No Way

25

Frank rolled most of the way down the Santa Clara. He had just enough watts to drive the last half-mile across the Heights to MBO, but the fuel cell warning had been on for five minutes by that point. He parked up outside the workshop, and immediately plugged the buggy into the power system.

Then he inspected the damage. The front was scraped and dented where he’d used it as a battering ram. There were bright ridges along the right side where the tire plates had made their mark. His own buggy’s plates were more dinged than before. He’d got off remarkably lightly himself, all things considered. A touch of frostbite on his hands and feet. A few more gray hairs.

He entered through the cross-hab, carrying a life support pack in each hand, and as he expected, Lucy was there, waiting for him. She said nothing while he went through the routine of climbing out, racking his equipment, and re-dressing in his too-small overalls.

He tugged on his ship slippers and straightened up in front of her.

“You owe me an explanation,” she said. “All of us. Come through to the kitchen.”

“I’m guessing ‘commercially sensitive’ doesn’t cut it any longer.”

“Not any more, Lance. Come and sit down. We need to talk.”

“It doesn’t sound any better coming from you than it did from my wife.”

She instinctively glanced down at his third finger, left hand. “Wife?”

“Ex-wife. At least let me make myself a coffee.”

“Someone will make you coffee, Lance.” She took a deep breath. “Just… come.”

He snaffled Jim’s mission badge from his pouch under cover of unclipping his tablet, and followed her through the connecting corridor. They were all there. Isla and Fan opposite—Lucy took the spare seat between them, leaving him to sit between Yun and Leland. Lucy gave the barest of nods to Leland, who got up to pour hot water on some coffee granules. He put the mug down in front of Frank, and resumed his place.

Frank looked at the tabletop and screwed his face up.

There was a silence after they’d all settled. No one spoke until Lucy leaned across and into his eyeline. “Lance?”

“Lucy.”

“We reported your absence to Mission Control. Wasn’t much else we could do. XO sent through a whole slew of records. About your psychotic episodes. Your hallucinations. Your rambling late-night messages to someone called ‘Luisa’. How you think you’re really someone called Franklin Kittridge? That you’re a convicted murderer sent to Mars as a punishment? Is… is that right?”

Frank looked up. Goddammit. He hadn’t seen that coming.

That was actually a stroke of fucking genius. No one was going to believe a single word he said from now on. He could be protesting his sanity from now until whenever, and that’d simply be reinforcing XO’s story.

He started to laugh.

“What’s so funny, Lance?”

Frank calmed himself down and slurped down some of his coffee. It was only lukewarm, but it was still better than he’d got in San Quentin. A long way to go for some decent joe.

“I give up,” he said. “I haven’t got the energy to fight this any more. You can do what the hell you like with me.”

Lucy glanced at Leland. Perhaps that wasn’t the reaction either of them was expecting.

Leland shuffled on his seat and said: “You went dirtside with two spare LS units. In the middle of the night. For hours. Where did you go?”

“I went to look for Jim.”

Again, from the tremor of disquiet that moved around the table, not the answer they’d thought they’d get.

“Did you find him?”

“No. I was able to get this, though.” Frank reached into his pocket and tossed the mission patch into the middle of the table.

Everyone stared at it for the longest while. Then Fan reached forward and dragged it back towards him. He examined it, the loose threads hanging off the embroidered edge, the dust ingrained on the face, the paleness of the backing. He passed it to Lucy.

“Where,” she asked, wagging it at Frank, “did you get this?”

“You’re not going to believe a word of this, so I’m thinking why should I even bother.” Frank watched Lucy grow even more cold, more controlled. “But this is about Jim and where he is, so you’re just going to have to shut up and listen until I’ve finished.”

He caught the gaze of everyone around the table, held it until they looked away. Isla… what was that expression even about? He didn’t know.

“Deal?”

“Tell us,” said Leland. “We won’t interrupt.”

Frank pinched the bridge of his nose. “So there’s another XO base, eighty miles south of here. They call it M2.”

“A manned base?”

“Goddammit, Fan.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“It’s been there maybe three, four months.” He stopped. “Look, this is difficult to explain without giving you the whole backstory, but let me just give you the edited highlights. Half the equipment we’re using is theirs. They’ve got a total comms failure, and they can’t find their supply drops. But I could, and XO were so determined to keep M2 secret from me that they told me their stuff was a resupply for MBO. I didn’t know anything about it until I happened across one of them out on the plain, east side of the volcano, before you arrived even. XO swore me to secrecy. Said you weren’t to know. They were prepared to let M2 fail and everyone in it die if it meant keeping it hidden.

“And I had my own reasons for not wanting to go over there, which you’re not going to believe because XO have poisoned that well. Let’s just jump forward to when Station seven vanished. I’d been told that there was no way M2 could have survived, yet I knew it was them who’d taken it. I wanted to tell you about M2 at that point. XO said that if I did, they’d sabotage MBO and if anyone died, that’d be my fault. So I said nothing.”

Lucy gave him the side-eye. Words started to form, then she pressed her lips shut again.

“Then Jim disappeared. Maybe you were right. Maybe this was something to do with caves and ice and stuff like that. Maybe he’d had a suit malfunction. Maybe, hell, I don’t know, he just wandered off. It can be like that some days. And when we couldn’t find him, I thought maybe I’ll go and see M2. See if they really are as dead as XO says. Turns out they’re not.”

The silence dragged on, and grew more awkward.

Finally Lucy placed the torn mission patch on the table between them. “Are you saying that someone from this other base, this M2, gave you Jim’s patch?”

Frank scrubbed at his face. “I wouldn’t say ‘gave’. There was a guy outside—the same guy who I’d met on the east side—wearing Jim’s suit. He told me Jim was inside their hab, wanted me to go in too. I felt something was off, and when he realized I wasn’t going to do that, he tried to beat my brains out with a wrench. We… fought.”

“In spacesuits?”

“Of course we did it in fucking spacesuits! He tried to take my buggy. I broke his ankle and ripped the patch off his arm and got the hell out. They chased me. There’s damage to the buggy.” He scratched at his stubble again. “I got away. I came back here. That’s pretty much it. Apart from all the other stuff.”

“You know, this is…”

“Sure.” Frank swilled the remains of his coffee. Properly cold now. He grimaced. “What are you going to do now?”

She shrugged helplessly. “This has to do with the safety of the base and the mission. That is my responsibility. You disappearing off with mission-critical equipment with no explanation is… And the information XO has sent through? That they didn’t tell us en route, or after we landed: their excuse was they thought you were getting better, with us arriving. I’m going to leave that to the people back home. Right now, you’re my problem. Fan and Leland are going to take you through a thorough medical assessment. Which I’m going to arrange for you to fail.”

“I don’t think you’d have to get them to lie,” said Frank.

Yun, silent until now, said quietly. “Lance, what have you done with Jim?”

“I haven’t done anything with Jim. I don’t know if he’s alive and in M2, or… not. I just saw his suit. If you want answers, you’ll have to ask M2. But they don’t seem keen on answering that question. I did try.”

“When we first lost him, and you went out on your own to look, did you find him out on the volcano? Did you take his patch then? Was he still alive at that point?”

“I didn’t find him.”

“Is there really an M2? Or is that a—”

“Yun. I can show you on the fucking map. You can see the descent ship.”

“If that’s so, then—”

“Enough,” said Lucy. “This is about Jim. Where did you get this patch from?”

“I told you. I told you. As much as I’d like to be making this shit up, as much as I’d like to have brought Jim back, it didn’t happen. I tried to do a good thing, and, well, I guess it didn’t work. But before you drag me away, just remember, the threats that XO made to me, and to you, still stand. We’re breathing XO’s air. Drinking their water. Relying on their computer to run everything. Talking to Earth through an XO dish via an XO satellite. You probably want to watch out for that.”

“Fan, Leland. Go and do what you have to. You can take your time.”

Leland put his hand on Frank’s forearm, and Frank jerked away. “I know the way to the med bay.”

As they left, Yun leaned forward and started to whisper furiously at Lucy. Frank couldn’t catch what she said, and with both Leland and Fan at his back, he couldn’t linger. They followed him through the cross-hab and into the med bay.

“In here?” Frank indicated the examination room. “It has the only lockable door on the entire base.”

“Let’s just take it easy, Lance,” said Leland. “We just want to take a look at you.”

“Sure.” Frank pushed the door open, and lay down on the bench. “Do what you want. There’s nothing you can do to me that is worse than what’s already happened, or is going to happen.”

He stretched himself out. He felt his joints crack and click. It was done. It was over. He’d tried to play the game, and he’d lost. He’d just not been ruthless enough: he’d put the possibility of Jim’s survival over his own. If he’d left it, not said anything, not done anything, then maybe he would have survived. Gone home. Seen Mike again.

He’d blown all that out of the airlock. He’d fucked up. He hadn’t thought it through. Jim going missing hadn’t been his fault—it had been Jim’s fault. And rather than accepting that Jim take responsibility for that, Frank had decided to try and fix it. History was repeating itself. He’d wanted to fix his son’s drug habit, and that had ended with Frank in prison for life. This bad decision might end up with him the wrong side of an airlock door without a spacesuit on.

Was he going to fight that? Or was he just too tired? He didn’t know.

“Are you OK with me giving you a physical?” Fan asked.

“Am I going to try and bust you up, and break out of here? I built this place. If I wanted out, I know exactly how little force I need to use to get through the door.” Frank sat up and swung his legs out over the floor, and started to unzip his overalls. “Knock yourself out.”

“That doesn’t fit too well, does it? Have you grown some? Or has it shrunk?”

“It’s not even mine.” Frank eased himself up and pushed the garment down to his ankles, then kicked it off onto the floor. He started on his long johns.

“Not even yours,” repeated Leland. “Whose is it then?”

“You know that story I’ve made up, about me being a prisoner called Franklin Kittridge?” The examination table was cold, and he shivered slightly. “I don’t know how to break it to you, but that’s pretty much the bones of it.”

“So this is all Franklin’s stuff.”

“No, this is all Brack’s. I’m Franklin. Frank.” He watched for the reaction. “Don’t raise your eyebrows at me like that, Leland.”

He was naked, and he saw Fan frown.

“What’s that on your chest?”

“That’s where I cut out my monitor. Measured heart rate, breathing. Also, it turned out, worked as locator and microphone, so Brack could hear what we were all saying, even when we thought we were private.”

“We?” Leland leaned in next to Fan to take a look.

“I was part of a team. Seven convicts. One guard, Brack.”

“Eight of you,” said Leland. “Seven… convicts?”

“Let’s just stick to the physical for now.” Fan snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves, the white dust from them hovering in the air. “You cut out this monitor yourself?”

The steristrip had long since come off, but he still had a raw scar over his sternum. Fan used a head torch as extra light, and pushed aside the hair on Frank’s chest to examine the wound.

“You’ve got two scars.”

“Where it went in, and where it came out. I was in kind of a hurry for the second one, so I just cut.”

“It should really have been stitched.”

“I’d have been sewing my own skin closed. I know people have done worse, but I didn’t feel up to that. I’ve got no training, over some really basic first aid.”

Fan’s frown deepened. He let Leland take a good close look. “First scar is the pale one. It’s a couple of years old.”

“I wanted to make Brack think I’d died in the knife fight with Zero. So I had to cut it out. And the bullet.” These were just names. More embellishments for his delusion.

Fan moved over to Frank’s arm. That scar? That scar was ugly. Puckered at the edges, indented in the middle, still ruby red and angry.

“This was where you got hit by the pylon, right?”

“No, but that’s what I had to tell you. Brack shot me.”

“Brack shot you. With a…”

“Gun. Automatic. Modified.” Goddammit. The gun. It was still under the rocks outside the hab. The one part of Phase three he bucked. Actual physical evidence that he might not be mad after all.

Fan spent a long time probing the scar, pushing at the skin, watching how it moved and changed color. “What did you do with the bullet?”

“Pulled it out with forceps.”

“And after that?”

“It went in the descent ship with all the other crap. Brack was supposed to clean up after he’d disposed of all of us.”

“If I’m telling Leland not to do that now, I don’t want you doing that now either. This is the physical, OK? I do bodies.” He grunted, and lifted Frank’s arm up and down, backwards and forwards.

“Well, it certainly looks like a bullet wound,” he said eventually.

“Seen many?”

“Worked the ER for five years in Miami. Can I take a look at the rest of you while I’m here?”

“You asked nicer than the XO doctors ever did.”

Fan got the rest of the tools of his trade and spent a good long while listening to Frank’s heart and lungs, and palpating parts of him. Lights in his eyes, down his ears, his throat. When he’d done, he pulled his gloves off and slapped them in the medical waste bin. Leland stood in the corner, arms folded, observing.

“How old are you?” asked Fan.

Frank squinted at the ceiling. “Fifty-three?”

“And your birth date?”

“January twentieth. Ninety-six.”

“Almost a millennial.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say this was your first time in space, right?”

Frank frowned. “Well, yes.”

“We’re all in our thirties. You’d have been what, late forties, when you started your training?”

“I barely got six months of that. I’d just turned fifty-one when some suit came to the Q. Fan, you got to understand: all they needed to know was, one, whether or not I’d survive the sleep tanks, and two, whether I’d live long enough to do the job. Me, and the rest of the crew, we were disposable. You know what they called us?”

“What did they call you?” asked Leland.

“Chimps. That’s what they called us. Not to our faces, as that might have given us a clue what was going to happen to us. But behind our backs. Chimps.”

“You’re angry about that, aren’t you?”

“Look. I know I made some pretty shitty life decisions. Shooting some drug-dealer being the worst. Maybe this is some kind of justice for the life I took. But the others? Especially Dee. He was just a kid himself. They didn’t deserve this.”

Again, just a name. They didn’t believe him. Why was he even bothering?

“Maybe you’ve heard of Alice,” he said. “Dr. Alice Shepherd.”

Fan pursed his lips. “Name’s ringing some kind of bell. Leland?”

“Involuntary euthanasia. Made a splash at the time.”

“That’s her,” said Frank. “She was here, on Mars, with us. She was our doctor.”

“She’s in jail.”

“If you look, so am I. Or I might have recently died.”

Fan took a step back. “You’re physically fit. Considering your age, you’re actually in pretty good shape. It’s too late to really do anything about that cut. There’s some cream, for that and the… hole in your arm. What’s happening up top is a different matter.” He hesitated, looked at Leland, and back at Frank. “Lance, what’s going on here? There’s something that doesn’t sit right.”

Leland intervened. “Why don’t I take over now?”

But Fan hushed him. “I know. I know. I’m not saying anything out of turn. I just, I’ve got a feeling. It’s nothing, right?”

The door opened, and it was Isla.

She saw Frank, naked, sitting on the bench. Frank didn’t move, didn’t try to cover himself. In prison, he hadn’t had any privacy, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen it all before. She blinked and looked at the floor. “Fan, Lucy wants to talk to you.” Then she left, leaving the door open.

“Leland?” he said. “You’re up. I’ll be right back.”

As he left, he narrowed his eyes at Frank, and Frank knew. There was doubt there. Good doubt. He could work with that.

“Why don’t you get dressed, Lance?” said Leland. “Then we can make a start.”

Frank struggled back into his clothes, and lay on the bench again.

Then he told Leland. He told him everything.