Ian McDonald - Ares Express

They shook hands briefly. Then the lizard-hands scooped up the bundle of fortune-telling sticks and snapped it smartly in half.

“You’re free now. I give you your fate back. What happens from now on is entirely in your own hands. Your story has ended, your tale has just begun.”

“Thank God for that,” Sweetness Engineer 12th said, and began to walk. Like flies in the heat-haze, she thought she could see objects far down the track, swimming in the treacherous silver. Resolution and certainty increased with every step she took closer. People, trainpeople, and behind them, that rippling square of black must be the jettisoned tender. But what was that in the deeper haze beyond? A thing like a city, all spires and towers and campaniles. Mirage. Illusion. It could all be lies and magnifications. Should have taken that ride, traingirl. Story’s over, if your pride gets you into trouble now, you’ve only yourself to get you out of it. No different from everyone else then. That should be sufficient. Sweetness jogged forward, trying to penetrate the shimmering. A city, yes, but a narrow one. A linear city? She stopped, laughed out loud, beat her hands off her thighs in realisation. Not a city at all; a factory train. A big smelly minging dirty factory. Now she could see the tell-tale parallel plumes of steam from the separators. They had all come for her. They were all here. All her people. She glanced back, as everyone must. Of course there was no figure squatting by the signal relay, but did she see a scurry of green dart to cover behind a sleeper?

Free to be mundane again.

Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th smiled, shouldered her pack and ran along the line through the green hills of Mars, into the silver shimmer where her people were waiting.

Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including Desolation Road ; King of Morning , Queen of Day ; Out on Blue Six ; Chaga ; Kirinya ; River of Gods ; and Brasyl . He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the BSFA Award, been nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award, and has several nominations for both the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The Washington Post called him “one of the best SF novelists of our time.” He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“This is the kind of novel I long to find yet seldom do—extraordinary and more than that!”

“ Desolation Road is wild, original, exuberant, profound, moving, magical, hilarious, fantastic, fabulous…. It is also good science fiction.”

“Most exciting and promising debut since Ray Bradbury’s…. Here’s a first novel brimming with colorful writing, poetic imagination, and outrageous events recounted in a persuasively matter-of-fact manner…. Hugely readable.”

“…destined to be a classic… perhaps a work of true genius. Desolation Road will drift along timelessly, undoubtedly outliving its creator—though may he live long and prosper—and occupying its own special place by the dust-blown literary highways traveled by countless generations of future readers.”

“A spectacular first novel. A lively wit leavens the dense complexity of this epic tale. From the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Has Ever Known to a mysteriously transported Glenn Miller (father of the Martian swing craze) and the technoevangelist Inspiration Cadillac, the characters are madly memorable, the most extraordinary mix of human and not-quite human since Cordwainer Smith’s tales of Norstrilia.”

“McDonald is a truly original stylist, somewhat reminiscent of Jack Vance, yet still somehow unique. This is a dangerous trick for a writer to attempt, because if he fails the book will be unreadable. McDonald pulls it off, and his prose sings…. The author tells a real story populated by real characters. Desolation Road and its inhabitants will haunt you…. Poetic, moving, and unforgettable. It deserves to be a classic.”

“The quality of the writing is superb…. Most of the truly gigantic cast are memorable and distinct. There is enough invention in this one novel to fuel sixty thousand trilogies…. This is a strange book and its strangeness makes it memorable. Unpack your sense of wonder and buy a ticket to Desolation Road. You won’t regret it.”

“…not since Walter Miller’s master work A Canticle for Leibowitz have I been so profoundly affected by a writer’s breadth of vision and prescience…. I have seen the future and it is Desolation Road .”

Brasyl

Cyberabad Days

The Dervish House

Desolation Road

River of Gods

Published 2010 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

Ares Express . Copyright © 2010 by Ian McDonald. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover illustration © Stephan Martiniere

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McDonald, Ian, 1960–

Ares Express / by Ian McDonald.

p. cm.

Originally published: London : Earthlight, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., a Viacom Company, 2001.

ISBN 978–1–61614–197–4 (pbk.)

ISBN 978–1–61614–345–9 (ebook)

1. Mars (Planet)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.C38A89 2010

823’.914—dc22

2009050115

Printed in the United States