Old Mars

Rekari had been his father’s business partner for more years than Dave had been alive, helping his father guide rich Earth tourists through the best-preserved Martian ruins, offering lore that was traditional if not always accurate—as he admitted privately—and translating ancient inscriptions in colorful ways. In the long periods between tourist visits, the two of them searched for more ruins as well as for any interesting minerals that the long-depleted Martian landscape had to offer. The ancient civilization had used up most of the planet’s easily accessible resources, leaving a legacy of rust thinly scattered over the surface, but his father had once found a narrow vein of opal in a cliff exposed by the melting of the northern ice cap. Now there were rings and pendants of that opal among the more affluent residents of Syrtis City, although the gold for the settings had been brought from Earth in the luggage of the city’s only jeweler. The opal money had helped to finance several expeditions to sites that seemed to have exceptional archaeological potential. Nothing significant came of any of them, though. The old Martian cities had been lost for a very long time. But his father had never given up.

“I found his notebook,” said Dave. “It says he had some promising coordinates.”

The Martian lifted one hand in his version of a shrug. “Your father heard a story. You know, he was always hearing stories.”

Dave nodded.

“He thought he had some coordinates. So we took the boat and went, and we spent weeks searching at the edge of the northern ice. To my eyes, there was nothing, but in one area, your father saw … perhaps … some traces of what once might have been. We had brought the excavator along, of course, and he used it to strip off the top layer of soil, as always. Then he went down on his hands and knees with a trowel and began to scrape at some markings he said appeared to be the remains of wooden footings. He had done the same so often before, I did not think it would harm him. I knelt beside him and tried to help, but he pushed me away. It was delicate work, he said. Leave it to the expert, he said. I had used my trowel before, many times, but your father did have a surer hand.”

Dave wasn’t certain that was true, but he didn’t say so. Elders—and they were both his elders, after all—were not to be contradicted.

“I could see he was in great pain,” said Rekari. “His hands were shaking so much that he could not open the pill bottle. I took it from him and opened it and gave him a pill, but it was no help. The doctor had said a second pill, if necessary, but that, too …” He made a sign that Dave had never seen before, and his thin shoulders sagged as if he was immensely tired. “I buried him in the north and came back here. When anyone asked, I said that he and I had decided that one of us had to return to the business, and he preferred to stay in the field.” He made the new sign again, an emphasis by repetition that Martians rarely resorted to. At Dave’s inquiring gesture, he said, “It is sorrow, David. It is not a sign that the young should use.”

Dave took a deep breath and made it anyway. “I would like to visit his grave.”

“He would not wish it,” said Rekari.

“That doesn’t matter. I wish it.”

Rekari reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of cloth the size of his fist. “This is what he wished, David. To give this to you.” He unrolled the cloth to expose a pale, teardrop-shaped pebble, smoothly polished, pierced at one end and threaded with a silver chain. Its surface glimmered faintly, like the ghost of an opal, and Dave knew immediately what it was. Its Martian name translated as “sunstone,” and it was traditionally worn by the heads of Martian families and passed down from parent to child, generation after generation. Rekari, who had been head of his family since the death of his father nine years before, wore one, usually tucked inside his shirt. The humans on Mars did not consider sunstones especially attractive, though Dave had always thought Rekari’s was pleasant-looking.

He hadn’t known his father owned one.

Rekari held the stone out to Dave, the chain dangling from his long fingers.

Dave took it and held it close to the lamp. “Where did this come from?”