Pleas to the Pleiades
Chapter 5: SYRTIS

Jimmie decided to drive to Syrtis, alone. Neither Osha nor Binger wanted to go.

He had a new tech. He had his well-tested alpha-Mercury turbine engine mounted in a standard four-wheel-drive Mars crawler. Tanked up to the max with mercury, five hundred grams, much more than he needed, bought at high metallurgic prices, he headed north out of the Hesperian canyon complex. There was a road for a while as he went north, past the exclusive hillside villadomes of the Martian hill-billaries. At first, the wind was howling like it usually does, but after about forty clicks it calmed down. The road petered out … but, still … the first part of the journey was about one-hundred-eighty kilometres of relative ease. He had with him on his computer the original Mars maps from NASA, from which the coordinates that follow are derived.

Jimmie had left the small crater colony of Northern Hesperia (248W, 8S), then went left (west) about ten kilometres, then drove forward on a heading of about 355-360 N/NW, on a broad plain, avoiding a few scattered monoliths. Craters and their walls loomed to left and right; the left high-walled crater was a bit closer, only about twenty kilometres away. The series of right three craters was about one-hundred-twenty kilometres away, first a smaller one, then two larger ones. He passed within a couple kilometres of two isolated monoliths on the right when he was about halfway parallel to the larger craters on the right. For a while, he avoided lots of craters and gulleys.

The second part of the journey was about another one-hundred-eighty to two hundred kilometres of greater difficulty. At about the beginning of this second part, he encountered a decision: there were mountains ahead and to the left, a monolith immediately ahead concealing a pass up a slope, and to the right, a broader path that then skirted another high-walled crater to the left (approximately 250W, 5S). Either the second or third choices could lead on, but both were difficult going. If he went too far to the right his frail truck could fall into a small chasm. Whichever he chose, at about the two-hundred-kilometre mark of the entire journey, he had to ascend onto a plateau that extended N/NW for about a hundred and forty-five kilometres. He hugged the edge of the chasm and drove on, looking down into the chasm, which was actually much deeper than the map had indicated. Mars was chock-full of chasms.

He was on the plateau. He then encountered two craters about ten to fifteen kilometres apart, the left one about twice larger.

He had to refer to his old NASA maps. If he went around the left one to its left, he would be stranded on a cliff and would have to turn back. If he went between them, it would be about the same. If he went to the right of the right crater, he would have a difficult descent also, but could go ahead, and so he did. Then there were six or more pinnacles and monoliths to the left (252W, 1S). After passing them, he entered the broad valley that extends down a slope toward its opening between the Libya and Nepenthes Mountains. He had gone about three hundred and eighty kilometres, unless he had made bad decisions.

The third part of the journey was about six hundred kilometres of easy driving down a broad sloping valley with uplands on the right, and scattered small mountains on the left. About halfway down the valley, there were craters of moderate size to either side, each ten to twenty kilometres away.

Toward the valley’s end, the Libya Mountains loomed high on the left, and the Nepenthes Mountains higher on the right. Extremely beautiful scenery, with cliffs like a cascading series of huge red and purple rock curtains, was arrayed on either side of the great sandy descent.

As the day wore on, with occasional squalls of dust storms, he drove gradually down the pleasant slope, listening to old southern rock songs on the player in the four-wheel-drive. He was getting tired, but the view was getting better and better, and there would be no difficult driving ahead. He was in a good mood.

The Nepenthes began to light up nicely in the lavender light of the sunset, and the sky was that unique deep clear violet-aqua that it can be on Mars, and the red dunes everywhere turned golden and crimson, and it was still even what you could call warm. But he had to stop and dress more warmly.

Soon the temperature would plummet at sunset. He needed to go ahead and make camp at the broad turn of the pass. Otherwise his campsite would remain bathed in the extremely cold shadow of the Nepenthes when he woke in the morning.

Before sleep, Jimmie got out of his vehicle and took a look around. Then he got back in his truck and made a voice recording.

“Finally, I came to where I could see out onto the Plain of Isis. What a view northward from there unto Utopia. Ha, a joke of a name, Utopia, a wind-blown Martian dry tundra with very little known life, once the bottom of the great northern Martian ocean. But beautiful to gaze upon, north into the deepening night of vastness and its distant aurora, east unto the Nepenthine ranges, now fully illuminated like firebrands from the setting sun, south to the deep purple and bronze precipices of the Libyans, and the path back home, ascending into the beautiful Hesperian Plateau. Then, the setting sun, casting a last dim rosy caress across Isis, before sinking into dark and distant Syrtis in the west.”

Jimmie made camp there, after first snapping a few pictures, of the valley between two great groups of peaks that once must have overlooked the undoubtedly pleasant Gulf of Isis below.

“It long ago so teemed with marine life that we still replace its shells and pearls aplenty. It’s all now a mere Plain,” Jimmie said, speaking into his journey-recorder.

Jimmie went back into his four-wheel-drive alpha-mercury powered truck. Then, he put some rice and beans with dried seaweed and spices in the pressure cooker, and laid back, and played a little guitar. Looking upward through the clear domed top of his four-by-four, he watched the stars gradually array themselves in the ritual of the night, just as they did on Earth. To count sheep, he mentally recited the sixty major stars of our limb of the galaxy.

The morning broke bright and clear, and there was dry frost everywhere, turning the rocks and sand to paler icy shades of pink, and flesh tones like lustrous lipstick. Jimmie stayed in his cozy warm sleeping bag a long time, gazing out the windows at the myriad frosty stones while farting from the last night’s undercooked beans. It had only hit seventy below in the night, but that was plenty cold enough. Inside, it was cold too, above zero, but shivery nonetheless.

He went to turn on the motor and nothing happened. He got out of his sleeping bag and tried again, as if sitting in the proper position made the difference. And same thing … nothing happened. Well. He was glad he had parked in a spot that got sunny early in the morning. He went and checked all the connections, from the solar panels to the batteries and transformers, and then reset everything to recharge. It would take almost five hours, and then he could start up, and head across the Plain of Isis for Syrtis.

Meanwhile, he had time to kill, and decided to hike back into the curving pass in the valley that came down from Hesperia, toward the mouths of the canyons that he had passed the previous evening, maybe to do a little archaeology, or just explore, he didn’t know. He put on his jumpsuit and unsealed out of the craft.

The canyons were similar to the Nili Fossae to the north of Syrtis – they ran in a southwest to northeast direction. Not like his home canyon of Hesperia’s crater, or Syrtis City, which sort of wind and twist all around, but generally run sort of north and south. These new canyons were virtually straight gashes, over a hundred kilometres long, with walls several hundred metres high, and they would make good future building sites for cities, if the walls were stable enough to support the arcovale canopies … and, of course, if enough water could be found. But they looked dry and unstable.

Immediately, Jimmie began to bound back up the valley toward the Hesperian Plateau. With the help of this new type of jumpsuit, he thought he would reach the canyons within a couple-three hours. The jumpsuit took advantage of relatively low Martian gravity and exploited pre-stressed torsion in the long planes of the legs in the fabric of the suit, so that it always wanted to spring open to full length, but you could easily bring it into the opposite flexed-leg position, the cocked position. It seemed to release more energy than stored in it – flexing was easy, but extension was like a catapult.

Jimmie was jumping like a grasshopper. When the suit was triggered into expansion by a slight suggested jumping movement in the desired direction, it would spring toward a specific point ten or twenty metres ahead … the trick being to land well, but the suit also helped that. It was really tiring to do for more than a few hours, like skiing, only he liked it better. It became very dangerous of course, during the winds, but that day was unusually calm.

The valley floor was like an immense outpouring of packed sand down a slope between the two mountain ranges, only occasionally pocked with craters. Each of these was interesting, because if they were under twenty metres, he could easily leap them brim to brim. The sand was not dangerous to tumble into in case of a fall, either. Martians are used to surfing sand.

Jimmie had violated the cardinal rule of any explorer – never to go alone. But he liked being alone. Maybe he should have brought Osha, but Osha had not wanted to come. Maybe Jimmie had grown tired of Osha’s country platitudes, anyway.

After an hour or so traversing upward on the slope, Jimmie sprang to one point and there it was. Protruding slightly from the windblown sand was a fine shklar – an ancient type of hooked swordlike weapon once wielded by humans on Mars against the durgeons.

The special hooked design enabled the warrior to catch and sever one of the blood vessels of the reptile’s neck, which were somewhat more vulnerable at the base of the sturgeon-shaped skull. The durgeon skin was so tough, you had to cut into one of these blood vessels at the base of the skull. If you were really a tough guy, if you were real good, you could even just kind of pop the skull off the pedestal it rotated on, if you first hooked the shklar back behind the base of the skull and pulled it back forward, then pried it up in a quick twisting motion. That really blew it for them, it was the artful execution, like taking a human’s neck into the v of your arm and using your other arm to scissor the skull away. But durgeons were lots harder to kill.

A durgeon is a large lizard-like adrenoreptile that reaches nine feet in height when standing. They live underground and require more warmth than the Martian surface allows, but they are capable of short bursts of exertion even in freezing Martian daytime temperatures. They burrow through the sand rather well, and can come upon someone by surprise this way … from below … carnivorously. They are like sharks of the sands.

Jimmie had been saved by the jumpsuit more than once.

The durgeon’s head is big like a bison’s, with a sturgeon-like beak, and massive scales, and serpentine masses of vestigial feathers like dreadlock wattles on either side. When angry, it forces air through the bladders beneath the wattles and bleats a most distressing tone, which probably would be a roar on Earth …

They are as intelligent as dogs or horses, yet have the draconian ability to hypnotize any mammal, including humans. Their craftiness, and their feathers, and their adrenalin bursts, place them in something other than the purely reptile category. Their bodies are simply those of very large lizards with long whip-like tails. They have very sharp real teeth rather like those of alligators, and they have very sharp claws as well. They are extremely territorial, and attack viciously for territory as well as for food.

On Mars, during the Draco Wars, the durgeons were used by the dracos against humans as psycho-warhorses. The dracos themselves, of course, have even more hypnotic abilities, ranging on up to those of Be’elzebub himself, and they can look and sound pretty much like whatever they want to. They used to be called demons, but they are real adrenalizards all right. No myth. Their hypnotic abilities and ability to manipulate the scalar matrix made them seem supernatural. Usually one would appear like a winged dragon or a bat-like vampirish creature, quite frightening really, a reptile that looks like a leathery bat-winged spider. Ten feet tall.

They like blood too, but the dracos are very intelligent, on average much more intelligent than most humans … just utterly lacking in feeling. Thankfully, they seldom reproduce, so there are few of them, yet it is definitely known now that the draco species dominates much of this part of the galaxy.

They use one species to dominate another. They breed durgeons for here on Mars, and the space graebes, adapted for being hurled about in hyperspace discs, for picking on people on other planets.

Then, the sapents … they are really rare. Those are either dracos who have renounced their ways and shorn their sorbs, or another species entirely – no one has analyzed their genetics yet. They appear as rather handsome cobra-headed or alligator-headed humanoids, with extremely finely scaled skin, or maybe more densely scaled dragon-like lizards, with ornate feather headdresses like birds of paradise, although they too can appear in whatsoever form they choose. They have profound scalar matrix powers, like the draco, but are even more rare. There may be only a few hundred … or fewer … remaining – it is not known.

The archaeology of the various Draco Wars was Jimmie’s hobby, and the laws about archaeology on Mars were almost impossible to enforce.

He went back to his recharged truck, admiring the shklar he had found – a beautiful relic. Moisture inside the truck’s cabin was condensing on it, and its edges were still very sharp.

On the drive further to Syrtis, along the shores of the great drained and frozen boreal ocean, Jimmie kept his eye out for other archaeological possibilities. He reflected on the rap several nights ago after the Hesperian Hippodrome show.

Osha had renamed himself after the medicine root, and although he was a bit wacky and impressionable to fads and urban myths, he knew his ancient mythology well. Osha was a great rock steady bass player. He didn’t overplay, he could walk that line. A super rock trio with Osha and Binger Shaker would have been a good idea.

Jimmie remembered what Osha had said, after they had met the Asteropians from the Pleiades. “Do you remember the details of the project we embarked upon?”

“Well, yeah, Osha, I have right here with me our catalog on a disc that we put together around the turn of the century. When our Asteropian expatriate answers, and I sure hope this transmission to him will work – you know how the dust clouds interfere with signals between us – I hope he’ll be able to update us out here in the sticks.

“Sirius or Sol, or the Centauris, we are so far apart here, and he’s got all those stars so close together – no wonder he went for the center of galactic culture, even though it’s really out there on the edge, man. Far out. Everybody knows the Pleiades are the Paris of this galaxy. Funny thing to say, considering the condition of Paris today.”

“Well, here is the entirety of the original 2004 document. I am sorry to have to say that I cannot remember writing most of it. All I remember is the studio in Chatterquot, Florida, and those alligators’ eyes.”

Osha was smiling compassionately, gazing at his old friend. “They erased you. They rubbed you right out there in Chatterquot. It’s all you ever talk about – that dead end.”

“Yeah, they erased me you know – they deleted so much of me, I don’t feel the same. It’s those years 2012-2020 that were erased, as were almost everyone else’s. Must have been a great collective trauma at that time.”

“Well, loss of memory’s like a form of nirvana they say.”

“Nah, I disagree, I think enlightenment is better and not the same as nirvana. I think it is possible to remember everything. Let’s examine the document I put together in my past, and which you have returned to me.”

As he recalled the philosophical conversation, Jimmie put a disc into the computer inside his truck. A galactic map zoomed into view on the screen, as his own voice played.

“Mapping the Civilizations of the Alcyone-Rigel Limb. Throughout history, humankind has wondered whether other civilizations exist. In the distant past, this speculation has extended from wondering whether other civilizations exist in other regions of our own planet, to the more adventurous speculations of whether civilizations could exist beneath the sea or the earth, or in the heavens.

“Now we know that the most feasible situation would be for another civilization to exist on another planet with suitable conditions. Such a planet would have to be a reasonable distance from its star, not too far and not too close, and that star would have to have certain stable characteristics.

“It would not necessarily have to be of the same spectral characteristics as our Sun, but it would have to share those spectral characteristics if the life forms were to be similar to us in their basic biology. Other spectral characteristics could possibly be conducive to life, but a variable star, a red giant, or a white dwarf would almost certainly be unsupportive of life in any form. However, that does not preclude the possibility of technologically highly advanced civilizations basing themselves near unusual star types, in orbiting stations, for technological energy resource reasons.

“I feel strongly that high technology certainly does not guarantee truly cultural civilization. It might mean a terribly unkind kind of life.

“All over the earth, legends about stars have sprung forth, and in many cases those legends even describe the possible inhabitants of the planets of those stars. Sometimes those legends are encoded in metaphor, and those metaphors have become part of the lexicon of mythology and astrology.

“I have mapped a summary of the major star systems that have had such legends attached to their reputations. It is, of course, incomplete, a suitable beginning for what remains, at this time, a highly speculative endeavor. The star systems are presented in their order around the ecliptic, and polar stars of great north or south declination are presented afterwards.

“The logic of this organizational system will become apparent to the reader as he progresses. After all, it would be frightening and nightmarishly disheartening to discuss the polar stars first. Many of these stars interpreted here form part of the familiar zodiacal and other constellations. Many of them are also our nearest neighboring star systems; in most cases, less than one hundred light years away.

“To the ancients, the influences of stars corresponded to their color, variability, brightness or magnitude, distance from us, and apparent distance north or south of the ecliptic path, as well as their traditional constellation myths. Generally, northern stars were more favorable than southern ones; and most white, blue/white, yellow, and some orange stars were favorable, whereas most red or highly variable stars were considered potentially difficult.

“The most powerful stars were those nearest the ecliptic path, the brightest, and those closest to us.”

Jimmie headed west to Syrtis. It gradually became a glowing dome in the distance.

Jimmie pulled in toward Syrtis, and parked a ways outside its eastern entrance. He put on his tank-suit skins, locked up his truck, and went inside the huge dome. He wandered the wonderland of Syrtis, which was like a huge shopping mall. It was a bit too much like Earth, he thought. All sorts of useless things were for sale. Everybody was in their tank-suit skins like it was Key West or something.

Finally, he found a shop for musical instruments.

There he met Khlilia, a waiflike young woman who was also shopping for guitars and synthesizers. He thought, she probably does not know how old I am. I may look like I am twenty-something, but I am really well over a hundred years old.

“Nice synthesizer.”

“Yeah. Ten times what it costs on Earth,” she replied. It was apparent that she was broke, living on the streets or maybe in a youth hostel, and dreaming of a new synthesizer.

“That’s why I’m selling my old Les Paul and this old shklar I found where the Plain of Isis leads up toward Hesperia.” He showed her the antique electric guitar and the shklar.

“You from Hesperia?”

“Yeah.”

“One of those old hippie communes?”

“Yeah. I’m Jimmie Memnon.”

“I’ve heard some of the music from Hesperia.”

“Like it?”

“Very much. It’s the real thing. I hate synthetic music. I hate any kind of monotony. Maybe we should jam? I mean, play music together. I’m Khlilia.”

“Yeah.” The awkward pause continued. “Hey, you know the best place to sell these antiques?”

“Yeah.”

Jimmie and Khlilia went to a Syrtis pawn shop. The pawn shop was all lit up with the same dangling cherry lights of hundreds of years ago.

The pawn agent examined the antiques. “Ten thousand for the guitar, fifty for the head-popper.”

Jimmie answered, “Eighty-five for both.”

“Seventy,” answered the agent, his beetle brow wrinkling. He looked like he did not like life on Mars.

“Yeah.”

Outside the pawn shop, Khlilia said, “Jimmie, he ripped you off.”

“Yeah. But that was a Chinese Les Paul.”

“And you took out the humbucking pickups?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. I already built my own new guitar, it’s a kind of electric surbahar-bandura. Know about those ancient instruments?”

“Sure do. The surbahar is like a baritone sitar. I received training in it, long ago. The bandura is the harp-guitar of the old kobzars – bards – in an earlier time in Ukraine.

Yeah. We’ll bring them with us. I’ve got a samisen and a regular banjo too, besides my acoustic Guild D-28 and my custom Carvin with stereo outputs.”

Jimmie and Khlilia bought the synthesizer she wanted, then kissed before they donned their tanksuits and exited the airlocks of Syrtis. They headed for Jimmie’s truck, and got inside.

“Strange vehicle, but I like it.” Khlilia looked around inside.

“I built it myself.”

They went to the hostel where Khlilia was staying, outside of the main crater’s arcovale. They got her electric surbahar-bandura and her other things, then the new couple drove southwest across the Mars landscape. In this region there were roads … of a sort. It was the region of the first American Rover landings.

After some hours of driving and listening to classical and classic rock music, Khlilia asked, “Don’t we have to stop for gas?”

Jimmie answered, “Nope.”

“Yeah.”

Finally, after a couple days of kissing and then lovemaking, Jimmie and Khlilia were peering across the chasm of Candor.

“Jimmie, why did we have to come here? You know it’s considered dangerous territory, off-limits to us terrestrials. I’ve heard terrible stories about it.”

“I’m just going to try to park up here above the Candor canyon. It’s a romantic view. Maybe we can get out and replace a way down.”

“It’s a romantic view, but I don’t think we should get too close to the edge. The sand is really unstable. Don’t!”

Sure enough, as women’s intuition always tells us, they were in danger.

Their vehicle began to slide down the huge sandy slope. Khlilia screamed, but only a little. She was a stalwart girl. The truck tumbled twice, but then, thanks to Jimmie’s engineering, the truck self-righted near the bottom of the sandy cascade of sands. Their ears had popped.

Jimmie calmly kept on driving toward the Citadel of Candor, swallowing to equalize his ear pressure.

He had mapped it out long ago. They drove up to the Citadel. Then they waited outside its gates. They did not have to wait long. The massive gates opened. They drove in, and got out of their vehicle.