by S. J. Morden
“What’s the damage?”
“Didn’t check the greenhouse, so I don’t know about the plants or the fish. Jerry was still alive when I left him, but he was trying to cough up his lungs, so maybe Fan can see to him.”
Lucy broke contact. Fan’s body language changed—treating a man who’d eaten Jim—and Lucy seemed to spend a while in talking him round. In the end, he flapped his arms in surrender, and went to sit at the controls of the second buggy.
“He’ll do it.”
“Because you ordered him to, or because he wants to?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not. Though our team doctor had a thing about euthanizing her patients, so I’d probably want to get seen by someone who didn’t think I was better off dead.”
“We’ve all had a difficult few days, Frank. There’s a lot to process, a lot to come to terms with. I’ll keep an eye on him, but I don’t think Fan’s going to deliberately kill someone he’s treating, no matter how much he might like to.” She straightened up for a moment to look at the base. “You want to try this thing out?”
“You going to be the guinea pig?”
“I can’t ask anyone else to do it, can I?”
“Sure you can. But since you’re a decent human being, you’re stepping up to the plate yourself. Sit where I can see you, and put a hand in the air if your suit craps out. I’ll take it slow.”
Frank drove forward. He knew he was going to be safe, but having had his suit stop working on him once, he knew what Lucy had to be thinking. Now? If not then, then now? How about now? Surely close enough now.
Then uncertainty. Then hope. Then… Frank had forgotten about it when he had other, more urgent things to worry about. How odd that such imminent danger of death should become normal, but it had. He’d been on Mars, what, nine, nearly ten months? And every day he’d suited up and walked around one of the most hazardous environments known.
Normal. It was normal.
Once upon a time, he’d been concerned that he’d not been able to feel anything. That he was already in the grave. Still. Silent. Here, he was alive, so fully alive.
Perhaps XO had done him a favor after all.
Lucy’s hand stayed down. He’d done a good thing. He’d done a bad thing before that, a long time ago. The good didn’t cancel out the bad, he knew that, but maybe he’d earned himself some peace.
35
[Transcript of interview with Benjamin Jonathan Cohen, conducted by [redacted—A#1] and [redacted—A#2]. Also present Stephen Buk, Attorney at Law 3/17/2049 Salt Lake City UT]
A#1: Tell me about Luisa.
BJC: Luisa was all of us.
A#2: All of you, or some of you?
BJC: Whoever was on duty. We were working around eighteen [18] hours solid, but we had to get some sleep sometime. And a Mars sol is thirty-seven [37] minutes longer than an Earth day. After twenty [20] days, the day/night cycle completely reverses. No one person could be Luisa.
A#1: So how did you maintain consistency?
BJC: I guess, same way you get a writers’ room. People would say “that doesn’t sound like Luisa”, or “she’d not use that word”, and the thing would get written pretty quickly. We knew we had to keep him on board. It was the only way we could get anything done.
A#2: Luisa was the good cop?
BJC: I mean, sure. There’s this guy, starved of human contact, starved of female contact. So we kind of did a bit of flirting, make him feel like we were just a bit on his side against the management, that we thought he was getting a bum deal but, you know. Stick with it, champ.
A#2: Champ, or chimp?
SB: You don’t have to answer that.
A#1: Everyone who was Luisa: they were regular Mission Control people.
BJC: We didn’t have a separate Luisa team.
A#1: And you were all in Mission Control for the whole duration.
BJC: [whispered conversation with SB]
SB: My client would like to know what kind of deal might be on offer.
A#1: I’m not certain we need to offer anyone a deal at this stage.
BJC: [whispered conversation with SB]
BJC: Yes.
A#2: The whole duration? From June 2048?
BJC: Yes.
A#1: OK. Let’s have some names.
[transcript ends]
It had all come down to knowing where Earth was, and then encoding its movement in a series of equations that the dish motors could follow, to keep the antenna pointed at the correct portion of the sky.
Yun had explained that the problem wasn’t trivial. That bypassing the dedicated satellites in orbit and calling home directly on the equipment MBO came with, was complicated precisely because no one had thought the situation would ever arise. That turning an entirely digital system into an analog one, without destroying the ability to switch back, was time-consuming and technically difficult.
She had, of course, managed it within a week. From their initial Mayday, to reaching a lo-fi text-only system, had taken another week. Video was out of the question for the time being, but highly compressed voice messages, sent over the Deep Space Network, was something they could now manage.
Messages from home. Messages from family, from friends, from colleagues. It felt like a huge thing, and it was. And every day, as Mars turned away from the Earth, there was silence for twelve hours.
Frank didn’t ignore the event. It just didn’t mean as much to him as it did to the rest of the crew. Luisa had gone. XO no longer had any relevance for him. And Lucy was camped out in Control/Comms, trying to relay as much information as possible regarding what had happened.
Sometimes Frank took her food—it was all he was able to do—while she was in the middle of dictating another lengthy transmission. She’d always pause her recording and make some small talk, but it was clear she wanted to continue as soon as she could. He understood there was pressure from NASA, but he wasn’t privy to the content, nor the context.
Frank was going to have to wear his inflatable arm cast for four months, and not take it off at all for the first two. Fan didn’t have access to an x-ray machine. He didn’t have the surgical plates and screws he probably would have used back on Earth, either. It was going to heal crooked, and it was never going to be as good as before, even if everything else went well.
The cast stretched from wrist to past his elbow. He had to wear a sling with it, which meant it was always present in front of him, and he could see, through the transparent covering, his skin turn yellow, then mottled black. It hurt, mainly at night when he didn’t have anything else to think about.
He didn’t like taking anything for the pain, for… reasons. But sometimes, lying there in the almost-dark, he’d bite his blanket in order to stop himself from crying out. He was pretty certain Fan wouldn’t have minded being woken up—Frank had a standing invitation to do so—but so far, he hadn’t taken the lifeline offered to him.
In the cold light of day, he wondered why. Yet during the night, he stuck it out. The pins and needles. The random shooting pains. The steady throb. The bone-deep itch. Hurt was now his default. He’d thought it would be better than this. Disappointment added to his discomfort.
The things that Frank couldn’t do without two hands—almost everything except greenhouse work and carrying light things—Jerry would do. Frank couldn’t go outside. All he’d seen of Mars for the last month was through the little window in the airlock, and yes, it might be an airless red desert where nothing would grow in the toxic, frozen soil, but he missed it. The simple act of suiting up and stepping out, and having a sky over his head rather than a low ceiling, would have been a relief. But there was no way he could do that, and still have the possibility of a working arm at the end of it. Jerry ran his chores, using Leland’s suit.
It kept the M2 man busy. It kept him from killing himself, and Frank was no Leland. He could listen, but he wasn’t so hot on advice. Jerry’d talk to Frank about who he was and how he’d ended up on
Mars. About the people he had waiting for him back on Earth. What he’d wanted to do, and how his idealism about taming a new planet had slowly desiccated in the fine red dust until it was a dried, twisted caricature of what he’d dreamed of before.
There was no emotional attachment. Jerry was a project: they were both survivors of their respective missions. Frank had arrived on Mars already a criminal. Mars had turned Jerry into one. Frank didn’t know how he felt about that.
The greenhouse was the only place he didn’t feel like a spare part. He could top up the nutrient tanks, take readings, record heights and weights and volumes, and carefully harvest the produce. He could pollinate with a paint brush, move lights higher and lower, plant seeds and, mostly, anything else that needed doing.
It also, incidentally, meant that he spent a lot of time with Isla.
Not that he talked to her much. She had her experiments, which she decided that she had to start again from scratch due to the partial depressurization and atmosphere changes in the hab, and she concentrated on those while Frank carried on the grunt work of growing food.
But she was there, in the background, a presence. A welcome presence. They bumped along together. He knew where stuff was kept and, despite his inertia when it came to learning new things, he’d gotten knowledgeable about the plants he was tending. Mineral deficiencies, mutations, drip rates, germination conditions and harvesting times. She asked his advice. Whether she needed it or not, it made him feel less useless.
Neither of them mentioned that night in the shower.
All the same, it was a memory that Frank treasured. It had made him feel human again.
Yun’s days were spent doing what Jim should have been doing. Collecting rocks. Surveying. Digging. Lucy had taken Jim’s hammer from Justin. Yun wore it in her utility belt. Frank’s utility belt. His suit was a better fit for her than Leland’s.
The rule about pairing up had gone out the airlock along with so much else. The worst had already happened. In the spirit of her dead colleagues, she was going to collect as much data as she could, while she could. At some point, someone was going to have to go back up to the outpost, and further still, as far as M2, to retrieve what was left there. Not just the equipment, not just Station seven: the bodies. Whatever remained of Jim. But that was in an undefinable future, not now.
The one time they were all together was at dinner. That wasn’t so strange for Frank. His crew had done it. Even Jerry was expected to be there, though he didn’t talk much. What does a man say to the friends of someone he’s helped eat?
And just when he thought things had settled into a new normal, the greenhouse airlock opened and there was Lucy. She stood there for a while, not catching Frank’s eye, nor Isla’s, just checking out the health of the hab and its contents. Frank was busy with the nutrients, swapping out nearly empty syringes with full ones. He had to use his teeth to remove the flexible hose, and the C nutrient especially tasted bitter. Isla was taping the seams of a new atmosphere-controlled experiment. Both of them carried on working, expecting to be interrupted at any moment.
It didn’t come. Lucy climbed down the ladder to the lower level, and Frank raised an eyebrow at Isla, who shrugged back.
Frank finished the tomatoes, and walked around to where he could see through the grating. Lucy was leaning over one of the tilapia tanks, wafting her hand through the already stirring surface. Her sleeve was dangling, and had wicked up the dark, algae-rich water as far as her elbow.
“You OK?”
She looked up at him, and then shifted her gaze back to the tank. “They want me to call it, Frank.”
“Call what?”
“Stay/No Stay.”
He was aware of Isla behind him, listening.
“I didn’t think the MAV was ready yet.”
“Mission Control have calculated that with a reduced crew, the MAV already has enough fuel to make orbit and rendezvous.”
A reduced crew, she’d said. That didn’t include Jerry. Or Frank. He’d not asked before about that. It looked as if someone somewhere—probably several someones—had made a pronouncement and, well: it wasn’t like he was unused to bad news. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Things have been happening back on Earth. Serious things. Seriously legal and political things. It’s a hell of a mess. There are lawyers and federal agents all over this, and I’ve tried to insulate everyone here from the shitstorm that’s broken out. But they want me to call it, Frank. Today, tomorrow. They’ve left it up to me.” She looked up again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I guess you’ll do whatever you think best. For your crew.”
“We’re in uncharted territory, Frank. I’m not going to lie, part of me wants to have nothing more to do with this planet. It’s taken two of the best people I know. Then again, I’ve never run away from anything before.”
“No shame in calling it quits,” he said.
“You won’t be left behind,” said Isla, softly enough that only he could hear it. “I won’t allow it.”
He felt her hand on his shoulder, her fingers digging into the skin and muscle beneath his overalls. A fierce grip. It was almost painful, and that was good. She meant it.
“I need to talk to everyone,” said Lucy. “I can’t make this decision by myself.”
Frank swallowed. “OK. Let me know when you’re done.”
“You need to be there. Five minutes, kitchen.”
She lifted her dripping sleeve and squeezed out the water, then climbed the ladder. She might have given the tableau of Frank and Isla the side-eye before she left, but it was difficult to tell. She seemed to have closed down completely.
Isla squeezed tighter, then let go. He’d be bruised there later, to go with all the other bruises.
“If she tries to make us return without you, there’ll be a mutiny.”
“Whoa. Just think about what you’re saying.”
“I know what I’m saying.”
“You’re on Mars. The MAV is it. If it’s leaving, you should be leaving with it. We don’t even know, after this, that they’ll ever send another.”
“All of us, or none of us.”
“What if she orders you?”
“Then we disobey her. We have space on the Prairie Rose for you. Even for Jerry. We can wait for another month, two months, and then we can all go.”
“Maybe Lucy’s just giving you the option. Not because she wants to go herself, but because she thinks you might.”
“I’m doing this as much for me as I am for you.” She was adamant, and Frank didn’t know what that signified. Something for sure.
Brack had once taunted him saying people like him didn’t have friends: that he was indelibly marked out—the mark of Cain—as being different, being other. And yes, while he’d been in prison, that had been true enough. There’d been guards, and there’d been other cons, and why the hell would he want to make friends with anyone in either group?
In his mind, he’d not done anything to earn this generosity. Yet here was someone who was unequivocally on his side. He was conditioned to think, “what does she want?” OK, Frank. Don’t overthink it: what if she doesn’t want anything?
“I have to stay,” said Isla. “To the end of the mission. I’ll never get another chance at this. None of us will. I’m so sorry we lost Jim and Leland.” He could hear her passion. “But I didn’t realize how much this meant to me until I thought it might be taken away.”
He tidied away the nutrient solutions, making a note of where he’d got to and pushing in a flag to indicate the last tray he’d topped up: he liked things squared away. That way, if he suddenly died, then the next person along wouldn’t curse him for being messy.
She carried on: “The radiation exposure, the reduced gravity, the risks, my age—don’t laugh—this is it. I’ll never get back to Mars again. People will remember this mission for all the wrong reasons anyway. I understand that. If we turn tail and run now, or in a couple of months’
time even, that’s all they’ll remember. I want them to have something else.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.”
“I do. Yun feels the same way.”
He walked ahead of her, running the fingers of his right hand across the tray of wheat tillers.
“You’ve talked to her? Of course you have.” He suddenly realized what was going on, and turned round. “Wait. You think I’ve got a vote? I’m pretty certain I don’t have a vote.”
“You’re crew.”
“I’m a con, Isla. Guys like me, we don’t get a say in stuff like this.”
“Most of Yun’s equipment is still intact. We can fix what M2 took. She knows this is her only opportunity too. And Fan.”
“What did Fan say?”
“‘You need a doctor’, is what he said.”
“That’s not great.”
“It’s enough.” Isla looked down at Frank’s broken arm. “He’s willing to say he can’t leave until that’s fixed. That’s…”
“Four months at least. Maybe six. Does Lucy know you got this all sewn up?”
“No. But if you want to go home, first opportunity you can, then I’ll switch. All you have to do is say.”
He missed leaning against stuff. Putting both his hands down and just resting his weight against them. “I’ve no idea what’s going to meet me at the other end. You know that, right?”
“I know that,” she said.
“Any deal I cut with XO, I blew out when I told you who I really was. They took me out of jail to send me to Mars. There’s nothing now to stop me bouncing straight back there. I’ve another hundred and nine years to serve. I don’t think you quite appreciate that that’s set in stone.”
“We can get you a new lawyer. Another trial.”
“The first trial wasn’t wrong, Isla. They didn’t come to the wrong conclusion. I did what I did, and this base might just be the only place on two planets I get to be free.” Then he turned away. “What I’m saying is, don’t make any decisions based on what may or may not happen to me. I don’t want that.”
