Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

treacherous once more, and seek to destroy the republic once
and for all with Frane’s help?”
    Though I burned with sudden anger, I held my
tongue as Newton immediately replied, glancing at me, “I would hope
that would not be the case. But the timing is more than, as you
say, curious.”
    Haydn was abruptly looking at me. “You must
realize, Queen Clara, that even though you are half F’rar, this may
not be enough to stave off the F’rar appetite. Why have half a loaf
when you can have it all?”
    “I will not let it happen!” I shouted.
    Her voice still even, Haydn replied, “You may
have no say in it. There have been rumblings in the far provinces,
and already violence has broken out between F’rar and the other
clans. It is mainly incidental, because felines have good memories
and the F’rar have been treacherous twice in the last fifteen
years. I tried to heal the rift, your father tried to heal the
rift, and now you will try. The record has not been a good one.
These animosities go back centuries. The republic, we both know, is
the only hope of uniting Mars. But blood runs hotter than cold
intellect.”
    “I said I will not let it happen!”
    My own blood was running much hotter than my
intellect, and I spent the rest of the interview stewing in a
corner, clenching my paws into fists and listening to the mumbled
strategy behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father’s
empty chair begin to fill with vague smoky blue light, which
eventually coalesced into the shape of King Sebastian. Thomas, now
filled with purpose, leaned over my father and whispered into his
ear as he became ever more evident, an almost solid blue light.
    Again I shivered, and vowed anew that
they would never do this to me. When I was dead I would be dead,
like old Xarr.
    L ater, on the aerial
ride home, Newton left me to my own thoughts and then, eventually,
intruded on them.
    “You must remember a few things, your
majesty. And it’s time you knew of others. There were things I
thought best to keep from your father, and now I think it was a
mistake. He did not know about Queen Haydn’s...regeneration,
because we in the Science Guild had no idea if what we had done
would last. It was a difficult decision even to try. The technology
had been gleaned, as most of ours has been, from the Old Ones. It
is very difficult for me to admit, because I am a man of science,
that most – practically all – of what I’ve accomplished has been by
standing on the shoulders of those who have come before me.
    “We still know very little about the Old
Ones, and yet what we do know baffles us. Where did they come from?
Why did they die out? Was there a time when our two races
coexisted, and if so, why did we flourish while they were swept
away?
    “Their few books that have survived, along
with a few of their fossils, have given us scant clues. It is
through their machines that we know them best. We know for example
that in their days on Mars there was an Old One named The Machine
Master who built, or designed, much of what we have been able to
make use of. We think that in that era the oxygenation stations had
already been shut down and abandoned, because we find no mention in
any of his records of any such devices. They must have been in use
before his time.
    “This of course hinders us now, because what
records of The Machine Master that haven’t been destroyed are quite
complete and useful. He was a meticulous engineer. There are hints
of devices he made that are astounding. Your father and grandmother
were regenerated using a technology that is incomplete to us –
apparently a variation of it was used as a weapon. His notes
mention ‘plasma soldiers,’ though we have been able to find no
record of any such device.”
    “He sounds as if he was a horrible creature,”
I said.
    Newton, as if broken from his reverie, looked
at me blankly and then nodded. “Perhaps so. While much of his work
was benevolent, there is a darker side to his