No Way

13

[Message file #137405 2/11/2049 0812 MBO Rahe Crater to Ares IV Mission Control]

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 parts 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.

They stepped out into the cross-hab, and Frank immediately climbed down into the area underneath it. It had seemed as good a place as any for food storage, cool and dry and dark, and away from either the medical equipment or the water reclamation system. The containers he was using weren’t airtight, but since he’d pretty much made them himself out of cargo-cylinder parts, he was pleased with them.

There was more room down there than there was in the airlock, but her proximity still made him nervous and he moved right to the back to let her examine the drums, which had shiny words scratched into the still-extant paintwork. There hadn’t been any paper on the base, and nothing to make labels with.

“Oats, wheat, rye, soy, groundnuts, corn,” she said as she traced the letters. Some of them were, to be fair, hard to make out. She picked up a drum, frowned at its unexpected weight, and carefully opened the lid. “Mercy.”

“What?”

“There’s so much of it.”

The containers, more or less regular sizes, were stacked several deep.

“I got… bored. I suppose. Did I tell you I don’t eat the fish? So I changed my diet a bit, and yeah. That. We still seem to have plenty of the ABC nutrients, and there’s all the organic waste, just sitting there. I haven’t touched that yet. If you want to just take over the greenhouse, that’s fine. Like I said, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, her plait turning with delayed slow-motion.

“You’ve done pretty well for someone who says that. XO chose you for a reason. We could make bread. Flat bread, at least. For now. I’ve got some dried yeast, but we have to keep it under wraps until we know it won’t damage the base.”

“I don’t have anything to mill flour with. I could have made something, I guess, but—”

“I’ll look into it. See what equipment we have.”

“You know a lot about milling?”

She shrugged. “I’m a farm girl. An astronaut farm girl. You?”

Frank’s own biography—construction worker, murderer, con—didn’t quite fit the expected trajectory for getting onto Mars. The bare-bones of Brack’s background—Frank had been told to keep it deliberately vague to avoid close questioning—didn’t fit Frank.

“Career military,” he said.

“Sure. Which branch?”

“That’s, that’s classified.” It was poor, and he knew it. He didn’t even have to fake embarrassment. “Sorry. Orders.”

“That’s fine. I’m not going to pry. Thank you for showing me this: I think you’ve done something extraordinary here, and I’ve no wish to push you out of the greenhouse. It’s not like I don’t have a whole bunch of experiments to run, and only fifteen months in which to run them, on top of making sure people get fed. If you want, you can just carry on doing what you’ve been doing, as much or as little as you want.” She put the lid back on the container, and eased it back on to its shelf. “It means I get more time to do science. I don’t want to make work for you, but if you’re happy with that, then deal?”

“That sounds fair. As long as we make sure we don’t not do something because we think the other guy’s doing it. OK. Deal.” He held out his hand for a dap. It was instinctive, habitual, and she just stared at it quizzically. He pulled back and headed for the ladder.

There were so many ways he could betray himself, not even with his words, just his actions, just himself. He went to push some buttons, passing some of the others on the way—Leland and Yun—and they all seemed so impossibly perfect. Fit, healthy, engaged, enthusiastic: physically, emotionally and psychologically in balance.

Whereas he, and his crew of cons, were anything but. Disposable chimps who needed only to last as long as the job. Waking up, being sick, hungry, thirsty, argumentative, exploited and abused.

This was how it should have been. It was how it could have been, with a little more care. Goddammit, XO.

He pulled the cubicle curtain closed behind him, and pushed his overalls down to his knees. He rested his elbows on his legs and his face in his hands. Day one of fifteen months. He’d waited so long for this. So long, and now it was here, he didn’t know if he wanted it any more.

“Lance?” It was Leland, just outside.

“Just give me five, OK?” Goddamn it. Declan was always—had always been—doing that: ambushing people in the can, and no one had liked it then.

There was silence, then: “It gets better. That’s all. It gets better.”

Frank heard his footsteps retreat back up the corridor. That was, indeed, all.

Was it? Was it really going to get better? Or was the accumulated weight of everything he’d seen and done and had happen to him going to break him? No: he was, by any measure, pretty much broken as it stood. All it had taken was the presence of people who wanted him for his skills and experience, wanted to be friends with him, who were willing to show him patience and kindness, who didn’t want to kill him, to reveal him as a wreck.

These gods, descended from the heavens, were so far above him, and he didn’t know what to do.

Not cry. Definitely not cry. Deep breaths. Blink away the tears.

He pushed the buttons, and washed his hands and zipped. He was going to do the only thing he could do. Carry on, and hope, like Leland said, that it would get better.