George Martin - Old Mars

It’s bullshit that they don’t have emotions, whatever those Far Frontiers episodes say. They’re just less self-reflective about them .

Sally took a deep breath; she wasn’t entirely confident of getting out of here alive, but the odds would be much worse without Teyud.

“My residence was attacked …” she began.

When she had finished, the receptionist blinked at her and bent to whisper into a grille. Teyud’s ears pricked forward; so did Satemcan’s. A tendril extended and the receptionist plugged it into his ear. The conversation that followed went entirely silent; he nodded several times, then extracted the intercom thing (or possibly data-retrieval thing) with a plop and spoke:

“Three independent Coercives contracted with a third party for the operation you mention four days ago, through our employment placement service, with the usual finder’s fee. They also purchased tactical information on your habitual schedule. Early this morning they returned here with a vas-Terranan prisoner, whom they turned over to the third party. They then purchased fairly extensive medical care for bone fractures, burns, and canid bites and departed Zar-tu-Kan bound for Dvor-il-Adazar. We will not sell you their identities because their affiliation contracts contain a nondisclosure clause.”

International Union of Thugs, Local 141 , she thought bitterly. They’ve had a long time to come up with rules to cover every contingency .

The receptionist blinked; evidently Sally’s expression was showing more than she wanted. Earth-human body language wasn’t exactly the same as Martian, but it wasn’t impossibly different either for basics like humor or anger. The problem was that each species found the reasons for the other’s emotions weirdly opaque. Add in that Martians had only one language and one set of social rules and hence were unaccustomed to dealing with different reactions, and crossed wires were more common than not.

There was more cultural variation in San Francisco than on this entire planet. She made the muscles of her face relax one by one.

“The nondisclosure policy is not negotiable, by permanent directive,” the receptionist said cautiously. “Killing or excruciating myself or any of our other associates here will not alter this; the policy is set at higher levels, to whom we are of little consequence.”

Sally schooled her face and glanced aside at Teyud. The Thoughtful Grace made a very small gesture with two fingers of the hand resting on her sword hilt: Don’t push it .

“I’m more interested in the person who employed the three … associates of your cooperative,” Sally said grimly.

“We will inform you of the identity of the third party for a fee of 2,750 monetary units, with financing available on the following terms at an interest rate of …”

“No nondisclosure clause?”

“No, none was purchased. This was an imprudent excess of thrift that increases the probability of suboptimal results from the client’s perspective! Note that we will include a nondisclosure agreement with you for a modest additional fee of—”

Ten minutes later they were back on the street, and Sally was looking at the name and address written on a scrap of paper-equivalent.

“What do we do now?” she said.

Teyud smiled. “As to our course of action, we engage in reconnaissance, then attack.”

Here I am, invading Harvard with fell intent. Or maybe Oxford .

Even by the standards of Zar-tu-Kan, the Scholarium was old . Old enough that it hadn’t originally been under a dome, or laid out whole in one of the fractal-pattern mazes Martians had gone in for under the Crimson Dynasty. They’d improvised during the Imperial era as it grew; now the reduced students and staff rattled around in buildings that ranged from the size of her apartment block to things bigger than the Solar Dome in Houston or the Great House of People’s Culture in Beijing; the bigger ones were mostly garden now, and they were all linked together by tunnels below and translucent walkways etched in patterns like magnified snowflakes above.

Sally suppressed a start as she saw herself in a reflective patch of one of them. She and Teyud wore student robes—slightly threadbare and gaudy—and Scholarium-style masks. Hers was a Spinner-Grub, modeled on the pupal stage of an insect used for textile production—a freshman style, and something of a dry joke in local terms. Teyud’s was a jest of her own, a delicate golden mask representing the face of a Thoughtful Grace sword-adept … which she actually was. Here it could mark someone studying the martial arts, or military history. The fact that most people wore masks and clothing that covered everything to the fingertips made sneaking around in disguise much easier.

And Teyud had a rather ironic sense of humor. When Sally mentioned the fact, she nodded slightly.

“More. In their origins, the Thoughtful Grace were Coercives concerned with maintenance of rule and regulation deference … what is that Terran word …”

“Police,” Sally said quietly.

“Yes. And now I am pursuing a similar function, particularly for you.”

She chuckled slightly. Sally didn’t feel like laughing; it was a bit too personal.

“And so I still serve Sh’uMaz , in—metaphorical mode—a way,” Teyud said, and touched the Imperial glyph in the forehead of her mask that represented that concept. “Even though I am not in the service of the Kings Beneath the Mountain.”

Sh’uMaz meant Sustained Harmony , the program and motto of the Tollamune emperors. The Eternal Peace of the Crimson Dynasty was a nostalgic memory on Mars now, but there was some undertone in Teyud’s voice stronger than that.

A section of the walkway curled downward in a spiral like a corkscrew. They slid down it in a way practicable only because the gravity was a third of Earth’s, then walked out into the space under a dome. The buildings around the edge were wildly varied, but most of the identifying glyphs bore variations on the beaded spiral that signified tembst . This was the science faculty, more or less.

Pathways of textured, colored rock wound through the open space, interspersed with low shrubs and banks of flowers. Colorful avians flew or scurried about. One of the birds stopped and hovered before her face.

“Food?” it said hopefully.

“Buzz off,” she replied, and it did.

Students sat or sprawled along the pathways and planters and benches, arguing or reading or occasionally singing. Apart from the eternal atanj a few played games that involved throwing small things with bundles of tentacles that tried to snag your hand. You won by catching the tip of a tentacle and whirling the … thing … at the next player. If it missed, it scuttled back to the one who had the next turn.

She couldn’t understand why anyone here would abduct a Terran biologist for his knowledge; Martians were simply better at it, and Tom had come to this planet to learn himself. That left something on the order of I need a lab rat with a particular genetic pattern as motivation. Which meant that anything could be happening to him.

Anything at all.

“Information,” Teyud said smoothly to a passerby. “Knowledgeable Instructor Meltamsa-Forin?”

The student had a mask whose surface mimicked something that had a swelling boss of bone on its forehead.

“Ah, Meltam the Neurologically Malfunctioning,” he said.

Or Meltam the Eccentric or Meltam the Mad , she translated mentally.

“Identity, function?”

The student pointed to one of the buildings. “Be prepared to listen to exquisitely reasoned arguments from faulty premises.”