Prologue - THE ONE WHO WOULD SEE

 

A new star appeared in the evening sky. The ground crew in their blue pressure suits watched it drift, watched it brighten until, reflected in their visors, the light of the shuttle’s main engine speared down from the vault. Now they could make out her form; spider legs grasping from the silver shell as the blaze of her engines drove back the darkness. To a rolling drumbeat she steadied above the landing zone, raising curtains of dust that retreated in the tenuous air of a frozen twilight.

Then silence.

The vessel was down, a squatting mantis on the basalt platform beyond the far side of the runway. The door drew in then moved aside as three of the ground crew approached. The boarding ramp slid out and from the metal husk ten figures descended, anonymous in white pressure suits and tinted helmets, each to place a foot upon this new but very old world. They stood a while, not knowing true gravity since the day their journey had begun; a gravity one third that of Earth’s but gravity, nonetheless. Ushered by the crewmen they crossed the landing strip, silhouettes against a burnished horizon where a violet glow hovered in spectral memory of the now vanished sun. In their approach to the main airlock they gazed in wonder at the great, domed complex rising from the red desert. For some this was the end of their journey, for others only a stepping-stone.

Amidst but not of them was one for whom this vision of human enterprise hardly mattered; one for whom there waited an assignment of which she as yet knew nothing, though the fate of all humanity on this arid world might hang upon it.

With the outer airlock doors sealed, they stamped their boots over the metal grill and awaited the rise to optimum atmospheric pressure whilst a muffled roar proclaimed the operation of dust extractors. Then a chime, followed by a call from one of the ground crew, ‘All right everybody - we can take off our hats!’

Hands raised up to release airtight collars. Space helmets lifted clear of turning heads. One balanced his helmet on splayed fingers, raised and lowered it to test its weight in the new gravity. One, two, then a third jumped up and down, each laughing at the antics of the other. The inner airlock door was opening and with disarming normality a voice announced, ‘Welcome to Mars, everyone! Welcome to Novamerica Five!’

‘Oh, I smell grass!’ smiled a young woman, shaking free her long hair.

‘Hell, yes - and food!’ exclaimed another, turning to one of the ground crew. ‘That’s real food I can smell. Tell me if it ain’t!’

‘Could be, sir,’ replied the crewman. ‘The biodome main restaurant is close by. It’s open around the clock. And when you want to give your stomach a rest and walk around the gardens then the biodome is the place to go. It’s almost like home. You’ll think you never left Earth.’

They followed the crewmen, talking of the sights they had witnessed from the shuttle on their way down. Except for one. One who held back in the shadows as the rest moved away into the bright concourse. One who watched their faces glow in infra-red. Watched fumarole heat coil upward from the opened necks of their pressure suits. Processed and perverted their images to render them as grinning, chomping skulls in filtered light, lurid in shifting wavelengths. She captured, amplified their voices, heard the creak of their spacesuits, listened to the sound of their breathing, to the cacophony of beating hearts as they gathered to receive their welcome brief. But she would remain where she was until he sent for her.

One of the base crew re-entered the airlock, glancing about to ensure only the two of them remained there. He eyed the name badge on her suit. ‘Officer Michaelis - welcome to our station - I’m to take you to your quarters. Chief Hammond is waiting to see you as soon as you have your gear stowed away.’

She had already scanned, already analysed his DNA, his micro-implants - those for gravity compensation, hormone and antibody levels, bone marrow, calcium stability. The man was as perfectly adapted as all the colonists had to be. ‘I’ll get out of this pressure suit and go directly to his office,’ she responded. She needed to do that. Once having landed, then again when approaching the base, she had attempted direct contact but her mind had been unable to reach his.

Leaving the storage lockers she followed the orderly across the concourse. From his thoughts she resolved freeze-framed images of herself. He was appraising her slim figure, her attractively angular features, her dark, oddly expressionless eyes. Such banalities were of little importance but she wished he would move quicker in her desire to meet once more with Virgil Hammond. It was a year and a half, back on Earth, since they had spoken face to face yet there was his image as it had been when he stood before the silent faithful in that secret hall – the faithful whose message went unheeded on Earth. In her mind his words once more rang out. ‘The wounds of Christ still bleed for the sins of mankind! On Mars those wounds will be healed. On Mars His word will be manifest. We have the means. We have the will to do what is demanded of us. Barriers will be raised in our path but they will be thrown down. We will prevail! On Mars His Kingdom will rise anew!’

For the message she cared nothing at all. It mattered only that the appointed time was close and that she would be there to serve and to obey. Trimensional pictures shifted before her eyes. The corridors and passages, every part of the complex had, since her arrival, become familiar through the minds of others. She knew exactly where to find Hammond. But she must be patient. The orderly must not become suspicious.

At the end of a plain, well-lit corridor stood the office of the man responsible for all facilities established by the United American States, a major power on Earth stretching from Alaska to Cape Horn, the man who was co-ordinator of the international mining consortium. Hovering against the door the words glowed. Virgil Hammond - Chief Executive. Frontier Mining.

The orderly touched the words.

The words reformed to read, ‘You may enter.’

She found herself before a small township with stark white weatherboard church set amidst sunlit fields of golden corn. An idyllic scene basking beneath the blue skies of distant Earth, the whole accompanied by the retreating notes of a choir. The desk and figure behind it rotated to face them whilst the scene shivered, fragmented then altogether faded to reveal a sparsely appointed office interior. At the centre of the room a ring of lights glowed into life. The figure arose. ‘Officer Michaelis - I did not expect you would come directly here from the concourse. You have caught me in a brief spell of self-indulgence. That was my hometown as a boy. Please - take a seat.’

She knew he was lying. She was certain he would have followed her every move as soon as she left the shuttle but she was unable to penetrate his mind as she could the minds of others. Intending to effect a formal introduction, the orderly had found himself pre-empted. His request for dismissal was also stillborn for his one-time charge moved away without a word whilst a brief glance from the Chief Executive told the man his presence was no longer required. The orderly shrugged then left the room.

She was, of course, familiar with the sturdy figure, with the big boned, heavy-jawed features. Familiar, too, with those steel-grey eyes, with the slightly twisted smile of the man who extended a hand to greet her. His was a smile quite as forthcoming as her own and quite as superficial. ‘Welcome to our new world and to our humble outpost. I trust the journey out and the company on board were not too tiresome.’

‘I experienced no problems, General,’ she replied. ‘Apart from a necessary minimum of dialogue I closed down for much of the time so the other passengers tended to leave me alone. As you appreciate, after a day or so in space, people usually switch between entertainment and hibernation. I sensed even their dreams were frozen. Two of them woke for a while then retreated from the emptiness beyond our vessel. They were afraid. They imagined that I also slept for most of the journey but of course I did not. Our transfer to the shuttle was without incident.’

‘Well now you’re here I’ll arrange for refreshments then we can discuss the purpose of your journey. And we do not use the term “General” in the presence of others - with a small number of exceptions, of course. At least not yet. “Chief” will suffice because out here I as well as all of my staff are officially and strictly civilian. I believe I made that clear before you left Earth.’

‘You did indeed, Chief,’ she replied, ‘but we are alone in this room and there are no active sensors other than those required for your personal security.’

‘You are of course right, my dear Zena. ‘I above all should never doubt your remarkable abilities.’ He issued words to a small dome shimmering translucent green on the left side of the desk. A man’s face appeared above it. To this Hammond addressed his order for food and drink then returned to his guest. ‘As you are aware, the official reason for your visit is that you are to undertake environmental systems studies. That will be sufficient should anyone ask and it gives you ample reason to go when and wherever you wish. I expect you will see more of this world than most. More, perhaps, than any of them ever could.’

They made small talk. She appeared relaxed, but her expression belied the busy probing of her mind. She was aware of the real Hammond behind that benign and easy-going manner. Aware of the zealous, uncompromising mind of a man who would have nothing and no one stand in his way. That was no secret to others close to the General and yet - in spite of the screen that prevented her fully accessing his emotions, she perceived a dark shadow. Whatever cast that shadow, she realised, had brought her on the long voyage through space to serve him on this world as she had been programmed to serve on Earth. To search out, to reveal any who schemed to subvert. Any who thought to deceive. Following the near fatal accident on Earth, Frontier’s biolab had restored her body, remodelled her mind, had made her what she now was. What she recalled from an earlier life was only what they had allowed her to remember. Much of what coloured her memories had never been.

With the arrival of refreshments she expected Hammond would remain at ease but he did not. When they were alone again he leaned toward her as if in fear of being overheard. ‘You will understand,’ he breathed, eyes hard upon hers, ‘that what I am about to tell you is known to only a select few within this facility and to no one else on the entire planet. These are sensitive times. You will find speculation and rumour everywhere, my dear Zena. They seem to appear and disappear planet-wide like whirlwinds out there in the desert.’

‘I sensed those rumours, Chief. I sensed them in the one who brought me here and in those who walked by. There are events, images they do not understand. There are things that have occurred recently. It fascinates them as rumour always fascinates.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘rumour is a black seed placed by the Devil and watered by the ignorance of the unwary. Opinion is its shoot waiting to blossom into dangerous conviction.’ Hammond once more relaxed then continued, ‘This office is, as you have gathered, electronically isolated and what I’m to tell you will be treated Class One confidential.’

‘Information I am given in confidence will not be imparted to unauthorised persons, Chief. You know that better than anyone.’

‘Oh, I know it very well, my dear Zena - I do indeed. But if we are to carry out His good work in this soulless place; if we are to unmask, if we are to crush the evil that has arisen to test our resolve then we must be on our guard at all times. At all times!’

***

The last personnel had entered the base. They had watched the outer airlock doors slide shut against the forbidding beauty of a starlit desert. Maintenance bots retreated to cluster inside their protective shells. A low mist advanced from the night to explore their domain. It drifted in spectral cortege, embraced parked vehicles, stole away their warmth and veiled them with carbon dioxide frost. Soon the mist would settle and thicken. Soon the complex would be obscured to leave the great biodome a pale bubble adrift in a phantom sea.

***

The General had finished speaking. His disclosure had been brief. Now she understood the nature of her mission as he leaned back in the chair, hands held prayer-like, fingertips touching his lips, eyes still fixed upon her. ‘You don’t appear surprised. Perhaps I should not have expected it.’

‘Things are what they are, General, whether they surprise us or not. I will be vigilant and do nothing to arouse suspicion. I will report directly to you when the time comes.’

‘That is what I expect, Zena, and I know I can depend upon you. Our resources on Mars are growing though as yet we have not been able to authorise suitable surveillance equipment. We have, however, the backing of others on Earth - some of considerable influence. We will accomplish His good work together and His hand will surely guide us.’ Hammond’s smile returned. ‘But you have hardly set foot on the planet and here am I detaining you. You must go to your quarters then do a little exploring. Visit our biodome before your evening meal - the main pathways are lit throughout the night and I suspect it is the biodome where you should begin. We can discuss matters further before you retire. I’ll recall the crewman to escort you.’

‘Do you consider that necessary, General? Most people familiarise themselves with our complexes before they leave Earth.’

‘We must play safe, my dear Zena. You must not appear over-familiar with finer details to those who know you are newly arrived. That could fuel more speculation. Let them continue with the rumours they already have for as long as it serves our purpose. After this evening you may go about as you please.’

The door slid aside to reveal the waiting orderly. Hammond remained motionless until the door had closed and sealed, then he raised fingers to the sides of his face and closed his eyes. Where had been the familiar surroundings of his office there now resolved corridor walls and overhead lights. The head and shoulders of the orderly swung in and out of the scene as he proceeded around a corner to approach the staircase. He appeared to look directly at Hammond whilst his lips moved in silence. He was, of course, speaking to Zena Michaelis. Hammond had no interest in hearing what was said, only in the picture that she unknowingly fed him through the secure link. Her eyes now were his eyes. Whatever evil moved amongst them would be revealed to him exactly as it appeared to her so that he would know at once. And once knowing, he would act.

He remained watching until they arrived at her quarters. A smile of satisfaction touched his lips. His gaze remained cold and unblinking.

She had become the eyes and the ears of a man whose motives she could never truly understand, in part because they involved emotions. And even though the senses conferred upon her ranged far beyond the keenest possessed by any human being, she was no more able to predict the future.

Nor could she foresee the coming of death and destruction.

Chapter 1 - ENIGMA OF THE CRYSTALS

 

Most of that morning I’d spent working out in the gym with my old buddy, Leo - Leo McDowell, that is. He’s a fellow pilot. Our ground leave had overlapped a few days this time around. As usual when the opportunity came up I’d done my best to outshine him but he always managed to haul more weight than me. I guess that’s because he spent a deal longer working out than I did when he was down at base. Some people relax in the bar or the biodome, or get lost in programmed dreaming. Leo was no more interested in escaping from the real world than I was.

Stepping from the gymnasium, my thoughts had hovered over a session of further education rather than the bar room, where I knew Leo would be heading after our workout. Further education? Well, I was involved in an arts course though I was never too interested in the subject back on Earth. But after arriving on Mars, I’d come to realise the value of much that I’d left behind. Earlier that day I’d planned to have myself a tour around one of those virtual European art galleries, all trimensional images, all perfectly convincing, except that you had the illusion all to yourself – no crowds, no company at all, unless you wanted otherwise. By this time, however, my academic side was feeling less assertive. It backed down altogether when my left earlobe pinged. ‘Hi, Brett - sorry to interrupt your free time but there’s something I’d like to discuss right here in my office. How are you fixed?’

‘Ten minutes Joe - okay?’ I replied, wondering why I needed to go to his office in the flesh. He could in any case have joined me in the bar room as he occasionally did but the tone of his voice suggested this was something out of the ordinary. Something that maybe needed a private face-to-face.

‘Sure, Brett,’ he came back. ‘See you in ten.’

Joe, our station commander, seldom interfered with people’s leave schedules. It’s no secret how jealous pilots get about their free time on the ground, though in my case it didn’t matter so much. For me real freedom came when I was flying. On the other hand, it wasn’t too often I could get together for a drink and a little reminiscing with Leo. Leo and I had been pals since we were kids. From the start we’d both dreamt about going into space, each of us telling the other that he himself would be the first to do it and maybe the other one would never get off the ground. But good old dependable Leo and I ended up in basic military training together. We graduated as pilots on wingships and shuttles and began flying at more or less the same time. We even fell out over the same girl. That could have terminated our friendship but when she threw us both out of her life that did it; Leo and I were pals again.

We made the journey out to Mars together, although our reasons for so doing were not the same. Leo wanted to fly wingships long enough to pile up the credits then return to Earth. He figured on having enough set aside to pursue his favourite sport, golf, in a big way. In the meantime, his ambition was to set up the first teams on Mars and eventually organise inter-base tournaments.

As for me, I wanted to fly wingships and go on flying wingships. I never thought there was enough peace and quiet to be had back on Earth. Never enough time to sit and think. I found life too complicated Earthside - over-regulated, overcrowded, with too many people retreating from a reality they figured was no longer worth having. It’s very easy to interact with bionics, easy to be something you aren’t in order to escape the pressures of life on the home planet. There’s no sense of wonder for a lot of people. Maybe there never was. Plug yourself in and you can be and go and do almost anything you like as long as you don’t shift your butt from the couch. It’s what people were escaping to as much as from that bothered me.

I needed to find myself. I needed to live my own life and on Mars I could do that. I could think straight and metaphorically speaking I could breathe again, which is a pretty ironic thing to say about a planet where the outside air is unbreathable. And sure, there are people - there are forty or so bases and at least twice as many outstations. There were, when I arrived, the all-important uranium and rare metal mining operations as well as the automated factories, but the human population hadn’t climbed much higher than a hundred thousand. A major percentage of them had been born on the planet, though, and never gotten closer to the real Earth than taking a stroll in the biodome or wandering through virtual Earthscapes.

With so few human beings on a land area roughly the same as Earth’s, and almost all concentrated in the bases, you could say even then that the surface of Mars was practically devoid of humans. Most of the big ships plying the routes those days were just cargo platforms and most didn’t carry people anymore, only manufactured goods and industrial equipment. But the big dream, the one that had initially lit the fuse, had proved too ambitious in the end. Mining the asteroid belt, siphoning up the organic atmosphere of Saturn’s moon, Titan, then shipping the stuff back to Mars for processing - both had remained no more than that – stalled because of the war on Earth. And I for one hoped it would stay that way since I didn’t care to live out my days on the factory planet some people had been intent on creating. Yes, I could wander over cratered deserts, around great volcanoes, through vast canyons, and the sky was mine. Above those ancient landscapes I imagined things a lot of people wouldn’t understand. Some of it I didn’t understand myself.

Then maybe I wasn’t alone. Rumour had it that a few people, those who spent time at remote outstations, claimed they heard and saw things. Sounds. Images. No one ever used the word “haunted” but I knew what they meant. I’d felt it myself when I’d been grounded and asleep in my quarters. As if voices were calling from across some great divide, but it’s not the kind of experience you advertise. Loneliness, remoteness, can have a strange effect on people. At least that’s what I told myself.

Some might not consider the likes of Leo and me to have had particularly glamorous lives. We flew cargo containers and pallets to and from main distribution points as well as from base to base. On Earth that would be entirely automated and so would not require a pilot. Out here the powers that be still preferred a genuine human on board so whenever I carried passengers they would have someone to bitch at when life wasn’t going their way. Apart from that, everyone on Mars had to be involved with something.

The cargo containers arrived after being released to aero-brake in the atmosphere and from those same main points, new ones were blasted up into space. They would rendezvous with the crewless freighters as they swung around our small world to begin the long return journey to Earth, oscillating back and forth across the solar system to the unheard beat of some celestial pendulum. When the big rockets did come in direct from the home planet, there were always people aboard. Sometimes they’d transfer passengers and equipment to the shuttles in orbit or onto the Isaac Newton space station; sometimes they’d come right down to the surface. When they did come down, when the sun was low and the sky clear - what a sight they were!

The passengers I mentioned might include technicians, engineers, scientists or administration staff. That’s how I first met Karin - Karin Blomdahl, the first real complication in my life since I’d quit Earth. Karin worked for the Europeans but at that time she was using our base facilities for one of those co-operative ventures the powers-that-be got involved in. Sure, everyone joked about the male pilots and their women the way people used to about those old-time sailors on Earth. The innuendo some of us were subject to seldom matched reality, though I guess Leo and I didn’t have much to complain about in that respect. But Karin was different - no, more than that as things turned out. Even so, it took a while for me to realise there could be more to life than sitting in the pilot’s pod and musing over the scenery. Eventually, I found myself gazing at the mountains and the deserts but seeing her face, too. At first that worried me and I tried to convince myself it would soon pass. Karin didn’t start out as a complication, however. I flew wingships whereas she was a geologist - a planetary scientist if you prefer - so the nature of her work kept her firmly on the ground most of the time. Anyhow, where there’s a will - as they used to say. Except that in this case the will, initially, wasn’t mine.

It might never have happened but for Joe – the very Joe I was now heading up to meet. Joe van Allen was not only my base commander - he was a good friend. He, too, belonged out here though he came initially on a five-year tour of duty. That’s Earth years, by the way. We always reckon time out here in Earth years. The Martian year of six hundred and eighty-seven days gets too complicated, though it makes you sound a lot younger for a while. Anyhow, Joe came out to help further his career on the home planet. That was twenty-eight years ago. His partner hated Mars so much they split and she returned to Earth. Meantime, he’d been offered command of, and responsibility for, the expansion of what had been our first permanent base, Novamerica One. It became his personal project and he saw it develop into what it is today. The place is ancient by colonial standards, getting on for a century old, though it’s been modified so much over the decades the original structure got recycled somewhere in the process.

Karin made out that Joe was my father figure. I guess she was right. Joe always had a soft spot for me, maybe because he never had kids of his own. It was Joe’s idea to have me show Karin around our station on her first visit. When I looked at those cool Nordic features, when I saw how they so easily dimpled into a smile when she spoke, he didn’t need to hold a gun to my head. Well, it seemed innocent enough at the time, even when Joe arranged for the three of us to have dinner together in the biodome café away from the crowds then found, just before Karin and I arrived, that he had an unexpected inter-base meeting to deal with. Sure, I was slow off the mark but I figured out what he was up to when I found my rest and recreation periods falling as often as not at the same time as hers. Regardless of nationality and provided there was room on a wingship going in the right direction, personnel could spend their leave time in someone else’s back yard. After a while we realised it was due to Joe and his counterpart at her patch, Europa Four, cooking our work schedules. Neither of us objected although the possibility did cross my mind. All right, only once, and it was totally without conviction. When I got around to broaching the subject with Joe, he swore it was nothing to do with him. In any case, as he was quick to point out, interfering with duty schedules without good reason was a breach of regulations. Regulations! Now that’s not a word I ever associated with Joe and I don’t recall he ever used it until that day.

I entered Joe’s office to find him staring out over the runway. There were a couple of robots shifting sand from the external storage area, a never ending task if ever there was one, but nothing flying in or out. His office was the nearest thing to a suburban habitat back home I ever saw. How he got some of that stuff out here with space on the cargo ships at such a premium, I never discovered. And there was that nineteenth century mechanical clock of his - always ticking away. He never adjusted it to compensate for the slightly longer Martian day so it always measured the time at his hometown on Earth. Even more than the greenery of the biodomes, that office of his seemed so out of place on this planet that I felt at odds with reality whenever I went up there.

‘Sit down, Brett,’ he said, stepping over to the low table. Joe, a grey-haired, tall and slightly stooping man in his late-seventies, was usually pretty equable. Others might have chosen to retain a more youthful appearance but he didn’t worry about that. Anyhow, when you know a guy as well as I knew Joe, a plain speaking, straightforward man, you can sense when something isn’t right.

He pushed a cold beer my way then began, ‘We’ve had an official decree from Chief Executive Hammond. I won’t go into all the details and it isn’t something that will affect everyone, at least not for a time. You, Brett, it will effect. Putting it simply, we’re to put a hold on some joint scientific programs and all non-commercial operations with other nationalities plus we’re to introduce security measures. I’m telling you first, and unofficially I might add, because – well, I’m telling you, that’s all.’

‘Security!’ I responded. ‘Who needs security out here? Security against what?’