Before Mars

by Emma Newman

  Perhaps I should tell Petranek. I wince at the thought of the conversation opener. “So . . . I was just spying on your friend because I think he’s dodgy, and he’s sobbing out on the edge of a crater, so maybe he needs a hug or something?”

  I should tell Arnolfi at least. Banks might already be at risk of some sort of breakdown for all I know. And making sure he is okay is more important than any embarrassment I might feel.

  Leaving the cam drone to hover where it is, I check to see if Arnolfi is still in her office. A movement on the wall draws me back and I see Banks standing up and then going back to his rover. Relieved, I watch him start it up and turn around, hopefully to return to base. I check that he’s heading in the right direction, and when I’m sure he’s coming back, I change out of the onesie and back into the T-shirt and joggers, then send the cam drone toward the location of the footprint. I can use that as my reference point, to be certain that I’ll be sending it to the area that Principia is hiding with the replicated cam data, so I can see what the missing cam data should have shown me.

  At the back of my mind, I fear that as soon as Principia works out where the drone is heading, it’ll sabotage the expedition somehow. If it wasn’t a glitch, and that area is being hidden deliberately, surely any cam being sent there will be redirected or have its data doctored? Just as I’m about to abort and call it back to base, I decide to press on. If something happens to the cam drone, it’s one more tick in the Principia-is-deliberately-hiding-something box.

  If Principia is doctoring the data to hide something, somebody must have told it to do so. Its artificial intelligence doesn’t include the spontaneously generated desire to hide information from people; there has to be a reason why. This base is owned by GaborCorp, so the natural conclusion I can draw is that someone in that organization—possibly Gabor himself if Travis is to be believed—is telling Principia to cover something up. Again, I’m reminded of the risk; I’m sure that when someone as powerful as Stefan Gabor wants to hide something, it stays hidden, by whatever means necessary.

  On the aerial map, Banks’s fake dot is also heading back to base, almost like a mirror image of his current movements. Could he have set that up?

  The cam drone is approaching the edge of the Cerberus Palus crater now and I redirect my attention to finding the footprint. It’s exactly where I expect it to be and a close examination of the immediate area confirms my suspicion that any other footprints have been erased by weather conditions or by an ineffectual cover-up.

  The area that was not included in my earlier mersive rendering is on the other side of the crater, two kilometers away. I direct the cam drone to cross the crater and head straight for it. Halfway across, I get a ping from Principia.

  “Yes?”

  “I have detected a dust storm rising in the north. Apologies, Dr. Kubrin, but I must recall the cam drone to base to prevent damage.”

  Bingo.

  “Oh, okay, fair enough. Can I pick up where I left off tomorrow?”

  “I have noted your desire to and I will keep you informed of environmental conditions. It may be two to three days.”

  “Understood.” I let Principia take the controls and I watch the view swing round before the feed is shut down. Oh, I understand all right. Fine. I know where to look now. I just don’t know how to do that. Maybe I need to go back to that mersive and discuss it with Travis. He did say there was more that he needed to tell me.

  Before that though, I need to tell Arnolfi what I saw. If Banks does something that endangers himself or anyone else, I would never forgive myself.

  I don’t see anyone else on the way to her office. The base feels strangely empty when everyone is secreted away in their rooms. With only the environmental support system’s background hum, the red concrete corridors feel lonely and slightly spooky.

  The door is ajar and I slow down, wondering if she is about to leave. Then I’m creeping up to it on tiptoe, like the spy I don’t want to be, to peer through the crack.

  Dr. Arnolfi is sitting on the edge of her seat, hunched forward with her head in her hands. Her breath is ragged, like she’s either crying or panicking; it’s hard to tell which. Either way, she is clearly distressed.

  I pull back to rest my back against the wall. Has the same thing upset both of them? Have they had a row? What could have left the composed Arnolfi like this and sent Banks outside to sob alone?

  Uncertain of how to handle it, I drift back down the corridor. I don’t want to impose myself on her, nor do I want to raise Banks’s distress if it is somehow tangled with her own. I’ll talk to Elvan instead.

  I round the corner and almost collide with Banks. He’s still in his onesie, just back from his excursion, his eyes bloodshot. The fabric over his chest is still wet with tears that ran unchecked when he was in the environmental suit.

  “Sorry,” I say without thinking. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he says, starting to go past me.

  “You look like you’ve been crying,” I say. “Is something wrong? Can I help?”

  He rounds on me, his eyes filled with hatred. “I know what you’re doing and I’m not falling for it. You are, quite literally, the worst person to speak to right now.”

  “Why? What have I done?”

  “Just . . . fuck off, will you?”

  He marches off and I’m left alone in the corridor. I almost go after him, unwilling to be his emotional punching bag, but I know I’ll just make things worse. When the desire to stand up for myself evaporates, I’m left feeling shaky and uncertain, then angry at Banks for making me feel this way. Fuck him. I’m glad I didn’t go outside to see if he was all right. At least I’m somewhere safe.

  Dr. Elvan’s medlab is just a little way down the corridor. Even as I start to walk toward it, I know I shouldn’t. Then I’m knocking on the door and he opens it.

  “Hi, Anna,” he says, swiping something out of his virtual vision at the sight of me. “Come in.”

  I go inside and lean against the bed I lay upon for my first examination. I have an image, sudden and bright, of lying down, pulling him close and kissing him. I do my best to ignore it as he sits down by his desk. “Is something going on between Arnolfi and Banks?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have they had a fight or something? I just went to see her and she seemed upset, and Banks has just got back from outside and he’s obviously been crying.”

  His frown tells me all I need to know. “Not that I know of. Crying? Banks? What did Arnolfi say?”

  “I didn’t talk to her. When I saw how she looked I didn’t want to disturb her. Look, Banks hates me for some reason, so he won’t talk to me about it, but I think he needs to talk to someone. Crying while he’s outside doesn’t seem the safest thing to do, you know? Not that tears and snot are dangerous, but the distress might be.” I’m babbling, and even though I know I am and the reason why, I just can’t stop myself. “I mean, what if he fell or something? Do you think I should tell Petranek? They seem close. I don’t want to seem like I’m interfering though. It’s bad enough that I’ve come to tell you, isn’t it?”

  He holds up his hands. “I didn’t get a chance to answer the first question! Or was that rhetorical?”

  Blushing, I admit that I can’t even remember what it was and we both laugh. Oh God, it seems far too easy with him. Did I ever feel this way with Charlie? Surely I must have. Maybe it’s still there, millions of miles away, buried under the banality of married life. No, I’m not even fooling myself thinking that it’s a relic just waiting to be excavated. It was never there. JeeMuh, how did we end up together?

  “Because I’m your doctor and you came to my office?”

  I jolt. “What?”

  Now his frown is directed at me. “You asked how we ended up together. Are you still experiencing symptoms?”

  Is that what Travis was
? Some bit of my brain all muddled up? “I don’t think so,” I say, even though I just manifested one. I shrug. “I’m sorry. Principia has been getting me to do voice interface stuff and . . . I obviously shouldn’t do that. It’s why I avoid it; otherwise I just end up saying my thoughts out loud at all the wrong times.”

  He doesn’t look convinced. Probably because it’s about as convincing as that dust-storm excuse that Principia gave me. “Did Banks give you a hard time again?”

  I shrug. “It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”

  “Let me do a checkup. I was going to call you in for one later anyway.”

  I sit on the bed and he checks me over as I try not to think about his proximity. This is ridiculous. It’s like I’m having my first crush again.

  “Well, you’re still doing much better than any of my predictions,” he says. “I’m going to have to rewrite the parameters if the next crew member turns up in such good shape at the changeover.”

  “Are you going back to Earth, then?”

  He nods. “Yep. My turn to go back.”

  “Does Banks never want to go back? I mean, he’s going to hold that record for a hell of a long time. Is it that important to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Elvan says. “I’ve advised GaborCorp that we’re in uncharted territory with Banks. I’m all for working out what happens to people who stay on Mars, but I worry that he’s taking on a lot more risk than anyone else.”

  “Could his prolonged stay on Mars make him unstable?” I think back to Arnolfi. What if they’d had a row about his behavior? What if she’s trying to warn him and he won’t listen?

  “I think Arnolfi would be better qualified to make that call than I am. I’ll talk to him,” Elvan says. “Thanks for telling me. I’m sorry he’s being such a . . . an unprofessional.”

  We share another smile at his last-moment change. “I just wish he’d tell me what I’ve done.”

  He reaches up to tuck a tuft of hair behind my ear. “You haven’t done anything.”

  The palm of his hand is warm when I press my cheek into it. Then he’s leaning forward and I’m tilting my face up to his and then we’re kissing like we’ve been held apart for days and can finally carry on where we left off. The voice in my head that is squealing about Charlie, about commitment and faithfulness, is shoved away as we wrap our arms around each other, frantically, almost desperately. He smells so good and it just feels impossibly right. Like we should have been doing this all along.

  He pulls away and as soon as we break contact the guilt rushes in.

  “Shit,” I say, sliding off the bed. “I’m going, because if I don’t, I’m going to do something stupid.”

  He just nods and I walk out. Three steps away from the door I get a notification of a message arriving from Charlie. A half chuckle, half cough at the timing of its arrival bursts from me and I scurry back to my room, ashamed of my own weakness. I can’t let myself be alone with Elvan again.

  I lock the door when I get back to my room, mostly to keep myself in, and play the message on the wall. For the first time since I left Earth, I am so glad we’re deprived of real-time conversation.

  Charlie looks tired again. He’s sitting on the sofa this time, Mia flopped against him fast asleep. It feels like an actual string in my chest is pulled when I see her. Basalt is lying next to them, muzzle on the leg not covered by a child, dozing.

  “Hi, Anna,” he says quietly and Mia gives a loud sigh, shuffles slightly and is off again. “It’s been a long day. Mia just wouldn’t settle. She loved your message. Thanks. I’m glad you’re settling in. We knew it would be tough, but you know, every day that we get through is just another closer to you coming home, right? Now you’ve arrived, it feels like I can actually start counting down to when you’re back.

  “Have you been keeping up with the feeds up there? It’s almost capsule-opening time down here. I’ve had to mute that word; I’m so sick of all the speculation about what will be inside. Obviously, I want to know what the Pathfinder left for us, but the way people are acting, it’s like waiting for the Second Coming or something. Or the third, I guess. So many people have said she was the messiah and that Atlas was like the Rapture or something. She took all the best with her, blah blah blah.

  “Listen, I’ve got to go to bed. I’m shattered. I’ll message you properly tomorrow, okay? Bye.”

  I stare at the “end message” notification. That was it? I tell him about the footprint, about things being weird and my mum and . . . and he just ignores it? “Principia, did my last message arrive in full?”

  There is a text confirmation that it did. Then Principia says in my head, “The message was delivered in full to Charles Kubrin, opened and viewed at nine thirty-one p.m. GMT.”

  “The whole message?”

  “Yes, Dr. Kubrin. Is there a problem?”

  “Show me the message he received.”

  Principia plays me the whole message I recorded and sent earlier. So he just didn’t want to talk about my worries. Anger swiftly burns through my chest and I hate the way it feels, the way it threatens to take me over and make me into the same kind of monster it made my father. In an attempt to suppress it, I tell myself that he was obviously tired, that Mia had been a handful, but still, it’s always the same pattern. We have to stop everything and talk through anything he’s concerned about, and then when it comes to something I am struggling with, it’s glossed over. No wonder I shut down when I couldn’t cope. What would have been the point of saying anything? He always had a way to make any concern sound smaller than it was, until I felt smaller than I was. If I persisted, it was because I couldn’t let something go due to some fundamental character flaw, rather than the original issue being unresolved. If I wanted to process something by talking it over, I was “obsessive.” If he wanted to do the same, it was because he was “analytical.” Now he is showing his contempt for my concerns with silence. I shouldn’t have stayed with him. I should have left the day I packed my bags. How did I build up that head of steam only to let him win?

  I replace the image on the wall with one of the Scottish Highlands. Amazing what clarity a few million miles can give. I don’t love my husband and I don’t think I ever did.

  12

  I WAKE THE next morning with a headache, my mind leaping straight back to where it had been the night before. Just because I don’t love my husband, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to sleep with Elvan. The counter to that is less coherent, more a mess of anger and resentment and lust and loneliness. The pure id response of “But I want to! Right now. And he’s just down the corridor, and anyway, your husband is a dick.”

  Trust me to end up rediscovering my libido on Mars. Millions of miles from the one man I’m supposed to shag and a plethora of devices to satisfy me when alone. I don’t feel like I can ask Principia whether any porn was uploaded to the Mars mirror of the Internet, let alone download a mersive and have that on my file. Especially when Arnolfi and Banks are probably monitoring my mersive consumption very closely.

  I can’t understand why Elvan has this effect on me. He must think I’m pathetic: the stereotypical sex-starved wife who blooms at the slightest show of affection. No, I don’t think he would see me that way. I think, somehow, he sees more of me than I’ve even shown him. It’s like we’ve got shortcuts set up between us. No need to go through the awkward flirtation stage and the worrying about whether the feelings are mutual. I just know they are. I know we work together. Just as certainly as I know Charlie and I don’t.

  It isn’t Charlie’s fault. None of it is. I’m not the woman he married anymore. No, worse than that: I wasn’t her back then either. She was just a construct, a study of someone who could live a corporate life made manifest in the world. All of the clothes I wore were new, chosen to fit with the kind of person I needed to be, not who I actually was. The handmade, natural-fiber clothes, sewn by our neighbor in excha
nge for pottery made by my mother, looked ridiculous outside of our valley. The scruffy ease of wearing my favorite combo of trousers and long tops was exchanged for the sleek, tidy lines of synthetic materials that felt better against the skin but had no history to them. I discovered a new awareness of my waist, bust and hips, and that clothes for women were all about accentuating them instead of being practical.

  With the new clothes came a new lifestyle with new hobbies taken up to look good at assessments and to fill in gaps left by my bohemian childhood. What use would being able to light a fire in a wood be? Far better that I play the latest mersives and learn how to respond in virtual spaces instead of just staring and then jolting whenever it was my turn to speak.

  The places I went to in the evenings to socialize were never of my choosing; they were the places other entry-level candidates were going and I just tagged along. When Charlie and I met in a bar, I in a dress that sparkled and changed color to match the music (why the hell I thought that was a good idea I will never know), he in a dapper suit, how was he to know I wasn’t who I was pretending to be?

  The only thing Charlie did was fit into my image of the life I wanted. At the core was the science and getting to work in a decent lab. Everything else was built out from that. What I needed to know, who I needed to be, whom I needed to impress, all were informed by that core goal. I reinvented myself. The entirety of my teens I was doing that; why stop before I had what I wanted?

  It started with pretending that I was fine after Dad was sent away. At first it was for Geena’s benefit, some misjudged notion on my part that as her elder sister, I had to show her that everything was all right. I didn’t notice that all I did was make her think I was cold and uncaring. How could I have? I was working so hard at being strong for her and for Mum as she recovered from the trauma, and besides, I was barely a teenager!