by Paul Magrs
I took a weaving route through the empty streets, past shells of abandoned houses. I was soon breathless and the thin night air was hurting my lungs and making my legs shake. For a while I could hear the slapping of Martian feet and the thrilled ‘Hee heeee heeee’ of their laughter. I could imagine their graceful movements, but I didn’t look back and eventually they faded away.
I decided it was time to abandon this morbid town. We had uncovered everything useful or edible that it had to offer. I gabbled out my story about Cassandra’s fate and the encroaching Martian Ghosts. No one wanted to stay a moment longer.
Dawn came up brilliantly as we hitched up our burden beasts and started the engines of our hovercarts. Ma took a couple of her purple pills and smiled at us. ‘Where next, kids? You’re the ones in charge!’
I had to admit that I wasn’t sure at all. All we knew was the general direction we had to head in: the source of the weather warnings. Always keeping west, where the strange words came from. But beyond that, I didn’t really know much at all.
Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that was just as well.
24
I remember Ma saying, on the first day out from Dead Town, that she felt the whole of her world had been turned upside down. Why, just a few months ago, it had been the adults in charge. Grown men like Da were in command of our destiny, knowing all the answers and making all the decisions. And now it was just little bits of kids telling everyone what to do. A little girl, at that.
I stared back at her when she said this, catching a bitterness in her voice and I saw she was looking at me like I was a stranger again. She was as high as a kite on her tablets, of course. All she had to do all day, through these long days of travelling, was sit atop the hovercart, cuddle Hannah, and keep swallowing the pills.
Over the next few days and weeks we travelled hundreds of miles, all without much incident. Our initial supplies dried up and we had to rely on what we had looted from Dead Town. I found myself being thankful that we had stopped in that place after all. Their dried foodstuffs, their capsules and even their water were of a better quality than we were used to.
Mrs Adams took over cooking duties each evening, after Ma decided that she didn’t want to do any more of that stuff. This surprised her children and the people who knew her best. We all knew how she loved to cook and feed folk.
With Mrs Adams keen to show off her culinary skills we were living the high-life for the next few days. We consumed rehydrated sticky ribs and hoisin duck; tinned champagne that fizzed so fiercely it made us sneeze; star fruit in syrup served with powdered custard. This was bounty like we had never known and our suppers together became celebratory affairs.
But we knew our lavish evenings couldn’t last forever.
There was one curious night when, buoyed up on that sharp, cold champagne, Madame Lucille opened up a trunk she had packed away in a corner of her hovercart. She pulled out yard after yard of gorgeous, shimmering material in a multitude of colours. Salmon and topaz and midnight blue. The bolts of cloth were followed by flourishes of silk and lace, feathers and fake jewels.
‘You brought dressy-up stuff?’ squawked Aunt Ruby. She was scandalised. ‘We ran away with the few vital bits we needed to survive – and you brought your dressy-up trunk?’ I knew Ruby was thinking about her precious tapes and historical records.
Madame Lucille simply grinned at the old lady and shook out a long, white sequined dress with a slash that went right up to the thigh. She thrust it into Ruby’s arms and told her to go and put it on at once.
Ruby’s eyes went out on stalks. ‘Me?’
I couldn’t remember seeing Ruby in a dress in all my life.
She was flattered. She dashed off with her prize and came back, not long after, looking really bizarre. But she felt – you could tell – ever so glamorous and fine. Aunt Ruby swept round and round our encampment that night acting like she was one of the flickering dames out of a picture show.
It turned out Madam Lucille had brought enough gaudy and marvellous outfits for everyone in our party of refugees. Quite by chance she had calculated the exact right number. That night she got her gruff, burly husband to put some old-time music on their wagon’s speakers and she somehow whipped up a party out of nowhere.
It was a very fancy affair. We all got dressed up in items of fabulous apparel and we drank the whole supply of canned champagne.
Even the men dressed up. Madame Lucille insisted. By the end of it all, Madame Lucille with her dirty growth of beard and her over-painted eyes looked the most masculine of us all.
Oh, that was a great night in our journey. Al took pictures of us all glamming up and showing off. The next day, all the costumes – a little stickier with booze and grimed with desert sand – went back into Madame Lucille’s dressy-up box. And we set off again, somewhat thick-headed, onto the next stage of our journey.
The day after we entered the canyons. I remember glimpsing this landscape once, when Sook flew me around the skies. It had seemed so far away. All these crazy zig-zagging patterns. Fathoms-deep trenches reaching into Mars. And now we were going to be trekking into them. We were stepping into deep purple shadows and entering a kind of labyrinth. The walls rose ever-higher above us as we went.
I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea, travelling into the canyons, but there was nowhere else and at least the ravines offered us shelter and shade. And water, too, with innumerable rivulets coming down the rocky walls. As we advanced we soon lost track of our route through the maze. We came upon fountains and once even a deep jade pool. The lapping sound of cool waters was delicious to our sand-encrusted ears.
We stopped and carefully tasted the water. Would it make us sick? Toaster took a sample protesting that, as a humble Servo-Furnishing, his computer brain wasn’t really built for chemical analysis. Nevertheless, after a few moments’ consideration, he announced that he believed the water in the pool was non-toxic. That evening we drank deep and took off our dusty things and bathed and swam in the lucid waters.
We built a small camp beside the driest bank and settled for the night. Ma played her harp but, for once, the music wasn’t as perfect and soothing as usual. She hit sharp discordant notes and grew cross with herself, cursing her clumsy hands. Her fingers had stiffened, she complained. This made her cry out in frustration. ‘The old songs have left me!’ she sobbed. The old songs had disappeared from her memory and her hands. ‘It’s because we have wandered too far,’ she said, in a haunted voice. ‘We have strayed too far from our own kind, and from civilisation.’
That night I dreamed about the Martian Ghosts and Sook. At night I felt as if they came among us. They would peer in my face and I’d see their round, purple eyes staring at me. They’d open their lipless mouths, showing needle teeth. They’d let their hot breath scorch my skin. Following our visit to Dead Town I could now hear their horrible giggling in my head: ‘Heeee heeee heeeee…’
In my dreams Sook came back to me, unfolding even bolder, more elaborate wings, stronger and more powerful. They could fly us both all around the world. In my dreams she would tell me the vile truth: that she had never been my friend at all. The whole thing had been a trap. She had been sent to my people to learn about us; to find out about our wishes, our hopes and our weaknesses. To find out anything useful about us. Sook had just been playing me along, anticipating the day that she would be able to eat me. She had earmarked me for her own personal consumption.
I would wake from these dreams panting with fear, my body running with icy sweat. Did I really believe it, deep down? Did I believe in my hidden mind that she had betrayed me all along?
In some ways it hardly mattered. I had heard nothing from her in weeks. She had obviously lost track of us since we had come so far. I would hate to discover that my dreaming mind had guessed right — that she had been an envoy of the hungry Martians. That she had never been my friend at all.
I decided that these were gloomy thoughts to be having by the oasis. I looked arou
nd. Everyone was sleeping. I clicked on a small lamp and fired up my electric book and I spent my sleepless hours immersed in one of my old novels. I was reading my way through the Brontes. Sand had gotten into the workings of the machine and scrambled the pages up, so that all the Brontes had become one big, confusing story. I remember sitting up that night, trying to make sense of it all, and being impressed by the heroine of the amalgamated saga. How lonely and resourceful she had to be, and how far away from home she felt.
That was our quiet night by the oasis, where it was cool and calming. Other days and nights were less comfortable. We endured them. But one of us in particular grew angry and frustrated. Ray, the husband of Madame Lucille, became more and more impatient with being lost in the maze. One day he hunched his shoulders and summoned all his strength. To our astonishment he started to clamber up the rock wall. He was sick of hiding in shadows, he shouted. He would climb to the top and see how the land lay.
I knew it was far too dangerous. We stood watching. Madame Lucille shouted up at him, shaking with fear. ‘The idiot,’ she kept whispering. ‘What’s he trying to prove?’
Ray was about three-quarters of the way when there was a rattle of loose stone and a horrible, quick scraping sound. A handhold let him down. He slipped.
Madam Lucille screeched and darted forward. But what could she do? What could any of us do?
Ray didn’t stand a chance, falling from that height. It was all very horrible, but graceful, the way he fell. And it happened right in front of us. He landed with a sickening crunch.
Madame Lucille was inconsolable.
That night she sat beside his body on the floor of the ravine. She covered it up in yards of very fine, silver fabric. She had her sewing kit out and her best needles and she stitched him a shroud. She knew she would have to leave him there on the rocks. There was nothing to dig into, to bury him properly.
‘He looked after me, Lora, all those years,’ she told me. ‘He was a good man. We have lived in some very unfriendly places. Unforgiving places, if you see what I mean. Why, even in Our Town, where we felt we were settled at last, even that wasn’t all that friendly. Oh, they tolerated us, I guess – but I had to keep myself indoors most of the time. I had not to show my face amongst everyday folk.’
Crouching by Madame Lucille, I thought about it. I’d always assumed she kept herself indoors because she was sick or too grand to go out. Or maybe her skin was too pale for the sun.
‘He always stuck up for me,’ she said, stitching away. ‘He made my life livable.’
She sat up with him all that night, hunched over, spinning a web of silver lace about his crumpled body.
The next day we set off without him.
We turned one of those sharp corners in the canyons and saw that the way ahead became suddenly very much more narrow.
Dread clutched my throat. It felt like the red rock walls were closing in around us.
The way ahead wasn’t wide enough for our three hovercarts. Nor would our burden beasts be able to squeeze themselves through. This was as far as they could go.
And so we had a big decision to make.
25
Of course we had to go on. Going backwards wasn’t an option. We gathered everything we could carry in our arms and abandoned the hovercarts where they stood.
If I expected trouble from anyone over this, I guess I expected it from Mrs Adams. Having been pampered all her life, she wasn’t used to walking anywhere. But she understood what had to be done. She, her husband and Annabel set about making bundles of supplies and tying them up in luxury sheets. They would carry everything they could on their backs.
It was my Ma who kicked off when we turned Molly and George free. It was hard for me, too. I was attached to these animals. I’d picked them out with Da when they were just infants. But when she watched those ugly brutes turning around in the canyon, Ma freaked out.
I slapped the beasts’ hides, and urged them to leave us, to go find a new life for themselves, free in the desert. Molly and George looked totally mystified. Like they had no idea what to do with freedom.
Aunt Ruby suggested that we kill them at once for meat. Surely we could carry enough to see us through several days? But the very thought of turning on our loyal companions and giving them such a reward was too much for me. Molly and George’s eyes were wide with doleful surprise. The idea of slaughtering them was too terrible. We’d only be able to carry a few handfuls of flesh, leaving the rest here for the desert scavengers. It seemed ungrateful and cruel.
Ma watched me shoo our beasts back the way we had come, and she set up such a noisy protest she disturbed Hannah, who was clinging to her neck. I thought I knew how Ma felt. By saying goodbye to the beasts and by leaving our old hovercart to rust in the labyrinth, we were saying a final goodbye to the last vestiges of Da.
Al brought out her pill jar, giving her a double dose. He hoped it would quell her incoherent sobbing. She fell quiet and Hannah hugged her tight, singing a nonsense song to cheer her. We watched Molly and George plod off the other way, glancing back now and then to check there hadn’t been some mistake.
Ma finally turned to walk with the rest of us. She shambled along, like she had given up all hope. Aunt Ruby walked alongside her, trying to look strong and dependable, muttering about lizard meat.
With the hovercarts we were leaving behind our electric navigational instruments, maps and the best radio. They had become erratic anyhow. We would just have to rely on the stars and our own instincts. We still had the small transistor radio, though reception was poor.
‘Hecate, Balustrade, Liverwort, Fingerless…’
We were stumbling in the vague, twisting direction of what we hoped might be civilisation. But we didn’t know what lay ahead. We didn’t know anything at all, really.
Down in the canyons I started to feel doubtful. Perhaps it was the limited sun. The light came probing its long fingers into the labyrinth, as if seeking us out, but most of our days were spent brushing through curtains of blue shadow.
But there we were – Ma and Hannah, Al and Ruby, Mr and Mrs Adams and Annabel, Madame Lucille, Toaster and me. All of us clutching as much as we could carry. I knew better than anyone that in a matter of days we would be completely out of supplies.
Al helpfully pointed this out.
‘We’ll be out of the canyons by then,’ I told him.
‘Will we, though?’ He stared up at the ever-loftier walls, until his neck gave an unwholesome cricking noise. ‘This is an endless maze, Lora. You’ve been calling it that yourself. We could be wandering around down here forever.’
‘Not forever,’ I whispered. Of course, we’d be starved to death way before then.
I could see the rising panic in my brother. It fluttered away at his insides, just as it did with Ma. He had always been more like Ma. I was always like Da. Stoic, Aunt Ruby said. I was stoic and strong. Well, I don’t know about that. Somebody had to be in charge without throwing hissy fits and panicking, didn’t they?
About this time Toaster began to have trouble with his joints. He wheezed and clanked through these days in the canyons. His glass innards were making a horrible, grinding noise. He’d only just managed to scrape through the narrowest part of the ravine and we were all relieved we didn’t have to leave him with the burden beasts.
He took me aside and lowered his voice, saying, ‘You will have to consider leaving me behind. When I cannot look after myself and become useless.’
‘No, never!’ I gasped. I couldn’t even imagine a life without Toaster. He had been in our family longer than any of its individual members.
‘Lora, if I malfunction and cannot move anymore, what are you going to do? Push me along on castors?’
‘If we have to, yes.’
I watched his stiff face pull into a smile. It gave a grinding noise as it did so. He was pleased by my reaction, I think. But like all Servo-Furnishings he was completely practical. ‘I insist that, if the time comes, you leave me behi
nd and you don’t look back.’
‘We’ll decide that if and when we have to,’ I said. I was thinking how our party was getting smaller and smaller. Was that how it was going to be? Until we got whittled down to nothing?
Toaster started talking about being the very last Servo-Furnishing on Mars. He had no actual evidence for this – how could he have? None of us knew how many settlements there were on this vast world. What he really meant was that, out of all the grand luxury ships that had arrived here, so hopefully and bravely, sixty or more years ago, he was the final mechanical servant left. His faulty sensors could detect no other. From a roster of hundreds of drinks cabinets, trouser presses, armchairs, ovens and grandfather clocks, only Toaster the sunbed was still alive. Once they had all been splendidly alert and willing to help the human race in whatever it had needed. Slowly they had all crumbled into dust with just Toaster still somehow managing to amble gallantly along.
There was no way I’d abandon him. I’d walk away from Aunt Ruby easier than I would him.
That night our encampment was very subdued. We had no beasts or vehicles to protect us and the walls were closer. I found myself expecting Ma to start playing her harp, sending those delightful, liquid notes up the ravine walls, buoyant and sweet, taking our minds off our worries, as she had done so often in the past. Except, I realised, she had left the harp stowed away inside the hovercart, several miles behind us.
That night we went hungry, with only a few concentrated cubes left. We munched them silently, hating but making the most of their rubbery taste and texture. A plaggy bottle of distilled water was passed around between us.
Madame Lucille tried to lead us in a round of storytelling, but no one’s heart was really in it. We listened as she told some dramatic tale about how she and her husband met. We were polite because she was still coming to terms with having lost him. Mrs Adams told a story about her mother, who was a first-generation settler and a very fine lady, a painter of portraits and landscapes. Mars’ very first lady artist, she’d had a retinue of twelve Servo-Furnishings, each one of them a lamp of different height and dazzling colour. They all followed her about, illuminating her way as she slowly went blind.
