by Ruth Morgan
‘I write poems through there.’ I pointed at the doorway through to the Origins of Earth. ‘It’s my project. What did you intend doing?’ I didn’t want her trailing after me and guessed Doc Carter wouldn’t want it either. Being in a creative state to write my poems might somehow be assisting the celephet and Robeen’s presence would only cramp that creativity. It wasn’t just me being nasty.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. I knew I’d offended her. It didn’t take much.
‘There’s plenty to explore,’ I said. ‘If you liked the canals there’s a lot of old natural history exhibits down that end. They’re a bit jumbled up. You could even come up with a project of your own. I’m sure it’s not too late. You could write a proposal quickly and hand it in?’
‘As if anyone would be remotely interested,’ she muttered as she walked away into the gloom, much as Halley had done on that first day. I couldn’t help but feel a shade sorry for her. So far, the mission had been a massive let-down for poor, brilliant Robeen. Oh well, we couldn’t all be the most valuable member of the mission, could we?
I was at a crucial stage in my poem and I was also determined that whatever happened, however angry the footsteps got, however many doors banged or however many times it ran at me, I would stand my ground and let the celephet do its work. I wasn’t going to allow myself to get scared. In the cold, hard light of day there was nothing to be scared of; like Doc Carter said, the energy couldn’t hurt me. I felt like a real pioneer, perhaps the first Pioneer School had ever truly produced. I, Bree Aurora, was at the very cutting edge of exploration, a vital facilitator to our Great Quest and Purpose. I felt important.
Try as I might, I couldn’t completely shake off my nerves entering the fossil room again. It seemed even darker and even bigger. The ceiling was so high it might not have been there. I steeled myself. No matter what happened, I would carry on with my brilliant poem and let the celephet do the rest; the celephet that was at that very moment firing its question out into the unknown without my feeling a thing.
In a gesture of defiance, I decided to position myself right slap in the centre of the room. On previous days I’d sorted the creamy coloured limestone fossils of crinoids, the floaty, feathery, stalk-like creatures which once dwelt in the shallow seas when Wales was further south on the planet’s surface. These fossils fascinated me, because the animals looked so little like animals and because they still appeared to be in motion, waving their thin, fine tentacles to trap food particles and scoop them into their flower-head mouths. I wanted to capture the sensation of what it must have been like to swim amongst them. With our exploration of the real Earth limited by the dragomansk, this was the next best thing. My ambition for my Museum poems was, I suppose, to communicate to people on Mars a little of what Earth had been like, its spectacular diversity, its beautiful messiness.
Some of the limestone slabs were quite large but they were also fairly thin and I was able to carry them with care. I laid them flat, arranging them in a circle like a giant Celtic torc. I’d have been too embarrassed to go to all that trouble if anyone else had been with me but on my own in the dark, I could do pretty much as I liked. Once the fossils were as I wanted them, I sat in the middle and set my tilelight to its dimmest setting. I swept the soft light over the fossils, imagining the light as rippling water, imagining what the crinoids would have been like all those millions of years ago. Transfixed by their beauty, I soon became lost in the picture in my imagination:
Water from the melting poles
Warmed into life by the sun…
I forgot where I was. I was back in the primordial reef, swimming amongst the crinoids long before humans. This is what it’s like when you’re completely taken over: the words are gifted to you and you know when the words are right.
The footsteps began in the next room, pacing this way, pacing that, just on the other side of the wall. This time I made a deliberate effort not to pay too much attention to them, to allow the celephet to do its job. It would get on with its work and I would get on with mine.
When the door banged open, I jumped, but I willed myself to breathe, to calm down and I just about managed to refocus. I told myself, I’m sitting in the middle of a near circle. A circle’s a powerful shape. I’m surrounded by the fossils I love. My crinoid circle will protect me.
I felt protected.
…Stirred into life by currents,
Swept into life by the tides…
The footsteps began to circle slowly, outside the protective fossil wall. I kept my eyes on my tile and carried on writing. The steps were so crisp, exactly as though they belonged to a real, physical presence just out of view. Now they were behind me, now they were walking round one side, and now they were in front again. Yet, if I looked up I knew there would be nothing there. One moment they were circling in a clockwise direction, the next they changed to counter-clockwise. Maybe I was right, maybe the ring of crinoids did offer me some symbolic protection from whoever this energy had once belonged to. It was dead, absolutely dead now. There was nothing to fear, there really was nothing to fear. I kept telling myself this even as the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck started to rise.
The footsteps stopped but I sensed that it hadn’t left this time. I could have sworn that a real human presence was standing in front of me and the reason I knew it was because – oh. Oh. I could hear breathing again. It wasn’t my imagination and I couldn’t pretend it was; I really could hear breathing right there in front of me, somewhere in the dark. Quick, angry breaths. I couldn’t concentrate on the words on my tile now, but I wasn’t about to look at whoever was standing there, if anyone was. It was my turn to shut my eyes.
The breathing was right in my face. The energy had entered the circle and I wasn’t staying still because I’d decided to stay still. I was so absolutely terrified I could not move. I squeezed my eyes even more tightly shut. I knew that if I looked up, I would see something. Something I’d never forget. The icy cold breath was blowing aggressively into my face. Whoever it was was so close now.
The breath blasted me with a roar.
‘GO AWAY!’
I opened my eyes. I wished I hadn’t, even though the face I saw hung in the air a mere fraction of a second. It was the same face as the one on Doc Carter’s holoscreen, the same agonised expression, but now it was in colour. The strange eyes, such alien eyes were open this time, staring out of their sockets, and the horrible open mouth was like a bloody gash, the lips pulling back from the teeth. It was there and it was gone, along with the breath and all sense of another presence. It didn’t melt away: one moment it was there and the next it wasn’t.
A voice began to scream and it took me a little while before I realised that it was me screaming. I had to hold my shaking hand over my mouth to stifle the noise. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t get up; I sat trembling violently in the middle of the stone circle that wouldn’t protect me from anything. My belief in it had been ridiculous.
Doc Carter had said the energy couldn’t harm me but it had: it had broken my sense of safety, probably forever. Now I knew such agony existed, how could I feel another moment’s peace again?
I only vaguely remember Robeen picking me up and asking me questions I couldn’t answer, then leading me from the room.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you what’s been going on. I’m not allowed to tell anyone,’ I whispered hoarsely. An hour after my fright in the fossil room, we were sitting next to the open front door. Robeen sat patiently beside me, looking confused but at the same time sympathetic.
‘Is it something to do with your celephet?’
I nodded. I could admit that much.
‘Wow. I’m glad mine didn’t work after all. Sorry. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone look so scared. You were petrified. Are you sure you’re all right now?’
I nodded but I was so cold that I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. Outside, the bright sunshine was marred by the masses of flies, a grey mist even on the s
unniest days. I wanted to walk outside, fling back my head and soak up some of that sunshine, warm my bones and rid myself of the darkness, but of course, that was impossible.
After a while, she said, ‘It’s pointless my asking you any more, I suppose?’
I nodded.
‘Well, if Doc Carter’s putting you through this, I wish he’d stop.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But it’s something I have to do, you don’t understand.’ It was an odd echo of that fraught conversation we’d had about her cello practice on board the Byd, which seemed so long ago now.
Even at that moment I knew I would go back in there and carry on. Why? Because the worst fear of all was my fear of losing this new important sense of myself. I had travelled all those millions of miles to empathise with the unknown and get an answer to the biggest question facing our species, to further our Great Quest and Purpose. I had to succeed or I was nothing and didn’t deserve my place on board the mission.
‘You’re brave, Bree,’ said Robeen. ‘If I’d had the kind of fright you’ve just had, I wouldn’t want to do it, whatever “it” is.’
I felt suspicious. Was Robeen trying to put me off, jealous of my getting all the attention again? But no, her eyes were full of worry and she wasn’t that good an actress; with Robeen what you saw was what you got. The mission hadn’t been a success for her, but at least those endless hours she’d spent as Nisien’s sidekick seemed to have worn down her big-headedness. She’d changed for the better, it seemed.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘What for?’
‘Just what you said then. It helps.’
She smiled, sort of. It was still a bit of a non-committal, Robeenesque smile but it was genuine. There was a lovely person in there somewhere, all it needed was a bit of encouragement.
‘Oh, I’ve just remembered something.’ I hesitated, in case what I was about to say turned out to be stupid. In the end I couldn’t not tell her. ‘You haven’t done much cello practice in a while?’
‘The virtual cello’s worse than useless.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve stopped playing altogether.’
‘Well, I don’t know if this suggestion’s any good, but when I was here with Halley the other day, we found a room which has loads of ancient musical instruments in it and I’m sure I spotted a cello. I know I did because I grabbed it when I fell over. I nearly put my foot through it.’
‘Really?’ Her eyes lit up.
‘It’s very old,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if it actually works. We were in a rush so I couldn’t stop for much of a look. I don’t know a lot about cellos.’ Now I’d told her, I was certain there’d be something wrong with it.
‘Do you think … would you feel well enough to show me?’ she asked.
I couldn’t face going through the fossil room quite yet but there was another way to get to the rooms beyond. ‘Of course, let’s go now.’
Let’s go and get this over with, I thought, even though it meant stepping back into the dark.
Robeen was delighted. For the first time I could remember, a huge smile radiated across her face, impossible to miss even in the dark cluttered room. She’d dug the cello from the jumble of other instruments and amazingly, it still had all its strings intact, protected so Robeen assured me, by a special coating still used by cellists on Mars. She thought it was probably still playable. Rummaging around she found a bow then between us, we lugged the instrument through several adjacent rooms and back to the hall.
She sat on the edge of one of the statue plinths and used her tile to tune the strings. They were so old, I still expected them to snap when she turned the pegs but, they didn’t. The very first touches of the bow upon the strings, even when they weren’t fully in tune, were magical, like a voice from another age. The deep, rich notes echoed around the hall. Robeen was soon utterly absorbed in tuning the instrument. I retreated, sat on the floor and leant against a marble column. She began to play properly and the most beautiful, resonant music swirled around the hall, filling the entire space. It was a rich, glowing kind of sound, so beautiful it took my breath away and I marvelled how at one Robeen seemed with the instrument, as though they were old friends with a deep understanding between them. The magnificent sound of the real old cello was completely different to the flat and tinny virtual instrument she’d been forced to use on the Byd and for the first time I could appreciate her frustration. I sat there listening for a long, long time while Robeen played on and when she stopped, her face was wet with tears, yet she smiled. The music seemed to have unlocked some part of her, the human part.
We stayed in the hall for the rest of the day, her playing and me listening. I was glad there was something to distract me from thinking about what awaited me back in Origins of Earth, but I also felt guilty for not going straight back in there. I decided I would speak to Doc Carter. I just needed some extra reassurance that there was no physical danger.
On the way back to Base, Robeen was, if anything, more quiet than usual, but she also seemed perfectly happy and at peace for the first time since I’d known her. I was glad.
I went straight to Doc Carter. He was exactly where I expected to find him, analysing my celephet’s data on the holoscreen. He spun around, delighted to see me.
‘Today has been the best!’ He grabbed me by the arms and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me.
‘I couldn’t stay in the room very long,’ I said, catching my breath. ‘In the room where … the things happen.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’ve actually managed to animate a short clip. We’re getting somewhere at last!’
‘Doc Carter,’ I began.
‘No, in a minute, just look…’ In his excitement, he’d forgotten how much I’d hated the face the day before. He tapped his tile and before I could offer any kind of protest, up it came again: the face, the one I’d seen that afternoon, hanging in the air right in front of me. This time its lips were moving slightly, forming themselves into an ‘o’. Presumably the ‘o’ in ‘Go away’. The animation was on a loop and the awful face kept forming the shape of the letter over and over again. What was this cruelty? Why was I being shown this again?
‘Stop it.’ I backed away. ‘I don’t want to see it! I saw it in the Museum. It was there, right in front of me. It said, “Go away.” That’s what it said. “Go away”.’
And if ‘Go away’ was the answer to the celephet’s question, how was that going to help us with our dragomansk problem?
Doc Carter was stunned. He tapped his tile hastily and the face reverted to flickering graphs. ‘It appeared to you this time? That face appeared… You’re certain you didn’t imagine it?’
‘Of course not!’ I was furious.
Doc Carter sat down heavily on his chair as though the breath had been knocked out of him. He ran his fingers through his hair then tipped his head back and swivelled this way and that with what I took to be joy. ‘This is just phenomenal. My celephet, my invention! It’s working better than, well, I could ever have imagined.’ He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes.
Wait a moment, I thought. It’s brilliant? The celephet is brilliant? What had happened to You’re brilliant, Bree?
‘I was scared. It appeared this close to me.’ I put my hand in front of my face to illustrate just how close. ‘Actually, no, I wasn’t just scared, I was terrified, nearly out of my wits. If Robeen hadn’t been there…’
‘You didn’t tell her?’
‘No! I mean, naturally she wondered why I was screaming my head off but I managed not to tell her.’
‘Good.’
‘Doc Carter, I need to know I’m not in any danger. It felt like I was. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again after seeing that … thing.’
‘Oh, Bree.’ He got up, took me by the arm and guided me to his seat. I eyed the graphs on the holoscreen dubiously as he leaned over me and practically purred like a domestic cat. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not in any danger. It’s
an energy, that’s all, a residue in the air. It cannot hurt you. Now, you’ve been great and I just need you to carry on being great a little while longer. The celephet works so well on you.’
‘Because of…’
‘Because of your Empathy skills, yes, obviously.’
I just needed to hear him say it again.
‘At this rate, in a few days we’ll have it: the dragomansk’s genetic code and then these deadly creatures will be history. Think how famous we’ll be back home, Bree, think what we’ll have achieved.’
‘I really was terrified.’ I didn’t think he was taking my feelings into consideration at all.
‘But you’re a brave girl,’ he said. ‘I’m relying on you to keep the bravery up a little longer. Let the celephet do its work. You’re not in any danger, I promise. Go back to the Museum with Robeen tomorrow and do exactly what you did today. Exactly the same, right? I’ll make sure your poems get plastered all over the walls of Cardiff if that’s what you want. People will be reading your fine poems as they walk to work. Just hang on a little longer, Bree, that’s all I ask, a little longer!’
What choice did I have? I had to agree. In a way I was like Robeen. She and her newly found cello were made for one another and it seemed as though me and my celephet were the same. Well, it wasn’t exactly my celephet, of course. It was Doc Carter’s invention.
I awoke in the night in the middle of a bad dream. It didn’t seem like one of my usual nightmares, although I couldn’t remember much about it, but it had left me with a horrible, lingering unease. I couldn’t get back to sleep and although I still felt drained by the day’s events, I couldn’t just lie there listening to Robeen’s steady breathing and envying her blissful sleep. I decided to go and wake Halley. Fair’s fair, I thought, he woke me that first night. I was desperate to talk and he was the only one I could talk to, the only one beside Doc Carter.
