Rainbow Mars (23 page)

“It is known that you and your women have gold. No?”

“We gave you what we had. Why would we need such stuff here?”

“He lies, Captain, let me try my surgical skills on his tongue—”

“
Why, Peter, would you wade into the sea to shout your threats up at him on his platform? Peace, Peter. Patience.
Master Svetz, where did you find these golden eggs?”

The Portuguese were growing hoarse. The shouting was wearing them down, and Thaxir's music, that might have been the sound of the sea hereabouts. They were losing subtlety; their greed showed through.

An antic whim took Svetz. Futz, they'd never trust him anyway, and now he was sure that they'd offended his women. He pointed straight up along the Hangtree.

“From up there. I got the coins there too, but I'm not wanted back.”

By their questions he let them add their own details. Together they concocted a wild tale in which Svetz climbed to orbit, robbed a giant of coins, returned and captured a bird that laid golden eggs—who had escaped, and must be still at large in the jungle. “Maybe Jack saw it. Shall we talk to Jack?”

“Jack has gone exploring,” said Captain Magalhaes. “We should join him, I think. I thank you for the suggestion.” Captain Magalhaes turned away, but some of his soldiers were looking toward the green jungle, and others toward the Hangtree/Beanstalk rising to infinity. And the voices went on.

“Alvarez, you thieving son of a dog, tell me what that sorcerer's women will have told him! Will he kill us all with his magic?”

“Captain, they are not hurt. We only wanted to have our way with them.”

“But they are hiding gold, you understand, Captain!”

“No, we would not have hurt them even if—”

“Alfonso threatened the dark woman. Truly, he might have hurt her, not just had his way with her, yes, Peter?”

“Peter Alvarez da Orta, if you lie to me now, God will never find your soul.”

“They were not hurt! Sir, sir, they were not hurt! We blocked their way. Alfonso Nunes set the edge of his sword against the black woman's throat and spoke his threats, and then we all fell over and could not move. Evil was the day we came to this unholy place.”

“But you could see and hear?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Two women. Six men. Pitiful. What happened to Alfonso Nunes? Did they drag him away?”

A pause. Then:
“Yes—”

“No—”

“We didn't see—”

“Captain, Captain, no! Stay your hand! We will show you. Peter, we must.”
And they were among the trees, and their voices fuzzed out.

*   *   *

Thaxir was elated. She tried to describe the sensation of riding a rolling wall of water down onto powdered rock in two and a half Mars gravities, with all her limbs pulled against her body to make her into a great unstoppable missile. The translator was losing phrases. An epiphany, Svetz gathered.

How did she feel?

Her soul was complete!

But physically?

Water was her natural element! She could float, waking or sleeping, and rest, or she could swim against water's resistance and exercise her whole body.

“We need to be about our mission,” Svetz said. “Will you come with us into the future?”

Thaxir was startled. She took some time to think, then, “Would you leave me behind if I asked?”

“Why not? But I don't think it's a good idea. Earth's gravity will kill you young, even if you could find a food supply. In the present we can levitate you. We'll take care of you in the Vivarium until Willy Gorky knows how to make Mars habitable again.”

Thaxir asked for details: Vivarium? Levitate? Then she rolled on her back to look up at the
Minim.
“How will you get me back up there?”

“Do you think you can climb?”

“Well, let me try.”

Svetz watched her climb the ropes of the half-completed pulley. She didn't have trouble until she was nearly free of the water. There she stalled. Miya came out on the platform to watch. Thaxir dropped back, and tried again, and failed again.

“We'll set up the pulleys,” Miya said.

Thaxir disappeared underwater.

Svetz and Miya went to work. They weren't surprised when the green giant didn't surface at once. It might be her last chance to swim. The oceans of the thirty-second century were polluted to a green-and-black goo.

During a rest break he turned his mag specs on the Hangtree. There had been attrition, but he saw at least two climbers in the black tuft. The root that ran into the sky had become as thick as a man's leg. A third man was climbing it, eighty meters up. Another was pulling on the root.

He could hardly be needed to hold it steady. He too must intend to climb it.

The view through the
Minim
dome was the same as the camera's, almost straight up the anchor trunks, past the underside of the black tuft, and up into infinity. Anyone might be in the tuft.

Zeera came out. “What's this about?”

“Getting out of here, I thought.” They'd been having trouble arranging the pulley system. It was new to them both. “Now I'm not sure. Zeera, did you kill someone in the woods?”

Silence. Miya ignored them both. Svetz said, “Alfonso Nunes. Short, very hairy, almost as dark as you. Didn't wear a helmet.”

“Six of 'em thought they were going to rape us and torture us,” Zeera said. “Miya stunned them down. We talked a little about what to do with them, but we couldn't move them without letting them wake up. Just putting them to sleep didn't seem like much of a lesson. Miya wanted to steal their pants and dye their, uh, pubic region.”

“Not enough?”

“They think we've got gold. They would've tortured us to get it. Rape, that's just entertainment. Svetz, they take it as their
due.
A woman doesn't walk alone or speak to a man if she has a protector to speak for her. A woman alone is, is anyone's. They have to be taught, Svetz! And you'd
steal their pants?
”

“They're showing something to Captain Magalhaes right now.” Svetz asked, “What is he going to see?”

Zeera turned away.

Miya answered. “They're going to take him to that temple Jack showed us. He's going to find a gold statue. Life-sized. Reclining. Obscene. Why didn't Thaxir toss us her pack?”

“Don't know.” Right, the Martian had left her pack underwater when she tried to climb.

“Where is she?”

“Don't know. Am I being distracted, Miya? Always talk it out, remember? Let's talk about a gold statue. I take it you,” turning to Zeera, “used the trade kit on Alfonso Nunes.” Svetz looked into the forest, but the Portuguese were all gone. “Why him?”

Miya answered. “He had his pants off. He had Zeera down on that stone dais before I got to my stunner. Knife at her throat. I had to stun them both and then wait for Zeera to wake up. He stank like nothing I've ever smelled—”

“Like the ostrich cage after the roc broke loose,” Zeera said. “And he was hard—”

“He had an
impressive
erection. Nunes could have had a great media career if he'd waited a few centuries, right, Zeera?”

“Right. You could have stopped me.”

“Zeera, I had a different impression,” Miya said coolly.

Svetz said, “They're showing that statue to Captain Magalhaes right now.”

“Why'd they wait this long?” Miya wondered.

Zeera laughed. “Gold,” she said, mocking. “They don't know how to move it or hide it or sell it, but they want it.”

Miya said, “Hanny, we turned some of those stoneware things to gold too, and that row of knives. They might think it was all native work. Hide him in plain sight. What is it, Hanny?”

Svetz touched his mag specs. What he thought he'd seen—

“Thaxir.”

Thaxir was out of the surf and almost to the trees. Her pack was on her back. Six-limbed, Thaxir managed a fast crawl. “What's she doing?” Miya wondered. “Escaping?”

“I
told
her we'd leave her here if she wanted,” Svetz said.

She was into the forest, shouldering trees aside.

A Portuguese came running out. He ran down the beach, southeastward, never slowing.

*   *   *

They made a meal while they talked it over.

“The default option is that we can leave her,” Zeera said. “Any objection? Willy Gorky wanted us to negotiate with her, but she's not negotiating and she's not in contact with the tree anyway.”

“She'll starve,” Miya said. “Hanny, don't you have an opinion?”

Svetz had been letting them run on while he watched the anchor grove. They were wasting time, but Svetz himself shied from abandoning a story half finished.

Jack was on the Hangtree, a hundred and twenty meters above the anchor grove. He'd left his metal shell below. This would not be much like climbing rigging. Ropes would have some slack to them, would run horizontal in spots. Still, he climbed on. Two men, Portuguese but without their shells, waited below him in the black foliage.

Thaxir was not to be seen.

Svetz said, “She knows what she can eat. You know, I've taken a lot of prisoners in my time. I'm used to considering them property, but they don't
talk
to me. I'm inclined to consider that Thaxir owns herself. I'm surprised at what she can do in Earth gravity. Maybe she'll maim herself. Maybe she'll crawl back to the sea for rest and sleep, and forage on land, or just eat seaweed. Maybe the conquistadors will kill her, but she knows the risks as well as we do or better! So the question is, how long will it be before she needs rescue? Do we stay or go? Or Fast Forward by a year and look again?
Hyah!
”

“What?”

“It's her!” A great yellow-green insectile shape poked itself above the black fluff. Jack's companions flung themselves away, out of the tuft, and how they fell was not to be known. The Martian began to climb, six limbs around a silver thread.

Miya was scrambling for mag specs; Zeera had hers. “There. She can
climb.
She was faking us out, sure as futz. How high can she expect to get?”

“Whatever. We can't do anything about it. The
Minim
won't fly and the flight sticks won't carry anything like that much weight.”

Thaxir wasn't moving fast.

Jack was hardly moving at all.

“She's catching up. She'll have to get past him,” Miya said.

Jack looked down and saw the monstrous shape coming up at him.

Zeera said, “Svetz, try your IR on the beach.”

“Zeera, I want to see—” But he knew the sound of terror. Svetz obeyed: found the beach, looked for hot spots, and zoomed.

Where a Portuguese had burst from the forest forty minutes ago, nine were now wrestling with some massive tube.

“Zeera, get us ready for Fast Forward. I'll cut these lines.” Svetz dropped to the cargo level and went out the airlock.

Within the shadows of the forest, shelled men were backing their big metal tube against a tree trunk. Svetz had a familiar view, straight down the axis.

He slashed away the never-tested pulley system. Most of it fell into the sea. He pulled what remained through the airlock, then stabbed virtual buttons. The airlock doors closed.

“Get us into FFD,” he told Zeera, but she was already doing it.

The tube blinked fire. Clouds raced. The sun set and rose again.

“I wonder how that came out,” Miya said.

Svetz said, “I'd say Jack is a doomed man. And isn't it a wonderful thing, to be able to leave all your mistakes behind? I'm just wondering, though, what will happen if those men go home with an obscene statue made of solid gold. They'll have all of Europe thinking that there's gold all over these continents, and the locals don't deserve to keep it.”

There was silence and the flicker of time passing, until Miya asked, “Hanny, did you do anything with the talker?”

Talker? “No. Zeera?”

“Last I saw it, it was lying … lying right next to Thaxir's head. Do you suppose that was in her pack too?”

“It was broken. Beyond repair, wasn't it, Zeera?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But that's still the answer,” Svetz decided. “She took the talker. But
why?
”

35

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Parrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of
Nature
dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us.

—
The War of the Worlds,
by H. G. Wells

 

The Portuguese ship lasted a minute or two, then zipped away.

They watched the anchor grove shed its black top. A knot remained where it had been, where anchor trees joined the root of the Hangtree; but it had grown a klick or two higher, and the marks of a join were fading. It was all one organism now.

Far above, where Earth's atmosphere no longer filtered the sunlight of naked space, photosynthesis stored energy as some form of sugar. Water and soil nutrients from below, sugar from above, and so the tree survived and grew.

They watched, and argued, and took turns reading notes into the record. They ate dole bricks and drank recycled water. They took turns sleeping. Svetz and Miya made love on the cargo net while Zeera slept above them, beneath a strobe made by the whirling sun. Years passed outside the
Minim
's ruined hull.