by Paul Magrs
That afternoon in Peter’s musky-smelling alcove in the Den, the two of us sketched out a history of his people and mine.
‘So … other people came to Mars before we did,’ I said.
‘Many more,’ said he. ‘We came from England. Well, our ancestors did. In the last millennium. Sorry about that.’
I gawped at him. In our town we were settlers. I was part of the third generation. Mars was new and uninhabited. We were holding on by our fingernails.
But before Grandma and Ruby grew old on the prairie – almost two centuries before them – the British were here. Drinking tea and all the other strange things they do.
They came from the late Victorian period, Peter explained. He brought out albums, showing me scratchy pictures and dim photographs. He had books piled up, dusty under his messy bed, and he yanked them out excitedly.
‘How did we not know?’ I kept saying. ‘How could we be such fools?’
Several thousand human beings absconded from planet Earth and came to Mars between 1885 and 1902.
‘Oh, it wasn’t very widely publicised,’ Peter told me. ‘It was all quite clandestine and hush-hush.’
They came in bunches of several dozen, in spacecraft no larger than a motorised lorry, which were built very quietly in Newcastle-upon-Tyne docks. These ‘Celestial Omnibuses’, as they were called, were manufactured in the North, away from prying eyes. The people who were leaving all belonged to a secret society. They were ‘Insiders’. None of them were very pleased about the way life on Earth was heading. They were convinced man was about to do irreparable harm to himself and his planet. Well, that turned out to be true, though not for a while yet.
They signed up and paid extortionate prices by monthly installments. All of them were convinced they were going to be happy colonists on a new world, creating a better life.
Just as we were, almost two centuries later, when we settled thousands of miles away, across the supposedly barren surface of Mars.
They came here, all that time ago. They landed their brass and lead-lined spacecraft here in the dust bowl and set about making their towns, to plans laid down by the geniuses in charge of the exodus. The Mars Exodus, the Insiders had called the whole enterprise, Peter told me.
And so the City Inside grew up over the decades and centuries. They were secret and independent of Earth and soon completely forgotten by everyone down there, apart from surviving members of their secret society and the custodians of their papers and affects, who – it was rumoured – would secretly keep them abreast of some of the useful technological advances on old Earth. Their colony expanded and settled in and grew hugely. Filling out this whole, magnificent City.
By the time my grandma and her generation of settlers left for Mars, they knew nothing at all about the Victorians far across the vast deserts.
Perhaps that was just as well. How would Grandma and Aunt Ruby or even Da have reacted to this? Would they feel foolish and amazed like I did? Would they have felt tiny and futile, building their dust-blown towns and never knowing about the City Inside?
I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.
I was sitting in an underground Den on a snowy day with a boy and his cat-dog. I was learning all this stuff, where I came from. I was having my mind blown.
‘OK,’ said Peter at last. ‘You’re reeling, aren’t you? We can stop talking about all this cosmic stuff, and time and civilisation and everything for a while, if you like.’
‘But it’s important!’ I burst out. ‘I need to understand. No one’s ever gone from one civilisation to the other, have they? Me and Al and Toaster – we’re the first, aren’t we? The first to understand.’
‘I guess so,’ said Peter.
I thought about that Dean of the University. Dean Swiftnick. Yeah, no wonder he wanted to talk to me. If the Authorities knew what me and Peter had just pieced together – I guess I had quite a few things in my head that they’d want to know about. I had about 250 years of Earth history and advances locked away somewhere inside me. Valuable stuff they knew hardly anything about.
I must have looked completely freaked out by now. Peter jumped up off the bed. ‘Come on. Enough now. I’m taking you to the pub.’
Karl went happily into his walking harness and, even though he could only manage about ten yards under his own steam, he was glad to get some exercise. Peter carried him the rest of the way through the dark streets. A sulphurous drizzle had started up. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would prefer to live down here to up above, amid the green glass towers.
Then we arrived at the pub – a dingy, neon-lit place where people huddled around strange-looking pipes that bubbled as we passed and emitted multi-coloured smoke. There was music like nothing I’d ever heard before – jangling and discordant – and somehow it got under my skin straight away. I loved it.
Peter put Karl on the busy bar, and the cat-dog drew attention from the men standing on either side. The animal didn’t look so sickly as he sat there while Peter ordered some drinks.
We sat at a small table and I found myself telling him about Al’s problems at work.
‘They’re not used to people breaking rules,’ he said. ‘Poor Al. There are rules everywhere in the City Inside and the Authorities are used to people who would never dream of breaking them.’ He sipped his drink and grimaced. He dribbled a little into a clean ashtray for Karl to lap up, which couldn’t have been good for him. The stuff was spirits. I pretended to sip mine in a grown-up fashion but didn’t like the taste much. ‘They’re very precious about the bits of technology they’ve managed to cobble together over the years. Only a very few geniuses know how all these miraculous things work.’
‘They certainly don’t seem to want people to use the archive computer for personal reasons,’ I said. ‘Al should have thought it through. He’s been brought up to think he can’t do anything wrong. He was always pretty inquisitive as a little kid.’
Peter was paying close attention to me and seemed about to say something, when the lights plunged even dimmer and much louder, aggressive music came on. All eyes were on a single figure standing under a sodium light. It was a man, I think, starting to dance. He was dressed up as a robot. But a robot in a tutu and tights, with loads of make-up slashed across his face and a white wig hanging in tatters. He moved his mouth to the words of the song and moved his body to a pounding beat. I thought I recognised the song, but couldn’t put my finger on it. He slung a feather boa around his shoulders and made the crowd laugh and howl with drunken appreciation.
Peter was watching my face as I stared, mouth open at the performer.
He reminded me of Madame Lucille, the dressmaker. I was remembering how she’d danced so outrageously for us, lit up like a star on the sand dunes that night. The night she’d made us all dress up.
Down in the Den there was no telling how late it was. Soon enough I felt tired. I should have been home hours ago. Al would be wondering where I’d got to. He went on like he was tough, but I knew he hated being in the apartment without me.
I asked Peter to show me the way back out to the surface, and tell me how to get back to Stockpot District. He just needed to point me in the right direction, and I could find my own way. I knew at once he was disappointed. By then we had watched a number of dancers come and go, each more elaborate than the last.
That crazy-looking cat-dog was sitting in Peter’s lap with his deformed limbs sticking out in a tangle. Karl seemed to be looking at me disappointedly, too. I didn’t know what they wanted from me. Did they want me to stay here with them?
Soon we were out of the bar and moving through the dim streets. I was feeling woozy from the drink I had ended up finishing. There were more people about, coming and going like it was rush-hour, many of them got up in their finery.
Soon we reached the doorway, the curtain of ivy and, beyond that, the untended park. We emerged from beneath the bandstand to find that night had fallen and there was a layer of crisp, blood-coloured snow over every
thing. It looked surprisingly gruesome out there.
I patted Karl and Peter didn’t make a fuss insisting on coming any further with me. I was grateful. I just needed to do some walking by myself.
Pretty soon I was lost.
I found grand arcades and fancy streets crammed with shops. It was all emporiums here, in this part of town, beyond the wild park. The windows were lit up, filled with gorgeously colourful displays. Hordes of shoppers flitted to and fro with parcels. Lizards clopped by in the roads, the wheels of the carriages turning the snow to bloody slush. For the first time it hit me that we had both Martian Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. Except the people here didn’t have Martian Thanksgiving, did they? What they had, it seemed, was a full-on Dickensian Christmas. Ding-donging merrily on high and with more trimmings than I’d seen in my life. Something gripped me deep inside my stomach. That pit-of-your belly Christmas feeling that I hadn’t had in years.
I remembered how we used to think that Adams’ Exotic Emporium was the last word in festive displays. Their windows and well-stocked shelves were the highlight of our town’s Christmas. Why, that whole shop would have been lost and insignificant in the City Inside. Everything in it would have looked tawdry and poor by comparison.
I succumbed to a moment of tearfulness. Just the thought of being back in Our Town made me catch my breath. I thought about Da steering our hovercart into town with Al and me, our pocket money clenched in our gloves, ready to pick out gifts.
Why was I thinking about that now? Standing in the cloying, noisy heat of the entrance to a fancy store, deep in the heart of the City Inside, I was brimming with tears. My clothes were shabby and plain and wet through. Some of the fancy-assed people going by on either side of me were giving me nasty looks.
I checked my purse to see what money I had. It would be great to surprise Al with a small gift. Cheer him up for losing his job. I looked at all the colourful silk shirts that were on display in great, billowing profusion. I could picture him in something with flowing sleeves and ruffles, like a buccaneer or a pirate. But all I had in my purse and my basket was a handful of coins.
35
I returned home with my shopping basket stuffed with several silk scarves, an expensive shirt and more bottles of cologne than Al could ever use. I had walked the cold streets of the City Inside carrying hot merchandise, and it felt good.
Al was asleep on the sofa. Toaster was bustling about, complaining that dinner was dried up and ruined.
‘Where have you been?’ my brother scolded me.
‘It’s so Christmassy out there,’ I said. ‘The stores are incredible. We need to go and see them together, Al.’ In the meantime I had brought Christmas to our apartment. I produced the silk shirt and the scarves and laid out the bottles of cologne on the table. He was delighted, despite himself.
I asked whether he had heard from his young lady.
‘Oh, Lora. She’s so mad at me. She can’t believe that I got myself into trouble at work. She’s actually shocked. She’s never been in any kind of bother in her life.’
I nodded sadly. ‘Maybe that’s why she’s so dull.’
‘Lora!’ He clapped a hand over his mouth, starting to laugh.
‘Well, it’s true. She’s a lovely looking girl and all, but she’s a bit prim and boring, isn’t she?’
Al sighed, fiddling with his new shirt. ‘Maybe.’ He was wistful about losing his job with the newspaper. He had loved working there and being treated like a grown-up.
‘Don’t you wish we were still refugees?’ I asked him impulsively. From the kitchen there came the clanging of Toaster trying to rescue our dinner from the oven. ‘Just imagine. When there were no rules at all. When all we had to do was make sure we survived.’
Al surprised me by looking scared. ‘Promise me we won’t ever have to go back to that. We can stay here in the City, can’t we? We won’t ever have to leave?’
‘Sure, yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Our lives are here now. But was it so bad when we were in the wilderness? I looked after you and kept you safe, didn’t I?’
He nodded. ‘Of course you looked after us. You saved us. Tillian says it was a miracle we came through all that.’
‘Does she now?’
Toaster appeared with a stiff expression. Tillian’s father, Mr Tollund Graveley, was on the telephone, he announced, and he was terribly eager to have a word with Al. My brother brightened up straight away. Toaster brought out some plates of horrible, blackened food, like he was making a point.
Al returned after only a few minutes, looking pleased with himself. Mr Graveley had apparently forgiven my brother personally for his indiscretion with the Archive Machine. Furthermore, Tillian’s father had renewed the invitation to Al to visit their family home in Darwin Sector the following evening. Martian Thanksgiving, as it would have been, back in our old life. He told Al, as if in passing, that I was invited, too. The Graveley family was eager to make my acquaintance. Having read a couple of newspaper articles about me, they were intrigued to meet the girl who had led her family and friends through the wilderness.
As Al told me this I groaned aloud. I wanted nothing less than to spend an evening being quizzed by people about our adventures.
I saw that Al was looking perturbed again.
‘Are you dreading it as well?’ I asked.
‘It isn’t just that,’ he frowned. ‘Mr Graveley passed me onto Tillian for a quick word. She was whispering down the receiver so her father wouldn’t hear. She says she has a package for me. Something she must smuggle out of work tomorrow. She said that she’s going to do it for my sake, at great personal risk to herself.’
I was surprised to hear it. ‘What’s in this package?’
Al said, ‘It’s got something to do with Grandma.’
I spluttered out the water Toaster had brought with my singed dinner.
‘It seems that after I typed in my search request and then got found out and sacked, the Archive Machine carried on doing what I’d asked it. It continued to go through all the records of women called Margaret Estelle Robinson. And it printed more stuff out.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Tillian found the evidence today. Piled up in a tray no one had noticed.’
We set off late in the following afternoon. Of course Tillian had given us very precise instructions for getting to her parents’ apartment in the Darwin District. Now we had to cross the City and meet these strange, grand folks. But we were the kids who had crossed half of Mars together! The evening shouldn’t have held any worries for us.
I was pleased to see that Al was wearing the cream silk shirt I’d pilfered for him. One of the scarves, too, which was vivid orange against the deep crimson of his new woollen coat. He’d always loved bright, clashing earth tones like that. He had always been more interested in dressing up than I had. I was wearing more sombre and respectable clothing. I’d bought myself a frock with only minimal constrictions and ruffling, but at least I was branching out into that Victorian style of theirs. Now I knew why they favoured it. They were actual Victorian people, living in space, according to Peter. I hadn’t told Toaster or Al any of that yet. It still seemed so unreal.
For the hundredth time Toaster asked whether we wanted him to accompany us. I told him we’d be fine, imagining their reactions if we turned up with our sentient sunbed for a chaperone. Toaster didn’t appear to mind the snub. He admitted that his thoughts were elsewhere. He was busy imagining what information about Grandma the computer at The City Insider had apparently found.
‘It is her life story, I am sure of it,’ he was burbling as we prepared to leave. ‘I can’t wait to find out. Why, she was a Historical Personage, and even people from the City Inside must know of her. That seems likely now. We are going to be able to read about her true story! Her past will be returned to us! And with it, mine too! Everything I have ever forgotten!’
We left him in the dizzying throes of his new obsession.
I didn’t buy it
, though. If, as Peter had told me, the people here were descended from humans who had left Earth just prior to the twentieth century, and if there had been no traffic or communication between them and our own folk, then there was no way they could have any knowledge of our Grandma whatsoever.
All the while I was wondering … well, what if the City Insiders did know about us all along? They had telescopes and stuff, didn’t they? They must have watched the skies and seen us landing. How come they never came offering their help? They had so much here, so many resources. It would have been so easy for them to help us out.
And, come to that, when Grandma and her people crash-landed in the Melville, the Hawthorne and the Dickinson, how come they never saw this place on the horizon? How come they missed seeing a whacking great big Emerald City like this?
Our ears were popping in the elevator and I found myself once again enjoying the sensation of falling through all those many storeys.
‘Al, do you still have those pictures on your phone?’ I asked. ‘The ones you snapped of the globe in the lizard queen’s throne room?’
He frowned at me, his thoughts a million miles away. ‘What? I suppose I do. Toaster fixed the charge for me once before. Maybe he could get it going again.’
‘Could we take a look at them?’
‘I guess so. How come?’
‘I was thinking about our lost relations and friends. They’re somewhere out there…’
‘Oh, Lora,’ he sighed. ‘We have got to start thinking about the future, you know.’
This sounded unnecessarily heartless to me.
We emerged from the elevator into the Downstairs Market, where there were paper garlands and swags of tinsel and candles burning everywhere. A group of men were hauling a colossal fir tree into place. Me and Al paused to marvel at the livid green foliage.
Passing through the market, I was listening for the sound of Peter’s harp. I would love to introduce Al to him, and to show him Karl. But my new friend wasn’t there. His spot was taken by a mime artist that we hurried past.