DEATH MASK

The first woman on Mars lay chained to a bed, her wrists and ankles bound securely by titanium-laced shackles. She had laid there, unconscious, for more than thirty-six hours. Her whitish hair was an ashen shade of gray. Her weathered face had been exposed to the harshest atmospheric conditions to come out of the Red Planet. White bandages concealed the gaping wound from which her right eye had been torn.

“This can't be the same woman. How could anyone change so much in only six years?”

“Willow—she murdered a hundred and nine men and women. She left the ship an absolute bloodbath inside. You're ratings just as good as mine, but I really wish they hadn't partnered me with a sentimentalist. She ever breaks free of those restraints, you better be ready to put her down like a rabid dog.”

“I'm as ready to do my job as you are, Cartwight.”

“She spent five years, alone on a planet no better than a cold, frozen desert. I think that would be enough to change anybody.”

“None of the rest of the crew were affected like that.”

“Well, we don't know that for sure. As soon as the Invictus made planet fall she went into complete radio silence. She could have crashed for all we knew. What happened to her could have happened to the rest of the crew, too—we have no way of knowing.

“What we do know is that to fly a ship of that size takes at least ten crew members. How the hell could she have single-handedly both flown and landed the ship?”

“That's not what I'm more concerned about. When she stepped off of that ship, why—with the eyes of the whole world upon her, why was tearing her eye out the first thing she did? Do you realize how many millions of kids there were that were watching that? How many of those kids is that going to scar for life?”

“We're here at Sirius TV, Brightest Star of the Television Firmament. And our guest here today is Helene Hecatè, best-selling author of The Anvil of Ares. It's great to have you.”

“It's great to be here, Sonia.”

“So tell us what The Anvil of Ares is all about.”

“It's the fictional history of the Drackuw—the native-born, humanoid inhabitants of Mars, It's also the story of the God they worshiped, and how in the end, their worship of this God led to a planet-wide conflagration of suicidal self-destruction.”

“But the biggest news is that you've been accepted for the Ares Expedition. You're not just writing about Mars—you're going to be going there! And that's just incredible! What we're all dying to know is why were you chosen? Your accomplishments don't run in the hard sciences. Yet, you're being welcomed by all these scientists, biologists, computer specialists...”

“Science and technology can make a Dream come—but they aren't the Dream, itself. We're going to going to be living on Mars for five straight years. We're going to need more than reruns of Star Trek and Star Wars to keep ourselves from killing each other.”

“Helene—I know this next question will be hard for you...”

“Yes, the story is true. I have a prosthetic eye. It replaces the one stabbed out by one of my crazed fans. It enables me to see in the infra-red and ultra-violet spectrums. It's going to come in handy when we board The Invictus, as I'll be able to access the computer systems directly.

“But it can really lead to really overwhelming sensory overload. I need to really control the sensory input, and I don't want to wear a patch. By now I'm completely used to combing my hair over the right side of my face.”

“And it is a style that fits you to a 'T'. A lot of women and young girls are beginning to imitate you.”

Captain Daniel Dreyfus' voice echoed over the comlinks. “She did what? Why didn't she wait? I was supposed to be the first man on Mars.”

“Well, you'll still be able to be the first man on Mars. Just not the first person.” Through her face plate, Marjorie Dixon's, expression was a mix of frustrated helplessness and regret. Helene Hecatè had moved quickly and unexpectedly. There had been a computer malfunction, just before they were about to venture to the Martian surface for the first time and the Captain had gone to see about.

“I don't believe this! Is this going to get back to Earth? We can still salvage this—can't we?”

“Captain—Dan—nobody had the slightest idea she was going to try this.”

“Something's been starting to interfere interfere with our radio telemetry. Even if I'd set foot on the ground it might not even have gone through. I thought at least she'd wait until I got back from fixing it the transmitter.”

“Well, she's still down there. You can see her from here.”

“How'd she get down there? We didn't employ the elevator yet.”

“She shimmied down the scaffolding.”

“Jesus Christ, Almighty! She's pulled a Jacob.”

“Sir?”

“Book of Genesis, chapter thirty-seven. Jacob tricks his blind father into giving him the blessing, instead of his brother Esau. 'Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing.' When I get my hands on her...”

“Fortunately, I don't think anything of this snafu is going to get back to Earth.”

“What am I supposed to do now? I worked for three months on that speech. I thought she was going to write my speech and...and...she must've planned this from the very beginning! She's had something prepared from the very start and she was going to make damn sure she was the one who delivered it!”

Captain Dreyfus was furious. Electronic communication with the Earth had completely broken down in the ensuing three months.. Radio communication on Mars was untouched, however, and besides being completely incommunicado with Earth, the colony was functioning well. Records were being impeccably kept for the time when the crew of the Invictus finally returned home. For now, the laboratories, habitat modules and hangers of Mars Town continued to speard out over the Acidalium Planitia

“Did that bitch do what I think she did? Please give me some good news.”

“Rover Number Nine and Miss Hecatè are both gone. She won't be hard to find. Tracks lead out due east.”

“Good—fire up Number Seven, Miss Dixon.”

There was a sudden beep from the comlinks. “No can do, Captain.” It was Thomlinson, who saw to the maintenance of the rovers.

“Something's interfering with the electronics of the rovers. I think I can fix it, but it's going to take time. Won't matter, though. Somehow she's drained most of our fuel tanks. Even fixed, the rovers aren't going anywhere until we synthesize more fuel.”

“How long before we can get going?”

“It'll take a week before we can cannibalize the electronics. Jackson says we can have the hydroponics up and running. We'll have more fuel synthesized two weeks ahead of schedule.”

“A week then. She's gone too far, this time. I want double shifts—no, triple shifts on the tanks. If she's going where I think she is, we're going to need a whole lot of fuel. We haven't taken a rover out further than a hundred miles—now we're going to have to. I want those rovers ready in five days. And when I catch up to her, I will rip the goddamned tanks off her bank.”

“Sir, you can't do that. You don't have authority to do a court-martial.”

“There's not going to be any trial. If you—any of you—have any complaints, just give Earth a call.”

In the end Captain Dreyfus had to be satisfied with one solitary rover. Cannibalizing the other units went easier that expected, and he ordered modifications to be made, greatly enlarging the storage space. This was filled by an exorbitant number of fuel tanks, but not all of them contained rover fuel. Marjorie knew these to contain extremely volatile chemical compounds. She wondered just what Dreyfus was planning, and why he thought so much explosives would be necessary. Was the Captain planning to fight a war—and against one solitary woman?

She had gotten to know Helene to some degree. The woman was incredibly inventive, creative, and even extremely entertaining. She definitely lightened the mood at Mars Town base. She'd definitely enjoyed taking part of some of Helene's dramatic productions. She'd done a fair amount of acting in High School and was glad of this opportunity to employ her skills after a few years postponement. In the end, Science was what she was married to—but drama had always been her first love.

She found herself fascinated by the mythology of Helene's fictional Drackuw. The God they worshiped, which they called Awkeayy, had once been a celestial body that lay between Mars and Jupiter—a planet that had once exploded, leaving the asteroids in its wake.

But Awkeayy had not been a planet but an unquantifiable anomaly. The more she heard her descriptions, the more it sounded to her that Helene was talking about...a black hole! Could such a thing actually have existed in the solar system millions of years ago? The gravity would have torn everything apart—wouldn't it have?

She had to remind herself that this was all fiction, no matter how intriguing it all sounded.

Well, in this goddamned fiction, these goddamned fictional Drackuw worshiped a goddamned fictional God called Awkeayy, who was a goddamned fictional black hole!!!

The pyramid was to her immediate left. A five sided structure, it loomed close to three quarters of a mile high. Its sheer massiveness intimidated her and she wanted to shrink inside herself and hide. It felt like an unrelenting weight bearing down relentlessly upon her. She found it difficult to breathe. If the Captain was affected by any of this he gave no sign.

The Pyramid's lines were too sharp to be natural.. Photos taken from above did not convey the horror of the undiluted reality.

Miles in the distance she glimpsed the City—a ruined cluster of colossal monoliths.

And to the far right of it...

The Face. Two miles long. A mile wide. Half a mile high. A human face looking up into the Martian sky. She couldn't doubt any more. All she'd been told of 'tricks of light and shadow' were exposed for the lies they'd always been.

“I should have followed my instinct and landed The Invictus here. Could have taken care of all this nonsense right from the beginning. I should have known...” Captain Dreyfus' determination showed through his face plate.

Rover Number 9 was parked several hundred feet from the Mesa of the Face. Marjorie looked closely. She could make out what looked like a miniature laboratory. In minutes the rover had drawn near. She followed Captain Dreyfus out and once more set her booted feet on red Martian sand.

The lab was a small one, but Marjorie wondered where some of its equipage had come from. It must have been taken from the labs, but how had Helene gotten access to it? She wasn't a scientist, but a storyteller. Even if she had stolen all these supplies and equipment, she would have had no idea what to do with them all.

Dreyfus cursed under his breath. He was looking at a beaker full of the red Martian sand. “She damn well did it. But where the hell is she?”

“I'm right around you.”

The voice was cold as ice and echoed sepulchrally. She heard it through her face plate and not over the comlink.

Marjorie whipped around. Helene Hecatè stood before her. Gone was the lustrous black hair. In its place was a dead-white and gray mane that had been brushed away from the glistering prosthetic eye. But the natural eye which shocked her most. No longer full of ink-colored depths, it glared like the dead white pitiless eyes of a ghost.

She walked freely, no longer contained and protected by the bulky pressure suit, her clothes the kind worn only indoors in the habitat modules. She endured the freezing temperature, and the thin, unbreathable carbon dioxide atmosphere, and showed no signs of distress.

She had come here, seemingly out of nowhere. How had she crossed the intervening space from the Face without being detected?

She stooped down and picked up a handful of the scarlet sand. “Do you know what I found when I came out here? What do you think this is?”

The change in Helene Hecatè left Captain Dreyfus unmoved. “Iron oxide,” he replied , evenly. “Nothing special about it. We've known that for years. Just dead minerals.”

She shook her head. “Organic iron oxide. Remnant of the living carapaces of the Drackuw. All dead. Mars is the Anvil of Ares., His storms of a million centuries are the hammers which have crushed these skeletons to powder. I never saw what they truly were. More like insects than anything else. They reached out to me and I saw only men and women like myself—I saw nothing but the shape of their souls. Now it's their bodies I have seen.” She knelt down and reverently poured out the handful of dust upon the ground.

Captain Dreyfus held out the pistol. “Helen Hecatè , you're under arrest for treason and I'm empowered to carry out a sentence of death.”

Marjorie was aghast. “What treason, Dan? You can't do that—even if it's true, she still has the right to trial.”

“Haven't you noticed we're completely cut off from Earth? That leaves me in charge. I'm the Captain and my word is law. Forget about unauthorized use of vehicles, or theft of Mission property. You know what she's done here? This discovery of hers completely upsets all our science. No life on other worlds. Earth's the only world on which life has appeared—ever! This?” He gestured toward the Face, “Just a naturally formed mesa, which only vaguely looks like a human face. And after I blow it up, it won't even look like that.”

“No—you can't do that. This changes everything and people deserve to know.”

Dreyfus whipped the gun around. A single bullet pierced Marhorie Dixon's helmet. There was an almost explosive hiss of escaping oxygen.

“Grow up, Marjorie.”

He whipped the gun around and aimed it at Helene who remained unmoving.

“Figured you'd be the one to lead us here. Your Drackuw sounded like a perfect match for this big ol' Face. But this,” he kicked aside the red dust with his foot, “they were just some kind of insect, all along? Why would they make a human face?”

“It's a Death Mask. Not of them—but of us. Do you know the secret of their God? Of Awkeayy? Awkeayy is the fusion of opposites. Awkeayy is what happens when the Irresistable Force meets the immovable Object. The Irrisistable Force is the Immovable Object. It is a Cosmic Centrifuge which separates and polarizes all things. And this became their God. They warred and destroyed themselves. Armies clashed and there were no survivors—there could not be.

“But when all the believers in a God perish, that God can no more be alive. And so it was with Awkeayy.

“But the death of a God is not like the death of a man. Before they died, the Drackuw created the Face, for they knew our face. They knew we would come and Awkeayy would live again. He has become my God and I shall bring him to the Earth, and all Earthmen and Earthwomen shall rise up in clashing armies and harvest their own annihilation.”

“Not going to happen. We had no idea where your aliens would be. We needed someone to lead us to them. Do you think the guy who jammed his knife in your eye was was just a crazy fan? We planned it all. We replaced your eye. That amplified your ability to receive the messages you received, messages that became The Anvil of Ares.”

“And did you not wonder why the Invictus, lost its ability to communicate with Earth? I learned to use that power you gave me. I control the entire ship. Did you think I disabled your rovers by hand? I controlled all their electronics and all their mechanisms.”

“Do you think you've won?” Captain Dreyfus snarled. “There's more to Humans than to your dirty, Drackuw insects. There's no way you can win?”

“Margorie Dixon was your second in command—yet without a single qualm you blew her brains out. The power of Awkeayy polarized you. Your love was turned to hate.”

Dreyfus pulled the trigger. Again and again.. The result was the same.

“I control all the machines on our ship—including your guns.” Her lips drew back in a vicious grimace. It was as if a sudden bolt of force left her eyes and the gun in Dreyfus' hand exloded. Exploding shards tore through his side. He collapsed and the light slowly went out of his eyes.

“An interesting challenge you've given me. Perhaps there is more to human beings than there were to the Drackuw. If so, then perhaps a remnant of you may survive, but only a remnant. Perhaps we shall see what we shall see.”