Sebastian of Mars (5 page)

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.

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.

A
s 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.”

I
t 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.