Read Online In the Hall of the Martian King by John Barnes - Free Book Online
Authors: John Barnes
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dirtying the ice, preventing the albedo from rising too high. A wet, warm world began to come
back together on top of the sunken ruins of the old.
In the tenth Martian year of the Bombardment, water stood in small lakes on the hitherto dry bottom of the Boreal Ocean; in
the twentieth Martian year, the Boreal Ocean did not freeze over, and the first hurricanes blew. Just after the Bombardment,
when Ralph Smith, and the last remnants of the Grand Army of the League of Polities, battered the desperate Rubahy into submission
on Titan, the backup plan relied, in part, on submarines beneath the Martian seas. And when Ralph Smith’s grandson accepted
the imperium of the Second Empire, at Chrysepolis, the Imperial Sea Guard swore its loyalty to him on the docks there.
Earth has a worldwide ocean interrupted by a scattering of continents; Mars, a worldwide continent surrounding a small ocean,
with only two inland seas to help moderate the climate. Large parts of the planet broil and freeze, far from any moderating
water, the thinner atmosphere responds with much greater violence to the differences, the Coriolis force per kilometer of
north-south difference is about twice what it is on Earth, and the high-viscosity atmosphere delivers more of its force to
any exposed surface. Martian hurricados—savage spiral thunderstorms, fifty kilometers across— rip across the Martian desert,
their sticky almost-Mach-1 winds flinging gravel and mud. Waterspouts deposit whole lakes onto surrounding land. Double-length
seasons bake grass dry for prairie fires in summer, and bury the black land deep with blizzards in the winter.
Jak and Pikia could see all these things from the viewport of the warshuttle: violent tight swirls of hurricados, bouncing
and weaving ice clouds above waterspouts, streaks of black smoke from grass fires, big white feathers of blizzards.
Jak’s purse tingled again; he glanced down, mentally preparing to tell Pikia to cut it out, but it wasn’t from her. He slipped
on his goggles and earpieces.
Hel Faczel looked sour. “Hive Intel has won two concessions. The first is that two stringers for Hive Intel, Sibroillo Jinnaka
and Gweshira Byeloaibari, are accredited to join your party when you land. Reeb Waxajovna assured me that you would be less
than pleased. I hope you can come up with something clever to keep them sidetracked and harmless.”
That’s a forlorn hope,
Jak thought.
Oh, well, I tried to keep Sib out of things.
“They will shortly be joined by a regular Hive Intel agent. He’s low-level probationary, in his third year of probation—I
am trusting you to dak the implications—”
Most Hive bureaucracies either took new officers off probation, or fired them, within ninety days. Jak’s own probation had
been thirty days, and Dujuv’s less than two weeks.
“—and he is the Hive Intel open agent in place for the Harmless Zone. An agent’s prestige, in that organization, is much higher
if he is secret rather than open. Prestige also depends on the importance of the nation in which an agent operates. So Hive
Intel has bounced this heet as low as they can bounce him without bouncing him out. You’re getting a heet who has a knack
for antagonizing the powerful and for failing his superiors.
“He will be under your orders theoretically but you will not be able to punish or fire him, because his name is Clarbo Waynong.
That
Waynong family. He will arrive in a day or two—he had to meet with friends at the Patridiots Association expats banquet.”
Jak felt sick. The Patridiots were a reactionary student movement; it was the shorthand combination of patrician-patriot-idiot,
young men and women from the Hive’s traditional political families who favored the abolition of the Republic, the creation
of a hereditary aristocracy, and an enforced loyalty to a list of conventional ideals. They proudly described themselves as
“too loyal to be smart” and
back together on top of the sunken ruins of the old.
In the tenth Martian year of the Bombardment, water stood in small lakes on the hitherto dry bottom of the Boreal Ocean; in
the twentieth Martian year, the Boreal Ocean did not freeze over, and the first hurricanes blew. Just after the Bombardment,
when Ralph Smith, and the last remnants of the Grand Army of the League of Polities, battered the desperate Rubahy into submission
on Titan, the backup plan relied, in part, on submarines beneath the Martian seas. And when Ralph Smith’s grandson accepted
the imperium of the Second Empire, at Chrysepolis, the Imperial Sea Guard swore its loyalty to him on the docks there.
Earth has a worldwide ocean interrupted by a scattering of continents; Mars, a worldwide continent surrounding a small ocean,
with only two inland seas to help moderate the climate. Large parts of the planet broil and freeze, far from any moderating
water, the thinner atmosphere responds with much greater violence to the differences, the Coriolis force per kilometer of
north-south difference is about twice what it is on Earth, and the high-viscosity atmosphere delivers more of its force to
any exposed surface. Martian hurricados—savage spiral thunderstorms, fifty kilometers across— rip across the Martian desert,
their sticky almost-Mach-1 winds flinging gravel and mud. Waterspouts deposit whole lakes onto surrounding land. Double-length
seasons bake grass dry for prairie fires in summer, and bury the black land deep with blizzards in the winter.
Jak and Pikia could see all these things from the viewport of the warshuttle: violent tight swirls of hurricados, bouncing
and weaving ice clouds above waterspouts, streaks of black smoke from grass fires, big white feathers of blizzards.
Jak’s purse tingled again; he glanced down, mentally preparing to tell Pikia to cut it out, but it wasn’t from her. He slipped
on his goggles and earpieces.
Hel Faczel looked sour. “Hive Intel has won two concessions. The first is that two stringers for Hive Intel, Sibroillo Jinnaka
and Gweshira Byeloaibari, are accredited to join your party when you land. Reeb Waxajovna assured me that you would be less
than pleased. I hope you can come up with something clever to keep them sidetracked and harmless.”
That’s a forlorn hope,
Jak thought.
Oh, well, I tried to keep Sib out of things.
“They will shortly be joined by a regular Hive Intel agent. He’s low-level probationary, in his third year of probation—I
am trusting you to dak the implications—”
Most Hive bureaucracies either took new officers off probation, or fired them, within ninety days. Jak’s own probation had
been thirty days, and Dujuv’s less than two weeks.
“—and he is the Hive Intel open agent in place for the Harmless Zone. An agent’s prestige, in that organization, is much higher
if he is secret rather than open. Prestige also depends on the importance of the nation in which an agent operates. So Hive
Intel has bounced this heet as low as they can bounce him without bouncing him out. You’re getting a heet who has a knack
for antagonizing the powerful and for failing his superiors.
“He will be under your orders theoretically but you will not be able to punish or fire him, because his name is Clarbo Waynong.
That
Waynong family. He will arrive in a day or two—he had to meet with friends at the Patridiots Association expats banquet.”
Jak felt sick. The Patridiots were a reactionary student movement; it was the shorthand combination of patrician-patriot-idiot,
young men and women from the Hive’s traditional political families who favored the abolition of the Republic, the creation
of a hereditary aristocracy, and an enforced loyalty to a list of conventional ideals. They proudly described themselves as
“too loyal to be smart” and
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