People of Mars

by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

  The air was impregnated by an evident sexual tension, a complicity Anna had already seen many times between the two of them during the journey on the Isis and then during the many months of their stay on the planet. When she had talked about it with Robert, he had told her she could see intrigues everywhere and made fun of her. Michelle was used to getting very close to both men and women, even more so since they lived within a small community, which had become family over time. But now, faced with such a blatant situation, not even he could deny the obvious.

  Michelle laughed again, placed a hand on her head and started rolling a lock of hair with her fingers. Hassan moved away a bit to look her in the eye. It was her turn to speak. He was the one listening to her with attention now; he almost hung on her words. Anna was unable to hear what they were saying. They were using a very low tone and were in the other side of the room. But, despite that, she could not stop watching them, while little by little she was assailed by a mix of rage and sadness, which prevented her thinking in a lucid way. She couldn’t decide whether to interrupt them or just walk away. She didn’t know which of the two would have hurt her less.

  In the end it wasn’t her business. Who cared? Yet she cared.

  All at once, as if he knew she was there, Hassan raised his gaze. He didn’t seem perturbed to see her. There wasn’t the least astonishment on his face. He kept on listening to Michelle and brushing against her hair with his fingers. But he looked at Anna, with a half-smile.

  Feeling caught out she lowered her head, guilty, and ran away.

  “Why are you still here? Aren’t you hungry?”

  Robert had appeared at the laboratory door, but Anna almost didn’t react to his words. Her stomach was closed and the last thing she wanted was to spend her time staring at the kitchen wall, while chewing some insipid food. And thinking. So she had returned to her domain, she had donned her white coat and had started to work on the samples right away. She wasn’t required to leave the station tomorrow, so she could stay up until late that evening.

  She was preparing a tiny portion on the sample taken from the crack, to observe it under the microscope, located inside a Plexiglas sterile unit that had a similar internal atmosphere to the Martian one. Handling glassware by means of the rubber gloves protruding into that big transparent box wasn’t an easy task and required a huge amount of concentration. The risk of altering the material with the air in the station, or contaminating it with the bacteria they’d brought from Earth on their bodies was high; therefore before she could watch it closely and touch it with her own hands, she wanted to analyse all its properties in an environment not too different from where she had collected it.

  While moving it under the artificial light, the azure reflections had started dancing before her eyes. It was an optical effect of extraordinary beauty. Those points were so small, scattered on the surface of the stone. According to the analyser, it was a crystal containing beryllium, whose azure colour was due to a high concentration of iron. In short, it was common aquamarine. What made it peculiar were the tiny dimensions of the crystals and their arrangement that formed separated, round stains of various size, which sometimes merged. They reminded her of something she knew well, but the theory did not fit the context where they took the sample.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you,” Anna murmured, trying not to perform abrupt movements, while placing the slide under the lens. “I’m busy now.”

  “Look, those stones were out there for millions of years, they won’t get offended if you let them wait for another half an hour.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Right now, she just wasn’t in the mood for playing around.

  “Come on, Sister, at least keep me company. Don’t send me there alone. What if I meet them? I guess I wouldn’t be able to hold back the laughter. At least, if I am with you, I can pretend I’m laughing at you!”

  And, goodbye concentration. Anna raised her frowning look at Robert, hoping that this way he would understand she didn’t really fancy joking about.

  “Perhaps we misunderstood, after all they were just talking,” he continued in full flow. “Truth be told, I’m not even quite sure of what I saw.”

  “I am,” she replied, curt, while slipping her hands out of the gloves. Then she activated the wide screen installed on the wall in front of her. At first, the image of the sample was as it appeared visible to the naked eye. By moving a finger on her folio, Anna put one of the small, azure crystals in the middle of the field and zoomed in. As the image entered the crystal, the latter seemed to break up in smaller, separated pieces. “What the …”

  “What are we looking at?” Robert came closer to her, intrigued.

  “One of those glitters on the rock sample taken from the crack.” She ensured she was recording all that was displayed on the screen. “From the analyser it turned out this is what you commonly call aquamarine … but it’s strange. I thought each of them was a single crystal, maybe small, but single. But it isn’t the case.”

  “They’re a lot of pieces, so tiny.”

  “Correct.” She kept on zooming in gradually. “They aren’t just tiny, they are microscopic.” She moved to one of the microcrystals and zoomed up to the maximum optical magnification. As it became bigger, that mineral formation acquired an even more elongated shape.

  “Oh, Christ …” was his comment.

  Anna, instead, stared at the screen, incredulous, wondering whether she was dreaming. The image before her was a rod-shaped structure, inside of which were many small, azure microcrystals arranged in a uniform way.

  “Hey, guys, you were late.” Michelle burst into the room, drawing their attention on her. “Have you found something in—” Her words trailed off as she saw the screen.

  “Michelle, do you see what I see? Or am I hallucinating?” Anna asked, as she resumed watching the subject of her study. She wasn’t really in the mood to look at her face in that moment, but it was also true that her scientific expertise could come in handy.

  “Where did you take it?” The geologist, or better areologist, as she liked to define herself, moved as close as possible to the screen. “Which magnification is it?” she asked after some seconds of silence, during which she had stared open-mouthed at the image.

  “That thing is ten micron long. And those points you see inside it are microcrystals of beryllium and iron.” Although she tried to hide it, Anna’s voice betrayed a certain amount of excitement.

  “Wait, Anna, let’s not jump to hasty conclusions now.” Michelle turned to her colleague with a grave tone. Their eyes met just for a moment. Anna was the first one to look away.

  Robert let a chuckle escape, which he hastened to transform into coughing, thus earning a nasty look from his friend. Both had linked that statement to something else.

  The other woman observed them with curiosity then, with a professional attitude, resumed examining the enlarged image. “At first glance, it would actually seem to be a fossil bacterium, but how have beryllium crystals ended up inside it?” She turned to Anna again, with a slight smile, in which the latter couldn’t help but glimpse arrogance. “It is surely a mineral formation that resembles something else, that’s all … sure, the fact that the crystals are so dispersed, instead of being aggregated together, is odd and deserves a careful study.”

  She had much to say for someone who didn’t wish to jump to hasty conclusions. It almost seemed she wanted to close that business as soon as possible, even though her words meant the exact opposite.

  Without replying, Anna zoomed out one-step at a time, thus showing the many rod-shaped structures that grouped together to form a big azure stain, located beside other stains of various sizes. “Yet this arrangement strongly reminds me of the colonial growth of bacteria.” It was far too evident and Michelle could not deny it.

  The silence was at once interrupted by the sound of broken glass, which made the two women turn.

  “Holy Christ!” Robert exclaimed. At his feet was
one of the sealed vials, drawn by means of the sampler from inside the crack, and it had shattered in a thousand pieces. Many tiny stones had scattered on the floor, projected by their fall, whilst a thin film of red dust was settling and forming a wide patch. “Sorry, Sister, I was so absorbed looking at that colonial stuff, or whatever the hell it is, that I bumped the counter.” He crouched down. “I’ll clean up, don’t worry.”

  Michelle started laughing.

  “Rob, let it go,” Anna said. “I’ll take care of it later.” Luckily, they had extracted a one-metre core from the ground, so nothing important had been lost.

  “Ah.” Robert pulled back his hand. “Goddamned glass.”

  “I told you to let it go.”

  “You’re right, Mom,” he replied, imitating a childish voice.

  But some blood was copiously dripping from his fingers, while he was standing up. “Let me see,” Michelle stepped in, getting closer to him. “You’ve cut yourself, wash it under the tap.” And she headed for the laboratory’s emergency kit.

  “Sister, you sure I won’t get landed with tetanus or something like that in this dust?” He was sniggering, while letting water flow on his hand. He was playing the fool, as usual.

  “At least of this, yes, I’m sure,” Anna said with a fake reproachful tone. “Whatever that stuff we’ve found is, if it ever was alive, that happened million years ago. And it surely isn’t Clostridium tetani.”

  “Let me see.” Michelle was back with a swab soaked in disinfectant and had unceremoniously grabbed Robert’s hand, to check his wound.

  “Ouch!”

  “It’s a deep cut. It’s better that I take you to Hassan to let him put in some stitches.” She wrapped up his finger with a gauze bandage. “Press here. Let’s go.” And she dragged him towards the door.

  Robert turned to Anna a moment before they left. “She takes me to Hassan.” And he winked at her.

  Once she was alone, Anna’s smile disappeared.

  One of the things he couldn’t stand about Mars was the utter darkness during the night. When the external lights of Station Alpha were turned off and everybody went to sleep, just a single, immense gloominess remained out there. Yes, you could see thousands of stars from your window, especially if you stayed long enough to allow your pupils to dilate at their maximum to gather that little light coming from the sky. But it was not sufficient. Deimos almost mingled with them. Phobos, instead, when over the horizon, moved too much in a rush. It looked like a foreign, artificial object.

  He was missing the Moon. He was even missing light pollution. Who would’ve thought it? The dark oppressed him, disoriented him. That entire world, which all looked the same, didn’t give any reference even during the day. He didn’t even know in which direction he should pray. In the beginning he had used the position of Earth, but in the end it seemed nonsense to him. So he had pretended to be still there and had oriented eastward. Then, without realising it, he started skipping some prayers. He had vowed to himself to respect Ramadan and he had done that, until he had completely lost the sense of the Earth time. After one thousand sols on Mars, you get used to months with the name of constellations, double-lasting years and seasons. Inexorably you realise that certain conventions lose their meaning and in the end, what remains without them?

  At night, when he took refuge in his quarters and lay down on his bed, immersed in a darkness that was interrupted only by the blue LED of the life support sensor, in those moments his faith wavered, but just for that brief time between wakefulness and sleep.

  He realised he had fallen asleep only when a noise awoke him. Or was it maybe a dream? With reluctance, Hassan opened his eyes. A silhouette stood out against the glow of the LED. It was motionless, beside the bed, just a couple of steps from him. As he made it out, he started.

  “Sshh …”

  He swallowed, letting his heart, hastened by fright, calm down. It was happening again. He sat up slowly, but he knew the blue light would reveal any move of his.

  Who knew how long she had been watching him in silence?

  He reached out towards the lamp switch, but another, quicker hand moved to his.

  “No, no light.” Nothing more than a whisper.

  That touch, that voice took his breath away. He stretched out his other hand, grabbed her by her waist with both, and dragged her to his bed. She followed him docilely, removed the blanket and climbed on him. In the half-light, he saw her taking her dressing gown off. She wasn’t wearing anything else under it. Then he felt her hands running on his chest, the taste of her mouth, the warmth of her body.

  Perhaps he was dreaming, but he had no desire to wake up.

  While he explored her skin, he could envisage her features illuminated by the sun. The scent of her hair reminded him the way it fell on her shoulders.

  “I missed you,” he dared to murmur, but she welcomed him inside her almost at once, like a stormy sea. And there weren’t any more words, but only whispers, warmth, humours, pleasure.

  He was already falling into the drowsiness that follows passion, when he perceived her body withdraw. He tried to stop her, but that skin, beaded with perspiration, slipped away from him in a moment.

  “Anna, wait!”

  He reached the switch, but when the light turned on, she wasn’t there anymore.

  4

  Walking in the corridor, Hassan was checking on his folio the acknowledgement of receipt by Houston of his medical reports and of those concerning the sorties. The message icon was blinking on the top of the display. The excessive communication delay between Mars and Earth didn’t allow the crew members to navigate on the global terrestrial internet in real time, but they could perform deferred activities, like sending or receiving private messages. Letting his finger slip on the thin device’s screen, he started browsing his emails, until he found one from his brother. A stab of nostalgia grasped his heart as he remembered the family he would never see again.

  In that moment, he heard cheerful chatter coming from the kitchen. Anna’s voice stood out over the others. A joke, a laugh. Hassan turned his attention to the origin of the sounds, foretasting the upcoming challenge, then he folded his folio and put it in his pocket. His brother could wait, for now.

  “Here you are!” Dennis welcomed him energetically. “We were getting worried. You’re usually the first one to wake up.” There was something out of place in the commander, but he couldn’t focus on it because his gaze was drawn elsewhere.

  “Do you like it this way?” Robert said, standing behind Anna’s chair and massaging her shoulders.

  “Oh, yeah, I do,” she replied, voluptuous, closing her eyes in approval. “You’re fantastic.”

  Hassan tensed up. He could feel the blood pulsing in his head. He placed a hand on his temple. The game had started over again, but with different rules.

  “Today you stay, Dennis will accompany me.” He didn’t understand right away that Michelle was talking to him, until he concentrated his attention upon her.

  “What?” So that was out of place: Dennis was wearing the clothing for a sortie.

  “I wanna be there, when we reach the sac, so I can report immediately to Houston,” the commander said with a wide smile on his face. “It could be the solution to all our problems.”

  Finally Hassan realised the meaning of those words. “Are you sure?” he asked, uncertain, meeting Michelle’s darkened gaze. She stepped back and slightly shook her head, rolling her eyes and twirling a lock of hair with her right index finger.

  That behaviour wouldn’t have escaped Anna. He could sense her irritated look on him.

  “We can keep in contact all the time, there’s no need for you to go in person.” He was insisting a bit too much, but he didn’t care right now.

  With an abrupt gesture, Anna pushed away her plate. The fork tinkling resounded in the room, breaking the embarrassing silence, followed by the tapping of her hasty steps as she left.

  “I’m perfectly able to manage this sortie
,” Dennis replied, annoyed. “And anyway, until proven otherwise, I’m the one in charge here. Consider it an order.”

  “Okay.” Hassan raised both his hands in resignation. “You are the boss.”

  “The west Aeolian turbine has suffered a huge drop in performance compared to the east one.” Dennis was addressing Robert. “Take advantage of Hassan’s availability to go out together and see what’s wrong.”

  Robert snapped on his feet, saluting. “Yes, Sir,” he exclaimed, then he burst into coarse laughter.

  What had she done?! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The laboratory door slammed, Anna leant against it. She nervously dried a tear with her palm.

  The previous night, after seeing Michelle and Hassan together, she allowed her pride to lead her actions. She hadn’t reasoned. She had wanted to take control of the situation, flattering herself that she could change things. And now, she had been humiliated.

  After all, she deserved that. She had always known that that man was venom. So many times her mother had told her to stay away from those like him. They make you feel so marvellously wrong that it seems right, for a few brief moments. Then they use you, they frighten you, and they throw you away. You are just a woman. She hated him, was afraid of him, deplored each gesture of his, each word from him, and yet she couldn’t help but think about him.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  Seated on the floor, with her shoulders against the door, she looked for an answer, as she watched the long morning light piercing through the glass wall and reaching her feet. A single brilliant surface, so even, except for an irregularity, precisely over there under the microscope counter. In the greenhouse, on the other side of the glass, the foliage of a plant, shaken by the air from the life support fans, made the sun rays ripple, revealing a thousand tiny, blue reflections.