Old Mars

The chamber was large and had scattered consoles and lab benches, and what Sally recognized as an isolation tank, a glassine cylinder. Tom Beckworth was in it, naked and glaze-eyed and fastened to a frame with living wormlike bonds. An elderly white-haired Martian was striding up and down in lecture mode, dressed in a dark coverall fitted with dozens of loops to hold instruments, most of them alive.

There were a half dozen younger Martians, probably the equivalent of grad students. She checked a half step at the seventh, a tall, hard-faced man in a gray uniform. He had blond hair cropped to a bristle cut, but his cheekbones were nearly as high as hers and his eyes slanted. One of the grad students was fitting a glassine tube to the side of the isolation chamber and preparing to press a plunger.

Teyud simply walked toward the group. Sally followed, taking deep, slow breaths. Then—

The EastBlocker turned, and his eyes went wide. A hand sped toward the Tokarev at his waist, very fast. Sally leapt—

Pfutt!

The student slumped to the floor before he could press the plunger, and Teyud’s dart pistol was out of action for twenty seconds as the methane chamber recharged.

—and the blond man leapt back, but the tip of her sword scored across his hand and the automatic pistol went flying—

Crack and Teyud’s sword punched through another student’s eye socket and into her brain and out again, as the rest scrambled for their sword belts if they weren’t wearing them. The professor stood glaring with indignation.

Ting, and the EastBlocker had his own blade out, settling into a classic European academic épée stance and beating aside her flèche and riposting with a stop-thrust.

Cling-ting-crash and Teyud was moving through the press of grad students in a whirling blur, with blood misting into the air in arcs as she did. Pfutt, and another dropped bonelessly to the floor. A scream and growl as Satemcan leapt onto the back of one angling to get behind Sally’s back.

Ting-crash-ting, and the point of Sally’s blade slid into the man’s throat, with an ugly sensation of things crunching and popping and yielding.

She froze for a moment, watching him fall slowly to the floor and lie kicking as the astonishing amount of blood a human being contained flowed out.

“Mat’ …” he gasped once: Mother.

“You came a very long way to die,” she murmured, suddenly conscious of a wound along her ribs that she hadn’t even noticed. She swallowed as she felt it; just an inch or two farther in …

The last of the grad students broke and fled for the door. Teyud’s dart pistol came up: Pfutt.

Something crunched as he fell face-first.

Sally wiped her sword on the arm of her robe and sheathed it, throwing back the hood of her robe and keeping her pistol trained on the white-haired professor. She removed her mask and the optic, regretting it as the thing scuttled across the floor and flowed up Teyud’s robe, opening a container and stuffing itself inside. It wasn’t the light, which was adequate; it was the smell. Martians and humans both tended to be very messy when they died.

The robe she was wearing would take care of her wound until she had time to do something more formal. She reached for the ampoule plugged into the side of the isolation chamber.

“Careful!” Tom said.

She looked up; he was gray with either pain or shock or both, but alert.

“Dr. Cagliostro there was about to test that on me, he liked explaining every step. It’s a virus that makes you suggestible. The East-Blockers … or maybe that guy on his own … were paying him to develop it. Then they were going to tell me to forget about it and let you rescue me … so I could spread it.”

“Sounds like them,” Sally said grimly. “There’s a protection?”

“Vaccine,” Beckworth said.

Teyud came back from the door, considering the veterinarian with her head to one side.

“You are elderly and frail,” she said. “Attempting to resist excruciation would be pointless.”

Sally smiled thinly as she worked the controls of the isolation chamber. There were times when she did like the way Martians thought.

Sally Yamashita yawned as she finished her essence, a taste like raspberries and mango with an alcoholic subtang. The glow-globes of her apartment were turned down low; Tom needed all the sleep he could get.

“I am an optimal canid,” Satemcan said sleepily, curling up on his rug.

She yawned again. “Damned straight,” she said. “Best damned dog on Mars.”

MARY ROSENBLUM