Lost on Mars

by Paul Magrs

  It was like we were all waiting, all the time, for disaster to befall us.

  7

  Grandma was furious with me.

  It was Al’s fault. He let slip that I’d dropped most of my season’s allowance on books from Mrs Adams’ lending library.

  Ruby cried out against the greed of Mrs Adams and how she’d been exploiting the townsfolk for too long. ‘Three credits! And for only a lend, too! Not even a keep!’

  Grandma was more inclined to be cross about my stupidity. ‘Your Da works so hard! And what do you do with your pocket money? Why, you throw it back in his face!’

  I managed to find my voice and answer her back. ‘We all work hard, Grandma. And besides, he said the money was mine to spend on what I liked.’

  ‘See?’ hollered Grandma, gnashing her plaggy teeth. ‘No respect! This is where your soft living and luxury gets you!’

  ‘Luxury?!’ I shouted back. I was really mad now. ‘What luxury do we have? You say it yourself, Grandma – when you were my age, you had Servo-Furnishings to do everything. Shopping and cleaning and tending the crops. You even had a robot to cut your toenails and do your hair!’

  Al was staring at me in horrified awe. I’d never been as openly rebellious as this before. Something had touched a raw nerve, I guess. Them thinking I was wasting the family’s money with my library books. I wasn’t hurting anyone, was I?

  ‘Why do you want to read made-up books, Lora?’ Grandma asked, close to tears. ‘Things like that can only make you unhappy. They make you hanker to be elsewhere, and to be someone else. We only have the here and now. And that’s what we’ve got to concentrate on.’

  Oh no. The crazy glint in her eye was back again. I’d pushed her into one of her dreadful moods. But it seemed that Ruby knew how to placate her. Toaster joined in, shuffling forward and rubbing Grandma’s back.

  Ruby’s idea was that my remaining two credits would be spent at a certain fancy establishment called Lucille’s. Grandma had talked about having fittings at Madame Lucille’s for corsets and other ladieswear things I didn’t understand as yet. Lucille’s was where town ladies with more money than sense hung out, and they came back gussied up in paint and lipstick with ludicrous hairdos. Worst of all they came back in horrible dresses that winched them into unnatural shapes and prinked them out in flounces and frills, like they’d stepped out of some old history tape.

  I could feel the blood chilling in my veins. Ruby announced her generous intention to supplement my remaining credits with five of her own, from her very own savings, and I was to think of it as this year’s birthday present from her. Both she and Grandma were getting flushed, prodding me and examining my figure and demeanor like I was their very own dressy-up doll.

  Next thing I knew, I was being dragged along and we were heading on out.

  I wanted to struggle but I knew it was no use. I knew that I’d have to be a lady some day.

  I was at their mercy. They driiiinged the bell and the door clicked open.

  Madame Lucille was painted eggshell white and she was very tall and muscular. When she bent close I could see that her face paint was covering a thick moustache on her top lip. Her hair was done up in a turban and she wore a very tight, wraparound dress. It seemed plain to me that she was a man. She didn’t even try to disguise her voice. But no one said a thing about it. They just called her Madame Lucille in this very polite way, even Grandma.

  Madame Lucille made me stand on a chair and she went round examining me from all angles. I was pretty mortified, standing in my raggy underwear. When Madame Lucille leaned in close, it was like her moustache was bristling at me.

  My nerves and the musky heat of the dressmaker’s shop made my head spin. Her perfume and stinky breath made my stomach surge upwards into my throat. When she sent me into her cubicle with three heavy outfits to try on, I couldn’t stop myself. I made a horrible squawking noise and threw up.

  We all got thrown out of Lucille’s. Grandma and Ruby were given no choice but to buy the horrible purple – and now sicky – dress. Madame Lucille called her brutish husband down from upstairs. He stood intimidatingly over us until all the cash was handed over.

  We went home to Ruby’s. I was in disgrace. I was holding the vomity dress in a large paper bag and it was reeking. I was told by Grandma that I would have to scrub it myself. I felt like saying the rotten food at Ruby’s had turned my stomach. Those space capsules she kept serving up were decades out of date.

  The whole day felt like a disaster.

  Al was in his element. He got to laugh even more when Dad returned from hanging out with his Storehouse cronies. He smelled of booze and was swaying slightly. I’d hardly ever seen Da drunk, especially in the afternoon.

  Grandma said, ‘Go on, girl.’

  I opened the bag to show him satin ruffles and lace and ribbons. The stench of sick came rising up to meet him and he looked puzzled. Da was too tired and drunk to ask any more. He went up to his room and didn’t come down for supper.

  I spent the evening rinsing and rubbing my hideous new frock in the zinc tub. I wrung out the dress, dunked it and hung it up to dry in Ruby’s scullery. It looked wrinkled and lopsided and quite a lot like an old rag. It was nothing like how it had looked in Madame Lucille’s shop. It seemed to me like a headless spectre, sagging there on the line. This was the lady I was supposed to grow up to be. She was lopsided and wrong, and trying her hardest to seem feminine and sophisticated.

  We had supper and I avoided the chewiest, rankest-tasting cubes. The evening hurried by, with none of us really talking to each other. I was keen to hide away with my stories from the lending library. At last I’d have a chance to be alone and simply read.

  I dozed over my electronic Vanity Fair and by one a.m. I was in a deep sleep. By then Toaster had shut himself down, leaving his leads plugged into the mains for charging to the max, as was his habit when at Ruby’s. He knew that, following Grandma’s operation tomorrow, we would be leaving for the Homestead just as soon as we could.

  At ten minutes past one Ruby felt ‘a great big wave of weariness, hot and dry like the sandstorm itself’ sweep over her. She told her oldest friend on all of Mars that she was ready for her bed. Ruby reminded Grandma to unplug the television and to do the usual stuff. Checking windows and doors and lights.

  The window had been open all evening, it being such a sultry and close night. Grandma knew the drill, so Ruby told her good night and headed off to bed.

  There was no noise. No almighty scuffling sound. No shrieks or protests in those early hours. Not one of us was woken up. We all slept till first light came flooding through the blinds.

  Ruby was first downstairs. She went hurrying down in her night things – startled because the television set was still buzzing.

  And the windows were open, letting in cooler air and street noise. It was obvious they had been open all night.

  At that moment Ruby felt her old heart was going to burst right out of her chest. She knew something terrible had occurred.

  Grandma was gone.

  Only her leg remained.

  8

  It was late in our Martian autumn when we were allowed to hold the funeral for Grandma’s leg.

  F.E. Baxter wasn’t a very reliable town sheriff. No one felt any safer because he was in charge of law and order. Now he said we had to hang on to that left-behind leg for ten whole weeks before we could legitimately bury it and only then could we assume that Grandma was officially gone.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ said Ma, with Hannah grizzling on her lap. ‘What does he think? The old woman went off on a whim? Dragging herself along on one leg just for fun? And that some day soon she’s gonna come hopping back to the Homestead and surprise us all?’

  Da told her, ‘Hush now.’ Da was grim-lipped and subdued that autumn. Chill winds were coming in from the wasteland west of us. He never said much about Grandma’s Disappearance but what he said was enough. It was a bad business. An unfitting end to the life of
an Historical Personage.

  Of course he tried to say as little as possible in front of us kids. Al and me were as upset as our parents, but we were also secretly thrilled. Grandma was gone forever. The old Martians had taken Grandma away. We whispered this to each other at night and then lay awake, wondering what it could all mean.

  Ma went about cleaning and baking and making the house nice for Ruby. The old lady was bringing a letter of permission from the sheriff to hold a small ceremony commemorating the loss of Grandma. The white-haired old lady also brought with her a parcel tied up in brown paper. At first we wondered what she might be bringing us, and then we realised. Of course. The leg.

  Toaster shuffled forward and took possession of his owner’s last remnant. He took it away to the shady spot we had picked out, where he’d spent all of the previous Saturday digging a hole to bury her in. He was extra quiet. He’d been very attached to the old dame.

  Ma saw to it that Ruby felt at home. She had fixed up Grandma’s room, making it fresh and habitable. Ruby couldn’t have been a more gracious guest, complimenting Ma on the comfort of her home and the excellence of her food – especially the feast Ma put on in her honour that night. We had all our favourite Sunday night foods: salted lizard steaks and hickory sauce and mashed taters. Ruby joined in as one of the family. She listened to stories and told her own and cracked jokes – and she never once got nasty-mouthed and crazy like Grandma often did. It was nicer having Ruby than Grandma with us. Al and me were starting to think it was a decent swap.

  However, this old lady in her khaki fatigues and her soft sugary hair wasn’t ours to keep. As she told us, her place was in town and her own house off Main Street. Even the Disappearance of Grandma couldn’t put her off living there alone.

  ‘I told her,’ she said, looking upset for the first time. ‘I told her about closing the windows. Over fifty years I’ve lived in that house and shut the whole place up each and every night. I never thought to go on about it, in case it insulted her – of course she knew the windows had to be fastened tight. Not because I thought night creatures would snatch anybody away. No, it was on account of the vapours. I didn’t want the poisonous vapours leaking into my home.’

  I saw Da roll his eyes at this old-timer superstition. The first-generation Martian settlers thought that the planet was a living organism that resented the very presence of human beings. It exhaled poisonous gases every night after dark, so everyone had to seal their homes up tight or face certain death. The dark fumes would creep into their lungs and drive them demented.

  Of course, farming folk like Da and third-generation people like me – we all scoffed at such stuff. Why, we practically lived in the open air. We knew all about terra-forming and how our new world had been made safe for us to live and breathe. We camped out under the stars and by Earth light. We never had one whiff of these so-called ghastly vapours.

  Da shook his head. No, something far more solid and real was responsible for making off with his much-missed mother, he said.

  Hannah was packed off to bed and Al was drooping by now. I stayed awake later than usual and heard the grown-ups discussing important things in lowered voices. They had a nightcap of brandy and Ruby told them that, yes, there had been further Disappearances in town. Two more that she knew of. And naturally people were getting scared. There had been no public pronouncements yet. The Sheriff and the town Elders hadn’t said anything about the Disappearances at all. Even the weekly news-sheet hadn’t reported anything. They’d not said a word about Grandma, which had angered Da. He’d gone to the office and took issue with them, but still there was no obituary.

  I lay awake in my room until all the adults were in bed and the house Da had built for us eight years ago settled down creakily into its timbers. All I could hear were the hot winds cooling as they blew over the dunes. Then I heard Ma and Da murmuring to each other in bed, in the room next to mine.

  He said to her, ‘It’ll soon be time to start again. Can you bear it?’

  Her voice – when she answered him at last – was so sad and desperately tired. ‘I’ll have to, won’t I, Edward? We’ll all have to start again.’

  There was a long pause. ‘I think we will, yes. We have to go somewhere else.’

  I heard Ma crying softly.

  Da said, ‘We know this is happening, it’s happened before. This is what we heard about, isn’t it? The tales and rumours in those other towns. We knew that it could happen here. We knew it was possible … even inevitable.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Ma said. ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s already too late for my mother,’ he said.

  9

  One night – not too long after – Al shook me awake. I knew right away that something was up.

  ‘I dunno what it is,’ he said, looking worried. He was in his little-boy pyjamas, but his face in the starlight looked older than his thirteen years. You could see the softness was starting to leave his features. For the first time I saw that my brother was growing up. ‘Something is happening.’

  The house was reasonably quiet. Squeaking timbers and the clink and hiss of the cooking range as it cooled in the kitchen below us. It was a still night outside with no wind. The house smelled of that evening’s dinner. Al was annoying me now, just standing there, ears pricked. I climbed out of my bed and he seized my arm.

  Clunk. There was a definite clunking noise from downstairs. There it came again. Someone was moving around heavily. It’ll be Ma or Da, I thought. Or Aunt Ruby, who seemed to be living with us now after all. One of the adults would be up in the night, unable to sleep. Plagued by cares and vexations, the way that adults seemed to get.

  Clunk, clunk, it came again.

  Then there was the precise noise of the front-door lock. Someone was easing it round. Thunk. It was open.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘That’s not right.’

  No one was ever allowed to mess with the seal on the front door of the Homestead except Da. Especially not at night.

  Yet someone was heading outside.

  ‘Come on,’ I told him. Downstairs we went. How eerie it was, seeing the front door open, casting moonbeams on the scrubbed kitchen table and floor.

  We ventured outside, where the air was chill and the prairie looked even wilder than usual. All the warmth had leached out of the sand and the jagged pillars of rock standing at intervals on the wide open space. Shades of cinnamon and hot paprika had drained from the land. All was pale and frosty blue.

  Soon we found disturbed sand. Muffled prints of someone dragging their feet like a sleepwalker. We followed the unswerving trail into the shallow hills, where sprigs of gorse were growing and a few murky shapes dashed hither and thither. Martian hares. Blue Jack Rabbits. Bad eating. We’d tried them once and never again.

  ‘Uh, we shouldn’t go too far,’ said Al.

  I agreed with him. Looking back, I saw that the ground had risen almost imperceptibly and we could see the whole Homestead in all its modest glory. Here was the main house, the outbuildings and the sheds where the new Molly and George were sleeping. It looked so peaceful and vulnerable. The land about us was seething with mysterious and secretive noises which we – when I actually thought about it – knew very little about.

  Still we ploughed on, carefully testing out the safety of the ground. The last thing we needed was one of us stepping onto shifting sands and getting caught up and lost forever. When the sand became the consistency of finely milled flour, that was the most dangerous sign.

  We hauled ourselves over a craggy brow of rock and beyond there was a shallow bowl about a mile across. Once it had been the bed of a vast lake and usually it was a broad expanse of smooth, dry perfection. I’d been out and seen it before, though Da didn’t like us to come out this way. Yet here we were, looking at this one-time lake, like a silver mirror under the stars.

  Al pointed. I jumped when I saw what he meant. It was impossible to miss.

  It was Toaster we were following. Of course, it had to be T
oaster.

  Those clumpy, square feet dragging along. The clunking noises we’d heard. I think Al and me had known from the start that we were pursuing the sunbed into the night, but neither of us had liked to give voice to the thought. There was a definite possibility that Toaster had gone rogue. He had broken every rule in the Servo-Furnishing book. He had endangered and abandoned his human family, striking out into the outdoors at night and even leaving the door open. This was very bad news and it could only end with his total deactivation.

  I called out to him. I called his name again and again and he took no notice. I set off at a run. Al flew alongside me, his breaking voice filled with panic. ‘If he’s flipped out he could be dangerous, Lora! Be careful! Don’t get too close!’

  I was in no mood to be careful. I had known Toaster as long as I had been alive. He had been nursemaid to all of us, and nanny, butler and cook, babysitter and tutor and everything. Our family had drawn upon his great reservoirs of knowledge and energy and generosity for decades. We’d even played horsies, riding around on his back, when we were little. He was one of the only touchable links we had left with Earth, and this was the first time I saw that for the plain truth it was.

  ‘Toaster!’ I screamed and started to run onto that dead lake.

  Still he didn’t turn. As I got closer I saw that his tanning bulbs were on. They flashed spasmodically in his bodily cavities, ultraviolet in the night. I wonder if he even knew they were malfunctioning so badly. They would drain his energy away, along with all this exertion, and he was in danger of getting stranded out here.

  I caught up with the errant sunbed and saw with a shock he was crying. It should have been impossible, but there were certain things that Grandma’s Servo-Furnishings had been customised for, over the years. Her second husband had been some kind of whizzo robotics man. And so Toaster the sunbed could express his emotions just as freely – why, much more freely – than the human beings we knew.