Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy (20 page)

“Then we will find her ourselves,” came a
weak voice from the doorway, and I turned to see my husband,
Darwin, standing pale and weak. He was smiling at me, and winked,
before he collapsed to the floor. Warton rushed to his side and
helped support him as he was removed, back to his own bed.

I was feeling tired myself.

“Let me think on this,” I said, adjourning
the meeting.

Before the last of them had reached the
doorway, I was dead asleep.

I
awoke with someone
sharing my bed. A jolt of alarm went through me, and I reached for
the dagger by my bedside and the bell pull that lay just behind it,
but a paw stayed me.

I turned to look into Darwin’s grinning
face.

“I meant what I said, you know,” he told me,
gently releasing my arm.

We lay back, our sides touching, and I said,
“I missed you. How do you feel?”

“Like a new kit. Nearly a day has passed
since I collapsed in your doorway. You will feel much better, too,
when you’ve had something proper to eat.”

“You should have told me you were in such bad
shape.”

“Why?” He laughed. “So you could feel even
worse?”

I stroked his paw lightly with my claws.
“What news is there?”

“This place is running without us. Newton has
gone to meet with Stella, and draw the rest of her secrets out.
Half the army is out crawling over the hills looking for Frane. The
senators and the Assembly are acting like there never was war and
are fighting with one another over anything that presents itself.
And the architects are drawing up plans to rebuild Wells, into an
even grander place than it was before.”

I nodded absently, and he pushed himself up
on one elbow to regard me. “What? None of this pleases you?”

“She is still out there.”

He nodded, and lowered his voice to a
whisper. “That’s why I’m here. You and I are going to find
her.”

“What!” I hissed.

“Shhh!” His put a finger to my lips. “Keep
your voice low. There are minders and tenders and servants, valets,
chambermaids, grovelers, scrapers and watchers of every stripe just
outside your door. If they knew you were awake they would burst in
here like a tide.”

I sighed. “It will be my lot from now on.
They’ll keep me locked up like a doll in a glass case. Even if I
insisted, or made it a royal order, they’d gang up on me and insist
it was ‘for the good of Mars.’”

“Exactly. Now that the danger to the republic
is perceived to be over, things are quickly reverting to normal. We
will never see another exciting moment in our lives.”

“True.”

He sat up on the bed, but kept his voice low.
“Now let me ask you. What are the chances of finding Frane with
Army patrols bumbling about the countryside and looking under hay
bales?”

“None. She will hide, using my mother until
she is no longer useful – and then, once again, Frane will attack
somewhere up the line.”

“Exactly. But now let me ask you: what are
the chances of two lone trackers, one of them an expert at hiding
and stealth, bringing Frane to ground and saving your mother?” He
smiled.

I could not help it, my voice rose. “They
would never let us do it!”

He continued to smile. “Of course they won’t!
That is why we will have to sneak out under their noses!”

And then he told me his plan.

I
was patient,
though I felt like anything but. The better part of the week was
spent in regaining my appetite (much of it by Darwin’s excellent
cooking – which also enabled him to have run of the kitchen and
secret away the provisions we would need), endless meetings with
ministers and counselors, and public displays from my balcony to
the cheering populace. All the while, Darwin and I planned. Besides
food, he found the proper clothing and, in a final stroke of
brilliance, enjoined Miklos, who had returned from the north pole,
to secret us out of the temporary capital.

During that time the expected news was
received that Frane was nowhere to be seen. It was if she had
dropped off the face of the planet, and my mother with her.

Finally, the day came. Both Darwin and I were
fit and hale again, and when the final audience of the day arrived,
a hulking gypsy who I well knew, he strode into my chamber after
his announcement with my husband under his arm like a sack of
wheat.

“How we worried!” he boomed, dropping Darwin
to the ground. He stomped forward to embrace me. “We dug and we dug
and we dug – but always there was more ice! Finally, when a storm
came, we were forced to leave! But never for a moment did I doubt
that little fish” – here he picked Darwin up again – “would let
anything happen to my Queen!”

He dropped Darwin and went to one knee before
me.

“Are you sure about this, my Queen?”

I nodded. “It must be done.”

“Already my gypsies are moving over the hills
and villages, and there is word that the evil one is farther east
than was thought.”

“Then that is where we will start.”

“We will always be close by,” he vowed,
and I took his giant paw in my own. “Then I will not worry,” I
said.

I
heard and smelled
rather than saw my own escape. Dropped from the window of my
audience chamber in a sack to the ground below, as was Darwin, and
then the dog Hector, I felt the quick descent and none too gentle
transfer to the back of a wagon. The sack smelled of oats, which
made me want to sneeze. Other sacks, which were piled around us,
some of them atop my own, contained everything else we would
need.

I felt the jostle and shake of the wagon as
its ponies were reined into motion. We traveled for perhaps an hour
outside of Bradbury, during which time, no longer caring for the
dry smell of oats, I cut a slit in my bag to breathe the late day
air.

Instead, I smelled the manure sacks which
Miklos’s men had piled atop everything else to discourage close
inspection – especially after our disappearance had been
discovered.

Which didn’t take long, because after perhaps
another half hour the cart came to a grinding halt, and I heard the
driver questioned in mumbled tones. The words became more heated
until the driver said, “Take a whiff, then!” I felt one of the bags
above me lifted away, and then heard a grunt of disgust.

“Happy, then?” the driver snorted, and the
bag was dropped back into place.

Soon we were back on our way.

Though I still longed for the smell of
oats, the odor of manure never smelled so sweet.

W
e emerged in
starlight. A small fire was burning, and Darwin immediately began
to prepare a meal. Our driver would not stay to eat, but
immediately mounted the extra pony which had been tied to the back
of the wagon and rode off.

“Good luck! It was Miklos’s wish!” he called,
raising a hand in farewell.

The night was still.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Not too far from the last sighting of Frane.
From here we head due east. Miklos’s people have to be careful,
because everyone is wary of strangers these days.”

He handed me something roasted and spicy,
and, thankful for my appetite, I ate.

I looked down at Hector, whose big eyes
studied me greedily. He barked once, and then sat there with his
tongue lolling.

Darwin laughed and tossed him a morsel from
his own meal, which Hector devoured.

“This isn’t dog, is it?” I said, warily,
holding up my meal.

“Of course not!”

I gave Hector a bit of my own meal.

“Can we rid ourselves of the manure at
least?” I asked, joking.

“No!” he said, which surprised me. “For now,
we are two traveling farmers who sell manure.”

My newly returned appetite began to leave
me.

“Perhaps in a few days, after we make a few
sales, we can rid ourselves of it and become mere peddlers.

“Not soon enough for me.”

A
nd that’s what we
did. We met a farmer who – after Darwin allowed him to rob us in a
transaction for the manure just enough so that he felt kindly
toward us, but not enough so that he became suspicious of us –
informed us over his table that two strangers had, indeed, been
this way not the week before.

“Strange they were, too,” the farmer said,
smoking on his pipe and scratching his whiskered chin. I thought of
Pelltier’s cigarettes, and almost gagged. “One of ‘em was plain
mad, and the other never showed her face or paws. All bowing and
thankee and good day. The other just stared into space. Then they
were gone east.”

“What’s east of here?” Darwin asked
innocently.

“Hills and more hills, until you get to the
town of Opportunity.”

“That’s quite a name for a town.”

The farmer smiled, showing a distinct lack of
various teeth. “‘There ain’t no opportunity in Opportunity,’ the
saying goes here.” His chest puffed out a little and he leaned
back, blowing a smoke ring. He waved his pipe stem at us. “And
thing is, you might want to watch yourselves in that town, yes
indeed. They ain’t as kindly in transactions to wandering peddlers
as I.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his table, and
smiled.

“Now I believe we were going to discuss
rent for a night’s lodging?”

T
he next morning, a
beautiful clear one, found us on the road, climbing and descending
hills. The countryside was pretty but monotonous, and soon I tired
of what looked like the same bubbling brook or the identical grove
of junto tress or similar clusters of ancient rock huts, shaped
like beehives, and for the most part demolished.

“Did you know that ancient feline hermits
used to live in these structures?” Darwin informed me, and I
pretended that I did not already know. We were cresting yet another
hill. Even Hector was bored, running ahead to scout, then,
inevitably, stopping to lie down in the sparse grass by the side of
the road to wait for us when nothing of interest presented itself
ahead.

This time he began to whine excitedly, and
ran back to jump into the cart and sit up beside me.

“What is it?” I asked in a low voice, but
Hector only whined with anticipation.

Darwin was finishing his history and
anthropology lesson, and I pretended to listen.

The cart topped the hill.

“Wonderful!” I cried, and Darwin said, “Why
thank you, I had no idea you were so interested in ancient
monks–”

“Not that – look!”

Below us was the dirtiest place I had ever
seen in my life.

O
pportunity indeed!
More like Red Dust Town, with plumes of airborne dirt hanging over
the streets like permanent clouds. The residents of this shanty
village wore a permanent layer of filth on their fur, which gave
them a strange, almost insubstantial look. You felt as if you were
beholding them through a crimson fog. I began to cough almost
immediately, which brought little notice because almost everyone
else was doing the same.

Between bouts of hacking, I turned to my
husband. “Why is it so – cough – dusty here?”

He pointed to the street below us, as well as
the surrounding hills. “This town – cough – could only have been
built by fools. It’s set – cough, cough – in a bowl, with a
perpetual breeze on a bed of red silt. Madness!”

Every building was covering in a fine layer
of dust, and I could not tell haberdashery from general store. In
fact, there were no markings on any of the buildings, which puzzled
me. But there was one large structure in the near distance which
everyone on the street was either coming from or going to, so we
headed there, wiping our eyes and sniffling.

Hector, his eyes closed, was snugged down
between us in the wagon, making noises of complaint in the back of
his throat.

The doors of this structure were huge and
thrown wide, with an aisle as wide as the main street leading in.
We passed through strips of plastic sheeting which hung down from
the top of the entry, and suddenly the dust and dirt were gone.

“Ingenious!” Darwin remarked, looking back.
The strips kept most of the filth outside, and allowed for a free
atmosphere within.

We found ourselves in a huge indoor bazaar.
To either side were booths and tables set with wares and food. Rich
aromas filled the air. There was the sound of laughter and the
shouts of vendors.

“Welcome to Opportunity!” said a little
feline to our right, stationed in a booth. Before us was a lowered
gate.

The little fellow smiled, showing even less
teeth than our recent farmer acquaintance. “I’d say you’ll need two
spaces to fit that wagon. That’ll be a tenner, please!”

Darwin paid him, and the little cat, red as
the dust outside from head to foot, bowed. “Been here before?” he
inquired, as if he already knew the answer.

“We’re from out west, thought we’d try the
waters here.”

The little fellow cackled. “Waters! There’s
no water for miles.”

“Why, may I ask, is there a town here at
all?”

There was a smaller wagon behind us, the
driver beginning to complain about our slow pace, but the little
feline was only too happy to give us the short history of the
town.

“Ever seen how rock candy grows, mister?” he
asked. Before Darwin could answer he went on. “You start with a
string in a glass o’ sugar water. Pretty soon some of the sugar
sticks to the string. Then more, and more. And before you know it
you got a whole lot of candy.”

“Move on!” the irate driver behind us
shouted, but the toll taker ignored him.

“Fellow named String, of all things, camped
here a hundred years ago. Then, he wakes up and there’s another
camper next to him, then another...”

He laughed and waved us through. “Lots 57 and
58! End of aisle 15!”