Lost on Mars

by Paul Magrs

  I felt very peculiar. It was as if the metal floor was opening up underneath me. No, not beneath my feet. The floor of my mind was dropping away. I squeezed my eyes tight shut and experienced a horrible sensation of suspension. I was teetering above a dark chasm.

  Down there, whole worlds were whirling. They were green and blue and crimson and gold.

  Sudden, vivid flashes of light came at me through the dark. I could see Martha and George, the golden-eyed burden beasts as they toiled up a sand dune. I saw all my family out in the fields. There was Hannah, only three, wearing a headscarf, trying to help out. I saw Al. He and I were in Adams’ Emporium, breathing in the excitement of stealing exotic goods. I watched his tamed lizard bird wheeling gracefully in the air. I could see Grandma and Aunt Ruby, drunk as Jack Rabbits on prairie wine, laughing together at some old, old joke.

  And I saw the wilderness, reaching out for thousands of miles in every direction. Here came the Martian Ghosts dancing after us in their long scarves, pricking the shadows with their spiky limbs. Their purple eyes were swirling, dizzy with greed.

  At last I saw Sook, my friend, drifting down through the blue night vapours to meet me in secret…

  How long all this went on for I didn’t know. I was held wriggling above the abyss and still those brightly coloured worlds spun beneath me. They looked like old Earth and Mars and the crimson globe in the churchy room of the queen of lizards. The globe that Toaster once believed held the whole of the City Inside…

  Soon I was feeling weaker. The worlds below were exerting a dreadful gravity. I was using my willpower to stay afloat, at the top of my mind, still conscious. But at any moment I could drop into that cauldron of noisy memories and flashing pictures.

  Then – with a shock – I woke up.

  There was a ripping noise and a sudden sharp pain and a smell like burning chops. I felt what must have been a mild electric shock. Awareness of the bright metal room around me returned all at once, in a flash. Peter was standing there. He looked scared, with a tangle of wires and electrodes in both clenched hands.

  ‘I haven’t killed you, have I?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I grinned.

  ‘I thought I should disconnect you,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  A rush of questions leapt out of me. ‘Where’s the Dean? How did you get in here? What have you done? You must have ruined his machine…!’

  ‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘Do you feel all right?’ He helped me off the bench and I swayed dizzily. I suddenly felt sick, deep in my gut, like I used to get if I had to sit in the back of the hovercart for too long.

  ‘I’m OK. Where’s the old man?’

  ‘You were in here alone. They left you plugged in. You’ve been in here for over an hour. I came looking and saw you through the window, there.’

  ‘It was so weird, Peter. Like someone was staring straight into my mind…’

  ‘Yeah, well. I’ve put a stop to it.’

  I grabbed his arm. ‘Did you leave Karl outside?’

  He nodded quickly. ‘We have to get back to him. The snow was really coming down hard.’

  One of the Dean’s assistants came back in behind the glass partition. She gave a panicked cry when she saw I’d been revived. Next thing, alarms were going off and lights were flashing.

  ‘We have to run,’ Peter said. ‘Are you up to that?’

  ‘Of course!’ I was incredibly grateful to him. God knows what would have become of me, hooked up to that Remembering thing.

  Panicked academics or lab assistants tried to get in our way, but we pushed them aside and ran for our lives.

  They would have drained my mind away to nothing. Like opening a can or juicing an orange. They’d have squished everything useful out of me and thrown the rubbish away.

  Department security almost got us as we hurtled across the foyer of the archive building. A man in body armour even pulled out what looked like a gun. Peter pointed a finger at me and shouted, ‘You hurt her and there’ll be hell to pay. She’s a valuable specimen. I must take her to the Dean at once – so stand aside!’

  I felt like laughing at Peter’s commanding tone. The startled guard and the floss-haired receptionist fell back obediently to let us through. It seemed so easy! To answer so-called authority back with a dose of their own bullying.

  Peter cackled and bundled me through the glass doors. Now we just had to pick up Karl and untie his leash and…

  Peter stood stock still before the spot where his cat-dog had been tethered. We both stared at the rumpled, hairy blanket, which was now almost wholly covered in wet pink snow.

  Karl was gone.

  39

  Student protesters were arriving to occupy the quad between the glass towers. The whole place was busier, and with a crush of starved bodies all around us, we couldn’t look properly for Karl.

  ‘He’ll be crushed underfoot,’ Peter shouted, looking distraught. ‘He won’t know what to do, Lora. This is a place he doesn’t know, and…’

  I examined his lead, which had been left tangled on his blanket. It wasn’t chewed or broken. Someone had cut through it with a blade.

  Snow was dropping more heavily and we grew desperate in our search. We hunted in the alleyways and shrouded corners, hoping he might have crawled away to shelter.

  ‘He can’t even get very far on his own legs,’ Peter said. ‘You know him. He can barely support himself.’

  We tried to get back into the Department of True Life Stories, banging on the plate glass, to ask the receptionist if she had seen anything. It was a long shot and she didn’t even appear to notice us. When we banged at other official-looking doors around the square, the people inside turned up their noses at us.

  ‘Oh God, Lora,’ Peter said. ‘He depended on me for everything. He trusted me absolutely. I was going to look after him forever…’

  I tugged on Peter’s arm. ‘We’ll find him.’

  ‘We can’t though, can we? We’ll never find him. Just look at this place.’

  It was fully dark now and the student radicals were building tall fires in metal bins and gathering noisily around them. A feeling of angry discontent and danger was rife in the air. We went up to some of the less-frightening ones and asked about Peter’s cat-dog. The students shook their heads and treated us as if we were ridiculous. What did they care about someone’s lost pet?

  But I knew how much Karl meant to Peter.

  ‘He’s all I’ve got, Lora, on this whole planet. He’s the only one I’ve got to care for.’ Tears were streaming down his face and they were starting to freeze.

  I thought: we all need someone to love. My tired thoughts were coming in little blips like this. Obvious, perhaps, but they seemed like huge, important thoughts just then. We need someone to depend on us. We need them to need us. In recent times I had had Al to look after, but he was grown now. He was his own man. Without him and Toaster, what would I be in this City Inside? If there was just me to think about would I come unstuck? I think I might lose my mind.

  Toaster had both of us to look after, too. I believed he loved us in his own way. He was someone else dear to us who was missing. I didn’t know when or if we’d ever see him again.

  It was the day before Christmas Eve in the City Inside and disaster had struck. We had come loose from each other – the few folk I knew and cared about – and now we were lost.

  ‘Karl! Karl!’ Peter was shouting, sounding desperate. His voice was just one among many ragged voices calling out in the quadrangle. Others were shouting for freedom of imagination and thought, freedom from dogma and debt. Others were crying for food and somewhere to sleep. But right then nothing seemed to matter as much as the fate of that tangled-up cat-dog belonging to Peter.

  It was some hours before he would leave the university buildings. I told him we could return tomorrow and resume the search. It would do Karl no good if we both caught pneumonia tramping about the streets, soaked to the skin and freezing.


  ‘Yes, yes, you’re right,’ Peter said. He was white-faced with worry.

  And, as luck would have it, just as we’d decided to head home we witnessed something very strange indeed.

  We left the quad via a side street we’d already explored. It was the route back to the nearest Pipeline station and our way out of Ruskin District. We were both plodding along, numb with exposure to the elements and heartsick with fear.

  A shiny carriage stood at the side entrance to the Department of True Life Stories. Lights were dimming inside the building – it was after 10pm by now. The glass doors opened and we heard a familiar, cultivated voice calling good night to the security men. Peter and I shrank into the shadows of the iron fences, crouching in the dirty snow. Here came Dean Swiftnick, hurrying down the steps to his carriage, in a tall hat and a heavy cloak. A driver sat atop the vehicle, flexing his whip in readiness, and the stately green horses were whickering softly, eager to be off, now that their master was here.

  Peter and I both saw that he was carrying a small cage containing a dark, lumpy shape. A shape that gave a distinctive mewing woof we both knew very well.

  Before we could dash into the street to prevent him, that hateful academic was inside his carriage and crying out to the driver to set off at once. In a jingling and rumbling and clattering of hooves, they were gone – sizzling through the scarlet ice and snow.

  Peter and I turned to stare at each other. We could both still hear Karl’s pitiful cries. Had he seen us? Had he sensed that we were close by? Perhaps the cat-dog had even caught our scents.

  ‘He’s been kidnapped,’ Peter said, his voice hoarse. ‘That old monster has stolen him away!’

  But at least we knew that Karl was relatively safe, I kept saying, as we jumped on the Pipeline home, back to Stockpot District. Swiftnick hadn’t harmed him. The old man had stolen him in order to have a hold over Peter and me. He was a wily old devil.

  Peter glanced at me as if he was wishing that he and his best friend had never offered to accompany me that day. He covered up that look with a hopeful smile.

  When we got back to Stockpot and our tower block he reclaimed his harp from the locker in the empty Downstairs Market. I told him to come to our apartment on Storey 202 to get warmed through and have something to eat. He was silent and shivering as we rode the elevator upstairs.

  When we got to the apartment he glanced around appreciatively. ‘Look at this place. And the Authorities just gave this to you and your brother?’

  I nodded. ‘Should I have been more suspicious?’

  ‘I think maybe you should have been.’ He moved to the vast greenish window and gazed at the City spread out below. There was a blizzard going on down there. Great flurries of rose-coloured snow were blowing through the canyons.

  ‘You’d best sleep on our sofa,’ I said. ‘No need for you to trek all the way to your Den tonight.’

  He didn’t put up much of a fight. He went off to take a hot shower, which he said was a massive luxury. While I waited for him, I hunted in the kitchen for food that I could quickly heat up. I found everything orderly and spotlessly clean, just as Toaster always left it. I gave myself a swift talking to: there was no use getting overcome with sadness and all that. I needed to think. I needed to be practical. Otherwise I wouldn’t be of any help to anyone, would I?

  Peter rejoined me wearing a heavy blue jumper and some loose house pants that were big enough and not too girly. I made him coffee in the fancy pot and suggested we have some soup Toaster had left. It wouldn’t take long to heat up.

  Peter looked at me searchingly as I got on with this. ‘They’re really after you, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘I look at you, and you’re just you. But there’s like this net, all around you, and it’s closing in. Someone is tightening it…’

  I knew he was right. I had felt like that ever since we’d arrived in the City Inside and were given this marvellous place to live. Nothing ever came for free. ‘I’m just glad that I’ve made a good friend here,’ I told him.

  There was a key scraping in the front door and lots of happy, clattering noise. Al was home, bringing bag-loads of Christmas shopping and a breathless Tillian Graveley in tow. They were both covered in feathery snow and laughing about something.

  As he flung off his smart coat Al greeted the ragged Peter like a long-lost friend. I suppose I had mentioned Peter once or twice in recent weeks. I explained about the missing Karl, prompting sympathetic noises from both Al and his girlfriend.

  The dishing up of Toaster’s vegetable soup led to another explanation – how Toaster had been taken away. He had been tricked and stolen and was currently in danger.

  Tillian looked sceptical and Al gave a nervous laugh. ‘Oh, come now, Lora. You’re just being paranoid and silly, surely. You know he’s had problems with his memory circuits.’ I watched Al glance at Tillian for back-up. I felt a flash of anger, realising that they must have discussed me. Al asked, ‘Why would the university want to kidnap Grandma’s old sunbed…?’

  My face burned to hear him dismiss my fears and Toaster himself. Toaster was our oldest and most loyal friend.

  ‘But why would they kidnap a harmless creature like Karl, either?’ Peter said, more rudely than I think he meant to. ‘They want your sister’s memories, that’s why. The Uni and Dean Swiftnick are working for the City Authorities, I bet you…’

  Exasperated, my brother turned to his girlfriend. She looked amazed, and not very pleased at all. ‘Lora,’ she said, sternly. ‘It sounds to me rather as if you’ve been hanging around with radicals and anarchists.’

  I glared at her. ‘I’ll hang about with who I want to, Tillian Graveley. And I’ll say and think what I want to, thanks very much.’

  She grumbled and muttered at this, delicately finishing her soup. I suddenly thought that we should have been more careful, telling our tales in front of this girl. She was, of course, involved with the Authorities. Her father owned The City Insider. Peter and I should have waited till she was gone before saying anything at all.

  Al swerved neatly into small talk. ‘Where is it you come from, Peter? Where do you live?’ He was checking him out, looking at him from top to toe. I realised my brother was turning out to be a snob.

  Naturally Peter didn’t tell them that he lived at the Den. He was used to keeping that stuff under his hat. He just told Al that he lived in the Eventide District.

  ‘Oh!’ Al burst out. ‘I must tell you, Lora. Today we were shopping in that very district, where they have the most extravagant Christmas displays. Tillian has been most generous. She’s been buying us wonderful presents.’

  ‘That’s very kind of her,’ I smiled. I started to gather in the used dishes.

  ‘But, listen, Lora. In one particular store I saw the most astonishing thing. I saw the Homestead, Lora! Our Homestead on the prairie! Exact in every way. A child’s toy, a play-set … but it was unbelievable. I saw our lives – everything we thought we’d lost – and they were all in miniature…’

  40

  Later, when I was alone, I thought about what Al had described. He had talked as if he’d found something unexpected and amusing; something I would find interesting.

  But I was starting to feel alarmed.

  He and Tillian had been in a lavish toy department. The most famous in all the City Inside. Tillian had told Al, ‘I know that the childhood you and Lora had was very poor and deprived. It sounds so harsh, the time that you lived on the prairie…’

  And so she had taken him to the fairy grotto that she remembered from her own childhood. It was a fantasy-land, crammed with every toy imaginable. Laughing, she described how Al had regressed to childhood in there. His eyes had bugged out and he had wandered around that Christmas wonderland in a daze, peering at space rockets, teddies and gingerbread houses.

  And then he had seen the elaborate playset representing our Homestead on the crimson prairies of Mars.

  ‘There were scarlet dunes and neat rows of blue corn. Fa
rmers and green burden beasts all carved beautifully out of wood, working in those fields. And in the middle, a two-storey dolls’ house. A rather primitive building, with sides that opened out. I cried to see it, for it was our family home all in meticulous detail, Lora. The family were all at work – three children and a stooped grandmother. They were hauling water from the well and feeding chickens. The bulky Servo-Furnishing was doing some heavy work on the barn. And there was a mother cleaning pots with red sand in the kitchen, and a father at the table. Just like ours. He was looking at a tiny folding map.

  ‘It was all so like us, Lora. I felt all my memories stirring up. Things I had thought I could no longer see or taste or feel. But just standing there in the toy department, where it was all noisy and unreal … I felt like I was floating through the skies above our past and looking down upon us all and how we used to live.’

  ‘But how?’ I burst out. ‘How is it possible? They don’t know us here, do they? They don’t know anything about where we came from, or how we lived at the Homestead. They don’t really know anything about us…’

  Al shrugged and Tillian smiled indulgently at her boyfriend. His eyes were all bright with delightful memories. I felt a horrible chill stealing over me. The Authorities know everything about us, I thought.

  After Tillian left, Al went excitedly to bed (‘Christmas Eve tomorrow!’) and Peter went off to the bathroom. I suspected he was keen to use the shower again, getting the most out of its novelty. He was putting on a very brave face, I knew. He’d been quietly irritated by all our chatter about toyshops and the like. All he could think about was what might be happening to Karl. Was he safe? Was he terrified? Had someone fed him? I patted his arm as if he were the pet, telling him, ‘Tomorrow we’ll get right back onto the search. We’ll get him back.’