Who was to blame for that? She would go to her grave with an unbearable weight on her soul when it would be so easy just go now.
Go now. Risk everything, her safety, credibility, and career, all for one shot at the Truth. To be honest all she had were crazy ideas to go on. And yet it seemed as if the decision had been made for her. Aurora reviewed the mental checklist accompanying her plan. What she had to do was quite straightforward. She had a plan, and the plan successfully masked the whole box and dice of the insanity involved. She would complete the longest unassisted extra-terrestrial expedition in history. That was the plan.
Well, at the very least, Aurora reasoned, she could always chicken out halfway, pick up a few more samples, and miss a claustrophobic flight home in the process.
People would be sick with worry. They’d all think she’d gone Outers. Phillipa would go off her nut, Aurora thought with a grin. They would come after her. It would compromise the safety of the group. She could be sued, labelled a loose cannon in her profession. And, if she was being honest with herself, Aurora didn’t know how far she could get with a sled full of supplies and sampling gear.
It was a bad idea. Dangerous, unauthorised, with an uncertain return, but at least it was a plan, which was better than the alternative. The plan gestated into action. She could always stay out the day and come back in time for the shuttle, take the slap on the wrist, make a point.
For the plan to work she would have to escape undetected and she would need rest for the journey. She forced herself into a fitful sleep. Xiao Li and the others passed by her bunk from time to time to ask if she wanted to eat but she politely declined, feigning an illness.
At midnight Aurora awoke groggily to the whispered beeping of her neurovisor alarm. After a quick graze in the kitchen she pulled on her body stocking, zipped on her squeeze suit and helmet and, with Denali at her side, slipped out of the station and headed for the utility shed.
Unlike back on Earth, on Mars there was always time for thought. There was work to be done, but activity unfolded at a natural, unhurried pace. Mars was a world frozen in time since its birth, activity was foreign to its nature. Immersed in this geological stillness Aurora often had to consciously remind herself to breathe. So, this was the first time in many years that Aurora had felt the unseen, inexorable pressure of time running out.
What surprised her was that the work was mostly already done. It was as if for over a year provisions had been stockpiled, gear had been stowed appropriately, more power packs charged than would ever be strictly needed for stock standard field trips. Even the appropriate modifications had already been made to the sand sled. It was as if she had been working towards this moment through innumerable daily decisions.
She readied the sled almost habitually but fumbled as she dragged out the compressed air tanks. She was breathing hard and she could feel her heart racing. She sat down to catch her breath, to concentrate on what she was doing. A small mistake now would be ultimately fatal. Quietly and efficiently she worked through the night, painstakingly loading, unpacking, and reloading the sled.
Two months rations, compressed gas cannisters, sample bags, electron microvisor, poptent, solar powered water condenser, graphite rope, celestial navigation system, waste-molecular reprocessor, commlink boosters, flares, Buckeygel refills, spare helmet, cesium packs, spare harness, walker braces, neurovisor, rope. Now, where are they? Field notebooks, heaters, vitals monitor, med kit, night goggles, skin defrost. It all was so well rehearsed. The incremental completion of her checklist instilled a meditative calm.
Before sunrise, Aurora had the sled reliably loaded, had jotted a brief mneme of explanation to Xiao Li to be delivered after a time lag, and was ushering Denali and sled through the shed airlock into the waiting darkness.
Within an hour, the dusky gray tubes of Mawson Mars had slipped behind a ridge as Denali and she headed into the rising dawn.
ISLAND OF JEWELS
‘Liberation's good qualities, like an island of jewels -
If they aren't known, there is no way to begin to make efforts.’
Aryasura
Chapter 12 - Aurora
The bridge of stone, twisting its way steeply across the confluence of three impossibly steep Chasma, lay before Aurora's path like a giant question mark. This was the place where she should turn back, the place where she should finally answer the panicked calls from base and return to the end of her mission. It had been fun up to this point, almost joyous, as she and Denali had sped freely out into the waiting embrace of Mars. This was where the exhilaration should end, a brief flirtation with what might have been.
Her neuroview bellowed Terry's extreme displeasure.
"Aurora, I don't know what wank has mixed up your head, but that's all it is, wank. You won't get anywhere you can come back from because Elysium Mons is too fregging far. We all know this, we've been over it that many times, it ain't gonna work. Whatever the Ox is whispering in your thick head is total Outer bullshit. For your own sake, let it go and answer me."
Aurora opened a channel to transmit a response but immediately switched it off. Had she just given away her location? Agitated, she switched off her neurovisor entirely and a deep shiver ran through her body.
Terry was right, but it didn't matter much at the moment. She had anticipated standing at this exact spot for a long time, and her answer to turning around was more or less the same as it had ever been. That this was all bigger than her, and that greater things were at stake. Her choice was starker than ever because of August Bridges driving things this way, with full knowledge of the consequences.
“If we don’t document Martian bacteria, we won’t be able to preserve them.”
His words not hers.
He had encouraged her, and she had taken him at his word. And after all that, August had driven the knife in.
“This is a cry for help from someone, a friend, who is suffering profoundly.”
They were such best mates. Weren’t they?
The whole time he’d known she’d be in his way. That’s why he’d funded her, like he said, so he could come out smelling of roses when he shot her down.
That was why this expedition of hers was not about recovering a few specimens to preserve for posterity, as August had suggested. No, it was impossibly larger. Her discoveries could be used to save an entire planetary life system, to have the whole of Mars declared a reserve. And that was why she was out here, taking these enormous risks. The stakes were that high.
Denali was watching her, eager for direction. Ears perked. Aurora listened as well, to sounds pitched at geological frequencies, to an unearthly rhythm lasting eons.
She heard him calling for her. Waijungari sang out to Wheatbelt Wallaby from across the desert, serenading her to visit his camp fire for only a while. Just for a short while. He was so lonely for even friendly mateship. Come on over for a cuppa. Sing me just a little more into the universe. Don't leave me empty. You can still go back anytime you like little sister. If you turn back now you are just afraid. If you turn back later, you will have been someplace no one else will ever see. No matter how crowded-in your Dreams become after, we will always have that time together.
Her mind flattered by the sentiment, Aurora shook the reins and Denali, released to follow her lead, scrambled forward pulling her along.
Their passage across the rock bridge was like being suspended in wonderland. Mars could be a dull and dusty sort of place, the spaces long and, to the untrained eye, monotonous. Visitors often remarked similarly about the Australian outback that Aurora had grown up into. You had to develop an eye for it, and a geologist's training was a big help to see the history of the place. This Croc bone bridge was not like that. Any tourist brochure of Mars would pick out this place. It was the smallest she had felt since she had arrived. The scale of features around dwarfed her, the plunging depths waiting for her with any misstep, the canyon walls swallowing up the horizon, the unexpected colors and shadows. It had a beauty
that defied description. The opening wedge of the salty crocs head of Hybleaus Chasma followed behind her, pointing the way towards the final crawl up steep terrain to the other side. As the sun set, shadows from the west end of the Chasma grew long, chasing her up the incline. Before she reached the other side, Aurora looked out, taking in the perilous path she and Denali had just traversed. There was no way the Djambi could follow them across; the rescue party would have to travel a couple hundred extra kilometers to catch up with her.
Once across the bridge, they travelled along the edge of another small canyon that had once carried a river down the flanks of Elysium Mons. Just before nightfall they pitched camp on the East side of a hill and Aurora cuddled up to Denali for a hard sleep.
The next few mornings they woke early and worked their way ever further East until the canyon of Stura Vallis ran out and all that remained before them was a long dust plain. From her altimeter, Aurora knew they had progressed some way up the slope of the volcano, but the mountain was so big and the slope so gradual that it was impossible to tell this by reckoning. They were still too far away for the peak to be more than a bump on the horizon. Their journey forward for some time would offer little variation, with the panorama behind them slowly widening as the only indication that they were moving upwards.
There was no risk of getting lost, even though a satellite positioning system did not cover their position and compasses were useless on a planet lacking a magnetic field. The celestial navigation programme in Aurora’s neurovisor could site on the positions of the stars to calculate her coordinates. It seemed incongruous to use all the familiar constellations from Earth to find her way on this remote, exotic world. The evening skies of Mars were same ones Aurora had looked up at all her life - the inconceivable distances to other stars shrinking to insignificance the gap separating Mars from Earth.
There were some differences. The planets travelled a slightly different path through the night, as did other heavenly bodies. This was a consequence of Mars spinning a bit more upright than the Earth. Mercury was too close to the sun to make out. Venus had a small bluish companion at dusk and dawn. These were fine distinctions.
Dancing through the night were old companions. Orion with his great sword stalking the equator chasing the seven sisters of the Pleiades, a story shared by both the Greeks and many Australian First Peoples. The Great Bear with his eye high in the North. They were all swamped by the Milky Way, the cosmic Emu, which was a thousand times more glorious on a planet without much of an atmosphere. To be out on the sands of Mars at night was like walking on the beach of an island amidst an ocean of dazzling jewels.
"What do you think of this Denali?"
Grunt. His servors whirred as he rolled over on his back and Aurora began to scratch his exposed stomach.
Her Dad walked over and sat down beside her, his arm over her shoulder lending her warmth.
"What do you think Dad?"
"It's all right Ror. You've picked us quite a spot."
He was right. The view was unsettling off the tall cliffs of Stura Vallis and out over the other Chasma and the plains far beyond. It was clear they had gone up a fair way when the stars began to look like they are spread out beneath them. Aurora took a drag on the reheated piss her suit had transformed into coffee and enjoyed the heat fanning out beneath her breast.
"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?"
"I dunno. What's right?"
"That's not an answer. I'm scared."
"Uh huh."
"No. I really, really don't know what I'm doing here."
"You must know or why else'd you be here."
"They're coming after me. I'm putting the people I love at risk. It's the most selfish thing I've ever done Dad."
"Not the only selfish thing."
"What? What could be more selfish than this?"
"It was selfish when you left us all."
"Selfish? Selfish? You bastard. You can talk. How many times did you leave us?"
“Guilty as charged. Struth. Had to be who I was Darl. That's my point. Just like my daughter."
"You stopped. You quit. You gave up."
"You didn't. You aren't. Why's that?"
She didn't have a quick answer.
Denali sat up and leaned into Aurora for a hug. She clung onto him tightly.
"Don't worry Denzi."
He yawned.
Relaxing before the stars, Aurora let her mind rest in the tranquillity around her. Some part of what she was chasing was this peace that seemed everywhere around her. Each breath could come as free as the last. There was a joy in this constancy, which she often became lost in for hours. In that eternal now, she didn't need to have answers. Then the questions would begin again.
It was time for bed. Operating as late as they had into the Martian night meant wasting Denali’s valuable energy on internal heating. Aurora climbed into her swag and hooked his batteries in to keep her warm. Then she found the spot behind his ear and switched him over into low power mode. Savouring the bust of warmth released from the condensed fats in her evenings vitabar ration, Aurora tried to find some sleep herself.
Instead she lay awake into the night. Her sleeping bag temperature, set on the far side of tolerable, sharpened her senses. Now, instead of relaxing her, the titanic silence of a dead world kept her awake. Her eyes strained open, her mind on guard against the annihilation threatened by a falling eyelid. Hallucinations began to descend; water roared past Wheatbelt Wallaby in the distance, filled with screams.
And filled with questions Aurora could not answer. She was completely abandoned by her better sense. The compulsion to continue was a weary madness. What the hell was she doing out here? She voiced the question aloud, earning a commiserating grunt from Denali.
The night continued to offer no answers. She thought about her plan and became dismayed as she was unable to reconstruct a whole sense of it. Every detail seemed to dissolve into a tidal rush of panic, the air solidifying around her. Aurora tossed about looking for something to sustain her against the crushing apparition and ended up taking refuge in childhood memories.
Her rubber thongs caught in the sand as Aurora broke through the spinifex and stalked up the hill. She was running towards something. She had always been running towards something. They were in the grip of drought yet again and there hadn't been a lot else to do. Out here, in the Bush, chores done, there was always somewhere else to go and somehow her soul always tilted towards the horizon.
She pretended that Jesse was hard on her heels but knew that her baby sister had predictably fallen behind. More interested in the spring flowers, clouds, and birds, than in the impossible task of catching up, Jesse had slowed to a stumbling and disinterested pace. Aurora crested the hill that had been the object of the exercise. Triumphant she turned to scrutinise her sister’s performance. Far back along the red track she could make out a cotton dress bending over something in the bush. Aurora wandered down disapprovingly. Retracing ground was distasteful.
“Jesse, what are you doing with that old feral?”
The tattered and shivering gray cat glared back from its new home, wrapped in Jesse’s blue school jumper.
“It’s sick Rory, I’m helping it.”
“Don’t bother,” Aurora snorted derisively.
Jesse bit her lip and began to stroke the wild cat’s head.
“Jesse, you’re a worry. Ferals carry disease and they kill Natives. Dirty old thing.”
“But it’s crook Rory.”
“It’s not crook, it’s probably been poisoned by the Rangers. Should be too. They eat Natives.”
“I don’t care. I’m taking him home.” Glowering, Jesse gently scooped up the dying creature and cradled it. Aurora waited for her sister’s innocence to be abruptly violated with one swipe of the moggy’s substantial claws. The thing was no house pet – evolution from a few centuries on hard scrub had seen to that. It was as big as a mid-sized dog. Instead the beast began to purr.
&nbs
p; Jesse tended the ailing cat through its last days - gave it a name that even Aurora had given in to using. What was it again? Muzza.
Jesse was now a Mum. Aurora tried to imagine her sister tearing her hair out as the cute little monster ran her ragged. Sharing stories with the other mums. Juggling the intense relationship of mother and child with the competing demands of Hub, self, and family. What would that life have been like, that other life unlived? Claustrophobic, a confining prison for a restless spirit, but safe and a hundred million miles from here.
How had she come to this, outracing the entire human race to this desolate frontier? She was on the back side of beyond, but still the unachievable tomorrow called out her in notes long and low. What if she should have stayed at home, dropping out children with Jesse? What part of that life was so impossible to imagine?
“See Darl. We are what we are. Like I told you.”
Aurora ignored the comment.
“That’s the answer to your question.”
“Come on Dad, you’re just something I made up in my head.”
“Same difference. We are what we are.”
Aurora thought some more about the differences between her and Jesse, which used to be more symbolic than real, just the standard way siblings differentiated themselves. Jesse the fertile Earth mother. Aurora the intrepid explorer. Somehow those identifies had become fixed, and motherhood became a destination further from Aurora’s mind than other planets. She recognised the irony that seeking life on Mars meant she had abandoned it in herself. Space travel required you had to burn that bridge - the risk of mutations from the radiation was too great otherwise. Aurora had happily joined the honorable tradition of Hub aunties and uncles - those who made this choice to focus scarce ecos and resources on fewer kids in a still overfull and heavily degraded world. What did it matter? She had inherited her father’s light feet - hardly an ideal attribute for a mother. She was what she was.
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