George Martin - Old Mars

“All that is holy,” I spat at him. “From a man who has joined himself to the devil.”

“Say rather,” he replied with his mocking smile, “that I have joined myself to the victors. An ambassador, if you will, though without the official title as yet. Someday soon the Ikkeans will rule both worlds, and their friends will rule with them.”

Carina Meer’s laugh was the platonic ideal of contempt.

“Unacceptable,” I said. “You may have the advantage, but you have had that before only to see defeat. I insist upon guarantees of clemency.”

The Ikkean at Governor Smith’s side chattered, a horrible high-pitched sound with a thousand knives in it. I believe that Governor Smith flinched from it as much as did I.

“Captain Lawton, I made an offer to you before. Your aid in return for control of the Serkeriah .”

I nodded. Behind me, young Carter said, Oh, was that the offer then?

“You are a clever man,” the governor continued. “And I see that I was stingy in my price. Our situation is somewhat changed, and so is my proposal. Order your men to drop their lines and take into custody the rebel forces of Captain Meer. I will guarantee your safe return to our home world, and further, a full pardon. I will see to it that your good name is restored and your honor unquestioned in any corner of the British Empire. I will champion your cause personally.”

I froze, Your Majesty. What a prospect it was! What vengeance it would be to use Governor Smith, of all men, as the agent of my social redemption. To be made right in the public eye. My honor restored. It was like the promise of love to the unrequited. For a moment, I was in the fine houses where once as a young man I supped. I recalled the delicate eyes of a young woman who loved me once, before my fall from grace. To see her again, to kiss those near-forgotten lips …

“It is not enough,” I said. “I require a confession, written in your own hand and before witnesses to say it was not coerced. You will admit to all the subterfuge and deceit that brought me low. That, and pardons for not only myself, but all of my men. Would you suffer that price, Governor?”

His eyes narrowed, and he let out a sound like the hiss of an annoyed serpent. I could feel the gaze of Carina Meer upon me and did not turn to her. My men and hers stood silent. A thin breeze stirred the dust about our ankles.

“Done,” he said at last. “You have my word of honor, I will fulfill my part of the compact. For now, you will fulfill yours.”

At that moment, as Providence had it, a change came upon the Palace of the Underworld, and a gout of green fire rose from it, up into the purple Martian sky. A cheer rose from the crew behind me and I saw Carina Meer settle a degree into herself.

“I will not,” I said. “You sad, small-hearted pig of a man. Do you believe that you frighten me? I have ridden the most tempestuous waves in the seas. I have stood with naked steel in hand against men a thousand times your worth. Who are you to pardon me?”

“What is—”

“That fire you observed was the signal from those of my crew and Captain Meer’s not present that they had arrived in safety at the Palace of the Underworld. All the time that you have wasted preparing for these negotiations and conducting them, our men have been taking the alloy beyond your reach.”

When young Carter and Mister Darrow threw back the tarp to uncover the mound of rough Martian stone, the astonished gape of Governor Smith’s mouth was a thing to behold. I could see where the dentist had removed one of his molars, so profound was his surprise.

“False parley!” he shouted, and pulled a pistol from his belt. Murder glowed in his eyes. “There is no shred of honor left in you, sir.”

“You are a fool,” Carina said. She lifted her chin, haughty as any queen. “Honor is a petty, meaningless thing if men such as you have it.”

Governor Smith shifted his pistol, pointing it at her forehead, his finger trembling on the trigger. Carina narrowed her eyes in disdain but showed no sign of fear.

“Save your childish outrage,” I said, stepping forward to draw his attention. “You haven’t the will to fire. You’re a coward and cheat, and every man here knows my words are as the gospel on it. I would no more accept pardon from you than drink your piss. If you have honor, then honor be damned. You are nothing, sir. You. Do. Not. Signify .”

And then, Your Majesty, as was my hope and aim, the Honorable Governor Smith turned and shot me.

Was it a desperate ploy that brought the pistol’s ball to my own belly rather than chance the death of the woman whom I admired above all others? Perhaps. But it was a successful one. The blow was not unlike being struck by a mule’s hoof, though I am sure you have never had the ill fortune to experience such. I stumbled back and fell, unable to maintain my feet. I believe that Governor Smith had time enough to understand that his temper and impetuous violence had left him vulnerable, though God alone will have leisure to clarify this with him. Before he could call out to his demonic allies for aid, Carina Meer leapt forward and crushed the man’s windpipe with a single strike of her right elbow. He stumbled back, my echo in this as in so many things.

The battle was immediately joined, and Carina Meer and what remained of our joined crew assaulted the Ikkean warriors. But we sat for a moment, he and I, our gazes locked. Blood spilled from my punctured gut. His face darkened as he struggled vainly to draw breath. And then his eyes rolled back and his body sagged to the Martian ground, and that, as they say, was that.

When the skirmish ended, Doctor Koch and Carina Meer were with me immediately. We had won the day, but only at peril to our lives. The massed Ikkean forces were descending upon us, and despite my entreaties, Carina and my men refused to leave my wounded body behind as the burden it was. Mister Darrow fashioned a rough litter from the legs of the defeated Ikkeans, and then …

Oh, Your Majesty, and then so much more. Shall I recount to you the battle at the edge of the Palace of the Underworld, and how young Carter saved us all by scaling the massive spider-ship as though it were rigging, his dagger in his teeth? Or the fateful meeting with Hermeton, brother to Carina Meer, and the fearful duplicity of his plan to defeat the Ikkeans? Shall I describe to you the great caverns below the Martian surface and detail the mystery and madness of the Elanin Chorus? The death dwarves of Inren-Kah? The hawk-men of Nis? The Plant-Queens of Venus? Like Scheherazade to her Caliph, I believe I could beguile you with these tales for countless nights. But to what end? I set forth here to explain my role in the death of Governor Smith, and I have done so.

Your Majesty, I did not slaughter the governor, but I was instrumental in his death. I broke the laws of custom and honor, rejected his offer of clemency, and drew his ire to myself in defense of a woman and of a world, both almost strangers to me but already of inestimable value. I did this knowing that I might die, and accepting that risk because there is a better and nobler thing than to be the servant of honor. I know this, for I have become it. And I was once an honorable man.

Yours,

Captain Alexander Augustus Lawton, Citizen of Mars

A writer whose work crosses several mediums and genres, Melinda M. Snodgrass was story editor on Star Trek: The Next Generation and wrote the award-nominated “Measure of a Man,” among other episodes. She worked on Reasonable Doubts , and was a writer/producer on The Profiler . She has written a number of SF novels, and was one of the cocreators of the long-running Wild Card series, for which she has also written and edited, and she has delivered a Wild Card movie to Universal Pictures. Her novels include The Edge of Reason and The Edge of Ruin , and she has just delivered the third book in that series. She also penned the Circuit trilogy, and Queen’s Gambit Declined . Her most recent novels are This Case Is Gonna Kill Me and Box Office Poison , written under the pseudonym Phillipa Bornikova.