Life on Mars

by Jonathan Strahan (Ed)

  Attlee Bonser, Backslider.

  She wasn’t a Backslider! Wanting a better life wasn’t the same as if she planned on ditching the Collective, the way some traitors had done, and going to live up on Mons Olympus with the rich people or, worse, going back to Earth. Attlee would stay on Mars and use her brains to make the terraforming go faster. She’d be a hero too. Just not a dead one.

  But the jeering voice in her mind wouldn’t shut up, and finally she stopped arguing with it as she loped along through the darkness. She was a long way out now, and though Mons Olympus still obscured stars to the west, different stars whirled and burned to the east; the others had long since sunk behind the jagged ridges of Ceraunius.

  When she felt her strength flagging, Attlee stopped and pulled off her pack. She set up the billy-can, filled it with water, and dumped in a packet of dehydrated broth and noodles before activating the heating element. The pounding of her heart took a while to slow down, as did her gasping breath, but they did, and so it was fairly quiet when she heard the scuttling run of another roach.

  Attlee looked up in time to see it streaking straight for the billy, a big bold roach. Rising from her crouch, she grabbed the billy and set it high on the edge of the canal. The roach halted for a second. She was pulling out her hammer when it darted right up the side of the canal. Outraged, Attlee kicked at it to knock it off, but it dropped before she connected and her boot hit the canal wall with a painful thud. She chased it down the canal path, slamming at it repeatedly with her hammer, until she killed it at last. Limping, she turned and went back. She drank the broth and ate the noodles standing, dipping them out with two fingers as she glared around, daring anything else to surprise her.

  Nothing more did. As she packed up the billy, Attlee spotted another couple of holes in the ground at the far edge of the field. The beets all around looked chewed and plundered. Muttering to herself, she stamped in the holes and continued her journey.

  During her rest, the cold had begun to sink in a little, even through her psuit. Attlee could see the frost patterns on the vizio now, and here and there as she jogged along, the vibration of her passage knocked little flakes of ice from the ceiling or walls.

  Got to be somewhere close now. Nobody’s ever frozen to death going to see the Old Roach, at least. Attlee halted in her tracks as she heard a low gurgling roar in the darkness, echoing along the canal. She fumbled for her hammer and gripped it, half-crouched as she waited.

  The roar grew louder, but as it did Attlee realized that it was coming from the fields behind her, rather than ahead. He’s back of me! How? How’m I getting past him to get home again?

  Attlee trembled as she waited, swinging her hammer to brace her nerves. Big as a tractor, Hobby said. Can’t be true. Just big. Jump high, hit hard. Don’t let him knock you down—

  She saw the wave of steam racing along the pipe before she understood what it was. When she realized that the roar was coming with the steam, Attlee almost dropped her hammer, she was so relieved. She laughed out loud as the noise and the heat caught up with her and passed her, racing mindlessly on down the canal.

  “Big as a tractor!” she cried. “You liar, Hobby!”

  As clouds of warmth rose from the heating pipe, the ice on the vizio melted and began to fall in little drops, plinking into the canal and spattering on the path. The crops in this particular bit of the annex—oats, still green—seemed to wake up, seemed to crane eagerly toward the falling water. They must be remembering rain, thought Attlee in wonder. She slid her mask up and turned her face toward the ceiling. A big drop hit her cheek. Is this what it feels like?

  She’d never seen rain. Rain was the blessing of old Earth, it fell from the sky everywhere down there. On Attlee’s planet, water had to be melted and pumped from below, every drop, or brought in by Haulers from the poles. Mars had no blessings; every good thing here had to be earned. But someday it will rain.

  Feeling light-headed from the moist warmth, Attlee trudged on. More often, now, she saw the black mouths of dug burrows, always in fields that looked neglected and chewed. The crops out at this distance were all stuff that didn’t need to be tended much, oats and barley and sugar beets, and the burrows looked fresh. Attlee supposed they had all been dug since the last time the planting crews had been out here. Dutifully she stamped in each one, as a Shadowcat ought to do, but there were more and more of them now.

  What if the Old Roach laid eggs and they hatched, and these are his kids? He’s a she then. Attlee thought briefly of an Old Roach dressing itself up like one of the posh ladies on holos, disguising itself with makeup, drawing red lips around its mouthparts and simpering. Somehow that made it scarier. And what if thousands of giant roaches were down this end of the fields, now, with Attlee was out here all alone?

  She began to run again, not too fast, determined to keep control. I’ll do it. I’ll fetch back their stupid rock, just to show I wasn’t scared, and then I’ll ditch the Shadowcats. I don’t need the likes of Hobby and Jennifer always telling me what to do. Jennifer’s going to leave soon anyway and that’ll just make Hobby bossier. I’ll go to Uncle Dave and tell him I want to be an intern and ask him what classes I have to take.

  The sneering voice in her head called her a coward, called her lazy, told her she wasn’t worthy to clean the canal-mud off the boots of the noble field workers, and asked moreover what would happen to the Great Work if everyone tried to get themselves soft jobs?

  Attlee came to the next lock, smacked it, and jumped through. There, far off but clearly visible, was the far wall with no lock, the end of the annex. And that was dawn light filtering in, over a wretched ragged field of sugar beets so chewed up the field looked already harvested.

  If the Old Roach is anywhere, Attlee thought, it’s here.

  She was suddenly acutely aware of how tired she was, and what a long way she had to go to get home. She thought of Hobby’s scary stories, all the kids nodding solemnly and believing every word. You were supposed to believe, weren’t you? Believe and shut up and do what everybody else did. Not question the ones like Hobby, who liked to boss everyone around. Not know things by finding them out for yourself.

  But it’s good to know things.

  Attlee took the stone from her pocket with one hand as she walked forward and swung her hammer in the other. All around her, black things were springing out of the ruined field and streaking for . . . streaking for the biggest den Attlee had seen yet, a mass of holes and thrown-off dirt.

  There’s dozens of them. Not one big one, but lots. One slip and they’d be on you in a second, biting and hooking you with their spikes. So this was it, this was the real danger you had to face. This was the truth behind the stories.

  Attlee walked straight and steady, keeping to the canal path. She got all the way to the end and looked out at the vizio wall. The sun must be coming up, far away on the other side of the eastern hills. She could just glimpse frost glittering on the Ceraunius tops, though stars were still visible. Lowering her gaze, she saw the rock marked SHADOWCATS lying in front of her boots.

  Attlee bent, dropped the rock she was carrying, and scooped up the one she had come so far to find. As she was putting it in her pocket, she saw something beginning to emerge from one of the holes.

  Shuddering, she ran and stamped at it with her boot, as hard as she could. The soil gave way under her and she fell.

  Attlee didn’t fall far. But it was pitch-black where she landed, somewhere warm and stinking of. . . what was that smell? Her arm was buried but she thrashed free, smacked on her mask’s light, and swung her hammer.

  It didn’t connect with anything. Attlee looked around wildly, expecting her light to flash across clicking mandibles, waving antennae. She saw none. There was only a glimpse of a pair of legs vanishing into a wall of holes . . . black-furred legs . . . and the wall was obscured by branching spindly stuff, whitish-yellowish. . . .

  Attlee followed the branches with her spotlight, down to the floor where the
y sprouted from a dense carpet of pellety things, black and squashy.

  She remembered being little and working at the baby-minders’, working with the animals the Collective farmed because kids were supposed to like animals, only she never had liked cleaning out the pens full of . . . rabbit poo.

  Rabbits vanished, and everyone assumed something was taking them. But hadn’t they lived in the ground, back on Earth? They dug under fences and ate carrots. Attlee remembered an illustration in a lesson plan that showed rabbits doing just that.

  And here on Mars they had gotten away and dug down into the Martian soil, where the cold and the ultraviolet couldn’t hurt them. Some would burrow out into Outside and they’d die, of course, but some would learn to burrow only under the domed fields where there was air, and they’d survive to have babies. Lots of babies, because rabbits did that too, they bred fast. It was why the Collective raised them for meat.

  Old Roach is rabbits! Attlee struggled to her feet, laughing, but with her mouth closed because of the smell. Were Hobby and Jennifer in on the joke? Or had they never dared to step off the canal path? Hadn’t the grown-ups noticed? Or didn’t they pay attention, sending the harvester machines in?

  She was about to scramble out of the pit when her attention was caught again by the spindly branches. What were they? Was it some kind of mushroom? . . .

  Wondering, she put out her hand and swept a bunch toward her. Not mushrooms at all. Thin scaly stems, no leaves, unlike any plant that grew on Mars where there were no weeds ever, nothing that the Collective hadn’t planted. Attlee had seen a picture of something a little like this, something primitive that once grew on Earth. What had its name been? Cooksonia. But it was extinct. And this was different, and alive.

  It was something that had lived underground away from the UV glare, casting out spores, and had finally perished as the planet got colder and dryer. Except for its spores, which lay dormant. Who knew how long?

  Until something dug down where they were and gave them warmth and damp and fertilizer.

  Well, so what? It’s not something you can eat, is it?

  “It’s a Discovery,” said Attlee out loud. She put away her hammer and pulled out her fieldman, unfolding the sharpest blade. She cut a bunch of the branches free. It was awkward climbing from the pit holding them before her, but she managed.

  It was a miracle. Something Martian finally growing again on Mars, instead of cabbages and beets. Something that would make Attlee’s mum proud. Something to show Uncle Dave and maybe get Attlee an internship in the laboratory.

  Attlee emerged by the canal path just as the first sunlight was spreading out over the high valley, and the frost on the mountains blazed like bright windows. She slid her mask up and ran for home, holding her future in front of her like a bouquet.

  KAGE BAKER grew up in the Hollywood Hills amid glamorous houses, ruins, and the ruins of glamorous houses. Her aunt and uncle, Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling, played the cosmopolitan ghosts on television’s Topper, endowing the young Kage with a permanent and uniquely flexible view of time, reality, and immortality.

  This resulted in the concept of Dr. Zeus, Inc.—an all-powerful cabal responsible for a secret history of the human race—the source of her acclaimed Company series (In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, et al). She won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2004 for “The Empress of Mars,” and was nominated several times for both Hugos and Nebulas. The novel length version of this story is a nominee for the 2010 Locus Awards, and has just won the Romantic Times SF Novel of the Year Award. Her novella The Women of Nell Gwynne is a nominee for both the 2010 Nebula and Hugo. Her fantasies include the novels The Anvil of the World and The House of the Stag (a 2009 World Fantasy Award finalist and winner of the 2009 Romantic Times Best Fantasy Novel of the Year Award). She contributed stories to numerous anthologies, including tribute collections for Robert Silverberg and Jack Vance, and published extensively in the developing steampunk genre. She also wrote a children’s book, The Hotel Under the Sand, in the classical traditions of E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, and Kenneth Grahame.

  Her upcoming novels are Not Less Than Gods, a Company/ steampunk novel, and The Bird of the River, set in the universe of The Anvil of the World. They will be published posthumously.

  Kage Baker lived her entire life in the numerous environments of California. She died in Pismo Beach, her home for the last fifteen years, in January 2010 after a brief and heroic battle with cancer, whence she departed for the Uttermost West. She is assumed to be sailing over the horizon now, dining at the Captain’s table, drinking the kinds of cocktails that feature rum and fruit spears, and slow dancing on the aft deck with God.

  Visit her Web site at www.kagebaker.com.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  “The biggest inspiration for this story was the fact that new lands are settled by courageous idealists and sturdy pioneers—but their kids have to live with that decision, willy nilly. Most kids do rebel in some way against their parents, but they still end up living essentially the same lives Mom and Dad did. The kids of Mars 1 are like that too: and if you aren’t by nature a heroine of the Revolution, you’re pretty much out of luck unless you can invent your own way. Attlee is one of those people who has to navigate life on their own. Her parents are among the dedicated socialists who have emigrated to Mars to make a new and perfect world; and while Attlee loves her parents and her home, she doesn’t much like her society.

  “Attlee is named for Clement Attlee, Labour Prime Minister of the UK from 1945 to 1951. Her parents name her Attlee because he’s a heroic Labour politician; I called her that because Clement was a rather cool guy, actually. He helped develop the National Health Program, and was instrumental in India, Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Jordan all winning their independence from Britain. He was independent, smart, and resourceful, and I’ve tried to give Attlee some of those characteristics. The big difference, though, is that she finds her parents’ socialist paradise stagnant and boring, and she wants to strike out on her own.”

  “Attlee and the Long Walk” was conceived of and written during Kage Baker’s last few months, when she was undergoing therapy for the cancer that finally took her life. She was hopeful and stubborn and sure she would win, and that attitude is reflected in self-sufficient, determined Attlee. It’s also largely the way Kage lived. She made her own worlds and quietly insisted on living there, and so succeeded in accomplishing things that elude most people. She’s off on her own Long Walk now, and Old Roach had better watch his ass.

  —Kathleen Bartholomew

  (Kage Baker’s sister)

  THE OLD MAN AND THE MARTIAN SEA

  Alastair Reynolds

  In the belly of the airship, alone except for freight pods and dirtsmeared machines, Yukimi dug into her satchel and pulled out her companion. She had been given it on her thirteenth birthday, by her older sister. It had been just before Shirin left Mars, so the companion had been a farewell present as well as a birthday gift.

  It wasn’t the smartest companion in the world. It had all the usual recording functions, and enough wit to arrange and categorize Yukimi’s entries, but when it spoke back to her she never had the impression that there was a living mind trapped inside the floral-patterned—and now slightly dog-eared—hardback covers. And when it tried to engage her in conversation, when it tried to act like a friend or even a sister, it wasn’t clever enough to come out with the sort of thing a real person would have said. But Yukimi didn’t mind, really. It had still been a gift from Shirin, and if she stopped the companion talking back to her—which she mostly did, unless there was something she absolutely had to know—then it was still a place to record her thoughts and observations, and a useful window into the aug. When she was seventeen she would be legally entitled to receive the implants that gave her direct access to that shifting, teeming sea of universal knowledge. For now, all she had was the glowing portal of the companion.

  “I’ve done it now,” she told it. “After all t
hose times where we used to dare each other to sneak aboard, I’ve actually stayed behind until after the doors are closed. And now we’re in the air.” She paused, tiptoeing to peer through a grubby, dust-scoured window as her home fell slowly away. “I can see Shalbatana now, Shirin—it looks much smaller from up here. I can see Sagan Park and the causeway and the school. I can’t believe that was our whole world, everything we knew. Not that that’s any surprise to you, I suppose.”

  It wasn’t Shirin she was talking to, of course. It was just the companion. But early on she had fallen into the habit of making the entries as if she was telling them to her sister, and she had never broken it.

  “I couldn’t have done it if we hadn’t played those games,” Yukimi went on. “It was pretty hard, even then. Easy enough to sneak onto the docks—not much has changed since you left—but much harder to get aboard the airship. I waited until there was a lot going on, with everyone running around trying to get it loaded on time. Then I just made a run for it, dodging between robots and dock workers. I kept thinking: what’s the worse that can happen? They’ll find me and take me home. But I won’t be in any more trouble than if I do manage to sneak aboard. I know they’ll find me sooner or later anyway. I bet you’re shaking your head now, wondering what the point of all this is. But it’s easy for you, Shirin. You’re on another planet, with your job, so you don’t have to deal with any of this. I’m stuck back here and I can’t even escape into the aug. So I’m doing something stupid and childish: I’m running away. It’s your fault for showing me how easy it would be to get aboard one of the airships. You’d better be ready to take some of the blame.”