Firstborn

“This is the work of the Firstborn. They are everywhere. And everywhere they are doing what they tried to do to us, and the Martians, and at Procyon —eradicating. Why?”

“If we knew that,” Bella said, “if we understood the Firstborn, we might be able to deal with the threat they pose. This is how our future is going to be, however far we travel, as far as we can see.

And that’s how we’ve come to this situation, this desolate beach.”

Bella handed the sample tray to an aide, and took a step back.

“Would those of you who are leaving now, please come stand behind me?”

Most of the group stepped forward, including Ellie von Devender, Grendel Speth, Hanse Critchfield. Among those who remained were Myra, and Yuri, and Paula Umfraville. The Chinese stood back too. One of their delegates approached Bella, and told her again that they planned to stay to tend the memorials they had built to their fallen of sunstorm day.

Bella faced them all. “I understand you’ve plenty of supplies—

food, power — to see you through until—”

Yuri said, “Yes, Madam Chair. It’s all taken care of.”

“I don’t quite understand how you’ll be able to talk to each other — Lowell to the polar station, for instance. Won’t you lose your comms satellites when the secession comes?”

“We’ve laid land lines,” Paula said brightly. “We’ll be fine.”

“Fine?” Bella’s face worked. “Not the word I’d use.” She said impulsively, “Please — come with us. All of you. Even now there’s time to change your minds. We’ve room on the shuttle. And my daughter is waiting in orbit on the Liberator, ready to take you home.”

“Thank you,” Yuri said evenly. “But we’ve decided. Somebody ought to stay. There ought to be a witness. Besides, this is my home, Madam Chair.”

“My mother is buried here,” said Paula Umfraville. “I couldn’t abandon that.” Her smile was as professional as ever.

“And I lost my mother here too,” Myra said. “I couldn’t leave with that unresolved.”

Bella faced Myra. “You know we’ll do what we can to build on the contact that’s been achieved with Mir. I gave you my word on that, and I’ll ensure it’s a promise that’s kept.”

“Thank you,” Myra said.

“But you’re going to a stranger place yet, aren’t you? Is there anybody you’d want me to speak to for you?”

“No. Thank you, Madam Chair.” In the months since the Q-bomb strike, Myra had tried over and over to contact Charlie, and Eugene. There had been no reply. But then they had seceded from her own personal universe long ago. She had tidied her affairs. There was nothing left for her, anywhere but on Mars.

“With respect, Madam Chair, you must leave now,” Yuri said, glancing at his suit chronometer.

There was a last flurry of movement around the shuttle, as ladders were dumped, hatches closed. Myra took part in a last round of embraces, of Ellie and Grendel and Hanse, of the Chinese, even of Bella Fingal. But the Mars suits made the hugs clumsy, unsatisfying, deprived of human contact.

Bella was the last to stand at the foot of the short ramp that led to the biconic’s interior. She looked around. “This is the end of Mars,” she said. “A terrible crime has been committed here, and we humans have been made complicit in it. That is a dreadful burden for us to carry, and our children. But I don’t believe we should leave with shame. More has happened on Mars in the last century than in the previous billion years, and everything that is good has flowed from the actions of mankind. We must remember that. And we must remember lost Mars with love, not with shame.” She glanced down at the crimson dust beneath her feet. “I think that’s all.”

She walked briskly up the ramp, which lifted to swallow her up inside the belly of the shuttle.

Myra, Paula, and Yuri had to hurry back to the rover, which drove them off through a kilometer, a safe distance from the launch.

When the rover stopped they clambered out again, squeezing into their outer suits.

They stood in a row, Myra between Yuri and Paula, holding hands. They found themselves surrounded by a little crowd of robot cameras, which had rolled or flown or hopped after them.

When the moment of launch came, the shuttle lifted without fuss. Mars gravity was light; it had always been easy to climb out of its gravity well. The dust kicked up from this last launch quickly fell back through the thin air to the ground, and the shuttle receded into the orange-brown sky, becoming a pale jewel, its vapor trail all but invisible.

“Well, that’s that,” said Paula. “How long until the light show?”

Yuri made to look at his watch, and then thought better of it.

“Not long. Do you want to go back into the rover, get out of these suits?”

None of them did. Somehow it seemed right to be out here, on the Martian ground, under its eerie un-blue sky.

Myra looked around. The landscape was just a flat desert with meager mountains in the far distance. But in a deep ditch not far away there was a mosslike vegetation, green. Life, returned to Mars by the sunstorm and cherished by human hands. She held tightly to her companions. “This is the dream of a million years, to stand here and see this,” she said.

Yuri said, “Yes—”

And the light went, just like that, the sky darkening as if somebody was throwing a dimmer switch. The sun rushed away, sucking all the light with it. The sky turned deep brown, and then charcoal, and then utterly black.

Myra stood in the dark, clinging to Yuri and Paula. She heard the cameras clatter about, confused.

It had only taken seconds.

“I hope the cameras got that,” Yuri murmured.

“It feels like a total eclipse,” Paula said. “I went to Earth once to see one. It was kind of exciting, oddly…”

Myra felt excited too, stirred in an unexpected way by this primeval, extraordinary event. Strange lights in the sky. But, standing there in the dark, she felt a flicker of fear when she reminded herself that the sun was never, ever going to shine on Mars again.

“So we’re alone in this universe,” Yuri said. “Us and Mars.”

The ground shuddered gently.

“Mars quake,” Paula said immediately. “We expected this. We just lost the sun’s tides. It will pass.”

The rover’s lights came on, flickering before settling to a steady glow. They cast a pool of light over the Martian ground, and Myra’s shadow stretched long before her.

And there was a circle in the air before her. Like a mirror, full of complex reflections, highlights from the rover’s lamps. Myra took a step forward, and saw her own reflection approach her.

The thing in the air was about a meter across. It was an Eye.

“You bastard,” Yuri said. “You bastard!” He bent awkwardly, picked up handfuls of Martian rocks, and hurled them at the Eye.

The rocks hit with a clatter that was dimly audible through the thin, cold air.

The ground continued to shake, the small, hard planet ringing like a bell.

And then a white fleck drifted past Myra’s faceplate. She followed it all the way down to the ground, where it sublimated away.

It was a snowflake.

59: Temple

Abdikadir Omar met them at the Temple of Marduk.

A loose crowd had gathered around the Temple precinct. Some even slept here, in lean-tos and tents.