Lost on Mars (17 page)

And so we had a big decision to make.

25

Of course we had to go on. Going backwards wasn't an option. We gathered everything we could carry in our arms and abandoned the hovercarts where they stood.

If I expected trouble from anyone over this, I guess I expected it from Mrs Adams. Having been pampered all her life, she wasn't used to walking anywhere. But she understood what had to be done. She, her husband and Annabel set about making bundles of supplies and tying them up in luxury sheets. They would carry everything they could on their backs.

It was my Ma who kicked off when we turned Molly and George free. It was hard for me, too. I was attached to these animals. I'd picked them out with Da when they were just infants. But when she watched those ugly brutes turning around in the canyon, Ma freaked out.

I slapped the beasts' hides, and urged them to leave us, to go find a new life for themselves, free in the desert. Molly and George looked totally mystified. Like they had no idea what to do with freedom.

Aunt Ruby suggested that we kill them at once for meat. Surely we could carry enough to see us through several days? But the very thought of turning on our loyal companions and giving them such a reward was too much for me. Molly and George's eyes were wide with doleful surprise. The idea of slaughtering them was too terrible. We'd only be able to carry a few handfuls of flesh, leaving the rest here for the desert scavengers. It seemed ungrateful and cruel.

Ma watched me shoo our beasts back the way we had come, and she set up such a noisy protest she disturbed Hannah, who was clinging to her neck. I thought I knew how Ma felt. By saying goodbye to the beasts and by leaving our old hovercart to rust in the labyrinth, we were saying a final goodbye to the last vestiges of Da.

Al brought out her pill jar, giving her a double dose. He hoped it would quell her incoherent sobbing. She fell quiet and Hannah hugged her tight, singing a nonsense song to cheer her. We watched Molly and George plod off the other way, glancing back now and then to check there hadn't been some mistake.

Ma finally turned to walk with the rest of us. She shambled along, like she had given up all hope. Aunt Ruby walked alongside her, trying to look strong and dependable, muttering about lizard meat.

With the hovercarts we were leaving behind our electric navigational instruments, maps and the best radio. They had become erratic anyhow. We would just have to rely on the stars and our own instincts. We still had the small transistor radio, though reception was poor.

‘Hecate, Balustrade, Liverwort, Fingerless…'

We were stumbling in the vague, twisting direction of what we hoped might be civilisation. But we didn't know what lay ahead. We didn't know anything at all, really.

Down in the canyons I started to feel doubtful. Perhaps it was the limited sun. The light came probing its long fingers into the labyrinth, as if seeking us out, but most of our days were spent brushing through curtains of blue shadow.

But there we were – Ma and Hannah, Al and Ruby, Mr and Mrs Adams and Annabel, Madame Lucille, Toaster and me. All of us clutching as much as we could carry. I knew better than anyone that in a matter of days we would be completely out of supplies.

Al helpfully pointed this out.

‘We'll be out of the canyons by then,' I told him.

‘Will we, though?' He stared up at the ever-loftier walls, until his neck gave an unwholesome cricking noise. ‘This is an endless maze, Lora. You've been calling it that yourself. We could be wandering around down here forever.'

‘Not forever,' I whispered. Of course, we'd be starved to death way before then.

I could see the rising panic in my brother. It fluttered away at his insides, just as it did with Ma. He had always been more like Ma. I was always like Da. Stoic, Aunt Ruby said. I was stoic and strong. Well, I don't know about that. Somebody had to be in charge without throwing hissy fits and panicking, didn't they?

About this time Toaster began to have trouble with his joints. He wheezed and clanked through these days in the canyons. His glass innards were making a horrible, grinding noise. He'd only just managed to scrape through the narrowest part of the ravine and we were all relieved we didn't have to leave him with the burden beasts.

He took me aside and lowered his voice, saying, ‘You will have to consider leaving me behind. When I cannot look after myself and become useless.'

‘No, never!' I gasped. I couldn't even imagine a life without Toaster. He had been in our family longer than any of its individual members.

‘Lora, if I malfunction and cannot move anymore, what are you going to do? Push me along on castors?'

‘If we have to, yes.'

I watched his stiff face pull into a smile. It gave a grinding noise as it did so. He was pleased by my reaction, I think. But like all Servo-Furnishings he was completely practical. ‘I insist that, if the time comes, you leave me behind and you don't look back.'

‘We'll decide that if and when we have to,' I said. I was thinking how our party was getting smaller and smaller. Was that how it was going to be? Until we got whittled down to nothing?

Toaster started talking about being the very last Servo-Furnishing on Mars. He had no actual evidence for this – how could he have? None of us knew how many settlements there were on this vast world. What he really meant was that, out of all the grand luxury ships that had arrived here, so hopefully and bravely, sixty or more years ago, he was the final mechanical servant left. His faulty sensors could detect no other. From a roster of hundreds of drinks cabinets, trouser presses, armchairs, ovens and grandfather clocks, only Toaster the sunbed was still alive. Once they had all been splendidly alert and willing to help the human race in whatever it had needed. Slowly they had all crumbled into dust with just Toaster still somehow managing to amble gallantly along.

There was no way I'd abandon him. I'd walk away from Aunt Ruby easier than I would him.

That night our encampment was very subdued. We had no beasts or vehicles to protect us and the walls were closer. I found myself expecting Ma to start playing her harp, sending those delightful, liquid notes up the ravine walls, buoyant and sweet, taking our minds off our worries, as she had done so often in the past. Except, I realised, she had left the harp stowed away inside the hovercart, several miles behind us.

That night we went hungry, with only a few concentrated cubes left. We munched them silently, hating but making the most of their rubbery taste and texture. A plaggy bottle of distilled water was passed around between us.

Madame Lucille tried to lead us in a round of storytelling, but no one's heart was really in it. We listened as she told some dramatic tale about how she and her husband met. We were polite because she was still coming to terms with having lost him. Mrs Adams told a story about her mother, who was a first-generation settler and a very fine lady, a painter of portraits and landscapes. Mars' very first lady artist, she'd had a retinue of twelve Servo-Furnishings, each one of them a lamp of different height and dazzling colour. They all followed her about, illuminating her way as she slowly went blind.

No one else volunteered a tale that night. We turned in to sleep, dowsing out our own lamps early to save their charge.

26

We had enough water, so long as the rivulets came running down the walls of the ravine. We tried to eat some of the lichenous plants growing out of the rocks, but they just made us sick. I knew from the resentful, sidelong glances I was getting from the others that they thought everything was my fault. I
f
I'd been in their shoes, I'd have been blaming me, too.

Why couldn't we have stayed back in Dead Town? Ma even asked me this one night. ‘Sure it wasn't very safe,' she grumbled. ‘But there were supplies. We could have at least lived for a while with food in our bellies…'

I thought back to the Martian Ghosts tearing after me through the silent streets. It wasn't worth arguing with her. I knew that we had done the right thing in moving on. We had to keep going. There was no choice about this.

The next day, as a total surprise, things took a turn for the better. The rock walls started receding. The chasm we were walking through was widening out. It didn't sound much, stated like that, but it felt like we could breathe more freely again.

Now we started thinking about the hovercarts and the beasts we had been forced to leave behind, and how much we longed for them. But it was no use looking back.

The ground was sandy and soft and all at once there was more sunlight getting into the labyrinth. The light felt gentle rather than harsh on our faces. Our eyes streamed with tears, unused to the soft glimmer of sun.

‘Is it my imagination?' Aunt Ruby asked. ‘Or are we walking uphill now?'

With his usual slow thoughtfulness, Mr Adams confirmed it. Yes, the ravine walls were growing shallower, and the path was leading us uphill. I let hope start to grow in me: perhaps this was the end of being lost in this maze.

But then those hopes were crushed.

First we heard the noises. Horrible gurgling noises that welled up from deep inside the gullies. We walked on, puzzling them over. Thinking they were some natural thing. Maybe we would soon find another pool of spring water. Then the gurgling got louder and more insistent. They started sounding like words we couldn't make out. Like creatures conversing with one another.

Our party huddled together and moved along more rapidly. All that day and into the evening the vile sounds dogged our heels.

And then we saw them.

All at once. Creatures of a type we had never seen before. They emerged from the dark ravines, swaying, sticky tentacles first. Then globular, purple and blue bodies followed, glistening in the light. They moved towards us, closing in.

We kept very quiet and still, struck dumb by their hideousness. We shrunk away from the touch of their slimy, unnatural flesh. They were covered in jelly-like blisters that looked painful and ready to pop. As they came closer I could see that some of these blisters were actually eyes, swivelling about and studying us with keen, wordless intelligence.

A different kind of Martian, I thought. They had discovered us at our weakest, when our resistance was at its most dismal. There was nothing we could do to prevent them taking us prisoner.

Only Toaster put up a decent fight, once he was quite sure that these jelly creatures meant harm to those he was programmed to protect. He lashed out at them with laser bolts and electric shocks. They went crackling through the chasm like blue lightning.

But it was no good. We all yelled out as the jelly creatures swarmed around him and quickly sealed him inside a mound of horrible muck.

At that point I knew it was hopeless. No matter how far we'd come, or what we'd achieved, it was all over now these creatures had us in their clutches.

They herded us just like we'd herded our burden beasts. They waved tentacles and ragged claws in our faces and we had no choice but to go where they chivvied us. I looked at my family and friends and they all had the same shocked, wild-eyed expressions on their faces. None of us could believe what was happening, and how quickly. It had been sixty seconds since our first glimpse of the new Martians. And now we were helpless prisoners.

‘Look,' gasped Al. One of the jelly creatures had reared up, stretching until it was twice its height, and made a guttural chanting noise that sounded like a kind of magical spell. All at once a wide section of the rock wall slid open, revealing blackness beyond.

Aunt Ruby swore. Her crabbed hand grasped my arm. ‘W – where are they taking us, Lora?'

How could she expect me to have all the answers?

The creatures corralled us, nudging us along with their sticky bodies. They uttered threatening sounds and made it clear we had to go with them into the darkness beyond that fake wall. Grinding mechanical noises came from deep within the darkness. It was hot, too; it felt like we were being ushered into hell. Down we went: the Adamses, Madame Lucille, Ruby, Al, Hannah, Ma and me. Toaster was still trapped inside all that jelly, which had somehow taken on a life of its own, and was dragging him along behind us.

There was a nasty, sickly sweet smell. It reminded me of a jar of honeyed pears at the back of Ma's store cupboard one year. There'd been a crack in the glass and the stuff inside had turned nasty. It gave off this same scent of sugary decay.

The fake rock wall rolled back into place behind us. It wasn't completely dark in there. The walls glowed blue and pink. The colours were actually quite beautiful, but the creatures with us were hideous. More of them showed up, eager to watch our every move with their sticky, globular eyes.

We humans huddled together. Al tried to say reassuring things. ‘If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it already.'

I wasn't so sure about that.

Annabel Adams voiced my thoughts neatly for me. ‘They want to study us. They're taking a good look at us. Then they'll probably want to eat us, like those other Martians did.'

Ruby was staring at them thoughtfully as they pushed us about. ‘They do seem to be fascinated by us. I think maybe they've never seen anything like us before, just as we've never seen anything like them…'