Chapter Ten

He remembered his childhood, eighty-five years ago. He'd been in the plantations of the Mare Sirenum and had become lost among the withered bushes, yet another failed attempt by the farmers to grow food in the barren Martian soil. To a child's eyes, the plantation was a secret garden, a miracle blossoming in the sands. He'd found a winter berry, a vivid orange against the ash-brown branches. He'd reached into the tangle with his claw, snipped the berry from the vine. It had been so beautiful, and looked so tasty. Xznaal took a bite from it, only to discover that inside it was black. It had putrefied inside, without leaving any external sign. He had swallowed what he had bitten off, so that he would never forget that moment.

Was this planet a rotten fruit, lush from the outside, but foul and worthless within? Xznaal remembered his history. In the Early Period, Martian cities would have smelt like this. Instead of being endlessly recycled, food waste and plant matter was left in the streets. On hot days, the streets would buzz with insects, the weak would die of diseases caught from the scraps left lying in ditches and gutters. The rubbish piled up against the bastions and glacis of every building was - and this was the image that stuck with Xznaal from that distant schoolroom - teeming with tiny worms and bacteria. No Martian day was as hot as even this Terran night, no city was ever as large as London. That smell was life, digesting the rubbish and filth of other life. What a world this was where even the night air sang with chemicals and buzzed with energy.

The platform had reached the ground. The humans were unsure how to react to him, and most contrived to both back away and lean forward. It amused him to think of their animal emotions trying to cope with something entirely beyond their comprehension.

The stench. The dreadful milky stench that these humans all had. They were aware of their pungent state: they tried to disguise it with ethanol and plant extracts, but this only made the rancid smell all the more powerful. He had noticed it before when Gerayhayvun and Xztaynz had come aboard, here there were a dozens of them, all with different odours. He imagined their bodies, crawling with insects and bacteria. Xznaal was dizzy, bombarded with so much that was new. He stepped onto the green flooring material, realising at the last moment that it was plant matter, soaked with water.

'Gerayhayvun... ' he wheezed.