Lost on Mars (3 page)

As we stood among those clucking women, Al was twisting and pulling faces. We were so crushed between the starched pinnies and the wooden baskets we couldn't even see Mrs Adams behind her glass counter. We knew, though, that she was weighing out goods on her silver scales and talking all animatedly.

We caught the odd phrase echoed by the ladies around us. We heard the word ‘Disappearances' several times and this made our ears prick up. I heard ‘just a baby' and ‘one of her lovely twins' and then a kind of ghoulish excitement rippled through the shop. A shrill voice piped up: ‘Like she foolishly left a window open … and during a storm! What did she expect to happen to her precious babies? Of course one of them went flying out the window…'

‘Or it was snatched,' snapped another, croakier voice. ‘Snatched from clear under her nose. Just like it used to happen before. They could always get at you and yours, no matter how secure you thought your Homestead was. Even when you were under lock and key and all your hatches were battened down they could still get at you!'

This particular raspy voice rose above the others and I recognised it almost at once. It belonged to Grandma's only friend, Ruby. Ruby was an engineer and a legend in Our Town. She was also Grandma's only surviving contemporary. She had more memory and knowledge than anyone still alive on Mars. She was revered and respected and it was surprising for us to even find her here, wasting her time gossiping with all these old dames. If Ruby was here then it must be important, she was no idle chatterer.

‘Tell us, Ruby, tell us,' urged Mrs Adams.

‘What's to tell?' said Ruby, smoothing down her tangled white hair. She glowered at everyone in turn. ‘It's the Disappearances. Seems like they've started up once again.'

A horrible pause followed this pronouncement, as everyone struggled to take in what she meant. It was something we'd heard the older people saying. The Disappearances. The very word made the colour drain out of the ladies' faces.

Then Mrs Adams saw Al and me standing there with our wooden baskets and our list and our handfuls of coins. She decided we ought to be protected from all this gloomy adult talk, so she brightened her voice. ‘Why, it's the Robinson children. Thank the Lord that you're safe, my dears. I take it you all came through the storm in one piece and that your family is well?'

I nodded firmly and the ladies sighed with relief. They knew that we faced the brunt of the storm on the prairie. Here in town they'd have been hunkered in their shelters underground. I admit that Al and I basked in their admiration as we went up to the counter with our empty baskets.

I gave Mrs Adams our list and watched her frowning at Ma's handwriting and then set about filling our order. I felt Al's hand reach out to take mine and I knew straight away how he felt about what we'd heard.

Da had heard similar things from the men. In the great wooden Storehouse, where they traded and loaded up their wagons with heavy sacks of grain and barrels of oil, the men gossiped just as much as the ladies did. They just swore and spat more, is all. He always said that we weren't the same as town folk. We lived on the Martian prairie and we were made of tougher stuff. Yes, we traded with them and we were still related to them, and all of us sure depended on one another for survival, but Da insisted that we were crucially different. They were used to their huddling together with their softer, sheltered living and their fancier things. They had time on their hands and idle tongues to match.

That day, though, it seemed that the gossip reached out and snared Da's attention too.

‘Old Man Horace. He's gone,' Da told us tersely, as we loaded the hovercart with new provisions. Da didn't believe in sugar-coating the truth, even for kids. He thought it was best we knew the worst from the very start.

Old Man Horace had been the town vagrant. Going back way before I was born, he had been racketing about the town. He may have been a filthy tramp, but he belonged to us, and every single Homestead had taken him in at Christmas time or Martian Thanksgiving. I could remember the Christmas I was eight and he came out to stay in the Homestead with us; he'd carved wooden animals for Al and me.

Now, according to the men in the Storehouse today, after the storm came rampaging through town, and left the whole place smothered in dust and all topsy-turvy, there was not a single sign of Old Man Horace. No one could remember who had volunteered to give him shelter. It was assumed that the storm had simply borne him away like an old rag swept out of the road.

‘They're taking it to be an omen,' Da told us, as we strapped the last of the sacks into the hovercart. ‘Damn fools. They're talking like that dirty old guy was our mascot or something.'

Al looked as if he was longing to tell him about the baby that flew out of the window. But I jabbed my brother with my bony elbow. I didn't want him troubling Da right now. This was unsubstantiated tittle-tattle and Da surely wasn't in the mood for it. I distracted them both by asking about our replacements for Molly and George.

‘They'll be ready in two weeks,' said Da. ‘They're still too young to leave their mother. They're having chips implanted too. But before the month's out we'll be able to take them home with us.'

I wished I'd gone to the livestock pens with him, just so I could have seen the young burden beasts.

On the way home Da chatted brightly about the feast that we'd be having the following evening. He'd invited everyone he'd seen and now word would go round the whole town. Everyone was welcome at the Homestead barbecue. We could celebrate the fact we were all still alive and the summer storm was, hopefully, at an end.

And nothing more was said for the rest of the day about Disappearances.

4

Molly and George turned out to be delicious. Ma cooked them up right. Great hunks of meat marinated in sauces all the afternoon before our party. I helped hoist them out onto the makeshift cooking range outdoors, but most of the work was Ma's. She was brilliant at this stuff. Obviously it was easier when supplies were more plentiful, but Da always said that Ma excelled at any time – feast or famine. She could keep us going on the most meagre rations.

The aromas swirled and drifted all the way into town, enticing folk out of their boltholes, attracting many more than we knew we'd have to feed. Their carriages and hovercarts came pulling up in our yard and some of these faces we didn't even recognise. They were cousins and friends of townsfolk. All were welcome, Da announced.

Some folk brought kegs of foul-tasting homebrew. Noxious drink was passed around in plaggy beakers and as the sun went down, fizzing golden into the dunes, the party was getting rowdy. With the landscape so changed about, I wondered whether everyone would find their way home after darkness fell.

Grandma enlisted help from Al and Da to drag her heavy old armchair into the yard and there she sat, looking like the queen of our world. She wore a silver frock that she must have unearthed from the very bottom of her trunk. It shone glamorously in the moonlight and she was very proud of herself. She watched the revels going on with a strange expression on her face. I guess it was the kind of face you'd wear if you'd seen everything and done everything the world had to offer and now you were watching all the young people doing it all again.

There was music. Old discs that had been handed down from the first settlers. Later, when everyone was tired of those ghostly, over-complicated songs from Earth, we made our own music. Da fetched out his guitar and someone beat time on the empty kegs. Mr Adams played a shrill penny whistle and there were jigs and reels. I hung back when the dancing started, keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. The grown-ups were drunk and enjoying themselves, but there was no way I was making a fool of myself.

The only dancing I'd ever done was away from anyone watching, with Hannah, when she was a baby, moving softly round as I held her in my arms and tried to get her to sleep. In all of the raucous music that memory came back to me and it caught my breath sharply. I looked for Hannah and saw her in the dress she'd had for her birthday. Ma had cleaned and pressed it and Hannah looked a peach. She was clapping and trying to join in, though she was too small for most people to notice. I kept a careful eye out in case my sister strayed too close to those stamping feet.

One cracked voice cut across everyone else and started to sing an old song. It was a story song: about the voyages that the settlers had made from Earth to come here. It was a song no one had heard in a long time.

By now it was properly dark. The stars were out, but we all felt safe because we were together. The whole town was here. We listened in respectful silence as Grandma rocked back and forth in her armchair. Her voice was like old creaking water pipes or ungreased engine parts. It told a tale come from the distant past and it was our duty to harken to it. Paying our respects to the sacrifices of those who had gone before us.

Her song went on forever, it seemed like. It was truly horrible. Even worse than the last time she'd inflicted it upon us. In the end, Toaster stepped forward to pat her on the shoulder and whisper in her ear. Her dirge-like singing faded out and she submitted to his hydraulic embrace, allowing herself to be manhandled indoors to her bed. It was too late for old ladies to be squawking at the tops of their voices in the cooling desert air.

The music and the party were over, and everyone became conscious of being out of doors in the dark. All of a sudden it was time to leave. In all the milling about – that was when the gossip started. People were tired and jumpy and whispers were going around – insidious and shivery – spoiling the party mood. People were talking about the Disappearances. It was as if our light and warmth and noise couldn't keep the dark thoughts at bay forever. The shadows were creeping in to claim us.

Clearing stuff away, Ma caught those whispers and went straight up to Da. She was shaking with anger and fear. ‘You never told me about this. You never said what you'd heard in town.'

He froze. He was aware others had stopped to listen. They had caught the tension in Ma's voice. ‘It's only a rumour,' he told her. ‘Old Man Horace just wandered off, probably. He was a drunk old man, weak in the head after years of being ill. It's sad, but one day they'll find his body in a dune out of town.'

‘And the Simcox child?' Ma asked. Her voice was getting shrill and others were murmuring. The Simcox family were absent from our shindig that evening, most unlike them. It added credence to the rumour they had lost one of their babies. It had flown right out of its cot and through its nursery window into the eye of the descending storm.

‘So you don't believe it?' Ma asked Da. ‘You don't believe that it's happening again?'

He growled, ‘We need more evidence. We can't all turn hysterical.' He took hold of her and tried to shush her down.

‘Disappearances, Edward,' she hissed. ‘You know the stories. You know what your mother said. Or have you forgotten?'

He smoothed down her hair. She wriggled out of his grasp. She beckoned to Hannah, who ran into her arms.

‘We've forgotten nothing,' said Da.

‘The weather isn't the worst thing,' said Ma. ‘It isn't the harshest, most deadly thing on Mars. We've had it easy for years. We've had it soft. Compared with the settlers.' Then she broke into tears. This shocked both Al and me. We'd seen Ma cry before, but not in front of people from the town. She just crumpled up and fell down on her knees in the dirty cinders from the barbecue.

5

At the weekend Grandma took a bad fall. We heard a tremendous crash and all this cursing from her room and, next thing, Toaster came to us looking all concerned. Grandma's cybernetic leg had seized up – sand in the joints. It was all corroded up and getting to be no use. Da said the only thing to do was to take her into town when we went for the replacements for Molly and George. Doc Eaves could fix up cybernetic limbs pretty well.

Grandma didn't complain, even though she hated to go into town, on account of her looking so beat up and old. She hated to be seen by people these days. I reckoned she must have been hurting for real to agree so readily.

So we all went – apart from Ma and Hannah, who waved us off from the veranda. Grandma and Toaster were strapped onto the back of the hovercart like bits of old farm equipment and I guess we made quite a comical sight, buzzing along on the sand. Grandma kept yammering all the way across the plains. I could hear Toaster hushing her and placating her in reasonable tones.

Al and me sat up front with Da. We were both paying attention to how he drove the machine. We knew that our day would come when we'd have to know how to do everything Da could do, to support our own families in the future. One day we would have our own Homesteads somewhere on the prairie.

We were settlers – third generation – and it was our duty to grow up and spread out and occupy new land and have more children who'd carry on the sacred mission after us. Me, I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my life and, for as long as I could remember, I'd been learning and memorising all the skills and knowledge bound up in Ma and Da about surviving in our world. Al was the same. Well, I'd always assumed he was the same.

But something weird was going on with Al. He had started to question things. He wanted to know
why
our whole purpose was to thrive and proliferate and multiply and colonise Mars. He was thoughtful, Al. Thoughtful and deep and troubled. At first he only voiced his questions to me, his older sister, and I only half-understood what he was talking about. I mean, what else would he or anyone else do with their lives? What else was there to do but try to survive?