Footsteps chipped on the stony ground. A brown uniformed figure flanked by two assistants was approaching.
“Stand lively and listen up,” barked the stranger. “I’m in charge of Supplies and Requisitions.”
“He means he’s the caretaker,” Snod whispered to a neighbour.
The man glared at Snod as if he belonged under a microscope. “Did you say something young Earthworm?”
“N-no,” Snod replied, avoiding eye contact.
“I am Quartermaster Stubbs, here to welcome you and sort out sleeping arrangements. No doubt you’re all exhausted after a day spanning two solar time zones, but bear with me and we’ll get this fixed a.s.a.p.”
Stubbs was a stout man with the face of a rhinoceros and a military haircut. He browsed a long scroll of names. As they waited Pin-mei slipped her hand into Zeke’s, and let out a massive yawn.
“I’m space-lagged. We’ve gone two whole days without a proper sleep.”
“Any minute now and we’ll be in Snoresville,” Scuff remarked.
She squeezed Zeke’s hand. “Zeke, I was so scared back on the Televator.”
“We all felt the same.”
“But you made me feel safe. I think you’re good at it.”
“What?”
“Keeping people safe. Promise you’ll look after me. Be my Martian big brother.”
Zeke looked down at her, at the dark circles round her eyes and the grubby cheeks. She seemed so small and vulnerable. A sense of foreboding trembled in his chest.
“Of course! Promise.”
Scuff poked a finger in his mouth.
“Pass the vomit-bag, bro.”
“Listen up,” the Quartermaster began. “I’ll read out everyone whose parents prepaid. Your rooms are in East Wing, and very nice suites they are too. Superb views and operational toilets. Now is there anyone who hasn’t prepaid?”
There was a long pause before Zeke raised his arm.
“Aha, one of those families,” Stubbs remarked with a scornful expression. “It’s not often we get students from the bottom of society.”
Most of the students hooted loudly, glad for a distraction from their homesickness. Zeke buried his head in his palms as his cheeks burned. Why did he come from a poor single-parent family? Why couldn’t he have a high-flying father? It wasn’t fair. A wave of despair washed through him. Planet Earth, Mum and his old life suddenly seemed so remote, as though they belonged to a prehistoric era that was gone forever.
Pin-mei stood on the tips of her soles and whispered in his ear. “I learnt an English word for these kids.” Giggling, she said it.
Zeke turned paler than the light of the Martian moons.
“Now, now, if I’m to be your honorary big brother I can’t have that kind of language,” he said, hiding his embarrassment.
Scuff glanced over at Zeke. “Hey, having a rich daddy isn’t everything. You should’ve seen the smile on my old man’s face when I left for Tibet.”
Before Zeke could say anything Scuff moved away.
Stubbs looked up from his long list. “Is your name Hailey?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“OK, we have a room for you on the lower levels. Part of the original caverns. No windows and lousy ventilation, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they?”
“No, Sir.”
Stubbs gestured to the crowd.
“When I say your name go to my assistants who’ll sort out your first year uniforms. Silver-coloured tunic and breeches with stiff space-boots. Compulsory for all newbies. And don’t forget the extra forty minutes in bed.”
The sea of faces stared blankly.
“You’re on Mars, people! The day here is thirty-nine minutes longer than Earth. At midnight the clocks all stop and thirty-nine minutes later start up again.”
“I knew that,” Scuff insisted.
The Quartermaster held up his scroll.
“Almera? Juanita Almera?”
The olive-skinned girl wiped her eyes and stumbled forward.
~~~
“Mum?”
Zeke opened his eyes. Instead of the familiar chaos of his bedroom he saw the cold walls of a cave. His new room was a pothole carved by an underground river billions of years ago. As for Mum, she was over fifty-five million miles away, on another world, under another sky. A nausea tingled the pit of his stomach. With a deep breath he ignored it.
He glanced around the cave-room, as bare as a prison cell. The only touch of colour was the framed photo of his father he’d placed on the bedside cabinet. He stared at the bronzed, handsome face with its lopsided smile.
“Morning, Dad. We’re a step closer. An enormous step. I’m on Mars now, at the Chasm. Where you grew up.”
He was talking to a photograph. Zeke suddenly felt foolish and returned his attention to his living quarters. Later he could decorate the place with his posters of the famous astronomy museum, the London Galactarium. With a sad smile he recalled all the Saturday afternoons he’d spent there. The main attraction was the Star Dome, with its old-fashioned depiction of the night sky. Hundreds of lights in the ceiling lit up in changing patterns to illustrate the constellations. Over time Zeke had memorised them all.
Then Zeke noticed the mountain bike, propped against the wall, plugged in and charging. A golden label dangling from the frame read simply, ‘a gift from the United Nations.’ Presumably every new student got one. The logo down the sidebar proclaimed it to be a Rover, manufactured specifically for Mars.
It had thicker tyres than Zeke’s bike back on Earth, adapted for the harsh terrain. The gears were all automatic. A small, computerized console sat on the handlebars, equipped with sat-nav, wireless and radar.
An idea flashed through Zeke’s mind. He fished out a DVD in a crinkled envelope from his rucksack.
“This’ll come in handy,” his mother had said when she packed it.
The handwritten note on the back read:
Use this software to upgrade any kind of vehicle. It’s called ALBIE and has a hundred and one useful apps. C.H.
The sight of his father’s scrawl filled him with emptiness. Pushing that feeling aside Zeke inserted the disc. The bike’s console flickered for a few moments.
“Please identify owner,” the bike said, its voice as metallic as a wind chime.
“Zeke Hailey.”
“Voice recognition software locked to Master Zeke Hailey.”
It would only work for him!
“Upgrades complete. Albie fully installed. Any further requests, Master Zeke?”
Zeke scratched his blue hair, filthy with the grime of two planets.
“Um, well, what time is it?”
“Eight forty-six am, Martian Mean Time, Sir.”
“WHAT!!”
He was late for his first day! Zeke leapt in the icy shower, threw on his stiff, itchy new uniform and dashed out.
~~~
The Chasma School was a gloomy labyrinth of corridors, cloisters and classrooms. Zeke felt he was scurrying through the tunnels of an ant nest.
After several wrong turns he found a great steel door pro-claiming ‘Congregation Hall.’ A digital notice board flashed the class schedules: Psychokinesis, Translocation, Telepathy, Precognition, Psychometry, Chakra Awareness, Remote Viewing, and Astral Phasing. A shiver tickled his spine.
“Talk about weird science!” he muttered, as he pushed his way in.
On his right sat rows and rows of students. The newbies were at the front, with miserable homesick expressions. The teachers were all seated to the left on a stage. The entire Hall listened intently to an African woman on a podium. She wore the ceremonial white robes permitted to only one person in the galaxy—the Chasm’s School Principal!
Zeke recognised her at once. Henrietta Lutz was famous from Mercury to Pluto, famous for a heart of steel and a will of iron. Her pursuit of excellence was ferocious and her discipline ruthless. Even the leaders of Earth called her Ma’am.
The woman froze in mid-sentence and
scowled ferociously at Zeke. Who dared interrupt the Principal of the most important school in history? Zeke blushed redder than the surface of Mars.
At length she spoke. “You, with the blue hair, how good of you to join us.”
“Dthothruthruuk mrnstx.” Zeke’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t even speak!
“Are you mad, boy?”
Zeke said nothing, desperately searching for a spare chair.
“And your name is?”
“Zeke Hailey, Miss,” he said, inching towards the aisle.
“That is ‘Ma’am’ to you, boy.”
“Y-Yes Miss, I mean M-Ma’am,” he stammered.
“I hope this shocking lack of punctuality will not be a regular occurrence.”
“No, Ma’am. Can I sit down, Ma’am?”
“Can you? How would I know the limit of your physical abilities? Do you suffer from a sore backside? Haemorrhoids?”
A few dozen throats erupted in malicious laughter.
“N-no, Ma’am.”
“Then surely you can. The question is MAY you?”
“May I sit down, Ma’am?”
“You may. And submit an essay to the school secretary before five p.m. entitled: The Merits Of Punctuality.”
The Hall rang with more laughter. Zeke sloped off to the back row, crushed. Principal Lutz returned to her speech.
“Where was I? Oh yes. I’d like to offer the new students a warm greeting. I’d like to but I can’t. Mars is too dangerous.”
The more sensitive newbies gasped.
“So you expected a planet of milk and cookies? It’s my duty to dash those hopes. Mars is a death trap. Stray out of Mariners Valley and you’ll freeze solid. But don’t think you’re safe down here. Perils lurk around every boulder. Flash floods, rock falls, and oh, the quicksand! I lose so many children to the quicksand.
Just as deadly are our fellow humans. The mining camps, the oxygen factories, the colonies, about as law-abiding as the Wild West. You’re all banned from these settlements for good reason.”
Principal Lutz paused to draw breath. Zeke glanced around at the spellbound audience. This woman was obviously an old hand at putting the fear of God into newbies.
“And now a story. Yes honoured students, a tale of the end of worlds, of heroism, and most of all, a twist. Every one of you is a character in this frightful story. So listen carefully, it just might save your life.”
Chapter Eight
The Congregation Hall
Principal Lutz paused and nodded sternly. The teachers and older students filed out of the cavernous room. A tall girl with a huge blond ponytail paused at Zeke’s row. Her face was so caked in make-up she looked like a doll. She let out a mock yawn.
“Same old routine, year in, year out.”
She popped a sweet in her cherry-coloured lips.
“So you’re the new Earthworms? Even more feeble-looking than last year’s.”
Her gaze fell on Snod.
“You, zit face. I might have a vacancy for you, see me at break.”
She strode off, her ponytail swishing from side to side.
Lutz was alone with the newbies. She clicked her fingers and the photon lamps dimmed. Slowly, with arms spread-out, she levitated from the floor. Bobbing gently, she gestured to the students.
“Oh!” Zeke gasped as he rose from his seat. Along with the rest of his peers he floated upwards.
“Takes powerful psychokinesis to pull off a stunt like this!” Scuff puffed. He tried to steady himself but overbalanced and swung upside down.
Bubbles of glowing gas ignited throughout the Hall.
“It’s the Milky Way!” Zeke cried. He knew his astronomy.
Countless stars were burning against the backdrop of the universe. He reached out and touched a diamond-bright nova, but there was nothing.
“Hologram projectors. In the ceiling,” Pin-mei explained, poking her face through a cloudy nebula.
Lutz cleared her throat.
“Long ago lived a goddess.”
The students cooed as a beautiful woman twirled and skipped her way across the galaxy. She curled up inside her blue and green cloak, transforming into the Earth.
“She had as many names as there are languages. I call her Gaia. Gaia dancing for aeons around her father, Sol.”
A fireball emerged from the glittering tapestry and took Gaia into its orbit.
“But Gaia was alone. Her seas were empty, her mountains silent. So she became a mother, our first mother, a virgin mother. Her child was Life.”
The stars changed into single-celled protozoa and amoebas.
“Her child was one and many. And Gaia was a wise mother, always improving her children, making them better. Over time she added lungs, limbs and brains.”
The creatures morphed into jellyfish, fish, frogs, lizards, monkeys and, finally, unborn human babies.
“Gaia’s last child was her best. His name was Man and he was very clever, indeed, a little too clever.”
One infant matured speedily, reaching adulthood in moments. Around him trees sprang up, thickened, then solidified into skyscrapers. A city hummed with cars, jets and rockets.
“Sometimes cleverness is another word for stupidity. Man was cunning and greedy, but tragically shortsighted. Perhaps a devil whispered in his ear. Too proud to remain a child, Man yearned to become a god. Man could not create life like his mother, but he could invent. Yet his machines were flawed. Amid all this busyness and invention Man made a terrible mistake. He poisoned his own mother.”
The scene melted into the Solar System. The spinning Earth unfolded back into the woman, now old and diseased. Pin-mei choked back a sob.
“It took Man a couple of centuries to realise what he’d done, by then too late. Yes, he filled ozone holes and cooled global warming. But even his magic couldn’t fix this deeper problem. Gaia was slowly dying, beyond cure. So Man, with his endless ingenuity, cast around for a new mother.”
Mars rotated into view.
“This mother was barren and ancient. But Man didn’t let little things like that stand in his way. He had many tricks to rejuvenate Mars. Man warmed her icy desert. He pumped her full of gas. He scattered germs and sowed seeds. And so, just as a world made Man, Man made a world.”
A quick succession of images merged one into another. Mirrors in high orbit reflecting the sunlight. Comets rerouted from deep space melting in the upper atmosphere. Massive cargo ships ferrying hydrogen from Jupiter. Oxygen-converting bacteria drifting on the air. Genetically modified grass sprouting from the ochre soil.
“Man proposed The Five Century Plan—abandon Earth but save Mars. But The Plan proved costly. Taxpayers revolted, govern-ments toppled. Meanwhile Man made fresh discoveries. Finally he understood the three sacred powers of existence: gravity, magnetism and thought. And of these three forces, thought is the most powerful.”
The lightshow whizzed out of the rapidly growing Martian pastures and focused on a small boy surrounded by craggy peaks.
“Thoughts can speak to each other without sound. They can move objects, predict the future or see through walls. Their greatest ability is to change locations, in the twinkling of an eye!”
Electricity sparked deep in the boy’s eyes. The rocky landscape blurred. The boy found himself inside a classroom, looking at a map of constellations.
“This skill is called translocation. Moving between places, however far apart, by thought not action. You see, reality is nothing more than our perception of atomic structure. Once you understand this, you can sidestep the physical dimension and be wherever you wish to be.”
The sky-map zoomed out and filled the Congregation Hall with stars again. Gigantic spacecrafts cruised into sight, Far-Ships built for long-distance galactic travel.
“Man dropped the Five Century Plan in favour of a plan B. Cosmic Migration! All that was required were psychics, the one-in-a million gifted enough to power spaceships. And so Man channelled his energies into nurturing psychics. The Space
Mariners Institute was founded to recruit, train and employ these gifted youngsters.”
One by one the Far-Ships shimmered and vanished. The stars expanded and fused to form Lutz’s face, enlarged and radiant.
“This is why Mankind needs you, tomorrow’s Mariners. Every day cosmologists detect more earthlike habitable planets. New Gaias are calling to us from across the heavens. We’re the ones who get there. We are the saviours of humanity.”
She stopped to take a deep breath.
“Now, I hope you were taking notes because this is in the half-term quiz. Any questions?”
The immense face, both forbidding and benign, smiled at her audience.
“Yes,” a lone voice piped in the dark.
Surprise burst across her enormous visage.
“Someone actually wants to ask something? The first time in twenty years! Who is it? You again?”
Zeke squirmed beneath her gaze but he was determined to speak.
“Why does nobody ever come back from the colonies?”
The glowing countenance frowned.
“You’ll find out for yourself one day. Don’t worry your young head about details. As saviours of the human race we need to focus on the big picture. So if there are no more—”
“Principal Lutz, one more question please.”
Her mammoth eyebrows arched in amusement, waiting for him to go on.
“Have there ever been Martians?”
A chorus of titters rippled around the Hall. But the image of the Principal sighed.
“Ah yes. There were.”
“Why is it secret?”
“It’s not secret. It’s classified. For our own safety.”
The Infinity Trap Page 4
