Memory Songs

Commander Chen

August 2045

"Ready to take your harem down to Mars, Commander?" Yuan Li asked, with a smile on his round, chubby face.

Commander Chen looked over at the two women. Jiao was certainly beautiful enough to be part of any harem, but Dr. Ping was quite another story. The brilliant physician and bio-chemist was tiny and exceedingly plain, certainly no man's idea of a harem girl.

"Let's get on with it," he said.

Yuan Li would remain aboard Mao for the first phase of the mission. His time on the planet would come later, during their exploration of Martian caves.

Commander Chen felt a series of unusual vibrations while undocking from Mao, but no warning lights flashed on the Mars Lander's console and it responded perfectly to a series of small attitude corrections. He nevertheless turned the craft around and visually examined the aft-side docking port. Everything appeared normal, so he carefully maneuvered the craft back into position for the descent.

They landed several meters from the silver-and-red habitat. The eight-wheeled rover sat nearby, slightly askew atop a nearby hillock. Both had been on Mars many months, exposed to the planet's weather. Remote testing indicated that they were fully functional, but such tests did not ease Commander Chen's doubts. He would not be convinced of their fitness until he had personally inspected each. A successful, if limited, mission was certainly possible without the rover, but the habitat's life support systems must be working flawlessly, or their time on the planet would be reduced to a single day.

The People's Republic had granted him the honor of being the first human to set foot on the planet, and he had worked for months on what he would say when the moment arrived. The fact that most of the Earth's billions of inhabitants would be hanging on his every syllable did not trouble him; he felt ready and filled with confidence. But when he at last found himself standing on the rocky soil of an alien world, looking up at its strange salmon-colored sky and out at an endless expanse of reddish dunes, feelings of wonder overwhelmed him, and his mind went blank. He never noticed as Jiao and Dr. Ping wordlessly exited the Lander and stood on either side of him, waiting deferentially to hear the words they had heard him rehearse so many times. But Commander Chen could only look out at the eerie Martian landscape and say, in a small child-like voice, "My God … my God."

A layer of Martian dust covered both the habitat and rover. Despite this, both functioned as well as remote testing had indicated they would. Commander Chen had no difficulty starting the habitat's life support systems, and in less than an hour he and his two crewmates were able to shed their pressurized suits and take up residence in its compact, efficiently-designed interior.

The mission's first weeks went exceptionally well. The discovery of living micro-organisms a meter beneath the planet's surface caused a sensation on Earth. Although the existence of such life had long been theorized, no one was prepared for the immense variety of microbial life that flourished there. Mao's daily updates were soon not enough to satisfy the curiosity of both the scientific community and the man on the street, and so a second broadcast was eventually added to an already crowded daily schedule.

The time soon arrived for the mission's second phase: an exploration of Martian caves. The Chinese National Space Agency had long ago concluded that Mars itself would provide the most effective protection against the twin dangers of planetary dust storms and prolonged exposure to lethal radiation, so plans were developed for using a Martian cave as the future site of a permanent Chinese base. Following up on work done by the Americans decades in the past, China sent a series of robotic missions tasked with locating a cave of suitable size. All had failed. It was up to the crew of Mao to do what robotic probes could not.

Yuan Li would now replace Dr. Ping on Mars. Commander Chen was secretly relieved that the diminutive physician would be returning to the ship. After weeks of little sleep and much physically taxing work, the woman looked on the verge of collapse. He thought he saw a trace of relief flash across her usually impassive face when he spoke of her return to the ship. She asked only one thing of him: could she be allowed to glimpse the interior of a Martian cave before her departure? He saw no reason not to oblige her. After all, it was doubtful that she, or any of them, would ever return to the Red Planet with subsequent missions.

And so, on the twenty-first day of their time on Mars, Commander Chen, Jiao, and Dr. Ping boarded the rover and drove fifteen kilometers to the closest of the caves marked on their map. This "cave" turned out to be little more than a deep pit at the bottom of which they found an opening to an ancient lava tube far too small to be of any use. Their second attempt also proved fruitless. Dr. Ping remarked that perhaps it was her fate never to stand inside a Martian cave.

The Commander reluctantly decided to try one more location before returning to the habitat and resuming the day's activities. His map showed a site five kilometers to the southeast. It would take them farther away from the habitat than he had intended to go, but it was the closest other possibility.

"I'm afraid this will have to be our last attempt, regardless of the outcome," he said.

"I understand, Commander," Dr. Ping said.

The mouth of the cave was wide enough for him to enter in his bulky suit. This was clearly no lava tube but an erosional cave very like those found on Earth. He flipped the switch on his laser torch and gingerly made his way inside. The cave floor sloped downward until it leveled out some thirty meters beyond the entrance. The ground there was sandy and much less littered with rocks than the planet's surface.

Dr. Ping and Jiao followed him into the cave and immediately began taking atmospheric readings and gathering soil samples. Jiao was surprised by the slight increase in oxygen levels, but the reading on her radiation meter was as expected, less than an eighth of those routinely encountered on the surface.

Commander Chen put aside all thoughts of an immediate return to the habitat, and as the two scientists continued their work he ventured deeper into the cave, going well past its enormous antechamber into an equally massive interior. Still within sight of the others, he took a yellow transmitter spike from his utility belt and drove it into the cave floor. He activated the device and seconds later a three-dimensional map of the area appeared inside his faceplate. No matter how far into the cave he might now travel, how many twists and turns he might encounter, the display could be relied on to guide him back to that exact spot. Two such transmitter spikes were carried by all of Mao's crew.

As he walked, his lamp's powerful beam bit deep into the surrounding darkness without encountering walls or a ceiling. The cave must be enormous, he thought, a match for any of the greatest caves on Earth. They would have to use the rover's large laser-light array in order to gauge its true size. For now, the best he could do was to move gingerly about, aiming his lamp at nearby objects. He was certain of one thing: if this was in any way typical of other Martian caves, future missions would have no trouble at all building a base shielded from planetary hazards. The construction process itself was not at all difficult to envision. Pre-fabricated sections would be delivered by a series of robotic missions, and the crews of Mao II and III trained in their assembly. Additional sections and equipment would be added over time until, decades into the future, a permanent base with its own oxygen generators, greenhouses, water extraction equipment, laboratories, living quarters, and medical facilities will have been built. A population of as many as one hundred of his countrymen might be sustained by such an outpost.

His musings ended abruptly when the beam of his lamp fell upon some unusuallooking objects. They lay scattered at the bottom of a long pit resembling a dry stream bed. They were nothing at all like the rocks encountered on the planet's surface. He knelt to take a closer look. The objects ranged in size from one centimeter to ten or fifteen centimeters long. They were all a pale blue color and reminded him of something else, something he had seen very long ago but which he could not recall just then.

He drove another transmitter spike deep into the cave floor before using his communicator to summon Jiao and Ping.

When they arrived, he pointed to the strangely-colored things.

"What do you make of those?"

Dr. Ping knelt over the objects.

"Are there any more like this in the area?" Dr. Ping asked.

"I don't know. These are the first I've seen. I thought they were oddly shaped rocks at first."

"Have I time to run a few tests before returning to Mao?"

"Of course. Take all the time you need."

She picked up one of the small blue objects and examined it closely.

"Strange, so very unlike anything else we've found so far."

"Well, if nothing else this should make good fodder for today's transmission. We've had so few new things to talk about lately that I'm afraid Beijing is growing bored with both us and Mars."

"This certainly might give them something to chatter about, Commander," Dr. Ping said.

They carefully gathered some of the objects into sealed bags and drove back to the habitat.

He and Jiao were having tea and working on talking points for the day's briefing when Ping re-entered the crew compartment after more than two hours in its tiny laboratory.

"Commander Chen?"

She looked pale, stricken.

"Are you alright, Doctor Ping?"

"Oh, yes. The question is how the two of you will feel after I tell you what I have found."

Jiao and Chen looked at each other.

"What is it?"

"These new objects of yours …"

"Yes?"

"They are not rocks. They appear to be organic remains, possibly, and I must stress possibly, humanoid in nature. They are remarkably well preserved considering their age, which I would estimate to be in the many millions of years. Mind you, these findings are preliminary. I must confirm them with more sophisticated and rigorous testing, and that can only be done in a properly-equipped laboratory. The one aboard Mao should do nicely."

"Exactly how sure are you at this point?"

"I believe further testing will only confirm my initial findings. They appear to be sections of a femur-like bone."

"Are you telling us that these are human remains?" Jiao asked.

"Oh, no, certainly not human. Humanoid. Except for the odd blue coloring, they bear a striking resemblance to the remains of some of man's earliest ancestors."

It was then Captain Chen remembered what had eluded him earlier. He suddenly saw himself as a boy, walking beside his parents inside the echoing halls of a great museum in the heart of Beijing. The fossilized remains of a small prehistoric creature were on display there and he had peppered his father with dozens of questions about them, questions his father, a wealthy merchant, could not answer.

"We will say nothing of this in today's transmission," he said. "You will take the remains up to the ship. When you've completed your analysis, if they confirm what you have just told us, we will inform Beijing on a closed channel and in code."

The next morning brought problems with the habitat. Maintaining it was a constant struggle against the effects of the planet's fine, all-pervasive dust. Somehow, it had worked its way into the sensors on the oxygen regulator units. At the same time, temperatures within the habitat had dropped to uncomfortable levels. Both things were repairable, but such repairs would consume most of a day, perhaps two.

"I'm afraid we will have to postpone your trip back to Mao, Dr. Ping."

"Can't the repairs be put off until you return with Yuan Li?"

"Any delay could make matters much worse."

"How long will the repairs take?" Dr. Ping was clearly anxious to return to ship and its laboratory.

"Most of this day and possibly the next, I'm afraid."

Jiao rarely contributed to any conversation. When she wasn't assisting Dr. Ping or collecting samples of Martian organisms, her focus remained entirely on the seedlings she brought from her lab in Shanghai. She had spent years trying to genetically engineer several varieties of grass and wild grain to grow in the sandy soil and harsh atmospheric conditions of Mars. The young widow called the plants her "children" and tended a small experimental garden outside the habitat the way a mother might look after her offspring. She spoke to them in a soft singsong voice, urging them to grow and flourish.

"I will return Dr. Ping to the ship while you make the necessary repairs," Jiao said in her delicate whisper of a voice.

He had spent months training Jiao in a simulator, and she had learned quickly and well. But that was a simulator. No amount of training could adequately prepare you for the real thing, especially for a vehicle that could be as difficult to control as the lander. And there was the docking maneuver, always potentially dangerous. The memory of the vibrations he had felt on undocking from Mao still concerned him. Then, too, there was the need to refuel the lander for its return to Mars. The highly volatile liquid fuel used by the craft presented hazards of its own. He wanted to say "no" but in the end decided circumstances offered him no choice other than to trust Jiao's months of training.

"Very well. I will remain here and make the necessary repairs."

It happened just as he was completing work on the oxygen sensors. He looked up toward the south, searching for the familiar bright blue dot slowly making its way across the Martian sky. He saw instead a sudden bright flash precisely where Mao should have been. The flash grew and became an intensely white streak that fragmented as it descended toward the distant horizon. Commander Chen stood transfixed, unable to take his eyes from the spectacle, all the while trying to reassure himself that it was a comet burning up in the thin Martian atmosphere and nothing more.

He entered the habitat, removed his suit, and went directly to the communications pod. His attempts at contacting Mao were met by a chilling silence. He tried again and again, using every available frequency, hoping for a reply from Yuan Li. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he shut down the transmitter.

Commander Chen did not need the habitat's small telescope to confirm what he already knew. Mao's position in the Martian sky, day or night, was as familiar to him as the contours of his own face. The ship was gone. Oddly, when he at last accepted what had happened, his first thoughts were not of his own certain fate, but of the small summer home he had purchased five years before. It was a two-room cabin located on a few acres of wooded hillside in Sichuan Province. He went there often, especially in autumn, when the deep blue of the sky and the color of turning leaves never failed to lift his heart and renew his spirit. He had hoped to take Jiao there when the mission was over. She was too young and far too beautiful for the lonely life of a widow. Now he would never see her or the cabin again.

He was in no hurry to contact Beijing. There was no longer any urgency attached to anything at all. His situation was hopeless and he knew it. Oh, the Space Administration would be quick to relay assurances of a possible rescue and try to give him hope, but he knew that any rescue mission was years away and a robotic resupply mission would take nearly as long.

Most of the provisions for their return voyage to Earth had been stored aboard Mao. Alone, and with careful rationing he might make the habitat's limited food supply last a few months, and by purifying his own urine he could assure himself of a supply of potable water. He was a fighter pilot who had become a national hero in his country's war with India, not a scientist or physician. He tried to estimate how long he might remain alive. Certainly not long enough. The mathematics of death was inescapable and pitiless. All his calculations and recalculations added up to one thing: he would be long dead if and when Mao II reached Mars.

Of course, there was always the hypodermic in the kit he kept among his things. Doctor Ping had once explained that it would be quick and no more painless than falling asleep.

He prepared a cup of tea and sat in the lonely crew quarters thinking about the others, especially Jiao. The communications pod came to life several times, but he ignored it. Beijing must be in a frenzy wondering why Yuan Li had missed relaying the latest briefing, and why tracking telescopes were suddenly unable to locate Mao in Mars orbit. They would learn the truth soon enough.

Outside the habitat's small triangular portholes, the Martian day was drawing to a close. He looked out, and briefly felt an echo of the wonder that had overcome him when he first set foot on the planet. The Mao mission had always been a dangerous gamble. He had understood the risks, they all had, and nothing that happened miles above the Martian surface would ever alter the great triumph that belonged to his country and its people.

"We were the first," he whispered to himself. "Hundreds, thousands may come after us, but we were the first."

What would the others have done in his position? An awareness of his crew's individual strengths and weaknesses was essential to his role as commander, and he had carefully studied all of them during their long months of training. Each was brilliant in his or her own way, but all were also tough and resourceful, even the soft spoken and shy Jiao. And all were utterly devoted to the mission's success. It was why they were selected from among a large pool of exceptionally gifted volunteers. He would not dishonor their memory or his nation by choosing an easy death over a difficult perseverance. He would go back to the cave and locate more remains of the creatures, then carefully label and store them.

When his countrymen finally did return to this place, they should come prepared to build upon all that he will have accomplished during his last few months of life.

Dexter Blake

May 2057

Dexter Blake was lost. He had turned off his convertible's auto-drive function that morning to assure himself an old-fashioned drive through a picturesque upstate countryside. One wrong turn led to another, and by mid-morning he found himself driving in a more or less northerly direction, cruising along the fenced border of an enormous corporate farm, enjoying the Mozart being fed through his car's speakers, and with no idea of where he was.

Dexter was also famished. He needed to stop somewhere, anywhere, for food and coffee. He pulled over to the side of the road and took a map from the glove compartment. Spreading it out on the empty passenger seat, he quickly found the nearest town. Pearl Valley was a tiny amber dot hidden among the crisscrossing red and blue lines of local roads and interstate highways. The town was ten miles north of where he was stopped and exactly twenty-five miles from his destination, the campus of Gates College. He fed the town's coordinates to his car's auto-guidance system and ten minutes later drove into Pearl Valley for the first time.

Seen from the air, Pearl Valley resembles a giant butterfly, with Center Street as its elongated body and two fan-shaped clusters of private homes spreading east and west like outstretched wings. The town sits within a lush green valley surrounded by hills of dense pine forest. A lake fed by water from springs deep within those hills is the first thing a visitor sees when approaching Pearl Valley from the south, as Dexter did that day. He drove along the lake's eastern shore and paused to watch a motorboat speed across the calm silver-blue surface. A narrow beach was crowded with children, and their watchful parents enjoying the cool water in the heat of a late summer afternoon. Farther along, and well beyond the lake's northern shore, he could just make out the local high school's football team holding a pre-season scrimmage. The gruff voice of a coach barking out instructions cut through the humid air and brought to mind his own days playing safety for his Iowa school.

He drove slowly along street after street of neatly kept homes before turning onto Center Street and the town's business district. The Pearl Valley Café came up on his left not long after. He parked and went inside. All the booths were full, so he took a seat at the café's marble counter and ordered two egg sandwiches and coffee.

"On your way to the college?" The man behind the counter was tall and thin, with an easygoing manner and a warm smile that invited conversation. He continued talking to Dexter as he turned toward the griddle.

"Yes. How'd you guess?"

"We don't get many people passing through Pearl Valley unless they're headed to or from Gates College."

"I'm starting a job there next week."

"A professor, eh?"

"Not yet. By the way, is there a hotel in town where I can stay while I'm getting settled in at the school?"

"There's a good-sized rooming house a couple of streets up from here, but it's filled up. No hotels. No need for them. We aren't exactly a magnet for the tourist trade. I'll tell you what, though, I know of a house that's for rent."

"Thanks anyway, but a house is more than I need right now."

"It's a real nice place. Used to belong to Dora Kent. She passed away a little over a year ago and Tom, that's her son, just put it up for rent last week. He's not asking very much. Tom just sort of hates to see the place dark all the time, you know? Says it upsets him. I'll jot down the address for you. It's on Wesley Street, only a few minutes by car, maybe fifteen minutes from here if you walk. You go up Center Street until you hit Wesley, then turn left and keep going to where it meets Perry Lane. The Kent place is on the right-hand side, big white house on the corner, number 818."

He wrote directions to the Kent house on a napkin and handed it to Dexter.

"Thanks a lot, really, but I don't have enough furniture to …"

"No need for furniture. Tom hasn't got rid of a thing. He has a woman come by twice a week to clean the place. All you'll need is a tooth brush."

A fully furnished home for rent might be more than he had been looking for, but what harm would it do to take a look at it?

"I suppose it can't hurt to see the place. I'll drop by when I get back from the college. By the way, do you have some sort of stake in renting the place?"

"Sounds like it, doesn't it? No, none at all. Just doing a favor for an old friend, is all. I've known Tom Kent all my life. You might want to consider how, if you should take the place and settle here, you'll get to know a whole lot of your students. Almost all the kids who graduate from Pearl Valley High go on to Gates."

He finished the sandwiches and ordered a large coffee for the road. As he was paying, Dexter noticed a stack of newspapers by the café's old bronze cash register.

"Now there's something you don't see every day. Who publishes that?"

"The Gazette? It comes from right here in Pearl Valley. It's our town paper."

"I didn't think anyone printed those things anymore."

"Most towns don't, I guess, but we do. Care for a copy?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Dexter returned to Pearl Valley later that afternoon. He parked in front of the cafe and reached into his shirt pocket for the crumpled napkin with the scrawled directions to the Kent house. There were certainly places to stay that were closer to Gates College. He had passed a few driving to and from the school, nondescript roadside motels that were anything but inviting. He would look into the house in Pearl Valley before resorting to one of those awful places. Maybe the owner would agree to a short-term lease, a couple of months, perhaps. That would give him time to find something he liked that was closer to the campus. He left his car parked in front of the diner and began walking toward the Kent house.

As far as he could see, Pearl Valley's business district consisted of little more than two streets of shops, a movie theater, a library, the store-front offices of the Pearl Valley Gazette, a bank, a small medical arts building, and a four-story red brick courthouse, the town's largest structure. It ended at a town square bordered on three sides by neatly trimmed hedges. At its center, a fountain sent geysers of water into the late afternoon sunlight.

Children ran along grass-bordered stone paths and played in and around a gazebo as their parents watched. Elderly townspeople sat on nearby benches, talking among themselves, perhaps sharing memories of faraway summer evenings when they, too, brought their children to this same place. Dexter envied these strangers. They seemed at peace and happy, two things he had not been for far too long.

He continued up Center Street, past a small firehouse with two men sitting out front bent over a checker-board, calmly awaiting an emergency Dexter was sure would never arrive, not in Pearl Valley. He had come from a place where the wail of sirens was a daily companion. Somewhere, at all hours of the day and night, a fire truck, police car, or ambulance announced the birth of some new horror in the overcrowded streets of Manhattan.

Perhaps it was the quaintness of a place that still printed its own newspaper, or maybe it was only an aftereffect of walking through the streets of a charming town, but by the time he reached Wesley Street, he had decided to rent the Kent house. After a divorce that had left him battle-scarred and miserable, Dexter Blake felt he needed the tranquility offered by Pearl Valley.

Renting the house was surprisingly easy. A small placard in one of the front windows gave him all the information he needed. He called Tom Kent, who arrived half an hour later, walking up to Dexter and shaking his hand as if they were long-lost friends. Kent was a short, heavy man with thinning sandy hair and a soft voice. The house, he said, was furnished and ready for immediate occupancy. It had been his late mother's home and he was not at all sure how, or even if, to dispose of it. He had decided only last week to put it up for rent. Later, perhaps, he might consider selling the place.

After agreeing to terms, Kent handed him the entry card for the front door. He offered to have someone come by and tidy things up, but Dexter assured him that it would not be necessary.

A soft, golden twilight lit Center Street and the scent of night-blooming jasmine was in the air when Dexter returned for his car. He drove back to Wesley Street, contacted the warehouse where he'd stored his belongings before leaving Manhattan, and arranged to have everything shipped to him the next day. He went upstairs to the master bedroom and, after taking a long, hot shower, lay down on the room's big four-poster bed. He fell asleep in seconds.

Dexter woke the next morning and sat up on the comfortable old bed. For a moment he didn't know where he was, but then everything came back to him in a rush: the separation and divorce from Nina, the pain and longing he had felt whenever he went out for a walk and passed a women who looked anything like her, and then, nearly a year later, hearing about her marriage to a man who owned a chain of hotels and could easily provide her with the wealth she craved and which he was never able to give her.

The ache that lived in him for so long eventually faded. He had lost more than twenty pounds in the months following the divorce, and his clothes hung on him like rags, but the news of her re-marriage had been good for him. It filled him with a new determination to leave Manhattan and rid himself of everything that reminded him of Nina. Dexter quit his teaching job and applied for a position at Gates College. His apartment went, too. He banked the proceeds from its sale and lived in a small furnished room until the day before he was to start his new job.

He shook his head in grim amusement. More than a year of painful memories had gone by in a flash. Isn't that sort of thing only supposed to happen to a drowning man? Well, he wasn't drowning, not any more. He had a new job, a new place to live, and he again looked forward to getting up in the morning. But the best thing of all was that the cruel and lovely Nina was out of his blood for good, at long last become nothing more than an unpleasant memory.

He had just gotten out of bed when a small truck, an ancient electric model, rattled into the driveway behind his convertible. That should be his things. He went out to the two movers and instructed them to put everything in the living room. Afterwards, he signed the old tablet they handed him, adding a generous tip to the payment as a reward for their promptness.

Cool morning air brushed his face as he watched the truck whine its way into the distance. Standing on the wide porch steps, he noticed for the first time the long parade of oaks on either side of Wesley Street. The quiet was a big departure from the river of noise and pedestrian traffic that flowed beneath his Manhattan apartment on most mornings. He suddenly felt like someone who had returned home after a long and treacherous voyage, and he was certain that the feeling would not leave him as long as he remained in Pearl Valley. Dexter made up his mind then and there to make Kent an offer on the house.

He went back inside and stood for a moment by the belongings stacked in the living room. It wasn't much: six boxes of books, his Holovision equipment, and a few trunks full of clothes. No furniture. He had gotten rid of it all when he sold the apartment. Dexter wanted no vestige of the years with Nina to follow him into a new life.

He went upstairs to shower, shave, and dress. There would be time enough to unpack when he returned from Gates College. He had an appointment at the school in just over an hour, and he wanted to have breakfast at the Pearl River Café before then.

The man from the day before was behind the marble counter when Dexter walked into the café and took a seat. A short blonde woman bustled from booth to booth waiting on the morning crowd.

"How about some breakfast?"

"Sure thing. What would you like?"

"A couple of scrambled eggs, bacon, whole wheat toast, a large orange juice, and lots of your wonderful coffee."

"Comin' right up."

The man poured coffee into a plain white mug and brought it to him.

"So how do you like living in the widow Kent's house?"

"News travels fast in Pearl Valley."

"Well, it just so happens that it does, but that's not how I know. Tom stopped by last night and told me you rented the house."

"Will you be seeing Mr. Kent today?"

"Might. He likes our coffee way better than he does his wife's."

"If you do, you might tell him that I intend to make him an offer on the house."

"Well, that's fine news! Welcome to Pearl Valley. By the way, my name's Noah. I own this place. That's my missus running around waiting on folks. Hope you make us a regular stop."

"I'm Dex Blake, and as long as you keep making coffee this good, you'll never get rid of me."

He arrived fifteen minutes late for his meeting with Dr. Morton Greenly, the stooped, graying head of the English Department. The old scholar did not appear to notice. He was at his desk hunched over a book, and started a little when Dexter knocked on his open office door.

"Dr. Greenly? I'm Dexter Blake. We had an appointment."

"Oh, yes, yes. The new instructor. Of course. How are you? Sorry I wasn't here yesterday when you came by."

He got up from his desk and walked up to him with an outstretched hand.

"Welcome to Gates College, Blake."

"Thank you."

"I see that we share an increasingly uncommon vice," he said, pointing to the book in Dexter's hand, a copy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater he purchased just before leaving Manhattan.

"May I see it?"

Dexter looked around and saw that he and Dr. Greenly did indeed share the same expensive passion. His office shelves were piled high with books.

He handed him the small book. Greenly leafed through it with gentle reverence and shook his head sadly.

"This is fine, just fine. Sadly, if this volume were published today, it would exist only as an accumulation of electrons on a screen."

Dr. Greenly showed him one of his own recent acquisitions, a beautifully bound volume of Tennyson's verse. As always, Dexter enjoyed the weight of the book in his hand, the feel of the paper against his fingertips as he turned the pages, the promised intimacy of sitting in some quiet corner with the voice of the book's author as his only companion.

"It's wonderful, sir."

Dr. Greenly assigned him an office and they discussed the courses he was to teach that semester. Afterwards, he introduced Dexter around the department before walking with him back to his new office and excusing himself to attend a meeting with the school's president.

Dexter was famished by the time noon arrived. He had begun regaining the weight lost since his divorce and hunger was now a frequent and welcome companion. He found the cafeteria after some pleasant wandering around the big campus. He bought lunch and went in search of somewhere to sit in the crowded place, carefully balancing his copy of De Quincy on the edge of a full tray. There was only one seat available, and it was opposite a woman with long, dark hair. She was looking down at the tablet in front of her. He leaned forward to ask if she'd mind him taking the seat opposite her. That's when De Quincy slipped from his place at the edge of the orange tray and directly into her bowl of soup. Everyone at the table looked up at him, but he never noticed. His eyes were fixed on the woman. Her oval face was a revelation, with its honey-colored eyes and beautiful smile.

"You really like to make a splash, don't you?" she said, dabbing at the spots on her white lab coat.

He stuttered an apology and offered her his own soup, which she accepted with another of her wonderful smiles. He found her leafing through De Quincy when he returned with a new bowl of soup.

"I want to apologize again for my …"

"You've already apologized," she interrupted, "No harm done, except to your book. Why don't you sit down and have your lunch? I'm Clarissa Browne."

"Dex Blake."

"Dexter Blake?"

"Just Dex."

"Well, Just Dex, is this your first day at Gates?"

"Sort of. I was here yesterday to have a look around and fill out some paperwork, but I got the official tour today, along with half of a cramped office. Do you teach here, too?"

"Only occasionally. I work over at the Gates Institute. I work with Doctor Gomez."

"Gomez? Pedro Gomez?"

"The one and only."

"I read something a while back about his coming to Gates. A very big deal, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes. People visit here from all over the world just for the privilege of meeting the world's greatest geneticist."

"And you work with him? That's pretty impressive."

"Not as impressive as it sounds. No one works really works with him. The Institute gave him his own lab when he agreed to relocate here from Princeton two years ago and then pretty much left him alone to run it as he pleases. I'm really more of a glorified lab assistant than anything else."

"What's he up to these days?" he asked, wanting to keep his conversation with Clare going as long as possible.

"Nothing in particular, but with Dr. Gomez, nothing in particular just might win him another Nobel Prize. Right now, I think he's expecting to work on some of the specimens the Chinese are bringing back from Mars."

"Do you think he might really get a chance to do that?"

"Oh, yes. Talk at the Institute is that they're bringing back hundreds of specimens and distributing them to researchers all over the world."

They left the cafeteria together after lunch. He had no idea where they were headed, and didn't much care. They crossed the campus and before long were standing at the entrance to the Gates Institute, a complex of white brick buildings on the western border of the campus.

"I'm afraid this is where we must part ways."

"May I see you again sometime?"

"If you like."

"How about tonight? Let's have dinner or something."

"Something? That could mean anything from a game of tennis to charades."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't be much good at either. How about dinner and afterwards one of those new total immersion films?"

"My goodness, no! Those things give me an awful headache. Anyway, I can't make it tonight."

"Another date?"

"Sort of. With Dr. Gomez."

"Oh, I see."

"No, you don't see, Just Dex. I have to work tonight. Unfortunately, his idea of working overtime involves something close to eternity. I'll tell you what. There's a small theater in a town not far from here that shows old fashioned, gloriously two-dimensional films. They even sell popcorn. Does that sound appealing?"

"It sounds wonderful."

"Why don't you meet me out here tomorrow at noon and we can talk about it over lunch-that is, if you promise not to let Mr. De Quincy go for another swim in my soup."

"I make no such guarantees."

"Then I guess I'll have to take my chances and wear a raincoat. See you tomorrow?"

"Wild horses couldn't keep me away."

He returned to his office with the image of Clare's face consuming every thought, and found a man sitting at the previously unoccupied desk near the room's only window.

"Blake? I'm Ralph Brody, your new office-mate."

Brody was a big man with an easygoing manner, and Dexter liked him immediately. He learned later that Brody had been a journalist before coming to Gates as an instructor.

"You just missed our esteemed department head. He was looking for you."

"Maybe I should take a walk over to his office."

"Don't bother. He just wanted to show you one of his obscenely expensive books. He'll drop by later. I do believe he loves those damned things more than he loves his wife. You a collector, too, Blake?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Then I'll keep my opinion of the dreadful, unsanitary things to myself. And since we are to share this rabbit hole for the foreseeable future and probably should get to know each other better, I'd like to tender an invitation to sup with me and my bride tonight. The fare's simple, but tasty and moderately nutritious. It certainly beats the nauseating stuff available here on campus. We'll be sure to keep our two brats on their best behavior."

"I've got some unpacking to do tonight, but I'll take a rain check."

"You've got it. Name the day and we'll be on the lookout for you."

Dexter began unpacking his things late that evening. He first set up his Holovision device so that he could follow the latest news on the return of the new Chinese Mars expedition. Like everyone else on Earth, he was well aware of what had happened to the first mission: how after a brilliant beginning it met a tragic end when the Mao spacecraft was torn apart by a catastrophic and still unexplained explosion. Mao II was returning the remains of the mission commander, along with live specimens of bacteria-like Martian organisms. All this was amazing enough, and held the world's attention as nothing had since the Chinese first set foot on the Red Planet, but it proved not to be the whole story. The announcement came as Blake was dusting and shelving his collection of books. The announcer's voice changed, took on a halting quality, as if he were unsure of what he was reading.

"We have this just in from the Xinhua News Agency. The vehicle scheduled to land in Manchuria several hours from now is carrying the fossilized remains of humanoid creatures discovered by the crew of the first Mao expedition. A news conference is to be held later this evening. The Chinese National Space Administration will provide further details at that time."

Dexter ran into the living room, where his Holovision device was showing a panel of scientists sitting around an oval table discussing the astonishing news. Their small, three-dimensional images filled the center of his living room, flickering occasionally like spirits about to vanish. They referred to the creatures as "the Beings" simply because, as one astronomer explained, it was the closest English translation of the Chinese term used in the official press release. The same astronomer speculated that the news may have been kept secret all this time because of its possible impact on the psyche of an already troubled world. No, another expert weighed in, that was not the reason for the secrecy. After the disastrous end of the first Mars mission, the Chinese simply wanted to be certain of the success of the latest voyage before releasing news of the discovery and precipitating a rush to the Red Planet by other world powers. One of the scientists, a British astrobiologist named Halloran, found the news liberating. At long last, she said, an eternal question had been answered. The abundance of life in the universe can no longer be doubted. Here now was the proof. Early Mars had harbored complex, possibly even intelligent life. In learning more about the Beings, she speculated, we might learn something about ourselves and our place in the universe.

Blake went back to his books, pausing occasionally to listen as other panelists had something new to say about the miraculous turn of events. When he was done, he drove to Center Street and stocked up on groceries before having a late supper at the Pearl Valley Café. Noah was alone, watching coverage of the news on a tablet.

"Incredible, isn't it?" Dexter said.

"Oh, I don't know, professor. If I understand it right, these things are long dead and gone. It's interesting to hear about alright, but so what? Doesn't change a thing here in Pearl Valley."

He stayed up late to watch the news conference from Beijing. They offered little new information, except to announce that specimens of what had been discovered inside a Martian cave would be sent to individual researchers around the world for study. China welcomed any and all contributions to man's understanding of the Beings, no matter the source.

Before ending the news conference, the head of the Chinese National Space Administration announced plans for Explorer, an internationally-funded return mission to Mars that was to take place in two years. Its chief purpose would be a search for additional evidence of the Beings and their civilization.

Dexter shut the Holovision down and went up to bed. Clare's lovely face and news of the Beings raced through his dreams the whole night.

Dr. Pedro Gomez

June 2059

The man often referred to as the "Giant of South America" was exactly five feet tall. He was meticulous in his dress and had all his clothes made for him by a seamstress in his home town of Arequipa, Peru. He sent the woman a generous monthly stipend for her services and on his annual Christmas visits home, the only time of the year he was away from his laboratory, brought lavish gifts for her and her two children.

There was talk among some in Arequipa that she was more than merely the great man's seamstress. They pointed to the children as proof. The little girl had the fine features and hazel eyes of Pedro Gomez, and the boy, although greatly resembling his mother, had the intense, serious demeanor of a man many compared to Newton and Einstein. Both children were under twelve and already as tall as Pedro Gomez.

"Here's the blood work you requested, Dr. Gomez."

As she handed him a tablet, he was struck yet again by the beauty of Clare's small and delicate hands.

"Thank you, Miss Browne," he said in heavily-accented English.

He watched her walk away. She was his assistant and the only other person permitted in his laboratory. Most other researchers at the Gates Institute had a full staff and were answerable to one or more administrators, but he was Pedro Gomez, whose accomplishments were the stuff of legend, so he was allowed to have what amounted to a private laboratory and to run it any way he wished, and what he wished was to have Clare Browne near him.

The animal's blood work was completely normal, just as it had been since he first injected the Rhesus with the Martian virus. After several fruitless weeks of observation, he was at last forced to admit that his experiment was a failure.

He called out to Clare.

"I've decided to discontinue this experiment, Miss Browne. Please see that the animal is removed from the bio-isolation unit and disposed of."

"You want it destroyed, Dr. Gomez?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Do I have to supply you with a reason, Miss Browne?"

"Of course not, but you've seen the blood work. Eve's completely healthy. Why destroy her?"

This bit of defiance was unlike Clare. He looked up and saw that her beautiful eyes were misted over with tears. So that was it. She had developed a fondness for the wretched animal. Well, she was certainly correct about one thing: the creature did indeed appear healthy. He was ordering its destruction only out of an abundance of caution.

"Oh, very well. Go ahead and move it to one of the cages in the biology wing."

He might as well be generous with her. Sparing it now would, in any case, only postpone the animal's destruction. Sooner or later another researcher would use it for an experiment and that would be that.

"Would you please bring me a cup of tea, Miss Browne?"

"The symposium starts in less than half an hour, doctor. Don't you think you should have something more than a cup of tea before then? I can run over to the cafeteria and bring back a sandwich."

He had seen the same look of concern on her face many times before, and hated it. It was the look one might see on the face of a mother hovering over a sickly child.

"Thank you, no. Just tea."

He was very tired and it must be showing. Sleep had not come easily for weeks, and when it did come it was fitful. The nightmares about that dreadful place came nightly now, more vivid than ever: a cloudless salmon sky and the incessant sound of water lapping up against an unseen shore. A vague awareness of catastrophic loss hangs like a fog over everything in the dream. He wanders endlessly across an enormous plain looking for something, although he is not sure what it is, and ends up at the ruins of a city. Small gray vials are scattered underfoot like leaves in autumn. He hears something stir behind him and turns to see a small emaciated figure, very human in appearance except for enormous, haunted black eyes. The figure is holding a glowing crystal polyhedron in its bluish fingers and repeating something unintelligible in a high-pitched wheezing voice. The dream always ended there.

It had been six weeks since he received the call from Yasunari Takahashi, offering him dinner and a game or two of chess at his hotel in the city. The Japanese biologist was on his way to the West Coast for a series of lectures and would be in the area for only a single day. A car and chauffeur were at his disposal during his stay in the United States and he would arrange to have him picked up and driven to his hotel. Pedro Gomez happily agreed to meet his old friend. Although Takahashi could be overformal, even stuffy, he inevitably became excellent company after a few drinks of warm sake. He was also a formidable opponent over the chess board.

"Today I'm little more than a delivery boy, Pedro," Takahashi had said in perfect Spanish as they sat over drinks in the hotel's lavish dining room.

"That's a fairly remarkable statement, Yasunari. What on Earth do you mean?"

"Have you by any chance seen today's newsfeed?"

"I never trouble myself with such things."

"Oh, yes, of course. I'd forgotten about your distaste for the everyday affairs of man. Today's news, however, might have been of some interest to you, Pedro. Our mutual friend Bin Liao has been arrested and charged with some unspecified crime, sedition I think, by his country's government. Of course, his actual crime is that he is Bin Liao and a ceaseless critic of their manner of governance. In any case, he is the reason we are here this evening."

"How is that?"

"Before his arrest, Bin Liao managed, with the help of a few sympathetic friends, to smuggle a package out of China. One of these people met with me during my brief stay in Vienna and asked that I bring it to you during my lecture tour."

They were waiting for the main course to be served, and Takahashi was on his third cup of warm sake. He had been insistent with the waiter that the rice wine be heated to a temperature not to exceed forty-five degrees Celsius. Forty-two point five degrees was, of course, the correct temperature for sake, but he believed it unreasonable to demand such perfection of restaurant outside his home country.

Pedro noticed with amusement that his friend was slowly becoming more garrulous and that a sense of humor was beginning to peek through his usually reserved façade.

"This business has made me feel rather like a spy, Pedro. If I had not been both a guest of your government and condemned to getting around in this damnable wheelchair of mine, I seriously doubt that the package would have got through to you. I was nervous as a cat at the thought of going through customs. Fortunately, my country's ambassador became an unwitting accomplice when he met me at the airport and saw to it that I was allowed to bypass the usual inconveniences."

He laughed and sipped his cup of sake.

"Oh, yes, I nearly forgot." He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and brought out a crumpled envelope. "This is for you, also from Lin Biao."

He opened the envelope and read the letter.

My Dear Pedro,

The entire world knows of China's triumphant return to Mars and of the scientific treasures it brought back to Earth. My country has made a great show of its willingness to share its discoveries with scientists around the globe, but behind this mask of openness and generosity there is something dark and disturbing going on. Unknown to anyone other than those at the very highest levels of government is the return to Earth of something else: thousands of vials found deep within the largest of the Martian caves. I do not know what they contain; I do know that our military has taken a keen interest in them and is now fully in control of their fate.

I am a mere linguist, Pedro, a writer of scholarly books who has fought his entire life for greater openness and democracy in my homeland and, in a small way, for the cause of world peace. I tremble at this sudden involvement of our military. There are a few brave souls here who believe as I do and who have risked imprisonment and worse to smuggle a dozen of the alien vials out of China. I can only pray that they will make their way safely into your hands. I know that you will see to it that the right thing is done with them.

Your friend, Lin Biao.

"And where is this mysterious package?"

"Upstairs in my room, under the watchful eye of my companion and bodyguard, a quite fearsome fellow, I assure you."

They ended the evening by going to Takahashi's room and playing chess until three in the morning.

Pedro Gomez went directly to the Gates Institute from the hotel, exhausted, but too curious about Lin Biao's package to go to bed. He walked through the large outer room into the small private laboratory, feeling instantly at home. Everything here was constructed on a scale that would present no obstacles to his lack of height and reach. He spent nearly all his waking hours there, leaving only long enough for a few hours of sleep, a bath, and a change clothes in the rooms provided by the Institute.

He ripped away the brown paper wrapping to reveal a box of his favorite Cuban cigars. He opened it and saw, not cigars, but a second box containing twelve gray vials the size of small test tubes. They appeared to be made of a pewter-like material and felt very cold to the touch. All were covered with markings that resembled cuneiform. He placed one of the vials on his workbench and put the remaining eleven in a metal test tube rack that he put away in the outer room's supply cabinet.

When he thought later about what happened next, he blamed it on a combination of fatigue and the bottle of sake he had shared with Yasunari. He removed his suit jacket and put on his lab coat. Like everything else he wore, it was made for him in Arequipa. It had his name stitched in gold thread on the breast pocket. He ran his fingers over the raised lettering and thought of the pretty seamstress sitting alone in the home he had purchased for her, thought of how much time and patience it must have taken her to slowly and skillfully, one tiny stitch at a time, spell out his name in glittering gold thread. It had been months since he visited his home town, and he was suddenly filled with a longing for its cool, quiet mornings and the sight of snow-capped Misti looming over the lovely city. Pedro Gomez smiled. Too much sake will do that to you, make you foolish and sentimental. There would be time for visits home after the Institute's Mars symposium and after he was done working on Lin Biao's mysterious and unexpected gift. Or, might it turn out to be more burden than gift? He could not decide yet what to think about the vials. Still lost in thought, he reached absently for his tablet and as he did his elbow brushed against the Martian vial. It struck the tile floor with a hollow sound, followed by a barely audible hiss. He bent to pick it up. The scent of peppermint, very strong and pungent, struck him just before he felt himself grow faint. He gripped the marble edge of the lab bench for support. The light-headedness soon passed and he retrieved the vial. He noticed that it had changed appearance slightly: a series of pinpoint holes were now visible just below its rounded tip.

He decided that it was too late, and he was far too tired and still too under the influence of sake, to accomplish anything that night. The vials could wait until tomorrow. He would make his way to his rooms and rest before returning in the morning.

The first of what would be countless nightmares troubled his sleep for that night.

Clare returned from the cafeteria with his tea.

"Here you are, Dr. Gomez."

"Thank you, Clare."

"We really should be leaving for the seminar."

"Give me just a few more minutes to review my notes."

For much of the time since receiving the vials, he had worked on nothing else, and his preparations for the symposium had suffered. He had been forced to cobble together some remarks concerning the abundance and variety of the planet's microbial life. He hoped his brief paper would satisfy those who expected miracles from his every utterance. Of course, he did indeed have something miraculous he could have shared with the symposium's attendees: countless millennia before man's first ancestors roamed their dangerous Eden, the Red Planet was home to a race of creatures that possessed a technology capable of bioengineering a virus-like agent. That turned out to be the astonishing story told by the vials Lin Biao had smuggled out of his home country. But to reveal that secret now, or at any time before Lin Biao was released from his prison cell and managed to escape China, would mean certain death for the brave and gentle scholar.

Ironically, his friend's fears had turned out to be baseless. The pseudo-virus inside the vials could not possibly be made to serve any military purpose whatsoever because it was not a true pathogen. What it appeared to contain was a complete genomic portrait of the long-vanished Martian race. The precise mechanism by which it was meant to work still eluded him, although he strongly suspected that it was designed to enter a living host and target its reproductive system. Injecting the Rhesus with the virus led nowhere. It had vanished from creature's bloodstream almost immediately and resulted in no discernible after-effects.

When the symposium was over, he would redouble his efforts to determine exactly how the virus functioned, and the process by which it spread from organism to organism. At the same time, he must continue trying to decipher the genome itself, which was unlike anything he had seen before and which up until now had yielded little about the nature of the vanished Martian race. The task was rather like attempting to decipher a document written in a completely unknown alphabet. He had no genetic Rosetta Stone to guide his efforts, and had to work using a complex system of trial and error. Many months of hard work lay ahead of him, but he was confident that in the end he would have within his grasp one of the greatest scientific discoveries in the history of the human race.

"We really must leave now, Dr. Gomez."

Clare held his jacket.

"Very well. I suppose I am as ready as I will ever be. It will certainly be good to see my young friend Ranganathan again. He is here, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is, seated in the front row with his lovely young wife."

"Good. I can look forward to a few amusing games of chess tonight. It is hard to believe that so brilliant a microbiologist can be such a miserable chess player. Still, it will be great fun to spend time with him and his new bride."

He removed his lab coat and allowed Clare to help him on with his jacket. She straightened its collar and patted down the shoulders. These small gestures never failed to move him. He understood that his feelings for Clare were hopeless, and long ago learned to settle for such meaningless little intimacies. The times Clare straightened his tie before an appointment or lecture, the cups of perfectly-prepared oolong tea she brought him each morning, the occasional touch of her fingers as they brushed against his cheek while she straightened his shirt collar, all brought him a deep joy he felt powerless to express. He valued those moments greatly and thought of them often, even though he knew that they meant nothing at all to her.

She would soon marry an instructor named Black or Blake. Clare had introduced him one afternoon many months ago. He seemed a nice enough fellow, certainly smitten with Clare, but Pedro Gomez found himself having to suppress an intense dislike of the man. The way she looked at this handsome young teacher was the way he once hoped she might someday look at him.

After a brief, sad glance in Clare's direction, Pedro Gomez walked out of his laboratory.

Nick Brazos

June 2059

About the only good thing I can say about my job here at the Institute is that it gives me lots of free time to study for exams. Most days all I do is keep an eye on things while the research staff is away at some meeting or other. On rare occasions, far too rare for my liking, I'm asked to run a test or assist with an experiment. But there's one part of the job I hate way more than all the sitting around doing nothing. There's this room lined with cages where the Institute keeps Rhesus monkeys that it uses for experiments. The room is in an adjoining building and not really part of any lab at all, but since I'm low man on the totem pole, I got saddled with the task of looking after the noisy, smelly things, and that makes me feel like some damned zookeeper.

The only reason I applied for the stupid job in the first place was because I thought I might get to meet Pedro Gomez. He's been a hero of mine since I was in high school and decided that science was what I wanted to do with my life. It only took me a couple of days to realize I'd made a mistake. His lab is nowhere near where I work, so my chances of ever running into the him were about as good as my chances of sprouting wings and flying around the Gates campus. I was ready to quit, and then I met Clare Browne and that changed everything.

I was cleaning that disgusting roomful of monkeys when we met for the first time. She was returning a Rhesus Macaque she called Eve, and told me she'd be back now and again to bring it seeds and pieces of fruit. Clare is the most beautiful woman I've ever met. I think I fell for her a millisecond after seeing her, but I forgot all about that as soon as I learned who she worked for. From that point on I thought of her only as a way of being introduced to Pedro Gomez.

Clare brought treats to Eve nearly every day and sometimes stopped by the Chemistry Lab to chat with me for a few minutes. She offered to help with my Organic Chemistry assignments-help I didn't need, but which I accepted with a grateful smile. Later, I used that offer as a pretext for visiting her before my shift at the Institute. I'd always come prepared with a lot of stupid questions about stuff I knew backwards and forwards, never letting go of the hope that one day I'd be standing there with Clare and the door to Dr. Gomez's private lab would open.

It was amazing how informally-some mean-spirited types might say carelessly or even irresponsibly-Dr. Gomez insisted on running his laboratory. The Institute's security policies seemed to have no place there. The entrance was never locked, and even the massive steel cabinet where rare and very expensive substances were stored was always left open because, as Clare once explained me, Dr. Gomez did not want to be bothered entering the code to its electronic lock every time he needed something. He was also extremely sensitive about the possibility of others stealing his work, so the cameras that were everywhere around the rest of the Institute were nowhere in evidence inside or outside his lab. That's how the notoriously eccentric scientist wanted things, and Gates was more than happy to oblige him, in exchange, of course, for having his name associated with the Institute. That association probably brought them wagonloads of donations.

I was with Clare last Wednesday around noon when a small parcel arrived. As she did with everything she received, Clare examined the contents, recorded its receipt in a log, and looked for a place to store it. I watched her walk over to the cabinet and move a few things around to make room for the package. That's when I saw them: eight gray vials in a black test tube rack. Etched along the side of each were markings that resembled cuneiform. But they were not cuneiform. I recognized them instantly as the strange writing of the Beings.

"My God! Are those … are those real?!"

"Are what real?"

"Those."

I pointed to the vials.

"Yes. I suppose they must be."

"But why aren't they locked away somewhere, or under guard or something?"

"They're perfectly safe here, Nick."

"What's inside them?"

"I have no idea. He'll tell me when he's ready."

I knew that Dr. Gomez had been one of the many researchers to receive Martian organisms for study, but had read nothing about his having received anything else, certainly nothing about any vials.

The thought of those vials haunted me the rest of that day. They were artifacts belonging to an incredibly ancient race, and yet there they were, sitting in an ordinary metal storage cabinet alongside the most commonplace objects. How did they get there? What was Dr. Gomez planning to do with them? Before that day was over, I had come up with a plan to use the contents of one of those vials as a pathway to a job working beside my hero.

The day of the Institute's Mars Symposium arrived. I was sitting in the lab trying to concentrate on an organic chemistry textbook with no success at all. I had tried reading the same page several times and each time my mind wandered to what I was going to do that evening. I finally closed the book in frustration.

"Mind if I come in?"

I turned around and saw Clare peeking through the lab's half-open door.

"No, of course not."

Sometimes I think that if I had been just a few years older when we first met, I would have asked her out to a movie or dinner. My guess is she's around thirty, maybe a few years older, but she looks better, way better, than any of the girls I've met on campus. Of course, now it doesn't matter how old I am because she's obviously stuck on Professor Blake. The way they look at each other, well, you'd have to be blind not to know what's going on.

I don't know if the rumor is true, but I heard she was married at seventeen to some creep, a skirt-chaser who made her life miserable. Why any man, having married Clare, would even think of another woman is something I'll never understand. Some guys are just too dumb to know when they're well off, I suppose. She finally dumped the jerk and moved to Pearl Valley from one of the big cities on the coast. She enrolled at Gates College and turned out to be an exceptional student, graduating magna cum laude and staying on to earn an advanced degree. There was no shortage of grad students, and even faculty, clamoring to work with Pedro Gomez when he came to the Institute, but he selected Clare out of all who applied. And who could blame him? He's probably crazy about her, like just about every other guy at the school.

"How've you been, Nick?"

"Okay."

"How's that Organic Chemistry seminar going?"

"Good. Finals are next week."

"Let me know if you ever have any questions. I might be able to help."

I looked at her smiling, beautiful face, and all I could think of was what I planned to do that night. She and Dr. Gomez would leave for the Mars symposium around eight. The door to their lab would be, as it always is, unlocked, I'd walk in, go to the cabinet and take one of the vials. Before returning it to the rack, I'd transfer a tiny amount of its contents into a test tube. The whole thing should take less than a minute, and not a soul would ever know I was there. Back in the chemistry lab, I'd be free to work on the Martian substance, whatever it turned out to be, and when I was done, I'd find some way of getting the results of my work to Dr. Gomez. Then he'd see what I'm capable of and surely offer me a place on his staff. That was my plan, and it was perfect-or so I thought.

"Thanks, Clare."

I felt on edge and guilty as hell about using our friendship to get at those vials.

"Have to run now, Nick. Dr. Gomez is delivering some remarks on his Mars findings this evening and I've got to make sure everything is ready for his presentation."

"What's he going to say? Anything Earth-shattering … or Mars-shattering?"

"I have no idea. He works from notes and never shares those with anyone."

"Not even you?"

"Not even me."

"Well, maybe I'll drop by for a while. Hear what he has to say."

"That's fine. I'll see you there."

I kept checking my watch after that, praying for eight o'clock to arrive, but also dreading the thought of it. Adding to my nervousness was Arnold Baxter, one of the lab's senior research chemists. He had been intently working on something for hours, muttering to himself and rarely looking up from whatever chemical mystery he was trying to solve. I couldn't do a thing while he was still there. My plan depended on total secrecy and that meant not being seen leaving the lab.

Eight o'clock came and went and the Dr. Baxter was still at his bench, making notes and grunting or nodding every so often, not budging an inch. It was nearly nine when he finally removed his lab coat, gathered his things and, without a look or word in my direction, walked out. It was late, but I might still have enough time if I moved quickly enough.

What happened next felt unreal. I'd imagined it so many times, seen myself go through each step so often, that when the time finally came to carry out my plan, I felt as if I were reliving a dream. After checking to make sure the hallway was clear, I ran out of the lab and down a long passageway that led to an annex and Dr. Gomez's lab. The door was unlocked, just as I knew it would be. The steel cabinet, too, was open. I had put on surgical gloves before entering the lab and taking one of the vials from its rack, surprised at how cold to the touch it felt even through my gloves. I took the test tube and pipette I'd brought with me from the pocket of my lab coat. Just then I heard the sound of footsteps outside the door. I froze. The Mars symposium was taking place in a small auditorium only a few hundred feet away. Perhaps Clare had forgotten something and was returning now to find me by the open cabinet, one of the Martian vials in my hand. She would know instantly how I had betrayed her. I dreaded that more than I did the expulsion that would surely follow an accusation of attempted theft. I looked around for a place to hide and spotted a partially open door at the rear of the lab. Still holding the vial, I hurried inside.

The walls of the small room were lined with rows of gauges and switches. Above me a large metal vent rattled and hummed as it drew air into itself. Seconds that felt like minutes passed as I listened for sounds from inside the lab. When I could wait no longer, I opened the door a crack and peered outside. No one was there.

All I had left to do now was collect a sample of the alien vial's contents, then hurry back to the chemistry lab as if nothing at all had happened. But there was no obvious way to open the vial. It appeared seamless, as if constructed from a single piece of a pewter-like material. I tried twisting one end, and then another. Nothing happened. I tightened my grip and twisted harder, not an easy thing to do, since the vial was clearly designed to be handled by much smaller hands. That's when I heard a soft hissing sound and watched in wonder as the vial's curved end moved upward a fraction of a centimeter, exposing a row of pinprick sized holes. The closet suddenly filled with an overpowering smell of peppermint. I felt faint and leaned against the wall behind me to steady myself, waiting for the feeling to pass. A minute, maybe more, went by before I felt alright again. I'm not sure, but I think I might have blacked out momentarily. What I am certain of is that when I again became fully conscious of my surroundings the peppermint odor was gone, most likely sucked into a noisy ceiling vent.

I tried pouring a fraction of the vial's contents into my test tube, but nothing came out. I stared at the vial in disbelief. After all my hours of planning, all the risks I had taken, the damned thing appeared to contain nothing at all. What value an empty vial might have had for Dr. Gomez or anyone else was a mystery, but one thing was abundantly clear: it was useless to me. I returned the vial to the cabinet and hurried out.

Back at the chemistry lab I went through the last hour of my shift like a sleepwalker. I'd been careful and was sure I could not be linked to the open vial when it was discovered. I would return home to Pearl Valley for the summer and in September travel out West to graduate school. That was my fate. I had been more than willing to give it all up for a chance to work side-by-side with a great man. Now that opportunity was gone as surely as whatever it was that had once been inside the alien vial.

I had a hard time falling asleep that night, and when I finally did my dreams were restless things filled with strange visions of a place where a distant sun shone on a sea that stretched to the far reaches of a glowing violet horizon.

Dexter Blake

November 2063

Clare looked up from her tablet.

"Isn't it terrible?"

"It certainly is."

"If only something could be done to save them."

"I'm afraid they're beyond saving, dear."

Dexter had been sitting in the kitchen earlier that morning, listening to a Rachmaninoff concerto on the radio while going over the few pages he had managed to get done on his Chaucer project. In January of 2064 Gates College would join its sister university in England in a celebration of the great medieval poet's work. A small book of essays in honor of the occasion was to be published that month and Dexter had been asked to edit the volume. His own piece on The Wife of Bath's Tale, which he had not read since his undergraduate days and never had occasion to teach, was turning out to be more difficult to write than he had anticipated. There were times when he found himself questioning the value of the whole endeavor. So few people outside of academia knew or cared that The Canterbury Tales even existed.

His thoughts were interrupted by the somber voice of an announcer who interrupted the broadcast with a bulletin: an accident had occurred aboard Explorer, the spacecraft on its way to Mars. Few details were available, but it was thought that the lives of the crew might be in jeopardy.

Dexter ran into the living room and switched on the Holovision device. One of the engineers who had helped to build Explorer was being interviewed about what might have brought the accident about, naming this or that system failure as a possible cause, and speculating on the likelihood of the crew's survival as the enormous craft drifted through space, apparently powerless to alter its course. Another commentator brought up the catastrophic end of the first Mao spacecraft. The lone survivor of that doomed mission, he said, had managed to survive for nearly eight months, but he held out no such hope for the crew of Explorer. Every day they would drift farther out into the distant reaches of the solar system, and in time would leave the heliosphere and enter the cold and endless expanse of interstellar space. Rescue was simply not a realistic possibility.

None of the physicists and astronomers being interviewed understood or could explain how Explorer could have failed so utterly. An elderly physicist remarked that its incredible complexity may have been its undoing. When so many things might go wrong, something inevitably will. It was just a question of whether or not a particular failure was survivable.

Dexter turned off the Holovision device and returned to the kitchen table and an uncomplicated Chaucerian world.

"More coffee, Dex?"

"I'll get it."

"No, no. You sit right there and work on your essay."

Clare brought the coffee and stood by him.

"Thanks, hon."

He smiled up at her and gently placed his hand on the slight bulge of her belly.

"How's my boy doing today?"

"Dex, are you sorry we didn't wait to be surprised?"

"Not at all, Clare. I like knowing."

Her eyes suddenly widened in alarm. The first-floor bathroom of the old house on Wesley Street was down the hall and she managed to make it just in time.

Dexter shook his head. Nearly all cancers were only a bad memory these days and heart disease had largely fallen before the assault of modern medicine, and yet nobody seemed able to do a thing about simple morning sickness. Although on average most men and women now lived to a healthy and active one hundred years, in every other way that mattered people today were no different than Chaucer's Wife of Bath, his Pardoner, or his Knight.

Clare returned to the kitchen a little flushed, but smiling and radiantly beautiful, and he found himself hoping that no branch of medicine would ever find a way to eliminate any of the small things that made us all human.

"How about a movie tonight, Clare?"

"A real movie?"

Dexter knew she meant two-dimensional films, now rarely shown except in some big city art houses and locally at a small theater in Pearl Valley. He much preferred the total immersion technique now being used by nearly every modern filmmaker, with its ability to insert the viewer into the world of the film, but Clare always left those with a headache.

"Of course."

"Wonderful. I'll be ready when you get home."

"No lab today?"

"Didn't I tell you? Dr. Gomez will be back in Peru until at least the end of next month."

"He's been going there a lot lately, hasn't he?"

"More than he used to."

"Is he still stewing over what happened at the symposium?"

"I'm not sure he ever got over it."

"That was more than a year ago. You would think he'd put the damned thing behind him and move on."

Dexter had been there that night, waiting for Clare at the rear of the small auditorium. Dr. Gomez was standing on the brightly-lit stage and had just finished introducing the next speaker, an elderly Nigerian microbiologist. The woman rose from her seat in the front row and began making her way to the stage when the odor of peppermint was suddenly all around him. It was a pleasant smell he associated with the holidays and childhood, when he always found red-striped peppermint candy canes in his stocking on Christmas morning. He was thinking of those long-ago days when a wave of nausea and lightheadedness washed over him and he was forced to lean against the wall behind him to keep from falling. A few cries of distress from the scientists in the audience soon became a loud chorus of people sickened and moaning in their seats. He watched as the elderly microbiologist collapsed onstage.

The only person in the room who did not appear to be affected by the pungent odor was Dr. Gomez. He stood at the lectern repeatedly calling for calm. Someone, he didn't see who, turned on the overhead lights. Dr. Gomez continued to urge calm, but the audience had begun to panic and his pleas fell on deaf ears. Then, just as quickly and mysteriously as it had appeared, the peppermint odor vanished and one by one the assembled scientists recovered. Dr. Gomez called a halt to the evening's proceedings. He assured the audience that the symposium would resume on schedule the next day.

The entire incident had lasted fewer than fifteen minutes. Campus security soon arrived, along with local police. Ambulances were summoned but left soon after their crews realized that nobody required treatment. After taking statements from a dozen or so of the affected people, both the town police and campus security left.

"Has it really been a year, Dex?"

"Longer, I think. By the way, did anybody ever get to the bottom of what happened?"

"I don't think so. They took air samples and ran tests for weeks but everything came back normal. After a while people just seemed to forget about it. No one was hurt, after all, I mean not in any permanent way."

"As I recall we both got a cold afterwards."

"I doubt that had anything to do with what happened."

"You're probably right."

Dexter took a last sip of coffee before going to his study for his lecture notes. When he got back to the kitchen, he found Clare sitting at the table, tears running down her cheeks. He put everything down and knelt beside her, gently took her face in his hands, and kissed her.

"What's the matter?"

She wiped away the tears and smiled.

"I was just thinking about Dr. Gomez. He seemed so sad when he left the other day. I get the feeling he's not coming back."

"Why wouldn't he? You told me only last week that his work on the Beings isn't close to being done."

"It's so strange. He seems to be looking for something and getting nowhere. I probably shouldn't tell you this, Dex-you know how the people over at the Institute are about us discussing our work-but I think he may have found something in some vials that were brought back from Mars."

"What vials? I thought he was working on Martian bacteria."

"He was. I'm not certain where the vials came from, but whatever's inside of them had him worried, especially after that night at the symposium. He insisted on taking blood samples from nearly everyone who became ill, including me."

"You never told me that."

"There was no need to worry you, Dex. Anyway, the tests were all normal. "

"So, you think he might have found something in these vials? Like what?"

"I don't know. He's always been so secretive about his work. He injected a female Rhesus with whatever was in one of the vials and then had me run tests on it for weeks. He was definitely looking for a reaction of some sort. It was around that time that the monthly trips to Peru started. He became moody and preoccupied nearly all the time. Now he's hardly ever at the Institute. There's one other thing."

"Another dark secret to reveal?"

"Don't laugh, but I think he was infatuated with me."

Dexter smiled. "Who could blame him for that? I'll bet half the men who see you walking down the street fall in love with you on the spot. Why don't we focus on the birth of our son and forget about Dr. Gomez? I'm sure that whatever's bothering him will sort itself out. Hon, if I don't leave right now, I'll be late for my first class. Are you going to be alright?"

"Go ahead. I'm fine."

She went about clearing the breakfast dishes after he left. Dex was right, of course. There probably wasn't a thing to worry about. Dr. Gomez would be back soon and everything was sure to return to normal.

Commander Donald Troy

August 2093

Donald Troy remembered the morning the Space Agency named him commander of the Liberty Mars mission. The happiness and pride he had felt at receiving the honor did not last long. A quiet and very private man, Commander Troy had been instantly set upon by reporters wanting to know every detail of his life. He detested every moment of it and hoped that the media attention would end with the initial news conference. He could not have been more wrong. The press pursued him like ardent suitors. They seemed never to tire of hearing about his small-town Iowa boyhood, the marriage to his high school sweetheart, the details of his daily training regimen, and his hopes for the mission's success. Even his elderly parents were hounded by reporters looking for a new angle on an old story. Troy and his wife had to resort to sneaking out of their Houston home via a maze of adjoining back yards and alleyways to elude the press long enough to enjoy a quiet dinner and a few blessed hours of anonymity.

Dexter Blake Jr. and Arjun Ranganathan were added to Liberty's crew a week after Donald Troy was named mission commander. Both were brilliant young scientists and both just happened to have a fraternal twin. When this became known, an enterprising reporter for a Detroit news outlet began referring to them as the "Mars twins." The sobriquet stuck. Commander Troy was delighted to have someone to share the spotlight with. Unlike Troy, the two young astronauts seemed to enjoy their new status as media darlings.

The tragic loss of Explorer and its crew had caused the world's great powers to reevaluate their space programs. China, after stunning the world with its achievements, abandoned plans for a third Mao mission to Mars. Other space-faring economic super-powers, too, seemed content to limit themselves to robotic probes of the solar system. Then, almost two decades to the day after Explorer's launch, the United States made public its plans to send Liberty to Mars. Many cheered the announcement, and then quietly waited to see if the ship would meet the same horrific end as the doomed Explorer.

America's gamble succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. Liberty performed flawlessly, reaching Mars after a mere ninety days of uneventful flight. The equipment that had been brought to the planet by a succession of unmanned missions performed to near-perfection. The newly-designed habitat's electro-magnetic deflection system all but eliminated exposure to dangerous radiation, while their new EVA suits made physical movement far less taxing than anyone had ever thought possible. The suits' built-in conversion breathers permitted an astonishing ten hours of uninterrupted planetary exploration. Yes, things had gone very well indeed during the mission. So well, in fact, that the Commander found himself with little to do except run routine equipment tests and transmit updates on their progress back to Houston.

Most of the crew was resting in preparation for their imminent return to Earth. He gave some thought to having Blythe, his second-in-command, take the bridge while he retired to his cabin for a few hours of sleep. But the sight of Earth and its moon suspended in absolute blackness, and now only hours away, brought thoughts of his wife and home and kept him at the controls. Nothing had gone wrong with his ship in eighteen months, and he was now as certain as any man could be that nothing ever would. Docking with the space station and shuttling the crew down to Earth was all the flying he would have to do within the next thirty-six hours, and he was confident both would go exactly as planned.

The ship that carried them to Mars was a magnificent engineering achievement, but when the history of Liberty's mission was written, it would be Blake and Ranganathan that historians would look to when explaining the mission's success. Both had displayed an almost preternatural ability to home in on Martian artifacts. It was, Commander Troy sometimes thought, as if they had already been there and were now simply acting as tour guides for their shipmates. During Liberty's first month of exploration, when they happened on the ruins of a small city deep within the interior of Mars, Blake seemed to know precisely where to find the first evidence of the Beings' culture: scores of flexible metallic strips scattered about a circular chamber. Each strip was exactly half a meter in length and one eighth of a meter wide. All were etched with three rows of cuneiform-like writing. No one knew what to make of the odd find at first. Laser images of the strips were immediately transmitted to Earth, where teams of cryptologists and linguists waited anxiously for a first look at the artifacts. But it was the Mars Twins whose efforts yielded the very first translation of the Beings' writing, the thoughts of a creature dead for thousands of centuries: " By the shores of a sea that is no more I wait for thee."

The two astronauts eventually translated a dozen of the one hundred and ten metal strips and, in doing so discovered one of their strangest qualities: no matter how you arranged and rearranged them they always made perfect sense, like a jigsaw puzzle that yields a beautiful image no matter how its pieces are arranged and rearranged. It was Arjun Ranganathan who first suggested that the metal strips should be read as a kind of long poem or song with endless permutations. He also provided the name now universally applied to the ancient Martian writings: Memory Songs.

Nothing in any of the Songs suggested what a Being looked like, or provided details of their daily lives. Instead, they all looked relentlessly backward. They seemed a race in deep and perpetual mourning for a vanished past.

Dr. Mary Ivors was not at all happy with the accomplishments of the Mars Twins. She had trained two years to prepare for the voyage to the Red Planet, only to find that her special skills as a xenoarchaeologist were rarely put to use. She complained to Commander Troy that Blake and Ranganathan should spend more time doing their own work and leave her to hers. Troy's answer was to have Ivors oversee all future searches for artifacts within Martian caves. Arjun Ranganathan seemed especially pleased with this solution, and before long he and Ivors were spending a good deal of their off-duty time together.

Ranganathan came to him near the end of their final week on the planet and asked if, like captains on a ship at sea, he was empowered to perform a marriage ceremony. It seems that he and Ivors had fallen in love and wished to marry. Commander Troy doubted that such a thing fell within the scope of his authority, but promised to look into it with Mission Control.

Houston was more than willing to exploit the situation and arranged for a minister to perform the ceremony via the habitat's Imagecom system. And so, the first ever interplanetary marriage took place on the surface of Mars and became an instant public relations bonanza for the Space Agency. People who had stopped caring about Liberty's exploits suddenly embraced the romantic notion of Mary Ivors and Arjun Ranganathan taking their vows surrounded by the rust-colored hills of Mars. One man, the owner of a chain of Solarcar franchises on the West Coast, offered to pay for the couple's honeymoon upon their return to Earth. Having read about Mary's love of skiing, he had arranged for the newlyweds to spend two weeks at one of the warming Earth's few remaining winter resorts, a fantastically expensive place that offered real snow instead of the usual manufactured variety.

Commander Troy had no objection to the marriage or even to its brief disruption of the mission's busy schedule, but he did find that it left him feeling restless. The young couple had reminded him all too much of how badly he missed his wife, and that was a distraction he could not allow. Liberty's success depended on his ability to put aside all such feelings and concentrate on his duties as commander. He had managed that, as he did most things in his life, with an iron will. But now home was only hours away and he could permit himself the luxury of remembering his wife's soft brown eyes, the sprinkling of freckles on the bridge of her nose, and what it felt like to hold her close. Commander Donald Troy sat back, closed his eyes, and let memories of her wash over him like a healing tide.

Edward Peter Riggs

April 2125

I parked in front of the café and went inside. There wasn't a soul in the place except for a tall, thin man in a denim shirt and white apron standing behind a long marble-top counter.

"What'll it be?"

"Black coffee to go, please."

No town, however small, is without a personality, and the hour before my interview with Dexter Blake Jr. would give me time to walk around Pearl Valley. Getting to know a little about the setting of a story became a sort of ritual for me when I was a young reporter for tablet dailies. Later on, when I worked for a series of local networks, I continued the practice. Of course, my days of hopping around from story to story ended long ago, just as my decade-long career as host of the country's most popular evening news program finally came to an end last year. Everything runs its course. The trick in my line of work is to know when it's time to make a graceful exit.

When Total Immersion made the move from feature films to home units, gradually and inexorably replacing old holovision equipment, I knew the time had come for me to leave. Total Immersion places a viewer inside the newsroom, surrounds him with its sights and sounds. It's a little like having the news read to you personally, or at least that was the idea. The technology required for TI production was more than I was willing to deal with. Oh, TI is fine for the foolishness that pollutes the airwaves these days, but using it for serious news was and is a big mistake. Sounds have to be recorded from twelve distinct directions by grids of incredibly sensitive microphones. A broadcaster's every movement must be captured from multiple angles simultaneously by a complex and intrusive array of cameras. Total Immersion made reporters secondary to the technology, turning them into mere props. That was it for me. At the end of my contract, I headed for the door and never looked back.

When Edward Peter Riggs signed off the air for the last time, I was glad to be rid of him and become plain old Ed Riggs from Cincinnati, Ohio. I'd had a good career. During my best years I was paid astronomical sums of money and received the star treatment everywhere I went. But I had been a real journalist long before Holovision turned me into a national celebrity. I broke more than one big story in my day, let me tell you, and made some powerful special interests pray for my early demise. I want to make people remember those bygone days and put aside forever the glammed-up talking head that for ten years entered their living rooms through the polished silver disc of a Holovision device.

I'm a freelancer now, and work only when I want to and only on stories that interest me. I'm luckier than other freelancers, I suppose, since most places eagerly accept anything my agent sends them simply because it's got my name on it. The idea for a piece on Dexter Blake Jr. came to me a couple of weeks ago, just after the International Space Agency's announcement of plans for the first permanent Mars base caused a resurgence of interest in the long-ago voyage of Liberty. Millions of Americans suddenly became interested in a time when people first learned about creatures that flourished on Mars until a planetary catastrophe turned their verdant world of shallow seas into an uninhabitable desert.

I was not at all sure that Blake would agree to an interview. He had been out of the public eye for some time, and was rumored to dislike any sort of personal publicity. I had Josh Crittenden, my agent for the past twenty years, contact him a week ago. He told me that at first Blake hated the idea of sitting down for an interview, but quickly changed his mind when he learned who the interviewer would be. Blake insisted on only one condition: the interview must take place the following Saturday. He and his wife were leaving early Sunday morning for a cross-country trip and would not be back for at least two months. Josh assured him that Saturday would pose no problem and arranged to have us meet around noon at Blake's home in the upstate town of Pearl Valley.

A Saturday interview gave me only four days to prepare, so I contacted a friend who had done research for me over the years and asked her to send along anything she could dig up on what Blake had been up to since his glory days as one of the fabled Mars Twins. The tragic fate of his friend and fellow crew member, Arjun Ranganathan, was known to everyone old enough to remember the voyage of Liberty. I covered the story of his fatal skiing accident back when I was just starting out. That was more than thirty years ago. Thirty years. My lord, it hardly seems possible.

An info-wafer arrived by courier a few hours after I spoke to my friend. It contained hundreds of eNews stories about Blake, many of them decades old and of no use to me. I did manage to extract a few useful facts from the newer material. I was surprised to learn that Blake had written two books, one about the Beings, and the other a translation of all seven hundred Memory Songs. Reviewers initially greeted the first book with skepticism. Many dismissed it as mere speculation, a fanciful thing of little scientific value. Some stopped just short of calling him a crackpot; one or two did not. After all, they reasoned, how was it possible for Blake or anyone else to know the details of what a vanished alien civilization had truly been like? But when, time and time again, discoveries made by subsequent Mars missions confirmed nearly all of Blake's assertions, the skeptics retreated and his speculation came to be accepted as facts awaiting an inevitable confirmation.

Blake had been married for more than thirty years to the former Karen Minton, a Pearl Valley girl. Remarkably, she, like Blake, is a fraternal twin. They have two children, a boy and a girl, also fraternal twins.

That was the sum total of all I knew about Blake's post-Liberty life on the day I drove my gleaming new Ferrari (a retirement gift from the producers of my nightly news broadcast) into Pearl Valley.

The first thing I noticed as I came within sight of the town was the absence of cold fusion towers. Such towers are a common sight today. They rise like great silver arrows into the sky above most American cities and towns and are the source of all their power. I saw no fields of solar cell arrays, either, and wondered absently where the people of Pearl Valley got the electricity to run their homes, schools, and businesses.

The town itself resembled an old picture postcard from a bygone era: tranquil, scenic, and frozen in time, as if it had remained untouched by the myriad technological advances of the past half century. For a moment I envied Blake his quiet life in that picturesque place. My own home was an absurdly expensive high-rise apartment in the middle of noisy, congested New York City. But my feelings of envy did not last. I am a journalist, after all, and where else should a journalist live but at the busy crossroads of the world? Pearl Valley was the kind of place a man like me settles in only when he is ready to pack it all in and write his memoirs.

There I was, standing at the white marble counter of an empty café, less than sixty minutes before an interview with the legendary Dexter Blake Jr. The man behind the counter brought my coffee and gave me a look I had seen all too often. He knew who I was, but was reluctant to say anything, not wanting to appear foolish or star-struck. I paid for the coffee and left for my walk around Pearl Valley.

I walked aimlessly about the town, enjoying the beautiful autumn weather, pausing here and there to admire a lovely old home. It didn't me take long to arrive at the town's center, a small commercial district dominated by a four-story red brick courthouse with a white clock tower. A firehouse, a few small office buildings, a bank, a movie theater, a granite war memorial, and a scattering of shops completed the picture of typical small-town America. I'd visited many such places in my many years as a reporter. Given that it was a Saturday on a near-perfect fall day, I expected to see a lot of townspeople out and about. What I found instead was a town that looked abandoned. It reminded me of a Hollywood movie set before the arrival of the actors, all façade and no life at all.

On the way back to the café, I happened on a group of children playing on a neatly manicured lawn. The sight cheered me and I stopped to watch them. They were sitting in a circle, eight of them ranging in age from perhaps six to ten or eleven. Each held an object in his or her small hand and chanted something unintelligible in a high-pitched, odd sort of sing-song voice. As a game, if that's what it was, it made little sense to me. The raucous back and forth of the games I'd played as a child in Ohio was missing, and I assumed it was some sort of new amusement, perhaps a fad among local children. I was tempted to go up to them and ask about their game, but time had grown short and I wanted to jot down a few of my impressions of Pearl Valley before the interview with Blake. I hurried back to the café and settled into a corner booth with my tablet.

It wasn't long before the man behind the counter came over to me.

"Can I get you anything?"

"How about another coffee?"

"Sure thing."

He turned, walked a couple of steps toward the counter, and then wheeled around to face me.

"You're Edward Peter Riggs, aren't you?"

"Last time I checked."

"You're on the HV news at night."

"Used to be. I'm just plain Ed Riggs these days."

"Well, I'll be damned. What on Earth are you doing in Pearl Valley?"

"I'm here to interview Dexter Blake Jr. Know him?"

"Sure do. Known him most of my life. He was a year or so behind me at school, but we always had a friendly word or two for each other. My father helped his dad get the house he's living in right now. That was ages ago, of course."

"Your father?" I asked, not really interested. I glanced down at my notes a few times but he did not appear to notice that I was busy trying to write.

"This was my father's diner before I took it over. Dad was the first person Dex's old man met when he came to Pearl Valley. Old Professor Blake was on his way up to Gates that day and he came in and asked him if there was a good hotel in the area. We didn't have a hotel in town back then. Still don't. Anyway, Dad told him about this friend of his who had a house for rent. He got around to taking a look at it later that day and wound up buying the place. That's where Dex Jr. grew up and where he lives today."

There seemed to be no point in trying to get any work done. The man appeared determined to keep talking.

"By the way, is there some special event going on today? I took a walk around town and except for a few children playing some sort of game on somebody's lawn, I didn't see a soul."

"No, nothing's going on. Nothing out of the ordinary, I mean. That's just the way it is here. Things get a little busier around nightfall, but not much."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I was hoping to talk to a few of your townspeople, get to know Pearl Valley for the piece I'm going to do on Blake."

"Well, I might be able to tell you a few things about our past. I grew up here, you know."

"Thanks, but I wasn't looking for local history. I was hoping to get a sense of what it's like to live here."

"You might want to mention the twins."

"Twins? What twins?"

"You can't spend any time here without running into them, twins I mean. We must be the capitol of the whole damned world when it comes to twins. It's like an epidemic or something. My wife and I never had twins, but then she's not from around here. Seems only Pearl Valley gals catch that particular bug."

He laughed and sat down across from me. It didn't look as if I'd be getting the coffee I ordered anytime soon.

"Well, I only saw those few children on my way back here."

"Doesn't surprise me. Most local kids are solemn little things, all wrapped up in themselves. You won't see many of them running around getting into mischief like most kids. Blake's wife had twins, you know, a year or so after they were married. Boy and a girl. Fraternal twins, like all the others. No identical twins I know of in Pearl Valley. Karen, that's Dex's wife, went to school with him at Pearl Valley High, then over at Gates College. That's where they met. Come over to my house sometime if you want to see kids making all kinds of a racket. No twins there."

"I guess I'll have to pass on that coffee. I'm due at Blake's by noon. How far is the house?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes on foot, a few minutes by car."

"I'm parked outside."

"Then go north, straight up Center Street until you get to Wesley. Take a left there. His place is the third house from the corner on the right-hand side, an old brick split level with dormer windows."

I stood up and the man followed me to the door.

"It was really a thrill meeting you, Mr. Riggs. Come by again sometime. What this place lacks in style we try to make up for with our coffee. Best in the state."

We shook hands.

"You be sure to tell him Wayne over at the diner says hello."

"I will."

Blake's doorbell went off somewhere deep within the big house and moments later a woman came to the front door. She appeared to be in her sixties, still attractive, with an athletic figure and striking hazel eyes. She smiled and held out her hand.

"Welcome, Mr. Riggs. I'm Karen Blake. Won't you come in?"

She led me through a small foyer to a door at the end of a hallway. A faint odor of peppermint was everywhere.

She knocked on the door twice and waited.

"Dex?"

A peculiar sound came from inside the room. It was a strangely nasal, rasping voice reciting something in a language that sounded like a stream of consonants.

"You must forgive my husband, Mr. Riggs. He forgets about everything else when he's working."

She knocked again and opened the door a crack to peer inside.

"Mr. Riggs is here, sweetheart."

The sound abruptly ceased, and Dexter Blake Jr. came to the door. He's a stocky, smallish man with curly graying hair and hazel eyes very like his wife's. We shook hands and he invited me into his den.

"Sorry I wasn't at the door to greet you, Mr. Riggs."

"Please, call me Ed."

"I'm working on a revision of my book on the Memory Songs, Ed, and, well, the truth is that even though I've read them all countless times I still find them mesmerizing and soothing, especially when I listen to them recited in the language of the Beings."

It was hard to believe that anyone could find the noise I'd heard through the door soothing.

"Give me a moment to put a few things away. We can sit on the veranda while Karen prepares lunch."

"Thanks, but that's certainly not necessary."

"Speak for yourself, Ed. I've been working all morning and I'm famished. Besides, Karen makes the most wonderful crab salad. You really ought not to miss it."

"Very well, then. Thank you."

He made a few notes on his tablet and put away the tiny glass Info-wafers he had been listening to. The room was like most rooms of its kind, decorated with photos and assorted bric-a-brac. But this was Dexter Blake Jr.'s den, so there were a lot of things you would never find in any other den on Earth. A Presidential medal hung on one of the walls, as did dozens of images of Blake and Arjun Ranganathan on the surface of Mars and inside Chen Cave. One image in particular caught my attention and I asked him about it. It was a photo of beautiful woman standing next to a tiny man in a white lab coat. I recognized the man immediately as Pedro Gomez, the great South American scientist. I had done a story about him when he won his second Nobel Prize.

"That's my mother and Dr. Gomez."

"They worked together?"

"Well, I don't know that I'd say that. She was his lab assistant at the Gates Institute. Mother always said that Dr. Gomez worked alone no matter how many people he had around him."

"Did you ever get to meet him?"

"Oh, no. He'd gone back to Peru for good by the time I came along. Mother never saw him again after that."

Dr. Gomez, as the whole world knows, did his last and many believe his greatest work during those final years in South America. The work that won him a second Nobel Prize has saved millions of lives in the decades since his untimely death.

Blake had a collection of small crystal polyhedrons on a shelf by his desk. I picked one up and saw that it had a cluster of asymmetrical shapes suspended within its crystalline depths. It felt oddly lightweight for a piece of crystal.

"What is this?"

"That's a replica of something found on Mars during Liberty's mission."

"Looks like a paperweight. Who's the artist?"

"I am. And the crystal is certainly much more than a paperweight, Ed. Crystals like the one you're holding were central to the life and culture of the Beings."

"This little thing?"

"That's just a replica. The originals came in many sizes and served all sorts of purposes. The larger crystals powered the Beings' technology, and there's good reason to believe that the smaller ones were used as data repositories of a sort. Some possessed healing powers, while others were used for meditative purposes."

"That all sounds rather fantastic."

"To you it may, but to the last few doomed generations of Beings the polyhedrons helped to sustain life."

I examined the thing more closely. It appeared to change as I looked into it and suddenly became warm and slightly luminescent. Its polished surface started alternating between green luminescence and gray opacity. The shapes within it changed in a way that was almost hypnotic and I felt myself growing drowsy as I followed the changing internal patterns.

"It's reacting to you, Ed."

"Reacting? You mean this thing is alive?"

"Oh, no, no. It's certainly not alive in the usual sense, but you are, of course, and that's what the crystal is reacting to. I had a devil of a time getting my hands on the Martian minerals required to create it."

"I see. These things were a kind of Martian holovision?"

"I don't think the Beings would have had much use for our Holovision or this new thing, this Total Immersion contraption people have in their homes nowadays. The crystals were not mere distractions. You must remember, Ed, that the Beings faced extinction, and knew it. They retreated into their planet's interior because it was their only means of survival. Each new generation grew smaller, weaker, until finally, well, you are well aware of the outcome. No, Ed, they would have had no use for anything as trivial as Holovision. Everything in their culture served a vital purpose, including the crystal polyhedrons."

I looked again into the depths of the small crystal. It continued to pulse and glow. As I put it back on the shelf, I felt a sudden stinging pain.

"Damn!"

"Are you alright?"

There was a speck of blood on my thumb.

"It's nothing. I must have cut myself on the infernal thing."

"Its edges are rather sharp. I'm sorry. I should have warned you."

Blake looked at me with an odd half-smile.

"I have a first aid kit somewhere around here."

"Don't trouble yourself. I'm fine."

I wiped away the spot of blood with a handkerchief.

"About these crystals and the Beings, how can you know any of what you've just told me? I mean, they left nothing behind to tell us about themselves."

"But that's not true, Ed. It's all in the Memory Songs, if you know how to read them properly. That's one of the things I'm hoping to accomplish with this new edition of my book. I want to instruct people on the virtues of the Beings and their way of life. And I'm not the only one trying to do that, I assure you. There are others, people who understand what the Memory Songs can teach us and who are using them as an instrument for bringing about profound change. Pearl Valley itself has been transformed over the past decade. Children here are taught about the Memory Songs from infancy. My sister out West has formed a community devoted to the study of the Songs and she's helping others in her part of the country to do the same. Someday there will be hundreds of such communities all over the United States and the world. In time there will be thousands, and when that occurs nothing will be able to prevent what is going to happen. Change is coming, Ed. It will wash over this planet like a tidal wave, sweeping away all the old ways and making things better for everyone."

His voice had risen as he spoke and his bright hazel eyes glowed with evangelical fervor.

"Change things? How? And what if some of us don't want change? What if some of us like things as they are?"

Before he could answer, his wife walked in and announced lunch. She glanced at Blake with concern.

"Oh, my goodness. Mr. Riggs, has Dex been preaching again?" She gave him a stern, reproachful look. "Why don't you allow our guest to leave Mars for a moment and enjoy lunch out on the veranda?"

Blake, looking chastened, smiled at his wife and nodded.

"You're right, dear. Sorry, Ed. I do get a little carried away sometimes. Please forgive me. You can do your interview as we enjoy our lunch. After that, I'm afraid I must say goodbye and get ready for our trip." Blake and his wife stood on their front porch and waved goodbye as I pulled out of their driveway onto Wesley Street. The interview had been disappointing. It was mostly a recap of Blake's days at the Space Agency, the Liberty mission, and a brief discussion of his two books. Whenever I tried to dig deeper into what he had meant by the Martian crystals bringing about change, his wife would see to it the subject was quickly dropped.

The Info-wafer in my pocket held about sixty minutes of material. After some editing, it would make an adequate piece for which I would be handsomely paid. But I was convinced I had stumbled onto something much more important than an interview with an aging astronaut. I wanted to know more, much more, about how the ancient Memory Songs bring about change in a twenty-second century world?

Blake had mentioned a sister out West somewhere. How far had she gone in setting up the communities he spoke of? My contacts at the Universal Broadcasting Network would have little trouble tracking her down. My agent could then reach out to her and set up an interview. A piece on a Martian cult founded by a former astronaut was news, and the reporter in me wanted to be the one to break the story.

Blake's sister might be willing to share information about the change he had spoken of. And if she wasn't, then I would seek out others in her community. Sooner or later I'd find a talkative weak link and I'd have my story.

The man who had waited on me earlier was still behind the counter when I walked into the Pearl Valley Café.

"Wayne, right?"

"Yes sir, Mr. Riggs."

"How about a cup of your wonderful coffee, Wayne?"

"Sure thing. How did your talk with Dex go? "

"Fine."

I moved to a nearby booth, took out my tablet and began jotting down some notes. It was only then, as I tried describing the sounds I had heard through the door of Blake's den, that I realized that the children I encountered on my walk around Pearl Valley had been reciting something in the language of the Beings. I had no doubt that the unseen thing cradled in their hands was a Martian crystal. The realization had a chilling effect on me and I stopped taking notes. Pearl Valley changed for me in that instant. The quaint, typically American town I thought I had driven into only hours before was an illusion, and I wanted nothing more to do with the strange reality that had taken its place. The noisy, crowded, and all-too-human chaos of New York City suddenly seemed like a perfect place to be.

Wayne brought my coffee.

"Would you please fill your largest container with more coffee to go?"

"Nothing to eat?"

"No. Just coffee."

"I've got a thermos I can fill up for you. It will keep the coffee piping hot for hours."

"Wonderful, Wayne. Thank you."

"You okay, Mr. Riggs? You look a little green around the gills."

"I'm afraid I'm feeling a bit under the weather."

The flu-like symptoms had come on suddenly, while I was still at Blake's. I felt feverish and a headache the size of Mount Rushmore was slowly taking hold of me.

"How about some of those new-type aspirin? I've got a box of them in the back. They say those pills can make just about anything go away, at least for a little while."

"That sounds like a very good idea."

"I'll put a dozen or so in a bottle and fill up that thermos for you."

"How much do I owe you?"

"Not a cent, Mr. Riggs. It's not often we get a celebrity stopping by. Truth be told, it's not all that often we get much of anybody stopping by here. Fact is, I'm thinking of closing up the place. I drive forty miles to get here and forty miles back to our house in Blue Falls. That's where I live, me and the wife and our three kids. My grandfather opened this café and my dad kept it going all his life. I helped out here until I went off to school in Ohio. I was going to stay on there after I met Stella, my wife, but when my father got sick, I was forced to come back and help out, keep the diner open for my mother's sake. Pearl Valley was still a good place to run a business back then, so I stayed on. Quit a good job in Ohio and moved the family to Blue Falls. I never tried to get a house here, though. The wife just doesn't care for Pearl Valley. Never has. The place spooks her for some reason. Couldn't imagine why back then, twenty years ago, but now I think she might have had a point. The children around here for one thing, all twins, like I told you before. They never seem to be out and about like other kids. Strangest thing you've ever seen. The parents aren't much better. Town's changed so much since my father ran the diner that, well, it's just not worth trying to keep a restaurant open in a town full of hermits. That's what my wife says. No, sir, it's just not worth it anymore. "

"How about that aspirin?"

"Oh, sure. Sorry, Mr. Riggs. I know I tend to carry on, probably because there's never a soul around to talk to anymore."

Wayne was right about the pills. Twenty minutes after I swallowed two of them the headache was gone and I was feeling well enough to dictate some mail as I drove home.

"Begin dictation," I said, and a tiny amber light came to life on the dashboard.

"Please select format and destination" a man's soft voice said. It had been a woman's voice when I first got the car. It had sounded eerily like my late wife, so I called the Solarcar Corporation and asked that it be changed. The support person claimed that such a change was impossible. I gave them my name and asked them again to change the voice for me. A week later, after a brief visit to a dealership, a new voice responded to all my commands. I called him "Sam," after an alcoholic weatherman I'd worked with in my early days in Holovision. When he was not on the air, Sam had spoken in the same gentle voice that now came from my car's speakers.

"Thank you, Sam. Send to Donald Stevens at Universal Broadcasting Network, Research Division. His address is on file. Begin note: Don, I need information on Dexter Blake Jr.'s sister. Her address and a biographical summary will do. Also, please send along a few pages on contemporary religious movements and a summary of what is known about the Martian Memory Songs. Please forward to me asap. End note.

"New note: to Josh Crittenden, address in my contacts file. Begin note: Josh, will forward name and address of Dexter Blake Jr.'s sister to you later. Please do what you can to arrange an interview with her at her earliest convenience. Sometime next week would be fine. Just say I want more info on her brother for my article. Stuff on their childhood, family, that sort of thing. I'll do the rest. End note."

The pills had started to wear off and the flu-like symptoms were returning. It would be at least another forty minutes before I got to my place in New York, so I pulled over to the side of the road and reached for the bottle of pills Wayne had given me. I washed down two of them with coffee, then sat back with my eyes closed, waiting for the medication to take effect. I must have dozed off because after a while I was jolted awake by a vivid dream of strange twilit skies above a vast desert landscape and the face of a child with enormous dark eyes.

Dexter Blake Jr.

April 2125

They watched Riggs back out of the driveway onto Wesley Street. His sleek red Solarcar convertible sped toward the corner, turned right, and was gone.

"He seems nice, don't you think, Dex?"

"A trifle full of himself, but, yes, a nice enough fellow."

"What happened to his hand?"

"He picked up a drnn."

"Oh, no. Did it …?"

"Yes. The drnn reacted to him almost immediately. Sort of a waste, I mean given his age."

"He's not that old. And he's certainly very good-looking. He might still find a young wife and start a family."

"I believe he was married before. His wife was killed in some sort of accident."

"Did they have children?"

"No. I don't believe so."

"I suppose he'll start having the dreams now."

"No doubt of that. How they affect him is another matter. It's always hard to tell with an outsider. Everyone reacts differently. It would be wonderful to have someone like Riggs as part of the community, carrying the message to others. There's probably not a soul in this country who doesn't know who he is."

"You seemed to be making quite an effort to win him over, dear."

"That was a mistake, I know. It's never wise to say too much to outsiders, but there he was, Edward Peter Riggs himself, in my den, and I, well, I suppose the temptation was too great to resist. I'm glad you stepped in when you did."

"Shall we go inside now, Dex? We still have some packing to do."

"In a minute. Do you know if my sister sent out the new shipment of drnn yet?"

"I spoke to Vera last night. Twenty should be waiting for us at each stop. She says the communities in China, Brazil, India, and Australia have all done a wonderful job of distributing the ones they received."

"That's good news. We're growing so quickly, dear. Remember when it was just a few families making them in their basements?"

"My goodness, yes. Those were difficult times."

"We've come very far in short time. And now, in a matter of weeks, a new ship will land on ryyuk and begin the resurrection."

"I'm afraid I still don't understand all of it, Dex, especially how so many from the community managed to become part of this new mission."

"It's really not so mysterious. The community grew, that's all. Some made a career of the Space Agency and over the years they brought others onboard. A few managed to secure appointments to Agency planning committees. Our people in the House and Senate pushed for funding and, well, here we are, very near the start of something we've dreamed about since the beginning."

"But how will they ever bring about the resurrection once they return to ryyuk?"

"The most important part of the work was done millions of years ago. All the massive crystal drnn are already in place, huge creations that are described in the Memory Songs, if you know how to interpret them. Thedrnn are spaced at precise distances around ryyuk's core . The device we're sending on the new spacecraft is designed to activate the first of these ancient drnn. The second one will come to life in response to the first and so on until all seventy-one are working and forming a giant ring of sorts that will restore the planet's magnetic field. As far as any outsider knows, the triggering device is an experiment sent there to measure the mineral content of the planet's interior."

"Then what happens?"

"Well, dear, we can't be absolutely certain, but in a year's time, possibly longer, with a powerful magnetic field in place, ryyuk will begin the process of resurrecting itself. Some things will happen quite naturally, others will require some additional intervention on our part, but in the end we're confident that the shallow seas will return and with them an atmosphere and some forms of vegetation. It's all in the Memory Songs. A few translators, outsiders of course, see the whole notion of ryyuk's rebirth as some sort of mythic tale, desperate wishful thinking on the part of a dying race, but they could not be more wrong."

"I've never been able to understand why the people of ryuuk couldn't save themselves."

"I've asked myself that same question a thousand times, Karen, and I'm not sure I have an answer. I suspect they simply ran out of time. So very few of them remained near the end, most probably too weak or ill to contribute much. It may have taken all they had left to construct the last of the massive drnn. Perhaps the collective will that nurtured and motivated them for thousands of centuries failed them at the end. And, of course, without that collective will and a network of shared memory, a true community could no longer exist. And, of course, where there is no community, no interconnection of memory, there can be nothing. That simple truth is everywhere in the Memory Songs."

"It must have been awful, racing against time to build those things, only to fail when they were so close."

"They didn't fail, Karen, not really. It's true they never managed to save ryukk or themselves, but not everything was lost. All that they were as a race, their collective memory, can be passed along by the substance within the sacred vials. And now we have the drynn as a means of delivering that substance. Together, they'll bring about a new beginning for the race. It's up to us to finish what they started, and soon we'll do exactly that. And then, one day, our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be able to make the long journey back home."

She smiled and looked up at Blake with bright hazel eyes. He put his arm around her waist and together they walked back into the house.

THE END

Bio: I am a librarian who lives and works in New York's Hudson Valley. My science fiction novella, The Fifth Leland Hardesty, appeared in the June 2020 issue of The Scarlet Leaf Review.

E-mail: A.J. Padilla

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