George Martin - Old Mars

Plunging down the slope, away I went, driving fast. It all seemed to be coming together, working out. I was going to make it just fine. And then in the head beams, a rock jumped up. I hit the throttle in such a way that the sled rose as high as it could go. For a moment, I thought I was going to clear the rock, but it caught the bottom of the sled and tore it, and the sled went crashing, spinning, the see-through cover breaking around me, throwing me out where the valley sloped off on a hill of wet winter grass. I went sliding, then something bumped up against me.

It was my father’s body. I grabbed at it, and the two of us were going down that hill, me clinging to him, climbing on him, riding his torso down at rocket speed.

Down.

Down.

Down we went, Dad and I, making really good time.

Until we hit the outside wall of a house. Hit it hard.

There’s not much to tell after that. Making it to my feet, I staggered along the side of the house and beat on a door. I was taken inside by an old couple, then the whole town was awake. People were sent up the hill to find the sled, to look for the vaccine, and my father’s body next to the wall. The sled was ruined, the vaccine was found, and my dad was still dead. People came in and looked at me as if I was a rare animal freshly brought into captivity. I don’t remember who was who or what anyone looked like, just that they came and stared and went away and new people took their place.

After the curious had gone, I sat in a chair in the old couple’s house, and they fed me soup. The doctor came in and fixed my wound as best he could, said it was infected, that I had a concussion, maybe several, and I shouldn’t sleep, that it was best not to lie down.

So, I didn’t.

I took some kind of medicine from him, sat in that chair till morning climbed up over the mountain as if it was fatigued and would rather have stayed down in the dark; and then I couldn’t sit anymore. I slid out of the chair and sat on my butt a long while, then lay on the floor and didn’t care if I died because I had no idea if I was dying or getting well; I just plain had no idea about anything at all.

Someone got me in a bed, because when I awoke that’s where I was. I was bandaged up tight and was wearing a nightgown, the old woman’s I figured. The bed felt good. I didn’t want to get out of it. I was surprised when the old woman told me that I had been there three days.

I guess what happens in those cheap romances Dad talked about is that they end in a hot moment of glory, with all guns blazing and fists flying, but my romance, if you can truly call it that, ended with a funeral.

They kept Dad’s body in an open barn, so the cold air would keep him chilled, protect him from growing too ripe. But in time, even that couldn’t hold him, and down he had to go, so they came and got me ready in some clothes that almost fit, and helped me along. The entire town showed up for the burying. Me and Dad were considered heroes for bringing the vaccine. Good words were said about us, and I appreciated them. Pretty much overnight, the whole place was cured because of that vaccine.

Hours after Dad was buried, I got the goddamn Martian fever and had to have the vaccine myself and stay in bed for another two or three days, having been already weak and made even more poorly by it. It was ironic when you think about it. I had brought the vaccine but had never thought to immunize myself, and neither had Dad, and he was a doctor.

I won’t lie. I cried a lot. Then I tucked Dad’s memory in the back of my mind in a place where I could get to it when I wanted, crawled out of bed, and got over it.

That’s what we Kings do.

Chris Roberson has appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, Postscripts, Subterranean , and elsewhere. He’s probably best known for his alternate history Celestial Empire series, which, in addition to a large number of short pieces, consists of the novels The Dragon’s Nine Sons, Iron Jaw and Hummingbird, The Voyage of Night Shining White , and Three Unbroken . His other novels include Here , There & Everywhere ; Paragaea: A Planetary Romance ; Set the Seas on Fire ; Book of Secrets ; and End of the Century . Recently, he’s been writing graphic novels, including Elric: The Balance Lost featuring Michael Moorcock’s characters, and two New York Times best-selling Cinderella miniseries spinning off Bill Willingham’s Fables . His most recent book is a new novel, Further: Beyond the Threshold . In addition to his writing, Roberson was one of the publishers of the small press MonkeyBrain Books, which has recently launched a digital comics imprint, Monkeybrain Comics. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.

Here’s a robust and exciting sea story, complete with pirates and swordfights, except that the seas our swashbuckling adventurers are sailing are not the seas of Earth but the endless sand seas of Mars …

THE SHIP SPED ALONG AT FULL SAIL, WITH NOTHING BUT RED sands as far as the eye could see in all directions. It had been days since they last caught sight of water.

Jason Carmody stood in the prow of the Argo , scanning the horizon with his handmade telescope, searching for easy prey. From time to time, the leatherwing that perched on the railing beside him would flap its wings and squawk petulantly, and Jason would quiet it with a strip of dried meat from the pouch that hung at his belt. If he waited too long to satiate his pet’s appetite, the leatherwing would nip at Jason’s hands with its jagged snout, to motivate him.

“ ’Ware, captain, lest the beast take a digit away in its maw,” a voice from behind Jason said.

Without turning around, Jason dropped another morsel into his pet’s waiting mouth. “Bandit prefers the dried meat, actually. But I’m sure he’d settle for one of my fingers in a pinch.”

He turned, smiling at the approach of his first officer.

“Perhaps if the beast were to eat enough of them,” the first officer said, “you’d finally have the proper number.” He waggled the three digits at the end of one arm in Jason’s face.

“Where I come from, Tyr,” Jason said, “it’s considered the height of pirate fashion to lose whole body parts. The best pirate captains have a wooden leg, or a hook for a hand, or a patch over a missing eye.”

The first officer grew serious and tapped the small stone pendant that hung from the breather that encircled his neck, covering his gills. “I am sure that, when they go to their final reward, their missing appendages are there waiting for them. As scripture tells us, the Suffocated God makes all things whole in the seas of the dead.”

Jason took in the first officer’s weathered flesh, the green of his skin marred everywhere by old wounds and scars that mapped the long years of duels, battles, and beatings Tyr had survived.

“It’s nice to think so,” Jason said thoughtfully, then grinned. “To be honest, though, I’d settle for a decent burger.”

Tyr clacked his mandibles, the Martian equivalent of laughter. “With our luck, we’d likely find nothing but the thin gruel our former jailers fed us instead.” Remembering himself, he stilled his mandibles, his forehead flushing yellow with shame, and fondled the stone pendant in repentance. “The Suffocated God forgive my blasphemy.”

When Jason had first met him, in a Praxian jail half a lifetime before, Tyr had been a priest of the Suffocated God, imprisoned for speaking out against the Hegemony that had risen to power in the southern network of Praxis. Jason had only recently arrived on the red planet when he was captured by the Praxians himself, and he and the priest had shared a cell while they waited for their turn on the executioner’s stone. They had been wary of each other at first, but gallows humor and close quarters bred first familiarity, then friendship. When, weeks later, the two had escaped imprisonment together and fled out onto the sand seas in a makeshift raft, they had become as close as brothers.