Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

Calvin30’s panorama dipped and scrambled in time with the Miles Davis electronic jangling jambalaya he was playing that was beginning to irritate the regulars.

  Someone from the audience bought him a shot.

  “Hey buddy, anything to stop the shit you was playin’.”

  Calvin30 took the tip and vacated the center stage. It was time to find another dive to jive in. He lilted out a new lick, dialling a friend, who had been waiting for his call.

  “Clone?”

  “Myself alone and on the phone. Free to be me for thee my dear General Bhatterjee.”

  Chapter 24 - Kalsang

  Sometime while in the crushing jaws of the Uranus swing by, where Kalsang’s small capsule picked up the critical momentum to fling it into the inner solar system, his endless loop of misgivings ceased. The deed was done. Kalsang knew where his course would take him. The fate of the Earth was as it had always been, certainly beyond the control of a mere monk.

  His spacecraft, Garuda was what they had named it, the winged mount of the Buddhas, a symbol of compassion. Garuda, granting freedom from hope and fear. That was how Kalsang felt now, freed as he was from the burden of making his decision. The Garuda finished its final maneuver and his body became light.

  “So close, isn’t it?”

  The external camera feeds revealed the last piece of land Kalsang would ever see - Uranus’ strange moon of Miranda. The Garuda had almost grazed its surface. The claw mark canyons and buckled valleys that ripped this lonely and magical world nearly in two were marvels. They flew past pinnacles with impossible twisting geometries and over cavernous crevasses that seemed to reach nearly the core of the world. It was as torturous a landscape as he could have imagined, suggesting visions of the cold hells he and his fellow monks had contemplated to make them aware of the potential of suffering from an untamed mind. Looking ahead to endless nothing where he was sure to die, Kalsang almost longed to land on it.

  Then, after the painful crush of the gravitational sling shot, his long journey into silence commenced.

  The incessant whispering of the demons became quiet as the pale green of the sideways rotating Uranus faded behind him. Kalsang almost missed them. As awful as they were they had been his travelling companions for so many days now. Perhaps they had been lured down by Miranda, attracted to the similarity of that tortured landscape to their tormented minds.

  Cold hell. There they might have departed to join the miserable inhabitants of that world, cracking and dripping supercooled fluids from their bodies into the ruptured ground. Due to his monastic training Kalsang found himself grieving over their imagined fate. More likely they had drifted ahead toward the Earth as if pulled by a magnet towards the growing potential for misery there. Most likely his mind was growing too tired to still hear them.

  Then there was a more concerning absence. d'Song and the others had dissolved into whispers, into the figments of his imagination that they had always been. Even though they were hallucinations they had been his companions, and he caught himself missing them.

  A long lonely road lay ahead, and it made Kalsang shiver. Back in the Triton Terrapod, before the excitement and the alien visitation, before the terrible choice and the intercessions of his guru, and after the novelty of his hermitage had worn through, why had he not felt lonely then?

  Of course, he had had the constant scurrying from the on-board biota to keep him company. The gentle kindness conferred by the simple presence of other living beings, wasn’t it? Now they had all sadly died and Kalsang wondered how long he would be able to survive in the chill and dim darkness without them. He could feel some part of his heart begin to freeze - perhaps part of it left behind with the demons on frozen Miranda.

  In groaning unison, they accompanied Kalsang’s song.

  Lost worlds in the deep sleep of Ages

  Dim bodies in the graves of dead suns spin

  Forlorn my bones fuse with this nameless mass

  Beneath the frozen wind, sound, vibration,

  Am I not a part of this Dark Matter

  Universal skeleton and flesh and skin

  Roaming endlessly without friends?

  How is it that I too am not so alone?

  Chapter 25 - Aurora

  “You really screwed it up this time mate. You probably can’t hear, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.”

  Nine words and Aurora felt each one like an itch that could not quite be reached.

  “Xiao Li’s dead because of you. Straight up.”

  When she woke from her coma this was all Aurora could remember from it. Terry telling her that her best mate had died, and the fault was all hers.

  There wasn’t any getting around it. Since her eyes had opened, after an initial burst of excitement of which she was only slightly aware, her friends had avoided her. As if they didn’t have much to say to her. As if what she had might be catching. Their approach to her, even from the ordinarily effusive Freya, was clinical. The truth was they were coldly furious. The unforgivable sin was going Out and someone else dying instead of herself. Especially Xiao Li, especially Shel.

  And they pushed her to get back on her feet. They’d lost too much in getting her back to let her fall off into the oblivion she craved. Terry told her as much since she was doing much of the pushing.

  “Time to get up off your backside again Aurora. No lying about.”

  Aurora complied. She couldn’t whinge. Not after what had happened. She switched on her muscles, like they were machines under remote control, and strained to stand. Her feet were on fire and slipped out from under her when she tried to stand.

  “Get up princess.”

  Terry hoisted her back into the pilot’s webbing rigged up to hold Aurora upright for the physio session.

  “Having only three toes isn’t an excuse either. You cost me two fingers and I can still do more than pick my arse.” Terry held forth her right hand admiring the missing last digits on her ring and pinkie fingers and the scarring from the frost bite.

  Aurora looked at her own hand. For an instant her fingers seemed to extend out into strange multi-colored tendrils before returning to normal. She shook to clear her head and resisted the urge to slump. If she did that Terry might just leave her hanging there. It wouldn’t be the first time. Better to get this over with. She focused on her foot instead, learning to lean away from the missing toes and keep her balance. It was so much effort for so little return. She didn’t really want to return anyway. And then her foot dissolved into flippers tipped with more weird tentacles. She felt light, like with a few flicks of her feet she could swim through the air.

  “Get out of your head.”

  Terry gave her an annoying shake that didn’t stop until Aurora made eye contact. The bitch was enjoying this. Why hadn’t Terry just let her die? Why did she have to keep bringing up Xiao Li? Like she was trying to guilt Aurora into staying alive.

  Exhausted, but too ashamed to cry, Aurora slipped one time too many and Terry shouldered her down into her cot.

  “Okay, where were we?” Terry began once she’d returned with a cup of tea and drank it herself. Aurora just wanted her to go away.

  “I know this isn’t doing you any good Aurora, but I find it gets it off my chest to let you know all the shit you stirred up. Where were we?”

  Whirling gyres of sand devoured the world. The Djambi containing Terry, Xiao Li and Phillipa rolled steadfastly forward, more to avoid being bogged in the rapidly drifting fines than to travel towards a destination.

  “Please don’t come. Leave me,” Aurora pleaded silently.

  “We almost did turn around there and then. Biggest fucking sandstorm of the year coming on up off the plains and we’d just found your track after going a long way in the wrong direction. Pretty stupid trick crossing between the Chasma like you did so we’d have to go around. Bet you thought that was smart.”

  “It was like that most of the way. Driving blind. Shel wanting to help but useless, Pippy telling us what to do, but doing nothi
ng. And then the damn tin can broke an axle.”

  Aurora imagined Terry laying there. Short cropped blonde hair slick with sweat - the back of her squeeze suit stained orange by a day on her back under the Djambi, straining to weld things back in place during a break in the storm.

  “So, there I was. Shel handing me oxy when I asked for arc damper and me telling her off for trying to kill me. I’m just finishing that last weld and fuck me, but this tongue starts slobbering over my faceplate. I roll over and who is it crawling in under there with me? Denzi! Must have banged my head ten times backing out I was that excited. Shel and Pip are just standing there hugging each other, and I ask them whether they want to get a room or are we going to download the dog and get on with finding you.”

  The rest of the story followed a familiar track as Terry had kept repeating it to be certain that it sunk in. By now Aurora could imagine it as if she had been there.

  The three of them had followed the feedback stored in Denali’s brain until they reached a cliff. Terry had found a ridge that swung around up to the place where Aurora had apparently climbed. She didn’t remember any of that. The sun was setting by the time Terry, dragged by Denali in the sled, had rode up the narrow ridge and seen the emergency strobe on her backpack flashing. Terry had found her nearby

  “Sitting stock still like you were taking in the sunset on a Summer’s day. Only it was colder than I’d been in my life. My squeeze suit wasn’t built for those pressures and those bruises haven’t gone away either. At least you had the sense to put on a space suit, I’ll give you that. You’d think you’d planned the whole thing bringing that along.”

  “Terry.”

  “I’m not done yet Aurora.”

  Aurora bit into her lip. She somehow needed to hear this, but she didn’t want to.

  “So, anyway, the sun was falling and if you hadn’t already frozen I was going to. There wasn’t much choice in it. Rigged us both up with rope and started lowering us down over the ledge. We were almost to ground, not ten meters up, and Shel runs up to help. Well that’s it. Useless rock had been sitting there a billion years waiting for my boot to knock it loose.”

  Aurora felt Terry’s hand on her arm, a steady grip that seemed to hold her mind in place.

  “That’s how it is. Now you go out and do the stupidest riskiest dumb thing in the history of the solar system and you’re still here. Shel gets hit with a rock - in this gravity you’d hardly call it falling - and it does her in. Could have happened anywhere. That’s all it is Aurora. When it’s your time it’s your time.”

  “I’m, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it Ror. Shit happens.” It was the first kind thing Terry had said to her since she had woken up. Somehow that kindness only pushed Aurora deeper into despair and she felt now even more of a fool. Once for causing her best friend’s death and all over again for thinking she’d had some control over it. As if through her repentance could bring Xiao Li back. Only she couldn’t. So there wasn’t even any point left in wishing herself dead. She wasn’t even deserving of self-pity. If she tried this logic on Terry, she knew what she’d get back.

  “Silly bitch.”

  Aurora laid down, with the reasonable excuse that the session and trauma were all too much. At the end of the day, she preferred to be frozen again because there wasn’t any point in doing anything else.

  Wheatbelt Wallaby wandered alone in the Dream. The Drought had left nothing to eat and had scalded the land free for such a long time that nothing would ever come back. Her belly felt as if it had swollen into a mountain and her throat was so thin she could barely breathe. She wandered the endless Red Plains without hope, looking in vain for anyone who had not already turned to stone, who still felt need. She saw her beautiful sister, frozen in the place where she herself had tried to freeze. On the side of the big mountain. The Dirty Old Man had kept her instead.

  “Why? Take me. I came to you. I wanted you.”

  “Sorry Darl. I like you heaps but she’s prettier. Nothing personal. Just the way it is. Thanks for bringing her but.”

  Aurora opened her eyes. They were keeping the lights low near her cot, but they still seemed painfully bright. Someone was sitting with her. Someone always sat with her. Aurora supposed they took it in turns. It wouldn’t be a good look just to prop her up out in the utility shed. Somewhere out of sight and out of mind, which is what they must prefer. That’s how she’d felt about Jules at times. And then she’d felt guilty about being so ungenerous. To be honest Aurora wished they’d get over the pretence of concern and just leave her to wither away. This was all too painful.

  Wheatbelt Wallaby saw something glimmer on the horizon and she headed for it, expecting only another mirage. As she approached, she was amazed to see that a spring had miraculously broken through the dead skin of the world. Overcoming her fear that the water might again overwhelm her she bent over the spring and drank.

  The person rostered on for the next pity shift was Phillipa. Aurora was appreciative that she didn’t expect much in the sympathy department with the woman. If it were Chandra, with her professionally neutral kindness, Aurora would have lost it. With so much self-indulgence running through her head, she welcomed spending time with a straight up bitch like Phillipa. At least she always knew where she stood.

  “Aurora. I need to bring you up to speed with things.”

  Phillipa couldn’t help herself.

  “While you were unconscious some very good news came in. The ET monitoring programme has been successful. They’ve captured some new tech that creates tunnels through space. So that means all our work here has been meaningful. Settlement will be happening soon, and we’ve laid the ground. I thought you’d like to know.”

  Aurora’s adrenaline levels coursed, and she heard her heart beating in her head. Was this true? If it was then her whole ridiculous trip had been hopeless from the start. Any life left on Mars was doomed. Her mind replayed August Bridges explaining to the world that the way had been paved by his old friend Dr. Davidson. His good mate. Wasn’t she though? Now he could now tick Elysium Mons off the list of potential hiding places for life.

  “There was also an awful tragedy. August Bridges was killed testing the wormhole himself. A terrorist incident.”

  So there was karma. Aurora felt inexplicably sad. Even though she despised him, August was still one of the most significant people in her life. The initial attraction that had sparked in their only meeting used to irritate her. Somehow now it felt like opportunity lost. Now the only person she could be angry with, besides herself, had been taken out of the picture. There were more details. Phillipa kept going on long after Aurora in her chronic fatigue had tuned out.

  “Xiao Li.”

  The mention of her friend drew Aurora’s attention out of the fog. She looked up to see tears in Phillipa’s eyes. They looked out of place.

  “I, I loved her you know.”

  There was strained passion in Phillipa’s voice, and Aurora suddenly liked her more. Phillipa turned her head away to recover herself and started to leave the room.

  “Phillipa?”

  “Oh yes. One more thing. Your monk friend, I believe his name was Kalsang. Communications with his module went dead while you were gone. My sincere condolences.”

  The bitch walked out.

  “Dad,” Aurora gasped. Was there any point in living? The pain was too much, and Aurora dropped off the map and into it.

  All the water remaining in the world ran out, down an impossibly small hole, back into the hidden spring where life had begun. Parched, Wheatbelt Wallaby followed it but found the spring had dried up. She dug down into the dirt, sucking at the retreating moisture with a ferocity that exhausted her. She continued sucking down the cold dry sand until her body filled with it and began to blow away.

  Something rough and rubbery pulled against Aurora’s cheek. She could hear a familiar panting in her ear. A warm wave radiated from this sensation through her body, pulling her
world back together. A raincloud of love scattering showers.

  “Thought I’d bring ‘round your old mate Denzi. He’s been whinging the place down to get to you.”

  Aurora open her eyes and tried to thank Terry, but she felt too overwhelmed. The lovely roughness kept tickling at her ears. Aurora smiled but her mouth wouldn’t mirror it. Her body came back into her sense of being and she lay in it, enjoying the licks and the solidity they brought to her heart.

  “Hey, Denali. See it’s Rory here. You’re a good boy. She’s alive because of you, you know. We were just going to turn and run when you found us.”

  Aurora managed to drag her fingers weakly through her friend’s fur and then lay there with his snoring weight rumbling against her. Aurora felt, for just this moment, entirely grateful to be alive. Her mind descended into a warm blankness from which she had no will to emerge.

  “Hi Aurora. It’s me, Shel.”

  “Xiao Li?”

  “It’s okay. I’m all right.”

  Aurora would have sat up to greet her friend if only she could put her billion pieces back into a body.

  “But you’re dead.”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Am I?”

  “Not so lucky.”

  Xiao Li reached over to embrace her and found Aurora’s body for her in the process.

  “Why not? I mean, why me and not you?”

  Xiao Li laughed in her captivating sing song way, which brightened any day. “Jesus isn’t finished with you Ror. She has a lot of work for you to do yet.”

  “And none for you? That seems kind of arbitrary.”

  Xiao Li laughed at the joke, which Aurora wasn’t quite sure she’d made. “No. Plenty left over for me too I’m afraid.”

  “Are you an Angel?”

  Xiao Li considered the question. “Only, I guess, in that part of you that is.”

  “I’m sorry Shel. I’m horrible for doing this to you. It was unforgivable. I only wanted freedom for myself, not for this to happen.”

  A great river of sorrow welled up from underground and blanketed the dry land, wicking down into the hissing soil. Life was returning to the dismal world. Forests of algae matted along the shores and a mist rose from the sea and thickened, trapping heat and fattening into clouds.