Before Mars

by Emma Newman

  She swipes something away from her vision. “It’s just a bit unsettling.”

  “Yeah.” I lean back, folding my arms and crossing my legs, noticing my defensive body language too late. “This comms problem couldn’t be caused by someone on the base, could it?”

  She remains silent so I look at Principia. “No communications are reaching the first satellite relay in orbit around Earth, Dr. Kubrin. This situation has not originated on Mars.”

  “Why did you ask that question?” Arnolfi asks. Now she’s focusing again, that bloody therapist brain of hers is kicking back in.

  I shrug. “Just wanted to be certain.” I look at the avatar again. “Is that dust storm still blowing outside?”

  “Yes, Dr. Kubrin. Would you like me to show you the footage from the external cams?”

  I don’t manage to keep a slight chuckle from escaping. “Oh, go ahead.”

  Images of dark, chaotic swirls of dust are displayed on the communal screens. “And that’s live, right now?”

  “Yes, Dr. Kubrin.”

  “If you say so,” I mutter, getting up. “I guess I’d better carry on with my painting, then.” I can’t resist giving Arnolfi one more look, and my distrust must be showing, because she seems to shrink back before she looks away.

  When I’m halfway across the room, I hear Arnolfi’s chair scrape back. “Dr. Kubrin. I know you didn’t want to talk about your father and his mental health issues, but I do feel it would be useful.”

  I round on her. “Useful for who, exactly?”

  “You, of course.” She’s more composed now, but still very pale. She’s more than unsettled; she is stressed out. “I’ve noted your distrust of what Principia has been reporting, and I think we need to make sure that any paranoid tendencies aren’t allowed to fester. They can be so damaging, as I’m sure you are aware.”

  “Don’t you”—I cut off what I planned to say, fumbling for a replacement—“worry about a thing, Dr. Arnolfi. I know the difference between paranoia and being lied to very well.”

  I wish I were as confident as I sound. I’m little better than a stupid male duck, puffing out chest feathers to seem more impressive. I want to have it out with her, here and now, get it all out in the open. But something holds me back. Perhaps the sense of self-preservation that has served me well in the past. I always knew when to be quiet around Dad. I certainly learned faster than Geena and my mother did. All of my instincts now are telling me to back off, to let her think she’s winning. I don’t even know what game we’re playing here, but I know the surest way to lose is to expose my hand too quickly.

  I give her a polite smile and leave before I lose my self-control, walking briskly back to my room. Locking the door behind me, I let out a long breath and kick off my shoes. The blank canvas is where I left it on the easel, the sketchbook resting on the bed, covered in eraser rubbings.

  This is not paranoia. The coincidences are too great. Principia is hiding visual data from me and stopping me from going outside to see things for myself. It’s stopping me from flying drones over the area I need to investigate. I send a message to my husband, mentioning a footprint and a sense of unease, and less than twenty-four hours later, before he has had a chance to reply to that message properly, communication with Earth is oh so conveniently cut off.

  Laying it out in my mind like that, and dredging up some faith in myself that I know what is real and what isn’t, makes the fluttering panic in my chest subside. This is totally different from what happened to Dad. I am not acting the same way he did. I’m not talking to people who are not there; my mood isn’t swinging between happy and murderously angry. This is all really happening and Arnolfi and Principia are at the epicenter.

  And now I feel angry. Something is being hidden, and I have a good idea where to find it. I don’t know whether Principia is aware of Travis and what he’s done, but it knows I’m closing in on the place where the answers are, and that AI is stopping me from getting to them.

  I’m not sure how Arnolfi fits into this, but I’m convinced she’s involved. She’s hiding something, and I can see it taking its toll. For now, the best hypothesis I have is that she is involved with covering up Gabor’s secret activities, and my poking around in things is stressing her out. I thought Banks was involved, but I’m less certain now. Then again, for a man known to be rigid in his obedience to the rules, he’s certainly very good at sneaking out to places he shouldn’t go. Sneaking outside to have a good cry hardly makes him seem like the mastermind behind all this fuckery though.

  I just want to be free of all of these questions and this constant sense of unease. If I’m going to get to that hidden area, I need to get out of the base. If Banks can trick Principia into thinking he’s going in the opposite direction from his actual bearing, maybe he can do the same for me, and that will be a lot more efficient than having to make several trips to feed the visual data to Travis’s cover-up program.

  I head for his room before I have a chance to talk myself out of the shitty plan that is barely formed in my mind. Banks is only just starting to come around to my presence on the base, so there’s little chance he’ll do this for me as a casual favor. There is one thing I’m certain of though: he won’t want anyone else to know he’s been making unauthorized trips and tricking Principia. If I’m going to get to whatever is being hidden on the other side of that bloody crater, I need to get some help from someone on this planet, rather than a copy of them trapped inside my hacked chip. Even if I have to put the pressure on Banks to do it.

  15

  “COME IN.”

  When I enter, Banks is sitting at his desk, covering something with a piece of paper. My first thought is that he is sketching something, but then I notice the fountain pen in his hand. Is he writing an actual letter? On paper?

  I don’t feel comfortable enough to ask him about it. Besides, there are more important things to address.

  “Hi,” I say, trying not to seem nervous. “Do you have a minute? I’d like to talk to you.”

  He nods and waves a hand at his bed. “Or did you want to go to the communal area?”

  “This is fine,” I say, perching on the edge of it. “It’s too private for out there.”

  He looks calmer than he did at the meeting, but far from relaxed. There are damp patches at his armpits. I wonder if there are at mine.

  Desperate for something to break the ice, I gesture at the paper. “Are you a fellow artist?”

  He frowns at it and shakes his head. Then, after visible deliberation, he moves the paper aside. “Calligraphy. This is copperplate. It helps me to relax.”

  The script is beautiful and very accomplished. Suspicion briefly resurges as I wonder if he would be capable of faking my brush style, but using a pen like that is a totally different skill. I let the idea die again.

  “Now that I’m not being a dick,” Banks says, “have you come with questions about the show? We can brainstorm some ideas if you like. It won’t take long.”

  He’s nervous, trying to control the conversation, marking out the topic that he is comfortable with talking about even though I’ve made it clear this is a private matter. I do all I can to keep looking relaxed, nonthreatening. Not that I’ve ever appeared to be dangerous in my entire life. “I don’t have any questions. Given what’s going on, we may not have to worry about the show for a little while anyway.”

  He takes a sip from a glass of water on his desk and I notice the tremor in his hand as he puts it back down again. “You must think I’m a terrible person. I’m not normally like that. I am really sorry I treated you so badly.”

  “How about we start again? Draw a line under it all.” I extend my hand toward him. “I’m Anna Kubrin. I’m a big fan of the show.”

  He puts on a smile that I know he’s learned for camerawork. It transforms his face, crinkling his eyes and making him so much more handsome with its
warmth. “Why, thank you, Anna. We work very hard on it. I’m Kim Banks.”

  We shake hands; his is hot and, thanks to the way he rested his palms on his legs when I held out my hand, recently dried on his trousers.

  It feels better between us. I don’t want to go crashing into this with threats and ultimatums. The softer approach feels better. I have to be patient. Clever. The former was never my strong suit, but I’m capable of following a plan to a goal.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the preliminary work I’ve been doing for the first painting.”

  There’s a flicker of relief before his confusion takes hold of his face. “Okay. But you should know that I don’t have a clue about anything artistic.”

  I lean in, closing the gap between us. “I want to talk to you without using a certain name. It’s the one who was present at the meeting but doesn’t have a real body.”

  He nods slowly. Instead of the question I was expecting, he asks, “How about we refer to that as the tin man?”

  “Okay. So, I sent out some cams to take pictures of an area I want to paint.”

  “You went out with Petranek. Ze mentioned it.”

  “Yeah. So the idea was that I get a massive area fully rendered in a mersive; then I can walk around it, find a good perspective to paint and use that as a reference.”

  “Okay,” he says, leaning back in his chair now, relaxing. Good.

  “When I reviewed the data, the images from one of the drones was missing and when I looked into it, the tin man denied it.”

  “Where did that drone cover?”

  “I can show you, if you like?”

  I call up a generic map of the Elysium Planitia region and he gives me permission to throw it up on his wall. I talk him through how I discovered it, show him the region; and then I tell him about the mast.

  “And the tin man denied editing the image?” When I nod, he looks back at the map. “This is definitely weird.”

  “Have you ever been out that way?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I haven’t. In the early days of the show, I did a lot of external shoots. But then when that first game came out the interest dropped right off. That’s when we changed the format, bringing the focus into the base and onto the crew.”

  I point to the place where Petranek and I saw the footprint. “Not here? Recently?”

  “No. Why?”

  “We saw a footprint there.”

  There’s no sign of anything but surprise on his face. He comes over to stand next to me, close to the map. “There? I thought the area between the base and that region was unstable.”

  “That’s what the tin man said. He didn’t want us to go there, but I used Gabor’s orders for me to paint the surface of Mars against it.”

  “What made you want to go to that crater in particular?”

  I try to recall the decision. “I don’t know. It was pretty much random. Just a big crater I’d always wanted to see, I guess.”

  “Petranek didn’t mention seeing a footprint.”

  I try not to blush, fail and try a shy smile instead. “I asked hir not to mention it to anyone. The tin man said no one had ever been there, even though we were seeing physical proof that it was lying. Seems very dodgy to me.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  I take a deeper breath, release it. “Of course, the tin man may have been telling the truth if someone sneaked there without him knowing about it. Do you know anyone who’d be able to do that?”

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, eyes very firmly fixed on the map, Banks shakes his head. “No. It’s impossible. The tin man knows where everyone is at all times.”

  “Everyone?” I watch him nod in profile. “Apart from you.”

  He starts to refute it, then sees the look in my eye and falls silent. He walks away from the map to lean against the bathroom door. He presses his finger to his lips, attends to something in his visual field, and then some god-awful Gregorian chant starts playing through the speakers above his desk. He comes back to me, leaning close to my left ear and dropping his voice to a whisper. “You’re smarter than I thought. All this, just to make me confess something?”

  “Not exactly. I want your help to figure this out. I know that you can go out there and make the tin man think you’re somewhere else.”

  The sweat is back, making his forehead and upper lip shine. He draws in a ragged breath and swears to himself.

  “Look, I don’t want to get you in trouble. I swear it. But I saw you crying out there and—”

  “Didn’t the psych talk to you about privacy lines?” he hisses, the old antagonism flaring back into life. “You have to respect them on a base this small and isolated.”

  I can feel the good work I’ve done to put him at ease unraveling by the second. “I’m sorry. I just hate seeing people upset and . . . Look, you don’t have to say anything. I can see this is stressing you out. I wouldn’t have raised this with you if it wasn’t important. The tin man is hiding something. I want to go and find it, and I can trick it once I’m outside, but with this fake dust storm I can’t even get out and—”

  “Fake dust storm?”

  “I sent out another cam to get the data from the missing area; that’s when I saw you where you weren’t supposed to be. Just as the drone got to the crater, the tin man says there’s a dust storm. Nothing was on the mid- to short-term forecasts before then. Dust storms don’t spring up with such short notice, not with all the hardware we have in orbit now.”

  “You really think the tin man is making up storms just to keep you confined to base?”

  I know that tone in his voice. We’re two sentences away from me being branded as too imaginative in the best-case scenario, or mentally ill in the worst case. “I know how this sounds. But look at the evidence. Something is on the other side of that crater, and if you can trick the tin man, I reckon you can help me to get out there and find out what it is.”

  I can see he’s curious. He keeps looking back at the map, chewing his lip, wrestling with the temptation. But I’m not sure if he’s being tempted to help me or to report me to Arnolfi. His shoulders slump and he shakes his head. “Listen, I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you get me out of the base?” When his frown deepens, I add, “Theoretically. Could you do it?”

  He runs a hand over his face, clearly torn. “If I wanted to, yes. I know how to trick the tin man into thinking that the manual override hasn’t been activated. I could get you outside without it knowing. Once you’re out there . . . it gets harder but I could probably sort something out. Only if you gave me full user privileges on your chip though. I’m assuming you wouldn’t want that.”

  “Well, it would be a good exercise in trust, I guess.”

  “You can ring-fence off your stored files from me, and as soon as we’re done you can revoke those privileges again. But it’s all academic. I’m not going to do it. It’s not worth it.”

  “We’re not doing anything illegal here. In fact, if it came to it and we were prosecuted by the corp internally, I’m sure that the tin man’s actions would be seen as an impediment to my primary mission here. And—”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “No, really, it is! All Gabor cares about is me painting enough pictures to make him more rich. You said as much yourself. Getting out there is—”

  “Have you heard a fucking word I’ve said?” His voice is loud enough to drown out the monks for a few seconds. He shuts his eyes, mouths an expletive. “The answer is no.”

  With an angry wave of his hand, he swipes the map off the wall and returns to the desk to slump in his chair.

  I rest my head against the wall and close my eyes, frustrated. What is he so afraid of?

  Then I remember the meeting and the way he reacted to the news that we were cut off. The way he’d emphasized th
at we’d all be fine. Like he knew he wouldn’t be.

  Slowly, telegraphing my movements so I don’t startle him, I go and crouch beside him, lining up my mouth with his ear. “Is there something in your contract that’s stopping you? What are you so afraid of?”

  To my surprise, his eyes well with tears again, and I realize he hasn’t really found his strength since the meeting. “If you do something that merits a disciplinary, you might get a warning, right?”

  I nod.

  “And if it’s bad enough, but not illegal per se, what’s the worst that could happen to you?”

  “I’d get kicked out. And if I didn’t find somewhere else to work within the notice period, I guess the very worst thing would be ending up as a nonperson. But that’s really rare once you get to . . .” It suddenly clicks into place. His panic before, his insistence that he won’t break the rules, even though he clearly does. He must have a different kind of contract from me, one with fewer protections. “That’s not the case for you, is it?”

  He drops his gaze and stares at the floor.

  “If GaborCorp is bought out of the Mars contract, are you not protected?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not protected by anything. I’m owned.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m classed as an asset, not an employee. I have no employment protection rights, or even human rights. GaborCorp owns me like it owns this base and everything in it. If I break the rules, it isn’t just a note in a file; it’s a black mark. Get three of those, and years can be added to my contract. As it is, I won’t be free until I’m seventy-six. I don’t know if they’ll ever let me go home. They have no obligation to send me back to Earth, just as they have no obligation to ship the lab equipment back at the end of its life.”

  “JeeMuh . . . But surely . . .” The words peter out. I’d heard of people with this sort of contract but never actually met one. Charlie didn’t believe they actually existed. For him—and until now for me—the idea of indentured service in modern gov-corp life was like some urban myth, a societal cautionary tale. “Did you even want to come to Mars in the first place?”