The Captain's Harvest

by T. J. Land

  Venturing inside, they found a dozen translucent cylinders big enough for a man to stand in lining the walls. Brushing dust off one of them and peering inside, Zachery noted, “Hey, these look like the ones we saw back at the lab with the killer robots.”

  Rux nodded. “Indeed. Cloning tubes. Those who worked down here as researchers and priests were among our most brilliant minds, carefully handpicked from millions of applicants. When they found themselves in need of extra hands, they sometimes considered it more expedient to simply copy themselves rather than going through the arduous process of selecting new inductees.”

  Echo gazed at the tubes, thought of the vast dark cavern outside, and wondered what it must have been like to have been born into such surroundings. He considered asking Rux whether the clones would have ever been permitted to leave and decided against it.

  “Captain, can we take a break? My feet hurt and I’m thirsty as hell,” said Rick.

  Khurshed nodded. “Let’s stop for ten minutes and drink some water.”

  * * *

  Zachery wandered around the spartan lab, pausing to peer again at the cloning tubes and the wilderness of cables leading into them, before moving over to where Antoine was sitting crouched in a corner, scribbling in one of his notebooks.

  “This place makes my skin crawl,” he said, hunkering down next to him.

  “Don’t let Rux know. You might offend him.”

  Offering him some water, Zachery said quietly, “So, I’ve had a thought. Why can’t Khurshed use some of your pills?”

  “I don’t take the pills,” said Antoine, setting aside his notebook and accepting the canister.

  “Come off it, Ant. I worked it out. If you’ve been with him as long as you say you have, there’s no way you can be as young as you look.”

  “I’m seventy-nine. But I don’t use rejuvenation technology. I don’t need to. I was modified in the womb. My expected lifespan is around two hundred and fifty years.”

  Zachery inspected the graphs and sketches in Ant’s notebook to conceal his wrong-footedness.

  On the one hand: Yikes. Seventy-nine. No wonder he treats me like a bratty kid sometimes. On the other hand: So he’s going to stay this sexy for another century at least? Lucky me. And back on the first hand: Wow, this is all kinds of awkward. I’m from fucking Mars, and even I know how many Earth laws and social taboos that violates. His parents must have been disgustingly rich to get away with it.

  “Sorry,” he grunted after a lengthy pause. “Shouldn’t have stuck my nose in.”

  “I’m not ashamed of it. Nor proud, before you ask. My mother and father were…ambitious people, and they never cared much for legality. That said, I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell the others. Particularly Echo.”

  “I won’t. How come, though? He’s your best friend.”

  “He’s also from the Moon, where anyone who wasn’t modified prior to birth is a second-class citizen, where people like me treat people like him like animals. And there’s also the fact that I’ve been pushing for us to use cloning technology, technology that is used by the lunar government as a means of reducing the number of ‘defective’ children. You can see how it might look to him.”

  “He knows you’re not like that.”

  “I hope he does. I’ve never had many friends, Zachery. I don’t want to risk alienating my best one.”

  “Aaw. Have I found one of First Officer Prissypants’ soft spots?” Zachery teased. If it had been Thomas, he’d have hugged him or ruffled his hair. But Antoine preferred jibes to sympathy. It was one of many things Zachery had noticed they had in common.

  “Sod off and annoy someone else, you oaf.”

  To Zachery’s dismay, when they exited the lab they found even more goddamn stairs waiting for them. These were wider, thankfully, so they didn’t have to move forward one by one, and had carved into them curling patterns that made his eyes hurt if he looked at them for too long. Shining his torch downwards, he could make out a stretch of flat rock, similarly decorated.

  “The sacred courtyard,” said Rux, whispering now.

  It didn’t get any harder to breathe the deeper they went, but it did get damper and hotter. Zachery unzipped his suit and then took off the top half altogether. The others did the same, to his lip-licking gratification, except for Echo, who always seemed to prefer to stay covered up for some reason. When they stepped off the final stair, Rux knelt down and said a few words in his language with his head bowed. Rising, he told them, “Take as much as you can carry, but please be careful not to leave any marks on the rocks.”

  “Aw, and I was gonna carve our initials in a heart,” Zachery murmured to Antoine and received a smack on his arm.

  The fungus itself was a deep maroon colour and grew across the courtyard floor in clumps connected to one another by thick pink tendrils, kind of like a colony of fat starfish. Seeing how much of it there was, Zachery realized they could have brought twice as many containers and still not really made much of a dent.

  When his own container was almost full, Thomas said, “Anyone hear that?”

  Zachery cocked an ear. From somewhere in the darkness, there came a fluttering sound. “Sounds like bats. Rux, you got bats on this planet?”

  “Do you refer to the winged nocturnal mammals or to the devices used in your tedious sporting competitions?”

  Antoine held up one of his many scanners and then checked his readings. “I’m not picking up any warm-blooded life-forms down here besides ourselves, nor any difference in the air quality.”

  “Then I imagine it’s the ghosts,” said Rux.

  The sound became clearer: not wings, but soft and papery laughter that seemed to be issuing from several dozen throats.

  “Well, that was fucking creepy,” said Rick, drawing closer to Zachery.

  Glaring at their guide, Antoine replied, “I was merely stating the facts as they stand, not trying to indulge your superstitious―”

  “Quiet!” snapped Khurshed. “It’s gone.”

  The laughter had faded completely. Zachery shivered. “Anyone else notice it’s gotten colder? Like a lot colder?”

  “We’re going back up. Now,” said Khurshed.

  Echo grabbed his arm and then signed, I haven’t finished, my container’s only half full.

  “Echo, something is clearly wro…”

  Khurshed finished the sentence―his lips were clearly moving―but Zachery couldn’t hear a word he was saying. It was as though he’d gone deaf. Then the world went dark. He was still conscious; he could feel the sudden biting chill and the ground beneath his feet, but all he could see was blackness. A sharp burst of pain from somewhere deep inside his brain made him clutch his head, and then the ground beneath him seemed to just disappear. It felt as though he was hovering in space.

  What the fuck is this?

  The papery laughter returned, louder this time. A moment later, so did his vision.

  No, Zachery thought, examining his surroundings. Not fucking this. Not fucking here.

  Chapter 4

  When Echo’s vision returned, he had time to register his location―an alleyway―his position―standing upright―and the number of men in front of him―two―before the punch knocked him over.

  He fell to the pavement. One of the men laughed raucously. Although Echo had no idea who either of them was or where his crew had gone, common sense told him that it would be a good idea to get out of the reach of their booted feet. He scrabbled backwards until he hit a wall and got to his feet, feeling blood spurt from his nose.

  His attackers came after him. As they stepped forward, their faces were illuminated by a street light.

  I do know you, Echo thought. I know this place. I’ve been here before. This…

  He looked up. Overhead loomed a forest of skyscrapers, most run-down or halted halfway to completion when the money had run out. Beyond them, he could see planet Earth, easily the most handsome thing anyone who lived in this part of town got to see on a regula
r basis. This is the Moon. This is where I grew up. And you two…

  To be sure, he examined their faces again, as the taller one reached into his jacket and brought out a knife. Yes, you’re those two. So this is a memory.

  Like most people who had lived most of their lives on the Moon and were in some way odd, Echo had endured his share of beatings. This, he recalled, had been the worst of them. At the end of it, he’d be in hospital for a month and then left with a medical bill that would quadruple the already ruinous debt incurred by his recent top surgery.

  Am I hallucinating this? Wait, Rux said the ghosts can create illusions…

  Echo was so preoccupied that he nearly missed the meaty fist swinging towards his head for a second time. Only nearly―instinct drove him to duck just in time, and his assailant’s fist connected with the wall instead, to a sound of cracking bone.

  I didn’t do that last time. I was too scared to move.

  Cursing, the shorter man kicked him. The movement was clumsy, and the tip of his boot glanced off Echo’s hip. It hurt, but not so badly as he remembered it hurting the first time.

  Why aren’t I scared now? Hmm… I suppose, on reflection, the intervening years have offered a fair number of very, very frightening experiences.

  As the one closest readied another punch, Echo considered his stance, remembering what Thomas had said during the occasional self-defence lessons they’d had while he’d been teaching Echo how to shoot. Deciding that he had nothing to lose, he darted forward and struck the man’s solar plexus. Pain shot up his arm, but not as much as the punch would have caused―if he remembered correctly, it had fractured his jaw―and the blow did make the man fall backwards into his accomplice, cursing.

  Mm. That was satisfying.

  Red-faced, both of them lunged at once. Echo’s reflexes were faster than theirs―it hadn’t occurred to him at the time, but looking at them now he thought they might be drunk―and he ducked easily to the left. He wished suddenly that he had a weapon of some kind. Thoughts of vengeance were quickly subsumed beneath common sense, and he turned and started to run down the street.

  They chased him and might have caught him; their legs were longer, and at that point in his life, he was still terribly unfit. But after he’d gone twenty paces his surroundings shimmered. The city street and the skyscrapers disappeared, replaced with the fungus-covered courtyard.

  Echo fell to his knees, panting and bewildered. I’m back. How? Where’s everyone else?

  Lifting his head, he couldn’t see a single one of his crewmates. Instead, six pillars of bright blue light were rising up from the ground, casting an eerie glow on the entire courtyard. Thomas’s rifle was lying nearby. Echo picked it up and approached the nearest pillar, his skin tingling as he came within a few inches of it.

  Maybe I should contact the ship for help. No; if the ghosts sent me back to that place, then God only knows what the others are going through. I won’t leave them in there for a second longer than necessary.

  Tentatively, he stuck a hand into the blue light. The tingling sensation got worse, but nothing more sinister occurred. Taking a deep breath, Echo stepped forward and the courtyard disappeared again.

  * * *

  Where the fuck am I? Thomas thought.

  Oh, he recognized his location. These were the woods where he’d gone vacationing with his family when he was sixteen. And this was the tree he’d spent a whole day sitting under when his thirty-four-year-old boyfriend had broken up with him via text. It had been dark when he’d returned to camp; his parents had contacted the police.

  None of which actually answered Thomas’s question regarding where he was. Because he sure as shit couldn’t really be here, not unless the last fourteen years of his life had been a fevered hallucination.

  He looked down at his sixteen-year-old hands. They were covered in muddy water. Why? Ah, that was right. When he’d received the text, the first thing he’d done had been to throw his phone in a nearby ditch, before realizing that the messages Russell had left on it were the last connection he had to him.

  Rux’s fucking ghosts are doing this. I’m still in the cavern. They’re making me relive this.

  It was a good thing he knew that. Otherwise he would have been freaking out. Oddly, even though he knew none of this was real, somewhere deep in himself he felt the same awful eat-you-alive misery that had dogged his heels for months after Russell had thanked him kindly for his virginity before fucking off to India to ‘find himself’. It made even standing up difficult, like there were weights tied to his arms and legs.

  “Get it together, Meléndez,” he said to himself. Wish I had my gun.

  He started wandering through the trees, calling for the others. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he couldn’t go more than several paces in any direction before finding himself exactly where he’d started.

  Panic started crawling up his throat. How long are they going to keep me here? Christ, what’re they doing to the others?

  “Wake up. Wake up right now,” he muttered, smacking the side of his head. Up from the depths of his sixteen-year-old mind came a shivering ghost of a thought: I wish Russell was here.

  He stopped dead. What? No, you fucking don’t. Kiddo, Russell was a slimy asshole who only hooked up with you because you were just old enough to be legal and looked young enough to get his dick going. More to the point, he’d be completely useless right now; he always went to pieces in a crisis. Who you really want with you is―”

  The air shimmered and Echo was standing in front of him, holding his rifle.

  “Fuck, I have never been gladder to see you,” Thomas said, collapsing into his boyfriend’s arms. He was a few inches taller than Thomas now, which felt weird.

  Echo held him tight, then let go, and told him, None of this is real. It’s―

  “An illusion, I know. Same thing happen to you?”

  Echo nodded. And all the others, I think.

  “So how do we get out of here?” Thomas asked, but even as he spoke, the forest around them started to fade away. The trees lost their colour and then became transparent. A moment later, the two of them were standing back in the courtyard, and he was back in his adult body, thank God. Forgot what a scrawny dweeb I was.

  “Huh. Did we do something to make that happen or did the ghosts just get bored of fucking with us?” he wondered aloud.

  Echo shrugged, handing him his rifle. My illusion lasted only a few minutes. I’m not sure if anything I did affected that. You see those blue lights? I walked into one of those to get to you.

  “Let’s get going then.”

  * * *

  They’d tied him to the bars of his cell, and the ropes were biting into his skin.

  That didn’t bother Zachery half so much as the smell. That unique combination of stale air, blocked toilets, and thousands of male and female prisoners packed in like sardines―even if he hadn’t recognized his surroundings, the smell would have tipped him off. Redtown Correctional Facility, the biggest and worst prison on Mars. He’d spent two years there for car theft, vandalism, and a few other things. It had felt like twenty.

  And this had been the worst part of it. There’d been a warden―Zachery couldn’t recall his name―and they’d got off on the wrong foot. The wrong foot, in this case, being the foot Zachery had used to kick him in the balls when he’d said some damn rude words about Zachery’s mother. Long story short, the end result was that Zachery had been marked out for special attention. One day, the warden and his friends had stripped him naked, tied him to the bars, and left him there, without food or water, for three days. In the dark. He’d struggled a lot, and the ropes had tightened, almost completely cutting off circulation to his hands. The prison doctor had said he’d come near to losing them both.

  Zachery wasn’t scared of the dark. Not much. What he couldn’t deal with was that fucking smell. Every time he breathed in, he had an irrational fear that it would leave a stain on his insides.

  Where
the fuck is everyone?

  “Guys?” he shouted. Then he thought: No, don’t make any noise. The warden’ll come. If the ghosts can make me see this, they can sure as hell make me see him.

  So he shut up and tried to think. His gaze drifted to the ropes around his wrists. I know that knot. Antoine taught me that one. Hmm.

  It took him a while to undo it. He had to use his teeth. When he slipped one hand free, he cackled victoriously before remembering he was supposed to be keeping quiet.

  ’Course, it doesn’t solve the question of how I get out of this shithole, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

  To his horror, the cell door swung open just as he finished freeing the other hand. When he saw the silhouette of a man start to enter the room, he didn’t hesitate, charging right for him with fist drawn back.

  “Jesus Christ, Zach!” Thomas screamed, and Zachery’s knuckles froze an inch away from his face. Echo stood behind him, wide-eyed.

  “Oh f-fuck,” he sputtered. I almost broke his nose. “Sorry, twerp. How’d you get in here?”

  “We… Wait, where is this?” Thomas said, looking around the dank and reeking room. “And what the hell happened to your wrists?”

  Zachery rubbed the dark red marks the ropes had left, muttering, “That’s courtesy of an old friend.”

  “That guy?” said Thomas, pointing behind him.

  Turning, Zachery saw that another figure had appeared in the cell. He was a weedy man with a chicken neck and hardly any hair left, and he was wearing a dirty uniform and carrying a stun gun.

  “Halberstam, how’d you get loose?” he said.

  Zachery swallowed. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  “Right,” Thomas said, hefting his rifle and putting a hole in the warden’s head. The body vanished before it hit the floor, and then the whole room did the same, evaporating around them like mist until they were back with the fungus again.

  “Fucking hell, Meléndez,” Zachery breathed.

  Thomas’s brow wrinkled anxiously. “Did I screw up?”

  “No. Needed doing. But…fucking hell. C’mere.”