Lost on Mars

by Paul Magrs

  How were we going to survive? I had seen for myself the vastness of the deserts. I had gained a glimpse of how huge our planet really was, during those stolen night flights with Sook. It seemed impossible that we could get very far on our hovercart, with our two lumbering burden beasts. I was glad no one else had seen things on the scale I had. They might think this whole setting off was futile. But I just knew we had to try. I couldn’t let the Martian Ghosts take any more of us away. I couldn’t bear to think of them Disappearing my family.

  20

  Though they couldn’t be described as a matter of life and death, I made sure I brought all of those books – the ones about the men in the tall hats and tight britches and the ladies in their corsets and gowns with their cups of Chinese tea. Books about wills and big houses and misty moors and journeys taken on horseback or railway. I stole them from under Mrs Adams’ nose, knowing that I would need them. I took my own books too, despite what I’d said to Aunt Ruby, and how I’d made her leave her things behind. But my books took up no space at all. Less than a handful of fingernails. And I never told anyone.

  The day after the meeting, when we walked about town, still trying to convince folk to leave, lots of them were averting their eyes from us. I knew that they wanted to behave like there was nothing wrong. But it felt like everyone thought we had disgraced ourselves. Made fools of ourselves.

  Al even said, ‘Maybe we’ve got it all wrong. If we stayed here in Our Town … we’d be stronger in numbers. Maybe we can fight the Martians off…’

  Even as he said this, I could hear the doubts colouring his voice. He was squinching his eyes up, trying to convince himself.

  We went to the Storehouse to buy fuel and sundry other bits that the damaged hovercart would need for a long haul. These men were Da’s pals and peers. They were respectful to us for his sake. They gave us good prices on the things we’d brought from the Homestead to trade. Stuff we wouldn’t need anymore.

  The men hung their heads in shame because they weren’t heeding our warnings. I wondered if they’d have listened to Da more. One of them – a gruff old geezer called Spider – broke their uneasy quiet. ‘He was a good fella, your Da. We all respected him.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, sounding curt.

  ‘But still, he didn’t know everything,’ Spider went on. ‘You think he did. But he weren’t always in the right.’

  I glared at Spider for that. How many times had he helped this lot, with a thousand things they couldn’t do, or got wrong? How many times had he fished them out of trouble? ‘Da knew more than you lot,’ I snapped. ‘More than anyone in this town.’

  They never said anything to that. I paid up and left that small collection of worn-out goods we’d been bartering with. Al and I carried the plaggy cases of supplies out to the parking area at the back. This was the place Da had brought us so many times when we were kids. This small lot was where he had always parked, leaving us to explore town while he went to see his cronies. What if he could have heard what they said today?

  Al and I didn’t feel like the same kids anymore.

  Ma, Hannah and Ruby were sitting in the hovercart as we loaded up the fuel and the last few supplies we could cram aboard.

  I sat in the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. It coughed and wheezed like it was choking on the red dust of the prairie.

  And that was how and when we left.

  Our first few days on the road were peaceful. Deceptively peaceful, Al said.

  The terrain levelled out and smoothed and the going was easy. Like the land itself wanted us to think it was gonna be plain sailing. And then, when we were far from home, it was gonna turn on us. Al always was a worrywart, though. I told him to get back to training his lizard bird to do something useful. He was full of talk about how bright that dumb-looking beast was.

  Ma sat on top of the hovercart wearing her best bonnet, clutching her carpet bag of her most personal and precious items. Those first few hundreds of miles she barely said a word or cracked a new expression. Staring straight ahead, she seemed frozen there. The rest of us shared scared glances with one another. She kept her face fixed straight on the horizon like a monument that we were transporting somewhere better.

  ‘She’s just recovering, that’s all,’ Aunt Ruby told us, in a wise tone. ‘Losing your Da like that. It’s a shock to her system.’

  Ma sat Hannah upon her knee and Hannah looked scared the whole time. She didn’t get what was happening at all.

  We camped under yellow starlight, and then, when it rolled into phase above us, the blue light of old Earth. The first few nights were colder than I expected, but luckily we had brought enough blankets and rugs. We lay on the exposed ground and I listened to my family members dropping off, one by one, into sleep. Hoping we’d be safe here. Surely this was safer than being at home and waiting for the Martian Ghosts to come for us, one at a time?

  I lay awake plagued by awful thoughts. What if I’d taken responsibility, only to place us in even more danger?

  This was me, staring up at the great big skyful of ink, too fretful to read a word to help me to sleep. I basked in the wild Earth light and eventually I slept for a few hours.

  First thing in the morning I was awake, tuning in the hovercart radio and listening out for those meteorological broadcasts. Was it my imagination, or were they clearer than ever out here? I took this as a good sign even though, unlike Da, I couldn’t make head nor tail of them. The messages consisted of a list of numbers – presumably temperatures, wind speeds … stuff like that. And strange-sounding names. Lodger, Digger, Moribund, Spaniard, Eventide, Kestrel and Turk. I listened because they were evidently important, but I didn’t have a clue what they meant.

  The increasing clarity I took to mean that we were travelling in the right direction. The reception was good, even if it made no sense. I memorised the words as best I could and made a mantra of them. Digger, Eventide, Turk and Softspot.

  As we travelled through those early days, Aunt Ruby sat in the passenger seat beside me. I fired off questions at her and she told me all that she could remember about all those years ago. Back when our town was first settled and how all the humans separated out across this hemisphere. They made townships all over the place. All these places that we – two generations later – had never even heard of.

  ‘It’s such a long time ago. You must excuse an old woman’s haziness and the gaps in her recollecting. We all fell out of touch with each other, after just a couple of years. Everywhere was so far apart, and radio and TV signals, they got blotted out by the rays, you know. And the towers fell down, and the dishes. And we were so busy just concentrating on keeping ourselves alive. There were storms and insect plagues and the blighted crops. They seem so commonplace now. You’ve grown up knowing how to deal with these things. But back then we had to learn everything new. There didn’t seem enough energy or time left for keeping in touch with those other places. And they had their own concerns, too. It seemed like a luxury or an indulgence to discuss them over the crackling airwaves. Why, when everybody had problems, why spend all your time yattering about them? Especially with folk so far away? Folk that you’re already starting to forget about?’

  I shook my head, listening to Ruby, keeping my hands on the wheel, keeping us straight and level on the desert floor. Would I have thought and felt the same thing, had I been alive back then? Would I have made the same decisions? I felt sure that I would have seen the sense in staying in touch with my fellow human beings. I know that I wouldn’t have let it all drift apart.

  Ruby went on. ‘The Elders always told us we had no time to waste, thinking about the cares and woes of other folk. Not distant relations, doing their own thing elsewhere. What were those others to us? Competitors, if anything, in the ecosystem. So when the dishes and masts fell down and the transmissions went hazy and faded to nothing, we didn’t fret none. We didn’t mind that our town suddenly felt alone on the face of this planet. The darkness dropped around us and it was a st
range and new feeling. Alone on this world of Mars.

  ‘Why, I remember the night it happened. The last strand of connection snapped. It was New Year’s Eve and the signal faded in the middle of the chimes from some famous clock. We had to pick up the counting ourselves and we all cheered and before the noise faded the last contact was gone. And you know what? Being alone there, in just our little town … why, it even had a kind of cosy feeling. As far as we were concerned, we were the only folk.’

  I was used to everyone acting kind of ignorant like this. The Adamses were regarded as great travellers because a couple of times each year they went to loot more stuff out of ships like the Melville.

  Only my family had come out of the wilderness, hadn’t we? Eight years we had been in our Homestead on the prairie. We weren’t part of the townsfolk, Da had always made sure we were aware of that. But where were we before? Another house on another prairie. I’d been too young to even know where it was.

  Da had brought us from somewhere else. We weren’t the same as the folk in Our Town. That was something I’d known all along

  Five days into our journey, we got the biggest surprise.

  Aunt Ruby stood up, looking backwards in the cart, wielding a brass telescope she claimed was an Earth antique. As she adjusted it she gave a squawk of triumph.

  People from Our Town were coming after us. They were a blur of dust at first, then they were gathering pace. They had come to join us.

  ‘Yooooo-hoooo…!’

  Not many of them, but who it was surprised me. The Adamses had abandoned their Emporium, loading everything they could on their own hovercart. As had Madame Lucille the dressmaker and her quiet, hulking husband. Hardly anyone had seen Madame Lucille out of doors for years and now here she was, in full glare of the sun and several days away from home.

  When they caught us up, they said they had realised it was a big mistake, staying in town. They would have been fools to listen to the Elders and the Sheriff.

  I was heartened and amazed and so was all my family. It had always seemed to me that the Adamses’ emporium was kind of like the heart of the town. Yet here they were, in a hovercart twice the size and much more splendid than ours, packed to capacity with everything they could think of.

  My heart was only just calming down. When we’d first seen them on the red horizon I didn’t know who was chasing after us.

  ‘You convinced them, Lora!’ Aunt Ruby crowed, grabbing me about the shoulders. ‘They saw sense in what we were saying!’

  It was like Da used to say: we stood a much better chance in greater numbers.

  ‘But it isn’t exactly the whole town,’ I said. ‘Just five people…’

  But it was enough. It was a sort of vindication. They made us feel less alone on the face of the planet.

  I tried to explain to Ma about it, but she just looked at me blankly. She shook her head, as if to clear it of sand or noise, and eventually I saw understanding coming into her eyes. She surprised me. ‘That’s good, Lora. You’ve done what your Da would have done. You’ve made people see sense, and follow you.’

  Even if they weren’t exactly the nicest people in town…

  We pitched camp early that night, building an extra big fire and cracking open supplies for a welcoming feast. Welcoming folk we thought we’d never see again. Mr and Mrs Adams and a shy-seeming Annabel, plus the glamorous Madame Lucille and Ray, her burly husband. Everyone hugged each other and made a whole load of noise. Even Ma came out of her shell that evening. Al said that she ought to play us some harp after supper. Music and the old rituals were important, he said, for making us feel at home, wherever we roamed.

  Vernon Adams told us how his family hadn’t been at all happy with the Elders and the way we had been treated and virtually dismissed by everyone. ‘We were sorry to watch you setting off on your own like that. The next day we felt so ashamed. The women in our Emporium were laughing and joking about you all, and how you’d soon be back with your tails between your legs. Well, we knew you were right. We Adamses know better than anyone what’s coming to that town. We knew we should have left with you.’

  Mrs Adams was nodding vigorously. ‘We’re so glad we didn’t leave it too late. And that we have found you…’ As she snuffled weepily by the campfire, her face was kinder and softer than I’d ever seen it. All of a sudden I felt guilty that I’d stolen her library books.

  Madame Lucille told us how she and her husband had decided to follow us, too. She added, ‘Ray and I – we never fitted into that town anyway. They only just tolerated us. I barely went out, did I? We lived most of our lives behind shutters. We figured we would be losing nothing by lighting off after you. Maybe going somewhere better. Somewhere with no danger…’

  In the silence that followed this hopeful pronouncement, I thought back to my single, embarrassing visit to their dressmaker’s shop. I shivered with shame when I recalled how I’d thrown up on one of the gowns and had to take it home in a bag. I hoped they’d forgotten all about that day. It was just last autumn, though it felt a lifetime ago already. It was around the time of Grandma’s Disappearance. Though so much had happened since then, I could still feel that crinkly, fancy material against my skin.

  We all sat there around the fire, eleven of us, now. We were lost in the wilderness, but we were making much more noise this night than we had been capable of the night before.

  21

  Because we were so used to being sealed indoors as we slept, it took some time to get used to the noises at night. I suppose I was better equipped at dealing with them, thanks to my night flights with Sook. But still, it was disconcerting, to lie there in the midst of a million rustlings and fidgetings, whoops and cries. These sounds came from close by and from miles away across flat prairies, echoing about the hills. We refugees slept huddled round the fire together and our hovercarts formed a barrier around us, sheltering us from whatever life was out there.

  I tried to sleep. I tried not to think that all these people were my responsibility. They were looking to me for leadership. Even the grown-up men. Ray had never left town before, and Vernon Adams was much too sweet and gentle to announce he was taking over.

  Late one evening the shopkeeper came and sat by me. He said, ‘When I look at you, Lora, it’s like your Da is still with us. I can see his wisdom in your face.’ Mr Adams was almost weeping as we sat there by the fire. The strain of recent days and weeks had been too much. ‘I know you’ll do great things, Lora. I know you’ll get us through all of this.’

  In a suspicious part of my mind I wondered whether those men – Mr Adams and Ray – were just relieved to become mere followers. They didn’t want to take charge and have everyone looking to them for answers. I was amazed at the way they trusted their lives to a girl like me.

  I was fifteen now. My first birthday without Da. I had a muted birthday celebration one night, quite early during our journey. Al and Ma conspired to make a cake out of handfuls of ingredients they’d stowed away. It was a flat honey and flour cake they made in a shallow pan on the fire. It was delicious but, even as we crowded round to share it, I thought it was probably wasteful.

  Mrs Adams produced a fancy bottle of pink liqueur from the depths of her shoulder bag and they sang to me under the bright Earth light.

  I looked at the beaming, well-meaning faces around me and I thought about just a year ago – and still being a kid. On my last birthday I’d wanted toys and childish stuff. Back then I’d thought it was exciting to go into town for a visit. It was a momentous trip, travelling in to see a picture or to visit Adams’ Emporium. A year ago, when I was just turning fourteen, Da was still around and so was Grandma and they were standing there as I cut into my cake.

  Everything had changed.

  We ate our honey cake and each had a sip of the cloying citrus spirits Mrs Adams poured. Then later I wandered into the desert alone as the others were settling to sleep under the stars.

  There were no grown-ups who could tell me when or where I wa
s allowed to wander. Not any more. Under the pretext of scoping out the land, checking our position by the stars and spying out signs of wild animals, I wandered away to find some quiet. These nocturnal checks had soon became second nature after two, three, four weeks on our journey. Also, I took the transistor radio Da used to carry with him, when he wanted to pick up the meteorological reports. I turned it on and tuned it into the dry, implacable voice again, telling me about the weather on Mars. Or at least, regaling me with the lists of numbers and strange names.

  ‘Desperado, Turnstile, Leastways … Mousetrap, Seizure, Cuttlefish…’

  Was it my imagination, or was the weatherman’s voice even clearer tonight? It was still gibberish. I understood nothing of what I heard, but I felt we were closer. Much closer. That night of my fifteenth birthday I wandered to a spot far beyond our camp. A spot sheltered by blood red rocks and there, when I was sure no one could hear me or see me, I called out to Sook.

  I knew she would be out there. I’d had a feeling for some days that she had been tracking us. I knew she wouldn’t let me down. In the midst of all those nocturnal noises I’d heard the brushing whirr of her wings, I was sure.

  Also, she knew it was my birthday. Though Martians didn’t have the same concept of birthdays in their culture, she knew that the day was a special one.

  She arrived out of the clouds and dropped lightly onto the sand. Her wings were gorgeous things, more elaborately formed since the last time I saw her, covered in golden scales. When her feet reached the sand, her wings folded tidily into a cloak about her slim body. She was more beautiful and graceful than ever, I thought. I felt so cloddish and dirty before her. So heavy and stuck to the ground.

  We hugged and it seemed like months since we had been together. She pulled me into that heavy, scaled cloak of hers. It had a strange, heady smell – like pollen, I guess. I was shivering at her touch. Suddenly I felt able to give in to all the feelings I’d been carefully holding back.