Lost on Mars (16 page)

I called to her, ‘Cassandra!'

She flew to the very edge of town, where the worn-down buildings were seedier and grimmer. I got the feeling that they'd been like this, even before everyone in town Disappeared. This place was dead before the rest of Dead Town. The scrubby bush and rocky terrain started again at the end of one particular street. This was where the headmistress stopped running, right where the desert resumed. She tottered to a standstill and turned to look back at me.

‘You think you're so clever, girl,' she snarled. ‘You think you can survive all of this … but you can't! You've all been trying so hard, but you needn't bother! This world is going to be the death of us all!'

I realised her eyes had changed colour. It wasn't just starlight catching them and making them flash. Her eyes were actually silver now.

Something alien had got into her. She really was turning Martian.

But I didn't have much time to think about that. Next thing, several slender forms came out of the desert to surround her. They were rushing soundlessly, and appeared in a second. I yelped out loud, I couldn't help it. It looked as if they were crowding around Cassandra to embrace her.

But then I saw that they were smothering her.

‘
Heee heeee heeeee
…'

The light breeze from the desert brought their giggling to me. They were skinny-limbed Martians, with burnt and blistered skins. They worked together as a team, squeezing and tethering their prize. And then they carried the headmistress away.

‘No!' I shouted, thinking too late that I shouldn't draw their attention.

They looked at me.

I swore.

There was nothing I could do for Cassandra. She had invited this. She had called out to them. She clearly wanted to be with her Martian Ghosts, and go the same way as the rest of Dead Town. But I didn't. I left her to their embraces and I turned back and ran. I didn't dare look behind me and I didn't run back to the saloon. I didn't want to lead the Martians to my family and friends.

I took a weaving route through the empty streets, past shells of abandoned houses. I was soon breathless and the thin night air was hurting my lungs and making my legs shake. For a while I could hear the slapping of Martian feet and the thrilled ‘
Hee heeee heeee
' of their laughter. I could imagine their graceful movements, but I didn't look back and eventually they faded away.

I decided it was time to abandon this morbid town. We had uncovered everything useful or edible that it had to offer. I gabbled out my story about Cassandra's fate and the encroaching Martian Ghosts. No one wanted to stay a moment longer.

Dawn came up brilliantly as we hitched up our burden beasts and started the engines of our hovercarts. Ma took a couple of her purple pills and smiled at us. ‘Where next, kids? You're the ones in charge!'

I had to admit that I wasn't sure at all. All we knew was the general direction we had to head in: the source of the weather warnings. Always keeping west, where the strange words came from. But beyond that, I didn't really know much at all.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that was just as well.

24

I remember Ma saying, on the first day out from Dead Town, that she felt the whole of her world had been turned upside down. Why, just a few months ago, it had been the adults in charge. Grown men like Da were in command of our destiny, knowing all the answers and making all the decisions. And now it was just little bits of kids telling everyone what to do. A little girl, at that.

I stared back at her when she said this, catching a bitterness in her voice and I saw she was looking at me like I was a stranger again. She was as high as a kite on her tablets, of course. All she had to do all day, through these long days of travelling, was sit atop the hovercart, cuddle Hannah, and keep swallowing the pills.

Over the next few days and weeks we travelled hundreds of miles, all without much incident. Our initial supplies dried up and we had to rely on what we had looted from Dead Town. I found myself being thankful that we had stopped in that place after all. Their dried foodstuffs, their capsules and even their water were of a better quality than we were used to.

Mrs Adams took over cooking duties each evening, after Ma decided that she didn't want to do any more of that stuff. This surprised her children and the people who knew her best. We all knew how she loved to cook and feed folk.

With Mrs Adams keen to show off her culinary skills we were living the high-life for the next few days. We consumed rehydrated sticky ribs and hoisin duck; tinned champagne that fizzed so fiercely it made us sneeze; star fruit in syrup served with powdered custard. This was bounty like we had never known and our suppers together became celebratory affairs.

But we knew our lavish evenings couldn't last forever.

There was one curious night when, buoyed up on that sharp, cold champagne, Madame Lucille opened up a trunk she had packed away in a corner of her hovercart. She pulled out yard after yard of gorgeous, shimmering material in a multitude of colours. Salmon and topaz and midnight blue. The bolts of cloth were followed by flourishes of silk and lace, feathers and fake jewels.

‘You brought dressy-up stuff?' squawked Aunt Ruby. She was scandalised. ‘We ran away with the few vital bits we needed to survive – and you brought your dressy-up trunk?' I knew Ruby was thinking about her precious tapes and historical records.

Madame Lucille simply grinned at the old lady and shook out a long, white sequined dress with a slash that went right up to the thigh. She thrust it into Ruby's arms and told her to go and put it on at once.

Ruby's eyes went out on stalks. ‘Me?'

I couldn't remember seeing Ruby in a dress in all my life.

She was flattered. She dashed off with her prize and came back, not long after, looking really bizarre. But she felt – you could tell – ever so glamorous and fine. Aunt Ruby swept round and round our encampment that night acting like she was one of the flickering dames out of a picture show.

It turned out Madam Lucille had brought enough gaudy and marvellous outfits for everyone in our party of refugees. Quite by chance she had calculated the exact right number. That night she got her gruff, burly husband to put some old-time music on their wagon's speakers and she somehow whipped up a party out of nowhere.

It was a very fancy affair. We all got dressed up in items of fabulous apparel and we drank the whole supply of canned champagne.

Even the men dressed up. Madame Lucille insisted. By the end of it all, Madame Lucille with her dirty growth of beard and her over-painted eyes looked the most masculine of us all.

Oh, that was a great night in our journey. Al took pictures of us all glamming up and showing off. The next day, all the costumes – a little stickier with booze and grimed with desert sand – went back into Madame Lucille's dressy-up box. And we set off again, somewhat thick-headed, onto the next stage of our journey.

The day after we entered the canyons. I remember glimpsing this landscape once, when Sook flew me around the skies. It had seemed so far away. All these crazy zig-zagging patterns. Fathoms-deep trenches reaching into Mars. And now we were going to be trekking into them. We were stepping into deep purple shadows and entering a kind of labyrinth. The walls rose ever-higher above us as we went.

I wasn't sure it was such a good idea, travelling into the canyons, but there was nowhere else and at least the ravines offered us shelter and shade. And water, too, with innumerable rivulets coming down the rocky walls. As we advanced we soon lost track of our route through the maze. We came upon fountains and once even a deep jade pool. The lapping sound of cool waters was delicious to our sand-encrusted ears.

We stopped and carefully tasted the water. Would it make us sick? Toaster took a sample protesting that, as a humble Servo-Furnishing, his computer brain wasn't really built for chemical analysis. Nevertheless, after a few moments' consideration, he announced that he believed the water in the pool was non-toxic. That evening we drank deep and took off our dusty things and bathed and swam in the lucid waters.

We built a small camp beside the driest bank and settled for the night. Ma played her harp but, for once, the music wasn't as perfect and soothing as usual. She hit sharp discordant notes and grew cross with herself, cursing her clumsy hands. Her fingers had stiffened, she complained. This made her cry out in frustration. ‘The old songs have left me!' she sobbed. The old songs had disappeared from her memory and her hands. ‘It's because we have wandered too far,' she said, in a haunted voice. ‘We have strayed too far from our own kind, and from civilisation.'

That night I dreamed about the Martian Ghosts and Sook. At night I felt as if they came among us. They would peer in my face and I'd see their round, purple eyes staring at me. They'd open their lipless mouths, showing needle teeth. They'd let their hot breath scorch my skin. Following our visit to Dead Town I could now hear their horrible giggling in my head: ‘
Heeee heeee heeeee…
'

In my dreams Sook came back to me, unfolding even bolder, more elaborate wings, stronger and more powerful. They could fly us both all around the world. In my dreams she would tell me the vile truth: that she had never been my friend at all. The whole thing had been a trap. She had been sent to my people to learn about us; to find out about our wishes, our hopes and our weaknesses. To find out anything useful about us. Sook had just been playing me along, anticipating the day that she would be able to eat me. She had earmarked me for her own personal consumption.

I would wake from these dreams panting with fear, my body running with icy sweat. Did I really believe it, deep down? Did I believe in my hidden mind that she had betrayed me all along?

In some ways it hardly mattered. I had heard nothing from her in weeks. She had obviously lost track of us since we had come so far. I would hate to discover that my dreaming mind had guessed right — that she had been an envoy of the hungry Martians. That she had never been my friend at all.

I decided that these were gloomy thoughts to be having by the oasis. I looked around. Everyone was sleeping. I clicked on a small lamp and fired up my electric book and I spent my sleepless hours immersed in one of my old novels. I was reading my way through the Brontes. Sand had gotten into the workings of the machine and scrambled the pages up, so that all the Brontes had become one big, confusing story. I remember sitting up that night, trying to make sense of it all, and being impressed by the heroine of the amalgamated saga. How lonely and resourceful she had to be, and how far away from home she felt.

That was our quiet night by the oasis, where it was cool and calming. Other days and nights were less comfortable. We endured them. But one of us in particular grew angry and frustrated. Ray, the husband of Madame Lucille, became more and more impatient with being lost in the maze. One day he hunched his shoulders and summoned all his strength. To our astonishment he started to clamber up the rock wall. He was sick of hiding in shadows, he shouted. He would climb to the top and see how the land lay.

I knew it was far too dangerous. We stood watching. Madame Lucille shouted up at him, shaking with fear. ‘The idiot,' she kept whispering. ‘What's he trying to prove?'

Ray was about three-quarters of the way when there was a rattle of loose stone and a horrible, quick scraping sound. A handhold let him down. He slipped.

Madam Lucille screeched and darted forward. But what could she do? What could any of us do?

Ray didn't stand a chance, falling from that height. It was all very horrible, but graceful, the way he fell. And it happened right in front of us. He landed with a sickening crunch.

Madame Lucille was inconsolable.

That night she sat beside his body on the floor of the ravine. She covered it up in yards of very fine, silver fabric. She had her sewing kit out and her best needles and she stitched him a shroud. She knew she would have to leave him there on the rocks. There was nothing to dig into, to bury him properly.

‘He looked after me, Lora, all those years,' she told me. ‘He was a good man. We have lived in some very unfriendly places. Unforgiving places, if you see what I mean. Why, even in Our Town, where we felt we were settled at last, even that wasn't all that friendly. Oh, they tolerated us, I guess – but I had to keep myself indoors most of the time. I had not to show my face amongst everyday folk.'

Crouching by Madame Lucille, I thought about it. I'd always assumed she kept herself indoors because she was sick or too grand to go out. Or maybe her skin was too pale for the sun.

‘He always stuck up for me,' she said, stitching away. ‘He made my life livable.'

She sat up with him all that night, hunched over, spinning a web of silver lace about his crumpled body.

The next day we set off without him.

We turned one of those sharp corners in the canyons and saw that the way ahead became suddenly very much more narrow.

Dread clutched my throat. It felt like the red rock walls were closing in around us.

The way ahead wasn't wide enough for our three hovercarts. Nor would our burden beasts be able to squeeze themselves through. This was as far as they could go.