“—and gentlemen.” It was the Director. His voice, usually rich and full and authoritarian, sounded shaky. “I have to announce,” he said, “there’s been a coup.”
There was a rush of conversation and shushing.
“President Martin has stepped down. A government statement says that his retirement has been caused by ill health. It’s no longer clear whether the Constitution remains in effect. The military has announced that Broadwell is taking over until they get things sorted out. Congress is reported to have approved the step.”
“A coup?” said Jason. “In the United States?”
“We’ll keep you informed as the situation warrants.” The Director seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Our only course is to recognize that we’re two hundred million miles away, and we should simply concentrate on doing our jobs. Thank you for your attention.”
“They can’t do that,” stammered Murray. “They don’t have the authority.”
“Where’s the President?” asked Judy.
Sam was still pressing his earphones. “The Tampa White House. Apparently. Worldwide says he’s asking everybody to support Broadwell for the duration.”
Beyond the plasteel, the low red hills stretched to the horizon.
Nobody said much. It struck Warren that perhaps the void between the worlds, black and deep and empty, could twist reality, could spirit away the mundane and insinuate shadows and phantoms. This Broadwell, for example. Warren had never heard of him. And now he was running the country?
Judy shook it away, as if she too sensed that the environment invited illusion. She smiled at Warren, suggesting it would all be okay.
The pyramid and the pyramid tablet had been set side by side on a work table. She sat down in front of them. She looked first at the tablet, on which the crocodilian Martian lifted the glowing pyramid, its head bowed. And then at the pyramid itself, cool and remote. But something was different about the pyramid. “Warren,” she said, “look at this.”
Warren looked. “It’s redder than it was.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Now that was unsettling. “O god of the pyramid,” she said. “I’d be delighted if you’d speak to us.”
Later, Warren would recall with a smile that it wasn’t exactly a formulation to conjure up other-worldly powers. But the lights dimmed and the pyramid brightened. And a quivering singsong cacophony erupted inside the dome.
The voice, if indeed it was a voice, was pitched high. Warren glanced up at the speakers, but Sam shook his head. The sound wasn’t coming from them.
“The pyramid.” Judy almost fell out of her chair getting away from it. The others circled the table, but kept a discreet distance.
“Why don’t we button up?” suggested Abu Hassam. Abu’s background was medical—he was a physician—but his specialty was math. He’d worked with Murray’s group on the translation.
Sam closed the shields, which shut off the sunlight, and turned off the lamps. Warren stared at the pyramid, stared into the pyramid. Deep in its interior, a ruby glow pulsed in time to Warren’s own heartbeat.
The ventilators were loud.
“Is someone there?” asked Judy.
“Yes.” The voice sounded disembodied, spectral, inhuman. It chilled Warren.
“Who are you?” asked Murray.
“I’ve already told you my name.”
Warren glanced at Sam, who was shaking his head and muttering no no no.
Out in the hills, at the edge of vision, a buggy was crawling over the lip of a crater.
“You’re the god—” Her voice went off the top of the scale and she had to pull back and start again. “You’re the god of this place?”
“I’m the Administrator.”
“Where are you?” asked Patti hesitantly. “Are you located inside the pyramid?”
“The ‘pyramid’ is a communication device.” Warren could hear the apostrophes. “You are from the third planet.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” said Murray. “Are you alive?”
“Define the term. My grasp of your language is tenuous. I don’t even know its name.”
“English,” said Charlie Kepper, an archeologist who had done most of his previous digging around North American Native mounds.
“Keep it simple,” said Patti. “Are you aware of your own existence?”
It chuckled. “How would you reply if I asked you that question?”
“Okay,” said Murray. “You said you’re the Administrator. What do you administrate?”
“Mostly transportation among the five cities. I had other responsibilities as well. But nothing demanding.”
“What five cities? There are no cities out there.”
“Well, of course you can’t see them. How did you people manage to cross the void from the third world?”
“The cities are buried,” said Eddie.
“Very good. I always thought the monkeys—do I have the right word?—had possibilities.”
That stunned everybody. Patti broke the long silence that followed: “You’re familiar with Earth?”
“The third world? The People were familiar with it, and I through them.”
“The People?” said Patti. “You mean the Martians?”
“The People were not native to this world.”
Warren finally found his voice. “You’re talking about them in the past tense. Are they dead?”
“Extinct, yes. Dead.”
“How long ago?” asked Jill.
“This world has completed its orbit six thousand seventeen times since the last of them died. But they forgot who they were long before that.”
“And who were they?”
“A race of great accomplishment and much promise. But the very qualities that drove their energies betrayed them.”
“In what way?”
“They questioned everything. Disputed everything. And if they were thereby enabled to uncover the deepest secrets of the cosmos, they were also unable to achieve long-term political stability. Those who came here were refugees.”
“Where did they come from?”
“I am unable to think how I might show you. Let me say only that, if their home star were a hundred times closer, it would still not be visible, I suspect, to your unaided eyes.”
“And they came to Mars.” Murray looked out at the sterile landscape. “Why not Earth?”