by Paul Magrs
No one else volunteered a tale that night. We turned in to sleep, dowsing out our own lamps early to save their charge.
26
We had enough water, so long as the rivulets came running down the walls of the ravine. We tried to eat some of the lichenous plants growing out of the rocks, but they just made us sick. I knew from the resentful, sidelong glances I was getting from the others that they thought everything was my fault. If I’d been in their shoes, I’d have been blaming me, too.
Why couldn’t we have stayed back in Dead Town? Ma even asked me this one night. ‘Sure it wasn’t very safe,’ she grumbled. ‘But there were supplies. We could have at least lived for a while with food in our bellies…’
I thought back to the Martian Ghosts tearing after me through the silent streets. It wasn’t worth arguing with her. I knew that we had done the right thing in moving on. We had to keep going. There was no choice about this.
The next day, as a total surprise, things took a turn for the better. The rock walls started receding. The chasm we were walking through was widening out. It didn’t sound much, stated like that, but it felt like we could breathe more freely again.
Now we started thinking about the hovercarts and the beasts we had been forced to leave behind, and how much we longed for them. But it was no use looking back.
The ground was sandy and soft and all at once there was more sunlight getting into the labyrinth. The light felt gentle rather than harsh on our faces. Our eyes streamed with tears, unused to the soft glimmer of sun.
‘Is it my imagination?’ Aunt Ruby asked. ‘Or are we walking uphill now?’
With his usual slow thoughtfulness, Mr Adams confirmed it. Yes, the ravine walls were growing shallower, and the path was leading us uphill. I let hope start to grow in me: perhaps this was the end of being lost in this maze.
But then those hopes were crushed.
First we heard the noises. Horrible gurgling noises that welled up from deep inside the gullies. We walked on, puzzling them over. Thinking they were some natural thing. Maybe we would soon find another pool of spring water. Then the gurgling got louder and more insistent. They started sounding like words we couldn’t make out. Like creatures conversing with one another.
Our party huddled together and moved along more rapidly. All that day and into the evening the vile sounds dogged our heels.
And then we saw them.
All at once. Creatures of a type we had never seen before. They emerged from the dark ravines, swaying, sticky tentacles first. Then globular, purple and blue bodies followed, glistening in the light. They moved towards us, closing in.
We kept very quiet and still, struck dumb by their hideousness. We shrunk away from the touch of their slimy, unnatural flesh. They were covered in jelly-like blisters that looked painful and ready to pop. As they came closer I could see that some of these blisters were actually eyes, swivelling about and studying us with keen, wordless intelligence.
A different kind of Martian, I thought. They had discovered us at our weakest, when our resistance was at its most dismal. There was nothing we could do to prevent them taking us prisoner.
Only Toaster put up a decent fight, once he was quite sure that these jelly creatures meant harm to those he was programmed to protect. He lashed out at them with laser bolts and electric shocks. They went crackling through the chasm like blue lightning.
But it was no good. We all yelled out as the jelly creatures swarmed around him and quickly sealed him inside a mound of horrible muck.
At that point I knew it was hopeless. No matter how far we’d come, or what we’d achieved, it was all over now these creatures had us in their clutches.
They herded us just like we’d herded our burden beasts. They waved tentacles and ragged claws in our faces and we had no choice but to go where they chivvied us. I looked at my family and friends and they all had the same shocked, wild-eyed expressions on their faces. None of us could believe what was happening, and how quickly. It had been sixty seconds since our first glimpse of the new Martians. And now we were helpless prisoners.
‘Look,’ gasped Al. One of the jelly creatures had reared up, stretching until it was twice its height, and made a guttural chanting noise that sounded like a kind of magical spell. All at once a wide section of the rock wall slid open, revealing blackness beyond.
Aunt Ruby swore. Her crabbed hand grasped my arm. ‘W – where are they taking us, Lora?’
How could she expect me to have all the answers?
The creatures corralled us, nudging us along with their sticky bodies. They uttered threatening sounds and made it clear we had to go with them into the darkness beyond that fake wall. Grinding mechanical noises came from deep within the darkness. It was hot, too; it felt like we were being ushered into hell. Down we went: the Adamses, Madame Lucille, Ruby, Al, Hannah, Ma and me. Toaster was still trapped inside all that jelly, which had somehow taken on a life of its own, and was dragging him along behind us.
There was a nasty, sickly sweet smell. It reminded me of a jar of honeyed pears at the back of Ma’s store cupboard one year. There’d been a crack in the glass and the stuff inside had turned nasty. It gave off this same scent of sugary decay.
The fake rock wall rolled back into place behind us. It wasn’t completely dark in there. The walls glowed blue and pink. The colours were actually quite beautiful, but the creatures with us were hideous. More of them showed up, eager to watch our every move with their sticky, globular eyes.
We humans huddled together. Al tried to say reassuring things. ‘If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it already.’
I wasn’t so sure about that.
Annabel Adams voiced my thoughts neatly for me. ‘They want to study us. They’re taking a good look at us. Then they’ll probably want to eat us, like those other Martians did.’
Ruby was staring at them thoughtfully as they pushed us about. ‘They do seem to be fascinated by us. I think maybe they’ve never seen anything like us before, just as we’ve never seen anything like them…’
‘So many Martians,’ whispered Madame Lucille. ‘All different kinds. We never knew we were sharing the planet with so many…’
Mr Adams said, ‘Maybe we could have shown more interest in where we were living. Maybe we should have found out more.’
Everyone was talking as our captors led us deeper into their strange complex. As if we thought our voices would make us feel better and keep us from harm. I looked round to see Al holding Hannah’s hand and Ma holding her other hand. My little sister didn’t seem at all scared. She was looking at the gleaming, glowing walls with great interest.
Still those blistery eyes swivelled round and stared at us. Every single noise and move we made was being noted. I wanted to scream with frustration. How could we have let ourselves be taken captive? I felt Madame Lucille’s hand on my shoulder, giving me a consoling pat. Her bearded chin was set grimly as she told me, ‘We’ll get out of this, Lora. You’ll see.’
Deeper and deeper we were taken, until it felt so hot we thought we must be somewhere near the centre of the world. The ceilings receded ever higher above us and the walls started to look more elaborate. To our amazement there were carvings here, and jagged windows in the rock, revealing more creatures going about their business. Nothing made any sense, but it seemed these creatures had some sort of civilisation. And that gave me a kind of hope. Maybe they could be reasoned with, or at least talked to, I thought.
They put us in a room together and left us alone. There were no windows, just more of that polished blue and purple rock, threaded with glowing veins. We spent the time scooping handfuls of the jelly stuff off Toaster while he lay there. It took a while for him to come back to his senses, and when he did it was clear the sunbed was angry and frightened.
We all were.
Whatever these creatures were, we were completely in their power. No one said it but I was sure we were all convinced we’d be eaten pretty soon.
&n
bsp; After a few hours stuck in our private thoughts, the rough stone door slid to one side with a grinding roar and one of the creatures appeared. He studied us all briefly, and then took hold of Mr Adams. Mrs Adams gave an over-dramatic cry as her husband was dragged away from her. Her husband shushed her quickly. I saw how quietly brave he was being.
‘What will they do to him?’ Mrs Adams shouted.
He was OK. They brought him back after about an hour.
Mr Adams, shamefaced, said our captors had simply assumed he was our leader because he was the oldest adult male.
We all listened as he told us about being taken into a large room, almost like a church from a book, all dug out of coloured rock. The jelly creatures placed him before a large pile of twiggy wood and stuff and he realised it was a nest. There, in the middle of it, sat what looked like a lizard bird. The kind we were used to seeing back at home, that Al had tried to tame. It was bigger, though. Gleaming and golden.
It snapped its beak and called to him in harsh, scathing tones.
‘Yes, it could talk,’ said Mr Adams. ‘And it turns out to be the ruler of these … creatures. What about that, huh? We’ve gone and wandered into the valley where the lizard birds rule. There was a whole flock of them in the rafters of that churchy place and I could hear them snoring and stirring. I looked up and saw thousands of them.’
His daughter giggled at that. She always laughed at the wrong things. I looked at Al. He was always fascinated by anything to do with the lizard birds.
Aunt Ruby spoke up, ‘What do they want with us?’
Vernon Adams shook his head. ‘They are intrigued to know our story and why we are on the move.’
‘Did you explain to them?’ Madame Lucille asked. ‘Did you have to explain all our business to a lizard?’
Mr Adams looked troubled. ‘I don’t think the lizard birds are as dumb as we always assumed. I think the ones we knew at home were always watching and keeping tabs on us.’
Ma gave a desolate cry. ‘My God, is everything on this planet hostile? Has everything always been watching and waiting to feed on us?’
‘I don’t think they want to eat us,’ Mr Adams said.
‘Well thank heaven for that,’ said his wife, fanning herself with her hat. ‘Tell us what you learned, Vernon. Come on, out with it!’
‘I think they have another use for us,’ he said, pausing and rubbing his face. ‘The way the lizard was talking, it was like she was considering … a strange idea she’d suddenly had. She got excited as she warmed to her idea. She said something about ‘The City Inside’ and how she must talk to the people there. I didn’t quite understand, she went back into lizard language and wasn’t at all clear…’
Aunt Ruby harrumphed. ‘Forgive me for saying so, Vernon Adams, but you’re not being all that clear yourself.’
He smiled ruefully. ‘I guess you’re right there, Ruby. But it was a very strange and dislocating experience. And then … then I was distracted by something that was there in that churchy room, something that I hadn’t noticed. At first, when the lizard bird was talking to me, I just figured it was an ornament of some kind. But when the lizard went jabbering away and I couldn’t follow, I happened to look again, and realised what I was seeing…’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ snapped Mrs Adams. ‘What was it?’
He smiled at all of us. ‘It was a globe. Taller than a man in height and diameter. It was glowing red and purple and looked utterly beautiful. Lit up with patches of darkness moving like clouds over the surface, and there were spiny ridges of mountains and deep tracks of canals and dark blotches of terraformed forests. It was like a miniature world in itself. I realised that it was a glowing globe – of Mars.’
There was silence as we all absorbed this. None of us had ever seen such a thing before and our minds were boggling.
‘A globe!’ Aunt Ruby cried. ‘A globe of Mars!’ She was just about crying. ‘The first settlers always said that when our ships crashed all the memory banks leaked onto the Martian sands and all that knowledge was lost. But they said that the best part of the planet had been chosen for us by the Earth Government, and we didn’t really need to know any more about Mars. We never had to worry our heads about what the rest of the new world was like…’
All this stuff about the past came pouring out of Ruby again when she was excited. Could it be true? Could all the knowledge have dribbled out of the spaceships like that? Or were the first settlers content just to believe whatever they were told?
Mr Adams was grinning. We looked at him like we could see that glowing red globe in his eyes. ‘I have seen the whole of Mars, and it is vast, let me tell you. There are so many places we could go.’
No one had the heart to point out that we couldn’t go anywhere. We were still locked in a rock cell with weird jelly creatures guarding us.
Madame Lucille had been thinking. She turned quickly to Al. ‘Have you still got your camera phone? Is it working?’
A protective look flashed across my brother’s face. His phone was an ancient antique Da once brought back from the Storehouse for Al’s birthday. His tenth, I think. Of course there was no one he could phone with it, and no satellites to connect him to anything, but Al had always liked the buttons that made noises. And the thumbnail pictures he could snap with it had always seemed like magic to us.
All the time we’d been on our journey Al had been taking pictures of us and where we’d been. He was making a record for posterity, he said. Madame Lucille remembered his camera because one day he had her striking glamorous poses while he snapped away.
He realised why she was asking. ‘I could take pictures of the globe…’
‘If we can get you out of here and into that room,’ said Madame Lucille.
‘My phone’s losing its charge,’ said Al. ‘I was hooking it into the hovercart’s solar cells each night, but since we left the vehicles behind…’
‘How much do you have left?’ asked Mr Adams.
‘Half power.’
‘Then we’ll make it last.’
Ma was impatient. ‘This is all very well if we can ever get out of this place … we might have an idea about which direction to go in.’ She looked unimpressed by Mr Adams’ plan. ‘How do we get out of here?’
But Mr Adams looked fretful, as if he had let something vital slip his mind. Now Ma had jogged his memory and he looked dismayed. ‘Oh, that’s what happened next. The lizard bird made up her mind. She started talking to me in English again and she said they aren’t going to eat us…’
‘Oh, well!’ said Mrs Adams. ‘That’s something, at least!’
‘They want to give us away,’ Mr Adams went on. ‘We are a gift. We’re going to be paid in tribute to the people of the City Inside.’
‘What?’ his wife barked out. ‘Vernon, how could you leave this part to the end? The most vital part?!’
‘Who are the people of the City Inside?’ I asked.
Vernon Adams shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t say anything more. But it was clear that she and her people are very scared of this City Inside and its inhabitants. As she said the words, all the lizards above woke up, flapping their wings and squawking. Even the jelly creatures made some hideous noises out of fright.’
Mrs Adams howled. ‘We’ve been kidnapped by creatures who are going to hand us over to their enemies, who they’re terrified of…’
‘That’s about the gist of it, yes,’ said her husband.
She glared at him. ‘You’ve been completely and utterly useless, Vernon. They must have seen you and decided that we’re all weak and pathetic. Why didn’t you stand up to them? Why didn’t you tell them that they can’t just push and shove Earth people around?’
Mr Adams started to protest, and to talk about the globe again, and how marvellous it would be if Al could take some snaps and then we would have all of Mars to explore and escape into…
‘Enough of your pie in the sky!’ shrieked Mrs Adams. ‘Enough, do you hear? We don’t have
all of Mars to explore, do we? Because we’re prisoners!’ She smashed her hat to the ground. ‘I wish they had taken Lora instead. She would have stood up to those vermin! She would have told them – you can’t just use us as gifts to appease your enemies!’
It sure was a surprise to hear Mrs Adams speaking up for me. She’d always been pretty dismissive of me in the past. But I didn’t think she was being fair on her husband. How would any of us react, seeing what he’d seen that day? Mrs Adams was just being scared and nasty-mouthed.
We all had to calm down. We had to be quiet and think about this.
Al and I worked on Toaster, who gradually returned to life once he was free of all that jelly muck. We filled him in on what Vernon Adams had learned. All about the glowing globe and the lizard birds.
‘I don’t like the sound of any of this,’ Toaster frowned, creakily. ‘Except for the globe and the idea of taking pictures of it. That’s a very good thing. Perhaps I can boost the power cells in your phone so they last a little while longer … let me see…’
Al beamed at this. Sometimes all he needed was a little encouragement.
‘But this other business is bad,’ Toaster concluded. ‘This talk of our becoming tributes. I’ve never even heard of this place they call the City Inside…’
Though the light never changed deep inside the complex, we figured it was time we all slept. We had no more rations with us, and no one brought us food. We lay down in a huddle and all our minds were whirling with everything that had been happening. We needed to rest if we were going to face whatever the next day would bring.
27
We were woken early. I don’t think any of us got much rest, but the jelly creatures ushered us out of our cell. Hannah grumbled a bit, but Ma shushed her. As we were led through the narrow passageways of rock, deeper into the complex, I had a wordless exchange with Al. Did he have his mobile ready? He nodded. He was ready.