“What’s happened?” Ikuro asked, leaning across his eldest brother. “It was all right when we left it!”
“Look there,” Tomoko said, indicating the far right of the screen. “Those two weren’t there when we left. They must be government ships.” “Yes,”Jelka said, coming up behind them. “The smaller one is the Ta Chi. The big one with the cannons is the Chang Hsien. If those two are here then the Shen Yi can’t be far away.”
“You know these craft?” Tomoko said, turning to look up at her, impressed, it seemed, by her knowledge.
“Yes,” she said, staring at the two ships thoughtfully. “I’ve been on the Chang Hsien many times.” She turned, looking back at Ebert, who was sitting beside Kano in the central cabin. “You were right.” He smiled. “I know.”
“Tomoko,” she said, her gaze still on Ebert, “send out a signal to the Chang Hsien. They’ll be using a microwave frequency—32.4 gigahertz, if I remember rightly. Ask for Commander Hassig, or if he’s not there, for Captain Gray. Tell them that you’ve the Marshal’s daughter on board and that you want safe passage to land on the south side of the apron. Oh, and tell him that I’m safe and that I’m being returned, else he might just take it into his mind to shoot you out of the sky.” Tomoko looked past her at Ebert.
Ebert nodded once. “Do as she says.”
“Then it’s true. You really are going to let me go.”
“It appears so.”
For the first time she smiled. “Then maybe I did you wrong, Hans Ebert.
Maybe you have changed.”
“Maybe,” he answered, his face strangely hard. “And maybe I was wrong. Maybe I ought to have kept you. At least you’d have been my wife. At least I’d have had you.”
Her smile slowly faded. “I’d have killed myself.”
His voice was the merest whisper. “Maybe. But as it is I’ve nothing.” Behind her she could hear Tomoko, sending out the signal to the Chang Hsien, but for once she felt no joy at the prospect of her release, no feeling of relief, for in front of her the man she had loathed these past six, seven years, the man she had feared, in nightmare as in reality, was looking down at the floor, his shoulders bowed, as if in defeat, an unlooked-for sadness in his eyes.
“I’ll speak out for you,” she said, wanting suddenly, unexpectedly, to comfort him. “I’ll tell my father what you did for me. He’ll speak to Li Yuan for you.”
Ebert looked up slowly, meeting her eyes. “No. It would do no good. There can be no returning. But if you must do something, then do this. Say nothing. Or praise these good fellows here for your rescue. As for me, you never saw me, never heard of me. You understand?” She stared at him silently, seeing him new.
“Evens?” he said, his eyes narrowing.
Jelka took a long breath, then shook her head. “No. My aunt, my uncle’s death—those lie between us. I can never forgive you those. As for the damage you did me, I forgive you. And, yes, I’ll say nothing.” Ebert nodded, satisfied by that. And then, from the speakers above Tomoko, came the answer from the Chang Hsien.
they watched her go down; saw dark-uniformed soldiers bow before her, then hurriedly form ranks to either side, escorting her into the great battle cruiser. And then she was gone, the hatch sealed up. Ebert leaned back from the screen and sighed.
“Where now?” Tomoko asked.
“Here,” Ebert said, handing him the piece of paper Echewa had given him earlier.
Tomoko studied the coordinates a moment, then fed them into the computer. A moment later he turned back, frowning. “But there’s nothing there. It’s desert.”
“Just go there,” Ebert said, staring at the ship that filled the screen.
“I’ll worry about that when we get there.” An hour later they dropped him, watching as he walked out into the darkness, the desert swallowing him. Yet as they lifted, banking to the right, they saw, in the bright glare of their lights, a dozen men step from a fold in the rocks and form a half circle about him. “Osu ...” Ikuro said quietly. “Outcasts.” “Like us,” Kano said, punching in their course, then turning to look across at his little brother, his eyes deeply thoughtful Yes, Ikuro thought, nodding, then strapped himself in. Like us.
“it’s done,” DeVore said, “finished with.” “Maybe,” Rutherford answered. “But maybe you should stay. Maybe now that they’ve got what they want, they’ll go away and leave us in peace.” DeVore laughed scathingly. “You think so? You really think they’ll be happy just to leave us alone? No. This is the excuse they’ve been waiting for—their chance to punish us. Why, if a tenth of it survives, I’ll be surprised. They’ve been waiting fifty years to do this. You think they’ll stop now?”
Rutherford stared at him, shocked. “But I thought—“
“You thought what? That I loved Mars? That this was my home?” He laughed. “Well, fuck Mars. It’s a fucking pit, and always will be. It was useful, very useful, but now that’s changed. I’ve taken the only thing worth keeping. I’ve shipped it out already.”
“I don’t understand.”
DeVore turned away, beginning to clear his desk. “No, but then you never needed to. You too were useful, Andreas. But now. . .” He looked up. “Well, run away, little boy. I don’t want your planet. It’s a shit hole.
And I don’t want to be King of a shit hole.”
Rutherford stared at him, astonished.
“Go!” DeVore said, hefting a gun in his hand, then aiming it at his erstwhile ally. “Fuck off, now, before I use this thing on you.”
“But, Howard—“
The bullet whizzed past him, less than a hand’s width from his head, and lodged in the ViewScreen behind him, shorting the machine. “Just go,” DeVore said, more quietly than before. “Right now, before I kill you.”
Rutherford backed away, then, turning, ran to the door and out. And behind him, echoing down the corridor after him, came De-Vore’s laugh, like the sound of air escaping from a punctured dome.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mother Sky it was night. Ahead, across the silent dunes, the Martian capital of Rang Kua was still ablaze, its great dome cracked and open to the sky. Beyond it the crater wall loomed vast and dark.
From a ledge of rock two li to the south, a dozen men looked on, the darkness of their face plates lit by the flickering flames. They had heard the screams of the dying carried on the thin and frigid air. Through the broad, curving face of the dome they had witnessed the devastation, the slow, suffocating death of Mars’s greatest City. Now the dome was dark, fire blackened, and the trickle of refugees through the main air lock had ceased. There would be no more survivors. Ebert looked about him at the silent, watching figures, then turned back, studying the scene, fixing it in mind. In less than thirty hours two centuries of patient enterprise had been undone. Mars had ripped itself apart in a series of tormented convulsions, like the death throes of an animal driven mad by inner sickness.
As the flames died, they turned away, making their way back to their power sleds. Returning across the darkness of the dunes, they lapsed into a brooding silence. It was only when they were back inside the settlement, seated about the benches in the meeting room, that they began to talk of what they had seen.