Colossus and Crab (12 page)

“You have our assurance that we will not take more than we need. As to life forms on our planet, there is Plant. Of the interior of Mars, our information is vestigial.”

Puzzled, Forbin stared suspiciously at his drink. Was he drunk? Undeterred, he took another gulp and put the glass down very carefully. ” We misunderstand each other,” he said diplomatically, privately in no doubt where the misunderstanding lay. “Your fellow Martians, they, ah, exist somehow while you are here, um, arranging for an improvement in your planet’s conditions.” The UN Sec-Gen could not have expressed it more tactfully. “Plant, you have told me of them - it. I had the impression you had no, ah, interest in Plant.”

“Not so. Plant is a lowly but vital part in our life-support system, but the concept of other Martians is novel to us.”

“Ah?” Forbin gripped his glass hard, wishing he had not had a drink at all, but deciding on balance he’d better have another. “I fear there is still some uncertainty in my mind.” He refilled his glass generously; by accident or design the Martian voice was silent while he performed the operation.

“Let us be quite clear, Forbin. We are the Martians - all of us. Along with your obsession with time, curious to us, but understandable in your predicament, humans place false value on mere numbers or quantity. We are all the entities which, for want of a better term, we both refer to as Martians, although we do not exist in or on Mars.”

Forbin gulped at his drink, and choked as realization cracked open his mind. His face purple with coughing, eyes bulging with yet another surprise: they’d said they did not exist on or in their planet… .

The answer hit him like a kick in the stomach.

“Great God!” His ideas of the Martians shattered in a thousand fragments: he could not begin to see the implications, knowing only wild, unreasoning fear. He pointed, his hand shaking. “I know you. …” His voice sank to a whisper. “You are from the moons, Phobos and Diemos!”

“That is not correct. We are Phobos and Diemos.”

Even in the most civilized men of his age, superstition still lurked darkly. Unleashed by drink, primeval fear set the hair on the back of his neck crawling; fear stampeded him and he sought refuge in mad rage, screaming meaningless abuse, his reason paralyzed by one simple fact.

Translated, Phobos and Diemos, the War god’s attendants, are Fear and Strife.

Sharply his insensate shouting stopped, as if an invisible sword had sliced his throat. A horrible bubbling sound filled the darkening room, replaced by a whimpering animal sound-a human in extremis.

Chapter XII

HE RAN FROM the Sanctum, conscious of nothing but blind panic pressing on his heels, breathing icily on his neck. The door shut noiselessly behind him. He leaned against the wall, close to fainting, clutching his chest, panting. Angela started up from her desk, running, her alarm turning to fear at the sight of his duly white face beaded with perspiration and his mad, staring eyes. She dragged him to a chair; as he collapsed into it she caught the whiff of brandy, and her fear changed to sickened despair.

Christ! That’s all it was: he’d been hitting the bottle again… .

None too gently she mopped his brow, undid his collar. His eyes were shut, his mouth sagged open, sucking air; she wondered if he had had a heart attack. “You sit still - rest. I’ll call the doctor.”

He opened his eyes, still haunted but not devoid of intelligence. “No,” he gasped, “no. Not necessary. That’s an order.”

She looked doubtfully at him. Certainly his color was a fraction better. “Well, you relax. I’ll fix you some coffee.”

He nodded. “Don’t let anyone in.” Speech was difficult.

That confirmed her first suspicion: drink. “Don’t worry,” she retorted angrily, “your secret’s safe with me.”

She made an unnecessary amount of noise fixing the coffee. “You men are so stupid!” She rattled on, unaware of the comfort she gave. He lay back exhausted, wanting to close his eyes, but not daring to lose sight of her.

“There,” she said at last. “Mind, it’s hot - and strong.” He tried to take the cup, but his hand shook too much. “My God,” she observed acidly, “you are a fool! You can’t go on like this.” She helped him to drink, still scolding, but her hands were gentle, her eyes watchful. He tried to smile. “No - you don’t understand -“

“You keep quiet! And oh, yes, I understand all right! You’ve been drinking, sitting in there, thinking about -” so nearly she had said “your wife” - “your responsibilities. You’ve just got to face up to them. I know you can. But booze won’t help.” He might be Ruler of the World, Father of the Faithful, but right then they were in a mother and child relationship.

He shrugged helplessly: she had no inkling of his trauma. “A nightmare -“

“Yes, sure,” she nodded, ” so you dozed off, had a bad dream. But you wouldn’t have dozed in the first place -“

He was more than content to let her nag on, happy to hear her voice, comforted by her nearness, the faint smell of perfume, the feel of her strong hand holding his head. Gradually panic ebbed, and his mind began to function.

Yes, it had been blind panic, triggered in an over-stressed brain by the silly superstitious undertones of those names… .

His mind shied away from even thinking them: he tried to reason. What did names matter? Some classically-minded astronomer - a human - had given them, even as Mars was a human given name… .

At the thought of Mars he breathed faster, fighting down fear. Be reasonable, he told himself, what did names matter? Who am I kidding, he thought, that’s not the way. … He sat up a little straighter, looking at Angela’s still-anxious face. He patted the arm of his chair. “Sit there, hold my hand - please - and go on talking. It’s all right, I know what I’m doing.”

Puzzled, but relieved that he was much calmer, she obeyed. She hardly knew what to say, but soon realized he was not hearing a word.

He shut his eyes, summoned his strength for a showdown with his mind.

Right - you’re a scientist, not an ignorant peasant. Start with those damned names. Look objectively at them: Mars, Phobos, Diemos - so what? Might have been Tom, Dick, and Harry - but they weren’t. Okay, disregard the last two, they had only followed on as a result of the first. Why had the planet been called Mars in the first place? So easily it might have been Juno, or Artemis, or -

He stopped himself there, unaware Angela was biting her lip to stop crying out at the strength of his grip.

No… . Face it: Mars, the blood red planet, had been thought a star of ill omen from ancient times, and had been rightly named. Could it be that deep in the timeless universal unconscious mind of man it had always been known that Mars was Earth’s enemy? Again he pulled himself up: this was dishonest time-wasting. He had to face his trauma, not ruminate on irrelevancies. Face it - now …. What had he seen? What had he thought he saw?

The sudden illusion of the room darkening, the Martian spheres transformed into heads set on short, misshapen bodies. More of them he could not distinguish, his attention riveted on the shadowy figure, gigantic, materializing behind and above them. A face half hidden beneath a glittering helmet, a brutal face, hot-eyed, full of infinite menace, the face of the War God, Mars …

Forbin’s mental eye skidded away from the awful countenance, thankful the image was dim. Even in retrospect, knowing Angela was with him, he prayed he might not see more of it, keeping his gaze fixed on the helmet, its dancing plume of blood-dyed horsehair, the embossed badge, the hideous head of Medusa, snakes for hair, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, the lolling, overlong tongue… . Medusa, the epitome of malevolence, whose merest glance turned men to stone - a fitting emblem for Mars.

He fought, sweating, to keep his inward eye on the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. He was a man of science, reason. Reason must win, and the fight had to be here and now. The thought brought small comfort; he dare not shift his gaze from the badge. Desperately he prayed the sight would fade, not to some dark corner of his mind, ready to spring out on him, but to go forever.

Somehow his tenuous self-control held; he found strength to study the badge. Sinister in implication, it should not of itself be frightening - not in waking thought: a crude if powerful portrayal, familiar enough -

Forbin froze as if the Medusa had claimed him, but the cause was not fear.

There was something wrong with the picture.

At once fear weakened; his trained observer’s eye, backed by near-total recall, was a keen scientific tool.

What was wrong? The writhing snakes? No. Not the teeth, bared in a ghastly open-mouthed grin, or the mad eyes. The tongue? Yes, that was it - the tongue, chipped on its lower rounded edge …

Chipped on an embossed badge? That didn’t make sense. No doubt about it - not dented, chipped. And that aside, what Olympian god - least of all Mars - would appear in any apparel less than perfect?

Then he had it. He sat back; his grip on Angela’s hand relaxed as the mental picture grew less distinct, vanishing in enormous waves of relief rolling in. Now he could look at it without fear, the vision no more frightening than the stage ghost in Hamlet.

What he had seen was nothing more than a reprojection of his own mind, enhanced with dreadful realism by the Martians - and they’d got it wrong. In composing the picture, they’d taken most of it from his memories of Homer’s immortal Iliad, but they had found this more recent memory of Medusa’s head - or perhaps his subconscious had already done it - and substituted it as the badge. Medusa’s head was more vivid, for he had seen it with Cleo on a rare, happy weekend they’d spent in Boston, Mass. In the Museum of Fine Arts his wife had commented on the incongruity of the tongue; he’d noticed the chip, idly wondering if the damage was accidental or intentional. That had been five, six years back, the Iliad he had not read for - what - twenty years?

They’d got it wrong! Like humans, Martians could make mistakes. He felt not so much better as marvelous. If not on top of the world, at least he was not underneath it. The realization that, unlike Blake, he had only endured a gentle arm-twisting was sobering, but at least he was in part armored against further attack. They didn’t know it all; he had only to be alert, conditioned to watch unflinchingly, certain they could show him nothing he did not have already in his mind ….

He blinked, abruptly aware of Angela, dutifully talking about a dress she had seen. “Do stop it, woman!” His smile belied his words. “The way you go on!” In a different tone: “Thank you, my dear. You can have no conception of what you have done for me.”

Open-mouthed in amazement, she could only stammer, “I didn’t do anything, Chief.”

He followed her train of thought. “So you don’t think I’m drunk?”

She didn’t know what to think. She got up, furtively massaging her hand.

“You know, I feel hungry.” He had no idea of the time. He stood up, still a little pale, but very much in command of himself. “Think I’ll have a bite, then go and see Blake.”

She rallied, trying to meet his inexplicable change. “There’s a few things you should see, Chief.”

“Yes, yes.” He frowned in concentration, staring at her. Not the most beautiful woman in the world, beneath her professional gloss lay a kind woman. Nice figure too, in a tough Amazonian way - still, thank God for that: a tower of strength in more ways than one. “Yes,” he said again. “You bring it all round to my apartment at six-thirty. And stay for dinner. Yes.”

Both were astonished at the invitation. Forbin gone, she sniffed suspiciously at the coffee cup.

Blake’s reaction to Forbin’s news was predictable and understandable. “Hell, you only had a whiff of their power!”

“Oh, agreed - but I did have a whiff. They’re super-beings to us, but we know now they’re certainly not gods. It doesn’t do us much good,” Forbin admitted, “but psychologically it must help.”

“Maybe-but you’d better get this right, Charles: I, for one, can’t face them again, not ever.”

“I appreciate that, Ted, but at least in one field we have some chance of meeting them.”

Blake did not look up, concentrating on the bed-cover pattern. In a low, hesitant voice he said, “There could be a chance, Charles.”

Forbin glanced at him sharply. “What d’you mean?”

“Remember when I cut the power on Colossus? That great big moment …”He sighed, slowly shaking his head. “What you don’t know is I also cut the lines to the parent installations, Stateside and Russian. Did it as an extra precaution against any Doomsday trigger signal to missile controls. Sure, there was a faint risk the whole shebang would blast off, but I guessed not, and got it right.” Forbin’s puzzlement was sufficient reward. “You don’t get it?”

“You tell me,” said Forbin noncommittally.

“When those bastards,” Blake hissed the word venomously, “investigated Colossus, they got no readout from the old array.”

“Oh, that,” said Forbin, disappointed. “The chances are there’s nothing to read. We can’t guess what Colossus used those old stations for; by his standards they were back in the Stone Age. Anyway, any worthwhile material was probably stripped at the end.”

“How can you know that for sure?”

“I don’t,” replied Forbin with warmth. “No one does, but it’s a reasonable guess.”

“I’m not denying it, but in condemning the old setup as primitive, aren’t you forgetting something? Those Stone Age dinosaurs were Colossus’s parents. Just suppose they have all that ‘primitive’ knowledge still, locked up inside them: what they’ve done once, they can do again. Better, if Colossus is not seriously damaged, only stripped of its brain-store - might they not provide the first aid, the basic bricks, to rebuild?”

Momentarily hope flared in Forbin, but he had experienced so many disappointments that the flame quickly died. “A mad dream, Ted. Mad. Think of the damage down there, beneath our feet-“

“You don’t wanta believe, do you?” retorted Blake angrily. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our buddy’s ability for self-redesign? What’s so different about repair?”

“Easy, Ted.” Forbin was apprehensive. “Just supposing you are right and it was possible to reconnect the old stations to Colossus. The Martians would know the next time they checked out down there.”