No Way

30

[Transcript of hearing Judge Treynor Williams III (2nd District (Denver) CO) 3/10/2049]

“XO want to talk to you,” said Lucy.

Frank took his time racking his suit. “You going to give me a clue, or am I going in cold?”

“They know you’ve told us about Brack.”

“I figured they might. Did you tell them, or did they guess?”

“I didn’t tell them.”

“We were shouting at each other before you turned the dish off.” Frank pulled on his overalls and went back to the airlock where he’d stashed everything. “OK. That cat’s out of the bag. So what do they want? Did you get to talk to NASA at all, or did they stonewall you?”

“We went up the semantic ladder, starting with me requesting and finishing with me demanding. I didn’t get to speak to anyone I wanted to.” Lucy shrugged. “I got comforting bullshit. Oh, sure they were sorry we got attacked. Really sorry we have dead team members. Really, very sorry that one of them got eaten.” Her mouth turned into a thin line, and Frank waited for her. She shrugged again. “They’re saying none of this is their fault. They deny that M2 was paid for by chiseling the MBO contract. They’re telling me they lost contact with the mission while it was still in transit, and they’ve not been able to re-establish it. What M2 have done and what they do now is nothing to do with XO. And they’ve replaced their whole Mission Control team with new people. Said the old ones were under investigation.”

“They’ve taken Luisa. Shit.” Frank pulled a face. “There’s nothing I can do about that, is there? She’s going to be thrown to the wolves, just like we are.”

“Maybe we can do something about that when I finally get hold of NASA.”

“Yeah. She knows too much. They all do. Look, did you get anything useful out of them at all?”

“Nothing. I got nothing. They say they’ll pass messages on to Jim and Leland’s relatives. They’ll pass messages on to NASA, ‘reach out’ to them, bring them ‘on board’, whatever they mean by that. I just wanted to get some sort of confirmation that NASA knew about our situation, so that they could come down and take over.”

“And what made you think XO would ever agree to that? Did you ask them what M2 were doing here in the first place?” Frank opened the airlock and started to collect the shields and the swords he’d made.

“Jesus, Frank.”

“Points are sharp, and so’s the curved edge.” He handed her one, and she made absolutely certain she didn’t get any part of it anywhere near the hab walls. “We’re a hundred million miles away from Earth. This is the best chance we’ve got. M2?”

“Commercially sensitive,” she said, and sniffed.

Frank took the sword from her and stacked it with the rest. “Why don’t we go and find out what they want?”

“They said they wanted to talk to you alone. That this was commercially sensitive too.”

“Goddammit, Lucy, I don’t give a shit what XO wants any more, and you shouldn’t either. They’re your enemy now. They’ve been mine for a while. You want to be in the room? Hell, you should be in the room. Maybe you’ll see for yourself how they operate.”

He walked through to Comms and sat himself in the chair. There was a message pad open on the console, and he tapped a few letters on the keyboard to make sure it was active.

“This is Frank. You wanted to say something to me.”

He sent it, and got up. Lucy was in the doorway.

“Got to wait half an hour. You want me to fix some dinner?”

“I’m not thinking of food right now.”

“You want to faint? Look, I’ve tried that whole denial thing. It doesn’t make anything better. It sure as hell won’t bring Yun back.”

She stood aside with a sigh. “Knock yourself out. It can’t make it any worse.”

“You haven’t seen my cooking yet.”

“Don’t make jokes. Please.”

He checked they were still alone. “You got to hold all this together. Isla, Fan, Yun, they’re relying on you.”

“Save me the pop psychology. I know what I’ve got to do.”

“Then damn well do it. You got a gun. You got a fucking cannon outside. XO aren’t going to be any help except to themselves—their best outcome is that M2 wipes us out. Second-best is that we take each other down. The only guys rooting for us are us.”

“There should be a way of getting Yun back without a fight.”

“You want me to go over and ask nicely? Or have I tried that already with Jim, only to discover. They. Fucking. Ate. Him.”

“This is a scientific mission.”

“This is war.”

They were both shouting. The others would have heard them. Frank didn’t care. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do.

“So while I wait for a reply, I’m going to make a big bowl of greens, soak some grains, get some fresh herbs and a couple of chilies and see how that goes together. Then we’re going to sit down and eat together whether we all like it or not. We get an early night, because we’re up again at two, checking our equipment and loading it up, and it is cold at that time of night. If you’ve got a better plan, then sure, I want to hear it. Otherwise, get out of the goddamn way.”

“I’m not in it.” She was still standing to one side of the door.

“It’s a metaphor. Or something like that.”

“I’ll tell you when something comes in. Otherwise, go.”

Frank went and washed up, then rattled around the kitchen for some bowls. He got water onto a bunch of wheat and microwaved it up, and while that was settling, went into the greenhouse for the leaves.

He was on his own. While he was passing the airlock, he heard low voices in the med bay, and presumed it was Isla and Fan. He hadn’t asked about Jerry. Maybe they’d decided they were going to toss him at the same time they’d decided they were going to talk to XO. Could they keep him on permanently? As a prisoner? Or even a trusty? Did he want to share living space with this guy? And yet, the irony was, XO had told him right at the very start of this, that the base would be a prison facility. Frank himself was prisoner number one. This guy was just the second.

So sure, he’d worked with murderers and thieves and perverts. Why not Jerry?

He carried the veggies back through to the kitchen and got mixing. He could still do with some oil for a dressing, and by that, a press for the groundnuts, which he still hadn’t gotten around to making. He threw a cupful of them in whole anyway, and used the starchy liquor from the wheat to carry the finely chopped chili and cilantro across the whole meal.

At some point, he became aware of Lucy sitting at the end of the table, waiting for him.

“How long you been there?”

“Five minutes or so. Watching you work.”

“You could have set the table.”

“I could have done. But then I’d just be setting it for four, not seven, and that’d remind me how far down we’ve gone. Yes, you’re right. I need to hold it together. But I’m also a human being and those were my friends, and I’m entitled to grieve.”

“I’m not busting your balls, Lucy. You handle this however you want. All I’m doing is giving you advice.”

“You’re pretty persistent about it, Frank.”

“I’m just trying not to die here. That’s all. Not yet, anyhow.”

“They’ve responded.”

Frank shook his hands and rinsed them over the sink, then in the absence of a working towel, wiped them on his overalls.

“So what do they say?”

“Why not come and take a look?”

She led the way back into Comms, and left the seat free for Frank. He settled in it and moved closer so he could see the screen.

He was quiet for a while, just absorbing what was probably going to be the very last contact he was ever going to have with XO. This clearly wasn’t from Luisa. The suits had taken full control of the message feed. He kicked back and thought about his response.

“What do you think? A simple ‘go fuck yourself’, or something more profound?”

“You think that’s a good idea? Yes, OK, I admit I was wrong. XO have no intention of cooperating with us, but willfully antagonizing them?”

“You’re going to pull the plug on them after I send this, right?”

“I don’t see how I’ve got any choice,” said Lucy, “but telling you that ‘protecting XO assets on the Martian surface is your chief priority’ and then threatening to sue the U.S. government for the cost of what gets damaged is pretty clear. Just so as I know, are you going to,” and she chased down the lines of text with her fingertip, “‘prevent third parties from pre-emptively acting against XO-owned and maintained facilities, without prior authorization and agreement, and in direct contravention of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967’?”

“No, you’re good.”

“Because otherwise I was going to invoke the Rescue Agreement of 1968, which technically only applies to state actors, which NASA is, but in the circumstances, XO are obligated to help us.”

“They’ve no hold over me. Not any more. I can’t help my son, whatever happens. But I can help the people in front of me, here on Mars.” Frank flexed his fingers and began to peck out his response on the keyboard.

“Tell me about him.”

“He was blond when he was born. Didn’t expect that at all. Blond curls. Then they all fell out and it came out dark brown and straight, like his mother’s. He was a good kid. Athletic. I must have spent hours sitting on the bleachers while he trained. Then it kind of started to slide when he hit senior high. Got in with the wrong crowd. Stopped sports, started parties. You know. I guess we were all young once. The way I dealt with it all, I made as many bad choices as he did, except mine went way over smoking some weed and taking a few pills. What the hell was I thinking? I could have done so many other things. I just got lost in it all. But I never stopped loving him. I never have.”

“And he doesn’t know you’re here?”

“How could he possibly know?”

“XO really did a number on you, didn’t they?”

“Yes ma’am, yes they did.” He looked again at what he’d written. “How does that sound?”

She leaned over his shoulder and read his words. “‘Dear XO, the deal’s off. I quit. I’m going to take my chances with the Feds if and when I get back—just like you will. If you hurt Luisa, you’ll answer for that too. She was the only one of you bastards who ever showed me any understanding, and is pretty much the only reason I made it this far. Also, go fuck yourselves. Frank.’ You really want to burn all your bridges, don’t you?”

“We’re on our own here. It’s us or M2. Everyone else is too far away to do jack. Unless you’re telling me you don’t need me.”

“Not saying that at all. But as commander, I need to be able to explain to my superiors every decision taken on this base that might affect crew safety. This, this is pretty final. You send this and we’re cutting all contact.”

“It’s your call.” He waited. He waited for a long time.

“We’re not really losing anything, are we? Send it, Frank. Send it, and let’s go eat.”

Frank clicked the button, and watched while the message worked its way through the system, to the dish and out. “Really need to be turning this shit off now.”

“I’ll go and pull the plug. No more traffic until we can get our own secure channel.”

He left her to it, and went to find Isla and Fanuel.

They were standing a little way away from one of the gurneys, where a black body bag lay, unnervingly full.

“Lucy’s calling you into the kitchen,” he said.

They had body bags. More than his team ever had. But someone at NASA had thought ahead, had planned for fatalities, and had used some part of the cargo manifest to send body bags to Mars, on the assumption that those bodies would be coming back to Earth again. Everyone on the crew had known that death was a possibility, and had also known that even then, they’d be taken home and not abandoned.

He could feel his face stiffen, and he blinked rapidly. Of all the things to get upset about, someone showing a measure of respect to a corpse that he’d never got in life had to be one of the stupidest. Yet here he was, working his jaw and trying not to cry.

“Go on,” he said. “She’s waiting for you.”

He felt a hand on his back, fleeting, warm. Human contact that wasn’t the prelude to an assault. Then he was alone with the dead.

He leaned his knuckles on the gurney, looking down at the heavy-duty zipper that ran the length of the bag, the write-on patch for identifying who was inside—FISHER Leland 3/8/49. Twenty forty-nine. How the hell had it got to twenty forty-nine? There were plugs and valves on the bag. A NASA logo. A medical company logo. The words “Body Back” and a serial number.

“Should have done more, Leland. I should have done more.”

What else could he have done, though? Jim would still have disappeared, M2 would still have attacked, and that was pretty much it. The only thing he could have done differently was tell the NASA crew everything from the very start—and it would still have unwound with XO undermining his testimony.

The only way it would have been better would be for M2 to have found all their gear and not to have turned into a bunch of crazies led by a madman. Them on their side of the hill, NASA on the other. That would have worked out. That would have been fine.

Instead, it was a mess. A goddamn mess.

He went back through to the kitchen. They were sitting around the table, bowls in front of them, cutlery laid out, glasses of water poured. Waiting for him.

“OK, you’re going to have to give me a minute,” said Frank.

Rather than disturb the place settings, he got another bowl out from storage and used the big plastic spoon to scoop some of the salad up. He went for a second helping, shook the bowl, then carried it, and a knife, back to the med bay, past Leland’s body bag, and unlocked the examination room. He’d reaffixed the door himself.

Jerry, curled up in the far corner beneath a blanket, didn’t move, though he was clearly watching what Frank was doing. He saw the knife, and perhaps he thought this was it.

“Chow time, Jerry.”

Jerry blinked, and rolled himself upright, leaning against the partition.

“Let’s see your hands.”

“What are they going to do with me?”

“At the moment, ‘they’ are trying to give you dinner. Beyond that, I don’t know. It’s not up to me.”

“They going to send me back?”

“Back to M2? You want that? Because we can take you with us and dump you there, after we’ve rescued Yun and taken out your buggies so you can never hurt us again. You’ll starve to death in the cold and the dark. Quickly, slowly. Maybe you get to do the eating, maybe you get eaten. What do you think, Jerry?”

“I don’t want to get sent back.”

“So let me see your hands.”

Jerry ass-shuffled so his back was to Frank. His wrists were cable-tied together, and Frank sliced through the tie.

“You came here as a prisoner, right?” Jerry rubbed at his wrists. “Maybe that can work out for me. Make myself useful over here.”

“You ate their friend.”

“I didn’t want to. He made me.”

“No one cares about your motives. Just about what you did. They’re decent people, and they’re not as used to the depths of human behavior as I am. Any one of them could decide living with you is just too risky and throw you out the airlock. They might just decide to do that anyway, in the cold light of day. We don’t need you.”

“I can do stuff. Computer stuff. I’m an expert. And electronics and electrics. I can do all of that.”

“Jerry, that’s what you did. Maybe that defined you before, with all your certificates and your college degrees and whatever. I know something about that. I was a builder. A good one. I ran my own company and I employed people and paid them on time and together we built houses. Then I shot someone, and all I was was a murderer. And all you are is a cannibal. Accept it. It’ll make things easier for you.” Frank pushed the bowl over to Jerry. “This is what we’re eating. You can take it or leave it. You don’t get so much as a spork to eat it with, though: I’ve seen what a man can do with one. You leave this room, I’ll toss your ass myself. You and me, we’re never going to be best buddies, but for some reason or other, I’m your best hope of making it through the next sol. Don’t piss me off by doing anything stupid.”

Jerry nodded. “OK. I get it.”

“The door stays locked. You’ve got a bucket. Use it because we’re not checking on you for comfort breaks every five minutes. Try and break out, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do. Now, I’m going to eat too, and after that you’ll probably get tied up again. So make the most of it. There are no guarantees here. If Lucy wants you gone, I can’t save you.”

Frank closed the door behind him. He clicked the lock, and pushed one of the empty gurneys up against the opening. If Jerry tried to get out, they’d hear him.

Then he went back and took his place at the table. They were watching him carefully.

“I feel sorry for him, for now. That’s all.” He took the spoon and helped himself to the salad. No one else had, and no one else did, for a while.

Eventually, Isla reached across and dragged the serving dish over towards her. She gave herself a tiny portion, barely anything, but from her expression it was going to be all she could gag down. Lucy reluctantly followed, and when she’d finished, she pushed it at Fan.

Who stared at it for the longest time.

“That’s an order,” she said, softly.

He didn’t have the willpower to defy her. The fight had gone out of him, and he theatrically clattered the spoon on the edge of his bowl to knock the last few grains of boiled wheat off.

Frank looked around the table, and found that everyone else was doing exactly the same. It wasn’t just ridiculous, but painfully, obviously so. He picked up his spork, toyed with it for a few seconds, then said: “You know what? Fuck it. If I’m going to die, I’m going down with a full belly. A couple of cold ones would go down nicely, but some damn fool decided this base was dry.”

He took a mouthful and chewed and swallowed, and went back for another.

“My parents,” said Isla. “They never drank. Very strict. When I used to come home from college, I had to hide my beer out in the barn, and the nearest place to buy it was some fifty miles away. Those summers were long.” And she ate. “It’s good, Frank,” she said.

After that, the floodgates opened. Reminiscences of childhoods in cities and on islands, on prairies and on air force bases. Things they’d done. Scars they’d earned. Loves they’d lost and hearts they’d broken.

One last normal evening, because they didn’t know who’d be coming back tomorrow.