Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (2 page)

As anger boiled within Trel Clan, he kept his eyes on the sights outside the bus, pretending to listen to the Lessons that droned over the bus’s speakers.

His face was blank. Inside he raged.

T
hree hours later, the transport Trel Clan rode, along with the twenty-five others that preceded and followed it, came to a halt in the middle of …

Nowhere.

Alarm tightened Trel Clan’s stomach. Had they been brought out here for annihilation? Had his months of playacting been for nothing, because the Martian High Leader had decided for whatever reason—on a whim, perhaps—that the experiment with the Titanian children was not working, that their indoctrination was not possible: that they were too much of their planet, too proud and hard-edged, as their parents had been, and that it was easier just to end the program?

For the first time since Trel Clan had faked his way into the midst of the children of Titan, he felt true fear. Fear that it would all end here in the desert.

That all his plans would come to …

Nothing.

“Exit the bus!” the monitor attendant at the front of the transport shouted, its chrome head gleaming, and for the first time Trel Clan found that he had slipped out of his persona of blandness and therefore invisibility—he was the last one on the vehicle, and sat staring out the window.

“Exit the bus!” the attendant repeated, in a fractionally louder tone, and Trel Clan hurried out of his seat and past the machine, which followed him with its round glass eyes.

“Tardiness noted,” it said implacably.

Instead of turning to apologize, Trel Clan drove himself onward, burying himself in the milling crowd of children that had formed off the road in a sparsely grassed crater field.

“Line up!” a monitor ordered; the order was repeated by the others.

With the others, Trel Clan obeyed; but that knot of fear in his stomach grew.

They formed into ranks.

The bus lights abruptly turned off.

The knot in Trel Clan’s stomach hardened into pain, which would have showed but for the darkness.

Above them, the night sky turned hard and bright, like a scatter of perfect diamonds on black velvet. To the horizons was blackness broken by points of glorious light. The tails of the Three Comets still brushed against the west, their heads long since sleeping for the night.

The darkness reminded Trel Clan of night on Titan. “Keep the line straight!”

Trel Clan’s alarm grew; he was ready to run, if need be, ready to scamper like a rabbit over the far dunes if a Martian Marine appeared with a raser rifle.

“Turn around, as one!” the monitors ordered.

Legs trembling now, Trel Clan turned with his compatriots, showing their backs to the mute, darkened line of buses.

Trel Clan listened for the sound of a raser rifle made ready.

“Look up!” Trel Clan, the others, were ordered.

The children of Titan looked up. Trel Clan, fury within, calm obeisance without, looked up.

“The bright light, thirty degrees up from the horizon! Look at it!”

As one, they looked.

Trel Clan made himself ready for anything—ready to run, to fight with his hands—

There came a sighing sound from behind them; Trel Clan, a few others, stole a peek at the lead transport, from which a figure was descending.

“Turn around!”

Trel Clan’s eyes found the bright light in the sky, under the dark web of night.

There was no sound of a raser rifle being made ready.

The Prefect himself, moving his thin, tall, frail body slowly, made his way from the bus to the clearing in front of the ranks of Titan’s children; an attendant, bearing a tube upon a folded tripod (a weapon?), followed, stopping when the Prefect stopped to sigh and take a few short breaths.

Finally the Prefect made it to his assigned spot; and the attendant opened the tripod of the device he bore, set it down and pushed a button, which rotated its tube until it pointed toward the bright light thirty degrees above the horizon.

The Prefect, pausing to take two shallow breaths, looked into the rear of the tube, which was revealed to be a common telescope.

The knot in Trel Clan’s stomach loosened.

They had been brought out here for a common astronomy Lesson!

The Prefect straightened up, took a shallow breath, and said, “Yes, that is it.”

He turned to face the students.

“Children of Titan!” he said, his voice was a hollow rasp.

He paused and looked to the attendant, which made a delicately quick move with one hand, reaching briefly toward the Prefect’s throat.

When the Prefect spoke again, it was with the amplified voice of strength and command:

“Children of Titan!” the Prefect repeated; the volume of his voice rumbled to the buses behind them. “You have been brought here to the desert tonight for a very special Lesson!”

He paused and then turned slightly to point with a thin finger at the bright white light all the children continued to stare at.

“That,” the Prefect continued, “is the planet Saturn, parent planet to your homeworld!”

There was the faintest stirring among the ranks; for the merest moment, Trel Clan felt himself swell with pride, and—oddest sensation of all—felt himself proud to be among these other citizens of Titan. Proud to be their de facto ruler.

“Silence!” the Prefect and his attendant both said at the same time.

The rustling ceased.

“I want you to continue looking at Saturn, knowing, though you cannot see it with the naked eye, that Titan is nearby!”

The Prefect paused, whether for effect or to catch his breath it was not evident.

Fingering the device at his throat, the Prefect leaned over to say something unheard to the attendant, which answered immediately, also unheard.

“Students! You will recall in Lessons how you learned of the workings of Titan’s Heating Core, which provides its moderating temperatures and also its stable gravity. This was a great technical achievement and allowed the colonization of Titan, as well as its terraforming.

“Continue to watch!”

The Prefect now fingered the device at his throat again, said something brief to the attendant, received an answer, and nodded. “Good, it is time,” he whispered in his own, rasping voice before reactivating the device at his throat. He then bent stiffly to peer into the telescope again.

“Students! Behold!”

There was a bright flash at the point in the sky where Saturn was located; it briefly expanded into a thinning bubble the width of a marble held at arm’s length; this bubble then dissipated and soon was gone, as if it had never been there.

Saturn continued to shine, a bright object.

Without a word, the Prefect took his eye away from the telescope and allowed the attendant to collapse its tripod and bear it away toward the bus. The frail Prefect, a slight smile on his features, now turned to the ranks of Titanian children and locked his hands behind his back. As if giving a Screen Lecture, he paced slowly back and forth in front of the students, looking at the ground, the slight smile still set on his lips.

“The Heating Core, so essential to Titan’s development, was also significant in its destruction. The Machine Master, at the High Leader’s command discovered that if the Heating Core was tampered with in a certain way, it would result in the meltdown of that core, followed by the detonation of the core with a blast significant enough to destroy Titan.”

The Prefect, unable to hide his glee, stopped his pacing and faced the students head-on.

“What you have witnessed tonight is the elimination of your homeworld. The High Leader in his wisdom has concluded that Titan will no longer be necessary to him and his plans. From this moment on you are no longer Titanians, but Martians! Rejoice, students!”

The Prefect held up his hands in a mock benediction, all the more startling for its heartfelt fervor. For a moment there was stunned silence as the Prefect stood there—but, as a black scowl started to replace the beatific look the head of the Teaching Compound’s face held, the students suddenly fell back on their Teachings and became the attentive, obedient, placid, pliable, useful children they had been taught to be.

Brain cleanings, of course, had awaited those immune to Teachings.

And Trel Clan was a good child—an excellent child. He was trustworthy, diligent, mindful, a good learner, heedful of others and especially of those in authority. He made his bunk with military precision, as prescribed. He took his nourishment at the appointed times, and was grateful for it. He listened to his Lessons, and learned them well. He was assiduous, patient, studious. He did as he was told, and was all but invisible.

But inside—inside—Trel Clan the adult burned with a fury stoked to new heights. The image of Titan—his Titan—blown to bits, as a child might blow a soap bubble through a ring, seared him with a new hatred, one that would never go away until he crushed all of the Martians, held them all in his hand like that child might hold that soap bubble, before closing his fingers around it viciously and feeling it pop.

The excellent child obediently boarded his transport, heading for sleep before more Lessons and Chores and Nutrition (but not Structured Play) tomorrow.

He would do all the things they asked him to do, and be invisible.

Until it was time to let the thing that was inside him loose.

Chapter 2

A
fter an hour on Venus, Visid Sneaden knew she was being watched.

She had developed the sense of knowing such things on Mars, while working for the Machine Master, Sam-Sei. In those days, there was always the possibility that the High Leader himself might be watching; more likely, Cornelian would have the surveillance done. There had not been a single time when Visid had left the (relative) security of the Machine Master’s subterranean shop when she had not known with certainty that eyes, electronic or otherwise, were upon her.

And here, on Venus, she was assaulted with the same certainty

It became apparent to her soon after her arrival that someone was observing her. Her initial elation at being back on her native soil had turned immediately to alarm. Was this her fate? To escape Prime Cornelian’s death sentence on Mars only to be caught by his minions after finding her way home?

Hadn’t Sam-Sei told her that Venus was uninhabited?

Apparently the Machine Master had been wrong.

But there had been no rush of Martian Marines or light soldiers at her, no immediate threat—just the gnawing certainty that someone was watching… .

And this certainty had stayed with her on the following days as she explored her once and future home. And, slowly, it became part of the background noise of her life, like the gentle cooling breeze, resplendent of moisture from far-off Lake Lakshnil, and so unlike the hot dry winds of Mars; or the paling blue sky, occasionally fat with clouds, also unlike Mars; or the thousand other things that were Venus, spoke only of Venus.

O
n her second day in Frolich City Visid found her former home.

This was an eerie occurrence for her, and not as easy to accomplish as she had thought it would be. She had been four years younger when she had last been on Venus, a mere child. And her neighborhood of trim houses and neat lawns had been just that—not the row of abandoned dwellings, some destroyed, burned, or ransacked, with weedy overgrown lawns and untended gardens. Where before she had remembered the differences—her friend Arnie’s house had been blue, with a dark roof and a swing set in the backyard; her own house white with black shutters—now she saw only the sameness: lines of houses with broken windows and dirty porches.

But then she saw Arnie’s swing set.

There it was: the same special one of wood that Arnie’s father had built himself. It had been the only one in the neighborhood, and now it pointed the way to Visid’s own former house, before which, finally, she stood.

I
t was, she decided, a sad place, and she took not a step toward it from the street where she stood. A sudden chill rose up her back, having nothing to do with the cooling afternoon breeze. Soon it would be dark, she knew, and she would have to find shelter for the night.

She felt even colder, and hugged herself as the house stared back at her, front door open, windows like tall eyes on either side broken in, siding pulled away by the wind, a white strip of it slapping the house like a scolding parent. In the tall and dry lawn were mingled cans and bottles, a discarded case empty of its electronic innards; someone had scribbled in what looked like lipstick “venus DIE” on one of the white garage doors.

The wind rose higher; the sun, large and growing orange, sank over the distant lake, making the water look afire.

Visid hugged herself, sat down in the street, her back to the house, cried, then slept, dreaming of Mars.

T
he next morning, things were different.

Again she felt eyes upon her, but knew they were not a threat. And she vowed never to be vulnerable again.

In Arnie’s house she found, in the place under the back porch where she and her friend had always hid them, a box with candy in it. The chocolate tasted dry but was edible. There was still, Visid was surprised to find, running water, and she washed and drank, trying to ignore the broken furniture in the kitchen around her. She had eaten dinner over here many times, and everything had always been in its place. But no longer.

Briefly she thought of Arnie; then, barely refreshed, she set out to find who was spying on her.

It did not take long. The recreation compound had been new just before the Martians had come, and it still looked new. There had been an addition to the bunkerlike building, a nest of cameras and receiving dishes atop the flat roof.

Visid smiled grimly to herself as one of the cameras swiveled, following her progress as she approached the building cautiously, ready to run.

She stopped twenty yards from the bunker’s entrance and shouted, “Come out and talk! Let’s see who you are!”