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CHAPTER THREE

BOOMDELAY, BOOMDELAY, BOOMDELAY, BOOM!

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far

(Don Juan of Austria is going to the war);

Stiff flags straining in the night blasts cold

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old gold;

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon,

And he comes.

—G. K. Chesterton

Alex Smith, 15 Bi-October, Mars Year viii

Isis Station, Planet Mars

The U.S.S. Indefatigable was a bloated guppy hanging in space over Phobos Base. An uglier-looking vessel I had yet to see, with its huge bulge amidships and its weapons clusters drooping from below—it wasn’t designed for beauty, but for war. I and the other members of the Advisory Council watched the slow approach of the flagship of Mars Expedition IV to its holding station.

“Requesting permission to dock,” the pilot said.

“Permission granted, sir,” Phobos responded.

“Dock achieved. All stop.”

“All stop,” came the echo.

“I have Vice Admiral Bruce holding for General Burgess.”

“Burgess here, sir,” the Military Commander of Mars said.

“Per the orders of the United States Space Command and the United Nations Security Service, I hereby request and require that you relinquish to me all authority over the military forces and civilian personnel currently stationed on or around Mars, effective this date and time.”

And so on and so forth, in the little game of charades that authoritarian folks play. It took about a half hour to settle everyone’s hash appropriately. In the end, it came down to this: Bruce, being the senior officer on site, had control of the overall mission, while Burgess retained some authority on the ground as Military Governor of the Red Planet. I assumed that Bruce reported only to God.

Then we got down to business again. The Admiral’s face appeared once more on our wallscreen.

“Fritz, I’ve had a chance to review your plans over the last few weeks, and I think they’re fairly sound. You’ve had no problems with the Martians?”

“Nothing recently, sir,” he said. “I assume they’re aware of your presence in orbit and the impending arrival of the rest of the fleet, but so far they haven’t said or done anything. We’ve managed to keep our plans completely secret, so far as I can tell.”

“I note that several of your advisors think differently.”

“Well, sir, they…,” the General said.

“If I may speak, sir,” I said.

“You’re…?”

“Dr. G. Alexander Smith.”

“Ah, yes, the philosopher: you were held by the Martians for two years, weren’t you?”

“I chose to live with them together with my family, and they chose to have me—a privilege, I might add, that has thus far been extended to no other human. I’ve had more experience dealing with the aliens than any other person.”

“By your own admission, Smith,” she said, “you have no better idea than the rest of us of what they want or what they’re going to do.”

“That’s true, but I still know them better than anyone else. They won’t allow an attack against their race, against their home planet, to go unchallenged. And we really have no notion, none whatever, of what they can do. They could destroy Earth, sir.”

“They already tried that. We defeated them.”

“No, sir, we did not! They withdrew, they ceased bombarding our planet with asteroids, and they agreed to a truce. Clear boundaries were established for both parties. If we break that treaty, the consequences could be disastrous, for us as well as the aliens.”

“President Bush believes that we must push forward. I have my orders, Smith. We’ll either civilize the Martians, or we’ll destroy them. The United States will not be bullied by any other government.”

“I don’t think they have a government, sir,” I said.

“Enough! General Burgess, we’ll commence bombardment at 0600 tomorrow. Prepare to defend yourselves against any possible response by the enemy.”

“Yes, sir,” the Governor said.

Don Juan of Austria was marching off to war, come hell or high water, come rain or come shine, come all the King’s men and all the King’s horses—and no one would ever be able to put the pieces back together again. I’d seen this all before, but each time it was worse.

“Damned fools,” I mumbled—or at least I thought I did.

“You’ll keep such comments to yourself, Smith,” Burgess ordered, “or you’ll be confined to quarters indefinitely. Understood?”

“I again request permission to rejoin my wife and children.”

“Request denied! This meeting is adjourned.”

I was angry and disgusted, at myself and at everyone else; as I walked slowly back towards my room, Min caught up with me.

“What’re you going to do, Alex?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something, anything to stop this madness from happening again, but I don’t have any idea at this point what I can do.”

“Is there any way you can warn Becky?”

“They’ve cut off all communication to our habitat, and if any of the rest of you tries to break that lock during a wartime situation, you might well be charged with treason. I can’t allow you to do that.”

“What about mental contact?”

“I don’t have the focus to initiate such connections, or to frame them when and if they occur. With me they’re always amorphous, occurring in dreams and musings and such.”

“Stavroula might help.”

“She was the one that got me into this situation in the first place. She would never agree.”

“All she can do is say ‘no’,” Mindon said. “You have nothing to lose but your pride.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “All right, I’ll try, but I want some dinner first. I might as well go to my execution with a full tummy.”

But truth to tell, my appetite was no better than my humor, and I pushed and picked on a mixed salad of greens and a bowl of beans, and then gave it up in disgust. I was fit for neither man nor beastie these days.

“Someone said you wanted me.” Nomsah Vassilidis, the soi-disant Madame Stavroula, was standing by my table in the cafeteria.

“A little bird, no doubt.”

“Something like that. Look, Alex, I’m sorry you’re stuck here. I didn’t know….”

“Seems like you don’t know a lot of things for someone supposedly so well connected.”

“When I glimpsed the threat in the alien’s mind, I felt that I had to report it.”

“What exactly did you see, Nomsah?”

“I saw them merging us with their own race.”

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but nothing I’ve received mentally from Big Guy has ever been quite that clear. It’s all either allegorical or symbolic. I think that’s because they don’t perceive in the same way that we do. They’re hive creatures of a sort, and they don’t really understand our individuality—or why it’s important to us. Everything for them is communal.

“So perhaps what you really saw was simply their attempt at common cordiality—reaching out to you and welcoming you to their group.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“But if you’re wrong in your interpretation….”

There was a long silence.

“If I’m wrong, then I’ve made the situation worse.”

“In my experience, the Martians are predictable in only one respect: they’ll respond to aggression in kind, and they’ll do so in ways that can’t always be predicted—at least by us. There’ll be another war. Do you want that?”

“No, of course not. But….”

“Then help me reach my family. All I want is for them to be moved out of harm’s way. That’s it. I don’t care what happens to the aliens, just Becky, Mellie, and Buddy. Becky and Mellie are Sensitives like you. Can you make contact with them mentally?”

“Maybe. I don’t know for sure. It’s not as cut-and-dried as that, Alex. I’d need a focus of some kind.”

“Use me,” I said. “They’ll be worried about me, thinking about me, concerned about communications being severed. Use me as the link.”

“I’ll try,” she finally said. “We’ll need to go somewhere private. There’s a storage room near the north entrance to Barrack 16. It’s empty right now, and is being used off and on as an area for couples to meet—even now, there’s not much of a place that anyone can be alone for long in this complex. Meet me there in forty minutes. With any luck, we’ll have the solitude we need. In the meantime, I have to gather a few things from my room.”

I agreed.

* * * *

It wasn’t hard to find the metal-walled bunker she’d described. It was lined with shelves, now mostly bare, awaiting the resupply ships arriving in the next few weeks—with a few plastic crates turned on end to serve as makeshift seats. They weren’t comfortable, but at least they were available.

Nomsah was late. I was beginning to wonder if she’d actually show up when she finally appeared.

“Sorry,” she said. “I needed to find the right implement. I haven’t done this sort of thing since we landed, and they don’t allow candles or open flames of any kind within the environment.”

I raised one eyebrow in question. I never did like the mumbo-jumbo associated with her profession.

She saw my expression. “Yeah, I know, it’s all a bit of a charade, isn’t it, but some of it seems to be essential to the process. I basically need to hypnotize you, Alex, so you can act as medium to the message.” She held up a small flashlight. “This will have to do.

“Sit down, please. Now, I’m going to turn this to its lowest setting, and I want you to follow the light as I move it slowly back and forth. Let yourself relax. Purge your mind of everything except the lamp. Let the light into yourself. Feel yourself giving way to the light. Relax. Relax. Let yourself go. You feel rested. Your eyes are closing, slowly, very slowly. Breathe in deeply and rhythmically. Relax. Rest.”

And then I felt my will gradually ebbing away into a sea of contentment. The stress of the last few days faded into the background.

“Can you hear me?”

I could, but as through a fog. Everything seemed muted to me. Everything was subdued. It was as if I were an observer standing to one side, watching the tableau unfold. I was there—and yet I wasn’t.

“I want you to form a picture of Becky in your mind. It’s a happy image, a good time, a place where you and she were thinking and feeling the same things together. Do you have that portrait before you now?”

I did. It was Mellie’s last birthday—her thirteenth—and we were celebrating with a private party, just the four of us. Even two-year-old Buddy seemed to understand what was going on. He was laughing in that strange little way that he had, almost a gurgle, and Becky was laughing along with him as Mellie opened her gifts. I could see them so clearly that it was almost as if they were here in front of me, that I could reach out and kiss my dear wife again, just as I did then, just as I did…now!

“Alex!”

“I’m here,” I said. “Listen to me, Becky. Take the children and leave. Use any excuse, but you must leave the Habitat immediately and find refuge in the Deep Zone”—I knew there were Martian “hives” located far below the surface, although I’d never been allowed to visit any of them.

“Why?”

“It’s war again, and the damned generals are going to start bombing everything in sight within tomorrow—or possibly sooner. Get out of there now! Promise me!”

“I will,” she said. “But what about you?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll survive. I always have. It’s the ones around me who have to worry.”

Then I kissed her again—mentally or whatever. It felt like the real thing. It might have even been the real thing.

“Now go!” I said.

“I love you,” she said, as she pulled away and faded into the distance.

“And I love you, dearest,” I whispered—but I don’t know if she heard.

Then I was back again, drifting in the fog.

“You’ll remember everything that’s happened to this point, Alex,” Nomsah said, “but nothing hereafter. Now, old friend, tell me everything you know about Big Guy.”

* * * *

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the HQ Council Chamber again right across from General Burgess, watching the wallscreen as the Indefatigable maneuvered around Phobos so that it had a clear shot at the planet revolving below. We had views from both the Moonbase and from the ship itself.

“Commence firing,” I heard Vice Admiral Rayma Bruce say.

“Launch missiles,” Captain Jacques ordered.

“Missiles launched,” another officer said. (The military is redundant like that.)

Twenty minutes later, the first of the weapons tore into a Martian hivepit and destroyed it and everything surrounding it within a five-mile radius and to a depth of several thousand feet. The bombardment continued for hours as each known alien base was systematically pulverized and rendered harmless.

Sometime after noon the Admiral ordered the offensive terminated, and came on screen.

“General Burgess, any activity down there?”

“None, sir,” he said. “Everything’s quiet at Isis Station.”

“Excellent. Maintain your vigilance until otherwise ordered.”

And that was that.

“Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far.”

I just wondered when the Martian night was going to start blasting its cold breath back at us.