The Wanderers

by Meg Howrey

  Her father did not get better. Sides were taken, but not fully explained. Her father’s family did not approve of things her mother was doing, and went outside a lot to talk about it. When they came back in, Helen would go collect their cigarette butts in a piece of tissue paper and bury it in the trash. Other people, her mother, her mother’s parents, family friends all had God, and by extension, specific language for unfair misery, on their side. God had plans and tests and he believed that you could pass them. He loved and did not make mistakes. All these people said her mother was brave.

  Her father’s state was categorized as persistent vegetative. The doctors could not say “he will die.” They said other things. Physiologic futility meant there were no operations, or drugs that would make her father get better. Qualitative futility meant that they weren’t entirely certain that something else might happen. People were something more than meat, but what else they were was difficult to measure and that made it difficult to know when it was okay to kill them. That was always clear. If they stopped feeding their father, they would kill him. They had the responsibility. Helen learned later on that her father had not been expected to survive that year: pneumonia, infection, organ failure were typical in cases like his. He did survive, but his vegetative state was moved from persistent to permanent.

  You could kill a person’s dream, but what if the dream was a person? Could you kill that? Anyway, they hadn’t.

  Her father’s family left and was heard from, by mail, only at Christmas and on birthdays. Helen’s McInnery grandparents moved to town to be closer to their daughter and help with the grandchildren. Grandpa McInnery was thought to be especially of benefit to Phil, who would require a male figure. Phil preferred his male figures to be wizards or elves or dwarves, so Helen had Grandpa McInnery nearly all to herself. “Helen’s the son Dad never had,” Helen’s mother and sisters told each other, although Helen knew that Grandpa especially liked it that she was a girl. “You’ll leave all the boys in the dust,” he told her. Helen didn’t want to leave people behind, but it was preferable to being left behind herself.

  At first her father’s face still looked like her father. It didn’t look empty, like a person wasn’t inside him. Gradually it looked empty, but maybe because they stopped feeling so much when they looked at it. Maybe they were the ones who became empty.

  Sergei and Yoshi stir. They have concluded their moment of silence. Helen is appalled at herself, at having routed the death of Chinese taikonauts to her father. That’s not the right way to think about it. It’s another reason why you had to be so careful with grief. It was like an impact crater, its surface always larger than the thing that created it.

  HELEN

  The instinct to find comparisons is strong. The Martian sky looks a little like the pink and yellow smog and marine layer haze of Los Angeles in June. The feel of her boots on the Martian regolith reminds her of the arid crunchiness of her boots on the polar desert of Devon Island. This stretch of Martian plain resembles certain barren sections of the Atacama Desert in South America. The color of those distant Martian outcroppings reminds her of the Easter egg Meeps insisted on dipping in every single one of the dyes: a muddy mixture of brown and gray and purple and orange.

  It is their third Martian dawn.

  Their landing site had been chosen for safety, not for exciting photo ops. It was the Martian equivalent of aliens coming to Earth and landing in a dusty field in Oklahoma. Elsewhere on Mars there are the volcanoes. The colossal canyon system of Valles Marineris. Dunes, rabens, rifts, clasts, yardangs, sulci, fossae, recurring slope linnae. Here, there are small loose rocks and slightly larger rocks, and rocks in the distance. And dust. It is a good place to land a spacecraft, but you don’t need the seven daily minutes on their schedule to take it all in. Presumably, this will be different when they Gofer. Even a featureless plain will be a marvelous thing when it’s the first time a human has stood on another planet and looked at one, in real time, with their own eyes. Surely, it will be marvelous.

  They’d wanted, from the beginning, an awful lot from a cold little carbon dioxide–filled planet with not enough atmospheric pressure to fly a kite and only the puny remnants of a magnetic field. They wanted nothing less than life from this place: evidence of it in the past, and the promise of a place to put it in the future. So many questions they have for this planet. So much work to be done. There will not be enough time in the sol. Even when they Gofer and have five hundred and fifty sols, there will not be enough time.

  Helen is responsible for putting these seven minutes on the itinerary. “For the purposes of Eidolon, the time will give us a chance to enter fully into, and habituate ourselves to, the simulation,” she had written. “It might also serve as a daily meditation, which may have a positive effect on mood and performance.”

  There were adjustments to be made. A virtual environment in the wild is not the same as one conducted in the lab. Helen is conscious of a life under the sim, aware that she is moving across a real landscape whose perimeters and threats are not known, or stable. It is to be imagined that Prime is taking care of certain possible external threats, which would not exist on Mars but do in a desert in Utah. Animals, for instance. A bobcat landing on her back during an early morning EVA would definitely spoil the illusion. Also, all their tools and instruments are made from light materials: sixty-two percent less than their normal weight. And Prime has appreciated the need to instill a “reason” for the fact that their own bodies could not enjoy some nicely enhanced jumping and leaping: their boots are “weighted.”

  The Martian sims were spectacular, of course, enhancing (and obscuring) the section of Utah they were actually walking around, although also slightly altering the appearance of whichever of your crewmates was with you, and such portions of your own spacesuit that you could see. Helen had the sense, for the first few minutes of an EVA, of playing herself in a video game. But then she got used to it, and when she returned to Primitus it was her unaltered self that looked a little fake.

  She is conscious that she is using some of her scheduled seven minutes of feelings to remind herself not to have too many feelings. To not think about how a Helen two thousand years ago would have looked at a distant tiny dot in the firmament and not known the first thing about it. To not think of all the hundreds of Helens that had been born and died, not knowing, until we reached a Helen—her!—who would stand on that tiny dot. To not think about all the people who had taken a problem as enormous as putting humans on another planet and broken that down into manageable portions and solved it. To not become lost in the observation of a planet so wondrously—so almost heartbreakingly—close to their own, and yet entirely alien. It’s too soon to think all this.

  “I don’t have a sensation of threat or hostility.” This is Yoshi’s voice, in her ear, pleasantly brain adjacent. All three crewmembers cannot be on EVA at once: someone must always remain in Primitus Hab, with RoMeO as backup, for safety. Right now, Sergei is observing Helen and Yoshi via camera from inside the Hab.

  “Okay, but don’t take off your helmet,” Helen jokes. It’s true, there’s only so much fear you can talk yourself into. The one moment of true alarm so far on Mars had been that loud cracking noise they’d heard after landing, which they’d never discovered the source of. (Perhaps it really had been a Prime employee falling off a ladder. It might also have been lightning.)

  “Spectacular sky,” Helen says, looking up. She is aware that in pointing this out her voice has taken on the mechanical enthusiasm of a mother trying to entertain a child with some everyday fact: “Look! There are three apples and they are red! Oh! That man has on a hat!”

  Yoshi points to what, on Earth, would be Venus. A very tiny morning “star” on the horizon.

  It is Earth.

  Ah. So it will not only be Mars that they will discover for themselves, when they come here. It will be a discovery of distance. An understanding of what the wo
rd far can mean.

  “Hey there.” It is Sergei now, speaking from the Hab in a terrible cowboy-Western accent. “You two look like you’re not from around these parts.”

  They laugh. There are still four minutes left of their morning meditation. In a few sols, she will suggest that they are now adjusted to the sim and have adequate time to reflect on the mission at other points in their schedule, and so they can scrub this exercise. It is a little confusing, maybe.

  The astronauts fall silent. It is a good sim. It has depth, it has texture; it feels real. But Helen hopes that the real Mars will surprise them. It’s not impossible. The history of humans looking at Mars is the history of getting it wrong first. Prime, she hopes, has gotten this sim just a little bit wrong.

  The anxiety that had plagued her since the beginning of Eidolon—the sense that she had missed something important—has not evaporated. If anything, the sensation has only increased. She’s missing something now on Mars. Looking for something.

  “I’m trying to think of right soundtrack for Mars,” Sergei says.

  “Not bells,” Yoshi says.

  “No.”

  “How interesting.” Yoshi again. “One hears certain music described as ‘otherworldly,’ but when you are on the otherworld, nothing is sufficiently strange.”

  What will they talk about when this is no longer a simulation? Will they look at Mars and say, “Yep, just like the sim”? If it looks like this, they will never be able to say, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” She should not feel too much now, so she can feel more, later.

  YOSHI

  Hello, Earthlings.” Prime likes the videos the crew practices making for the general public to be a little playful. The science must be made accessible to a general audience, and shown to be interesting and exciting. Additionally, the recordings must have a personal tone.

  “As you can see”—Yoshi opens his arms—“I’m in the lower level of Primitus. At this moment, upstairs in the Hab, Sergei is working a problem on his spacesuit gloves and Commander Helen is arranging the timetable for sol-morrow. I’m down here customizing our Dust Filtration System so that it can function even more effectively!”

  Yoshi is pleased with his work. The DFS has not, in truth, been functioning effectively. They’ve been tracking dust all over the Hab.

  “As you’ve seen,” Yoshi says into the camera, “our spacesuits can be docked to the exterior lower level of Primitus. Keeping the suits outside means we can crawl in and out of them right here from the EVA prep room. That leaves all the Martian dust—what we call fines—out on the planet, where it belongs, and not in here, where it can be destructive to equipment and our lungs.”

  The word fines is not very good. Yoshi would like to substitute with the word brume. The dust surrounds one like a mist or fog, only not damp, of course. A dry brume.

  It is cold in the lower level of the Hab and, to conserve energy, dimly lit. He is physically very tired. The first week of Mars has been wonderfully demanding and they are all sore and fatigued. The tools and instruments they use during EVAs have been adjusted to mimic the way they would feel on Mars, but physics is physics and a large object is a large object. Also, working in compression jumpsuits, spacesuits, weighted boots, and pressurized gloves is demanding in ways his Primitus exercise routine could not fully anticipate. They are forced to move slowly on the surface.

  “Now, as you saw”—Yoshi smiles at the screen—“we can also egress from Primitus by using one of the two hatches on either side of this EVA prep room. This is useful for when we need to take out or bring in equipment. The only trouble is, anything we bring in from Mars, including ourselves, will be covered with those fines.”

  The dust is on his tongue. In his ears. No penetralia is safe from it. He has found Martian brume on his scrotum.

  Yoshi moves through the EVA room, crisscrossed now by his system of dangling hoses. “The dust filtration system does a pretty good job of cleaning us and our equipment,” he says. “But it’s been getting quite the workout, and we like to be very thorough in our cleaning.” Yoshi holds up a nozzle end. “This functions just like a vacuum cleaner back home.” He demonstrates on his arm.

  The fines are slightly more reddish than you would expect from Utah, and have an iron smell. A virtually-environment-obscured Prime employee must be standing by the airlock with some kind of bellows, or following them around silently. Perhaps Prime is delivering the ersatz fines by drone.

  “It is a little like getting a massage,” Yoshi says, running the nozzle over his head. He and Sergei had both buzzed their hair down to their scalps yester-sol. “As you can see, this works well with my new haircut!”

  • • •

  “SUCCESS?” HELEN ASKS when Yoshi returns to the upper tier and the Science/Lab wedge, where his crewmates are finishing the sol’s tasks. Yoshi acknowledges that the problem has been sufficiently worked.

  “You are the Michelangelo of duct tape,” Helen says. “I’m sure it’s gorgeous.”

  Yoshi seats himself at the communal table and reads through his next job. Sol-morrow, Yoshi will be recording an “Astronomy from Mars” video. Prime has already sent a prepared script, but he will take thirty minutes in his evening schedule to personalize and improve upon this.

  The romantic in Yoshi has always appreciated the fact that Mars has no visible North Star. It points not at Polaris, as Earth does, but at a position in the sky that aligns neither with Deneb in Cygnus, nor Alderamin in Cepheus, but at some midway point too dim to have a name. You could say that the planet named for the God of War points at darkness.

  Yoshi cannot conduct his lecture while actually looking up into a Martian night. It was—will be—too cold on Mars at night for the astronauts to be safely out of the Hab or Rover. They have been allowed to stay on an EVA only long enough to see a blue Martian sunset, the dust of the planet scattering the light just around the star. It had been the first sight that had given him a genuine taste of how thrilling it all might be.

  • • •

  YOSHI TELLS HIMSELF that the astronomy lecture is a good assignment. The more opportunities he has to demonstrate to Prime that he is a good communicator and spokesperson, that he has charisma and likability, the better. Sergei, and especially Helen, have had more time and occasion to build public platforms and brands.

  The view of the stars on Mars is similar to what the stars look like to a North American Earth dweller, although their movements appear different. It’s really the moons of Mars that are the most unusual, and the focus of his lecture. Phobos and Deimos. Fear and Terror.

  From the other end of the table, Sergei, who is tinkering with a glove, makes one of his expressions of annoyance. “Chuh,” he says. “This is fucked.” Prime has been putting Sergei through a number of suit and monitor malfunction simulations.

  Yoshi judges the temperature of Sergei’s “This is fucked” to be mild, and that Sergei does not expect any response from them, or an offer of assistance. Annoyance and adversity are their entertainment on Mars; the servicing, fixing, and adjustments of their own equipment have comprised most of their labors. In a few days, Sergei and Helen will undertake the main exploratory event of their Mars stay: the Arsia Mons sortie. Yoshi will remain behind in the Hab and begin processing the samples collected from the drilling site. This is a wise division of labor, considering skill sets, and Yoshi will make a later Rover expedition with Sergei, to deploy the drones. He will get his chance to explore. And really, he was very content to be in a situation like this one: snug in the Hab with Helen and Sergei, each of them working. Yoshi does not ask for much, he merely wants to be where he should be, where he belongs, which is something you can know by orienting yourself to what is around you, and making yourself a part of it.

  Yoshi reads through another paragraph of the Prime script:

  A thing to consider: we are used to thinking of planets and mo
ons as quite perfect spheres, but they are not. Our beautiful Earth is not a marble, it’s an oblate spheroid, bulging out around the equator and squashed a little flat at the poles. Mars is quite bulge-y around its middle. The great Tharsis ridge near the equator exaggerates this. Tiny and low Phobos and Deimos orbit very near the plane of the equator, and a Martian who has always lived in the upper north or lower south of the planet would never see the moons!

  Yoshi looks at Helen, working across the table from him on her own screen, almost certainly designing tomorrow’s schedule. It is an aesthetic pleasure to look at Helen’s timetables.