by S. J. Morden
“Where should we stand?” asked Leland, looking up.
“We—” OK, stop there. There is no “we”. There never was. “Wherever you want, but somewhere behind me, hanging on to the roll bars will be fine. Probably easier if you sit down and you can brace against the struts.”
Like we all did. Like I did. Except I can’t say that because if I’ve done it, who the hell was driving?
Frank strapped himself in, and looked at the controls. His mind was inexplicably blank for a moment. He blinked and reached forward, and his hands naturally fell into position. That was better. He felt the chassis rock as Leland joined them. He couldn’t turn round to check on them, so he said: “Everyone OK? Holding on?”
“We’re good. Take us home, Lance.”
One of them patted his shoulder—Frank was going to guess Leland again, who seemed quite tactile—and he took that as a sign that he could move off. He drove them in a broad arc away from the Hawthorn, then back along the base of the Heights to the start of Sunset.
He almost said “we” again, and bit down on the word before he could voice it. “I normally come down this way. The slope’s stable here, and not so steep. If you’re going out onto the eastern plains, then it’s the most direct route. Straight along and up Long Beach, where the crater wall’s collapsed.”
“Long Beach? You from LA?” asked Leland.
Dee was. Dee had died, but his names lived on. “It was a Mission Control thing,” said Frank. “The base is up on the Heights, and the road between is Sunset Boulevard. The ridge of hills down the middle of the crater we called Beverly Hills.”
The “we” crept out again, but that was OK. He’d already introduced the idea of Mission Control giving him a hand.
“You know those features have official IAU titles?” It was the first time Isla had spoken. To him, certainly. It might have been the first time she’d spoken, period.
“No. No, I didn’t.” No one had bothered to tell him, or correct him, because he was supposed to be fucking dead, like Dee. And some of that deep reservoir of anger leaked out in his voice, despite himself.
He didn’t know how to apologize, or make it better, so he just shut up and concentrated on not turning the buggy over and killing the new people. He pointed the wheels uphill and remembered to soften the front tires more than he normally would to compensate for the extra weight on the back.
“If it starts to roll, just jump clear.”
“You won’t roll it,” said Leland.
“That’s kind of the plan. But, you know. Stay frosty.”
“Frosty. Got it.”
That was what they’d said to each other. Frank and his crew. And now he was trying not to cry again. His emotions were all over the dial, and he just couldn’t control them: from despair to rage to grief, and back again. He was a wreck. An actual physical, psychological car crash of a human being, swinging between extremes with no middle ground.
He widened his eyes, let the fans dry him out, and thanked whoever had designed their suits that the faceplate only allowed ten-to-two vision.
The buggy growled and chewed its way up the drop-off, and leveled out on the Heights—or whatever its proper name was—and he dialed the stiffness back into the tires so that they once more skipped over the surface.
“That’s your MAV,” said Frank, and pointed. “And there’s the base.”
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” said Leland.
“It’s what we’ve got. Breathable atmosphere, hot water and enough juice to keep the lights on.”
“Sounds perfect. Isla’s looking forward to seeing the greenhouse.”
She was the plant specialist, right? “I’ll give you a tour later on. I just follow the instructions, though, I don’t pretend to know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve made modifications?”
“I don’t know about that. I did what I thought was right.” He probably ought to explain more. “I had problems with the fish.”
“Problems? The reports said protein output was right in the middle of the expected mean.”
Frank took a moment to work out what she meant. “They grew fine. I, I just couldn’t eat them. I couldn’t kill them to eat them.”
“Oh. So…”
“So I grew more grains and nuts and peas and beans, and cut back on the fish production. I ramped it up again for you guys. I think I’ve timed it right.”
“I’ll take a look. We’ve dehydrated meals to fall back on.”
“You won’t be short.”
“I’ll still take a look.”
“You won’t be short,” he repeated, again with far too much venom. “I got drums filled with dried grains and nuts and I freeze-dried my own herbs rather than throw them. I did my job. There’s plenty.”
OK, so he should probably apologize now. So should she. But she didn’t know what she’d done wrong, and he didn’t know why he was taking offense so hard.
They drove the rest of the mercifully short way in silence, and when they pulled up outside the base, Isla climbed down, thanked Frank formally for the ride, and walked straight towards the cross-hab airlock without asking for directions.
They’d trained for years for this. They knew the layout as well as he did.
“It’s hard adjusting, Lance. No one here hasn’t got a massive self-belief in their own opinions: they wouldn’t have got picked for the mission otherwise. No harm, no foul. Let’s go and get the others.”
Frank watched Isla’s retreating back, and still couldn’t bring himself to say even the simplest sorry.
“Sure. Let’s do that.”
13
[Message file #137405 2/11/2049 0812 MBO Rahe Crater to Ares IV Mission Control]
We understand that what makes a man good at being on his own for eight straight months is not what makes a man good at being around six new people in close proximity. He’s taken to us pretty well, considering. Teething problems only. XO made a fine pick.
Leland
[transcript ends]
Music. Frank hadn’t expected music. He—his old crew—hadn’t had speakers, and they’d only arrived later, in boxes that he hadn’t opened. Yet it was one of the first things that the new crew had done: find them, sync them to the base’s computer and start banging out an eclectic mix of songs, old, very old and new.
Some of them were so new that Frank hadn’t heard them before. And when he thought of how new they might be, he realized with a start that for him, new meant “since he’d been in prison”. Ten years of popular culture, current affairs, scientific advances, and everything else, skipped like a time-traveler.
He hadn’t missed it, until confronted by the fact that he had, in fact, missed it.
He couldn’t take it. He felt overwhelmed. Everything was crashing in on him, a perfect storm of absence and recollection, remembering what he’d lost and remembering that other people hadn’t had the same experience. In prison, the cons ended up adrift in the past, while the present moved on without them. It was partly why there was such a revolving door of recidivism: it wasn’t criminality as such, more future shock. The outside world was a foreign country, with strange customs and a different language.
Frank hadn’t paid attention to any of that, since he thought he’d be inside until he died. Suddenly confronted with the truth of how the world had turned without him, he ran away.
Though that was a lie. He didn’t run. Everyone, and he was stumbling over that word as much as he was “we”, seemed to be in the kitchen area, getting one or another briefing of some sort. If he’d been meant to attend any of them, he was certain that Lucy would have told him. So he suited up and went outside. He didn’t ask anyone’s permission. He didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t leave a note. He just wanted to pretend he was still on his own in his own, perfect bubble.
Even that was a lie. He just couldn’t stop himself piling on the fictions, one on top of another. He wasn’t alone. Even though he didn’t have his ghosts any more, there
were six astronauts inside the habs—his habs—and there was another XO base, full of XO people, on the other side of the volcano.
He could hear violin strings sing even through his helmet and the closed airlock door, though indistinctly. It was only when the air pumped away that it became silent.
He fell back on routine. He did a walkround of the habs, checked that nothing had come loose, made sure the RTG heating system was still intact, and remembered he had to clean the panels after their two dustings. There was plenty to be getting on with, while the crew settled in and got to know their surroundings.
They seemed competent. He was certain they already knew how to do everything that he did—the basic functions of running the base—and that he could reasonably sit on his ass for however long it was, and then just go home with them. He knew he wasn’t going to do that, though. He’d find something to do, in time, even if it was just chauffeuring them around and carrying their bags.
And for now, he still had jobs to do.
He untied the large square of parachute canopy that Declan had used to clean the panels, and had habitually looped around the underside of one of the supports. It was past midday, and the flat black circles were angled to the west. Before he’d set up the new array, the job hadn’t taken much time. There were over twice the number now, and it was something that had to be scheduled rather than done while passing.
He worked his way methodically along the rows, cleaning the upslope sides, then brushing off the grit onto the ground from the downslope. They had plenty of watts, even with seven on board.
As he wiped, he relaxed into the rhythm of it. It was something he was used to doing, and by the time he’d finished and shaken out the cloth—upwind, as best as he could judge—he felt calmer.
He spun his nut runner through his fingers and checked the torque on several bolts on each ring; he paid special attention to the workshop, because although he knew there was nothing wrong with the build, he still had the abiding memory of Zeus being stuck in the airlock, boiling his life out into the near-vacuum through a crack in the door that Frank himself had created.
He knelt down in the dirt and examined the pipework that led from the hot-water tank to the habs, pipes that ran underground through insulated wraps. There was always going to be a possibility of the soil shifting. Permafrost, which was something that Frank had never had to deal with on building sites across California, had a habit of heaving or collapsing. That was what Zeus had said.
Frank missed the man. Stupid, really. Or not. He didn’t know. He even missed Declan, who was by far the most abrasive and awkward of those who’d made it as far as Phase two. And he couldn’t talk about them to anyone. They were never on Mars. They’d died, somewhere on Earth, their bodies cremated, their death certificates written up and their effects dumped into storage somewhere. Or burned along with their bodies.
He checked the buggies for charge, and inspected the main dish for dust, not that it had ever caused problems before, but it was worth worrying about. At least, it was if he was looking for jobs to do to avoid going back inside.
Eventually, there was nothing for it. He re-entered through the cross-hab, and as the airlock repressurized the unfamiliar sounds—long, slow chords overlaid by rapidly changing patterns of notes—seeped back in. Voices. Clattering of unpacking and moving equipment.
Frank racked his suit and life support, just like he’d done hundreds of times before. He did remember that he needed to get dressed in his overalls. Brack’s overalls. They felt tight, tighter than when he’d first tried them on. It was all he had. He could say that XO had sent the wrong size.
The crew had clearly taken Lucy’s warning to heart. They were leaving him alone, but their mere presence was still too much. He let himself into the greenhouse and immersed himself in the damp, green fug.
This was better, running his fingers through the seedlings—apparently it helped them grow strong—and on seeing that the corn was putting out silk, snapping off some of the pollinating tassels and dusting each plant in the block, again working methodically so as not to miss any out.
What he did miss was Isla standing just inside, by the airlock door, perfectly still so that his gaze just slid over her because he didn’t expect to see anyone there. Then she raised her hand to indicate her presence, and Frank yelped.
He did more than that. He stumbled backwards, banging awkwardly against the staging, and had to lose the corn-tassels in order to stop himself from falling. That indignity spared, he clutched at the racks of slowly dripping plants while he composed himself.
He’d thought it was a ghost. Or more than that. He’d thought it wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean… anything.”
He’d be bruised, but that was nothing really. What was wrong with him was what was happening inside, not out.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Nothing is your fault. I’m not saying it’s mine either, but I got some stuff I need to work through, and it looks like that’s going to take some time.” He straightened himself up, felt the pull of his too-small overalls, and took in her scraped-back white-blond hair before looking down for the tassels he’d dropped.
He dipped down for them, gathering them up and discarding them in the compost bin. “What can I do for you?” he finally asked.
“I just wanted to have a proper look around,” she said, and pointed at the airlock behind her, “but if you want some space I can come back later.”
“It’s fine. This isn’t mine. You come and go as you want.”
“We’re new here, Lance. We… we don’t want to crowd you.”
Frank turned away, turned back. “It’s OK. We’re all here to do a job, right? I’m not going to get in your way, and this place is big enough that if I need to escape, I can.”
“As long as you’re sure. I’ll stay out of your way.”
She maintained a respectful distance as Frank went round checking the reservoirs and the nutrient levels, topping up those which seemed low; but he could quite easily have left them. It struck him just how much make-work he’d invented for himself, and just how much the routine had held him together. Because of the disruption caused by the arrivals, his tablet was full of missed alarms and notifications, and most of those, if not all, weren’t urgent at all.
He climbed downstairs to the lower level, checked the water temperature in the tilapia tanks both with his hand—the fish swam up to investigate, butting against his fingers—and on the digital read-out.
“Holidays are over, kids,” he said to them. “They’re not going to be as good to you as I have.”
“Did you say something, Lance?”
He raised his voice. “Just talking to the fish.”
“OK. Sorry.”
He leaned over the closest tank. “Nothing I can do about it. Whether it’s better you live and eat and do whatever it is you do to make little fishes, or just stay as frozen eggs, I don’t know.” He looked at his broken reflection in the always-turning water. “I just don’t know.”
They were going to get eaten. He’d ramped up production to allow for that. What he didn’t know was whether any of the new crew were vegetarian, or even whether he could eat the fish himself just as long as he didn’t have to kill them. He’d give it a go. Maybe. Goddammit, he liked the taste of it, but that sound of the knife going through the bone: even thinking about it made his gag reflex kick in.
He looked at the floor, swallowed hard, and damped his hands in the fish tank to wipe across his forehead. Did that mean he smelled vaguely of fish now? He’d never really had anyone around before. He sniffed at his fingers, and they just smelled of the nutrient-rich water.
He took some readings of the holding tanks, too, that buffered the system and allowed for contraction and expansion in the external pipework. They were well within the tolerances Zeus had built in, and had remained so for the entire time the system had been installed. It was robust to any variation, and had no moving part
s to fail. Make-work. That was all.
He climbed back up to the second floor, and she was still there, inspecting the staging where he grew the strawberries. She saw him, or sensed him at least, and spent time examining the plants both above, where the leaves and the fruits were, and below, where the roots hung into the continually seeping nutrient bath.
Her hair extended in a white, woven rope down her back, almost to her waist.
“How were you told to pollinate these?” she asked, fitting the strawberries back into their tray.
“There’s a brush.” Frank went over to the drawer where the smaller tools were kept. His hand hovered for a moment, then lifted out what looked like a miniature shaving brush. “I wash it after I’ve used it, because I don’t actually know whether it matters if I transfer the pollen from strawberries to peppers to zucchini. Whether I’d end up with some weird half-chili, half-melon, or something like that: I really don’t have much idea of what I’m doing, outside of the list of instructions XO gave me. I didn’t starve to death, so I guess I got something right.”
That was the longest speech he’d made in months, and he felt almost giddy. He’d remembered how to speak, and not bite someone’s head off.
“I guess robots aren’t good for everything,” she said, inadvertently reminding Frank of why he was there. Did she see him wince? “You said you’d stored grain?”
“Sure. Not in here, though. Too damp. I didn’t want it sprouting at me.”
“Can I take a look?”
“If you want to.”
They cycled the greenhouse airlock together. The last time Frank had done that had been when he and Declan were going outside to try and flush Brack out. They’d both got shot shortly afterwards, Declan fatally, straight through the faceplate. Those flashbacks weren’t getting any less, were they? The situation he was in was completely different, and he had to clench his fingernails into the palms of his hands to stop himself from clawing his way out of the door.
If Isla was noticing anything wrong, she wasn’t mentioning it.
