Lost on Mars

by Paul Magrs

  Al and I rode the omnibus from the corner of our long street. It, like the Pipeline train we caught next, was packed with commuters. Even at the close of a busy day, the people looked immaculate to me, in their high buttoned-up collars and waistcoats, the women in long dresses that dragged in the melting red snow.

  Al led us to the platform where we were to catch the final train into Darwin District. He was completely in charge of us now.

  36

  The Graveleys owned an entire storey of their tower block, and there was no noisy Downstairs Market in their foyer. Just a fancy little shop for last-minute gifts and tasteful music and tasteful just about everything, as a matter of fact. I hated it straight away.

  ‘They can trace their family back to the first generation in this sector of Mars,’ Al told me. ‘That’s why they’re so rich and respectable. That’s what Tillian told me.’

  Their apartment on the 86th storey was furnished beautifully, with genuinely ancient fixtures and fittings. Everything smelled wonderfully of beeswax polish. Wooden furniture gleamed in the lamplight and the carpets felt about a foot thick.

  An extremely delicate Servo-Furnishing guided us to a worn couch and offered us the teeniest glasses of sherry. He was a grandfather clock and it was easy to believe that his steady ticking had been going on for centuries.

  ‘Very plush,’ I hissed at my brother. I sipped my drink and almost gagged. It was way too sweet and thick as molasses. ‘Whoah. You’ve brought us into Dickens or Jane Austen.’

  Al frowned at me. He was never big on reading so he didn’t really know what I was talking about.

  There was a delicate ‘harrumph’ and we looked round to see Tillian entering the room with her parents. The old man was wearing some kind of army uniform with epaulettes and medals and even a ceremonial sword strapped to his belt. More dressy up, Aunt Ruby would have complained. Tillian herself was in quite a plain, straightforward gown of a pale blue fabric, which was very becoming. The mother came behind them, weighed down in layers of lacy fabric, yellowing with incredible age.

  ‘Tillian informs us that you made a most remarkable journey, Miss Robinson,’ said her father. His voice was kind of muffled by his elaborate moustache and sidewhiskers.

  ‘You walked, didn’t you?’ her mother smiled through her ratty veil. ‘You walked through the wilderness.’

  ‘Most enterprising,’ said the father.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said the mother. ‘Really, most extraordinary.’

  ‘Yes, extraordinary,’ added the father.

  ‘But, why?’ Tillian’s mother asked. ‘Why did you ever do such an extraordinary thing?’

  I could feel my face burning up. Al was glancing at me sideways. I knew what he meant. Don’t kick up a fuss.

  I kept my voice light and sweet as I could when I replied. ‘Well, you see, Mr and Mrs Graveley, it was a question of survival. Our Town and our Homestead were no longer habitable. We all had to leave, quite suddenly. Things had been going wrong for some time. Storms which destroyed our crops, and then there were the Disappearances and all. We knew that hostile lifeforms were watching us and meaning us harm.’

  I saw that I had all three Graveleys hanging on my every word. Even the robot clock.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said Mr Graveley.

  ‘So, things happened quickly. Grandma vanished. Our father was killed. And I decided that we had to go. I had to take charge of our family and get us to safety.’

  Mrs Graveley looked astonished. Her eyebrows rode up her lacey scalp. ‘And you are how old, child?’

  ‘Fourteen, when we started out,’ I said, sounding gruffer than I meant to. ‘My brother Al here was thirteen and my sister was three. That’s how old we were when we struck out into the wilderness.’

  Tillian was sitting close beside Al. ‘It must have been terrifically difficult for you all. And I can’t imagine what it must have been like to lose your sister and your mother, and all the others.’

  With surprise, I saw from her expression that her feelings for him were absolutely genuine. She actually had feelings for Al, it was plain as anything.

  ‘It was pretty tough,’ Al said.

  They sighed meaningfully as they listened to him. The Graveleys were imagining the hardship, poverty and tragedy we poor children must have endured.

  ‘Well then,’ Mrs Graveley said kindly. ‘There’s plenty of time to hear about your extraordinary escapades, I’m sure. In the meantime, Mrs Gallagher the cook will be keen for us to eat the dinner she has prepared for us. Shall we go through?’

  Though we never saw Mrs Gallagher the Servo-Furnishing, we did see her food, and it made all the torture worthwhile. A whole retinue of robots brought it out on silver platters. Each course consisted of seafood and, as the shining dishes came and went, the fish got bigger and bigger. We began with golden sprat fried whole and served with triangles of toast, through pink fish with golden coins for eyes and eventually to a many-legged creature baked in a savoury crust and brought in upon the shoulders of the servants as if it were an infirm guest.

  As children of the prairie Al and I had never seen so much fish. Sure, we’d tasted it before, preserved in tins and sold over the counter at Adams’ Exotic Emporium, but that was never fresh. All these specimens of fish came from somewhere incredible in the south that they referred to as the Suspended Sea. Everything we were eating was extremely expensive.

  Tillian’s family seemed barely to notice. They sat with miraculous aromas wafting about and didn’t appear to care. Mr Graveley was telling us of a story about to break in The City Insider.

  ‘Turns out that these Antique Hunters were a good deal more sinister than you’d think. They went to every auction they could find and between them filled a vast warehouse chock-full of clapped-out Servo-Furnishings. You might suppose they were about to recondition the things and sell them on at a profit, but that wasn’t their idea at all – oh no! What these chaps were doing was much crueller.’

  Tillian and her mother leaned forward in polite interest. ‘And what was that, Father?’

  ‘They tarted up the Servo-Furnishings just enough to get them moving again, and then shipped them to some bleak, godforsaken prairie a hundred miles from the City Inside. They set them free to run as fast as they could, and then they hunted them with guns. BANG BANG BANG! Shot them to smithereens!’

  Mrs Graveley’s watery eyes went wide. ‘How unutterably nasty!’

  ‘It’s despicable,’ Tillian’s father said. ‘The worst thing is that it isn’t even illegal. One of the Antiques Hunters was injured in a horrible rifle accident and that’s why it’s about to be in the newspaper. But in terms of the law, they aren’t doing anything wrong.’

  I looked at the grandfather clock, who was going round the table with a bottle of white wine. He tried to look as if he wasn’t listening to his master’s tale, but I could see the trembling in his wooden fingers. I thought about Toaster at home. How long would he last if he had men with guns coming after him, intent on blowing him to bits for fun?

  My brother excused himself and slipped away after dessert. Mr Graveley passed around a boxload of fancy bonbons. Al had been gone for a few moments when Tillian stood up sharply and declared she’d go and find him. He must have got lost somewhere in their vast apartment. Mr Graveley chuckled indulgently, observing to me that the youngsters were clearly grabbing a few private moments to canoodle.

  ‘Darling!’ protested Mrs Graveley.

  ‘They’re young!’ he laughed. ‘Like we were once, remember?’ Then he looked directly at me. ‘Why, you are very young, too, aren’t you, Lora, my dear? Isn’t there a special young man for you? Surely someone here in the City has caught your eye?’

  I shrugged helplessly, feeling foolish and mildly dizzy from the wine. I didn’t dare explain that I’d spent the months since our arrival mostly in our apartment, venturing out only occasionally for supplies. That only very recently I had met someone I got along with and, under his influence, explo
red further this bewildering place.

  Peter. Yes, I had met a nice young man. But he was no good for me. Not in the way Tillian’s father meant. But I thought that he could turn out to be a good friend.

  Mrs Graveley turned a quite serious expression on me. ‘Yes, we must see what we are to do about you. Many ladies of my acquaintance have sons of good prospects. Men who need a woman to show them the way and domesticate them and tame them. It’s very important for your health and mentality and your social standing, you know, to marry well and to bear children. Then you can become part of the Great Martian Project. The ongoing Mars Exodus. Populating this barren, empty world with new life. Why, it is the single most important thing that we can do.’

  Clearly the old woman thought that I must be made respectable.

  For a fleeting moment I thought how marvellous it would be to run away to a place underground like the Den.

  I found myself saying, ‘But Mars isn’t a barren, empty world.’

  ‘Hm?’ Tillian’s mother smiled vaguely at me. ‘Pardon, dear?’

  ‘It isn’t empty. We needn’t feel so keen to fill it up with human babies. It’s never been an empty world.’

  Mr Graveley heard the tension in my voice and he laughed warmly. ‘Old wives’ tales and stories to scare the children! Mars is a dead world, my dear. It is stone dead, save for all the human life we have been blessed enough to have created here.’

  I forgot my manners completely. ‘You don’t know anything! You’ve only ever lived in this City. You’ve never really seen Mars at all. Not like I have!’

  Mrs Graveley dragged her veil away from her face and snapped frostily, ‘Oh yes. Of course, we bow down to your superior knowledge and experience, my dear. Of course we do. Forgive us for not having been born in the back of beyond. I am sure you are right, and that you have met with many kinds of extraordinary beings during your adventures in the wilderness. I suppose you have even met with the fabled Martians!’

  She and her husband chuckled nastily together.

  I glared at her. And at her husband. They wanted me to feel ridiculous. They wanted me to start thinking that I was crazy. It would suit them if I had started babbling and shouting and kicking up a fuss. They would adore that. But I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction.

  I bit my lip. I smiled at them. ‘Yes, I’ve seen all kinds of strange lifeforms in my time.’ It was all I said. But I looked at them as if I was including the pair of them in my list.

  At that very moment I noticed something odd about Mr Graveley’s eyes. They were moving round and round. The pupils and irises were whirling in circles. Now they were lilac-coloured. They were moving like kaleidoscopes.

  ‘Heee heeeee heeeee…’

  Was he laughing? No, it was his wife. She was grinning at me and her teeth were showing tiny points, and her eyes were spinning too.

  Now both Graveleys were laughing at me. Giggling at me.

  ‘Hee heeee heeee heeeeee…!’

  I sat there absolutely frozen still.

  Then I blinked. And everything was back to normal.

  Tillian and Al came strolling back into the dining room. They looked a bit dishevelled and flushed, as if they had indeed been kissing hurriedly elsewhere. Taking advantage of every moment they had alone.

  Mr and Mrs Graveley snapped back to attention, smiling warmly and starting up their genial chatter again. The evening flowed on in a good-natured blur, and they mostly forgot about me. I sat, saying very little.

  I knew what I had seen and heard.

  But had I? Could it be possible? Hadn’t I just … maybe I’d just … I was over-tired and nervous and out of my element. I must have just imagined it. Surely?

  Al had in his lap a parcel, tied up with ribbon. It looked exactly like Tillian had given him a box of fancy chocolates. He looked very pleased with himself. I reflected that people had always spoiled Al.

  Soon enough – though not before time – we were leaving. Farewells and pleasantries were said in a very formal, ritualised way. There was warmth, though, in the way they talked to Al. They saw him as a decent boyfriend for their daughter. Al, it seemed, had passed some invisible test.

  The Graveleys were far chillier kissing me goodnight in their apartment doorway. The feeling was mutual.

  In the elevator I closed my eyes exhausted as we plummeted to the foyer. I pictured those revolving, purple eyes. Yes, I knew what I had seen. I didn’t think I was mistaken.

  It was very late by then. We exited the building and were hurrying through the Darwin District, where the streets were safe and swept clean. We had a long trip home ahead of us and I hoped Al could remember all our connections on the Pipeline, ’cos I surely couldn’t.

  My brother was in a trance that he didn’t emerge from until we were aboard our first train. The gas lamps spluttered and fizzed. We were alone in there, rattling through the underground night. I pulled the window shut. The room was still filled with curls of greenish smoke.

  ‘You’re very quiet.’

  He smiled. ‘Wasn’t it lovely? The food, the apartment. The way they live.’

  ‘I guess so.’ I studied him and could tell he was anticipating spending the rest of his life in such beautiful trappings, and among such people. I’d wanted to warn him all evening – just because they’ve got nice manners and just because they smile and simper over you, it doesn’t mean that they really like you any. Those kinds of people could put their true feelings aside, so that you never knew what they were.

  But now, since their masks had slipped off – my thoughts were even darker.

  ‘Heee heeeee heeee…’

  I had heard them, hadn’t I? I had seen their teeth and eyes.

  But how was that possible? How? Could they really be Martians? Or were they some kind of horrible hybrid creatures, even? Or was I simply crazy? Maybe everything had been too much for me and my mind had cracked at last.

  Al said, ‘Thank you for coming along tonight, Lora. I know it was hard work for you.’

  ‘Hey, it was OK.’

  ‘I know they’re not your kind of people.’

  I smiled and shrugged and then I was thinking, why don’t I just tell him? Why can’t I simply blurt it out? It’s not just that they’re not my kind of people, and it’s not just that I didn’t like them. They’re dangerous, Al. I think they’re … I think…

  No. I had to be imagining things.

  It had been so hot and cloistered in there. The wine fumes and the rich food. All of it conspired to send my senses funny for a few moments.

  About an hour later we arrived at the Stockpot District and our tower block. Al dug around in his jacket pockets for his keycard and tossed me the ribbon-wrapped parcel Tillian had given him when they were alone.

  37

  I stowed it away in my bedside cabinet, ribbon and all. Grandma’s secrets – whatever they might be – would wait there until I could devote proper time to them.

  I lay awake exhausted that night. I felt the pressure of the past few days behind my eyes. I was dazzled by the weirdness of it all. There was too much to think about.

  First thing the next morning Toaster demanded, ‘What was in the parcel? What secrets did the Archive find inside itself? Have you opened it yet?’

  He was serving me breakfast. Grape jelly on wholemeal toast. Every scrape of the knife was war on my nerves. I couldn’t give our sunbed adequate reason for not opening the box yet.

  He kept asking, several times a day, in the days that followed. His voice became grating and impatient.

  Once, I distracted him by asking, ‘Toaster, did you ever think more about your idea? About this City not even being real?’

  He stood there, face frozen, hefting a large basket of laundry he was taking to the basement. ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Not so long ago. You said you thought this whole City might be inside the living red globe that the Queen Lizard showed us.’

  Incredulity was plain on his face. Toaster looked at m
e like I was making stuff up. ‘The what? Who… Why would I think something so peculiar?’

  I shook my head and dismissed him. Then I thought again. ‘Toaster, would you try to get Al’s phone working for me? I want to look at his pictures of the globe of Mars. Maybe I can find the City Inside on the globe and then…’

  But Toaster was looking highly annoyed. ‘Is that all I’m good for? Charging up phones?’ He stomped off with his laundry basket. He’d be away with his robot cronies in the basement for hours.

  If I looked at those pictures of the globe, I thought, maybe I could find this City and also the ravines where we last saw Ma and the others. I could work out how far away they were. I could find the prairie and everywhere we’d been. If I could see it all together on a map it would all seem logical and laid out somehow. It would all make sense. And then I could start to make plans.

  More days went by, and outside our apartment the City Inside became noisier and more Christmassy. Al came dashing in, clutching parcels and bags, excited and pleased with himself. Sometimes he went with Tillian, other times with Toaster, who privately told me that he was spending credits like there was no tomorrow. Al had never had so much money in his pocket before.

  He reminded me of my promise to go Christmas shopping with him. I’d been keen enough the night I came back and brought him a shirt and those scarves and cologne. The truth was, I no longer felt like it. It just didn’t feel like real Christmas to me.

  Tillian came to our apartment one or two times, and I watched her warily. Just to check that nothing crazy went on with her eyes. I listened hard for that tell-tale giggling.

  A creeping thought obsessed me in the run-up to Christmas. Could human beings from Victorian times have mated with Martians? Could their descendents be living here today? Most of the time they were normal. But sometimes – just sometimes – when the light caught them strangely or when they were turning on you with sinister intent … you could see it in their eyes. You could see who they were underneath. Neither human nor Martian. But something worse than both.