Icehenge Read online

  “I’m sorry about what we’ve done to you,” he said from the window. “All the impositions—the danger we’ve put you in.”

  “Eh,” I said.

  He stayed with his back to me. “Everything should be calm by the time you get back.”

  “Hope so.” I didn’t want to think of it. We deserved to return to calmness.

  “I’m sorry you’re not coming with us, Emma.”

  That woke me up. I looked at his back. “Why is that?”

  “You … were the last outsider. And I hadn’t talked with any outsiders for years—not really talked, I mean. If … if you had decided to join us, it would have meant a lot to me.”

  “You wouldn’t have to feel guilty about sending me back to whatever’s happening on Mars,” I said cruelly.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I suppose that’s true. And—and I wouldn’t have to consider what happened between us so long ago finished.…” Finally he turned and faced me, rip-ripped over to me. “I would have enjoyed your company,” he said slowly.

  “And if I were going,” I said, “I would have enjoyed your company too. But I’m not going.” I clung to that.

  “I know.” He looked away, searching for words, it seemed. “Your approval has become important to me.”

  Wearily I said, “Not all that important.” Which was true.

  He winced. I watched his mouth tighten unhappily. Somewhere in me a tide turned, my mood began to lighten. After a long silence I stood up carefully (I had been leaning on the navigator’s chair, I noticed), approached him, reached up on tiptoe (hand on his shoulder) and kissed him, lightly on the lips. A thousand phrases jammed on my tongue. “I like you, Oleg Davydov,” I said inadequately. I stepped away as he reached for me. “Come on, let’s go down to that soccer field. The meeting can’t start without you.” I led the way to the door, quite certain that I didn’t want the conversation to continue any longer.

  At the doorway he stopped me, and without a word pulled me into his arms, into one of those big Russian bear hugs that let you know that you are not the only consciousness in the world, because of the intensity of the flesh. I hugged back, remembering when we were young. Then we pulled our way down the jump tube to the enlarged recreation field.… And so we parted.

  There was a final meeting in the big space they had cleared in the Lermontov, a meeting strange and tentative. To each group there the other was dying. I felt as if miles of plasteel separated me from everyone else. Then they were all milling about, saying goodbye. It all happened very quickly. I felt very tired. Nadezhda and Marie-Anne found me and hugged me. I moved with the others toward the corridor leading to the boat bay, saying “Good-bye … farewell … good-bye.” Then Eric was standing before me, holding me. Davydov was at his side. They looked at each other. Davydov said, “She’s what you leave behind, eh?” Then he took my arm, led me to the corridor. “Good-bye!” Eric called. “Yes,” I mumbled. Then we were in the boat bay.

  “Good-bye, Emma,” Davydov said. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Don’t run into anything,” I said, my voice tight.

  He shook his head.

  “Good-bye, Oleg Davydov.” I could hardly say it.

  He turned and walked out of the bay. I got on the boat and we shot out into space, back to Rust Eagle where we began. Once there the new crew members looked at each other. Three MSA members who had decided to return; ten or a dozen people bitterly opposed to the starship effort, clustered around Valenski and Duggins; and another dozen people who had not cared, or who had helped the effort. We moved to the bridge by unspoken consent. I went to the window and looked at the starship again. The sun was behind us, and for a second our shadow crossed over the double ship.

  I stood inside the window, watching. I couldn’t think—every thought I had short-circuited and died.

  The starship moved forward. Helplessly I moved along the window with it, watching with the others as it receded, angling away: first a bright belt, then a necklace, a bracelet, a ring, and lastly a silver jewel, that diminished and diminished and disappeared.

  All that was left was to go home, home to the red planet. At the thought, over everything else, I felt immense relief.

  * * *

  Since then we have all taken on the various tasks we are capable of, and I, in the privacy of my empty room, have written this record—an attempt to save, for the Emma of the following centuries, some account of these months.

  Without a doubt this is the strangest crew Rust Eagle has ever carried. Ethel Jurgenson, Yuri Kopanev and I have taken over the work on the bridge, which is mostly monitoring at this point. Valenski in turn monitors us, walking about the bridge like a teacher during a test. Ginger Sims and Amy Van Danke and Nikos Micora, one of the MSA people who decided to return (very quiet he is), are taking care of the farm, with the help of three or four others, including Al Nordhoff. They report to me, but Valenski insists on being present all the time we are working.

  Despite this suspicious atmosphere, the relations between the various factions aboard are better than they were at first. About four days into our return Yuri and Duggins started a fight in the dining commons; they had to be pulled apart by Sandra and several others. The two principals were pretty well bruised, Duggins from flying backwards over a table, a wonderful sight to my eyes. For a couple of days we were like two armed camps. Eventually I went to Valenski’s room to talk. “You mind your own business and we’ll mind ours. Everybody just do their job. When we get back to Mars they’ll take the ship into custody and we can all say what we like.”

  “Fine with me,” he said. “It’s you who’ll be in trouble then, not me.”

  True enough, perhaps. But since then things have been relatively calm. In our private meetings Yuri suggested taking over the ship and going to Earth, but the idea was rejected. First of all, no one wanted to risk a violent confrontation with the loyalists. But more importantly, I think, no one was willing to face the idea of going to Earth. With its wars, its hungry billions, its gravity—we all instinctively felt that nothing on Mars could be as bad. Besides, as Sandra pointed out, Earth is no more than the home of the Committee’s bosses, and so not much of an asylum.

  So we coast toward Mars and wait. I have spent these days like a somnambulist, my mind existing in the past months as I wrote this record, or wandering toward Saturn with the starship and its crew, my friends. At first I was helpless to control this behavior, and I floated through Rust Eagle without responding to my mates. Later I cultivated it as a sort of act, as I noticed that it tended to subdue everyone else aboard.

  We have no transmitter, so we have listened mutely to what we can hear on the receiver. There isn’t much. Clearly the trouble has continued on Mars, and that makes it hard—not knowing what we are returning to.

  But it won’t be much longer until we know. I have filled up the weeks with this record, inadequate though it certainly is, for who can translate the amazing bombardment of experience into words? Yet it has passed the time. Deceleration starts today, bringing the blessed attraction to the floor. And soon we will be back in Mars space. If I can I will continue penning away in this little notebook, to give it a sort of ending. But I fear they will throw us all in jail.

  * * *

  It was the rebels who met us.

  I’ll never forget the look on Andrew Duggins’ face. Reality had betrayed him; the brave were springing up everywhere, even on his home ground where he might least expect it, and he couldn’t escape them.

  And yet I am sure that several of us collaborators were not much less dismayed to be received by anti-Committee forces.

  Well, this is how it happened. They met us just outside the orbit of Amor, in one of those little police craft that are used to patrol the space around Phobos and Deimos, and to take prisoners up to Amor. As I stared out the bridge window at the red crescent of the planet, wondering if I would set foot on it again, they hurried out of the jump tube—about ten tense-looking men and women, dres
sed in working one-pieces. They pointed long-nosed weapons at us, hot light guns, and for a long adrenaline-filled moment I thought they were removing all the witnesses to the mutiny.…

  “Is this Rust Eagle?” asked a blond-haired man, for we had been unable to respond to their angry questions by radio.

  “Yes,” two or three of us replied.

  The man nodded. “We are the Texan cell of the Washington-Lenin Alliance. You have been liberated—” He smiled, at our expressions I suppose. “And we are taking you as quickly as we can to New Houston, a free city.”

  That was when Duggins looked as if the world had turned upside down. Ethel and I looked at each other open-mouthed—Yuri held us both in a hug, moving slowly in front of the guns. It was he who began to explain us to the blond man, but he hadn’t got far before we were ushered to the boat bay, to transfer to the police craft. There we were separated into smaller groups and interviewed by a pair of the rebels. Soon I was led to a room containing the blond man and a woman about my age.

  “You’re Emma Weil?”

  I told them I was. They asked me some questions about the MSA and their adventures, and I confirmed the story that Yuri and the others had told.

  “So there has been a revolution?” I said. “And the Committee overthrown?”

  They were both shaking their heads. “The battle is still on,” said the woman, whose name was Susan Jones.

  The blond man was her brother. “Actually,” he said, “we aren’t doing so well.” He stood. “At first the uprising was planet-wide, but now—we still hold Texas—”

  “Of course,” I said, and they grinned.

  “And the Soviet sector. There’s still fighting in Mobil and the Atlantic, and in the tunnels on Phobos. But everywhere else, the Committee troops have regained control.”

  “Royal Dutch?” I asked, my windpipe suddenly constricted.

  They shook their heads. “Committee.”

  “Has it been very violent?”

  Susan Jones said firmly, “A lot of people have been killed.”

  Her brother said, “They broke the dome at Hellas. Killed a lot of people inside.”

  “They couldn’t have!” I cried. Hellas …

  “They did. They don’t care how many people they kill. There’s always more on Earth to take their places.”

  “They’re careful of property, though,” Susan said bitterly. “That’s to our advantage. Otherwise I have no doubt they would have destroyed New Houston outright by now.”

  “It sounds like you’re losing,” I said.

  They didn’t contradict me.

  Suddenly the gravity shifted up, and we became heavier. Heavier still.

  “But I’m with you,” I said, without planning to. “I’m with you if you’ll have me.”

  They both nodded. “We’ll have you,” Andrew Jones said. “We’re going to need life-support people, one way or another.”

  The gee diminished to the familiar pressure of Mars. A minute later there was a gentle bump-and-rock. I was home again.

  * * *

  So I joined the revolution.

  When we had been settled in the apartment the revolutionaries were using for their command post—it’s in the Dallas district, the industrial section of town near the air and water facilities, under the rim of New Houston’s crater—I asked Susan Jones what they were doing with Duggins, Valenski, and their group.

  She smiled. “We explained the situation to them, and gave them their choice—join us, or be detained. We told them the truth about the Committee, explained Amor to them. We told them that if any of them joined us and then did anything anti-revolutionary, we’d shoot them.”

  “And?”

  “Not all of them have decided yet. Most who have decided have chosen to be detained.”

  “That Al Nordhoff is a good man—”

  “He chose detention.”

  Of course. And all of us who helped build the starship have chosen to join the revolution. No surprise, although I still have the feeling some of us might have preferred to be met by the Committee. (Am I one of those?)

  We were taken to a short meeting with the revolutionary command here—a different sort of committee, a smelly and disheveled group of about twenty-five. They looked like my farm crew used to look after a hard day’s work. Or worse. Susan Jones told them what she knew of our adventure, and the story of our rescue—or whatever it was. We answered some questions. They looked pleased to see us; here was an anti-Committee project that had succeeded. I became very tired. It had been a long time since I had last slept. Finally they led us back to our rooms, and I fell asleep the moment I hit the bed.

  Today they want us to rest. Andrew Jones says some of them want to talk to us again. I’ve taken the opportunity to get down the story of our arrival. Now, again, I’m going to sleep. The Martian gravity I love feels pretty heavy these days.

  * * *

  I talked to Andrew Jones this afternoon. He told me that the revolution began all at once, in every major city on the planet. The entire Soviet space fleet rebelled and pearl-harbored the rest of the Committee’s spaceships, with devastating success. “That’s why we were able to go up there and intercept you. We still have partial control of Marsspace.” The railroad tracks connecting the cities were sabotaged, especially at bridges and other problem points. Air and water buildings in every city were stormed, as were some of the police barracks. These last attacks had uneven success. There were as many police as rebels, so it had been a pitched battle from the start. Fighting in the streets, in every city.… “The U.S. and U.S.S.R. have sent reinforcements to the Committee,” Andrew finished. “They’ve arrived recently. A few big spaceships, really long-distance killers, and some advanced weapons. Personnel killers.”

  “They must not be too worried about you,” I said, “if they’re still trying to save the buildings and facilities.”

  “I know,” Andrew said, discouraged and bitter. “They think they can just kill us and walk back into their property.”

  “And you’ve lost contact with a lot of rebel-held cities?”

  “You bet.” He became grimly cheerful. “They’ve retaken most of the sectors, like I told you. They drop in on the air and water buildings and blast the people there—if there’s still resistance in the city, they take away the air. A lot of buildings are self-contained, but that’s just mopping up. These cities”—he grimaced—“they’re too centralized. Some of the rebel cells have set up underground retreats in the chaos. We hope they made it out to them.”

  “What about the general population?”

  “Most of them fought for us. At first. That’s why we did so well.”

  “A lot of people must be dead.”

  “Yes.”

  Thousands of people dead. Killed. People who would have lived a thousand years. My father—jail may have protected him, but on the other hand, he may be dead. And my turn may be coming.

  * * *

  They asked me to make a small speech for the rebels in New Houston, which they would then transmit to the other rebel outposts. “When the revolt began,” Susan Jones told me, “the MSA members still here joined the fight, and they told everyone about the starship effort. It’s been a big story, people are very interested and excited about it. To hear you announce that the starship has taken off would be good for morale.”

  They’re in bad shape, I thought to myself. But I got the dozen of us who had helped Davydov’s people to sit with me at another meeting in the lounge of the command building. The same group, slightly larger and slightly more exhausted, was gathered there. A couple of video cameras were trained on us, and I was given a mike. I said,

  “The Mars Starship Association was part of the revolution. They worked isolated from the main effort, and have existed for the last forty years.” I told them what I knew of the Association’s history, aware as I spoke of the strangeness of the fact that it was me telling them this story. I described the starship and its capabilities, and events fro
m the previous two months flashed in my mind, disturbing my concentration. “When I left Mars on Rust Eagle I didn’t know there was an MSA. I didn’t know there was an underground movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Committee. I did know that—I did know…”—suddenly it was hard to talk—“that I hated the Committee and its control over our lives. When I found out about the MSA, sort of by accident out there”—a sympathetic laugh—“I helped it. So did my friends sitting up here with me. Now that we’re here, we want to help you, too. I’m glad—I’m glad that the Mars Development Committee wasn’t here to greet us.” I paused to catch my breath properly. “I hope they never rule Mars again.”

  And at that they stood up and cheered. Clapped and cheered. But I hadn’t been finished! I had wanted to say, Listen, there is a starship leaving the solar system! I wanted to say that out of all our petty and stupid and destructive squabbles on this planet, a pure, feeble effort had struggled away—that the revolution had been responsible for it, partially, and that it was a historical event to stun the imagination.…

  But I never got to say any of that. My friends from Rust Eagle crowded around me, familiar faces all, filled with affection, and my speech was over. We looked at each other with a new tenderness—now, and perhaps from now on, we were each other’s only family. Noah’s cousins, left behind.

  * * *

  Not much time left. The city has been broached by police troops, and we’ll be evacuating soon.

  I was up on the crater’s rim with Andrew Jones when the missiles started falling on the spaceport to the north of the city crater. The explosions were bright enough to leave blue after-images in our eyes, and they lofted tall, lazy clouds of rusty dust above the larger chunks of spaceport.

  Inside our daysuits the attack had been soundless, though I felt the thumps of the explosions even in Mars’s thin air. “Our turn,” Andrew said without emotion. “We’d better get back inside.”

  We went to the passage lock in the crater’s dome, and hurried down the escalator on the rim wall. We were just outside the command building when the dome fell. I guess the police weren’t worrying about property anymore; perhaps New Houston is the last rebel city left, and they are anxious to be done with us. We saw the starring appear around the perimeter, saw the huge sections of thin plasteel crack and tilt as they slowly dropped toward us. Then we were under the eaves of the building and in the protection of the door lock.