Hogan, James P - Martian Knightlife

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Martian Knightlife

by James P. Hogan

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance

to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31844-6

Cover art by Clyde Caldwell

First printing, October 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hogan, James P.

Martian knightlife / by James P. Hogan.

p. cm.

“A Baen Books original”—T.p. verso.

ISBN 0-671-31844-6

1. Mars (Planet)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6058.O348 M3 2001

823’.914—dc212001035799

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

To Jim, Toni, Marla, Hank, Nancy, Morgan,

and the rest of the team at Baen Books.

It's about time that they, too, got some

credit in the final product.

BAEN BOOKS by JAMES P. HOGAN

Inherit the Stars

The Genesis Machine

The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

The Two Faces of Tomorrow

Thrice Upon a Time

Giants’ Star

Voyage from Yesteryear

Code of the Lifemaker

The Proteus Operation

Endgame Enigma

The Mirror Maze

The Infinity Gambit

Entoverse

The Multiplex Man

Realtime Interrupt

Minds, Machines & Evolution

The Immortality Option

Paths to Otherwhere

Bug Park

Star Child

Rockets, Redheads & Revolution

Cradle of Saturn

The Legend That Was Earth

Martian Knightlife

HIS OWN WORST ENEMY

—

Consciousness reintegrated slowly out of fragments, like the threads of a frayed rope coming

together. Sarda felt dizzy and disoriented in the darkness—the nauseous sensation of spinning in a

void with no reference point. It passed quickly. Thoughts meshed raggedly and began running again.

Physically, he seemed to be intact and functioning. He registered the thumping of his heartbeats, chest

panting, skin wet and clammy. His body was ridding itself of excess heat, not working to build up

heat from cold. So the crucial experiment had worked perfectly. . . .

Except that he was the wrong one!

His mind recoiled in protest as images returned of the resigned look on Elaine’s face when he last

saw her, and Balmer reassuring them that everything would be fine.

They were going to rob him, sell out his work—and that would be fine?

Rage and panic overcame him. He tried to struggle, but it was useless against the restraints

protecting the equipment inside the reconstitution chamber. Light came on, revealing the planes of

densely packed condenser arrays and indexing heads positioned all around and above him like slabs

of venetian blind woven with multicolored wires and tubing. The panels in front retracted back from

their operating positions to clear the access door, the inside of which carried its own growth of wires and

mechanisms, along with a number of technical labels and warning signs. Included among them was a

curiously vivid graphic design in the form of a purple disk inside a silver outer ring, containing a

spiral pattern of red, yellow, and aquamarine. It seemed to grow in Sarda’s vision, drawing his

attention like field lines to a charge. In seconds his agitation subsided. He forgot all of his outrages.

Latches released in a series of clacks, and the door opened.

Stewart Perrel, chief physician on the TX Project, leaned into the chamber, his face anxious. A

light shone into Sarda’s eyes, while a hand lifted his chin, and fingers felt for a pulse at his neck. “It’s

okay, Stew. You don’t need to bother,” Sarda said. “I feel fine.”

“He’s okay!” Perrel threw over his shoulder to others behind. “It worked fine! Leo’s okay!”

Whoops of relief and delight greeted the words. Perrel unfastened the restraints and then draped a

surgical gown over Sarda’s head, helping him work it down to cover his body in the cramped space of

the chamber. The mixed company of project crew and technicians waiting outside crowded forward

to press him with backslaps and handshakes as Sarda emerged into the clutter of the R-Lab. After the

sweltering confines of the machine, he felt as if he were coming out of a sauna into clean, snowy air.

The expressions of the two men watching from farther back with the small group of specially invited

visitors were more restrained, but their eyes had a jubilant look. Their loose, dark jackets, worn tieless

with polo-neck shirts, were the closest to business dress likely to be found on Mars, even in Lowell

City, generally considered to be the main metropolis. The broad, balding form of Herbert Morch,

Quantonix’s managing director and technical head of the TX Project, moved forward to grip Sarda by

both shoulders as he approached, his fleshy face breaking into a smile. “Leo, today we’ve made

history!” he exulted. “No, you’ve made history! You took the risk. It succeeded. . . .” He shook his

head, momentarily unable to find further words.

Beside him, his brother Max, lean and gaunt-faced, cofounder and financial vice president,

reached out to add his own bony handshake to those Sarda had already collected. “You’d better get

used to the idea of being a celebrity before much longer, Leo,” he said. “Quantonix is going to change

the world.”

“The world?” Herbert turned his head quizzically, looking at him with mild reproach. “Think big,

Max, think big. That’s what this has been all about, hasn’t it? We’re going to reshape the Solar

System!”

The last time Kieran Thane was on Mars, he had come posing as a green arrival from Earth,

interested in land parcels in the Elysium region that an aggressive marketing company was pushing to

young immigrants flush with hard-earned savings. Some suspicious relatives had engaged him to look

into the claims of mineral rights potential that would pay back the investment many times over in

years to come. The values had turned out to be artificially inflated, based on fraudulent reports by a

geological consultant who was in on the deal. Kieran had contrived to salt some of the company’s

more recent drilling samples with platinum, hence bringing things to the satisfying conclusion of

watching the marketeers pursue their customers in order to buy back the tracts at several times what

had been paid.

That had been a little over half a year ago (mean standard year, equal to one Terran year). The

surface had sprouted visible changes, even since then. Kieran studied them in the view being

presented on the cabin display screen of the shuttle descending from Phobos, the inner of Mars’s two

moons—itself transformed from the cratered knob of rock that astronomers had once described as a

“diseased potato” into a gleaming composition of domes, berthing structures, and metallic geometry

as the main transfer port for long-range vessels from Earth, the various Belt habitats, the Jovian system, and

beyond. The area creeping onto the screen as the planetary outline expanded off the edges was the

Tharsis end of the vast system of gorges and canyons flanking the three-thousand-mile equatorial rift

of Valles Marineris—three hundred miles wide in places and up to four miles deep. Domes had

appeared over more of the craters, enclosing circular cities or orchard farms, with their tiers of

housing climbing inner walls reminiscent of steep Mediterranean shorelines; more vehicles dotted the

highway west to the mine workings below 50,000-foot-high Arsia Mons; and what looked like a new

rail link, already flanked by new excavations and greenhouse constructions, extended southeastward

in the direction of Syria Planum and Solis Planum. In the canyon complex itself, a frost of silver and

white beads was spreading between the roofed-over parts of the shadowy depths and across the

ramparts of crumbling orange rock separating them.

In a seat opposite, Ibrahim, one of the Iranian couple that Kieran had met in the transfer port on

Phobos, squeezed his young wife’s hand as they gazed down at the scene. They had just arrived from

Earth, he a plant geneticist, she a teacher. Kieran shifted his eyes from the screen and grinned across

at them. “I suppose all the sand down there could make it feel something like home. A bit short on

beaches, though, I’m afraid.”

“Give us time, Mr. Thane. Give us time,” Ibrahim answered.

“And in any case, this is home now,” Khalia said.

Such were the kind of spirits that Mars was drawing away from Earth. That was what new worlds

and new visions were built from, Kieran told himself.

The shuttle came out of its aerobraking trajectory to enter the final, vertical phase of its descent,

and the view stabilized on the jumble of interconnecting domes, roofs, and terraces that formed

Lowell, filling the intersection of two canyons and resurfacing on the overlooking heights as clusters

of buildings and roadways that looked from altitude like lichen mottling the pink-orange landscape.

As these surroundings in turn expanded beyond the edges of the screen, the view centered on the

spaceport of Cherbourg, perched on the open plateau north of the main valley. The scene gradually

resolved into domes, service gantries, and turrets bristling with antenna arrays, and then closed on the

landing bay, its covering doors open. There was a glimpse of metal-railed access levels bright with

lights, umbilical booms and hoses swung back to admit the shuttle, and then the rest was blotted out

by braking exhaust. The ship bounced mildly as the landing-leg shock absorbers disposed of the

remaining momentum, and the engines cut. They were on Mars.

Life returned to the cabin with an outbreak of murmuring and a few strained laughs to relieve the

tension that had taken hold. After several minutes’ wait, an announcement cleared the occupants to

disembark. Kieran collected the jacket, briefcase, and carry-on bag that he had stowed, and moved

nearer to a burly, red-bearded figure in a dark parka who was closing a duffel bag resting on one of

the seat arms. He was a construction foreman who had just arrived from Earth on the same transporter

as the Iranians.

“Good luck, Serge. Who knows, I might bump into you again out there one day. Let’s hope your

plans work out.” Wages on Mars were up to ten times the rate back home for comparable skills,

which with bonuses could enable a man to retire after a reasonably short stint, or alternatively make

enough to bring a whole extended family out.

“You too, Knight,” Serge grunted.

“Will you guys be staying together from here?” Kieran nodded past Serge to indicate the three

others traveling with him.

“Yep. We’re all on the same contract.”

Kieran moved a pace closer to press something into Serge’s hand. His voice dropped. “Let them

have this back when you get a chance.”

Serge glanced down to find himself holding a folded wad of several hundred-dollar bills in U.S.

currency. “What’s this?” he muttered. “You don’t owe anything back.” It was the winnings that

Kieran had relieved the four of them of in a poker game during the eight-hour wait on Phobos.

“Sure I do.” Kieran kept his voice low. “Nobody has that kind of luck. I was robbing you under

your noses. Learn to look out for yourselves here. There are a lot of people around who’ll take your

shirt if you let them.”

“Are you telling me you’re a card sharp too?”

“Let’s just say I have a lot of hobbies and amusements.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. They will too.” Serge punched Kieran softly on the shoulder by way of

acknowledgment. They moved to follow the other passengers, shuffling slowly toward the exit.

The port too had grown and gained more facilities, Kieran noted as he sauntered down the stairs

from Arrivals, ignoring the escalator and elevators—the thirty-eight percent normal gravity and

enclosed living meant that people generally took all the exercise they could get. The signs and

animated maps indicated that three more launch bays had been added to the complex, one of them

still to become operational. A wide, white-tiled corridor that hadn’t been there before led from the

mid-level concourse to an equally new hotel called the Oasis—apt enough in a heavy-footed kind of

way that went with marketing mindsets, Kieran supposed. And, this being Mars, of course there were

storefronts and stalls, robot hucksters, and ad displays placed to catch new arrivals straight off the ship,

offering currency exchange, accommodation and real estate, vehicles and surface gear, drugs and

narcotics, and all manner of human services ranging from legal representation and insurance to sex

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MartianKnightlifebyJamesP.HoganThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2001byJamesP.HoganAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBooksOriginalBae...

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