One Way

by S. J. Morden

  “OK,” said Frank. “I’ll do it.”

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “I’ll have to keep up appearances. Make sure that everyone thinks I still hate your guts.”

  Brack gave his silly little grin. “You’ll put on a good show, Kittridge. But you’ll remember, won’t you?”

  “I’ll remember,” said Frank, and wondered if Brack knew that sometimes words had two different, opposite meanings.

  “Go and get your things. Transport leaves in half an hour.”

  Frank went back to his room. It was bigger than his old cell, and technically en suite, which meant there was a door between the bathroom and the bed. It had never felt different, though. He knew he’d swapped one cage for another, and had simply shifted his brown cardboard box between prisons.

  Sure, he was leaner, fitter, more purposeful. He didn’t resent any of that. He had a use, rather than just rotting away out of sight. That was good. But it was all he’d thought he’d ever have. Now … he rested his forehead against the cool of the wall.

  Totally unexpected. Yes, he’d always known they’d send a supervisor with them, but Brack? Goddammit. Did they deserve that? Not that they weren’t terrible people: they were. But despite everything, despite their natural instincts to go to the extremes, or blame others for mistakes they’d made, or a lack of any kind of internal warning voice, they’d sort of made up a team. They were all qualified to be there, and as long as they all did their jobs and as long as they didn’t deliberately push each other’s buttons, they got on well enough. The base would be large enough when it was finished that they could have their own space. Bumping along like that was no different from being on a cell-block landing.

  Whether they could do it indefinitely was another matter, but there were going to be people coming and going, and the base was supposed to expand as time went on. They’d be diluted, and eventually become just the crew—which wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

  He’d prepared himself for all of that. Prepared himself for being a remote role model, an example of how a man could do something awful, and turn himself around. Now the twin revelations that no one outside knew his name, and that this might not be the end after all meant …

  The son he knew he had and thought of all the time wouldn’t have to spend all his days wondering what had become of his father. They could sit out in the yard together and watch that small red dot appear over the horizon, and maybe the grandkids would want to hear of the time Gramps went to Mars. He just had to stay strong, and survive, and make sure nothing happened to Brack. A year traveling. A year or two or three working. A year on the way back. That wasn’t such a bad exchange for something passing for freedom.

  He lifted the lid of the box and went through all the things he knew were there. His few books. His few letters from his ex-wife. He sat on the edge of his bed and read through all the letters he could, starting at the beginning, when there was consternation and confusion, and working his way through, watching it slowly drain away, until there was nothing but cool, defensive detachment.

  She’d divorced him. Of course she had. He’d told her unequivocally that she should, and she’d agreed faster than he thought she might. But he’d betrayed her, by not telling her what he’d been planning. And if he’d loved her more, he might not have done it.

  Rereading the letters gave him comfort, though. He had been loved. He had had the capacity to love. He might even love again, at some point. He had known once upon a time how to do that and what it had felt like.

  “Report to Building Two. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged.” It might be the last time he heard that voice in his ear. “It’s been real.”

  He picked up his box and headed down towards Building Two, where there was a line of minivans waiting. The evening air was cool, and coming off the desert, so it tasted of salt.

  The others were there, congregating at the steps up into the medical center, each of them was holding a California Department of Corrections cardboard box. Marcy’s was tied up with string. There were also suits, but they were waiting on the other side of the road. Apart from their earpieces, the cons were alone.

  Zeus, sitting on the steps of the Blood Bank, moved across to give Frank some room. “Good?”

  “Good enough.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this.” Zeus’s thick fingers dug into the board of his box, perched across his knees. “This is too quick.”

  “I’ve registered my objections already. It made no difference. We just have to suck it up, big man.” The wind tugged at Frank’s ankles. “We’re on our way. We’ve been on our way since we left the pen, but someone, somewhere, had one of those big clocks and it’s counted down.”

  “That’s always bugged me. The countdown business. If everything’s ready, why not just press a button and launch?”

  “I guess it’s more complicated than that,” said Frank. “You wouldn’t turn on a pump until it had liquid inside it, so people have to know the order in which to do stuff.”

  “I suppose so. If there was someone we could have asked, that would have been cool, you know? It’s like we’re being kept in the dark on purpose.” Zeus glanced behind him at Building Two. “Do you know how they’re going to do this?”

  “We get in the cars and they take us to wherever, where they do whatever it is they do to us. Then we wake up on Mars.” Frank saw he had an audience. “That’s what they’re going to do.”

  Alice jerked her head at one of the vans. “Go and take a look in the back.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any one.”

  Frank put his box down and walked slowly over. He shielded his eyes against the reflections around him and peered in through the tinted side windows. He frowned, and hunkered down for another, better look.

  Inside was like the back of an ambulance. There were machines and straps and wires and tanks, and things he couldn’t even recognize.

  “They’re going to put us under here,” she called. “We won’t even get to see the rocket. We’re the cargo. We’re not important.”

  Frank realized that he should have expected this. That every time his jailers had the opportunity to behave like decent human beings, they disappointed him. They were determined to let him down at every turn. All he’d wanted to do was step up to the rocket like a regular astronaut, so that he felt as if he was actually going on a journey. Brack had said “transport”, but they were just going to freight them all as frozen corpses. It would explain why they were waiting outside the Blood Bank.

  “Well,” he said. “Goddamn.” He walked back to the steps, picked up his box again and cradled it against his chest.

  The door to Building Two swung open, and the suits shifted their stances, in exactly the same way that prison guards did when they thought something was about to kick off. Rather than a message over the earpiece, it was one of the medics, holding a tablet, calling them inside.

  Frank looked around at the others. Did any of them seem more agitated than usual? Were they going to make a futile run for it? There was nowhere to go, and no one going to help them. Demetrius was almost shaking with fear, and Marcy put her hand between his shoulders. She whispered something to him, and the boy nodded hesitantly.

  “We’re not quitters,” said Zeus. He got to his feet and started up the steps. “We might be a lot of things, but not that.”

  Then he started to sing.

  “Oh mourner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down. Oh mourner, let’s go down, down in the valley to pray.”

  “No singing,” said his ear.

  Not this time. Frank couldn’t sing. Couldn’t so much as hold a note from one word to the next. He’d never really tried out of childhood. But damned if he wasn’t going to try now. The words weren’t familiar to him. He was more West Coast than he was gospel, and maybe he’d heard the tune once before, with different lyrics.

  “Go on, Zeus. Sing it for us.”

  Zeus
glanced behind him, and gained strength from what he saw. “As I went down in the valley to pray, studying about that good old way.” His voice was high and clear and clean. For a big man, he sounded more like a choirboy. “When you shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

  The medic wordlessly stood aside for the line of them, Zeus in front, Marcy propelling Demetrius ahead of her at the rear. When it came to the chorus, Frank joined in, hesitantly and very inexpertly.

  “Oh sinner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down. Oh sinner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.”

  “No singing,” said his ear again. Presumably in Zeus’s too, but he wasn’t going to be put off either. Not this time.

  “I think I hear the sinner say, come, let’s go in the valley to pray. You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

  They were walking down the corridor, down to the very far end, where Frank had never gone before.

  “Oh mourner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down. Oh mourner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.” Was it everyone now? It was difficult to tell without stopping to check. It sounded like most of them. Perhaps not Alice, but then again, why not? If an ex-white supremacist could sing a spiritual, then there was no good reason for a doctor guilty of murdering her patients not to do so.

  It was an act of defiance, for certain. There was nothing that their jailers could do to them. Not now. It was also an act of contrition. Zeus was singing the songs of the people he’d tattooed his hate for across his body.

  The double doors at the far end of the corridor opened up, revealing a bright, white space beyond, and Zeus strode into it, carrying the rest of them along in his wake.

  Seven tables. Seven coffins. Screens between them. Two medics in each bay.

  Zeus’s voice faltered, just for a beat, before he resumed. “I think I hear the mourner say, come, let’s go in the valley to pray. You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

  One of each pair of medics came forward to claim their victim, and led them to their separate areas, where it was just them, the three of them together.

  “Get undressed,” Frank was told, and he got undressed, like he had done a hundred times. He put his box on the floor in front of his white, plastic coffin, and purposefully took his clothes off, trying to record for posterity what it felt like.

  “Oh sinner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down.”

  The roughness of the fabric, the weight of it as it fell away. The cold, antiseptic air giving him gooseflesh. This might be the last thing he ever remembered. The slickness of the rubberized floor. The strange envelope of the stretchy one-piece he had to put on, that went right over his head and left only his face exposed.

  “Oh sinner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.”

  Rockets blew up sometimes. Even those carrying people. And if they were going to Mars, sometimes they didn’t get there. Or if they did, they plowed into the ground and left a new crater.

  “I think I hear the sinner say, come, let’s go in the valley to pray.”

  He used the steps to climb up into the coffin. It was even colder inside. Water-cooled cold. There were pipes going in and out of the shell.

  “You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

  He laid himself down. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. They were going to be in the same position for a year, so he ought to be told whether to put them by his sides, or cross them at his waist, or fold them against his chest.

  “Oh mourner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down.”

  His teeth were starting to chatter. He was utterly at their mercy, and he always had been. He might not be going to Mars at all. He could wake up anywhere. He might not wake up at all, and be used for spare parts. That was stupid. Why all the training, otherwise?

  “Oh mourner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.”

  One by one, their voices were being stopped up. He couldn’t see what was being done to them, but his own team of medics was holding out a mask over his face. He could hear the hiss of gas, and caught a whiff of magic marker pens.

  “I think I hear the mourner say, Come, let’s go in the valley to pray.”

  The mask came down, and he needed to breathe the gas in, and didn’t want to breathe it in at the same time. Keep singing. Keep singing. He was the only one left.

  “You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

  9

  [Redacted report from Gold Hill Assessment Center Building Two (2) to Project Sparta 5/20/2047]

  Kittridge, Franklin Michael.

  DOB 1/20/1996.

  POB Modesto, CA.

  Married: Scott, Jacqueline Christina 6/11/2022. Divorced 7/5/2040.

  Children: 1, Scott, Michael Clay 12/5/2023.

  Arrested: 7/4/2038 Murder One.

  Sentenced: 3/20/2039 Murder Two 120 years detention without parole.

  Dominance 38

  Emotional stability 78

  Openness to change 35

  Perfectionism 82

  Privateness 92

  Rule consciousness 86

  Self-reliance 87

  Social boldness 25

  Overall Utility 83

  The pain woke him up.

  He felt as if he was on fire, and for a moment he saw the white phosphorous flames that were engulfing him. But that initial wash passed by, and all he was was cold.

  Something was trying to push through his lips, and he couldn’t turn his head to get away from it, but he could clamp his jaw shut to prevent its entry.

  His cheek stung with the slap, and when he gasped, a lukewarm, moist mass was pushed into his mouth.

  “Chew it, and don’t swallow. It’s a sponge.”

  That was … Alice?

  The inside of his mouth was as dry as a sepulcher. The water-soaked sponge slowly loosened his tongue, while she ripped the tape—faster than was strictly necessary—from his eyelids.

  The glare was too much to start with and, what with that and the eyedrops that more or less went in the right place, he was still functionally blind. He chewed at the sponge, and when he’d drained it completely of moisture, he pushed it to the front of his mouth and let it roll out.

  “Mars?” he croaked.

  “It’s either that or a particularly shitty version of the afterlife.”

  He tried blinking, and it was scratchy, but doable. The lights over him started to resolve out of the white mist into individual sources. A tube replaced the sponge, and a jet of cold water splashed over his tongue.

  “Swallow.”

  He did so, and it was like taking down a stone. He was gasping with the effort.

  “Again.”

  He didn’t want to, but knew he had to. Unless she was poisoning him. But there was no way he could have stopped her from doing that, so he wrapped his tongue around the bolus of liquid and choked it down.

  “We don’t have much of this: what’s in here is yours. But it turns out that we don’t have much of much.”

  He heard her shuffle around out of his eyeline, which was forcibly directed to the ceiling by his head restraints. He tried to twitch his fingers, and was surprised when they responded first time. His toes, too.

  “Meaning?”

  “It means we’re critically short on supplies. We can afford to go hungry, but we can’t go thirsty.”

  He was lying in some sort of form-fitting soft rubber, cut so that it held him in place. He lifted one arm, and it came free with a distinct sucking noise.

  “But Mars?”

  “There’s a window downstairs you can look through, and there are cameras on the hull. It certainly looks like it. But the kicker is the reduced gravity: can’t fake that. Be careful how you move, because it’s a bitch.” She held out her hand, and he failed to grasp it at the first attempt. “Just stay still. Let me do the work.”

  She gripped hi
s wrist and pulled. Everything felt wrong and nothing felt right. He was weak, stupid and dizzy, and had to hold on to the sides of his coffin while his world, whichever one it was, stopped spinning.

  “You won’t feel up to much for a while. But the sooner you get moving, the better. You won’t be the only patient I have.”

  Frank didn’t recognize where he was. He’d never seen the inside of the capsule before. He squinted, looked at the two tiers of four coffins arranged against the circle of the wall, and the hole in the center of the open grid floor. There didn’t appear to be anything above them—so they were near the top of the lander, then.

  Alice threw a set of overalls at him. He didn’t try to catch it, just allowed it to wrap around his face and then slide down onto his legs. The way that it had flown through the air, on a flat arc, looked odd. Alien.

  “Crap. Can’t hit jack,” she said. “Come on, up. Marcy’s next, and I guarantee you she’s going to whine like a baby.”

  “Who else is up and running?”

  “Brack. Me. You. And seriously, we haven’t got all day.”

  A day which now lasted forty minutes longer.

  “You’re not special. I’m doing this in order of priority, and currently you and Marcy are the priority. Now get out of my way.”

  Her face looked puffy, and florid. Perhaps his did too. They were living under reduced air pressure and reduced gravity. He’d been told to expect fluid to pool in places it shouldn’t, at least until his body had got used to it all. And even though he’d been asleep for … however long it was … he’d been in zero g almost all the time.

  He picked up his legs, right then left, and dangled them over the side of his coffin, and laboriously struggled into his one-piece overalls. There was an embroidered patch on his pocket. Not his name, nor one of those fancy mission patches either. Just a number. Two. He was number two.

  He managed to focus on Alice, and saw she was wearing the same blue as him. She had her back to him, taking read-outs from one of the other coffins: Marcy’s, presumably.