A blaze of light and a twisted body stood before her with a face, such a face, an eye glittering, a beak open wide …
She screamed. She screamed, stumbled back, turned and ran.
Shouting in her helmet, running behind her. She burst into the dusty sunlight, the edge of the ledge rushing towards her. Couldn’t stop, legs still running, hurling herself down, clutching for rocks, sand. Rolling, but slower now … sand and rock gone now, the depth of the canyon walls and far below the little splinters. Clutching, clutching, and she was falling.
Stopped. Swinging like an old light bulb.
But what was on the other end of the line? She screamed again.
‘Okay, okay. I got you.’ Wheezing into her helmet. She could only see the line running from her suit taut to the edge of the ledge, spilling a small spray of sand.
She caught the line with both gloves, touched her boots against the cliff – and the line jerked almost a metre over the edge. ‘Oh no, no,’ she whispered.
She looked up and now saw Weyen’s head, frozen with pain as he tried to hold her weight. As she watched, he lurched slightly over the lip.
Alice stared at him and shuddered. ‘You have to let me go.’
‘Shutup,’ he breathed. ‘You do something. Climb.’
She blinked. She was wearing a spacesuit, a radio, two tanks of compressed air – she was carrying at least double her weight. How could she pull that massive load up that thin line? There was no way.
‘Come on, do it!’
Alice tightened her grip and pulled. And she actually lifted herself by a handspan. Of course! This was Mars, not Earth, everything was so much lighter and she was Supergirl! She kicked at the cliff and scuttled up the line like a beetle up a blade of grass. She caught Weyen by the neck, the air tank, the belt, and fell over his legs. Safe.
Except for the hideous creature in the tunnel.
She sat up, tense, turning towards the black hole.
‘Now, what was that all about?’ Weyen sounded feeble, but he was trying to recover fast.
‘The Martian – it almost got me.’ She looked down at Weyen.
Weyen threw up his arm against the glare of Alice’s light. ‘Turn it off, turn it off. What Martian?’
Alice fiddled with the buttons. ‘In there, in the tunnel. I saw the creature —’
‘There is nothing there, Alice. Nothing at all.’
‘But there is. I saw it.’
Weyen stood up and walked to the tunnel. ‘Come on.’
Alice stood. She moved reluctantly to the centre of the ledge, clear of the tunnel, but she could see daylight from the other side. ‘I saw it …’
‘Now put your light back on.’
Light flooded the tunnel, driving shadows from the walls, rock wrinkles above, whitening a boulder. ‘I couldn’t see the other end,’ she said weakly.
‘I was probably blocking it off.’ Weyen stepped into the tunnel.
Alice moved slowly, cautiously, after him.
And the boulder glittered. Alice stopped, looked at the boulder. There was a small cavity, like an eye socket. She took two short steps towards the boulder and a sudden shadow picked out an outcrop which looked a little like an open beak.
Weyen came back to her. ‘Your Martian?’
‘Yes. But you kept on talking about them.’
‘I am sorry, Alice. I didn’t want to frighten you. Nothing like that. I only wanted to show you something.’
Alice kicked at the boulder. ‘All right, what is it?’
Weyen took Alice’s hand and led her out the other end of the tunnel.
They were now on one of the towers of the Cathedral, a thousand metres above the red plain. Before them a sea of blue ice curled round the red plain, thrusting cold fingers deep into low valleys. A glacier swung towards the Cathedral but slid away to die in the flat desert. Near an elbow of ice was a lonely colony of silver domes.
‘Home,’ said Weyen, and sat down.
Alice smiled and sat beside him, resting her tanks on the cliff. It had been home for her too, for three months. While Mum set about installing a solar power plant. Walking about under round roofs, along round tubes, eating at round tables – it’s a wonder they didn’t have round beds.
Nursing vegetables in the nursery, almost always craning the neck to look at the Spider you’re talking to. But they are great people; a little mad, but great. And then there was Weyen …
‘You can see the green from here!’ Weyen stabbed the air.
Of course he’s completely mad.
Round the largest dome was an emerald shadow, a leaking of life. She knew it was no more than some kind of moss but it was surviving outside the dome. The first independent life on Mars since the rivers stopped running a million years ago. Maybe the first independent life on Mars …
‘Next year, grass,’ she said.
‘That’s the Martians. That’s what I meant. I am a Martian.’
She looked at him, at his mouthpiece and the air tank.
‘All right. But I am more a Martian than my Grandad was when he stepped off his spaceship, and I am more a Martian than Dad is and he was born here, like me. Just look at me!’
Weyen straightened his legs beside Alice’s. Far longer, the muscles elegant but thin.
‘Longer because of less gravity, right?’
‘Less gravity to pull us down. Gets handy too.’ Weyen unfolded his left arm across Alice’s radio to her far shoulder. He squeezed her bulk to his side. ‘And talking about gravity, what about you?’
Alice blinked. ‘What did I do?’
Weyen coughed and tried to imitate her voice. ‘“You’ll have to let me go, Weyen!”’ He grinned. ‘That was absolutely heroic.’
Alice jabbed Weyen in the ribs with her elbow.
He pressed his mouthpiece to her faceplate and clicked his radio off and on with his tongue.
Sexy long animal. She motioned a kiss to his mouthpiece.
‘Been a good time, hasn’t it?’ he said quietly.
She squeezed his thigh. ‘Always. In the library, the restaurants, the theatre, the … everywhere we were together.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But especially out here. In the open.’
He pinched at her suit. ‘In these?’
‘Despite these.’
A needle flared in the orange sky and arched slowly to the domes.
‘Oh,’ said Weyen. Flatly.
‘Yes.’ Alice sagged a little under Weyen’s arm. ‘The shuttle.’
‘Has – has it got to end like this?’
She looked at him. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Trying to put it right. We were talking about Earth – that blue jewel – and Mars, and you were feeling sorry for us.’
‘I’m sorry. There is really no comparison.’
‘But there is. People on Earth leave the planet worse than they found it every year. Every year there is another patch of desert, another forest gone, a river dead, more muck in the air. But every year in Mars we are making a better planet.
‘Look at the green. It’s coming to life. The elements we are putting in the air are warming the planet, so oxygen, whatever, gets released from the frozen desert. One day the rivers will run again, one day there will be forests.’
Weyen stopped and lowered his voice to a soft murmur. ‘So, why don’t you stay here on the bright new planet? Stay with me.’
Alice squeezed her eyes shut, clinked her helmet against his mouthpiece. ‘Oh, I would love to, so much …’ She petered out and pressed herself against him for a long silence.
Finally she pulled back. ‘How long?’
Weyen cocked his head.
‘Until the forests grow. Weyen, you are half a Martian now, the light gravity is natural for you, you can dance, run, anything; the cold doesn’t bother you much. You love what you see here because this is all you know. But if I stay here I will always be the motherless dumpling, rolling around, tending vegetables in special glasshouses an
d remembering the seas, the beaches, the shrinking forests …
‘I guess I can stand all this – most of this – for you, pet Spider. Just so long as I have something special to wait for. I could wait for ten, twenty years to watch trees grow in the lighter gravity; see them taller, prouder, than they ever could be on Earth. When do the forests begin?’
Weyen looked down at his curled hand. ‘About three hundred years.’
‘Oh.’ She stared at the domes and the shuttle surrounded by ice and desert and she shook her head. ‘But there is another way. Come home with me!’
He shook his head. Abruptly and immediately.
‘At least I tried. You’re not trying at all. There are still things on Earth you would not believe …’
‘Here, Alice, you are three times as strong as you are on Earth. So you could pull yourself and the spacesuit up to that ledge. Here you are Superwoman. There – on Earth – I would be dead. I would be three times weaker than I am here. I would fall over and my bones would break, and my heart would give out. I want to come with you, with all my heart. But I cannot.’
Alice and Weyen sat close together high on the Cathedral, gazing at the red desert of Mars and the lonely colony of domes. For a long time they did not speak.
There was nothing left to say.
1 Sri Lanka
A Taste of Cockroach Page 13