Saddled with authority, away from Ti Sandra and out of touch possibly for days, I felt like a lost child. Mostly I stayed quiet in the tiny compartment, lying on a hard cot that belied the colloquial name from centuries past — “featherbedding.”
Jack Vasilkovsky sat on a pulldown stool, face unreadable. He would give up his life for me if called upon. And he would kill.
I had thought these matters through before, but never with such intensity and urgency. I was no longer simply myself or even the Vice President. I was the face of the Republic until Ti Sandra could safely emerge.
In a few hours, I would examine all the contingency plans made by our defense and security staffs. And shortly after that, whether or not I had spoken with Ti Sandra, I would be facing someone representing Earth — who? And with what demands?
The compartment’s tiny port allowed small glimpses of pink sky darkening into dusk. The pink shaded into deep brown filled with stars. Came a quick flash of pale blue along the horizon, something I had never seen live before, and night black and cold.
The compartment smelled of stale nano and dust. The engine flew at speed, silent on straight trace. There might be other trains stranded on the tracks, their computers dithering from Earth’s merciless evolvons. Jack looked as if he was prepared to blast them out of our way — but then I thought more as he and Dandy were thinking, and realized they would simply commandeer the next engine, leaving the stranded passengers to fend for themselves.
Oddly, only now did I speck that these events were going to be historic. Whether we won or lost, the scattering of Mars’s leaders — President, Vice President, and presumably the district governors — would become a Martian legend. Intrigue, decoys, shuttle flights and trains in the night.
Jack’s slate chimed and another coded message came in. “Another pop-up,” he said dryly. “Point One is still operating, but our satellites are brought down as soon as we put them up. They must want us really scared.”
“What’s the message?” I asked, rising from the cot.
“I have something from the President, your eyes only, and status on who we’re talking to at Many Hills. Cailetet seems to be functioning, and maybe a few small renegade BMs. Nothing else.”
He transferred Ti Sandra’s message to my slate, simple text and one picture.
Dearest Casseia,
You are the negotiator now. Earth talks to us through sympathetic mouths — Cailetet. Word is you will meet with a negotiator chosen by Crown Niger . Earth is afraid. Somebody in the know has talked. Zenger? Olympians are all in hiding. I have issued instructions to CF too sensitive to tell you now. Say whatever it takes to put Mars on track, but in the next few months, or even years, we have the aces. You will learn of my death upon your arrival. I love you and trust you with our child. We will not talk until we have begun to fight again. There are locusts in the soil.
The text was followed by a small picture of Ti Sandra, face smiling but haggard. I signaled the wiping of the message and the picture faded.
Locusts.
Jack leaned forward, touching my hand in concern. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“What do you know about locusts?” I asked.
Jack sat upright and rubbed his hands on his knees. “Jesus,” he said. “Contravened by treaty throughout the Triple. What in God’s name could we do to Earth… Have they?”
“The President says they have.”
He looked as if he might cry, caught between anger and horror and helpless to act. “Jesus,” he repeated, and could say no more for a few seconds.
“Locusts,” I said, trying to bring him back.
He folded his arms and looked away, eyebrows drawn together. “How do you control an entire planet from across the Solar System? Seed it with nano factories that can build a variety of automatic weapons, self-directing warbeiters. Mars’s soil is ideal. High silicate and aluminum, high ferrous content. Choose old mines or seemingly depleted sites, still rich with the basic minerals, open to deep exploration and concealment without triggering alarm. Sprinkle nano factory seeds from orbit. A single small ship could do it. We have no defense against such an atrocity.”
I thought of Cailetet’s attempt to expand mining claims. As if Crown Niger had tried to warn us, one last signal flag of honor before handing himself to Earth on a platter, sole political survivor of conquered Mars.
I wondered now if Stan and Jane were even alive. “We could fight the locusts,” I offered.
“We don’t have anywhere near the means to destroy all the factories,” he said. “The locust concept is specifically forbidden by treaty signed by all nations and alliances.”
“And we’re too young and naive to have thought of a defense.”
‘Theoretically,“ Jack said, ”in a year or two, all of our scientists could design a response. A nano-level disease. But if the locusts are Earth-designed, we…” He did not finish.
But we did have defenses, and they were in themselves so frightening as to have provoked the Earth… Extremes bringing on extremes. The future seemed not just dangerous, not just bleak; it seemed incomprehensible.
Dandy left the controls briefly to tell us the track ahead was clear for five hundred klicks. Jack and I told him about the locust warning. His face went gray.
I told neither of them about Ti Sandra’s impending death.
Jack switched places with Dandy, and the engine pushed on across Mars, skirting the rugged regions a hundred klicks south of Mariner Valley and Eos Chasma.
I had never felt so isolated, so wrapped in silence. The train’s faint vibration on a curved trace rose through my feet. Dandy slept fitfully, leaning against the cabin bulkhead behind the stool, feet splayed like a boy’s, boots turned out.
In the next few hours, I studied the contingency plans available on my VP slate. They were none of them useful or even suggestive. None of them took into account either locusts or Olympians. Those preparing the plans would not have been in the know about the Olympians, and Martians were too trusting to assume the worst of Mother Earth.
How many Martians would die now, brave and artless?
How many deaths could Ti Sandra and I absorb the blame for?
I stared out the port again. The stars in the sky over nightbound Mars had their echo in the sands — piezoelectric flashes as the sizzle contracted from the day’s mild warmth, sparkling like thousands of tiny fireflies. I turned off the cabin light to see them better and pressed my armor-wrapped face against the glass like a little girl. For a moment, the vision seduced me into forgetting my worries, and I felt suspended like a wraith, a child’s ghost flying over the sands. I specked through my enhancement pressures building in sizzle baked by ultraviolet across the years, wind removing layers of flopsand and powder, sudden cold night air flowing from nearby scarps, pressure within the desert varnish squeezing tiny crystals of quartz…
Then I imagined the flashes were locusts signaling to each other, and pulled away from the port with a small cry. Dandy came awake instantly, straightened his legs, blinked at me. He drew his gun so quickly I only noticed the result, not the action.
“Dreaming?” he asked, pocketing the weapon without apology.
“No,” I said. “Thinking the worst, though.”
“No good that,” he said.
Jack came into the cabin and told us the tracks seemed to be clear through Schiaparelli and into Many Hills. “We’ve passed two trains that coasted automatically onto spurs,” he said. “At least the computers did that much before they locked up.”
“People still in the trains?” I asked.
“I assume,” he said, face stony.
The engine ascended a graceful, fairy-light series of sloping trestles. We topped the inward-facing scarps of Schiaparelli basin and descended into the great flat plain twenty-five hours after departing UMS. Many Hills stood at the center, in the worn hummocks of ancient central rings. The engine coasted into the new, dazzling white depot.