The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN (16 page)

“What the
fuck
…?” Matthew sounds almost
breathless—he must be dressing as fast as he can while he keeps his
eyes on the feeds.

I zoom in as close as I can get. The hole where the
round pierced the blue suit is closing up, the fabric re-knitting
itself. A view from behind shows the exit wound—though larger and
more roughly torn—doing the same. Something under the fabric—barely
visible—looks like boiling metal.

“Please don’t do that again,” a voice comes calmly
onto the Link. The hands go back to the belt buckle—slower, this
time, with more reassuring gestures—and unfasten it. The belt of
shiny spheres and rods comes away from the blue suit. One hand
holds it out to the nearest armored trooper. I can see the
featureless mask turn and look straight up at the Command Tower,
right at me.

“Colonel Ram,” the voice comes again, soft and
smooth. “My name is Paul Stilson. We should speak. I expect you
have many questions, and I, for my part, have quite a lot to tell
you.”

“Carver: bring him in through Airlock One,” I order.
“Kastl: Clear out, lock down and seal off everything in a straight
path to Medical.”

“And evacuate all the adjacent sections,” Matthew
chimes in urgently. On the base tracking grid, I see he was headed
to Ops from his quarters, but then he stopped, turned back, headed
to where our visitor will be coming through. He gets blocked when
the hatches all shut and lock down.

“Halley?” I make the next call.

“I got the alert, Colonel,” she tells me almost
instantly.

“Clear out your A-Deck ward and get us an Iso-room
ready.”

“Then get out of there until we’re sure he’s sealed
in,” Matthew goes further.

“On it. Give me two minutes.”

“We’ll hold him at Staging,” I let her know, then
pass that to Carver.

I switch over to the heads-up in my goggles so I can
watch everything on the run while I head out of Ops and down the
stairs. Hovering ghostly over my vision I can see our “guest”
getting led at gunpoint into Airlock One, and held there until the
adjacent Staging Area can be vented. (The locks themselves are only
big enough to transfer maybe four fully-suited bodies at a time for
routine efficiency, but the connecting Staging rooms—usually used
for suiting up—can be sealed and used as an extension of the
airlock, letting the better part of a platoon move in and out
together.)

The Blue Suit—who named himself Paul Stilson—gets
gestured in by gun barrels, a half-dozen Heavy Armor troopers ahead
of him and following him. Then he’s got a dozen guns on him in the
Staging Area as they put him (and themselves) through a quick
dust-off and contamination check. Then the section gets
re-pressurized, and they wait for Halley to give them the
all-clear. But no one unseals their suits, just in case.

Still outside, Sergeant Staley is holding Blue Suit’s
belt of curious objects like a dead rat by the tail, keeping a
heavy blast hatch between Stilson and his undetermined gadgets.

“Staley: Once they’ve gotten him to containment, get
his belt secured in a glove-box,” I order. “Then put the box in an
ordnance disposal container—treat it like a bomb until we know
better. Then get it to Dr. Mann in the labs.”

I see the silver-masked head turn and look right into
the security cameras, then give a little shake like he’s trying to
assure us we needn’t worry.

I run past the Senior Officers Quarters toward the
sealed hatch that would get me to Medical, which is where Matthew
is waiting, pacing like someone is about to die on the other side
of that hatch. I move to key in my override, but he grabs my
arm.

“Where the hell to do think you’re going?”

The only answer I give him is to raise my eyebrows at
him like I think he should know better, but he’s clearly thinking
the same thing about me.

“You saw what happened,” he makes his point clearer.
“That was some kind of advanced nano-shit. Even assuming that maybe
it isn’t something contagious, what
else
do you think he
could do?”

I watch in my goggles as the HA suits march our
visitor—Paul—down the corridors toward isolation, keeping their
guns up and keeping a respectable distance. But the blue suit just
follows where they lead him, offering no resistance.

“I don’t like that you let him inside,” Matthew
grumbles at me. “We could have checked him over on the surface, set
up a shelter.”

“The hard hatches and bulkheads are bio-sealed and
can be charged to resist nanotech,” I remind him needlessly. “And
they’ll contain any blast that couldn’t hurt us from the outside.
Besides: Assuming you’re right, if he meant to harm us, why hasn’t
he done so already? We did shoot him, after all.”

“Colonel Ram, you need to see something,” Lisa cuts
in on the Link, still up in Command Ops, but I see she’s only
transmitting to Matthew and myself. She’s feeding us an image of
the dusty floor of the airlock our guest was just brought through,
zooming in and enhancing one set out of several dozen boot prints
in the fine red sand. “His boots… They match the prints of our
mystery visitor. Which means he—or someone in an ETE suit like
his—was the one poking around here while we slept. And he did call
you by name.”

I take a few breaths to digest that, realizing I’d
been suspecting that just from the way he called to me, like he
knew me, like an old friend. Or like a very friendly enemy.
Still:

“As I was saying,” I give it to Matthew more gently
this time, “if he had meant us harm, he’s had opportunity,
especially if he’s already been inside, had the run of the place
while we were sleeping.”

I don’t think that makes him feel any better.

Halley did her job, clearing the main examination
ward in A-Deck Medical, getting the Number One Isolation Chamber
ready. The larger Iso units are laid out as fully-stocked exam and
treatment rooms, only heavily sealed and walled with thick clear
acrylic, separated from the main exam ward by a clean-room that
serves as an airlock into the units. Paul Stilson has let himself
be placed and closed up inside Iso One, where we can observe him
from what would otherwise be a waiting room. Armed troopers—still
in their sealed full HA gear—surround his clear-walled “cell”,
turning Medical into a high-security brig.

I watch through the thick multilayered acrylic as
Stilson’s gloved hands gingerly unseal and remove his mask and
light helmet, lift it from his head and set it on an exam table in
the small sterile chamber. He ignores the guns and looks calmly at
me.

Without his helmet, he is surprisingly plain: short
brown hair, soft Caucasian features, friendly smile—he looks like a
businessman, or maybe a politician. But his eyes are a shockingly
deep blue, the irises almost metallic, iridescent like
mother-of-pearl. He smiles broader when he realizes my assessment
of his appearance, and casually sits himself up on the exam table
next to his helmet.

“Not much to look at, am I?” he self-deprecates with
a bit of a chuckle. “I’m a xeno-geologist by trade, Colonel. Though
I suppose I didn’t go to any university you would know. I was only
eleven Earth years old at the time of the Apocalypse—that’s what
the survivors have been calling the Ares’ Shield disaster—living
with my parents as they helped get the first terraforming stations
up and running. And yes, that does make me sixty-one, by the Earth
standard calendar.”

His voice is soft and casual, like we’re talking over
drinks, new friends getting to know one another.

“It’s good to see you in person finally,” he
continues when I don’t respond. “And awake, of course. So yes, to
answer Colonel Ava’s suspicions, I
have
been here before,
many times. Not a popular pastime with my people, however—I expect
I’ll have quite a lot to answer for when I get home. Again. But
we’ll talk more about that later. I expect you have more pressing
questions for me.”

“Colonel Ram,” Lisa comes over my link, “for what
it’s worth, his ID
does
check: There was a Paul Mark Stilson
listed with the ETE crews who brought their children, birth date
2053.”

Matthew turns so that Paul can’t see his face, and
gives me a glare that warns me not to engage our “guest” the way he
seems to want me to. Paul catches him at it anyway.

“I really do mean to help you in any way I can,
Colonel Burke. But I understand if you need time to make your own
decisions about me. As you suspect, time is something I have in
surplus.”

“You look good for sixty-one, Mr. Stilson,” Halley
offers, calibrating another sweep of the chamber from the Clean
Room.

“I’m not in any way contagious, Doctor,” he tries to
reassure her. “But I request that I be allowed to wear my sealsuit.
Just a habitual precaution—we never spend time unsuited in any
environment outside of our Stations. Otherwise, my nanites are
specific to my DNA and do not function outside of my body—in fact,
they will break down almost instantly—they’re programmed that way
during the Generation Ceremony.”

He stops himself, chuckles under his breath.

“What I must sound like to you,” he considers, “the
things I take for granted. I apologize. Where should I start?”

There’s a hand-railing in front of the big
observation window, one of several in Medical to help the injured
get around. I lean on it, getting my face close to the
transparency.

“Are you injured?” I ask him.

“I’m quite well, thank you.” His hand reflexively
rubs the spot on his chest where the bullet entered (there isn’t
even a mark there now—his suit look pristine). “And no blame,
Colonel. I suppose I actually expected worse. I’d been thinking
about all the ways I could approach you, but I could think of none
that would totally avoid violence and suspicion.”

Matthew shakes his head very slightly, arms crossed
hard across his chest.

Paul unzips the front of his suit and then lifts an
underlying mesh shirt to reveal his pale but moderately-toned
chest. There is only what looks like a very old scar where the
bullet entered.

“My nanites allow me to heal quickly,” he explains.
“They also initiate emergency protocols: stop bleeding, compensate
for any damaged organs, even process carbon dioxide back into
oxygen right in my blood, so I can do without air for short
periods.” He puts his outfit back in order and rests his gloved
hands on his thighs. “I was implanted when I was eighteen. We are
currently delaying subsequent generations until they are at least
twenty-five. We take very good care of our children, Colonel, but
our Elders feel that we must all know what it is like to live as a
Natural—an un-enhanced and mortal human—for at least a short time
before we become otherwise.”

“You’re telling us you don’t die?” Matthew
doubts.

“Everything that lives, dies, Colonel Burke,” Paul
says matter-of-factly. “It’s just that death has become
significantly more elusive for us. As has aging.”

“You going to tell us how to kill you?” Matthew cuts
back.

“I would be doing my people a disservice to speculate
with you on that subject,” Paul answers coolly. “And I trust we
have better things to do together than have you spend your time
experimenting.”

“You have amazing trust for being bullet-proof,”
Matthew quips.

“It was not pleasant getting shot, I assure you.”
There is almost an edge in his voice now. “But I reiterate: We have
better things to discuss.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” I interrupt. Then to
Halley: “Is it safe to go in?”

“No detectable contamination, Colonel,” she confirms
without sounding convinced. “But that doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

“Any other surprises?”

“Passive scans would say he’s a normal, very healthy
thirty
year old,” she assesses with an edge of irony. “And
that includes an absolute lack of any gunshot trauma. Otherwise,
there are no obvious implants or modifications. Whatever his
particular nano-hybridization is, it keeps a low profile until it’s
needed.” She locks eyes with Paul, who gives her his usual soft
smile and adds:

“That would be an adequate assessment, Doctor
Halley.”

“Anything else you’d like to do with him?” I ask
her.

“If I was a researcher, I’d never let him leave,” she
admits. “But I’m not, and given our current limited resources, I’m
not eager to risk trying to extract a sample of his nanotech just
out of curiosity.”

“You would fail, Doctor,” Paul insists calmly.

“Is it safe to let him out of there?” I go further.
Matthew’s eyebrows go up and his mouth opens like he’s going to
protest, but he keeps silent. Halley only shrugs. “Then let’s move
this discussion elsewhere. Mr. Stilson, can we get you anything?
Water? Coffee? Something to eat?”

“Coffee would be very much appreciated, Colonel,” he
says with what seems to be honest warmth. “And please call me
Paul.”

“Command Briefing?” Matthew criticizes my choice of
location when we’re out of Paul’s earshot. “That’s nine feet from
Ops.”

“It’s not like he hasn’t been there before,” I remind
him of Lisa’s mystery footprints, now apparently resolved. “And he
doesn’t appear to be armed.”

“Rick,” Matthew calls into his Link as we walk back
toward Ops, unsealing hatches as we go. “Anything on our friend’s
shiny toys?”

“They look like solid pieces of steel,” Rick comes
on, looking simultaneously perplexed and intrigued. “Three
identical rods, too small to be effective clubs. Three identical
spheres. No instrumentation. Not even a seam. And we can’t scan
inside—they just show as solid. We tried looking closer, but when
we scanned one with an electron microscope, it began emitting a
low-level EM field that blocked our imaging. Very intentional. I’d
say his toys have specific protocols to resist examination. I even
tried cutting one: the material was not scored by anything up to
tungsten and diamond, which tells me it’s probably a carbon matrix
of some kind. Lasers and plasma cutters didn’t even get it hot.
Otherwise, they appear inert. Still, given the apparent level of
nanotech that made them, I seriously doubt they’re intended to be
decorative.”