“No, wait a minute. There’s a break in the cliffs ahead—an opening in the coastline.”
“Big enough to sail into?” asked Orphu.
“If it’s the opening to Candor Chasma,” said Mahnmut, “it’s a body of water bigger than Conamara Chaos on Europa!”
“I don’t remember how large Conamara Chaos was,” admitted Orphu.
“Larger than all three of the North American Great Lakes with Hudson Bay thrown in,” said Mahnmut. “Candor Chasma is essentially another huge inland sea opening to the north . . . there should be thousands of square kilometers in which to maneuver. No lee shore!”
“Is that good?” asked Orphu, obviously unwilling to get his hopes up.
“It’s a chance for survival,” said Mahnmut, pulling on lines to fill what was left of the mainsail with wind. He waited until they’d crested the next wave and swung the wheel, turning the heavy ship ponderously to starboard, swinging the bow toward that ever-widening gap in the coastal cliffs. “It’s a chance for survival,” he said again.
It ended on the afternoon of the eighth day. One hour the dust clouds were still low and scudding, the wind was still raging, and the seas within the great Candor Chasma basin remained white and wild; the next hour, after a final bloody rain, the skies were blue, the seas grew placid, and the little green men stirred from their niches and came up on deck like children rising from a restful nap.
Mahnmut was spent. Even with a recharge trickle from the portable solar cells and occasional jolts from their draining energy cubes, he was worn out organically, mentally, cybernetically, and emotionally.
The LGM seemed to marvel at what remained of the mended sails, at the spliced tiller cables, and at other repairs Mahnmut had carried out in the past three days. Then they got to work crewing the bilge pumps, hosing down the blood-red decks, mending more canvas, caulking the warped hull and bulkhead planks, repairing splintered masts, untangling lines, and sailing the ship. Mahnmut went to the mid-deck and supervised the lifting of Orphu from the soggy lower deck, helped secure his friend to the deck and rig the sun-tarp over him, and then Mahnmut found a warm, sunny place on the mid-deck, out of the way, with a wooden wall behind him and a coil of rope in front ameliorating the agoraphobia a bit, and there he allowed himself to float into a half-stupor. When he shut down his eyes, he could still see the high waves approaching, feel the pitching deck beneath, and hear the howl of wind, despite the calm seas around them now. He peeked. The ship was sailing south again, tacking into the mild southwestern wind, heading back toward the broad opening where Candor Chasma opened into the Valles Marineris at the place called Meles Chasma. Mahnmut shut down his vision again and allowed himself to doze off.
Something touched Mahnmut’s shoulder and he started awake. One by one, the forty LGM were filing past him, each green figure touching him on the shoulder as it passed. He reported this to Orphu, using the subvocal channel.
“Perhaps they’re expressing their gratitude for your saving them,” said the Ionian. “I know I would if I had arms or legs left to pat you with.”
Mahnmut said nothing, but he could hardly believe that this was the reason for the contact. He hadn’t seen any emotions from the LGM—not even when their translators had withered and died after communicating with him—and he found it hard to believe they were all grateful, even though the LGM were good enough sailors to realize that the ship would have sunk had it not been for Mahnmut’s intervention.
“Or maybe they just think you’re lucky and they’re trying to get some of it to rub off,” added Orphu.
Before Mahnmut could express his opinion of this idea, the last of the LGM in line had reached him, but instead of patting the moravec’s carbonfiber shoulder and moving on, the little green man went to his knees, lifted Mahnmut’s right hand, and set it against his chest.
“Oh, no,” Mahnmut groaned to Orphu. “They want to do the communication thing again.”
“That’s good,” said the Ionian. “We have questions to ask.”
“The answers aren’t worth the death of another of these little green men,” said Mahnmut. He was pulling his hand back as hard as the black-eyed LGM was tugging it toward his green chest.
“It might well be worth it,” said Orphu. “Even if the LGM unit does undergo anything similar to our idea of death, which I doubt. Besides, it’s his initiative. Let him make contact.”
Mahnmut quit struggling and let the LGM pull his hand against its chest—into its chest.
Once again there was the shocking, sickening feeling of his fingers sliding through flesh and being immersed in the warm, thick saline solution, of his hand contacting and then encircling that pulsing organ the size of a human heart.
“Try holding it a bit less tightly this time,” suggested Orphu. “If the communication is truly through molecular packets of organic nanobytes, less surface area of contact might cut down the volume of their thoughts.”
Mahnmut nodded, realized that Orphu could not see his nod, but then focused only on the strange vibration from his hand through his arm to his mind as the little green man began the conversation.
WE GIVE YOU
GRATITUDE FOR
SAVING
OUR SHIP.
“You’re welcome,” Mahnmut said aloud, focusing his thoughts through spoken language at the same time he shared the exchange with Orphu on the tightbeam band. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you call yourselves?”
ZEKS.
The word meant nothing to Mahnmut. He felt the LGM’s communication organ pulse in his hand and had the wild urge to release it, to rip his fist from this doomed person’s chest—but that would help neither of them now. Do you know this word—‘Zeks’? Mahnmut asked Orphu.
Just a minute, sent Orphu. Accessing third-tier memory. Here it is—from A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was a slang term related to the Russian word “sharashka”—“a special scientific or technical institute staffed with prisoners”—the prisoners of these Soviet labor camps were called zeks.
Well, sent Mahnmut, I don’t think these chlorophyll-based Martian LGM are prisoners of some short-lived Earth regime from more than two thousand years ago. The entire exchange with Orphu had taken less than two seconds. To the little green man, he said, “Would you tell us where you’re from?”
This time the answer was not in words but images—green fields, a blue sky, a sun much larger than the one in Mars’s sky, a distant range of mountains hazy in the thick air. “Earth?” said Mahnmut, shocked.
NOT THE STAR IN THE NIGHT SKY HERE
was the LGM’s response.
A DIFFERENT EARTH.
Mahnmut pondered this but did not know how to phrase a clarifying question other than his clumsy “Which Earth, then?”
The little green man answered only with the same images of green fields, distant mountains, an Earthlike view of the sun. Mahnmut could feel this LGM’s energy fading, the heartlike organ pulsing with less vitality. I’m killing him, he thought in panic.
Ask about the stone faces came Orphu on the commline.
“Who is the man represented in the stone faces?” Mahnmut asked dully.
THE MAGUS.
HE OF THE BOOKS.
LORD OF THE SON OF SYCORAX, WHO BROUGHT US HERE.
THE MAGUS IS MASTER EVEN OF SETEBOS, OUR LORD’S
MOTHER’S GOD.
Magus! sent Mahnmut to Orphu.
It means magician, sorcerer—as in the Three Magi . . .
Goddammit, Mahnmut sent fiercely, angrily—he was wasting this dying green person’s time. The heart-organ pulsed more weakly with every second that passed. I know what “magus” means, but I don’t believe in magic and neither do you, Orphu.