Mars Evacuees

11

Over in the garden dome, Carl’s lot, which meant about fifty kids, mostly younger than thirteen, had built a camp in the middle of the sports field with mattresses and crash mats and a few tents made out of blankets and gym horses and things. It was a bit smellier and messier than it had been the day before, but it still looked festive, like some sort of carnival, what with the flags and paintings people had made. But I did notice there didn’t seem to be as many kids around any more, and there was a row going on between the ones who were left.

‘We can’t sit on our bums here forever, where’s the fun in that?’ Carl was saying.

‘It’s a bad idea to go anywhere,’ said a boy called Ramesh. ‘We’ve got to protect our territory.’

‘We’re not dogs,’ objected Carl, who was looking much more harassed than I’d ever seen him.

‘I just don’t think Christa and Leon were kidding about wanting us out of the dome,’ said Ramesh.

‘Well, so we’ll leave guards,’ said Carl.

But though several people seemed not to want to go down to the sea, nobody wanted to sit around and be a guard either, especially since guarding anything implies you’re expecting to be attacked.

‘Let’s draw lots,’ Carl proposed.

‘I notice you’re not volunteering to stay,’ grumbled a girl called Mei.

‘This whole thing with the boat is my idea!’ cried Carl in exasperation. But he still grinned when he saw me. ‘Oh hey, Alice, welcome to Carltopia,’ he greeted me. ‘You and Jo not joined at the hip after all then?’

‘I wouldn’t call her that where she can hear you,’ I said. And I suppose I should have sat down for a sensible discussion about what we were going to do about Christa and Leon and Gavin and Lilly and all the horribleness that was brewing at Beagle Base. But I still couldn’t really believe things could be all that bad after just three days without adults and robots, and after all, nothing dramatically dreadful was happening right there where I could see it. I didn’t want to be thinking about territory and factions and guarding things any more than Carl did, so I said, ‘What about building this boat?’

‘Good question. What about it?’ he asked the rest of the assembled kids. ‘Because I’m going to the sea. The rest of you can do what you like.’

So it started out as a bad-tempered, muddled expedition, without anyone making any decisions about guarding the camp and people just going or staying depending on what they felt like. And those of us who were going fought quite a lot about what we would make the raft out of and whether or not we should take sheets to make a sail with.

Noel said something about driftwood, but of course there wasn’t any; the seas of Mars were too new for that. And though there must have been some hammers and nails and things in Beagle Base somewhere, we hadn’t found them. But we did find plenty of empty barrels near the hangar that had once held liquid oxygen, and we had a table and some strips of plastic panelling that had been torn off a wall at some point in all the excitement. Then Carl found some tough plastic-covered string stuff in the garden and decided we were ready.

‘Cavemen could make boats without nailing things,’ he said to the slightly demoralised band he was leading across the Martian countryside. ‘And so can we.’

Somewhere between Beagle Base and the sea, the faraway little sun came out from behind a purple-grey sheet of cloud. The wind had died down and though it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t freezing either. Cydonia was having its spring. Mei squeaked, ‘Rabbits!’ and Noel corrected, ‘Arctic hares!’ And whatever you called them, they were white and fluffy and adorable and hopping about the Martian tundra.

‘They’re there so their droppings add biomass to the soil,’ said Noel happily.

‘And so we can hunt them,’ said Carl.

‘Oh my God, I want one,’ said Mei, and we all agreed catching a baby one and keeping it as a pet would be the next order of business.

By the time we dragged our raw materials to the dunes we were all much more cheerful, and the actual raft-building was just as lovely as I’d hoped it would be.

‘WE ARE THE FIRST MARINERS OF MARS!’ yelled Carl, into the silent lavender sky, as soon as the amethyst sea opened before us. And I’ve never read about any of the earlier scientists or explorers using boats on the Borealian or the Utopian seas, so he was probably right. We dropped everything and ran down to the water to start kicking it about and shrieking at how cold it was. I found tiny white flowers growing among the red rocks and thought it was wonderful that even with a gigantic war going on, humans could make flowers grow on a planet that used to be dead.

Obviously, when we lashed the table to the barrels with the string, the resulting raft was not particularly seaworthy and it fell apart before very long, but it did last until everyone had had a go on it, and when I was lying on the tabletop, looking up at the passing snow geese, with Carl using a cane from the gardens to punt through the shallows, I thought that being kids alone with an entire kids’-sized planet to play with really wasn’t so bad.

Then I wondered what Josephine was doing and that made me feel uneasy and a bit guilty, so I tried to stop.

The string holding the raft together came undone again and no one felt like mending it this time and we left its ruins on the shore as a monument to the expedition. Even then, although we’d all started shivering a bit and Mei said her hands had gone numb even inside her gloves, we weren’t in a great rush to head back. No one wanted to say that we were scared we wouldn’t like what we’d find. And anyway, Noel wouldn’t let us leave until everyone had had a look for his flying worm-thing, but we didn’t find any sign of it.

But eventually it started to get dark. We were all very cold and wet, despite the fact that our suits and boots were supposed to be waterproof, and we were also a little bit oxygen-deprived, which might have been why we got slightly lost on the way back to Beagle Base. It didn’t last all that long but it was enough to spook us, and even when we did see the domes rise over the horizon at last, the relief felt unsatisfactory and achy because we weren’t really home, everything was sort of a mess, and we didn’t actually know what would be going on inside.

I looked up at the communications tower. Josephine couldn’t really be planning to spend the night up there, could she? I decided I’d look for a decent spot on a crash mat somewhere in ‘Carltopia’ and get something to eat and then try to find her, though I really didn’t fancy climbing the mast in the dark.

The sliding doors opened for us the same as ever and we got a nice head-clearing rush of oxygen and warmth.

Then we smelled the smoke.

In the middle of the sports field, Carltopia was a wreck – all torn apart and scattered, and to make a point someone had set fire to one of the crash mats, which was pouring awful-smelling smoke everywhere.

Carl gave a yell of indignation and rushed straight for his ruined kingdom, and at that a lot of unfriendly-looking kids appeared, namely Gavin and Lilly and plenty of others, all of whom seemed remarkably much bigger than us, though that might have been the effect of the chair legs – and the limbs of dismembered garden robots – that they were carrying as weapons.

‘Hey, idiots,’ said Gavin. ‘New rules. None of you lot gets to come in the dome any more.’

‘Yeah, that’s totally something you get to decide,’ scoffed Carl. But he sounded uncertain.

‘Leon made a list; you’re not on it,’ said Gavin.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, and they all sniggered. ‘Lilly – Lilly, let’s just go and talk, OK?’

But she looked at me as if she didn’t know who I was, as if something awful had got inside her and eaten away the person I’d thought so normal-looking the first day we arrived on Mars. She didn’t look normal any more, none of them did. They all had an expression I’d never seen before, but it was a little like the look on Christa’s and Leon’s faces when they were hitting that little robot until they broke it – flushed and breathless like that, but much wilder and more desperate, and I wasn’t sure they could stop now even if they wanted to.

‘Lilly,’ I tried again, backing away as the gang advanced.

‘Wait, not yet,’ said Lilly to Gavin, and for a moment I thought it might be all right. But then she said, ‘Get their tablets and stuff off them first.’

The next part wasn’t pleasant. By the time it was finished I was missing my tablet along with a clump of my hair, and my shin was bleeding where Lilly had hit me with a robot’s leg. I would have thought Carl would stay and fight like anything, but when at last Lilly shoved me back and the gang laughed and withdrew, Carl and Noel had already vanished. Mei and the rest were scattering too.

I limped after them at first. But then we passed the communications tower and I broke off and called, ‘Josephine!’ up at it.

It came out sounding feeble. The wind was picking up again and I didn’t think she’d have heard. I climbed a few experimental steps up the frame but my leg hurt such a lot and I couldn’t even see the top of the tower. I mostly thought Josephine probably wasn’t up there anyway. So I came back down.

Mei and everyone else had disappeared into the dark by this time. I supposed the sensible thing would be to camp in the wheat dome or the soya dome and hope things looked better in the morning. Some kids were sleeping there already and I knew it was all right, if kind of scratchy. Or maybe someone had managed to get into the grown-ups’ block and then we could really be comfortable, at least until Leon and Christa kicked us out of there too. But had they really taken over the whole centre of the base – the ring with its segments, as well as the dome? And what about the kitchen and the food storage buildings?

I was getting extremely hungry, apart from anything else.

What I decided I’d do was creep around the external doors and see how things looked, and if I could get in without being seen and find any food.

And I did still have the idea that if it came to it, everyone else might start being sensible if I could just be sensible enough at them. I could find Kayleigh, I thought, or maybe Chinenye. Kayleigh wasn’t necessarily that sensible all the time but she was older and probably on my side and she had a lot of friends, and she had managed to get Gavin and Lilly to back down when we were all on the Mélisande. The scarier kids wouldn’t have things nearly so easy if all the reasonably nice people stuck together and looked after each other. Maybe the scarier kids would see that and they’d settle down and be vaguely normal.

Although, if they didn’t, that did sound a bit like two rival gangs poised for something close to the civil war Josephine had predicted…

I went back to the door Josephine had dragged me out through hours before, and after peering warily through the windows I put my hand on the sensor panel and went inside.

No one was about. It felt so wonderfully warm after being outside. Finding a bathroom was equally welcome. Then I ran on tiptoe through Beagle Base, peeking round corners and through doors as I went.

There was some kind of noisy fight going on in the garden dome, and while I hadn’t run into anyone unpleasant, I wasn’t finding the confident crew of nice people I’d been hoping for, either.

In a classroom on Sarabhai Corridor, a group of girls were sitting on desks and chatting, but none of them was Kayleigh or Chinenye and I thought I’d seen at least a couple of them hanging out with Christa, so I didn’t talk to them. And though I did find nice, safe-looking hideaways in dorm rooms and laundry blocks, I kept thinking I didn’t fancy it on my own and that if anyone did find me there I’d be trapped.

That made me think of the simulation deck, which I was pretty sure had a door of its own to the outside. I crept down the dark corridor, expecting the deck would probably be locked, but when I got close enough I saw someone had jammed the door open with a fire extinguisher. Without moving it, I poked my head through the gap and looked inside.

I had the immediate impression of furtive whispers going quiet, so I called, ‘Um, hello? It’s just Alice.’

Somebody shrieked, and Kayleigh scrambled out from behind a bank of seating. She looked dirty and red-eyed even before she hugged me and burst into tears.

‘I thought you were Christa or someone,’ she said. She started back to look at my injuries. ‘Oh my God, you poor thing. Are they looking for you?’

‘Shhh!’ hissed someone else from behind the seats.

‘Shhh!’ repeated Kayleigh to me unnecessarily, looking around with exaggerated caution, and we crept behind the seating, where Kayleigh and Chinenye and four others had made a kind of camp. It wasn’t a very good camp, just a pile of blankets and a few empty food wrappers, and the dim glow of a tablet for light, and a dismal unwashed smell in the air. Kayleigh looked pale and flinchy and Chinenye was curled in an exhausted ball with one of the Russian boys mechanically patting her hair.

‘I was looking for you,’ I said.

‘Oh, wow,’ said Kayleigh, dragging her hands through her hair. ‘That’s nice. But you’re sure they don’t know where you are? We really can’t take any more trouble. Not after today.’

I stared at her, feeling all my bruises start aching again. ‘Do you want me to go, then?’

‘Oh, no,’ Kayleigh said, and she hugged me again and even tousled the pink bits she’d put in my hair. ‘Of course not. You can hide with us if you want. Alice can stay here, can’t she?’

None of the others looked wildly enthusiastic, although

Chinenye did manage to look up and sort of smile at me.

‘You’ll have to bring your own food, though,’ said one of the boys. ‘We haven’t got any.’

‘I was thinking of getting some food anyway,’ I said.

‘Oh God!’ said Kayleigh fretfully, twisting her fingers. ‘Be careful.’

‘Maybe you could come with me?’ I suggested. ‘Or someone else.’

There was an awkward silence. Chinenye dropped her head back into the Russian boy’s lap. ‘We just can’t,’ she said, without opening her eyes. ‘We can’t go out again tonight. It’s not worth it.’

‘We think lying low here until the Colonel gets back is our best bet,’ Kayleigh explained.

‘Even if you starve?’ I said, beginning to get irritated with them all. They didn’t answer. ‘I was thinking we should start making plans for if nobody does come back.’

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Kayleigh said, starting to cry again. ‘They will. They have to.’

I wondered if I’d somehow been imagining her as bigger than she was, because now she seemed sort of shrunken.

‘I’ll come back later,’ I told her. And then added, ‘Maybe,’ and I went back to the corridor. I’d get into the food store from outside, I decided. That would be safer, and then I’d take whatever I could find over to the wheat dome, and maybe somehow everything would look a bit better in the morning.

I went back to the airlock. There was an oxygen pump there so I refilled my canister and put the mask on before I went outside.

It was black and cloudy and I only had the glow of the dome to find my way by, but I managed to get into the food store beside the kitchens. I couldn’t find the lights at first, and a couple of larder robots whirred past my shoulder in the dark, carrying a tub of soybean oil over to a shelf, and I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from yelling out in shock.

When I’d got my breath back, I collected some dried Smeat bars and fruit, a block of cheese, some noodles and a tub of chocolate gludge, and then a few slightly more random things that had survived the other kids’ raids, like a tub of hundreds and thousands and some tomato ketchup. I put everything in a wire crate I found in a rack, and carried it awkwardly outside and hid it behind one of the twisty pine trees near the Maggini entrance to the base. Even though I could lift such a lot in the low gravity, it was annoyingly bulky and the things inside kept sliding around, so it was too awkward to carry much further on my own.

I should have gone straight to the wheat dome and got someone to help me carry everything. Unfortunately I decided I’d make another scouting trip and try and get some wipes and toothbrushes.

I went back in through the food store and the kitchens. They were close to the Processing Chamber where we’d had our uniforms dispensed to us on the first day, and with a bit of luck I thought I might be able to make it and get something out of the machines. But this time, just as I was opening the door from the kitchen to Vogel Corridor, I heard someone coming.

All the internal doors on Beagle Base were old-fashioned ones with hinges and door handles like back at Muckling Abbot, so that no one got stuck if there was ever a power cut. It was only the doors to the airlocks and the outside that slid open and shut. I drew back into the kitchen, and the door clicked.

‘What’s that?’ said a girl’s voice.

‘Just one of the kitchen robots,’ said a boy.

‘No, it wasn’t. It’s one of those kids trying to hide. Come on.’ Their footsteps sped up.

It was Christa and Leon, wanting a snack, I supposed.

I retreated further into the kitchen in the beginnings of a panic. I was sure they were coming inside, but there wasn’t time to run back through the food store. I decided I didn’t want to be found hiding in a cupboard, so I set my shoulders, pushed the door open and walked out. ‘Hello,’ I said.

‘You don’t take a hint, do you,’ said Christa.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ I said reasonably. ‘I know we’ve never got on that well, but things are different now. We’ve got to cooperate. We don’t know if the grown-ups are even coming back.’

‘We’re the grown-ups now,’ said Leon. ‘And you’d better learn to do as you’re told.’

‘We need to at least work out how we’re going to organise the food,’ I pleaded, backing away as they came closer. Not that I meant to be pleading, but pleading seemed to be what came out. ‘We’ve got to make sure the wheat and soy and everything gets harvested. We don’t even know how long the robots will keep going or how to fix them if they break and if this goes on for weeks people could starve.’

Leon grabbed my arm and dragged me down Vogel Corridor towards the garden dome. It was horrible how easy it was for him, that I was fighting as hard as I could and it didn’t really do a thing. I’d had all that training to toughen me up. But so had he.

At this point Lilly and Gavin and all their gang came running to see what the noise was about, and they brought their chair legs and bits of robots.

‘Hey, Lilly?’ shouted Christa. ‘Isn’t this a friend of yours?’

I did manage at this point to kick Leon in the knee as hard as I could. And he let me go – by throwing me towards Gavin and Lilly, and what with the gravity I went flying a scarily long way down the passage, even if I didn’t land as hard as I would have on Earth.

This time, when they started hitting and kicking me, it was even worse than before, in that for a while I ended up on the floor with my arms over my head thinking about what Josephine had said about people are going to start killing each other. But it didn’t go on that long, I suppose, although it felt like it, and when they backed off I was not dead. They did not stop, there, though. I scrambled up and tried to break away and Lilly and Gavin laughed at me for running, but Leon grabbed me and said, ‘No, no, you wanted to get in, didn’t you?’

He grabbed me again, just as easily as before. He hauled me a way down the passage and pulled out an old scaffolding pole or something jammed into the frame of a door, and he flung me inside a dark classroom. I could hear them all laughing outside as they wedged the pole back in place to hold the door shut.

The classroom was a mess, all tumbled desks and chairs and burned gym mats someone had thrown in there. Not that I spent much time looking at any of that. I did what people trapped in rooms usually do: start banging on the door and shouting, ‘Let me out!’ even though I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere.

After a while, I stopped and considered my situation. I reflected it was just as well I’d been to the loo recently, but it wouldn’t be much fun if I was still in here by the time I needed to go again.

Also I was still very hungry, and thirsty too.

I told myself they wouldn’t actually leave me in there until I died, but I wasn’t absolutely convinced. Even if they didn’t really mean to do that they might wander off to a different part of the base and forget I was there.

At this point I was standing with my forehead against the door and my eyes shut, and just coming to the conclusion that I might as well have a little cry, when something came up behind me and boomed, ‘HEY THERE, ALICE,’ in my ear. I screamed.

It was the Goldfish. It was hovering delightedly right in front of my face.

I flopped limply against the door and swore, at length.

‘Now, EDF cadets don’t use language like that, do they, Alice,’ the Goldfish scolded me, but it seemed too excitable to stick to the subject. ‘I sure am glad to see you, Alice!’ it rejoiced. ‘We have so much to catch up on! Say! What about those quadratic equations?’