Читать книгу Operation Isis - E. Hoffmann Price - Страница 4

Chapter 1

The spaceport of Maritania, the only city of the Martian Mining, Manufacturing & Agricultural Project, was in the easternmost of the ever-expanding complex of interlocking domes that retained the synthetic atmosphere of the developed region and the water vapor exhaled by its lakes and meadows. Beyond the spaceport and well into the level area bulldozed in the midst of the red desert’s wilderness of jagged outcroppings, the Garuda Bird towered above her landing struts. A kilometer-long enclosed escalator led from the vast waiting room and was connected by airlock to the cruiser’s boarding port.

Freshly refitted, her gleaming molybdenum alloy shell not yet pitted by micrometeorites, the old Garuda Bird had been modernized for the tourist trade. She would be packed with homeward bound Terrestrians. Now that Mars was “in” as a vacation spot, every trendy North American was pushing his or her Kredit Kard to its limit. In one respect, however, these differed from the other trained seals. They were in home territory.

For the past decade or so the Martian colony had been internationally, albeit grudgingly, recognized as belonging to and being ruled by the Limited Democracy of North America, successor to the short-lived Parliamentary Imperium of North America. Whatever doubts had lingered in minds other than that of Roderick David Garvin, war hero, war criminal, exile, and eventually Governor-General of Mars, were settled when his defense system made it a one-way trip for the invading Fourth World Flotilla, which set out to impose liberation and utopia on the rich imperialism that someone else had laboriously financed and developed.

In addition to the goddamn tourists, as the Maritanian population termed them, there were the military and civil service personnel setting out on leaves of absence. Destination: Paris; purpose: rest, recuperation, and cultural evolution, a pompous way of saying “drinking, whoring around, and getting away from Mars, that ruptured hemorrhoid of the Solar System.” The fact of the matter was that although Maritania offered plenty of such evolution, the cultural impact was greater away from home.

In one of the odd little nooks that were a by-product of making use of every square centimeter of floor space in a complex of spherical curves of dome and girder, there was a couple emotionally as well as bodily apart from the crowd. Two uniformed security men gestured with lead-loaded batons to keep souvenir and refreshment peddlers from invading the alcove. Back to that isolated couple: At first glance, one would dismiss the man as another sandy-haired nondescript whose features, though not badly matched, had been assembled from the spare parts bin. He wore English tailored tweeds that had not been pressed since leaving the Maritanian haberdasher. For several minutes he had been listening to his companion without ever a gesture or interruption. He was oblivious of his surroundings. The acre of milling travelers, the blaring of the P.A. system, and the vast red desert beyond the transparent plastic walls were dreary old stuff. The woman with him had his undivided attention.

Any graduate girl-watcher standing within half a dozen meters would have said, “No goddamn wonder!”

Her long-legged slender figure, with an understatement of curves that paradoxically enhanced the subtle sensuousness of body, suggested Shanghai, except that the peach blossom brocade skirt was not slit up to or beyond the knee. Furthermore, the dark eyes were not quite Chinese, nor were the cheekbones sufficiently prominent to give more than a piquant accent.

The woman’s nose lacked the nostril flare of so many eastern Asiatics; it was longer and with a hint of the aquiline.

Finally, the dainty feet and elegant ankles declared that she was a thoroughbred.

Without further appraisal, the hypothetical girl-watcher would decide, “Uighur Turki, and the type that the Son of Heaven gratefully accepted when he and one of the kings of Turkistan declared peace after a gentlemanly war: friendly exchange of gifts, which left those distinguished young ladies delighted and wondering what their home folk got that was one-half as precious as what the Emperor of China was receiving.”

Wrong diagnosis but not loutish ignorance. The nondescript man wearing tweeds, had he been so inclined, would have explained, “Not that it’s any of your frigging business, but Azadeh is my Number Two Wife. Aboriginal Martian. One of a prehistoric starfaring race. Their space cruisers are what won the battle of Kashgar. Quarter of a million years old and way ahead of our Johnny-come-lately science.

“Sure, they’ll tell you that that is pure distilled horse turd! Scientists are a jealous pack, and I don’t deny that the legends and myths are a contradictory confusion. So the Great American Slob calls them Gooks and feels witty.”

Confucius might have tagged Azadeh “Superior Person.” Chuang Tzu would have retorted, “Simply superior in herself. And I beg of you, Venerable Kung Fu Tzu, do not remind me that I often declare that all is relative.”

It boiled down to something like this: Azadeh was as incapable of looking up to this one as she was unable to look down on that one. It was clear that as a partner she would be difficult, and as a subordinate fatally impossible. Whether friend, lover, or husband, her opposite number had to be her equal in substance and self-assurance.

This suggested that Azadeh’s companion was not so commonplace. And, indeed, when at last he spoke, she did not interrupt. Though he paused for breath, or to ponder, or to look far beyond her as if gazing into time rather than space, she did not cut in with something totally unrelated to what he had been saying or, in the manner of the North American female, lash out with a rebuttal indicating that she had neither heard nor understood a word of what he had been saying.

Finally, she pointed to a spot outside the alcove and spoke. “You and Flora were standing over there. And when Dad came to pay his respects, it was pure sleight of hand the way you gave him your palmed note. Speaking our language, he told you he would be standing near me, with his back to the Saturnienne. That conspicuous Gook pattern on his jacket would be a marker, and when you were on the bridge, you could pick me from the crowd for a good-bye look.”

They’d spoken those lines many a time since their reunion in 2086, and especially since two of his wives had taken their leave. But that was the way of goodbyes, of the minutes before takeoff: rehashing trivia and choking on the unspoken meaningful. Such as the radiogram from France in which Flora had announced the birth of their son.

It was the afterthought line that he had never forgotten and which he was sure that Azadeh recalled: FELIX, NOT FELICE. I’VE CAUGHT UP WITH YOUR AZADEH AT LAST.

The man sighed. “My life is a long road, with leave-takings for milestones. Too bad we can’t take this trip together.”

Fond whimsy. Futile words. Neither was taking a vacation from the other. When it had become a fixed custom for him to sit at his telescope watching Earthrise, no matter what hour of the Martian night that might take place, Azadeh had known that it was time to tell him that she was as homesick as he. And this was convincing. He knew well how, like the Americans of North America, the Gooks had accepted too many of the worst features of an alien culture and had been unable to assimilate sufficient of its better phases.

So Azadeh would go back to the unspoiled asteroid, and he would head for Terra, where he would meet Felix and the boy’s mother, lovely Flora, the enchantress who loathed Martian life. And furlough would include a survey of North America and the exchange of reminiscences with the aging Warlords.

That neither had included mention of that radiogram in their leave-taking prelude made it clear that each was aware of the pressures that could and might make his journey a one-way trip and a permanent vacation.

During the six years in which she had believed herself to be a space widow, Flora’s TV show, the Sudzo Detergent program, had made her wealthy, the darling of two and a half or three and a half continents. And but for her husband’s return, she would have married the man who became Imperator of North America. Dangerous bait, that fascinating Flora, the Number One Wife.

But watching Earthrise demanded a remedy, and being a superior person, Azadeh did not wait for the answer. She gave it. However she hoped to be right, she was not afraid to be wrong.

She began to appreciate the feelings of those North Americans who, sent into a grim war, had been forbidden to fight and win. Outwitting both enemy-loving government and the enemy, they had destroyed both.

Tough going for an army.

And it wouldn’t be much easier for one female Gook.

The hands of the clock had not been lagging. Two Simianoid security men in black uniform approached. Halting with military precision, each clicked lead-loaded baton to cap visor.

“Governor and Madame,” one began. “We hope you have not been annoyed. There was a disturbance.” He made a sweeping gesture. “Purely minor, but it took us away for a minute or two.”

“No problem, Higgins. No one tried to move in on us.”

“Governor, we hope you have a nice furlough.”

“Thank you, Higgins. Thank you, Edgewood.”

“And my thanks, too,” Azadeh added.

The P.A. system announced that only passengers were allowed in the passage leading to the boarding port. Azadeh went with Roderick David Garvin, Space Admiral and Governor-General of Mars, a far from imposing fellow when not wearing full-dress uniform, side arms, orders, and decorations—unless he had that 11.2-millimeter handgun at his hip and the man he faced needed killing.

The tailor had worked on the tweed jacket until the shoulder-holstered gun did not warp the garment’s drape. Having cut his teeth on a gun barrel and having learned at an early age that self-defense is the first law of nature, Garvin knew that in a dangerous era, only a fool goes abroad unarmed.

At the boarding exit they wormed out of the crowd and snuggled against the jamb.

“When do you think you’ll be heading for the Asteroid?” he asked inanely, falling back on typical leave-taking talk.

“Not until after you phone and I know you won’t be back till you’ve had your fill of old times and old friends, and they’re bubbling out of your ears,” Azadeh answered.

A final squeeze, a fanny pat, and, “See you when I get back.”

Garvin was going Earth and Sunward some 65 million kilometers. Azadeh, headed in more or less the opposite direction, her course depending upon the position with respect to Mars of that only known inhabited asteroid, would have an outbound voyage of 113,750,000 kilometers—provided, of course, that bureaucrats had not yet managed to repeal Bode’s law.

And according to the Warlords, Garvin cogitated as he looked astern to see the entirety of the Martian green area, the conniving sons of bitches are working on that.

Comparing the cultivated expanse with the remainder of the ruddy disc, he wondered whether his son would live long enough to see the complex of domes removed.

The consortium of scientists was working on an isotope of nitrogen, using solar or volcanic energy—or both—to produce the heavy form of the gas that made up eighty percent of Earth’s atmosphere and which, with its greater atomic weight, would not readily escape as had the original Martian atmosphere.

Meanwhile, biologists might team up with the physicists and dream up an even heavier inert gas, one that would blanket the planet. When this stage was reached, the low escape velocity of Mars would be offset.

“All green against red,” he mused. “Bit gaudy, but so is that painted desert in Arizona.”

And now that he was on his way, a thought that he had skillfully kept buried surfaced: Loathing Mars and space may not be hereditary, but you can bet Flora’s made a career of downgrading both. With a sigh, he grimaced. “Goddammit, a man can’t be everywhere!” Ignoring the licensed Kruise Konkubines who added so much to spacing, Garvin settled down to estimating roughly how many thermal installations would be needed to synthesize atmosphere in volume sufficient to make a significant accumulation.

And before he landed at the Paris airport, he had quit damning himself for not having pressured Flora to send Felix for a look at Mars. According to her letters and judging from the photos she had sent, the young devil did have a cussed and adventurous streak, and there might still be a chance.