“That thing looks pretty far away,” Viola said after a few quiet minutes. “I’d say more than an hour, even at the speed he’s going. How long does it usually take to reach the horizon?”
“The eye-level to sea-level horizon on Earth is around an hour’s walk at a leisurely pace,” Robert said, slightly quickening his own pace to draw level with them. “But, naturally, elevation changes that greatly; looking up at or down from a mountain, for example, you could see a lot further.”
“And the moon’s horizon would appear twice as close as Earth’s,” Holly said, “so without knowing the size of this place we can’t really tell. But even if it takes us a few hours to reach the mound, that would be fine. The sun hasn’t moved much; definitely not enough to suggest it’ll be pitch dark anytime soon.”
Bo’s voice, now coming from slightly less than twenty paces ahead, interrupted Holly’s thoughts: “Guys, guys! I found something on the ground!”
Everyone rushed to reach him.
“What is it?” Viola asked, keeping pace with Holly.
“I don’t know… but it’s made of metal.”
eleven
“Don’t touch it,” Holly yelled as she rushed to see what Bo had found.
“I wasn’t going to!”
She arrived and crouched down. The thin piece of metal was no more than a few inches long and lay beyond Bo’s furthest footprints, indicating that he hadn’t uncovered it by disturbing the dust.
“It’s ours,” Holly said after a very brief inspection. “From the underside of the lander. There’s a lot going on when these old landers get ready for touchdown; a lot of different stages and a lot of vibration. We might find bigger pieces than this.”
Everyone accepted the answer.
“From now on we walk together,” Robert announced.
Holly nodded in support, glad that he was getting involved.
The group proceeded shoulder by shoulder, walking in silence until Viola unexpectedly addressed a question to Bo: “You don’t think any of this has anything to do with that Nibiru thing, do you?”
“What Nibiru thing?” Holly butted in.
“I paid him to write a physics essay for me about some made-up planet,” Viola explained. “I didn’t know it was made-up until I got an F and the teacher said it would have been an A for creative writing.”
“You paid him to write an essay?” Robert scolded. He then turned to Bo. “And you took the money?”
“It wasn’t much,” Bo said. “But anyway, the basic idea was that all the crop failures and natural disasters might have been caused by a hidden planet passing close to Earth.”
Two hours ago, Holly would have dismissed such a theory out of hand. Now, though, she took it seriously enough to focus on specific holes. One in particular jumped to the front of her mind: “What about its gravity? If it passed close enough to affect Earth, scientists would have known all about it.”
“Something could be, I don’t know, cancelling out the external gravity,” Bo said, shrugging in acknowledgement that he didn’t know much about the terms he was using or even whether they were the right ones. “Maybe the same forcefield that makes it invisible? Or maybe not. I didn’t say anything about gravity being what caused the problems. It could have been magnetic interference, or maybe some kind of interference we don’t even know about yet. Because there are a lot of things we don’t know about.”
“You can say that again,” Holly said. The idea of an external force causing the famine didn’t exactly fit with Bo’s mother’s well-publicised discovery that the catastrophic famine appeared to have been deliberately engineered, but she admired his inquisitiveness. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Eleven.”
Holly said nothing. Before learning how well-spoken and deep-thinking Bo was, she had previously assumed him to be around eight and would have been less surprised to hear him say six.
“Tell her the other thing, too,” Viola said, nudging Bo’s shoulder. “About the interview.”
Holly was all ears.
“I don’t know how much this means,” Bo said, “or even if it means anything, but it is kind of weird. We covered Devastation Day in my history class a few months ago, and before the topic started I looked at V’s old stuff to get an idea of what we’d be covering.”
“He’s a nerd,” Viola tossed in.
“Shut up! So anyway, her textbook had a video about the attack at the MXA space base. You know, Morrison Astronautics, where he built all his prototypes and everything? But then when I watched the same video in my own textbook once it got updated with the class material, part of the video had changed.”
Holly had already been interested; now, she was absorbed. “Which part?”
“An interview,” Bo said. “In V’s textbook, a security guy says there was a warning call an hour before it happened. But in my textbook, there’s a new interview with the same guy and he says the warning came ten minutes before it happened. If you were the guy who took that call, how could you forget? And why did they reshoot that interview but none of the others?”
They were good questions. It was good information. If the GU’s Education Board really was tampering with textbooks to make slight adjustments in the narrative, that spoke to the likelihood of further attempts to actively spread disinformation.
“There are two more things I don’t like,” Bo said, reading Holly’s face and taking the opportunity to empty his mind of the thoughts.
A lot of theories were coming out at once, but Holly was keen to hear everything and try to isolate the parts which made some kind of sense. “Go on…”
“Years before anything happened, Morrison invested in a firm that was working on weather manipulation. Like, for military stuff. And this was more than just cloud-seeding or anything like that. The thing I read said this was about catastrophe-level storms and earthquakes. Tectonic induction, or something. Fast-forward ten years and there are disasters all over the place. Then fast-forward again and suddenly Morrison is in charge. I’m just saying.”
“What’s the other thing?” Robert asked, surprising everyone with his non-dismissive tone. Bo’s theories couldn’t all be true — the disasters couldn’t have been caused by both interplanetary interference and terrestrial weather manipulation — but they were certainly food for thought.
“It’s a quote from Morrison,” Bo said, “from his autobiography. Something about humans being parasites.”
Holly cleared her throat. “‘The great majority of humans are nothing more than parasites surviving on the fungus which grows in the shadow of giants.’ Was it that one?”
“Uh, yeah. Have you read that book, too?”
“No,” Holly said. “I just know how much of an asshole he really is.”
After a few minutes of steady progress with no further conversation, Robert gently touched Holly’s arm in an effort to slow her down. She caught on and slowed slightly until the two of them were far enough behind the children to be out of earshot.
“That’s the first I’ve heard about any of what he just said,” Robert explained. “What do you think?”
“About which part?”
“The textbook. What’s the implication? That Morrison destroyed his own facility?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past him,” Holly said. “Would you? I mean, I don’t want to be insensitive, but surely after what happened to Olivia you more than anyone know what he’s capable of?”
Robert nodded slightly; ruefully. “And what about the other thing? The idea of another planet — this one, I assume — causing problems on Earth. Do you think there’s anything in that?”
Holly shook her head. “I very much doubt it.”
“Good,” Robert said. “Because if there was a hidden planet that could harm people from that kind of distance, imagine what it would do to people who were actually on it…”
twelve
Just over an hour into an uneventful trek across an unrelentingly barren landscape, the gr
oup reached the base of the mound.
With Holly’s encouragement, Bo had amassed a small collection of metal fragments. Or, as he called them, “spaceship parts”.
Robert’s age came up during a time-passing conversation. Though it wasn’t quite as surprising as Bo’s, he was nonetheless one of the roughest 42s Holly had ever seen. His age would have made more sense listed beside the clean-shaven image on the forged travel card Holly and Dante had viewed several hours earlier, but that all felt like a distant dream.
When the opportunity presented itself, Holly quietly asked Robert about the situation with Bo’s medication and the potential shortage of syringes which Viola had been so concerned about when the lander separated from the Karrier. To Holly’s relief, Robert insisted that the syringe issue wasn’t a serious one and that Viola’s hysteria had been an understandable overreaction.
“I’ve always told them that we should never reuse his syringes,” the man said, “probably because that’s how I was brought up. But the equipment these days is so far beyond what we used to have; we could quite safely use the same one forever. As for the medication, I looked into it carefully and the station has a reasonable stock of everything Bo needs as well as the capacity to produce mass quantities. His condition isn’t a common one, but it’s not stupendously rare.”
Before Holly could push for details, Viola, who turned out to be a more easily believable 17, slightly changed her path to come within earshot.
The girl had remained largely silent throughout the walk so far. Holly didn’t want to condescend by suggesting anything like Bo’s metal-hunt to occupy Viola’s mind in defence against too many negative thoughts, but her silence was at times disconcerting.
This was why Holly was so pleased when Viola jumped into a new conversation in which she and Robert were discussing the Venus station.
“I heard the whole place smells amazing,” Viola said. “Like lavender. Bo read that somewhere and told me. Someone else said it in a video, too. Is it true?”
“I don’t know,” Holly replied. “I’ve never actually set foot inside.”
“What? Bo said you’ve been like ten times.”
“I’ve been to it a lot of times, but I’ve always stayed inside the Karrier when it docked.”
Viola’s expression asked “Why?” without the need for any vocalisation.
“My grandfather had this fancy watch,” Holly said, flipping back through pages of memories that hadn’t been read for many years. “He saw my dad looking at it one time when we visited, and he asked him if he wanted to try it on. I’ll never forget what my dad said. He said: ‘Thanks, John, but when I put on a watch like that, it’ll be because I’ve earned it.’ And that’s how I feel about the station. When I walk through that door to take my place on the station, I’ll have earned it.”
The girl looked like she understood.
“It was mainly that,” Holly said, a hint of a grin spreading across her face, “but it was partly because I knew that if I’d walked through the door, they would’ve had to drag me back on to the Karrier for the next cargo run.”
Viola laughed. “I get that. It’s like if I’m really tired and I have to finish studying or something. If I try to tell myself I’ll sleep for five minutes then get back to it, there’s no way I’m getting back to it.”
“Exactly,” Holly said. Exactly might have been a stretch, but it was close enough. She hadn’t exactly gotten off on the best foot with Viola, what with the whole forcefully tackling her through the lander’s partition door and bruising her collarbone thing, but that was all behind them. And even if relations weren’t yet as warm as Holly would like, she was glad that they had at least thawed.
Holly considered only then how completely her view of the Harringtons had changed over the course of the last several hours. When Robert and Viola had been Norman and Jessica Tanner, presumed husband and wife, Holly saw them as nothing more than another pair of hyper-rich passengers she wanted to deliver to the station and never see again. Now, on the other hand, she was personally and deeply invested in their safety.
“Don’t go too far ahead,” Robert called in response to Bo’s increasing pace as the summit neared.
Looking back in the direction they’d come revealed nothing other than how isolated their lander truly was. The mound no longer seemed anywhere near as high as Holly had thought from a distance. A horrible feeling built in her stomach as they approached the summit; a hunch that they would see nothing but nothing in every direction.
“I’ll catch up with him,” Viola said.
“Thanks,” Robert replied, but the excited tone in the girl’s voice told both Robert and Holly that she was rushing ahead out of eagerness to see what lay on the other side of the mound rather than merely to do her father a favour.
This excitement in Viola’s voice was nothing compared to the elation in the words she screamed from the summit with Bo by her side just thirty seconds later:
“Holly, Dad… hurry up! There’s someone coming!”
thirteen
“Why would there only be one person?” Robert asked, speaking only to Holly as they ran the rest of the way to catch up with the children at the top of the mound. “Why would they split up? There can’t be anyone else here, can there?”
“Of course there’s no one else here,” Holly reassured him, using a far less patient tone than she would have with Bo or Viola. “They split up for the same reason people always split up: to cover more ground.”
In truth, Holly was slightly surprised that the group from the other lander had split up. She knew that Yury was in no shape to trek anywhere and that Rusev would never leave him alone, which left Dante and Grav to look around. Dante would have been her preference, but none of that really mattered.
All that mattered to Holly was that her wristband and its four red-for-dead tracking dots had been proven wrong; because if someone was alive, they all were.
A few steps from the summit, Viola ran towards Holly with one hand outstretched and asked to borrow her binoculars. Holly handed them over.
But before Viola had even removed the binoculars from their protective case, Holly recognised the body shape of the approaching man and spoke to answer the question on everyone’s lips:
“It’s Grav.”
“Oh, thank God,” Robert said, breathing a very literal sigh of relief.
“Who’s Grav, again?” Viola asked.
Holly and Robert answered at the same time: “Goran.”
Viola’s face lit up. Bo punched the air as if celebrating a victory. Their previous experience with Grav — of his cooperation and agreement to keep Bo’s presence on the Karrier to himself — had clearly been endearing.
Holly was less enthused.
She had known Dante on Earth for far longer than she’d known Grav. And while Dante was the youngest of the three by the better part of a decade, he was also the most conservative and by-the-book. Dante’s lack of seniority meant that the decision to split up would definitely not have been his to make. Holly couldn’t help but worry about him; they remained closer than anyone else knew, if not as close as they once were, and she feared that he might walk an unsafe distance from the other lander in his effort to find her. With the sun maintaining its steady trajectory and with nothing to decisively indicate that the group’s first night on this alien planet would be a temperate one, Holly knew that isolation after sunset could prove fatal.
No part of Holly regretted running towards the Harringtons’ lander rather than Rusev’s, but she wished she’d been firmer with Dante and insisted that he follow her.
She couldn’t fairly hold against him his spur-of-the-moment decision to run for Rusev’s lander in the aftermath of the Karrier’s mysterious initial collision, understanding as she did why he decided that his primary duty of care was to Rusev and Yury rather than to two wealthy passengers. Had Dante known who Robert and Viola truly were, though, much less that they were travelling with another child, Holly felt confiden
t he would have been standing beside her now.
Though she still felt great relief that the rest of the group were alive and that someone had come to look for her, the vast canyon on the other side of the mound did no more to raise her spirits than the identity of the man who had traversed it.
In every direction, she saw nothing but more of the same reddish-brown dust and rock.
The mound Holly stood atop was no higher than the other side of the sloping canyon, but the developing theme of barren nothingness gave her little hope that anything better lay beyond it.
Holly then caught Bo glancing up at her. In reaction to an expression she took as a question as to why she didn’t look happier, she forced a smile and spoke: “Race you down?”
He was on his way before her mouth closed behind the challenge.
The closer Holly got to Grav, the rougher he looked. His face appeared irritated and roughly shaven; far more so than it had when she’d passed him in the Karrier’s corridor the previous day.
He was carrying the same kind of backpack as Holly, evidently loaded to bursting point. Grav was no tall man — barely taller than Holly and several inches shorter than Robert and Dante — but his broad shoulders and tree-trunk thighs were built for heavy loads. Whatever he had carried across the canyon, Holly knew it must have had some serious weight to it. But the visible sweat dripping from his face and neck then made her consider that the same body shape which formed the basis of Grav’s static strength wasn’t exactly ideal for travelling long distances in such arid conditions, with or without any extra weight, so she was now less sure about the heavy load theory than she had been moments earlier.
The first thing Holly had thought when Rusev introduced her to Grav was that he looked like a man who got into a lot of fights. He had two independent scars on his scalp. Both were prominently visible, and he kept his hair shaved short enough to ensure that this remained the case. He had more tattoos than bare skin on his hands, forearms and neck, and probably everywhere else, too. Dante had his own fair share of tattoos, but his flawless Mediterranean skin and careful attention to facial hair detail could hardly have put him more at odds with Grav’s ‘it is what it is’ indifference to surface-level presentation.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 6