35

12,000 Meters Above the Tharsis Plateau

“What does Proust have to say about balloons?”

“Not much,” said Orphu of Io. “He wasn’t big on traveling in general. What does Shakespeare say about balloons?”

Mahnmut let that go. “I wish you could see this.”

“I wish I could see it, too,” said Orphu. “Describe everything to me.”

Mahnmut looked up. “We’re high enough here that the sky overhead is almost black, fading to dark blue, then to a lighter blue by the horizon, which is definitely curved. I can see the band of haze of atmosphere in both directions. Beneath us, it’s still cloudy—the early morning light makes the clouds glow gold and pink. Behind us, the cloud cover is broken and I can see the blue water and red cliffs of Valles Marineris stretching back to the eastern horizon. To the west, the direction we’re traveling, the clouds cover most of the Tharsis Plateau—they seem to be hugging the ground along the rising terrain—but the three closer volcanoes are poking up through the gold clouds. Arsia Mons is furthest to the left, then Pavonis Mons, then Ascraeus Mons farther over to the right, to the north. They’re all a bright white, snow and ice, gleaming in the morning light.”

“Can you see Olympus yet?” asked Orphu.

“Oh, yes. Even though it’s the farthest away, Olympus Mons is the tallest thing in sight, rising over the western curve of the planet. It’s between Pavonis and Ascraeus, but obviously further away. It’s also white with ice and snowfields, but the summit is free of snow and red in the sunrise.”

“Can you see Noctis Labyrinthus where we left the zeks?”

Mahnmut leaned over the edge of the gondola he’d built and looked below and behind them. “No, still cloud cover there. But when we were rising toward the overcast, I could see all of the quarry, the docks, and the whole tumble of Noctis. Beyond the seaport and quarry there, the jumble of canyons and cliff-collapses runs hundreds of kilometers west and scores of klicks north and south.”

It had been raining the last days of their felucca voyage, raining when they put into the crowded docks at the LGM quarry site in Noctis Labyrinthus, and raining harder when Mahnmut had finally assembled the jury-rigged gondola, inflated the balloon from its own tanks, and set out above what could only be called a city of the little green men. One of the LGM—or zeks, as they called themselves—had obviously offered his heart for communication, but Mahnmut had shaken his head no. Perhaps they didn’t die as individuals, as Orphu argued, but the sensation of using up another little green man was more than Mahnmut could handle. Instead, the gathered zeks had immediately understood what Mahnmut was doing with his homemade gondola, and they’d moved quickly to help connect tether cables, spread the fabric of the single-chamber, high-pressure balloon while it slowly inflated, and secure ground cables against the wind, all the while working as efficiently as a highly trained ground crew.

“What does the balloon look like?” asked Orphu. The deep-space moravec was tethered in the center of the enlarged gondola, strapped down by many meters of line and set into a frame Mahnmut had hammered together. Nearby, shielded and secured, were the transmitter and the smaller Device.

“It’s like a giant pumpkin above us,” said Mahnmut.

Orphu rumbled over the tightbeam. “Have you ever seen a pumpkin in real life?”

“Of course not, but we’ve both seen images. The balloon’s an orange ovoid, wider than it is tall, about sixty-five meters across and about fifty meters tall. It has vertical ridges like a pumpkin . . . and it’s orange.”

“I thought it was sheathed in stealth material,” said Orphu, sounding surprised.

“It is. Orange stealth material. I guess our moravec designers didn’t consider the fact that the people we’d be sneaking up on might have eyes as well as radar.”

This time Orphu’s rumble sounded like deep thunder. “Typical,” said the Ionaian. “Typical.”

“Our cluster of buckycarbon cables is rigged from the bottom of the balloon,” said Mahnmut. “Our gondola’s hanging about forty meters beneath the fabric.”

“Securely, I hope,” said Orphu.

“As secure as I could make it, although maybe I forgot to tie a couple of knots.”

Orphu rumbled again and went silent. Mahnmut watched the view for a while.

When Orphu made contact again, it was night. The stars burned coldly, but Mahnmut was still aware of more atmospheric twinkle than he’d ever seen in his life. The moon Phobos was hurtling low across the sky and Deimos had just risen. The clouds and volcanoes reflected the starlight. To the north, the ocean glimmered.

“Are we there yet?” asked Orphu.

“Not quite. Another day, day and a half.”

“Is the wind still blowing us in the right direction?”

“More or less.”

“Define ‘less,’ old friend.”

“We’re heading north-northwest. We may miss Olympus Mons by a shade.”

“That takes a certain skill,” said Orphu. “To miss a volcano the size of France.”

“It’s a balloon, “ said Mahnmut. “I’m sure that Koros III planned to launch it from near the base of the volcano, not from twelve hundred kilometers away.”

“Wait,” said Orphu. “I seem to remember a little detail about the Tethys Sea being just north of Olympus.”

Mahnmut sighed. “That’s why I built this new gondola in the shape of an open boat.”

“You never mentioned that while you were building it.”

“It didn’t seem relevant then.”

They floated along in silence for a while. They were approaching the Tharsis volcanoes, and Mahnmut thought they might pass the northernmost, Ascraeus, by midday tomorrow. If the wind kept shifting, they’d miss the slopes completely, passing ten or twenty kilometers to the north of it. Mahnmut didn’t even have to change his vision into light-enhancement mode to marvel at the beauty of the moons’ light and the starlight on the icy upper regions of all four volcanoes.

“I’ve been thinking about this Prospero–Caliban thing,” Orphu said suddenly, making Mahnmut jump slightly. He’d been lost in thought.

“Yes?”

“I presume you’re thinking along the same lines that I’ve been—that these statues of Prospero and the LGM’s knowledge of The Tempest are the result of some human or post-human dictator’s interest in Shakespeare.”

“We don’t even know for sure that the stone heads are supposed to be Prospero,” said Mahnmut.

“Of course not. But the LGM suggested they were, and I don’t think the zeks ever lied to us. Perhaps they can’t lie—not when communicating with you through molecular nanodata packages the way they were.”

Mahnmut said nothing, but that had been his impression as well.

“Somehow,” continued Orphu, “those thousands of stone heads circling the north ocean . . .”

“And the flooded Hellas Basin in the south,” said Mahnmut, remembering the orbital images.

“Yeah. Somehow, those thousands of stone heads have something to do with Shakespeare’s characters.”

Mahnmut nodded at this, knowing that blind Orphu would take his silence as a nod.

“What if the dictator is actually Prospero?” said Orphu. “And not a human or post-human at all?”

“I don’t understand.” Mahnmut was confused. He checked the flow of oxygen from the tanks stowed near the Device. Both he and Orphu were securely jacked in and getting full flow. “What do you mean, what if the dictator was actually Prospero? You mean some post-human was playing the role of the old magician and forgot they were role-playing?”

“No,” said Orphu. “I mean—what if it’s Prospero?”

Mahnmut felt a stab of alarm. Orphu had been battered and blinded, zapped by huge quantities of ionizing radiation, and buffeted in the spaceship’s fall into the northern sea. Perhaps his reason was going.