by Joe Haldeman
I lay still, bright red sparks fading from my vision while the pain amped up and up. Trying to think, not scream. It was dark again.
My ankle was probably broken, and at least one rib on the left side. I breathed deeply, listening—Paul told me about how he had broken a rib in a car wreck, and he could tell by the sound that it had punctured his lung. This did hurt, but didn’t sound different—then I realized I was lucky to be breathing at all. The helmet and suit were intact.
But would I be able to keep breathing long enough to be rescued?
I clicked the suit-light switch over and over, and nothing happened. If I could find the dog, and if it was intact, I’d have an extra sixteen hours of oxygen. Otherwise, I probably had two, two and a half hours.
I didn’t suppose the radio would do any good, underground, but I tried it anyway. Yelled into it for a minute, and then listened. Nothing.
These suits ought to have some sort of beeper to trace people with. But then I guess nobody was supposed to wander off and disappear.
It was about four. How long before someone woke up and noticed I was gone? How long before someone got worried enough to check and see that the suit and dog were missing?
I tried to stand, and it wasn’t possible. The pain was intolerable, and the bone made an ominous sound. I couldn’t help crying but stopped after a minute. Pathetic.
Had to find the dog, with its oxygen and power. I stretched out and patted the ground back and forth, and scrabbled around in a circle, feeling for it.
It wasn’t anywhere nearby. But how far could it have rolled after it hit?
I had to be careful, not just crawl off in some random direction and get lost. I remembered feeling a large, kind of pointy, rock off to my left—good thing I hadn’t landed on it—and could use it as a reference point.
I found it and moved up so my foot was touching it. Visualizing an old-fashioned clock with me as the hour hand, I went off in the 12:00 direction, measuring four body lengths inchworm style. Then crawled back to the pointy rock and did the same thing in the opposite, 6:00, direction. Nothing there, nor at 9:00 or 3:00, and I tried not to panic.
In my mind’s eye I could see the areas where I hadn’t been able to reach, the angles midway between 12:00 and 3:00, 3:00 and 6:00, and so on. I went back to the pointy rock and started over. On the second try, my hand touched one of the dog’s wheels, and I smiled in spite of my situation.
It was lying on its side. I uprighted it and felt for the switch that would turn on its light. When it came on, I was looking straight into it and it dazzled me blind.
Facing away from it, after a couple of minutes I could see some of where I was. I’d fallen into a large underground cavern, maybe shaped like a dome, though I couldn’t see as far as the top. I guessed it was part of a lava tube that was almost open to the surface, worn so thin that it couldn’t support my weight.
Maybe it joined up with the lava tube that we lived in! But even if it did, and even if I knew which direction to go, I couldn’t crawl the four kilometers back. I tried to ignore the pain and do the math, anyhow—sixteen hours of oxygen, four kilometers, that means creeping 250 meters per hour, dragging the dog along behind me… no way. Better to hope they would track me down here.
What were the chances of that? Maybe the dog’s tracks, or my boot prints? Only in dusty places, if the wind didn’t cover them up before dawn.
If they searched at night, the dog’s light might help. How close would a person have to come to the hole to see it? Close enough to crash through and join me?
And would the dog’s power supply last long enough to shine all night and again tomorrow night? It wouldn’t have to last any longer than that.
The ankle was hurting less, but that was because of numbness. My hands and feet were getting cold. Was that a suit malfunction, or just because I was stretched out on this cold cave floor? Where the sun had never shone.
With a start, I realized the coldness could mean that my suit was losing power—it should automatically warm up the gloves and boots. I opened my mouth wide and with my chin pressed the switch that ought to project a technical readout in front of my eyes, with “power remaining,” and nothing came up.
Well, the dog obviously had power to spare. I unreeled the recharge cable and plugged its jack into my LSU.
Nothing happened.
I chinned the switch over and over. Nothing.
Maybe it was just the readout display that was broken; I was getting power, but it wasn’t registering. Trying not to panic, I wiggled the jack, unplugged and replugged it. Still nothing.
I was breathing, though; that part worked. I unrolled the umbilical hose from the dog and pushed the fitting into the bottom of the LSU. It made a loud pop and a sudden breeze of cold oxygen blew around my neck and chin.
So at least I wouldn’t die of that. I would be frozen solid before I ran out of air; how comforting. Acid rush of panic in my throat; I choked it back and sucked on the water tube until the nausea was gone.
Which made me think about the other end, and I clamped up. I was not going to fill the suit’s emergency diaper with shit and piss before I died. Though the people who deal with dead people probably have seen that before. And it would be frozen solid, so what’s the difference. Inside the body or outside.
I stopped crying long enough to turn on the radio and say good-bye to people, and apologize for my stupidity. Though it was unlikely that anyone would ever hear it. Unless there was some kind of secret recorder in the suit, and someone stumbled on it years from now. If the Dragon had anything to say about it, there would be.
I wished I had Dad’s zen. If Dad were in this situation he would just accept it, and wait to leave his body.
I tipped the dog up on end, so its light shone directly up toward the hole I’d fallen through, still too high up to see.
I couldn’t feel my feet or hands anymore and was growing heavy-lidded. I’d read that freezing to death was the least painful way to go, and one of my last coherent thoughts was “Who came back to tell them?”
Then I hallucinated an angel, wearing red, surrounded by an ethereal bubble. He was incredibly ugly.
PART 2
FIRST CONTACT
1
GUARDIAN ANGEL
I woke up in some pain, ankle throbbing and hands and feet burning. I was lying on a huge inflated pillow. The air was thick and muggy, and it was dark. A yellow light was bobbing toward me, growing brighter. I heard lots of feet.
It was a flashlight, or rather a lightstick like you wear, and the person holding it… wasn’t a person. It was the red angel from my dream.
Maybe I was still dreaming. I was naked, which sometimes happens in my dreams. The dog was sitting a few feet away. My broken ankle was splinted between two pieces of what felt like wood. On Mars?
This angel had too many legs, like four, sticking out from under the red tunic thing. His head, if that’s what it was, looked like a potato that had gone really bad. Soft and wrinkled and covered with eyes. Maybe they were eyes, lots of them, or antennae. He was almost as big as a small horse. He seemed to have two regular-sized arms and two little ones. For an angel, he smelled a lot like tuna fish.
I should have been terrified, naked in front of this monster, but he definitely was the one who had saved me from freezing to death. Or he was dressed like that one.
“Are you real?” I said. “Or am I still dreaming, or dead?”
He made some kind of noise, sort of like a bullfrog with teeth chattering. Then he whistled, and the lights came on, dim but enough to see around. The unreality of it made me dizzy.
I was taking it far too calmly, maybe because I couldn’t think of a thing to do. Either I was in the middle of some complicated dream, or this is what happens to you after you die, or I was completely insane, or, least likely of all, I’d been rescued by a Martian.
But a Martian wouldn’t breathe oxygen, not this thick. He wouldn’t have wood for making splints. Though this one mi
ght know something about ankles, having so many of them.
“You don’t speak English, do you?”
He responded with a long speech that sounded kind of threatening. Maybe it was about food animals not being allowed to talk.
I was in a circular room, a little too small for both me and Big Red, with a round wall that seemed to be several layers of plastic sheeting. He had come in through slits in the plastic. The polished stone floor was warm. The high ceiling looked like the floor, but there were four bluish lights embedded in it, that looked like cheap plastic decorations.
It felt like a hospital room, and maybe it was one. The pillow was big enough for one like him to lie down on it.
On a stone pedestal over by the dog was a pitcher and a glass made of something that looked like obsidian. He poured me a glass of something and brought it over.
His hand, also potato brown, had four long fingers without nails and lots of little joints. The fingers were all the same length, and it looked like any one of them could be the thumb. The small hands were miniature versions of the big ones.
The stuff in the glass didn’t smell like anything and tasted like water, so I drank it down in a couple of greedy gulps.
He took the glass back and refilled it. When he handed it to me, he pointed into it with a small hand, and said, “Ar.” Sort of like a pirate.
I pointed, and said, “Water?” He answered with a sound like “war,” with a lot of extra R’s.
He set down the glass and brought me a plate with something that looked remarkably like a mushroom. No, thanks. I read that story.
(For a mad moment I wondered whether that could be it—I had eaten, or ingested, something that caused all this, and it was one big dope dream. But the pain was too real.)
He picked the thing up delicately and a mouth opened up in his neck, broad black teeth set in grisly red. He took a small nibble and replaced it on the plate. I shook my head no, though that could mean yes in Martian. Or some mortal insult.
How long could I go without eating? A week, I supposed, but my stomach growled at the thought.
He heard the growling and pointed helpfully to a hole in the floor. That took care of one question, but not quite yet, pal. We’ve hardly been introduced, and I don’t even let my brother watch me do that.
I touched my chest and said “Carmen.” Then I pointed at his chest, if that’s what it was.
He touched his chest and said “Harn.” Well, that was a start.
“No.” I took his hand—dry, raspy skin—and brought it over to touch my chest. “Car-men,” I said slowly. Me Jane, you Tarzan. Or Mr. Potato Head.
“Harn,” he repeated, which wasn’t a bad Carmen if you couldn’t pronounce C or M. Then he took my hand gently and placed it between his two small arms and made a sputtering sound no human could do, at least with the mouth. He let go, but I kept my hand there, and said, “Red. I’ll call you Red.”
“Reh,” he said, and repeated it. It gave me a shiver. I was communicating with an alien. Someone put up a plaque! But he turned abruptly and left.
I took advantage of being alone and hopped over to the hole and used it, not as easy as that sounds. I needed to find something to use as a crutch. This wasn’t exactly Wal-Mart, though. I drank some water and hopped back to the pillow and flopped down.
My hands and feet hurt a little less. They were red, like bad sunburn, which I supposed was the first stage of frostbite. I could have lost some fingers and toes—not that it would matter much to me, with lungs full of ice.
I looked around. Was I inside of Mars or was this some kind of a spaceship? You wouldn’t make a spaceship out of stone. We had to be underground, but this stone didn’t look at all like the petrified lava of the colony’s tunnel. And it was warm, which had to be electrical or something. The lights and plastic sheets looked pretty high-tech, but everything else was kind of basic—a hole in the floor? (I hoped it wasn’t somebody else’s ceiling!)
I mentally reviewed why there can’t be higher forms of life on Mars, least of all technological life: No artifacts—we’ve mapped every inch of it, and anything that looked artificial turned out to be natural. Of course there’s nothing to breathe, though I seemed to be breathing. Same thing with water. And temperature.
There are plenty of microscopic organisms living underground, but how could they evolve into big bozos like Red? What is there on Mars for a big animal to eat? Rocks?
Red was coming back with his lightstick, followed by someone only half his size, wearing bright lime green. Smoother skin, like a more fresh potato. I decided she was female and called her Green. Just for the time being; I might have it backward. They had seen me naked, but I hadn’t seen them—and wasn’t eager to, actually. They were scary enough this way.
Green was carrying a plastic bag with things inside that clicked softly together. She set the bag down carefully and exchanged a few noises with Red.
First she took out a dish that looked like pottery, and from a plastic bag shook out something that looked like an herb, or pot. It started smoking immediately, and she thrust it toward me. I sniffed it; it was pleasant, like mint or menthol. She made a gesture with her two small hands, a kind of shooing motion, that I interpreted to mean “breathe more deeply,” and I did.
She took the dish away and brought two transparent disks, like big lenses, out of the bag and handed one to me. While I held it, she pressed the other one against my forehead, then chest, then the side of my leg. She gently lifted up the foot with the broken ankle, and pressed it against the sole. Then she did the other foot. She put the lenses back in her bag and stood motionless, staring at me like a doctor or scientist.
I thought, okay, this is where the alien sticks a tube up your ass, but she must have left her tube back at the office.
She and Red conferred for a while, making gestures with their small arms while they made noises like porpoises and machinery. Then she reached into the bag and pulled out a small metal tube, which caused me to cringe away, but she gave it a snap with her wrist and it ratcheted out to about six feet long. She mimicked using it as a cane, which looked really strange, like a spider missing four legs, and handed it to me, saying “Harn.”
Guess that was my name now. The stick felt lighter than aluminum, but when I used it to lever myself up, it was rigid and strong.
She reached into her bag of tricks and brought out a thing like her tunic, somewhat thicker and softer and colored gray. There was a hole in it for my head, but no sleeves or other complications. I put it on gratefully and draped it around so I could use the stick. It was agreeably warm.
Red stepped ahead, and with a rippling gesture of all four hands, indicated, Follow me. I did, with Green coming behind me.
It was a strange sensation, going through the slits in those plastic sheets, or whatever they were. It was like they were alive, millions of feathery fingers clasping you, then letting go all at once, to close behind you with a snap.
When I went through the first one, it was noticeably cooler, and cooler still after the second one, and my ears popped. After the fourth one, it felt close to freezing, though the floor was still warm, and the air was noticeably thin; I was almost panting, and could see my breath.
We stepped into a huge dark cavern. Rows of dim lights at about knee level marked off paths. The lights were all blue, but each path had its own kind of blue, different in shade or intensity. Meet me at the corner of bright turquoise and dim aquamarine.
I tried to remember our route, left at this shade of blue, then right at this one, but I was not sure how useful the knowledge would be. What, I was going to escape? Hold my breath and run back to the colony?
We went through a single sheet into a large area, at least as well lit as my hospital room, and almost as warm. It had a kind of barn-yard smell, not unpleasant. There were things that had to be plants all around, like broccoli but brown and gray with some yellow, sitting in water that you could hear was flowing. A little mist hung near the ground,
and my face felt damp. It was a hydroponic farm like ours, but without greens or the bright colors of tomatoes and peppers and citrus fruits.
Green leaned over and picked something that looked like a cigar, or something even less appetizing, and offered it to me. I waved it away; she broke it in two and gave half to Red.
I couldn’t tell how big the place was, probably acres. So where were all the people it was set up to feed? All the Martians.
I got a partial answer when we passed through another sheet, into a brighter room about the size of the new pod we’d brought. There were about twenty of the aliens arranged along two walls, standing at tables or in front of things like data screens, but made of metal rather than plastic. There weren’t any chairs; I supposed quadrupeds don’t need them.
They all began to move toward me, making strange noises, of course. If I’d brought one of them into a room, humans would have done the same thing, but nevertheless I felt frightened and helpless. When I shrank back, Red put a protective arm in front of me and said a couple of bullfrog syllables. They all stopped about ten feet away.
Green talked to them more softly, gesturing toward me. Then they stepped forward in an orderly way, by colors—two in yellow-tan, three in green, two in blue, and so forth—each standing quietly in front of me for a few seconds. I wondered if the color signified rank. None of the others wore red, and none were as big as Big Red. Maybe he was the alpha male, or the only female, like bees.
What were they doing? Just getting a closer look, or taking turns trying to destroy me with thought waves?
After that presentation, Red gestured for me to come over and look at the largest metal screen.
Interesting. It was a panorama of our greenhouse and the other parts of the colony that were above ground. The picture might have been from the top of Telegraph Hill. Just as I noticed that there were a lot of people standing around—too many for a normal work party—the John Carter came sliding into view, a rooster tail of red dust fountaining out behind her. A lot of the people jumped up and down and waved.