George Martin - Old Mars

All right , he thought. It was time to stop being stupid.

He curled his hand around the sunstone and spoke in his most formal and respectful Martian. “Venori,” he said, “my elder who chose my father to be his son, tell his son how to leave this place.”

He thought he could hear a faint whisper, like a broom sweeping a wooden floor. And then his own vision turned dark again, except for one small spot on his right, and when he turned toward it, he felt as if he was looking down a long, narrow tunnel that ended at a circle low on the cavern wall. He slid off the table and walked toward the circle, stumbling once because he couldn’t see the floor beneath his feet, and though the spot remained as bright as Phobos, it shrank before him until, at the wall, it was no larger than the sunstone that hung about his neck. It stood at knee height, and when he bent close to it, he saw nothing special to mark it. He touched it with one finger, and when nothing happened, he pressed the sunstone to it.

The darkness in his vision cleared away as the wall opened into an ellipse, its stone quarters withdrawing into the walls just as the metal segments of the ellipse at the top of the stairs had done. Beyond was a stairway upward, lit by more green lamps. Dave climbed. At the top was another stone wall, and his vision shrank again, for just a moment, to show him where to press the sunstone to it. When that wall opened, late-afternoon daylight invaded the stairwell.

Dave stepped out. He found himself in the clump of boulders that stood at the far end of the nettle-free area; two of them had slid aside to allow him to pass, and as he emerged, they closed up behind him.

Outside, Rekari and the two caretakers sat atop one of the other boulders. Rekari jumped down to embrace Dave. “I knew you could do it.”

“So it was a test,” said Dave.

Rekari made the sign of agreement, twice.

“And what if I had failed?”

Rekari held him at arm’s length and looked into his face. “If two days had passed and you had not found the way, I would have gone back and brought you out. But I knew you would not fail. I knew when you opened the first door that the elders had accepted you.”

Dave turned back to the place where the boulders had parted to let him out. There was no way to tell that anything had happened there, but he knew he could open it again at any time. “My father has suggested that I could become famous by revealing the cavern to the people of Earth. On Earth, many such places have been visited by scholars and tourists. Caves at Altamira and Lascaux. Graves in Greece. The pyramids of Egypt. Sacred places. I visited a few of them myself when I was in school there.”

The caretakers glanced at each other. “And will you do this?” said one of them.

Dave fingered the sunstone at his neck. He looked at Rekari. “The people who made those places on Earth are long gone. The people who made this place on Mars are still here. What would the elders say if I stole it from them?” He made the sign of the negative. “The elders will help me find the ruins of cities where no one has lived for twenty thousand years. That is the proper work of archaeologists, not helping to despoil what has not been abandoned. There will be enough other places to make my reputation.”

Rekari gripped Dave’s arm. “Your father will be pleased. I know it.”

He thought about his father then—he could feel his presence in the stone. They would go out in the field again together after all, just not quite in the way either of them had hoped. And Dave would break the news of his death to Jacky, who would care, and to Beverly, who would perhaps realize that she also cared, because that was what one did for one’s elders. He knew that neither of them would believe that his father lived on in the stone. He didn’t think he would even try to tell them. It was, after all, a private thing between him and his elders.

“Will you work with me?” he said to Rekari.

“That would please me greatly,” said Rekari.

They walked back toward the hole they had dug.

“We should fill that in,” said Dave. “We don’t need it anymore.”

They had left the excavator on the third step from the bottom. Now they dragged it up to the surface, and Dave leaned against it for a moment, looking down the stairway. “You could have shown him lost cities, couldn’t you?” he said. “You and your elders know where they are. Why didn’t you?”

“That was his desire,” said Rekari. “Not mine.”

“But it didn’t matter in the long run. I’m going to do what he would have done.”

“It matters a great deal,” said Rekari, “because as much as I liked and respected your father, he was not a Martian. And you are.”

“Am I?” said Dave. But he didn’t need Rekari to answer that. He already knew, and so did all of the elders in his sunstone.

“Perhaps we can paint a new sign,” said Rekari. “For the new proprietor of the Miller family business.”

Yes , thought Dave. We’ll do that .

Dave Miller, Archaeology. Tour the Ancient Ruins.

Home.

Prolific Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale has won the Edgar Award, the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the American Mystery Award, the International Crime Writer’s Award, and nine Bram Stoker Awards. Although perhaps best known for horror/thrillers such as The Nightrunners, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Bottoms, The God of the Razor , and The Drive-In , he also writes the popular Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series— Savage Season, Mucho Mojo, The Two-Bear Mambo, Bad Chili, Rumble Tumble, Captains Outrageous —as well as Western novels such as The Magic Wagon , and totally unclassifiable cross-genre novels such as Zeppelins West, The Drive-In , and The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels . His other novels include Dead in the West , The Big Blow , Sunset and Sawdust , Acts of Love , Freezer Burn , Waltz of Shadows , and Leather Maiden . He has also contributed novels to series such as Batman and Tarzan. His many short stories have been collected in By Bizarre Hands; Sanctified and Chicken Fried; The Best of Joe R. Lansdale; The Shadows Kith and Kin; The Long Ones; Stories by Mama Lansdale’s Youngest Boy; Bestsellers Guaranteed; On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folks; Electric Gumbo; Writer of the Purple Rage; Fist Full of Stories; Bumper Crop; The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent; Selected Stories by Joe R. Lansdale; For a Few Stories More; Mad Dog Summer: And Other Stories; The King and Other Stories; Deadman’s Road; High Cotton: The Collected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale; and an omnibus, Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal . As editor, he has produced the anthologies The Best of the West, Retro Pulp Tales, Son of Retro Pulp Tales (with Keith Lansdale), Razored Saddles (with Pat LoBrutto), Dark at Heart: All New Tales of Dark Suspense (with wife Karen Lansdale), The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners , and the Robert E. Howard tribute anthology, Cross Plains Universe (with Scott A. Cupp). An anthology in tribute to Lansdale’s work is Lords of the Razor . His most recent books are two new Hap and Leonard novels, Vanilla Ride and Devil Red , as well as the short novels Hyenas and Dead Aim , the novels Edge of Dark Water and The Thicket , two new anthologies— The Urban Fantasy Anthology (edited with Peter S. Beagle), and Crucified Dreams —and three new collections, Shadows West (with John L. Lansdale), Trapped in the Sunday Matinee , and Bleeding Shadows . He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.