by S. J. Morden
“We can fix this.”
“The only way to do that is to bring back the dead. That’s not happening. Not everything is fixable. So just drop it. Please.”
She did. She took herself out of the greenhouse, and elsewhere, and left Frank alone. He stood there for a while, then followed.
Jerry was coming in from outside—it was still disconcerting to see Leland’s suit without Leland inside it. Maybe they should scrub his name off the carapace. Maybe that would be too much, too soon. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if it was just him and Frank in the base.
Jerry opened up the back hatch and eased his head out. “What’s going on?”
Frank checked up and down the corridor. “Lucy’s got to make the call.”
“The call?” Then he got it. “Right.”
“It probably won’t involve us.” He let that sink in. “No reason why it should. Neither of us should be here.”
Jerry slithered out backwards, with a dexterity that Frank envied.
“Where does that leave us?”
“On Mars. Where did you think it’d leave us? We look after the base, like we were always supposed to. They go home, like they were always supposed to. Just earlier than they expected.”
“Do you think they’ll do that?”
“That’s what they need to decide. I burned my bridges with anything on Earth a while ago. You? I don’t know how space law works, but I’m pretty certain you’ll be joining me and the XO board in jail.”
Jerry looked away, but Frank could see the muscles on his jawline flex.
“That’s not much of an offer,” said Jerry.
“Tell me about it. But unless I get anything better, that’s the one I’m taking. I’ve gotten used to pissing with no one watching me.”
“Is it that bad?”
“What it is, is gray. Think about that, Jerry. Whatever color is in your life, you’ll lose it.”
Jerry pulled on his borrowed coverall and racked his kit.
“What am I going to do, Frank?”
“People like us, we get it done to us. Today, we get to sit in and listen to what they have to say. Keep it zipped and take whatever comes. Just like I will. Let’s go see how it pans out.” Frank used his good hand to drag Jerry along with him to the kitchen. The others were already there, Isla and Fan and Yun sitting on the sides, Lucy standing at the yard-end of the table. Where Frank had sat, all those months ago, facing Declan and Zero and a tableful of shivs.
Frank guided Jerry around to the kitchen end and dropped him in one chair, then took one himself. If he sat just so, he could rest his arm on the tabletop and take the weight off his neck.
Lucy started pacing, first of all without talking, then, eventually, giving them the news.
“The situation is,” she pulled a face, “unclear. XO are holed up behind a wall of lawyers. They’re not admitting to anything, and are using our old friend, ‘commercially sensitive’, to cover almost every question they’ve been asked. They say that M2 acted independently of XO, that they lost contact early in the mission, that they can’t be held responsible for the actions of M2 crew. That much is what we know already.”
She stopped and stared at Jerry, who looked down at the floor until she resumed.
“Someone will probably manage to pin something on them in a civil suit, negligence or fraud or something like that. That might take years. Key personnel have just disappeared, gone to ground somewhere. Frank: you were reported dead six months ago. That’s why you’ve not been called on to give evidence yet. No one can work out who you really are. Your ashes were disposed of. There’s a death certificate for you, for Alice Shepherd, for Marcy Cole and Declan Murray. In the absence of the Phase three files, folk are trying to fill out your crew roster based on what you’ve told us. Needless to say, there’s no one who goes by the name of ‘Lance Brack’ anywhere near this or any other project. The military are now involved. Sorry, but you cleaned up too well. There’s no material evidence here we can point to that corroborates your story. Except for you. If you really are Franklin Kittridge, then someone on Earth will have to vouch for you.”
“There’s enough of the guys I worked with, in and around San Fran, who can do that. And my ex. And my boy.” Frank rubbed the end of his nose. “You want evidence? You’ve been walking over it for weeks. I did a decent job at getting rid of the blood in the ceiling voids, but sure, there’ll be some left. Scrape it out. Bag it. Take it back.”
Everyone cast their eyes downwards at the floor, and were silent for a while.
“So that’s where we are,” said Lucy. “Jim and Leland’s families have been informed. We can do precisely nothing about what’s going on back on Earth. We might be astronauts, but this is so far above our paygrade…”
She trailed off. She kept pacing, but she said nothing further.
Fan cleared his throat. “So far above our paygrade that what?”
Lucy finally stopped, and rested her knuckles on the table. “That we might as well stay.” She waited for a reaction, any reaction. “It has to be unanimous. I’m not going to keep anyone here against their will. We’ve lost two dearly beloved crew members and friends. We’re all still raw about that. I’m worried that none of us are ready to make a decision with such long-term consequences.”
“Stay,” blurted Isla. She took a deep breath. “I mean, I vote to stay.”
“Yun? You’ve talked to your government. But you still get to choose.”
“They have encouraged me to see out the mission, but they are not unsympathetic to the trauma of what has happened to us. I can still perform useful science, even if my original experiments are compromised. I can continue Jim’s surveying and sample collection, if you’ll permit me. I see this as my one opportunity to live and work on another planet. I wish the circumstances were different, but they are what they are. Stay.”
Fan shrugged. “Jim and Leland are still here. I’m closer to them if I stay. So, stay.”
No one said anything for a long time after that. Then Lucy stirred herself and raised her head.
“Frank? What about you?”
“What about me? It’s not up to me. There’s not even enough fuel in the MAV for me.”
“There will be one day. Don’t you want to go home?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. But I still don’t get why you’re even asking me. I don’t have a say in this. I’m not crew.”
“Is it that you’re worried about going back to prison? What if I told you that the FBI have intimated that if you turn State’s evidence, they could do something. Change the terms of your sentence. Maybe even a pardon.”
Yes. That would change things. He’d be tied up with juries and hearings for years, and the Feds would want nothing but his full cooperation. Blowing them out, heading to the east coast? That wouldn’t be part of the plan, would it?
And now when it came to it, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He’d endured. He’d survived. He’d changed. And really, what was left for him on Earth? His kid had done without him for a decade, and his ex was a good mother. They didn’t need some goddamn hero crashing into their lives after such a long time.
But here? He could do good here.
“You’re crew, Frank,” said Lucy. “Stay or go. It’s your call.”
Deep breath. Say it. Say it.
“Stay.”
Coda
[Message file #121985 6/5/2049 0045UT NASA Deep Space Network to MBO Rahe Crater]
Dad? Is that really you?
extras
meet the author
Photo credit: Simon Morden
DR. S. J. MORDEN has won the Philip K. Dick Award and been a judge on the Arthur C. Clarke Award committee. He is a bona fide rocket scientist with degrees in geology and planetary geophysics.
if you enjoyed
NO WAY
look out for
EQUATIONS OF LIFE
Samuil Petrovich: Book One
by
Simon Morden
Samuil Petrovitch is a survivor.
He survived the nuclear fallout in Saint Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone—the last city in England. He’s lived this long because he’s a man of rules and logic.
For example, getting involved = a bad idea.
But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he’s saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London.
And clearly saving the girl = getting involved.
Now the equation of Petrovitch’s life is looking increasingly complex.
Russian mobsters + Yakuza + something called the New Machine Jihad = one dead Petrovitch.
But Petrovitch has a plan—he always has a plan—he’s just not sure it’s a good one.
1
Petrovitch woke up. The room was in the filtered yellow half-light of rain-washed window and thin curtain. He lay perfectly still, listening to the sounds of the city.
For a moment, all he could hear was the all-pervading hum of machines: those that made power, those that used it, pushing, pulling, winding, spinning, sucking, blowing, filtering, pumping, heating and cooling.
In the next moment, he did the city-dweller’s trick of blanking that whole frequency out. In the gap it left, he could discern individual sources of noise: traffic on the street fluxing in phase with the cycle of red-amber-green, the rhythmic metallic grinding of a worn windmill bearing on the roof, helicopter blades cutting the gray dawn air. A door slamming, voices rising—a man’s low bellow and a woman’s shriek, going at it hard. Leaking in through the steel walls, the babel chatter of a hundred different channels all turned up too high.
Another morning in the London Metrozone, and Petrovitch had survived to see it: God, I love this place.
Closer, in the same room as him, was another sound, one that carried meaning and promise. He blinked his pale eyes, flicking his unfocused gaze to search his world, searching…
There. His hand snaked out, his fingers closed around thin wire, and he turned his head slightly to allow the approaching glasses to fit over his ears. There was a thumbprint dead center on his right lens. He looked around it as he sat up.
It was two steps from his bed to the chair where he’d thrown his clothes the night before. It was May, and it wasn’t cold, so he sat down naked, moving his belt buckle from under one ass cheek. He looked at the screen glued to the wall.
His reflection stared back, high-cheeked, white-skinned, pale-haired. Like an angel, or maybe a ghost: he could count the faint shadows cast by his ribs.
Back on the screen, an icon was flashing. Two telephone numbers had appeared in a self-opening box: one was his, albeit temporarily, to be discarded after a single use. In front of him on the desk were two fine black gloves and a small red switch. He slipped the gloves on, and pressed the switch.
“Yeah?” he said into the air.
A woman’s voice, breathless from effort. “I’m looking for Petrovitch.”
His index finger was poised to cut the connection. “You are who?”
“Triple A couriers. I’ve got a package for an S. Petrovitch.” She was panting less now, and her cut-glass accent started to reassert itself. “I’m at the drop-off: the café on the corner of South Side and Rookery Road. The proprietor says he doesn’t know you.”
“Yeah, and Wong’s a pizdobol,” he said. His finger drifted from the cut-off switch and dragged through the air, pulling a window open to display all his current transactions. “Give me the order number.”
“Fine,” sighed the courier woman. He could hear traffic noise over her headset, and the sound of clattering plates in the background. He would never have described Wong’s as a café, and resolved to tell him later. They’d both laugh. She read off a number, and it matched one of his purchases. It was here at last.
“I’ll be with you in five,” he said, and cut off her protests about another job to go to with a slap of the red switch.
He peeled off the gloves. He pulled on yesterday’s clothes and scraped his fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp vigorously. He stepped into his boots and grabbed his own battered courier bag.
Urban camouflage. Just another immigrant, not worth shaking down. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and palmed the door open. When it closed behind him, it locked repeatedly, automatically.
The corridor echoed with noise, with voices, music, footsteps. Above all, the soft moan of poverty. People were everywhere, their shoulders against his, their feet under his, their faces—wet-mouthed, hollow-eyed, filthy skinned—close to his.
The floor, the walls, the ceiling were made from bare sheet metal that boomed. Doors punctured the way to the stairs, which had been dropped into deliberately-left voids and welded into place. There was a lift, which sometimes even worked, but he wasn’t stupid. The stairs were safer because he was fitter than the addicts who’d try to roll him.
Fitness was relative, of course, but it was enough.
He clanked his way down to the ground floor, five stories away, ten landings, squeezing past the stair dwellers and avoiding spatters of noxious waste. At no point did he look up in case he caught someone’s eye.
It wasn’t safe, calling a post-Armageddon container home, but neither was living in a smart, surveillance-rich neighborhood with no visible means of support—something that was going to attract police attention, which wasn’t what he wanted at all. As it stood, he was just another immigrant with a clean record renting an identikit two-by-four domik module in the middle of Clapham Common. He’d never given anyone an excuse to notice him, had no intention of ever doing so.
Street level. Cracked pavements dark with drying rain, humidity high, the heat already uncomfortable. An endless stream of traffic that ran like a ribbon throughout the city, always moving with a stop-start, never seeming to arrive. There was elbow-room here, and he could stride out to the pedestrian crossing. The lights changed as he approached, and the cars parted as if for Moses. The crowd of bowed-head, hunch-shouldered people shuffled drably across the tarmac to the other side and, in the middle, a shock of white-blond hair.
Wong’s was on the corner. Wong himself was kicking some plastic furniture out onto the pavement to add an air of unwarranted sophistication to his shop. The windows were streaming condensation inside, and stale, steamy air blew out the door.
“Hey, Petrovitch. She your girlfriend? You keep her waiting like that, she leave you.”
“She’s a courier, you perdoon stary. Where is she?”
Wong looked at the opaque glass front, and pointed through it. “There,” the shopkeeper said, “right there. Eyes of love never blind.”
“I’ll have a coffee, thanks.” Petrovitch pushed a chair out of his path.
“I should charge you double. You use my shop as office!”
Petrovitch put his hands on Wong’s shoulders and leaned down. “If I didn’t come here, your life would be less interesting. And you wouldn’t want that.”
Wong wagged his finger but stood aside, and Petrovitch went in.
The woman was easy to spot. Woman: girl almost, all adolescent gawkiness and nerves, playing with her ponytail, twisting and untwisting it in red spirals around her index finger.
She saw him moving toward her, and stopped fiddling, sat up, tried to look professional. All she managed was younger.
“Petrovitch?”
“Yeah,” he said, dropping into the seat opposite her. “Do you have ID?”
“Do you?”
They opened their bags simultaneously. She brought out a thumb scanner, he produced a cash card. They went through the ritual of confirming their identities, checking the price of the item, debiting the money from the card. Then she laid a padded package on the table, and waited for the security tag to unlock.
Somewhere during this, a cup of coffee appeared at Petrovitch’s side. He took a sharp, scalding sip.
“So what is it?” the courier asked, nodding at the package.
“It’s kind of your job to deliver it, my job to pay for it.” He dragged the packet toward him. “I don’t have to tell you what’s in it.”
“You’re an arrogant little fuck, aren’t you?” Her cheeks flushed.
Petrovitch took another sip of coffee, then centered his cup on his saucer. “It has been mentioned once or twice before.” He looked up again, and pushed his glasses up to see her better. “I have trust issues, so I don’t tend to do the people-stuff very well.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to try.” The security tag popped open, and she pushed her chair back with a scrape.
“Yeah, but it’s not like I’m going to ever see you again, is it?” said Petrovitch.
“If you’d played your cards right, you might well have done. Sure, you’re good-looking, but right now I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.” She picked up her courier bag with studied determination and strode to the door.
Petrovitch watched her go: she bent over, lean and lithe in her one-piece skating gear, to extrude the wheels from her shoes. The other people in the shop fell silent as the door slammed shut, just to increase his discomfort.
Wong leaned over the counter. “You bad man, Petrovitch. One day you need friend, and where you be? Up shit creek with no paddle.”
“I’ve always got you, Wong.” He put his hand to his face and scrubbed at his chin. He could try and catch up to her, apologize for being… what? Himself? He was half out of his seat, then let himself fall back with a bang. He stopped being the center of attention, and he drank more coffee.
The package in its mesh pocket called to him. He reached over and tore it open. As the disabled security tag clattered to the tabletop, Wong took the courier’s place opposite him.
“I don’t need relationship advice, yeah?”
Wong rubbed at a sticky patch with a damp cloth. “This not about girl, that girl, any girl. You not like people, fine. But you smart, Petrovitch. You smartest guy I know. Maybe you smart enough to fake liking, yes? Else.”
