“I don’t know,” said Orphu. “Perhaps.”
“And do you think that’s what screwed up the Earth and sent the post-humans to their orbital cities fourteen hundred years ago there? Some quantum failure?”
“No,” said Orphu. “I think that whatever happened on Earth was a result of quantum teleportation success, not failure.”
“What do you mean?” For a brief second, Mahnmut was not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“I think they punched quantum tunnels into one or more of these alternate realities,” said Orphu. “And they let something in.”
They floated along in silence until sunrise.
The sun touched the top of the balloon first, painting the orange fabric in unreal light and causing each buckycable to gleam. Then it reached the three Tharsis volcanoes, glinting on ice, moving goldly down the east side of each of the three volcanoes like so much slow magma. Then the sun bathed the breaking clouds in pink and gold and illuminated the Valles Marineris Inland Sea all the way to the eastern horizon like a lapis crack in the world. Olympus Mons caught the sunlight a minute later and Mahnmut watched as the great peak seemed to rise above the western horizon like some advancing galleon with sails of gold and red.
Then the sun glinted on something closer and higher.
“Orphu!” sent Mahnmut. “We have company.”
“One of the chariots?”
“Still too far away to tell. Even with vision magnification, it’s lost in the sunrise glare.”
“Anything we can do if it is the chariot people? Have you found any weapons without telling me?”
“All we have to throw at them is harsh language,” said Mahnmut, still watching the gleaming speck. It was moving very fast and would be on them soon. “Unless you want me to trigger the Device.”
“It might be a bit early for that,” said Orphu.
“It seems odd that Koros III came on this mission without weapons.”
“We don’t know what he would have brought along from the command pod,” said Orphu. “But that reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about.”
“What’s that?”
“You remember we were discussing Koros’s secret mission to the asteroid belt a few years ago.”
“Yes?” The sun was still blazing from the advancing aircraft, but Mahnmut could see that it was a chariot now, its holographic horses in full gallop.
“What if it wasn’t a spy mission?” said Orphu.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the rock moravecs have one thing we five-moons types never bothered to evolve.”
“Aggression?” said Mahnmut. “Bellicosity?”
“Exactly. What if Koros III was sent not as a spy, but as a . . .”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Mahnmut. “But our guest is here. One large humanoid in a chariot.”
Sonic booms crashed around Mahnmut, rippling the fabric of the huge balloon above. The chariot continued to decelerate. It circled the balloon once from a distance of a hundred meters.
“The same man who greeted us in orbit?” asked Orphu. His voice was perfectly calm. Mahnmut looked at the helpless shell lashed to the deck, without so much as an eye to watch what was going on.
“No,” he said. “That Greek god had a gray beard. This one is younger and clean shaven. He looks to be about three meters tall.” Mahnmut held up his hand, palm outward in the ancient sign for greeting, showing no weapon. “I think he . . .”
The chariot wheeled closer. The man at the reins held out his right hand, fist closed, and swept the fist from right to left.
The balloon exploded above them, helium venting as the fabric flamed. Mahnmut grabbed the wooden railing of the gondola to keep from being thrown out as the twisting mass of flaming fabric, buckycarbon cable, and boat-shaped gondola plunged toward the Tharsis Plateau thirteen kilometers below. The little moravec was in negative-g, feet above his head, connected to the gondola only by his fierce grip on the railing as the platform began to tumble in freefall.
The chariot with its ghostlike horses flew right at and through the flaming balloon fabric above. The man—god—reached out and grabbed the black buckycable in one huge fist. Impossibly, absurdly, instead of ripping his arm out of its socket, the gondola jerked to a stop as the man held several tons in one hand. He whipped the horses with the reins, using his other hand.
Trailing the pitching gondola and its contents forty meters below and behind it, the chariot turned and flew west toward Olympus Mons.
36
The Mediterranean Basin
Savi drove another hour or so down the red-clay road, steering the crawler deeper into the fields and folds of the Mediterranean Basin. It was dark and raining hard now, with lightning flashing and thunder vibrating the glass-sphere of the passenger shell. Daeman pointed out the crosses with their humanoid shapes in one of the bright flashes. “What are those? People?”
“Not people,” said Savi. “Calabani.”
Before she could explain, Daeman said, “We have to stop.”
Savi did so, turning on the headlights and overhead lights and removing her night-vision glasses. “What’s wrong?” Evidently she could see the distress on Daeman’s face.
“I’m starving,” he said.
“I have two food bars in my pack . . .”
“I’m dying of thirst,” he said.
“I have a water bottle in the pack. And we can crack the shell and get some fresh, cold rainwater . . .”
“I have to go to the toilet,” said Daeman. “Bad.”
“Ah, well,” said Savi. “The crawler has a lot of nice amenities, but no onboard toilet. We could probably all use a rest stop.” She touched two virtual buttons and the forcefield quit keeping rain off the glass and the slice in the side of the bubble slid open. The air was fresh and smelled of wet fields and crops.
“Outside?” said Daeman, not trying to hide his horror. “In the open?”
“In the cornfield,” said Savi. “More privacy there.” She reached into her pack and took out a roll of tissues, handing Daeman some.
He stared at the tissues with shock.
“I can use a rest stop,” said Harman, accepting some of the flimsy tissues from her. “Come on, Daeman. Men to the right of the crawler. Ladies to the left.” He stepped out through the slice and clambered down the strut ladder. Daeman followed, still holding the tissues like a talisman, and the old woman clambered down behind him with more grace than he’d shown.
“I’ll have to go to the right as well,” said Savi. “Different row of corn, perhaps, but not too far away.”
“Why?” began Daeman, but then saw the black gun in her hand. “Oh.”
She tucked the weapon in her belt and the three walked off the road, across a low ditch, across a muddy stretch of field, and into the high corn. The rain was falling heavily now.
“We’ll be soaked,” Daeman said. “I didn’t bring my self-drying clothes . . .”
Savi looked up at the sky as lightning ripped from cloud to cloud and the thunder echoed down the broad basin. “I have both your thermskins in the pack. We get back in the crawler, you can wear those while the other clothes dry.”
“Anything else in that magical pack that you want to tell us about?” asked Harman.
Savi shook her head. “A few food bars. Flechette clips. A flashlight and some maps I drew myself. All of our thermskins. Water bottle. An extra sweater I carry around. That’s about it.”
As eager as Daeman was to get into the privacy of the cornfield, he paused at the edge of it to peer around. “Is it safe out here?” he asked.
Savi shrugged. “No voynix.”
“What about those . . . what did you call them?”
“Calibani,” said Savi. “Don’t worry about them tonight.”
He nodded and stepped into the first row of corn. The stalks rose two or three feet higher than his head. Rain pattered heavily on the broad leaves. He stepped back out. “It’s really dark in there.”
Harman had disappeared into the corn already and Savi was walking the other direction, but she stopped, turned, walked back, and handed Daeman the flashlight. “There’s enough lightning for me to see.”