No Way

35

[Transcript of interview with Benjamin Jonathan Cohen, conducted by [redacted—A#1] and [redacted—A#2]. Also present Stephen Buk, Attorney at Law 3/17/2049 Salt Lake City UT]

It had all come down to knowing where Earth was, and then encoding its movement in a series of equations that the dish motors could follow, to keep the antenna pointed at the correct portion of the sky.

Yun had explained that the problem wasn’t trivial. That bypassing the dedicated satellites in orbit and calling home directly on the equipment MBO came with, was complicated precisely because no one had thought the situation would ever arise. That turning an entirely digital system into an analog one, without destroying the ability to switch back, was time-consuming and technically difficult.

She had, of course, managed it within a week. From their initial Mayday, to reaching a lo-fi text-only system, had taken another week. Video was out of the question for the time being, but highly compressed voice messages, sent over the Deep Space Network, was something they could now manage.

Messages from home. Messages from family, from friends, from colleagues. It felt like a huge thing, and it was. And every day, as Mars turned away from the Earth, there was silence for twelve hours.

Frank didn’t ignore the event. It just didn’t mean as much to him as it did to the rest of the crew. Luisa had gone. XO no longer had any relevance for him. And Lucy was camped out in Control/Comms, trying to relay as much information as possible regarding what had happened.

Sometimes Frank took her food—it was all he was able to do—while she was in the middle of dictating another lengthy transmission. She’d always pause her recording and make some small talk, but it was clear she wanted to continue as soon as she could. He understood there was pressure from NASA, but he wasn’t privy to the content, nor the context.

Frank was going to have to wear his inflatable arm cast for four months, and not take it off at all for the first two. Fan didn’t have access to an x-ray machine. He didn’t have the surgical plates and screws he probably would have used back on Earth, either. It was going to heal crooked, and it was never going to be as good as before, even if everything else went well.

The cast stretched from wrist to past his elbow. He had to wear a sling with it, which meant it was always present in front of him, and he could see, through the transparent covering, his skin turn yellow, then mottled black. It hurt, mainly at night when he didn’t have anything else to think about.

He didn’t like taking anything for the pain, for… reasons. But sometimes, lying there in the almost-dark, he’d bite his blanket in order to stop himself from crying out. He was pretty certain Fan wouldn’t have minded being woken up—Frank had a standing invitation to do so—but so far, he hadn’t taken the lifeline offered to him.

In the cold light of day, he wondered why. Yet during the night, he stuck it out. The pins and needles. The random shooting pains. The steady throb. The bone-deep itch. Hurt was now his default. He’d thought it would be better than this. Disappointment added to his discomfort.

The things that Frank couldn’t do without two hands—almost everything except greenhouse work and carrying light things—Jerry would do. Frank couldn’t go outside. All he’d seen of Mars for the last month was through the little window in the airlock, and yes, it might be an airless red desert where nothing would grow in the toxic, frozen soil, but he missed it. The simple act of suiting up and stepping out, and having a sky over his head rather than a low ceiling, would have been a relief. But there was no way he could do that, and still have the possibility of a working arm at the end of it. Jerry ran his chores, using Leland’s suit.

It kept the M2 man busy. It kept him from killing himself, and Frank was no Leland. He could listen, but he wasn’t so hot on advice. Jerry’d talk to Frank about who he was and how he’d ended up on Mars. About the people he had waiting for him back on Earth. What he’d wanted to do, and how his idealism about taming a new planet had slowly desiccated in the fine red dust until it was a dried, twisted caricature of what he’d dreamed of before.

There was no emotional attachment. Jerry was a project: they were both survivors of their respective missions. Frank had arrived on Mars already a criminal. Mars had turned Jerry into one. Frank didn’t know how he felt about that.

The greenhouse was the only place he didn’t feel like a spare part. He could top up the nutrient tanks, take readings, record heights and weights and volumes, and carefully harvest the produce. He could pollinate with a paint brush, move lights higher and lower, plant seeds and, mostly, anything else that needed doing.

It also, incidentally, meant that he spent a lot of time with Isla.

Not that he talked to her much. She had her experiments, which she decided that she had to start again from scratch due to the partial depressurization and atmosphere changes in the hab, and she concentrated on those while Frank carried on the grunt work of growing food.

But she was there, in the background, a presence. A welcome presence. They bumped along together. He knew where stuff was kept and, despite his inertia when it came to learning new things, he’d gotten knowledgeable about the plants he was tending. Mineral deficiencies, mutations, drip rates, germination conditions and harvesting times. She asked his advice. Whether she needed it or not, it made him feel less useless.

Neither of them mentioned that night in the shower.

All the same, it was a memory that Frank treasured. It had made him feel human again.

Yun’s days were spent doing what Jim should have been doing. Collecting rocks. Surveying. Digging. Lucy had taken Jim’s hammer from Justin. Yun wore it in her utility belt. Frank’s utility belt. His suit was a better fit for her than Leland’s.

The rule about pairing up had gone out the airlock along with so much else. The worst had already happened. In the spirit of her dead colleagues, she was going to collect as much data as she could, while she could. At some point, someone was going to have to go back up to the outpost, and further still, as far as M2, to retrieve what was left there. Not just the equipment, not just Station seven: the bodies. Whatever remained of Jim. But that was in an undefinable future, not now.

The one time they were all together was at dinner. That wasn’t so strange for Frank. His crew had done it. Even Jerry was expected to be there, though he didn’t talk much. What does a man say to the friends of someone he’s helped eat?

And just when he thought things had settled into a new normal, the greenhouse airlock opened and there was Lucy. She stood there for a while, not catching Frank’s eye, nor Isla’s, just checking out the health of the hab and its contents. Frank was busy with the nutrients, swapping out nearly empty syringes with full ones. He had to use his teeth to remove the flexible hose, and the C nutrient especially tasted bitter. Isla was taping the seams of a new atmosphere-controlled experiment. Both of them carried on working, expecting to be interrupted at any moment.

It didn’t come. Lucy climbed down the ladder to the lower level, and Frank raised an eyebrow at Isla, who shrugged back.

Frank finished the tomatoes, and walked around to where he could see through the grating. Lucy was leaning over one of the tilapia tanks, wafting her hand through the already stirring surface. Her sleeve was dangling, and had wicked up the dark, algae-rich water as far as her elbow.

“You OK?”

She looked up at him, and then shifted her gaze back to the tank. “They want me to call it, Frank.”

“Call what?”

“Stay/No Stay.”

He was aware of Isla behind him, listening.

“I didn’t think the MAV was ready yet.”

“Mission Control have calculated that with a reduced crew, the MAV already has enough fuel to make orbit and rendezvous.”

A reduced crew, she’d said. That didn’t include Jerry. Or Frank. He’d not asked before about that. It looked as if someone somewhere—probably several someones—had made a pronouncement and, well: it wasn’t like he was unused to bad news. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Things have been happening back on Earth. Serious things. Seriously legal and political things. It’s a hell of a mess. There are lawyers and federal agents all over this, and I’ve tried to insulate everyone here from the shitstorm that’s broken out. But they want me to call it, Frank. Today, tomorrow. They’ve left it up to me.” She looked up again. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I guess you’ll do whatever you think best. For your crew.”

“We’re in uncharted territory, Frank. I’m not going to lie, part of me wants to have nothing more to do with this planet. It’s taken two of the best people I know. Then again, I’ve never run away from anything before.”

“No shame in calling it quits,” he said.

“You won’t be left behind,” said Isla, softly enough that only he could hear it. “I won’t allow it.”

He felt her hand on his shoulder, her fingers digging into the skin and muscle beneath his overalls. A fierce grip. It was almost painful, and that was good. She meant it.

“I need to talk to everyone,” said Lucy. “I can’t make this decision by myself.”

Frank swallowed. “OK. Let me know when you’re done.”

“You need to be there. Five minutes, kitchen.”

She lifted her dripping sleeve and squeezed out the water, then climbed the ladder. She might have given the tableau of Frank and Isla the side-eye before she left, but it was difficult to tell. She seemed to have closed down completely.

Isla squeezed tighter, then let go. He’d be bruised there later, to go with all the other bruises.

“If she tries to make us return without you, there’ll be a mutiny.”

“Whoa. Just think about what you’re saying.”

“I know what I’m saying.”

“You’re on Mars. The MAV is it. If it’s leaving, you should be leaving with it. We don’t even know, after this, that they’ll ever send another.”

“All of us, or none of us.”

“What if she orders you?”

“Then we disobey her. We have space on the Prairie Rose for you. Even for Jerry. We can wait for another month, two months, and then we can all go.”

“Maybe Lucy’s just giving you the option. Not because she wants to go herself, but because she thinks you might.”

“I’m doing this as much for me as I am for you.” She was adamant, and Frank didn’t know what that signified. Something for sure.

Brack had once taunted him saying people like him didn’t have friends: that he was indelibly marked out—the mark of Cain—as being different, being other. And yes, while he’d been in prison, that had been true enough. There’d been guards, and there’d been other cons, and why the hell would he want to make friends with anyone in either group?

In his mind, he’d not done anything to earn this generosity. Yet here was someone who was unequivocally on his side. He was conditioned to think, “what does she want?” OK, Frank. Don’t overthink it: what if she doesn’t want anything?

“I have to stay,” said Isla. “To the end of the mission. I’ll never get another chance at this. None of us will. I’m so sorry we lost Jim and Leland.” He could hear her passion. “But I didn’t realize how much this meant to me until I thought it might be taken away.”

He tidied away the nutrient solutions, making a note of where he’d got to and pushing in a flag to indicate the last tray he’d topped up: he liked things squared away. That way, if he suddenly died, then the next person along wouldn’t curse him for being messy.

She carried on: “The radiation exposure, the reduced gravity, the risks, my age—don’t laugh—this is it. I’ll never get back to Mars again. People will remember this mission for all the wrong reasons anyway. I understand that. If we turn tail and run now, or in a couple of months’ time even, that’s all they’ll remember. I want them to have something else.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me.”

“I do. Yun feels the same way.”

He walked ahead of her, running the fingers of his right hand across the tray of wheat tillers.

“You’ve talked to her? Of course you have.” He suddenly realized what was going on, and turned round. “Wait. You think I’ve got a vote? I’m pretty certain I don’t have a vote.”

“You’re crew.”

“I’m a con, Isla. Guys like me, we don’t get a say in stuff like this.”

“Most of Yun’s equipment is still intact. We can fix what M2 took. She knows this is her only opportunity too. And Fan.”

“What did Fan say?”

“‘You need a doctor’, is what he said.”

“That’s not great.”

“It’s enough.” Isla looked down at Frank’s broken arm. “He’s willing to say he can’t leave until that’s fixed. That’s…”

“Four months at least. Maybe six. Does Lucy know you got this all sewn up?”

“No. But if you want to go home, first opportunity you can, then I’ll switch. All you have to do is say.”

He missed leaning against stuff. Putting both his hands down and just resting his weight against them. “I’ve no idea what’s going to meet me at the other end. You know that, right?”

“I know that,” she said.

“Any deal I cut with XO, I blew out when I told you who I really was. They took me out of jail to send me to Mars. There’s nothing now to stop me bouncing straight back there. I’ve another hundred and nine years to serve. I don’t think you quite appreciate that that’s set in stone.”

“We can get you a new lawyer. Another trial.”

“The first trial wasn’t wrong, Isla. They didn’t come to the wrong conclusion. I did what I did, and this base might just be the only place on two planets I get to be free.” Then he turned away. “What I’m saying is, don’t make any decisions based on what may or may not happen to me. I don’t want that.”

“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.”