George Martin - Old Mars

It was a long, long way down, but finally the steps opened up into a huge room that seemed originally to have been a natural cavern, with walls rippled by deposits left behind by water. Green lamps lit the space, standing on tripods ranged in concentric arcs all around. In the center of the room was a pair of large tables shaped like two half circles with an arm’s-length gap between them. There were no chairs.

The two men moved to either side of him then. “We are the caretakers,” they said in English. “Now you will give us the sunstone.”

Dave looked at Rekari. “You said it was mine.”

“They cannot take it from you,” said Rekari, and he seemed to be speaking to them as much as to him. “The elders won’t allow it. We saw that with Venori’s cousins.”

“You must leave it here,” said one of the men.

Dave signed the negative. “My father gave it to me,” he said in Martian. “I will not give it up.”

“You will,” said the man. Gesturing for Dave to follow him, he walked over to the tables and stood at one end of the gap between them. There, he traced a symbol on one table with his left hand and on the other with his right, and a panel of dark wood rose up between them, almost filling the space.

It was crowded with sunstones, row upon row of them, hanging on hooks shaped like miniature fingers.

“You will leave the sunstone here,” said the Martian, “with all of the others whose families have ended.”

Dave stared at the stones. There were so many of them. So very many families gone. He could almost feel them calling to him from the dust of ages, and without thinking, he eased past the caretaker and slid two steps into the gap. He reached out with both hands and spread his fingers, so much shorter than Martian fingers, across as many stones as he could.

A sudden kaleidoscope of images sprang up around him, blotting out the array of stones, the table, the cavern. He found himself surrounded by strange tall trees with multicolored leaves, by boats with sails as colorful as the leaves, gliding across a glassy sea, by sprawling buildings topped with spires like blades pointing to the pale sky, by crowds of Martian men, women, and children, walking, running, gesticulating, all of those myriad images overlaid upon each other in a riot of color and motion. It was day, it was night, it was rain, snow, and sunshine. And the noise was deafening, a thousand thousand voices laughing, weeping, calling out, a chattering cacophony, with snatches of music rising above it all, like the singing of birds and the creaking of hinges in need of oil. The stones were speaking to him, speaking through his own stone, and inundating him with Mars as it was and would never be again.

And then, in his vision, someone reached out to him, took his shoulders with immaterial hands, and steadied the dizzying rush. All motion halted, all sound receded, and in front of everything a form coalesced.

Dr. Benjamin Miller.

“Hello, son,” he said.

Dave felt his mouth open, but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say or do first. He wanted to throw his arms around his father, but when he reached out to him, there was nothing to touch but air. Finally, hoarsely, he said, “Dad!”

His father smiled. “It’s good to see you, son. I’m sorry I couldn’t be at Meridiani to meet you.”

“Dad …”

“I wanted us to go out into the field together one more time. But the old pump didn’t make it.” He shook his head and sighed. “I remember lying on the ground and hearing Rekari call my name, then the pain was just too much. The next thing I knew, I was here.”

“Here in the cavern?” said Dave.

His father made the Martian sign of negation. “In the sunstone I’d been wearing, that you’re wearing now.”

Dave’s fingers went to the stone. “In it?”

“In it,” said his father, “with Venori and all of his elders. Sun-stones turn out to be much more than symbols, son. Everyone who wears a stone carries his elders in it—every elder who ever wore it, their memories, their knowledge, their personalities. I still haven’t finished sorting it all out, even with Venori’s help. I think it must be easier for the Martians since they expect it. He and I will both help you.”

Dave swallowed hard. “So I’m dead, too?”

His father made the negative sign again. “You’ve just had the full experience for the first time. Venori says it was triggered by all these stones being so close to you. But it’s been growing. I know you noticed it.”

Dave thought back to all the feelings he’d had, all the intuitions, all the impulses. “I guess I have.”

“And now that you’ve seen this place, you have to decide whether you want to make your reputation from it, or whether you want to search for something else. It’s a great find, son. The kind an archaeologist spends a lifetime hoping for.”

Dave looked past his father to the frozen multitudes, and he thought again about all those sunstones and the lives they represented—the parents, the children, the long history that archaeologists only guessed at. And he said, “What do they think?”

His father shook his head. “They’re in the past, son. As I’m in the past. The future has to make that decision. But first, you have to get out of here. And to do that, you have to open your eyes.”

“What?”

“Open your eyes. Open your eyes now.”

His father’s voice faded away, and his form wavered, became translucent, and beyond him all the frozen figures began to move and talk, faster and faster, until they closed in on him and he couldn’t be told apart from the multilayered blur of the rest. Dave felt surrounded by that dizzying motion again, and he pressed his hands to his eyes and took deep breaths and tried to push it all away. He felt himself crumple, felt the pain of hip and knee and elbow slamming against an unyielding surface, felt himself curl into fetal position, then black silence overwhelmed him.

Some time later—he didn’t know how long—he opened his eyes behind his hands, and when he pulled his hands away from his face, it didn’t make any difference. He was lying on a cold stone floor in darkness. He rolled to his knees, wincing at the pain of his bruises. He pushed up to his feet. “Rekari?” he said. There was no answer. In the Martian language, he called out, “Is anyone nearby?” Again, there was no answer.

He patted his pockets, found the flash, and snapped it on. They hadn’t taken it. Of course, they couldn’t. He wore a sunstone, and they didn’t dare touch him without his permission. He understood that now. It had taken every iota of courage Venori’s forty-generations-removed cousin had been able to summon simply to touch the chain, and Dave shouting in ancient Martian had been too much for him. Patting his chest, Dave verified that his sunstone was there.

He played the flash around. He was still in the cavern, though the panel of sunstones had slid back down between the tables. The green lamps had all been covered; he pulled the shields off several to make a softly lit path to the stairway. He ran up the steps, exposing lights as he went. At the top, the elliptical door was closed, and it would not open for him, even when he touched it with the sunstone. Someone had locked it.

The caretakers, of course. They couldn’t take his stone, but they could lock the stranger into the cavern and let him die there. He wondered what they had said to Rekari to make him cooperate.

He went back down to the cavern.

He stalked through the room, taking the shields off all the lights. Then he hitched himself up on one of the tables and looked around. The elliptical door had been buried. It was obviously an ancient entrance to this cavern, no longer used. But the caretakers had to get in and out somehow, if only to replenish the lamps. He made a circuit of the room, but it seemed to be completely sealed. He licked a finger and held it up, searching for a breeze, but there was nothing noticeable.