Red Mars(217)

At 4:30 alarms went off all over the city. The tent had been broached, apparently catastrophically, because a sudden wind whipped west through the streets, and pressure sirens went off in every building. The electricity went off, and just that quick it went from a town to a broken shell, full of running figures in walkers and helmets, all of them rushing about, crowding toward the gates, knocked down by gusts of wind or by each other. Windows popped out everywhere, the air was full of clear plastic shrapnel. Nadia, Maya, Ann, Simon and Yeli left the city building, and fought their way through crowds toward the east gate. There was a great crush of people around it because the lock was open, and some people were squeezing through; a deadly situation for anyone who fell underfoot, and if the lock were blocked in any way, it could turn deadly for everyone. And yet it all happened in silence, except for helmet intercoms and some background impacts. The first hundred were tuned to their old band, and over the static and exterior noises Frank’s voice came on. “I’m at the east gate now. Get out of the crush so I can find you.” His voice was low, businesslike. “Hurry up, there’s something happening outside the lock.”

They worked their way out of the crowd, and saw Frank just inside the wall, waving a hand overhead. “Come on,” the distant figure said in their ears. “Don’t be such sheep, there’s no reason to join the toothpaste when the tent’s lost its integrity, we can cut through anywhere we want. Let’s go straight for the planes.”

“I told you,” Maya began, but Frank cut her off: “Shut up, Maya, we couldn’t leave until something like this happened, remember?”

It was near sunset now, the sun pouring through a gap between Pavonis and the dust cloud, illuminating the clouds from below in a garish display of violent Martian tones, casting a hellish light over the milling scene. And now figures in camouflaged uniforms were pouring in through rents in the tent. There were big spaceport shuttle buses parked outside, with more troops emerging from them.

Sax appeared out of an alley. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get to the planes,” he said.

A figure in walker and helmet appeared out of the murk. “Come on,” it said on their band. “Follow me.”

They stared at this stranger. “Who are you?” Frank demanded.

“Follow me!” The stranger was a small man, and behind his face-plate they could see a bright ferocious grin. Brown thin face. The man took off into an alley leading to the medina, and Maya was the first to follow. Helmeted people ran everywhere; those without helmets were sprawled on the ground, dead or dying. They could hear sirens through their helmets, very faint and attenuated, and there were soundlike vibrations underfoot, seismic booms of some kind; but other than that all the hectic activity occurred in silence, broken only by the sounds of their own breathing, and their voices in each other’s ears, “Where to?” “Sax are you there?” “He went down that one,” and so forth, a strangely intimate conversation, given the dusky chaos they ran through. Looking around Nadia almost kicked the body of a dead cat, lying in the streetgrass as if asleep.

The man they were following appeared to be humming a tune over their band, an absorbed little bum, bum, badum-dum dum— Peter’s theme from “Peter and the Wolf,” perhaps. He knew the streets of Cairo well, making turns in the medina’s tight warren without a moment’s pause for thought, and leading them to the city wall in less than ten minutes.

At the wall they peered through the warped tenting; outside in the murk, anonymous suited figures were running off alone or in groups of two or three, in a kind of Brownian dispersion onto the south Noctis rim. “Where’s Yeli?” Maya exclaimed suddenly.

No one knew.

Then Frank pointed. “Look!”

Down the road to the east, a number of rovers had appeared out of Noctis Labyrinthus. They were very fast cars of an unfamiliar shape, coming up out of the dusk without headlights.

“Who now?” Sax said. He turned to look at their guide for an answer, but the man was gone, disappeared back into the alleyways.

“Is this still the first hundred’s frequency?” a new voice said.

“Yes!” Frank replied. “Who is this?”

Maya cried, “Isn’t that Michel?”

“Good ear, Maya. Yes, it’s Michel. Look, we’re here to take you away if you want to go. It appears they are systematically eliminating any of the first hundred they can get their hands on. So we thought you would be willing to join us.”

“I think we are all ready to join you,” Frank said. “But how?”