George Martin - Old Mars

For what he’s paying, he can call you a lot worse than that. Just keep an eye out in case those things return. They’re not going to get any less hungry in the next couple of hours .

“Let’s keep alert for hungry visitors,” said Scorpio to Quedipai. “And in the meantime, tell me a little more about what you think you’re going to find.”

“As I told you: the Tomb of the Martian Kings—and hopefully, inside the tomb, the Book of Blaxorak.”

“There have been a lot of Martian kings over the eons,” said Scorpio. “Why are these so much more difficult to find? This isn’t a very big planet, and it hasn’t got all that many weird places where you could successfully hide a tomb for thirty or forty thousand years.”

“They are more than well hidden,” answered Quedipai. “If my research and our legends are correct, they are protected .”

“Protected?” repeated Scorpio. “By who or by what?”

“They are the tombs of the Krang Dynasty,” said the Martian. “The Krang were a special race. Some say they were not even native to the planet but that a small handful came here and conquered the entire world in something less than a year. They built no cities and left no edifices, which suggests that they were … visitors .”

“As far as I can tell, you were always a warrior culture until your wars finally almost destroyed the whole damned planet. What kind of special race could conquer you in under a year?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Quedipai. “They were said to be huge, but that could be relative. Huge compared to what? I assume if they had the technology to come here from another world, they doubtless possessed weaponry in advance of ours, and there are hints, rumors, legends, that the Book of Blaxorak gave them powers that were so close to being supernatural as to make no difference.”

“But you don’t know for sure that they did come from another world,” Scorpio continued.

“True. Nor do I know why they all died or vanished—or left in a short period of time. Those are some of the answers I hope to discover when we find the tomb.”

“ If we find the tomb.”

“If we find the tomb,” amended Quedipai. “But I truly think we will. I have been studying the Krang for most of my adult life.”

“Can I ask a question?” said Scorpio.

“Certainly.”

“Why?” he said. “If they existed at all, they lived tens of thousands of years ago. They were here just long enough to conquer the planet, after which they left or went extinct. As far as I can tell, they left nothing behind—no artifacts, no monuments, nothing but a few myths and legends. Why spend your whole life trying to learn about them?”

“We are not all creatures of action like you and your friend.”

“My friend?” repeated Scorpio.

“Merlin. It is now obvious that you are in psychic or telepathic rapport with him.”

Well, good for you, Quedipai! thought the Venusian.

“Anyway, I learned what I could about you before I approached you, Scorpion,” continued Quedipai. “You have been to all of the inner planets, as well as Triton, Titan, Ganymede, Io, and Europa. You clearly have a desire to see what lies beyond the next planet. I, too, am interested in the next world. My worlds are just defined differently than yours.”

“Makes sense when you put it that way,” said Scorpio.

Quedipai turned to Merlin. “And I apologize for thinking you were merely an animal.”

Merlin stared at him and remained motionless.

Come on , thought Scorpio. He’s apologizing. Lick his hand or something .

That’s disgusting. Maybe I’ll just bite off six or seven of his fingers. Martians have too many fingers anyway .

“He appreciates your apology and accepts it,” said Scorpio aloud.

“Good, I would hate for him to be annoyed with me.”

What has annoyed got to do with it? I’ll face five duxbollahs a day for my half of what he’s paying us .

I had no idea you valued money was Scorpio’s sardonic thought. I thought you were a superior species .

We are. But we need money when dealing with inferior species, like Earthmen .

“Did the Krang leave any written records?” asked Scorpio.

“They themselves? No. But some of the races they conquered did. The question remains: How much of those records can we believe?”

“Why not all of them if they were written by the Krang’s contemporaries?”

Quedipai allowed himself the luxury of a very toothy smile, one of the few Martian smiles Scorpio had ever seen. “Tell me, Scorpion, are you a Christian?”

“Not much of one,” answered Scorpio with a shrug.

“ Did Jesus say the things that are credited to him? After all, they were reported by his disciples—but were they reported accurately?”

Another shrug. “Who the hell knows?”

And another smile from Quedipai. “Now you know the problem we have with the Krang. Are the writings factual, or myths, firsthand or hearsay?”

“Okay, I see,” replied Scorpio. “The subject is closed.”

“Until we enter the tomb.”

“Let’s not worry about entering it until after we find it.”

They waited by the flyer until twilight, not wanting to wander too far from it while the duxbollahs were still nearby. Then Scorpio announced that they were ready to leave, and soon the flyer was heading toward the Crater again.

“You are a very thorough man,” said Quedipai, as Scorpio kept checking to make sure there were no other planes aloft anywhere near them.

“The graveyards are filled with men who weren’t thorough,” replied the Earthman.

Merlin, check a map back there and see if this city we’re heading to has got a landing field .

This is a sophisticated flyer , answered Merlin. You don’t need one .

I know. But if there’s a landing field, it stands to reason that there’s a hangar. Why leave the flyer out where anyone can see it?

I’ll look. I wonder if they even had flyers back then .

And a moment later came the answer.

No luck .

All right. It was worth a try .

“Has this city we’re heading to got a name?” Scorpio asked the Martian.

“It has had several,” said Quedipai. “In the days of the Krang rulers, it was Melafona. Later, during the Sixth Pleistar Dynasty, it became Bechitil. And its last name, before it was sacked a little over five centuries ago, was Rastipotal.” He sighed. “And today it has no name at all. Even when it appears on maps, it is designated only as the abandoned ruin of a deserted city.”

“Given the area it covers, it looks like it might have held half a million people, maybe more,” said Scorpio.

“It did once,” confirmed the Martian.

“Why has it been standing empty for the last few centuries? Did the populace get tired of being sacked?”

“You know very little of Martian history, Scorpion,” said Quedipai.

“I skipped that course of studies,” said Scorpio.

You skipped school entirely .

“The war of five centuries ago is known informally as the Germ War,” said Quedipai. “It was fought not with guns and explosives, not with heat rays and sonic weapons, but with living viruses that wiped out entire populations. And those that didn’t die were genetically mutated. They produced a generation of malformed monsters, and there was a planetary purge of them.” His face tensed. “It is the era of which almost every Martian is least proud.”

“I can see why,” said Scorpio. “Well, that explains why the city is empty … if it is.”