One of them remembered a little more than the rest. She was their leader, in so far as they had one. The first to awaken, she"d had more time to think. How long had she slept, in a remote corner of some meaningless ruin? She forgot what that ruin was, or who"d built it, or why. Perhaps she"d never known. She"d lain tangled with-who? A lover? A child? A parent? Some stranger who"d fallen there with her? She couldn"t remember, no matter how hard she struggled. She"d been asleep for so long, and she"d had such terrible dreams, and she was so hungry.
Then someone had moved her-a mind had touched hers. In that moment she"d woken, screaming with fear and hunger. Whoever had slept at her side had woken too. The thing that had moved her was a sort of monster: huge, square, heavy-footed, wingless, an awful mixture of pink and white and brown. At first she took it for a new sort of nightmare. There"d been a struggle, in the course of which her sleep-mate died. Then one of the monsters had spoken to her in a language she half-remembered: the language of the Eye, a language of pride, and command, and power. Though she didn"t fully understand what he was saying, she felt compelled to obey. At the monster"s command, she fled.
When night fell, still following that command, she circled back and found the monster and its companions, and watched them from a distance.
She could hardly believe what she was seeing. These extraordinary, ungainly, heavy-footed creatures, trudging across the blasted face of her world; dragging behind them a nonsense of clutter, as if they meant it as some sort of offering-but for whom? They pa.s.sed through hungry dust-clouds and weathered storms unharmed, as if the ghosts of Mars had for some incomprehensible reason decided to spare them, or had found them too strange and too foul to eat. Even their leader, the one who"d spoken, was hideous-yet there was something about him that compelled her to follow, to watch him. He might speak again. He might tell her what had happened.
She was afraid of him. He had power; his followers had strange and deadly weapons. She hung back, drifting high above them. They didn"t seem to notice her.
From time to time they pa.s.sed ruins, and in some of them she found others like her. She woke them from their sleep. Because she"d been awake longer, and her hunger had been sharpened to a finer point, she was able to subdue them and make them follow her.
At night she circled closer, confident that she was unseen. Some nights the creatures marched on by moonlight; some nights they gathered around a fire, and slept.
One night their leader got up from the fire, after all the others were asleep. He walked some way, until he was separated from the rest of them by a tall dune, and then he lit another, smaller fire-he had carried it with him somehow-and placed it at his feet. Then he looked up into the sky, as if he knew she were there watching him, and began to speak. The way he spoke was horrible-ugly and unsubtle, clumsy and lurching, colourless and crude, empty of everything but power and command. Like last time, it spoke to her on some deep level she couldn"t quite understand; something drilled into her by centuries of fear and hiding responded, and she fled.
In the morning she returned. The others came with her. They attacked. She felt compelled to do so-as if the insult these creatures represented could no longer be tolerated.
It went badly. The creatures were slow and stupid-looking, but dangerous. Nevertheless, they killed one of them, a squat dark thing with a white fuzz on the top of its head and under its ugly mouth. After that, their fury vanished, replaced by fear. They fled, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a few things they hoped might be food.
They found a high tower-top to perch on. They sliced the tins open and found that some of what was inside was vile but nourishing, while some of it was vile and poisonous. They gnawed on the rope and the creature"s severed hand. She began to feel stronger. Faintly, she felt memory returning. More urgent than remembering her own name was remembering the name of her sleep-mate; but she couldn"t. She began to feel shame at her own degraded state. She trembled and sc.r.a.ped at her own faded withered skin. A fight broke out over the creature"s hand and she killed one of her fellow survivors. She never knew or asked his name. She s.n.a.t.c.hed what she could and fled. One other came with her.
Days and nights swirled beneath her. Then there were wings following her; she didn"t notice until it was too late. Someone swooped down on her out of the clouds. They struck her in the back and grappled with her and bore her down to the ground. A half-dozen of them, more than she could fight, even if she still had strength to fight. She crouched, clutching at her spoils as if they were children to be protected.
They were people like her-winged people-but there the resemblance ended. They were strong, well-fed, and unafraid. Their colours were still bright. She couldn"t understand how that was possible. She hated them terribly for their good fortune.
They paced, and circled overhead, threatening and babbling and asking questions that she couldn"t understand. They spoke some dialect she didn"t know-stiff and formal and grand.
One of them-it was a female-came rushing forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed her trophies from her grasp. She was too weak to resist. The female held up the thing she"d s.n.a.t.c.hed-a metal cylinder-as if it were the most astonishing thing she"d ever seen.
She summoned up the strength to rush at this impertinent stranger, this thief. She raised her wings to strike. Someone cut her down from behind.
Chapter Thirty-six.
Josephine held the tin in her hands, turning it around and around. Cold metal; heavy; a squat, functional cylinder. A worn and ragged label, with stiff black markings that were at first strange to her eyes. A form of writing, but how could it mean anything without motion? There was a picture in the middle, familiar, but of wildly fanciful creatures: a lion and a unicorn holding up a shield. Above that were the words BY APPOINTMENT; and above those, CROSSE & BLACKWELL, LTD. At the bottom, an address, which was as fantastic and as familiar as the unicorn: No 21, Soho Square. And above CROSSE & BLACKWELL it said OXTAIL SOUP.
She had the strangest urge to cradle the thing as if it were a long-lost, much-loved doll.
~ These poor wretches, Orpheus said, indicating the dead Martians at her feet. These are all that remain. They are better off dead. I wonder, though-what woke them?
~ My friends. My friends-or, if not them, then someone from the Blue Sphere. This-this is theirs.
Not just men of Earth, but Londoners, or at least Englishmen. Atwood had come looking for her, or Arthur, or both of them. At last. Not the fragile psychic exploration that had left her stranded, but an expedition, with food. What other explanation could there be? But when had they arrived, and what had happened to them?
Orpheus reached out with some trepidation and touched the tin. His finger traced the words on the label.
~ In all the times I have made the crossing, this is the strangest treasure I have ever found, and the strangest I ever expect to. What is it?
She tried to explain. Meanwhile, the rest of Orpheus" party went to investigate the other dead Martian, who"d been killed in the struggle in the air and had fallen among the dunes a little way away.
After the night of the red moon, Josephine had spent a day and a night hunting for Orpheus; but his movements were unpredictable, and he had no fixed abode. If he didn"t want to be found, everyone told her, no one could find him; and it seemed that was that.
She tried to pet.i.tion for access to the Fates-the moon"s council of matrons-but the bureaucracy of the lunar city proved as confusing and impenetrable as Chancery. She went looking for their courtroom, the little workshop she"d met them in before, and discovered that theirs was a mobile court. The place where she"d met them before was now just an ordinary workshop. They might be anywhere.
She pleaded, cajoled, begged anyone who"d listen: please help me go down to the surface. She boasted, in case boasting might help. She tried to trade, promising secrets of the Blue Sphere in return for pa.s.sage. She began to wonder if she could survive the crossing alone.
She was on the verge of giving up when the Fates sent for her.
She was sitting in a window overlooking the city"s rose-pink river, trying to remember what the Thames smelled like, when she saw a young woman standing by the water"s edge, beckoning her down. She shrugged, opened her wings, and drifted lazily down to the stone embankment. The young woman was already fluttering away, south of the river and deep into narrow streets, stopping sometimes to beckon Josephine after her.
At last she was in the presence of the Fates again. Another workshop, a little crescent-shaped room cluttered with tables and tools and dust and noise. The one she"d called Clotho stepped forward, and touched her hand.
~ You want to go down to the surface, Clotho said.
~ I do.
~ Why?
~ If I could search the ruins- ~ You will find death. Have we not been kind to you here, treated you as a guest?
~ Wouldn"t you return to your home if you could?
~ We could all return, if we liked. But it would mean death. So we don"t. Perhaps we should.
Clotho moved from one side of the room to another, and sat at a new table, where she began methodically sorting beads, tossing out every tenth or twentieth specimen.
~ Why did you bring me here, if the answer is no?
Clotho stopped her work and spoke. ~ Is that the answer? I didn"t know. I thought I had brought you here to say yes. Though you will most likely meet your end down there, and we will be sorry; we could have learned so much more from you. But you are inflexible.
~ Why now?
~ Now, you suspect me? Why not? We are not heavy, solid, inflexible things like you people of the Blue Sphere. One day we say one thing, the next another.
~ I don"t believe that.
~ No?
For a while Clotho went back to working. Then at last she spoke again. ~ We saw your coming. Did you know that? We haven"t lost all of the science of Mars. We knew it when your people first came into our sphere and left you behind. We didn"t know what you were, or where, or how, but we knew that something had changed. Our dreamers and sky-watchers tell me that you looked like a falling star. Two days ago they saw it again. Eight stars, falling onto the great face.
Josephine"s heart raced. She felt it in her wings, as if she were about to take flight.
~ Eight? Not nine?
~ See-you do know something. Why are they here? Do you think they are looking for you? Clotho looked up from her work and watched Josephine closely, waiting for her answer.
~ I don"t know. I hope so. It"s been so long. They may be different people. There are so many people in the Blue Sphere-more than here.
~ I will tell you what I hope, and what I fear. What I hope is that they have come to take you back to your people, and if that"s true, then it would be wicked to keep you from them. Isn"t that so? But I fear that they have come for another reason. I fear these people who have learned to venture from one sphere to another have come to plunder the ruins, to steal secrets of the Eye that are better left where they are. I fear that they have come to make war.
~ Then let me talk to them, and tell them to go home.
~ Good, child. I see we are in agreement.
Orpheus was chosen as the leader of the expedition to the surface. There were six members of his party, counting Josephine. They"d been on the surface of Mars for seven days, which was already far too long, far longer than any previous expedition had dared. Orpheus" second was a lanky woman whose name meant something like One-who-stays-in-their-proper-place-from-love; Josephine dubbed her Hestia. Hestia knew as much of the history of Mars-before-the-fall as any scholar in the city-which was to say, not a great deal. Xanthos was an artist. Poet and Far-Traveller rounded out their number; Poet was known for his sharp vision, and Far-Traveller for her swift flight.
~ If you die, Orpheus said, you die. They asked me to take you, and I will. I don"t know if this is right or wrong, wise or foolish. But I saw that you are brave, and so I won"t stand in your way.
The moon circled Mars, approaching periapsis. The party ushered Josephine blindfolded through the streets and into a certain tower at the edge of the city. When they let her remove her blindfold, she saw that the tower was windowless, and dark except for the faint red light in Orpheus" hand. A steep staircase wound up into the dark, and the walls around it were covered with carvings of a kind she"d never seen before on the white moon. They were on the verge of reminding her of something, but Orpheus said, ~ Don"t look.
~ What are they?
~ Not everything was forgotten, Hestia said. Orpheus shushed them both. They climbed the stairs in silence at first, and then Hestia began to lead them in a solemn chant. The chanting was like a drug, like Atwood"s incense; Josephine felt that she was dreaming. After a long time, the stairs fell away beneath them and they spread their wings. Together they forced their way up into the dark shivering, in the terrible cold, struggling with all their wills against a terrible weight; until suddenly everything turned on its axis and they were hurtling down through blinding light and heat and thick streaming clouds of violet dust, their wings screaming in pain as the clouds parted to reveal Mars beneath them.
There"d been a seventh of their party when they set off from the city. His name was Born-into-Storm. When they came down through the clouds, he wasn"t with them. That was to be expected. It was a dangerous journey, and sometimes people got lost on the way.
Mars rolled out endlessly beneath them. Orpheus led the way. The rest of them trailed behind in a V, like geese. They flew high. It was safer that way, Orpheus said. The surface was haunted.
You could see the things that haunted the surface sometimes, he said. They were clearest at noon. It took Josephine a long time to see what he was pointing to: not so much a thing as an absence, cloud-shadows on the land where no shadow should be. These, Orpheus said, were death to enter-he said no more. Whether they were a natural phenomenon or an unnatural one, they were everywhere, when the light was right and you knew where to look for them: like mould growing on the floor of an abandoned room.
Born-at-Midnight was as talkative as Orpheus was taciturn. She was a risk-taker, a scholar, restlessly curious. She told them stories about what was below them. A dust-filled crater was a sea, in Born-at-Midnight"s telling; and not just any sea, but the Sea of Second Sky, which the Nation of the Long Arm had claimed as theirs, and into which the great heroine Bright-Blue-Wing had once fallen, convinced that the water was a world as rich in treasures as the sky. There had been a legend that one day she would return. There was nothing for her to return to now, Orpheus remarked.
A wave-like sweep of sharp little mountains marked the western edge of the migration of the Nation of the Tooth. A crescent ruin in the middle of a jumble of hills was once the library of the Nation of the Pinion-it was long since picked over. Something that looked a little like an amphitheatre sounded, from Born-at-Midnight"s description, as if it had in fact been something roughly theatrical-it was hard to say. They"d lost the art of drama on the white moon, and Born-at-Midnight struggled for words. She was better at battles. This battle or that, acts of heroism, great feats of philosophical disputation, had taken place at one rock or ruin or ravine or another.
There were no borders. This was no one"s country, no one"s home. Thousands of years of history had moved through it. Everything that was now still and dead had once been in motion. Empty skies were once crowded. Desolate purple plains were once forests. What were now dry channels were once rivers, marking the route westwards. Dunes were once hunting-grounds. Born-at-Midnight told them about the animals of Mars: the lopers, the crawlers, the diggers, the stilt-walkers, the balloonists.
Josephine guessed that it was all about a quarter true. That was all right. Her narration was distracting, and calming. Whenever Born-at-Midnight stopped talking, a cold and nameless dread set in: the voice of Mars.
They headed north-west, towards the mountain of the Nation of the Eye. They didn"t like it-those territories, those ruins, that mountain, were taboo to them. They all suspected that Clotho"s fears were true.
One afternoon, to their great amazement, they saw wings in the distance and below. Life and motion on a dead and empty planet. Two ragged creatures, withered to the point of starvation, faded to a dreadful dead colour. Orpheus gave the signal to attack.
Born-at-Midnight and Exalted dragged the other dead wretch over and laid it out in the dust. ~ Poor thing, Josephine thought.
~ Suppose a straight line of motion, said Orpheus, from where this happened.
~ He was holding this when we killed him, Born-at-Midnight said, holding up a grisly object. What is it?
~ I don"t know, Josephine said.
~ Nor I, Orpheus said. Nothing I"ve seen on Mars before. Suppose that they flew straight, all the way from where they met your people to where they crossed our flight. Then they met your people in the country of the Eye. Perhaps not far from the mountain.
After a moment"s further thought Josephine recognised the object as a human hand. She recognised the golden ring on its finger; it had belonged to Mr Sun. It had been severed at the wrist by the blow of some sharp blade.
Chapter Thirty-seven.
The terrain climbed steeply, sweeping up and up into the great mountain. Better not to think how far up. Better not to look at the mountain at all, if you could help it. Even Payne and Frank, who boasted of their campaigns in the mountains of Afghanistan, said that they"d never seen anything like it, and confessed that it made them feel so small they practically vanished. Better to keep your eyes on your feet, anyway. There was sharp flint underfoot, treacherous scree. There were ravines, creva.s.ses, sudden drops that you might not notice in the gloom and the dusty wind. One had the sense that the mountain had once risen quite violently from the plains, spinning up like a whirlwind, leaving the land all around ragged and cracked. They tied themselves together for safety, looping the rope around their hungry waists and clutching it in their bony fists.
They"d left one of the sleds behind. It would only slow them down, Atwood said. Their destination was at hand, and a few tins of soup wouldn"t make much difference one way or the other. It was time, he said, to abandon the comforts of home; it was time to depend on their inner resources.
The second sled broke after half a day"s upward struggle. After that, Arthur and Vaz carried what they could in their packs. A little food, a little water, some lanterns and matches, Atwood"s most essential papers. Payne and Frank took the rifles, and watched the sky, in case the raiders returned.
They were being pursued again. There was no doubt in anyone"s mind about that. Neither Frank nor Payne could ever quite see the wings of their pursuers, though from time to time one of them would yell and fire into the sky. The air was too gloomy; it grew darker and colder and harder to breathe as they climbed the mountain, and the shadows lengthened in a predatory way. They knew that they were being hunted, whether anyone could see their hunters or not.
Dimmick walked at the front of their procession. When night fell, he held a lamp. It was unnerving to walk in the dark, but at least, Vaz remarked, they didn"t have to look at where they were going any more.
Atwood refused the rope. He went on ahead, setting the pace. Dimmick held the rest of them to it. When they slid, Dimmick pulled them along. At times they ascended at such a steep angle that on Earth they would have had to go on all fours.
Some time in the evening, Arthur found himself walking alongside Frank. He blinked. It seemed that Frank had for some time been hissing Shaw! Shaw! in his ear.
"Shaw? Are you with me? Please, Shaw." Frank whispered and whined. He sounded like a man pleading for his life, or his sanity.
"Shaw?"
"What, Frank? I was somewhere else entirely."
"Atwood, Shaw. Atwood. We have to kill him, Shaw. It"s our only hope of ever waking from this terrible nightmare. Weren"t you listening, Shaw? I"ve tried-by G.o.d, I"ve tried to wake up. It"s Atwood"s will that keeps us here. A bullet will settle this."