Old Mars

“All they want is their money,” I said. Count Jack had always resented paying lawyers and accountants, with the result that he had signed disastrous recording contracts and only filed tax returns when the bailiffs were at the door. This entire Martian tour would barely meet his years of outstanding tax, plus interest. “Then they’ll leave you alone.”

“No, they won’t. They won’t ever let me alone. They know Count Jack is a soft touch. They’ll be back, the damnable dunners. Once they’ve got the taste of your blood, they won’t ever let their hooks out of you. Parasites. I am infested with fiscal parasites. Tax, war, and old age. They make everything gross and coarse and pointless.”

Beams of white light flickered along the twilight horizon. I could not tell whether they were from sky to ground or ground to sky. The fleet had gone. The heat rays danced along the edge of the world, flickered out. New beams took their place. Flashes beyond the close horizon threw the hills into momentary relief. I cried out as the edge of the world became a flickering palisade of heat rays. Count Jack was on his feet. The flashes lit his face. Seconds later, the first soft rumble of distant explosions reached us. The Twav deckhands fluttered on their perches. I could make out the lower register of their consternation as a treble shrill. The edge of the world was a carnival of beams and flashes. I saw an arc of fire descend from the sky to terminate in a white flash beneath the horizon. I did not doubt that I had seen a skymaster and all her crew perish, but it was beautiful. The sky blazed with the most glorious fireworks. Count Jack’s eyes were wide with wonder. He threw his hand up to shield his eyes as a huge midair explosion turned the night white. Stark shadows lunged across the deck; the Twav rose up in a clatter of wings.

“Oh, the dear boys, the dear boys,” Count Jack whispered. The sound of the explosion hit us. It rattled the windows on the pilot deck, rattled the bottle and glasses on the table. I felt it shake the core of my being, shake me belly and bowel deep. The beams winked out. The horizon went dark.

We had seen a great and terrible battle, but who had fought, who had won, who had lost, whether there had been winners or losers, what its goals had been—we knew none of these. We had witnessed something terrible and beautiful and incomprehensible. I lifted the untouched glass of wine and took a sip.

“Good God,” Count Jack said, still standing. “I always thought you didn’t drink. Religious reasons and all that.”

“No, I don’t drink for musical reasons. It makes my joints hurt.”

I drank the wine. It might have been vinegar, it might have been the finest wine available to humanity, I did not know. I drained the glass.

“Dear boy.” Count Jack poured me another, one for himself, and together we watched the edge of the world glow with distant fires.

We played Camp Avenger on a stage rigged on empty beer barrels to a half-full audience that dwindled over the course of the concert to just six rows. A Brigadier who had been drinking steadily all through the concert tried to get his troopers up on stage to dance to the Medley of Ould Irish Songs. They sensibly declined. He tripped over his own feet trying to inveigle Count Jack to dance to “Walls of Limerick” with him and went straight off the stage. He split his head open on the rim of a beer keg.

At Syrtia Regional Command, the audience was less ambiguous. We were bottled off. The first one came looping in even as Count Jack came on, arms spread wide, to his theme song, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” He stuck it through “Blaze Away,” “Nessun dorma,” and “Il mio tesoro” before an accurately hurled Mars Export Pale Ale bottle deposited its load of warm urine down the front of his dickey. He finished “The Garden Where the Praties Grow,” bowed, and went straight off. I followed him as the first of the barrage of folding army chairs hit the stage. Without a word or a look, he went straight to his tent and stripped naked.

“I’ve had worse in Glasgow Empire,” he said. His voice was stiff with pride. I never admired him as much. “Can you do something with these, dear boy?” He held out the wet, reeking dress suit. “And run me a bath.”

We took the money, in full and in cash, and went on, ever up the ever-branching labyrinth of canals, ever closer to the battlefront.