a thump, a torn sheet in my hands.

Above me Darwin was dangling, a good fifteen feet up.

I braced myself, and he jumped, landing in my arms and then knocking me down.

Someone shouted, “Hey! You!” above us as we struggled to our feet and ran off.

At the mouth of the alley I started to halt, but Darwin said, “This way!” and I followed him to the right, away from the rooming house. The few citizens on the street stopped to stare at us, until Darwin growled at them. Three buildings down we slowed our pace, and I looked back to see the barkeep just emerging from the rooming house.

“In here,” I said, pulling Darwin into a dry goods store which we were passing.

We pretended to shop for thirty minutes, looking over skeins of yarn, garden rakes, mulling over tins of flour and salt, taking turns to wander unobtrusively to the front of the shop and study the street outside. Finally, when the proprietor, a short fellow with huge white whiskers and a lisp, began to pester me about buying something, I knew it was time to leave.

As we strolled toward the open door someone entered who froze me in place.

“Charlotte!”

There was no place to hide, and I stared at the face I had grown up with, now not on the body of a kit anymore but a mature feline form. It was as if another life had suddenly crashed into me from above. The many weeks that had passed since I was spirited away to Olympus Mons were just a blink of time, and once again I was back in the palace, a skinny, weak, misfit youngster watching someone from afar, someone who I had always loved and who had finally, after the years of pestering and kit-like pranks, told me she loved me too.

“Charlotte,” I said again, in a whisper, and she was as dumbstruck and frozen as I.

Twenty Two

“We can’t stay here,” she whispered frantically, turning to look behind her. “My father is right behind me, talking to two soldiers in the street.”

The short proprietor was waddling over to us, his whiskers twitching with a life of their own. When he saw Charlotte he brightened with recognition.

“Why, it’s so nice to see you–!”

Charlotte manufactured a smile for him and said brightly, “Please tell my father I’ve gone to Smalley’s with friends!”

He continued to beam, and bowed. “Very well, Lady Misst –”

“Thank you, Willis!” she said.

She brushed past him before he could react, pulling me after and eyeing Darwin, who followed. Quickly, she dashed through the aisles, into the back room and out a side door, which left us in yet another alley.

“Move quickly,” she ordered, and we followed to the back street. We moved over and around and through piles of rubbish. I hesitated as we crossed the rear of the rooming house, but Charlotte turned and admonished, “Hurry!”

Finally, Charlotte disappeared into the mouth of a yawning opening of what looked like a dilapidated barn. I followed, but Darwin held back.

“What is it?”

He disappeared, and I called after him but then Charlotte was back, pulling me into the gloom.

It had been a barn, but now was some sort of storage area. Rusting machinery, old tractors and moldering bales of hay lay about in haphazard fashion. The front of the barn, I saw, was closed and barred from the inside.

Charlotte had stopped behind a hollowed out area walled in on all sides. She turned to face me.

“We’re safe here,” she said. “This is where my friends and I come to smoke cigarettes and be alone.” She stared at me until I became uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?”

She continued to stare at me, and then she almost fell into my arms. I felt hot tears on my shoulder, and she was trembling.

“This must be a dream,” she said. “And I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”

“So have you. And it isn’t a dream.”

“They told us you were dead.”

“Who?”

She slowly broke the embrace. “Don’t you know what’s been happening? That my fool clan is in control of almost all of Mars?”

“What are you doing here, Charlotte?”

“My father is governor of this province. Frane herself gave him the appointment. And when . . .”

I waited for her to continue.

She looked at me, and burst into tears again.

“No, no, this can’t be happening. When they find you they’ll execute you, and then I’ll be alone again, really alone . . .”

I reached for her but she shook her head, sobbing. Suddenly she looked into my eyes. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to stop Frane.”

“Are you mad? She’ll be at Olympus Mons in a week, at the head of the biggest army ever seen on Mars. Everything left of the Second Republic is in Olympus Mons, and when it’s gone . . .”

Still sobbing, she let me embrace her, and I tried to soothe her. “It’s simple, Charlotte,” I said. “I’m not going to let it happen.”

In a moment she broke free of me, as if she had had a sudden thought.

“I must go,” she said, composing herself. “My father will check on me at Smalley’s. Stay here until tonight. I’ll bring food.”

I nodded. “All right.”

She rushed to me, and pressed her lips to mine.

“I’ll never let you go again,” she said fiercely.

And then she was gone.

I heard a noise in the rafters above me.

“Yech,” Darwin said, shimmying down a rope from a rafter nearly directly above.

“You saw that?”

“All too much of it,” he said, making a disgusted face. Then he became serious. “That kissing business isn’t for me. Can we trust her?”

“Of course.”

“We can always go on our own. There’s a contingent of F’rar replacements leaving tomorrow, and they’re looking for cooks. We could sign on.”

“How do you know this?”

“While you were smooching, I was walking the street. It’s easy to hide in this town, if you know how, and it’s easy to find out what’s what. I watched a couple of soldiers playing dice, and found out in five minutes everything I needed to know.”

“You’re a good fellow.”

He nodded. “And I can tell you that your Charlotte at least didn’t lie about this barn. It’s locked in the front and almost never used. A good hiding place.”

“We’ll wait for her tonight, then.”

“Fine. But I’ll be ready to run if I see any more mushy stuff.”

He made mock kissing noises, and moved away deftly, laughing, when I tried to swat him.

I arose from a deep and pleasant dream, in which Charlotte and I were reunited, and finally married, and she was my Queen and we lived in the palace in Wells with a kit of our own. I didn’t want to leave it. But someone was whispering in my ear, and shaking me, and the dream dissolved around my head and I smelled old hay and rust.

I opened my eyes.

“I thought you’d never wake up!” Darwin admonished. “It’s nearly midnight, and your girlfriend hasn’t showed up. They’re still enlisting cooks in the Army. I think we should go.”

Still bleary from sleep, I uncurled and sat up. “She hasn’t come?”

“No.”

The dream was gone, a thousand shards dissipating to nothing.

“If we’re going to enlist, we have to do it now! They leave at dawn!”

I stared at the opening at the back of the barn, filled only with night.

“I suppose you’re right, Darwin.”

“Good. Then let’s be off. I’ll go ahead and sign us up.”

“Fine.”

He left, and as I gathered up my things and prepared to leave, Charlotte was there, filling the doorway not with darkness but with the light of my dream.

She hurried in, her arms laden with a basket overflowing with food.

“I couldn’t get away until father went to sleep,” she explained. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m thankful you came.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll be gone tomorrow morning.”

She nodded sadly. “If you stay in Robinson you’ll be caught. I know it. This is a dangerous place, too small to hide in.” She looked into my eyes. “Let me go with you.”

“You know that’s impossible. Your father would send people after you, and then both of us would be taken.”

She was looking past me, as if trying to see part of my recent dream. I took her in my arms and kissed her.

“You must go soon.”

When the kiss ended she looked into my eyes as if she were looking into my soul. “I love you, Sebastian.”

“I’ve always loved you.”

“We are betrothed, and someday we will be married,” she whispered in my ear, after a long time. “I know it.”

“Yes.”

And then I said nothing, but kissed her again, before she had to leave.

In the morning she was gone, but Darwin was there, with the rising sun.

“Get moving,” he said. “We have to join the camp in twenty minutes, or they’ll leave without us.”

“You signed us up?”

“They were desperate for anyone who can cook anything at all. All of the real cooks have long since fled the area, or are dead. Believe me, we qualify. I told them you’re my big brother.”

I smiled. “Good enough.”

“And where is the Missy?” he asked, with mock innocence.

“You weren’t –”

“I stayed away until I saw her leave.”

“I didn’t tell you yesterday, but we are betrothed.”

His eyes widened in astonishment. “You know who her father is?”

“I know her father. He is a traitor, but she is not. And she is smart enough to stay behind.” Feeling suddenly weary, and tired of explaining myself, I snapped, “Let’s go,” and pushed past the little fellow, out into the daylight, which, without Charlotte, looked sallow and empty.

He hurried after, and showed me the way.

Twenty Three

Ours was a ragtag army, to be sure.

Though fourteen hundred strong, this was worse than a rear guard. Composed of conscripted old men and mere boys, as well as a sprinkling of F’rar reservists and one cruel but stupid lieutenant who, it was rumored, had been a major but been caught with the wrong general’s wife, it was a desultory lot at best. There were not enough uniforms – and second-hand ones, at that – to go around, and many of our group marched in their work or farm clothes. Moral, as well as discipline, was poor, though the occasional flogging administered by Lieutenant Cleft, two the first day, kept things in some sort of order.

Darwin and I quickly learned that besides our cooking chores, we were expected to pilfer, as this army had very little in the way of provisions. The occasional abandoned (or not) farmhouse was quickly emptied of any eggs and chickens on hand, and after a few days Darwin especially was very good at learning which roots were edible and which to avoid. I had to warn him not to get too good at what we were doing, for it seemed that our own cook lines grew daily, a measure of how bad the rest of the food was. I learned to use Tyron’s gift of spices sparingly. No one bothered us as long as we did our jobs and kept providing something – anything – for these unfortunate fellows to eat.

But this poor state of affairs did not last long, and within a week, when we had reached the rear of the real army, I began to realize how Frane was able to keep her iron grip on her army. It was a cruelly gray day, with cold rain in the morning which made slick red mud in the afternoon under slate colored clouds and what I thought was the distant boom of thunder.

I soon learned otherwise.

Cleft himself came slowly down our line, reviewing his “troops.” He was a short feline with a jutting jaw and chest, and a curious bald spot on his head over his right ear. His fur was as dark gray as the day itself, and his piggishly small eyes swept over us as he walked, paws behind his back. Here and there a cat would be pulled from the line as Cleft pointed to him, and hustled away.

I tried to look straight ahead when he passed, but he caught my eye, pointed, and said, “Him. And the little runt, too. They’re the cooks, right?”

His adjutant, a toady in an overlarge red tunic, said, in a mewling voice, “Yes, Lieutenant. The best ones.”

“Shouldn’t we keep the best ones?” Cleft asked, turning a beady eye on the adjutant.

“Well, ah . . . General Soames asked for our best.”

At the mention of the general’s name Cleft stiffened. “It’s Soames we serve now?”

“Ah, um, yes, Lieutenant, and I thought you would want to please the general and give him what he requests –”

“Enough! Take them,” Cleft snapped, and moved on, as Darwin and I were pulled roughly from the line and put with the other choices. As our group grew, I noticed that there was a new man in charge of us, with a proper uniform on, a crisp crimson tunic and spit shined boots untouched by mud; he stayed on a small dais that had been provided for him and looked us over as if we were germs under a microscope. His horse, a beautiful jet black, brushed and groomed, stood tethered next to him on its own platform.

No filth for this fellow, and when I caught Darwin’s eye he nodded.

“Quite the soldier,” Darwin whispered.

“Silence in the ranks!” a stout sergeant who had appeared roared. “Silence in the ranks or we’ll beat you all black and blue!”

That quieted Darwin, and everyone else.

After an hour of standing like cattle, we were formed into ranks and marched out. I noticed the officer climb his mount without touching the ground, and the horse moved forward reluctantly into the mud, with the officer offering it words of affection.

The man next to me sniggered at this sight, and the sergeant was instantly at his elbow.

“You find something amusing?” he roared into the suddenly frightened feline’s ear.

“N-N-No!” the man stammered.

“Just what are you?” the sergeant insisted.

“C-C-Carpenter, sir!”

The sergeant leaned closer. “Which paw do you hold your hammer in?”

“W-W-What?”

“I said: which paw do you hold your hammer in?”

The line had stopped, but the officer in charge, I noted, rode demurely on, ignoring the commotion behind him.

The man next to me stuttered: “L-L-Left, sir!”

“I’m not a sir, I’m a sergeant! Show me your right paw!”

The man held out his trembling right paw.

With a swift, grunting but smooth motion, the sergeant drew out his sword and brought it swiftly down in a blinding arc, cutting off the man’s right paw.

The fellow screamed, watching his severed paw fall to the ground.

“You’re still a left-pawed carpenter!” the sergeant screamed, wiping his bloody sword on the man’s dirty tunic and then sheathing it.

The wounded carpenter fell to one knee, mewling.

“Medic!” the sergeant ordered in a matter-of-fact voice, and in a moment a white-smocked doctor appeared.

“Patch him up, and get him ready for service,” the sergeant ordered, walking away.

As he reached the front of the column he screamed, “March!”

We had soon caught up to the riding officer, who never once turned around. I now had a new man marching beside me.

Ahead of me, Darwin turned quickly around, and caught my eye, and looked, for the first time since I had met him, frightened.

We passed other examples of Frane’s terror – felines strung up on high poles, lashed tight, begging for water. To either side of the muddy road, the poles were spaced in equal lengths as far as the eye could see. Some were empty, some held half-decayed dead bodies which were picked at by hovering carrion birds.

Once, our sergeant walked down our line and shouted, “Most of these fellows were local gentry, some former soldiers like yourselves who sought a new life. Well, you can see they’ve found a new life! Don’t let it be yours! It’s up to you!”

The day darkened, and rain came, chilled and dripping, and I watched while some of the strung-up prisoners turned their mouths upward, trying to catch a few beads of moisture in their parched mouths. I became used to the sound of mewling wails, and begging for death.

Somewhere toward the end of the day, as the gray sky was beginning to darken, the sergeant once again walked down the line, pulling out a man here, one there. He plucked Darwin out, and then myself.

“Cooks, correct?” he snapped, and we nodded and followed him.

There were twelve of us, and the others were eventually taken away, leaving only Darwin and I.

The sergeant became almost effusive. “An army marches on its stomach – you’ve heard that, I suppose? Well, you’re lucky fellows. You may be lucky enough to eat some of the Captain’s leavings – after you’ve cooked them for him, of course.” He gave a short laugh, which soured. “The rest of us will be eating the normal filth.”

We stopped in front of a tent which had been erected, four-cornered, feline-high, with a fringed awning, striped in red and white and clean as snow. The sergeant saluted the junior officer guarding it and turned abruptly, leaving us.

“Follow,” the junior officer said languidly. Without waiting for a response he turned and we went after him to another tent, this one open-sided, which had been erected a short distance away. We followed him out of the rain and were warmed by a long brazier filled with newly burning coals. Next to it was a table piled with small plucked birds. I counted twenty.

“The captain would like these roasted, but not dry. Vegetables will be brought later. His guests will arrive at seven sharp, and they will want to eat immediately.

“What time is it now?” I asked innocently.

“I have no idea,” he said, without looking at me, and walked out.

“You have a little more than an hour,” a voice now said, in a bland tone, and Darwin and I turned to see a rail-thin female enter the tent. Her face was a taut as her words were terse. “The vegetables will be boiled, but I’ll attend to most of that.”

“You are?” I asked.

“Your boss,” she answered, a flicker of fire lighting up her eyes above her unsmiling mouth.

“Of course,” I said.

Darwin had already begun attending to the fowl, and I joined him.

The sergeant had been correct – we did get to share in the meal, if only to lick the bones that were returned on the greasy plates. Nine officers, at least one of them of high rank, who I found out later was General Soames himself, had entered the Captain’s tent. They were fatter when they emerged, hours later, after much wine had been served. The laughter, I noted, got louder and more raucous as the evening wore on and more wine was opened. In the wee hours of the morning it was over, and Darwin and I were allowed to sleep, under the cook tent and out of the rain, which was a blessing, in the shadow of the cleaned plates and warm coals of the dying fire.

The next morning I was awakened in the bare light of dawn by the toe of a polished black boot which nudged me as if I were a dog.

“You,” a voice said, flatly.

I uncurled and stretched, yawning, as I got up to face the junior officer.

I stood at attention, but he said, almost yawning, “You needn’t do that. The captain would like his breakfast early today. Keisha will show you.”

He began to saunter off. “By the way,” he called back, “the Captain sends his compliments to the cook for last evening’s meal.”

I turned to see Keisha, our boss, staring at me. “You don’t know how good that is for you,” she said.

“How so?”

“He hates everything.”

She would say no more, but Darwin, risen at the prod of my own boot, less clean but more kind, helped me cook a small mountain of eggs and a small trough of hog bacon, while the sun came up, and the mud dried around us.

We found things relatively easier after that.

The march continued for three days. Everywhere, evidence of Frane’s iron hand was obvious – burned houses, decimated countryside, knots of huddled, scared refugees with nowhere to go and no one to help them. A knot formed in my stomach at such sights, and I secretly cursed my powerlessness to do anything for them. When I could, I left scraps of discarded meals behind with our refuse, so that they might pick through the leavings and at least find something, however meager, to eat. Even this was dangerous, I knew, but I could not help myself, my growing fury was so strong.

It became evident that we were moving deeper into a great army. Keisha became more talkative as the days wore on, and told us that scuttlebutt had it that we were heading almost to the front. In the far distance, I saw the frosted caldera of Mount Olympus begin to dominate the horizon. The mountains we were supposed to traverse with Radion and the gypsies – a trip which would have saved us this tedious march – lay like worshiping foothills to the right of its base.

The great volcano grew daily larger, and it seemed like years since I had left it with Quiff, in his vessel beneath the ocean.

And now, from that far horizon nearly to my feet, I saw nothing but an unbroken sea of red tunics.

Our captain’s appetite only grew as we neared the front, and the provisions became better. I could tell because the wines were no longer local, but the best imported ones. As the sergeant had said, an army does indeed march on its stomach, but this stomach was well fed off the plunder of an entire planet.

The quality of his visitors grew, also (Keisha informed me that the captain was known throughout the F’rar army for his hospitality) and we began to be visited by top-level officers, some of them rumored to be at the right hand of Frane herself. Darwin and I were now but two of eight personal cooks – or chefs, as we were now instructed to call ourselves. We wore white blouses and crisp white caps that were never to be soiled with grease. As with everything in the F’rar army, there was a penalty for this – I watched our newest chef being flogged within an inch of his life for wearing a spotted tunic. That the spots had been produced by a drunk officer tipping his plate against the poor feline as the plate was being held out for a second helping made no difference. There were now three red and white striped tents, one of them a grand affair fit for a circus. It was the day this monstrosity was installed in the midst of our camp that Keisha informed us that we would be serving a very special guest that evening.

“Prepare yourselves to be extra diligent tonight – if you want to keep your skins,” she said wryly to our assembly. “And you, Darwin,” she said pointedly to my little friend, “be sure your cap is straight on your head – no cocky tilt. I guarantee you someone will notice.”

“Who’s coming?” a voice said from behind me, and I cringed, because it was the kind of question that could bring violence.

But Keisha merely smiled enigmatically. “Just do your jobs. And you,” she said to me, dismissing the rest, “I want to speak to.”

Fear clutched my heart momentarily, but it quickly dissipated when she kept her wry smile. We had not become close in the last weeks, but her harshness had somewhat softened toward Darwin and I. I could not account for it, since we were only little better than adequate cooks and often needed her expert help – but perhaps it was just that, that we asked for assistance when it was needed, instead of floundering like fools and making mistakes, which inevitably caused more trouble in the end. Or perhaps it was that we did as we were told, and were quiet about it.

“Sebastian,” she said, and to my surprise she put a friendly paw around my shoulder and squeezed, “we will indeed have a very special guest tonight, and I would like you to assist me directly. You and I will serve the main table. I trust I can count on you to do what needs to be done?”

“Of course,” I said, forcing a measure of enthusiasm into my voice.

“Good. We will prepare all afternoon, and the fires must be ready by twilight.

“As you wish.”

She gave my shoulder a second squeeze, and let me go. “Good. You know, I learned almost everything from my husband, before he died.”

“Oh?” I said, noncommittal. This was a strange conversation that was growing stranger by the minute, as Keisha seemed to be staring off into space. In fact, in the time that I had known her, this was the first time I had ever seen her almost . . . at peace.

“May I go?” I offered meekly.

She looked at me from faraway, as if I had never been there, and said with a slight smile, “Of course. Be here in mid afternoon.”

I bowed, and left.

The preparations for our special visit began long before mid afternoon. I had never seen so many guards in my life, and then some of the so-called “foreign dignitaries,” a few of whom I vaguely remembered as visitors to the palace – mostly second functionaries to senators who had probably been murdered by now – began to arrive. Darwin, ever thoughtful, whispered to me as we stacked firewood, “Are you afraid you might be recognized?” but I shook my head.

“The last time I saw any of these men I was barely a kit,” I said.

“You act like barely a kit now,” he snorted, and then dodged the playful swipe I aimed at his head.

And then, at dusk, a hush that made the fur on the back of my neck stand on end came over the entire camp. It was like the hush of dark angels, and a long, sleek motorcar, the first I had seen in months, steam pushing from its rear exhaust, its body crimson as blood, drew up to the main tent, where the Captain waited, bowing from the waist like a manservant. The door on the far side of the vehicle opened, and I saw something red and tall emerge, immediately surrounded by bodyguards, and hustled into the open flap of the tent as the Captain still bowed . . .

“Merciful heavens,” Darwin said, beside me.

“Frane,” I breathed, and it was a breath that seemed to drift through the entire camp at once, becoming louder than a whisper:

Frane.

Frane herself, the root of all our pain, of all the suffering of our poor planet, the architect of the ruins of the second republic, and the first before it, the cause of everything evil on Mars and in my own family and the families of millions of my people.

I could not breathe; could not move a muscle – it was as if every breath I had taken, each tick of my life’s clock which had been counted, had all led to this moment.

Keisha stood before me. “So. Now you know who our esteemed visitor is.”

I looked up at her, and said nothing. I could not speak, and already the magnitude of what I must do was dawning on me.

“You have work to do,” Keisha said, with amazing kindness, and the strangest look in her eye, and I said, “Yes.”

We cooked, and plated, and served.

There were fourteen courses, and four mail courses. The pheasants were the most tender I had ever seen, brought in by airship, I was informed, precisely for the Queen. Her taster, an oily fellow with yellow eyes and bad breath, stood by my elbow as I cooked and watched everything that went into the preparation. He insisted on tasting each spice (some of them Tyron’s) before I used it, and his greasy finger often reached out to scrape the skin of a cooked goose and dab into its sauce, still hot in the pan, and then put it obscenely into his mouth.

“I would rather die here, than at her feet,” he said, and somehow made it sound dirty.

Keisha pushed him aside, and plated the Queen’s food herself as he watched with loathsome, hungry eyes.

“You will serve with me, Sebastian,” she said, and I noted that she had primped herself and smelled of perfume. Her white blouse was crisp and starched and unblemished. She looked ten years younger.

The taster struck out his finger and dabbed again at the sauce which Keisha pooled around the perfect pheasant. I now held a platter of tiny asparagus tips which looked too good to eat.

“Good,” he said.

“Then get out of our way,” Keisha ordered, and he did so, trailing behind us like a slathering pet.

A slit-eyed phalanx of guards parted before the tent flap, which opened before us as if by magic. The sound increased ten-fold. There were bright lights at the far end of the tent, and a bevy of performers – two jugglers and three tumblers whose acts intertwined. There was loud music, flutes and a booming drum. Again I thought of the circus.

We wove through the sea of tables, and now a spotlight fell on the pheasant. I glanced up, and noted a fellow furiously working the contraption as if his life depended on it. It probably did. There were rows of tables all pointing to the main table at the far end of the tent. We slowly made our way up the centermost aisle, each step brining us closer to the evil vision in red who sat in the middle, elevated as if on a podium, attended to either side by servants and hangers-on.

I reached briefly beneath my white blouse to feel the long dagger secreted there.

As instructed, as we approached, we raised the silver plates higher, so that the Queen would see not our faces but only her food. I noted the severity of her face, the cruel lines just as they had been described to me, the sallow cast to her features, the thin whiskers and almond eyes. It was the cruelest visage I had ever seen or imagined.

We stepped up the single step, and stood before her, eyes downcast, offering the food.

The taster capered like a clown next to us, waiting, making hungry noises in his throat.

“You may set it down,” Frane said, in a surprisingly melodious voice.

I caught her eye for the merest second as I placed the perfect vegetables before her and stood up straight.

My paw inched beneath my tunic, and began to draw it out.

But her eyes blazed not at me but at Keisha, whose own dagger, thinner and longer than my own, was revealed now.

“Death to you! You murdered my husband and my planet!” Keisha screamed – but it was a scream of triumph turned to pain as her body arched forward, the dagger plucked on its downward arc and another, firmer, more sure blade planted in her back by the taster, whose eyes were now hard as ice.

The blade came through her front, staining her white apron with a spreading pool of blood.

She gave a little sigh and collapsed, and in the chaos that erupted – Frane immediately surrounded and pulled from her chair to safety, the ten guards who drew their own blades and sank them into Keisha’s now lifeless body – I slipped my own dagger out of its hiding place and let it drop to the floor.

I kicked it aside, unseen, and turned to go.

I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.

I turned and looked into the face of the Captain, who hissed, “Get out of here, now, if you value your life.” He began to hustle me away from the table, toward the exit. He held me like his prisoner, and walked me through the mass of guards who blocked the way, shouting, “Do you know who I am?”

They moved aside, letting us pass.

When we were beyond the tent, in the cool night air, he shook me as if I were a baby and roared, “Why did she have to do this! She was the best chef I ever had!” He turned to me. “And now you are! Or would you rather die?”

His face was suffused with madness.

“I will be your chef.”

“Good! Then go, and finish the meal. I will talk to her. This kind of thing has happened before, and I will convince her that you had nothing to do with it. She knows how much my fetes mean to morale – otherwise I would be dead by now.” He rattled me again. “Just do as you’re told – and continue to cook!”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and when he let me go, and stalked back toward the tent, I watched him bull his way through and then went back to finish the next course.

I waited for an execution that didn’t come. The next morning what little word there was concerning the attempt on the Queen’s life was relegated mostly to rumor. I said nothing, understanding that it would mean my life. By the end of the day it was as if nothing had ever happened.

But the large tent was soon taken down, and then the two side tents, leaving the captain with his original place to entertain. The meals became sparsely attended, and then, within a week, no one attended at all. The captain took his meals alone, his face taking on a haggard look.

One night, after I had served a desert pastry, a thing of cream and the thinnest layers of pastry dough, which Darwin had become adept at, the captain took me almost gently by the arm as I was leaving.

“I’ve been given a choice,” he said, his voice as vapid as his eyes.

“Yes, sir?”

He nodded. “A choice, do you understand? I want to thank you for all the wonderful meals you’ve made. They’ve made these past days . . . bearable.”

I bowed. “Thank you, sir.”

He turned to an opened bottle of wine which I had not brought, and sat unpoured on the table beside an empty glass.

“Would you like me to replace that with a desert wine, sir?” I asked.

Distracted, he looked at me. “No. This . . . will be fine.” His face brightened for a moment. “Is there by any chance another of those pastries?”

I bowed again. “I think Darwin made an extra, Captain.”

“Excellent! May I have it?”

“Of course.”

I retrieved the extra pastry, and when I returned to serve it he was just pouring a glass of wine from the open bottle, with a trembling paw. The wine was the deepest red I had ever seen.

I placed the pastry before him, but he only stared at the wine glass before him.

“I would leave this camp if I were you,” he said in a funereal voice. He turned to look at me. “Tonight. I told you I had been given a choice. They will not give you one.”

“Yes, sir.”

I glanced back at the flap of the tent, and he was still staring at the wine glass, the pastry ignored.

The next morning he was dead.

But Darwin and I had already deserted, just before the guards came for me.

Twenty Four

It was remarkably easy for us to hide. In an army so huge, on the march, it was impossible to keep track of two unobtrusive cooks. And unobtrusive was what we made ourselves, all the while edging closer to the front.

To my surprise, and our luck, once we got away from the rear our task became even easier. The veteran portions of this vast enterprise had been moving for months, and a kind of lassitude had set in. It was as if the center of the beast was soft. Discipline was still strict, and disobedience met with the iron hand, but, day to day, boredom was the rule. These soldiers had seen no real action in quite a while, their main purpose being to escort a catastrophic weapon and little more. To them, it was little more than guard duty, and even their officers had become jaded.

We learned, by sitting in on many late night card or dice games, that no forces of the second republic had been engaged for weeks. It was as if they had vanished from the earth. It was rumored that Xarr was dead or forced into exile, that I myself was dead.

“The pup had run with his tail between his legs!” was a comment I often heard at these drunken affairs. I must admit it made me smile inwardly, that the wine-soused corporal, unkempt and belching, and who had just taken money from me by rolling two fives on the bones, was telling this to the very feline who he spoke of. There was a somewhat grim inner satisfaction it gave me.

“And where are those louts who guard the weapon?” I asked this same corporal, late into the same night, when he could barely stand but had continued to cheat me, for the dice, it became obvious, were loaded.

He stopped counting his money and stared at me blearily for a moment, a nearby fire shadowing his drunken features.

“Eh?”

I repeated my question, and added, “One of the louts owes me money!” I showed him the surfeit of coins in my hands. “And if I get it from him, I can play dice with you again tomorrow night!”

“Ah!” His face brightened for a moment, but then he looked down at all the money in his paw.

“Got plenty of money! Play!” He swayed from side to side before regaining his balance.

I repeated my question once more, and he said, “Ah!” again and then, “That no-good Finch and his bunch! Nothin’ bu’ babysitters!”

“Yes,” I said, seeking to keep him awake. “He’s the one! Where are they?”

He pointed vaguely over his shoulder. “Tha’ way. Tell ‘im Cheyenne sent you. Owes” – here he paused for a belch – “me money too.”

And then he fell over, still clutching his winnings in his palm, and was dead asleep on the ground and snoring.

So Darwin and I moved in the direction Cheyenne indicated, carefully, slowly, gambling and sometimes cooking when a cook was needed, as, in the distance, Olympus Mons grew daily at the horizon, its monstrous bulk eating up more of the western sky.

And always, we slipped closer, closer, to our prey.

Which I found unexpectedly, on the rare morning when Darwin and I split up, each to meet at a certain spot at noon. It was like moving through a slow carpet of red, and I had learned always to look as if I had somewhere to go or someone to meet. On the rare occasion when I was confronted, my original papers always seemed to do the trick, because cooks were scarce everywhere. My only fear was that I might be connected to the late unlamented captain, but this never came up. This far away from where it had happened, the attempt on Frane’s life had become, though the passage of misinformation, a heroic act on her part, as, according to these ever-changing false accounts, she had stood upon the table when confronted by her would-be killer, and slain the woman on the spot, or, in other versions, after a lengthy duel, for the assassin had been a trained swordsman, and deft in the many arts of killing, but Frane had outwitted her at every turn. In one version the fight had gone on for the entire night, Frane deliberately waiting for dawn to defeat her foe so that the Sun, her equal, could witness it. It was amazing what damage to the truth the feline tongue could do, merely by repeating a simple story. It had, in the intervening days, become a heroic epic, with Frane, naturally, as the hero.

When noon came, Darwin did not meet with me at the spot we had agreed on. This bothered me, but I did not worry about him. He had proved much more adept at subterfuge and cunning than I, and his actions had been an education to me.

I made careful inquiries, slowly widening my circle through the ranks, but no one had seen the little fellow or even heard of him.

And then fate intervened, and I found what I had been looking for since One had sent me on this quest.

Late in the afternoon, I passed a group of half-asleep guards and heard the name, “Finch” uttered, with near contempt. The day’s march had ended, and there were rumors (there were always rumors) that there would be no movement until the following morning. I had resigned myself to the fact that Darwin was nowhere nearby, and that I would have to spend a night of gambling, and discreet inquiry, alone, which was an unpleasant thought because Darwin was also a better gambler than I.

I sauntered past the guards, and then turned back, as if a thought had suddenly come into my mind.

“Say, fellows,” I said, as offhandedly as I could, “you wouldn’t happen to know where Finch is, would you?” I allowed a small measure of contempt to enter my tone when I mentioned his name.

The tallest of the three of them narrowed his eyes at me. “Why?”

“He owes me money, actually.”

The tall one twitched his whiskers and waved a paw in dismissal. “He owes everybody money!”

“Yes, but . . .” and I leaned closer, conspiratorially, and whispered, “this money was supposed to buy you fellows a good meal. I’m a cook, and when he lost to me at the bones he promised enough and bargained a good meal for his guards for even more. If I get him to pay me you boys get . . .”

And I proceeded to rattle off a menu that made their mouths nearly water, which would actually use up the scant stocks of Tyron’s spices I had left.

The tall one stopped me and said, pointing, “Head that way, a half mile. You’ll meet up with the guard on duty. His name is Morphus. Tell him that Jilly sent you.” He grabbed my arm, almost pleading. “When do we get this grub? I’ve been chewing hard tack for a week, and my teeth and belly can’t take it anymore!”

“Soon, I promise,” I said, taking my leave of them.

It was almost dark when I found Morphus, and told him Jilly had sent me. He was little impressed. He and his two companions guarded the single opening in a ring of wagons, which had been drawn into a wide circle. Each wagon had at least one guard, sometimes two. I imagined this makeshift fortress was assembling after the finish of every march.

I repeated my good meal scenario and Morphus’ interest was ignited. Only this time I said that I had lost a bet, and had been made to pledge my cooking skills to Finch and his guards for one evening. I showed them my money, which I said were to bribe the finest foods in camp.

“I hear you fellows are sick of hardtack, “ I said, and once again went down my imaginary menu.

“When is this feast?” Morphus asked eagerly. The other two guards had moved closer to better hear my promises.

“As soon as I can arrange it. When do you fellows get off duty?”

Boredom replaced eagerness. “Not for six hours yet. Then Jilly and his second-raters come on.”

I laughed. “Second-raters?”

Morphus’ back stiffened in pride. “Everyone knows my bunch is the best Finch has. Half of Jilly’s sad sacks have been found asleep on duty”

I laughed again. “Why don’t we say tomorrow, then, before you go back on duty?”

He licked his lips. “Fine! The guard house, back where Jilly is no doubt sleeping, is the place. The boss’ll leave us alone there.”

“Till tomorrow, then!” I sauntered off, losing myself in a huddled mass of anonymous resting soldiers, and waited for the changing of the guard.

Jilly’s group was not quite as bad as Morphus had promised, but, as I slowly and unobtrusively circled the wagons, I noticed one fellow in particular who looked to be a prime candidate for shirking. Even during the early part of his shift he abandoned his posture of at-attention, slouching and, when he thought no one was looking, leaning against his guarded wagon in an unmistakable attitude of sloth.

The problem was that Jilly was also aware of this, and made his own (thankfully regular) rounds, inevitably stopping at this particular soldier’s position to berate him for something:

“Harson! Stand up straight!”

“Harson! Stay awake, you fool!”

“Harson! Get that cigarette out of your mouth!”

And so on. It became regular as clockwork. Which was a good thing, because it meant than when Harson did inevitably fall asleep, which he did around five hours into his shift, there was a small window of opportunity before Jilly found him thus.

Taking care, I was able to move past the lightly snoring guard and, on my belly, crawl my way into the center of this fortress.

I crouched silently on the other side of the wagon, waiting for Jilly to come by and rouse Harson, which he did, right on time.

“Harson! You idiot! Do you want me to report you again?”

I moved off stealthily, with Jilly’s stream of invective fading in my ears.

There was no light from Phobos or Deimos to assist me, but the night was crystal clear, with a billion stars, including the Great Veil, giving me all the illumination I needed.

At first I saw nothing, a cleared area in the center and a few smaller wagons encased within the compound. There were no sounds. I crept to the first of these smaller wagons and peered into the back.

Two men lay sleeping, one of them snoring.

The other wagon was empty, but there were bedclothes flung aside and I pulled my head out just in time to see a figure making his way toward me from one of the circled wagons in the darkness. I pulled back and held my breath.

He yawned and climbed up into the wagon, making it groan, and then, according to his purring sounds of satisfaction, settled into his bedding.

I waited for his breathing to even, which it finally did.

On a hunch, I crossed the empty space to the wagon the feline had come from.

Inside was a long white tube, hinged open along its length, revealing clusters of wires and something dark, a long oblong box with dials on one end.

It was not what I had come for.

I pulled my head out, being careful to make no noise, and moved to the next wagon, which contained a similar device.

I examined all of the wagons in turn, and, in the last, found what One had sent me for.

It was a similar long white tube, but hinged not along its length but at one end. When I opened the cap my heart nearly stopped, for it was not as One had described it to me. But then I realized that a second hinged area was present and when I pulled this up and away I was faced with a row of thin rods set into a grid with a dial to their right. I quickly did as I had been instructed, changing the order of the rods, and replaced the two hinged caps over the end of the device.

There came a sound outside the wagon.

I froze, pressing myself back against the inside wall as the flap was thrown aside and someone coughed, then snorted and spit.

The flap fell back into place, concealing me completely, and I crept to it and peaked out.

A guard was shuffling away, yawning and spitting on the ground again as he did so.

I waited a full five minutes before climbing out and making my way back to the wagon with the sleeping guard.

His post appeared to be empty.

Puzzled, I moved to the next wagon, which was properly guarded.

I moved back to the original wagon, and crawled underneath.

I poked my head out, and saw no one.

As I pulled myself all the way out and stood up, I felt an iron grip on my shoulder, and someone hissed, “Got you!”

Twenty Five

“A cook,” Frane said. “It seems my life these days is complicated by cooks.”

She bent down, and studied me closely. I saw the pupils in her eyes dilate. She was very ugly up close, much older than she had looked at the dinner when Keisha had tried to assassinate her. There were lines behind the thinning fur of her face, and pinched wattles of skin beneath her chin on her neck. Her flesh looked too taut, as if it had been pulled back from her cheekbones, and there were thinning patches of fur behind her ears and on the back of her head.

She looked like an old woman.

We were in her private tent, which was not as large as I would have supposed. My papers lay spread on her dressing table, behind which two felines waited. My hands were bound behind my back, and two burly guards stood to either side of me, daggers drawn. One of them seemed to enjoy pricking me behind the ear with the razor sharp tip of his knife now and again. I had been beaten, but not too severely; my eyes were swollen and it felt as though I might have lost a tooth or two.

All in all, not bad for a F’rar beating.

“I know you,” she said quietly, the viciousness in her voice tempered by thoughtfulness.

She continued to stare at me, and her eyes dilated again.

One of the guards said gruffly, “He was at the dinner where the K’fry bitch tried to assassinate you, m’lady.

Without looking at him, Frane waved him quiet with the movement of a single finger. “I know that, you idiot. There’s . . . something more here. What were you doing at that wagon?”

I said nothing, and Frane turned her cold gaze on one of the guards.

Trembling, the man said, “The guard on duty swore this cook was about to crawl underneath the wagon when he nabbed him. We’ve given the man a medal, my Queen.”

Frane cocked her head to one side and resumed staring at me.

“A cook . . .” she said, and a sudden thin smile drew across her lips. It looked like it was etched in acid.

“He’s not a cook. He’s Haydn’s boy,” she said.

The other guard said, “That can’t be, my Queen! The runt Sebastian was lost in the caves of Olympus Mons six weeks ago! Our spy Jift –”

She looked at him sharply. “Quiet your tongue before I cut it out of your head!”

There was instant silence in the tent.

“So,” Frane said, turning her attention and mock sweetness back to me. “Are you Sebastian of Argyre, or not?”

I said nothing, but only stared at her.

She reached out the thin, wizened fingers of her right hand and cupped my chin. I felt her claws extend, their sharpened tips digging into my flesh. Her eyes blazed with an unnatural fury, and her breath was like fire.

“It is him,” she said, and when she withdrew her fingers her claws were dripping red with my own blood.

She continued to stare at me with a mixture of glee and hatred, and then a placid look came over her face and she turned to her waiting dressers and make-up artists.

“I know what to do with him,” she said, as if speaking to herself, and then waved the guards away, who dragged me away, and beat me again.

I looked out at what I thought was dawn, through still swollen eyes.

At least a day had passed, perhaps two. I had not been fed, and had been given water only once, just before a beating, and so had choked it up, along with my own bile. My mouth was as parched as the desert. There were bruises on my legs, my thighs, my buttocks, my chest and back and head. It felt as if at least one rib was broken.

But these fellows were experts with their beatings, and they never abused me past my own endurance. There was always something left for the next time.

Which was overdue.

And I had never told them anything.

I tried to focus on the light above me, which did not look like daylight, though it was bright enough for it.

The light receded, and then gained in intensity again.

This happened over and over.

With an effort of will, I forced my right eye all the way open, and tried to focus.

The lights were on the ceiling of a cave, and I was moving. I looked to the right, which caused me a shooting pain through my head and neck, but I persisted.

I saw the running edge of an open wagon, and red rock walls.

So, I was underground once more, and moving.

I concentrated on my hearing, which had diminished; it sounded as though things were far away, and heard through a wash of surf.

I heard the distant clop of hoofs, and of many wagon wheels moving.

With an extreme effort of will, I tried to sit up.

I cried out in pain, and fell back.

A voice sounded through the wash of surf, answered by another. There was a short laugh, and then a grinning face appeared above me – someone I had never seen before, or perhaps one of the many torturers.

A fresh bolt of pain lanced my right side.

“Give ‘im another kick, then!” I heard someone say.

The grinning face lowered over me evilly. “No, ‘e don’t need it, do ‘e?”

I tried to mouth the word, “Please –”

The grinning face grew to cartoon proportions, and began to laugh. “‘E’s tried t’ speak!”

Again came the lancing pain in my right side.

“Listen, mate,” the cartoon face said; it looked to me as if the mouth was moving before I heard the words, “it’ll all be over soon. So jus’ be a good boy, and be quiet. We don’t want to wake up the Queen, do we?”

“Wha –” I began, but the lancing pain came again, more intense. The grinning face was not grinning anymore.

“Keep your mou’ shut, is all,” the voice, unattached to the lips, said. “If y’ wake ‘er up I’ll cut your throat now.”

The face went away, and I was quiet, watching the ceiling lamps flash by one after the other, and trying not to die.

I was awakened by another sharp pain. I was being pulled, and not gently, from the wagon. I opened my right eye and saw a wagon behind us, covered in blood red cloth with the crest of the F’rar clan stitched prominently on the side. I saw a flash of bright red robes and a smiling thin face before I was carried in the opposite direction.

Someone was speaking but I could not hear. I was dragged past an impossibly long tube, gleaming white. It looked familiar. Then I felt cold metal at my back, and saw the winding lash of a rope being moved over me again and again, holding me fast.

The thin evil face of Frane appeared before me.

Someone held my head so that I faced her.

From a great distance I heard her speak, and even then her words sounded like acid.

“Even now, Xarr and the other fools of the Second Republic are fighting desperately above, on the foothills of Olympus Mons, to destroy the weapon that will annihilate them. But it is only a partial force guarding a decoy weapon that they fight. Those men were expendable to me, and they will die for a great cause. In the end, Xarr will do anything to destroy that weapon.

“But of course the real weapon is right here, at your back. And by the time Xarr finds this out, it will be too late.”

She brought her face within inches of mine. Once again I felt her hot, sour breath.

“Good-bye, Sebastian of Argyre. Say hello to your mother in hell.”

Then she turned, and I heard her say languidly, “I am hungry. Get me out of here and feed me.”

And I saw, before unconsciousness claimed me, amid the bowing and scraping of her handlers and hangers-on, a flash of albino white, and a face I thought I knew . . .

Twenty Six

I came back from a faraway place.

My mother was there, and my father, and my sister and Thomas and Xarr and Quiff and many others. There was a great Elysian plain, all in soft green, and a strange blue sky so deep it hurt the eyes.

And there were Old Ones there, too, tall and stately, stentorian-voiced and filled with wisdom. And One was there, too, only she wasn’t a machine, waving what looked like a magic wand but was in reality a machine, and there were other machines in the air and in the ground. It was a world unlike anything I had ever imagined, and yet it didn’t seem like a dreamland – it seemed real. It seemed like it might be like on another world, Earth perhaps.

And then I awoke, into another dream even stranger than the first.

“He’s awake.”

It was a voice I knew, but I could not open my eyes to make sure. And then I remembered the beatings, and slowly, painfully, forced my right eyelid open.

But there was only a blur.

“Don’t move, sire. And don’t worry. You’re safe now.”

There was a mewling sound, and I realized it was me. I forced it to stop, and then let myself relax, settling into the dream as if it were real. Every inch of my body hurt, but it did not feel as if I were on hard ground.

“Poor fellow. He’s a hero and he doesn’t even know it.”

I knew that voice, too, and wanted to shout, “Newton!” but my voice wouldn’t work. Only the mewling sound came again.

So I let myself slip back down into real dreams, Elysian dreams, and for a while the real voices receded and nothing hurt . . .

This time I was able to open my right eye.

There was a blur, but it slowly focused, as if someone were bringing a telescope to focus on an object. I remembered Newton’s voice, but decided to relegate that back to dreams for the moment. Instead I concentrated on seeing one sharp thing.

The thing moved, still a bit of a blur, but then it drifted into crisp outline.

It was Newton!

“Sire, I see that you’re awake.”

With difficulty, I raised my right paw, and held it out to him. I saw that it was covered in bandages.

He smiled and took it in his own, patting it with his other paw. Now another face came into view, and I was sure that my waking dream had been real.

“Don’t speak, Sire,” Thomas said, and a feline face had never looked so good to me.

I tried very hard, and managed to croak out a word: “Xarr...”

“Xarr is well, and busy chasing the F’rar army, which is scattered to the low hills at the base of Olympus Mons. I’m afraid we’re not out of the woods yet, Sire, but after you disabled Frane’s weapon she was forced to choose between running and fighting. For the moment she has chosen to run. But her army is a big one, and we may yet have to deal with it.”

I nodded, weakly.

Another thought was rising in my head, and I tried to bring it out. For a moment it was up there on the tip of my tongue, “Ji . . .” but then it slipped back down, like a coin slipping into a pool of water.

Thomas and Newton were waiting, expectant, but then I closed my eyes and could not muster the strength to open them again.

“He is healing well,” I heard Newton say, and then, for a while, I heard no more.

The next time I awoke, which, I was informed, was nearly a day later, I felt a renewed strength beginning to fill me. I could move my legs without swift pain, and I brought both of my bandaged hands up and examined them with both my right eye and, now partially open, my left eye. My face felt sore, but now it at least felt like a face and not a sack of cold wet oats. I could move my jaw, and could breathe without my healing ribs burning like hot coals.

In short, I wanted to get out of bed.

But they wouldn’t let me, Newton scolding that I still had plenty of mending to do, and Thomas concurring, as well as the returned Xarr, who stood over me like a brooding beast, dirty from battle.

“You smell awful, Xarr,” I said, my lips slowly pushing the words out. I wanted to laugh, but it hurt when I did so.

He didn’t know what to say, and began to blubber that he would bathe immediately, until I did laugh, immediately yowling at the sharp pain it gave me.

I put my paw out and grasped him. “It is good to see you, old friend.”

“It is good to see you, my King! The last time, you were so . . .” He gestured with his hands, and I laughed and finished his thought for him:

“Small?”

“Yes!” he said helplessly, and then laughed himself.

“I’ve been through a lot, and did a bit of growing,” I said.

He nodded. “Indeed you have.”

The thing that had eluded me now rose into my mind like an urgent stab.

“There is something you must do,” I said slowly.

And then I told him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, surprised and then angry. “It would explain some things on the battlefield, and especially off. And it would mean . . .”

Now real anger flushed his face. “It would mean . . .”

“Rella was innocent.”

Real pain was replaced by even greater anger. “I will attend to it immediately.”

“Yes,” I said. “And someday we will erect a monument to Rella, who was F’rar and wanted only to stop this war.”

He stormed from the room, swearing oaths and calling for his aids.

Newton, who had watched all this with quiet interest, said, “You have been very busy, Sire. I understand One summoned you, over my objections.”

“Yes.”

He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment. “My opticians have also been busy.”

“You don’t mean . . .”

He gestured to two apprentices who left the room and momentarily returned bearing a slick black tube mounted on a tripod made of gleaming red junto wood.

“My telescope!”

I immediately tried to push myself up in bed, and was rewarded with bolts of pain in my arms and legs.

Newton helped prop me up as the telescope was set down beside me.

I brushed a paw over the cool metal tube, the focuser, the diagonal with its replaceable eyepiece.

“There are three eyepieces,” Newton said proudly, “and the objective glass is very fine, almost five inches in diameter. My people did a graceful job.”

I was lost in admiration.

“When you are feeling better, we will set it up on the volcanic plain, where it is safe, now.”

“Then I must get well very soon.” I looked at him. “Thank you, Newton.”

“It is good to have you back with us, Sire.” A gleam came into his eye. “You must tell me about your adventures with One.”

“I will –?”

“She is . . . very special . . .” he added.

I was suddenly tired, and he sensed it.

“Rest now, sire, and we will speak again. We have much to discuss.”

“Yes, we do.”

“One thing,” Newton said, pausing in the doorway. “When Xarr and his men found you, there was a young fellow, his fur almost albino white, who was nursing you. He refused to come back to Olympus Mons with Xarr, but said he had business to attend to first –”

“Darwin!”

I felt a sudden pang, and missed the little fellow very much.

Newton nodded. “He said he had promised to bring you the one thing you needed most of all . . .”

“I wish he hadn’t left me.”

“You will tell me of these things?”

“In time,” I said. “It is nothing you need to know of, now. But it could end this war.”

“You are being enigmatic, Sire.”

I nodded. “For the time being, I must be.”

And then Newton left me, and I was left feeling better and worse – better in body, but hurting in spirit, missing the two felines in the whole universe who meant more than anything to me, and were out of my reach.

Twenty Seven

I healed, and, as promised, Newton had my new telescope mounted on the plain outside our fortress on Olympus Mons.

It was a beautifully cool evening. Winter was coming, and the stars, sensing it, rode in a crisp clear sky as sharp as pinpoints.

As Newton had said, the instrument’s objective glass was excellent, and with the help of a star atlas we had soon examined countless wonders, including clouds of what looked like luminous gas, some of them formed into whirlpools.

“There is a theory that some of those gas clouds are actually huge collections of stars like our own, held together by central gravity,” Newton said.

I took my eye from the eyepiece and stared at him in wonder. “Could it be?”

He shrugged in the darkness. “I do find it intriguing that some of these gaseous objects are so structured, with spiral arms and such. They are almost too elegant to be mere clouds of particles. But no one in the Science Guild has been able to resolve individual stars in any of these objects. At least not yet. If there were peace, we might be able to build a large enough instrument, using mirrors instead of glass. There is a book of the Old Ones that will help us.” He chuckled, a low rasping sound not usual to his serious demeanor. “In fact, these mirror telescopes were invented by my Old One namesake. I have the feeling the Old Ones resolved this question of nebulous clouds long ago.”

I angled the telescope toward another object listed in the atlas, this one in the midst of the constellation Kit’s Kite – it was a tiny smoke ring sitting in space, and looked beautiful.

“Sire, regarding One . . .”

His voice had taken on a strange tone, and I looked up from the eyepiece, but he only stood silent, pursing his lips.

“You were going to say something?”

“This is not the time, Sire. It seems I must be enigmatic about certain things.”

He took up the star atlas, and began to study it.

“There are two nebulae in the Big Pot that can be seen in the same field of view,” he said, helping me swing the instrument around in the direction. “Then, I think, we should study Jupiter, and then Earth.”

I did not attend the execution of Lieutenant Jift. He was not worthy of my presence. He was worse than a traitor to his people – he was a traitor to his planet and had sent an innocent woman to her death only to cover his own cowardly tracks. This was the worst kind of treachery, and after General Xarr had confirmed my accusations, the former military commander of the Olympus Mons region was unceremoniously hanged. I was told he did not go quietly, which gave me no pleasure.

My first council meeting was a contentious affair. It was not my insistence that the F’rar be engaged in battle that was in dispute, but rather my insistence that I lead the troops myself.

“Sire,” General Xarr proclaimed, “you are barely healed and, if I might be so bold as to say, you have never been in battle.”

“Then this will be the first time.”

“But Sire –”

I pounded the table with my fist. “I will hear no more of it, general. I’ve heard stories that the same arguments were used with my mother. I will give you her answer. How can my people respect a leader who hides behind his own army? I will be at its front. We will ride out tomorrow, and finish this thing. How many troops do we command?”

Xarr threw up his paws in frustration and answered, “About four thousand.”

“And the F’rar? I estimated at least ten times that when I was among them.”

“Not anymore. They’re scattered, and many have turned tail or just gone home. Frane –”

I interrupted him. “Is Frane still among them?”

“Yes. As long as she holds a chance of beating our army, she will not flee. And now we know how she escaped the last time.”

“How?”

“Underground. There are tunnels and caves throughout this entire area, just as there are outside of Burroughs, where Frane eluded your mother.”

I nodded.

“We will be ready for her if she tries to run this time.”

“Very well.” I looked to Newton, who had been sitting quietly, studying me, stroking his chin.

“And what magic can we expect from you?” I asked him.

“We have airships, which have been busy on Frane’s army in the hills, breaking it up, and will be there for support. She was very foolish to rely on that one weapon. We have similar weapons, in reserve, but I trust you have your mother’s feelings on this, too.”

I nodded. “They are evil. We will destroy Frane, but on the battlefield, just as my mother did.” I looked around the table, at Newton, at Thomas, at Xarr, at the other military generals I would command tomorrow. The attention they gave me was far different than what they had accorded me when I sat at my first council meeting, barely a kit, with a sprained ankle and no experience of any kind.

“Very well,” I said, adjourning the meeting. “We will ride out at dawn. It will take half the day just to get to the plains below.”

Thomas stayed behind, and when the others had left he said, “You are sure about this, Sire?”

“About what?”

“Leading the army yourself.”

“It is what I must do, if we are in hope of reinstating the republic once this is over.”

He was nodding, but not really listening.

“What’s wrong, Thomas?”

Now he looked at me, and there was a wistfulness in his eye. He looked suddenly old. “Nothing’s wrong, sire. It’s just that you’ve changed. Grown up. I miss the kit that relied on me, I suppose.”

I grasped his arm with my paw. “You will never stop being a great friend, Thomas. And I will always rely on you.”

“Thank you, sire.” His smile was genuinely warm. “And now I am to tell you that there are visitors waiting for you near the front entrance.”

I laughed. “Visitors?”

“One claims to be an old friend of yours, and a king himself. He is a vagabond . . .”

I ran as if I were a kit again, and found the King of the Gypsies, waiting for me.

“Radion!” I cried out, taking him firmly in a bear hug.

He growled a laugh in his deep basso voice.

“Where are Miklos, and the rest?” I asked, puzzled.

“Camped with the caravan on the ridge outside. I will join them soon, too. We gypsies must be out under the stars when we get the chance. We will fight with you tomorrow, just as I promised.” He laughed again, a low rumble. “And by the way, I found two stragglers on the way and let them ride with us.”

He called out, and Darwin entered, with Charlotte behind him.

“Little fish!” I cried, picking Darwin up and turning him around. His pure white fur stood out starkly against the red of the cave entrance.

“As promised,” he said, bowing toward Charlotte, who I took in my arms.

She kissed me, and laughed. “Darwin wouldn’t let me out of his sight for a moment! He spirited me out of Robinson City as if I were a ghost!”

“A wonderful ghost,” I said, looking into her eyes, and then kissed her again.

“How are things in Robinson City?” I asked Darwin.

He shrugged. “Crazier than when we were there,” he reported, and Radion added, “In Darwin we found the dogs who murdered my kinsman and his people.”

The way he said it left no doubt that he had dealt with them accordingly.

Charlotte added, “Once word of Frane’s failure reached the city, there was an uprising. My father is now in jail. Many of the F’rar, now that they aren’t afraid of Frane’s thugs, just want a return to what we had before.”

“When you and I marry,” I said, “it will restore order, and will end forever the enmity between our two clans.”

“But what about you and I? Will it end the enmity between us?” She laughed. “Perhaps I will still string wires across the hall to trip you up!”

“I think perhaps we should marry tonight, for the good of all our people.”

Her eyes brightened, and she nodded. “And for the good of you and me.”

“Then so be it!” I turned to Radion. “You will attend, of course, as well as Miklos and the rest?”

He bowed. “It would be an honor, sire.”

“Good!”

I took Charlotte in my arms, and our kiss was so long this time that Darwin and even Radion, embarrassed, looked away.

The wedding was a simple affair, with only four thousand or so guests. I insisted on little ceremony, and that all of those I would command in battle attend. There was much wine but not too much, and dancing, and Darwin stood up on a table in the hushed hall and sang in a reedy voice which made him sound entirely too solemn:

Come now and celebrate

Before the hour grows too late,

A love made for the ages!

For Queen and Sire

In fine attire

Will now turn many pages!

I call you here,

Raise wine and beer

And toast a love for the ages!

There was much cheering, and Darwin took a theatrical bow, and then Xarr made a speech which was fine and fierce, and then Newton spoke and then Thomas, and there was more wine and then a fine feast put on by my old cooking teacher Tyron and Brenda, who informed me with tears in her eyes that she had done the same for my mother and father, and there was more dancing and singing, much of the best of it by Radion and his people, and as Miklos, much taken with wine, was tossing Darwin into the air, higher with each toss, Radion took my arm and steered me away into a quiet corner.

“I see you have gotten over your distaste of the grape,” he said, gesturing toward my goblet.

“Somewhat. I see you don’t fast yourself!” and I tapped his huge flagon, filled nearly to the rim, and not for the first time, with a deep red wine he had provided for the festivities himself.

His smile was sly, but then it vanished.

“To business, then, sire,” he rumbled. “You understand that tomorrow I will die.”

Perhaps it was the wine, but I could not help blurting out a laugh. “That’s nonsense! Surely you don’t still believe what the cards said! The F’rar army is melting away from underneath Frane. By tomorrow she’ll have barely enough troops to fight with.” I shook my head. “It won’t be much of a battle I’m afraid, Radion. Perhaps you will die in my service, like the cards predicated, but it surely won’t be tomorrow.”

He shook his head, and studied his wine before drinking it, as if perhaps looking for more portents on its flowing crimson surface.

“No. Tomorrow it will be.”

A slight shiver went through me, and it must have showed on my face.

“I’m sorry to darken your wedding night thus, sire,” he said, and put a heavy paw on my arm. “But these things must be.”

“Then you will not fight! Stay here, and represent your clan at the council table!”

His laugh was a snort. “If I were to do that the ceiling would fall on me, or some such other disaster. I made a vow to ride with you in your last battle, and no gypsy has ever broken such a promise.”

“But surely –”

He shook his head, and his eyes told me that it was useless to argue with him further.

“And now,” he continued, after taking another drink, a deep one, we must talk of your final card.

Again I felt like laughing – I couldn’t help it.

“Beware your new wife, sire,” he said, his voice sinking to even a lower register than normal, and now I knew why he had needed the wine.

“That’s ridiculous!”

Again he shook his head ponderously. “The last card showed love and death for you, at the hands of a F’rar woman.” He looked away, as if embarrassed. “After all, Charlotte is F’rar . . .”

I stood up. “I won’t hear any more of this, Radion! You’ve met her! I’ve known and loved her all my life. Do you really think she’s capable of murdering me?”

He shook his head. “No, I do not.” He drank more wine. “I do not. But the card . . .”

“Please! You’re drunk, and it’s my wedding night, and I cannot refuse you anything. But let’s not have any more of this!”

He looked up at me, very drunk now, and gave a heavy sigh. A smile washed over his lips, but I could tell he was forcing it to be there. “Please forgive me, sire. I am a foolish gypsy. And perhaps the cards are wrong after all.”

Charlotte joined us, then, and pulled me away to dance a reel, and when I looked back at poor Radion again he was studying his flagon, and them employing it to great purpose. A little while later he was found asleep, and carried to his wagon outside and put to bed, gently, at my orders.

But the party went on. There was more dancing, and more feasting, and then a teller of tales, and Miklos sang a wedding song raunchy in nature, and then he took to tossing little Darwin in the air again, and then there was another toast to my Queen and I, and I gave a toast to everyone back, as did my wife, and then there were makeshift gifts for her to open, things we would treasure when we occupied the palace in Wells, an amazing thought, as I told my bride later, given that when we had met we were mere kits running though those halls and making mischief, and now we were to rule them.

And still the party went on, as if no one wanted tomorrow and its battle to come.

But finally the hour grew late and the wine grew scarce, and Charlotte looked at me and smiled and we stole away to my bedchamber, and I kissed her, thinking briefly of Radion’s absurd thoughts, which I immediately banished from my mind when she kissed me back, and we made quite a night of it.

Twenty Eight

The next morning, as the sun rose over a landscape below us shrouded in a soft blanket of morning mist, I went out to see Radion, who showed no ill effects of his night of drinking. He was mounted with his fighters, and ready to join us.

“I wish you would stay behind,” I said, but this morning he only laughed heartily and slapped his horse. “A vow is a vow!” he growled heartily, and fell into line behind me as we began to make our way down the side of the great mountain Olympus Mons in a series of switchbacks which seemed to go on forever. I stood at the head of an army four thousand and twenty strong, and quite ready for battle.

There was a solemn magnificence about our progress, with only the clopping of horse hoofs breaking the stillness; a grim purpose to our steady progress. I heard a droning, and looked up to see Newton’s fleet of sleek black airships, which began to pound the distant hills with bombs as prelude to our attack. I could just make out a mass of red which seemed to coat the hills, two in particular, like ants. I wondered which of them was Frane, who, I vowed, would taste my blade this day.

Xarr rode beside me, silent as a specter. His scarred face was set in a purposeful way.

Finally the silence had stretched too long, and I said, “Do you think they’ll fight?”

“Oh, they’ll fight,” he said with certainty. “With bombs at their back, and nowhere else to go, they’ll fight. Frane knows she’s trapped.”

“Do you know where she is?”

He pointed with his sword. “That farther hill, behind the first one. She’s a coward at heart, Sire, and will hide behind the skirts of her troops, what little she has left of them.”

“Did you send out word of my marriage to her army?”

He nodded. “And it was a brilliant stroke, having Newton drop those pamphlets. Nearly half of them deserted last night. She’s only left with the ones with nowhere to go, now. Those nearest to her, or subject to her fear, bribes or extortion. These are the hardest, I’m afraid, but there aren’t too many of ‘em.”

“And they know about my offer of amnesty?”

“They know. It may even work, for some of ‘em. We shall see.”

He lapsed again into silence, and we rode inexorably down.

When we reached the plains it was past noon, and the mists were gone, leaving the bare and sandy pink-red of the landscape. There seemed to be less red on the nearing hills. Our spies had reported that F’rar soldiers were slipping away as fast as they could, and that there had been many executions for desertion. Newton’s bombing had ceased, giving those who sought to leave a chance to do so.

We began to pick up stragglers, who threw down their weapons at our approach. They were herded to the rear. As we approached the first hill a single desultory arrow came our way, and landed short of us. It was tied with a white ribbon of cloth. Then we were approached by an officer, red helmet in hand.

“We will not fight you,” he said.

“And who are ‘we’?” Xarr asked him gruffly.

“I am commander Efflar. I control half of Frane’s remaining troops,” he said. “She has become insane, and can’t see certain death staring her in the face. The others on the far hill are with her.” He paused. “We will fight with you if you wish.” He looked at me. “It is a great thing you have done, King Sebastian. My men only want an end to this.”

I looked to Xarr, who shook his head. “Take your troops and head toward Olympus Mons,” he told Commander Efflar. “Leave your weapons here.”

The officer bowed. “As you wish.”

As he walked off to gather his men, Xarr commented, “I know of Efflar. He is a butcher, and merciless. If he has given up hope it is all but over. But it would have been foolish to let him join us. They could have turned on us at any time, and would instantly do so if things turned Frane’s way.”

“I will take that as an education.”

“You will be educated by many things today, Sire.”

We rode through retreating, tired F’rar, at least two thousand of them, who trudged past us with their heads down. A mountain of swords and arrows was left behind.

The second hill grew larger, and now, as expected, a rain of arrows came at us. Above, the sleek black airships began to bomb again, driving Frane’s remaining troops down the hill and toward us. We spurred our horses and, at Xarr’s shout of “Attack!” we rode forward, into the fray.

There was chaos, with moments of lucidity. The men who came at us were mad with hatred, and with the realization that they had nowhere to go and nothing to do but meet death head-on. These were Frane’s inner circle, the assassins and murderers and torturers who had brought her back to power and kept her there with their maniacal devotion.

But there were not enough of them to stop us, barely a thousand. The battle was fierce but short, and I was pleased to discover that Miklos had been right, that I was better with the sword than I thought. Xarr and I soon found ourselves with no one to fight at the top of the second hill. A carpet of red-suited bodies lay behind us.

Miklos rode up with an ashen look on his face. “My king,” he choked out, “my brother, he is wounded . . .”

A bolt of pain and rage coursed through me. “No!” I cried out, turning my horse to follow Miklos back to Radion, who lay motionless on the ground. Another gypsy cradled his head, but I dismounted and took over the task.

“Radion,” I sobbed, looking down at him.

His eyes were clouded, but then they focused on me. He smiled, and lifted a paw to weakly waggle a finger at me.

“The cards . . .” he whispered, and then added with urgency, “You . . . I know now the meaning of the last . . .”

Then his eyes went blank as opaque glass, and his last breath left him.

I rocked his massive head and sobbed, until Miklos gently disengaged me from his brother. “We will attend to him, my King.”

I nodded, and stood. A rage unlike any I had ever known coursed through me. I mounted my horse and rode back to Xarr, who was surveying the far hills and plains.”

“Fools,” Xarr marveled. “They threw themselves at us like devils. Pure suicide. To save Frane, no doubt.”

“Where is that monster –” I drew out my spyglass, the gift Radion had given me, and fiercely went over the landscape before us.

And then I spotted the rogue Queen in the distance, alone on a chestnut colored horse riding wildly, her red robes flaring wildly behind her.

And then, suddenly, she vanished.

“I’ll kill that beast myself,” I vowed, and tore off in the direction she had gone, with Xarr shouting behind me.

I drove my horse over smooth plain which suddenly gave way to rough brush and scattered desert grass.

And then I saw what I was looking for.

Ahead, the terrain sloped down to a small open valley floored with red sand. The slope to the right was smooth, but on the left there was a wall bearing four cave openings.

“I have you, you wretch,” I spat, drawing my horse up at the first yawning hole and studying the ground.

Horse tracks led toward the third cave, the largest of the four portals, and then they turned away, up the far ridge.

I saw Frane’s horse up there, as if lost.

I dismounted and saw feline boot prints leading into the cave.

Behind me I heard distant shouts, and Xarr’s booming voice calling for me.

I ignored it.

I drew my sword and entered.

I was surrounded by gloom, and the temperature dropped. The floor turned from a dusting of washed sand to hard rock. Each one of my steps echoed like an announcement.

“Enter, boy,” Frane’s voice echoed ahead of me, but I could not tell from where.

“Are you ready to die, Frane?” I called.

I was greeted by a laugh. “Not this day, pup. I should have let them torture you to death. But it wouldn’t have been a grand enough demise for Haydn’s fetid spawn.”

I advanced, trying to muffle my boot steps.

“Just a bit closer, pup,” she laughed, and then I heard and saw her all around me.

She dropped down from the ceiling, her blood-red cloak billowing, and I caught sight of her hidden perch as she fell upon me, screaming like a shrill beast.

“Die, Sebastian!” she shrieked, and I saw her mad, shriveled face before me and the quick thrust of the long thin dagger in her hand which pierced me in the middle. The blade retreated, red with my blood, and knew that the last card’s prophecy had come true.

Radion had not been wrong after all – I had been loved by one F’rar woman, and killed by another.

I felt warm and cold, and fell to my knees, gasping.

Frane drew back, and held the dagger up. “The thrust itself was not enough to kill you,” she spat, her eyes blazing. “But the blade is covered in the same poison that killed your foul mother. May it comfort you to know you will die the same way.”

There was a sound at the cave entrance, calling voices, and Frane hissed.

“Good-bye, spawn. Think of me on your death bed.”

She gave me one more blazing look of hate, then turned and ran off, deeper into the cave.

I sank from my knees and collapsed onto my back. I could not breathe. It was as if a warm hand had smothered me, and was driving me down into unconsciousness, while at the same time there was cold all around me.

There passed what seemed a long time where I saw nothing, and then I looked up and saw Xarr’s face but could not hear his words, though his mouth was moving.

And then Newton’s face replaced Xarr’s, and I saw him mouth the word, as I closed my eyes to die, “Quickly.”

Twenty Nine

I was awake. But wakefulness came suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown. One moment I resided in dreamless slumber, numb nothingness – and then I was fully engaged and alert.

I lay quietly, staring at something blue over me, like a shield, or the sky of a strange planet. Earth? That was preposterous. And there were no clouds or night stars, only a glassy curve of blueness that I could almost see through.

I tried to move my head but could not.

And neither could I move my limbs, which seemed, not leaden, but absent.

Was I dead?

And then something moved in the blue canopy above me, a shadow like the silhouette of a god, and I thought I must surely be dead.

“Sebastian?”

“Yes?” I answered, as if commanded, though the voice was gentle enough. It seemed to surround me as a god’s voice might. My own voice in kind sounded small and artificial, tinny and weak.

“Good. He’s responding.”

This obviously to someone else – another god?

The silhouette was joined by a second, filling my sky, and I lay in awe.

“Sebastian, it’s Newton.”

“Newton!” I cried, though it still kept its tepid tininess, with no increase in volume.

“Only answer my questions with yes and no, please. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Newton.”

Something that resembled a gravelly chuckle from the other side, and one silhouette turned to the other.

“Still stubborn, I see.”

“Yes,” I responded, and the chuckle repeated.

“Sebastian,” Newton asked, “can you move any of your limbs at all?”

“No.”

“Can you move your head?”

“No.”

“Your lips?”

Startled, I realized that I was answering his questions but that I could not feel my own mouth moving when I did so.

“I don’t think so.”

“Just yes or no, Sebastian.”

“If I must. No, then.”

Another slight chuckle.

“By the way,” Newton said, “Thomas is here with me. He sends his best greetings, and wants you to know that the Second Republic is safe, and that Wells is almost back to normal. There has already been a meeting of the Senate in the Hall of Assembly, including the new F’rar Senators. Peace has been restored throughout Mars.”

How long had I been in this condition? Before I could continue to wonder, he answered my question:

“You have been here” – where? I wondered – “for three weeks. If you hadn’t had partial immunity to the poison Frane inflicted on you, you would not be here at all. But while your mother was carrying you and your sister her litter was passed this partial immunity which she herself possessed. It was gained during the murder of her first kits.”

Again he answered some of my questions for me, in a clinical way: “In case you are wondering, we are in the realm of One.”

One! And Quiff was here, I suppose?

“Quiff is about, and has helped attend you these past weeks. There is more I must tell you, and for a reason. You must stay very calm. Please answer me now. Can you move your right paw?”

I tried mightily, but felt nothing. It was like I myself was not attached to myself.

“No,” my tinny voice answered, and some of my frustration must have been communicated because Newton immediately answered:

“That is all right. All of this will take time.”

I was silent, brooding.

“I have good news for you,” Newton said, and I heard in his voice genuine warmth. I wondered what the news might be.

He continued: “Charlotte is with kit. She’s going to have a litter.”

Charlotte! Newton’s instructions be damned, I could not help myself:

“Hurrah! That’s wonderful! My beautiful Queen! Is she here?”

I went on and on like this, with Newton trying to quiet me, until he suddenly said, “Oh, dear.”

I heard Thomas’s voice question in alarm: “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Newton replied quickly. Then to me: “I’m afraid we must cut this short, Sebastian. We will talk again before too long. Have courage.”

Have courage? But already I felt myself fading away, the circle of animation around my mind, which was already denied my body, shrinking and shrinking to a tiny dot which then went . . .

Out.

Again, it was like I was not there, and then there.

But this time, there was more of me. I could feel my right paw twitch, as if a current had been put through it, and also my left thigh down to the knee was warm. I knew instantly that this was a good thing, because Newton said, “Ah!” with evident satisfaction.

“Yes,” I said, to tease him.

His laugh – hard enough to draw from him in normal times – was long and full.

“I see you are with us!” he said.

“Yes.”

“And ready to obey this time? No outbursts of unalloyed joy?”

I remembered my wonderful wife Charlotte, and that she was with litter.

“Yes!” I said, restraining myself from the happiness that flooded through me.

Through me – yes, it felt as if there was definitely more of me now, as if the tiny circle of being had begun to open out from my head to encompass my body.

“Can you feel your right paw now?” Newton inquired.

“Yes,” I said, moving my fingers, though I could not lift it to examine it. My body still felt like lead – but warm lead.

The silhouette – there was only Newton’s, this time – moved to one side, then back. I could see the arms and hands moving over something tall and boxy.

“Are you stimulating me by machine?” I asked.

“Only yes or no, please, Sebastian. It is for your own good. And to answer you this once: yes.”

“Ah.”

“Let’s continue . . .”

These sessions went on, it seemed, forever. I could not really tell how much time was passing, because at the end of each period of stimulation Newton would hit a button, or throw a switch, and I was gone, dreamless, back to whatever place he had dredged me from. When I inquired was happening to me he deferred my questions, and when I demanded as his King that he answer me he became remote and business-like.

But progress was made, though ever so slowly. Though I still could not raise my paws to my face or see any part of my body, feelings eventually spread from my thighs to both my legs, one at a time, and from my paws to my arms (strange that this would happen in a reverse way from what one would think) and shoulders and finally my neck and face. Pretty soon I was grimacing, and smacking my lips, which made me realize that I was not now, nor had ever been in this condition, the least bit hungry.

When I asked about this, Newton demurred.

And though I could work my mouth, my voice, I knew, still did not emanate from my throat but independently. This was merely bothersome in the beginning, when I felt nothing at all, but now it was downright frightening.

When I asked Newton about this, he tried to demure again, but I persisted, and worked myself up into such a panic that he cut the session short and made me go away.

When I came back, after heaven knew how many days or weeks, his voice held a different tone than I had ever detected in it: watchful, careful, gentle, and frightened.

“This is a big day for you, Sebastian,” he said. He sounded as though he was dipping his toe into an ocean that he must now plunge into.

“No more yes and no?”

He almost chuckled – but not quite. “Correct. Today we are where we are.”

“Explain that, Newton.” One thing I noticed with a start was that my voice now issued from my mouth, and not . . . elsewhere.

“I am whole?”

“In a sense.

“Are we going to speak in riddles?” I said, impatient. “I can do that all day, and be just as frustrated.”

“No, we aren’t going to speak in riddles. But we must speak in . . . well, the way things are.”

“Another riddle!”

“Not really.”

Another silhouette had moved up to stand beside Newton, and I cried heartily, “Hello, Thomas!”

Newton said, “It is not Thomas.”

“Then who?”

“You shall see. But first this, and no more riddles, I promise. You are . . . different than you were, Sebastian.”

I was filled with terror and elation at the same time.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. You are not like before, when your body was flesh and bone. To save you at all, certain procedures had to be undertaken. Your . . . body as you knew it is no more.”

“What am I?” I cried.

“Do not panic. You are not a monster, or a machine. Much, almost all, of what you were before – your essence, if you will – is intact in this . . . new entity.”

Entity! Visions of an alien being holding my mind in its body rose into my head, and I began to breathe heavily.

“Sebastian! Listen to me! You look essentially as you did before. Only your body has been . . . changed.”

“Show me!” I demanded.

“Soon enough. But first you must speak with One.”

Newton’s silhouette moved aside, and One’s was there, before me.

“Sebastian,” her soothing voice said.

“Yes! What has happened to me, One!”

“Listen to me. Only this,” she said, and my terror abated for a moment, before it returned in full force.

Somewhere there rose a whirring sound, and the blue canopy began to move aside. Its edge moved over me like the moving line of a horizon, replacing soft blue light with another blue light, of One herself.

The canopy opened completely, and the whirr snicked off, leaving silence.

“Sebastian,” One said, reaching a hand out. Behind her I saw Thomas and Quiff, drawing back, their eyes wide.

“I’m so frightened!” I cried.

“Don’t be,” One said, and as my own paw reached out to touch her own, I saw that my fingers, my paw, my arm were as blue as hers.

“One!”

She held my paw in one like my own, and leaned down closer so that her face became visible, the blue haze melting away to begin to reveal her gently smiling visage.

Our blue halos merged, and her features came into sudden sharp relief, as if the focuser of a telescope had been tuned to perfection.

I cried out.

It was a face I would have known anywhere, even in another life.

“Mother!” I said.