Something Coming Through

2. Landing Day

Mangala | 24 July

Astronauts and aliens paraded down Petra’s main avenue. The astronauts were the surviving members of the Thirty-Eight, the first people to land on Mangala. Dressed in white tracksuits and standing on the backs of two flatbed trucks, waving to crowds that pelted them with confetti and paper streamers. The aliens marched behind the trucks. Lizard aliens, frog aliens, cat aliens, gorilla aliens. The cats brandished ray guns; the gorillas wore space helmets with spiral antennae. There were people dressed in black leotards stuck all over with clusters of black balloons; people in aluminium foil costumes and silver facepaint and blue wigs. A solitary Dalek trundled along, squawking about extermination. There was a troupe of dancers costumed as Jackaroo avatars, black suits and white shirts and gold-tinted plastic masks, high-stepping in jerky stop-go synchrony. There were floats and three school bands, a steelpan orchestra on the back of a truck decorated with artificial turf and fake palm trees and two real parrots. The Mayor and his wife rode in a vintage open-top Mercedes imported by a tomb raider who’d struck it rich, followed by a phalanx of motorcycle cops, four fire engines, the Salvation Army brass band, representatives of two dozen professions and trades, and a group selected from the latest arrivals on Mangala, newbies dressed in white T-shirts and blue jeans and blue denim jackets, the uniform of the orientation camp.

It was the thirteenth anniversary of the first landfall of the shuttle that tirelessly cycled between Earth and Mangala, of the first human footsteps on one of the fifteen worlds gifted by the Jackaroo. The shuttle had returned from its latest trip to Earth just two days before. A ring of fireworks had exploded around the giant spacecraft as it slid out of the sky, and there were more fireworks now, flowering in the chill sky above the city.

The last cannonade was fading and falling as Vic Gayle plunged into the narrow streets of the old quarter, heading towards a Landing Day party with a bunch of comrades from the early days. Back then, this had been all there was to the city. Quonset huts, a couple of big steel-frame sheds, small mud-brick domes built over the entrances to cut-and-cover bunkers. A precarious foothold in the howling alien wilderness. There were almost a million people on the planet now, most of them living in Petra, and the huts and bunkers in the old quarter had been made over into restaurants and tanning parlours, cafés and souvenir shops. Man, look at that: a Starbucks.

Vic’s friends had taken over the big round table at the back of the city’s oldest Chinese restaurant. They were all veterans of the second shuttle to Mangala, making a lot of noise, helping themselves from little dishes and bamboo baskets as waiters brought more food and fresh bottles of wine, brought Vic a bottle of Tiger beer. Most were much older than Vic, baby boomers who’d won the emigration lottery and decided to shed their old lives and chase after dreams of their Space Age childhoods. Thomas Müller owned two supermarkets and a thriving import/export business. Alice and Marek Sienkiewicz dealt in Elder Culture artefacts. Victoria Cheshire had built up a transport company that ran road trains between Petra and Idunn’s Valley. There were lawyers, surgeons, teachers. Maria Luis Pereira owned a chicken farm, the biggest on Mangala.

Vic Gayle was an investigator in the city’s police, a stocky middle-aged man in a dark brown suit and black shirt and green tie. Close-trimmed hair going grey at the temples, sleepy eyes that didn’t miss much. Sitting quietly amongst his friends as they ate crispy duck and pancakes, drank white wine from Idunn’s Valley or imported beer, talked about the old days, their children and grandchildren back on Earth, the latest political scandals, the big dust storm blowing up out of the west, the panic buying in shops and supermarkets. Vic finished his beer and switched to jasmine tea. Although he was on call, working on Landing Day so that colleagues with families wouldn’t have to, he’d decided at the last minute that he didn’t want to miss the annual party with his old friends, had told his new partner to hold the fort for a couple of hours, ignore the phone if it rang, call him if there was a problem. But now that he was here, he was feeling out of place. Everyone was talking about new business opportunities, their new cars and houses, their kids, their plans for the future, and he was back to living in an efficiency apartment, his ex was nagging him about collecting the last of his shit from what had been their home, and he was still working violent crimes, putting down murders. A righteous calling, no doubt, but after seven years it was beginning to feel like the same old same old.

Someone said, ‘Next year, we should do this in Red Rock Falls.’

Someone else said, ‘Only tourists and newbies go to Red Rock Falls these days.’

‘Time we reclaimed it, then.’

‘Who ordered these chicken feet?’

‘I hear StrangeWare is organising another attempt on the North Pole.’

‘Those people have more money than sense.’

‘They can afford to bet on long shots. And who knows what’s under the ice?’

‘A secret Jackaroo base.’

‘Atlantis.’

‘Every sock ever lost.’

‘The mapping satellite didn’t find anything.’

‘It’s a lot of ice.’

‘It had sideways radar.’

‘It’s a lot of ice. Forty kilometres deep in places.’

Familiar faces animated in the red light of the sconces on the red and gold walls. Laughing and talking. Hands wielding chopsticks, fluttering in the air over bowls and glasses.

‘Did anyone ever find out what happened to that satellite?’

‘A secret Elder Culture city shot it down.’

‘Two of its gyroscopes failed,’ Maria Kawelec said. She was an engineer and an amateur astronomer. ‘It couldn’t be aimed at anything any more, so it was de-orbited.’

‘They should put up another.’

‘They should send probes to the other planets. Seriously,’ Maria said. ‘Anything could be out there.’

‘That’s where we should go for our fiftieth. The North Pole.’

‘And miss the parade?’

‘I wouldn’t miss it. Every year the same.’

‘That’s why I love it.’

‘The kids love it.’

‘My kids don’t. Too old. Jaded at eight and ten,’ Faith Madeuke said, and looked across the table at Vic. ‘Are you okay, honey?’

‘Absolutely,’ Vic said.

‘You’re quieter than usual, is all,’ Faith said. She wore a gold and red dress and had wrapped her dreadlocks in a matching scarf. She had been the first in their circle to have children here, some of the first children born on Mangala.

‘I thought of skipping the bash this year,’ Vic confessed.

‘I’m glad you didn’t. Tell me one of your horrible stories.’

Vic smiled. ‘About police work or about my life?’

Mark Brown leaned in. ‘There was a shooting in my neighbourhood two weeks ago. In the park. A motorcycle went past some young men hanging out by the café and the pillion passenger popped off a couple of shots. This was Saturday afternoon,’ Mark said, his voice rising with indignation. ‘People were having picnics. Families were out with their kids.’

Vic had heard about it in the daily briefing, told Mark that the perps were being tracked down.

‘Probably gang-related,’ Thomas Müller said.

‘My question is, where do they get the guns?’ Mark Brown said.

‘People smuggle them in,’ Thomas Müller said. ‘People print them. Am I right, Vic?’

‘There are definitely too many guns,’ Vic said.

‘Kids with guns,’ Mark Brown said. ‘When did that start happening?’

Faith said, ‘Did you see the newbies in the parade? Didn’t they look weirded out?’

Vic, grateful for the change of subject, said, ‘You land on a strange new planet and — wah gwan? You’re marching behind the Salvation Army band and the crookedest politician in twenty thousand light years, who’s waving at the crowds from a vintage car. Who wouldn’t be weirded out?’

‘Anyone interesting in the new batch?’

‘You mean anyone famous or anyone useful?’

‘Famous people are famous on Earth, so why leave?’

‘They’d be more famous here.’

‘They’d be famous for being famous for about five minutes. And then what? What would Robert Pattinson do here?’

‘I have a couple of ideas,’ Faith said, and gave her trademark filthy laugh.

‘What happened to that guy who came here to make movies? Sci-fi movies on an actual alien planet.’

Vic said, ‘We had a nuclear war, we had an alien invasion, and now we’re living on alien planets. How could you make up anything to beat that?’

There was a vibration in the pocket of his jacket. His phone. He left the table and found a quiet spot near the restaurant’s pass-through.

‘We’ve got one,’ Skip Williams said.

Vic automatically checked his watch. Seven twenty-two.

He said, ‘You picked up the phone. Didn’t I tell you about not picking up the phone?’

‘Sorry about your meal and everything, but I was the only one here. Bodin and Espinosa are attending a shooting over at the Flats.’

Vic gave the address of the restaurant. ‘You’d better come by and pick me up.’