FAWP. Food, Air, Water, Protection. The four key elements of survival. Lose one, lose all. As the lander settled on the surface and dug its anchor deep into the ground, the first element was a success. Protection. We now had a working base of operations, a place where we would be sheltered from the harsh atmosphere, the radiation, and the cold. It wasn’t much, but it was ours. Our home away from home.
Next in line was water. The recycling systems already in place ensured that nearly none of our water was ever truly lost, and the anchor that had so recently tied us to the ground also functioned as a probing well. There was water down there, and lots of it. In time, it would be a small matter to extract the frozen liquid and turn it into drinkable water. We would not thirst in our new home, but for the moment, recycling ruled supreme. Nothing like taking a piss and knowing you would be drinking it back down a few hours down the line.
Air, or rather oxygen, would come from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the converter was up and running almost before we touched ground.
That left food.
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“I will murder you in your sleep if you eat the seed grains!” The fierceness in Roger’s voice stood in stark contrast to his waifish frame. He practically quivered as he leaned forward, all of his weight on the tip of his toes, ready to either topple over or launch himself at Robbie.
“What do you expect me to do then, starve? I’ll gladly take your rations if you don’t want them. Hell, I’d even be correcting an obvious mistake! Just look at the size differential at play here! Why the two of us are getting an even share is beyond me, one I’m about to correct.” With exaggerated care, Robbie reached into the newly opened vacuum-packed carton of seeds, pinched one between his thumb and forefinger, and with the speed and inevitability of a glacier moved it towards his gaping mouth.
Captain Reinholts reached over and plucked it from his fingers before it hit home base, tossing it back in the carton. “Enough bickering, kids. Don’t force me send you to your rooms without dinner.”
“But he started it!” Roger’s outburst hung in the air for several seconds before being dissolved by laughter from the others. Even Roger scaled back his deep-set frown and sheepishly glanced around the room. Fourteen members of the crew were in attendance, all with nonessential jobs at the moment. The meeting was being held in the largest available quarters, and it felt cramped even with just over a fourth of the crew showing up. The front of the room was slightly elevated, and a small stack of cartons had been meticulously stacked in the middle of the only available table. The cartons of seeds had come from the emergency supply included in all of the landers, and was meant as a last resort in case of catastrophic failures, either to eat or to plant.
“All well and good, and I’m ending it,” the captain replied with a smile. “But seriously, that argument perfectly encompasses the reason for this meeting. We are in a fix down here, and we need a plan going forward. The canned goods won’t last us forever, even with fewer people to eat it, and the decision whether to eat the seeds or not has to be made right now for it to have any meaning.”
“We’re not eating the seeds!” Roger was back on the tip of his toes, ready to fight to protect his progeny.
“If we end up deciding to throw everything we have at returning to Earth, then yes, that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.” Reinholts leaned forward and grabbed the carton, placing it back on top of the pile in the center of the table. Roger looked ready to go into cardiac arrest, but Anna interrupted before he could launch another argument.
“Enough bickering. It’s obvious our goal has to be to return to Earth, but it’s also obvious that we can’t just dig into the seeds with reckless abandon. I’m working on the calculations, but the initial analysis is clear: we need several harvests to make enough food for the return trip. We need the automated digger, we need the greenhouse up and running, and we need the crop seeds. Uneaten. We need to scavenge for every last bit of food from every available lander in order to buy the time to get a viable ecosystem up and running, and we need to do it right now.”
A slow clap filled the silence before anybody could reply. The Billionaire stood off to the side, not having made his presence known until now. “Congratulations! You have successfully stated the obvious. What will you do now? Bicker until any action is meaningless and we all die of starvation, or, my favorite choice, pull our collective heads out of our soft asses and get down and dirty?” He stepped up to the center pile, picked up the carton of seeds and let his fingers sift through them. “I just ordered the digging teams to concentrate all of their efforts on the construction of the green house.”
“You what!? They were working on the trenches to get our living quarters underground on my orders!” The captain took a step toward the other man, but was halted by Nadia’s hand on his shoulder as she leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.
“I hope the two of you are using some form of contraception. Stupidity is not a survival trait I care to cultivate.” The Billionaire raised an eyebrow quizzically.
The captain’s eyes darkened and he stepped forward, pulled back his shoulder and snapped his fist towards the face of the other man, all in one smooth motion honed by a hundred fights. Halfway there he was met by a fistful of seeds thrown in his face, and his punch missed by inches, throwing him off balance. By the time he had recovered, the room was deathly still and he could feel the tip of a knife resting against his side. The Billionaire was almost hugging him, one hand around his body holding him steady, the other lightly pressing the knife against his skin. The pressure increased and the knife broke the skin as the man leaned forward and whispered in Reinholts’s ear. “I could carve you like a pig, right here, right now. Might even solve our little predicament of not having enough food.”
As the Billionaire pulled back after his whispered threat, the captain snapped his head forward and threw his arm back. His forehead connected with the other man’s jaw and the knife was pushed to the side, giving him just enough space to twist away and pull his own blade. The headbutt was not hard enough to cause any lasting damage, and after half a step backwards to regain his balance, the Billionaire had his knife up and ready and the two men crouched, ready to fight. Blood trickled down the Billionaire’s chin from a split lip, and a dark stain was slowly spreading on the captain’s shirt.
“Enough!” Anna stepped between them and slapped her hand hard on the metallic surface of the table, causing a small landslide of seeds from the open pack. “We have enough problems without the two of you getting all alpha male on us! Cut the shit!”
The two men took their time straightening and backing off, but there was no more aggression from either side as the blades were carefully slid into their respective scabbards with a faint metallic harmony.
“You’re both right, and you’re both wrong. We need to get the shelter underground, and we need the greenhouse up and running. If we stay up here without shielding for any stretch of time we will all develop cancer, every single one of us. I can probably manage most of the cases, but some will die. Eventually, nothing I do can halt the progress and we all die. On the other hand, if we can’t get enough food we will definitely die. In this case I have to side with the food production. If we get the trenches for the greenhouse finished first, the long-term problem of feeding us all will be that much easier to accomplish. That does not mean that I’m okay with the process. We can’t go around changing work schedules whenever somebody who thinks they’re in charge gets a bright idea. We need structure. We need stability. And we need a plan.” Anna stepped back from the table and eyed the congregation. “I hereby propose a provisional government. Any major decision will have to be put to a general vote, but the day-to-day dealings must be dealt with in an orderly fashion. I believe I speak for the entire crew when I say that the three of us standing here embody the major opinions of the population. Even though some of us have the decency to give blood to our fellow colonists rather than drawing it.” She gla
red at the two men at either side of her, and they both took a moment to pretend to be properly admonished. “I propose a triumvirate, where the majority decides in any case where there’s a disagreement. Since this was a general meeting and only fourteen people showed up, the ones present will be the ones making the ground rules. All in favor of the proposal?”
All hands in the congregation were raised.
“Any opposed?”
No hands in the air.
“That’s it then, you’re now looking at the new provisional government of Mars. And the first order of business is the designation of priorities. I support the establishment of a viable greenhouse as our main goal. So, sorry, Captain, on this one you’re outvoted.”
The captain shrugged and returned to his lax stance, wary of any movement within his comfort zone. The bloodstain on his shirt spread slowly in a Rorschach pattern.
“However, my ultimate goal is to return to Earth. But since the steps leading up to our respective goals are the same, I see no problem with postponing that decision until our colony is up and running.” Anna stepped back and raised her hands, palms up. “We are in this together, and we need each other to survive. My sincere hope is that we can put down our differences and work toward a common goal. Now, we all have work to do, so let’s get to it. Survival does not favor the weak, so let’s be strong. And let’s be strong together! Remember that democracy formed the society that spawned us! Never, and I mean never, lose sight of that.”
Anna lowered her arms and walked out of the room.
17. The Cut
The knife hovered just above the skin on the iliac crest. Sweat stung my eyes. My hands were shaking, and I made no move to calm them. No point. Nobody here but me and Captain Reinholts. And he did not care, not in the slightest. The aesthetics of the cut was not my main concern while butchering another human being.
No, not another person, I could not think like that. That would be the end of it, I would not be able to do it. And I had to do it. I had to carve out a piece of meat to survive. I had to forget the person, and focus on the flesh. I knew I had to leave my humanity behind, there could be no room for it now. Not here, not for me, and not for the other survivors. If we were to be survivors, we would have to do what few others had done before us in modern times; we had to eat our dead.
I took a deep breath to calm my shaking hands. I envisioned the stillness of space, the black beauty of the stars. My pulse slowed, my breathing eased, I ignored my aching wrist and I made the cut. I could have made it at any part of his body, but somehow my hands had steered themselves here. The iliopsoas. The tenderloin. The choicest piece of any mammal, the muscle that is so tender that it almost falls apart when you try to cut it. It was a different kind of animal to skin from a deer, that was for sure. Human skin is hard. Even with my knife, sharpened beyond what would normally constitute a razor, it was more work than expected. There was hardly any blood since the flesh below had been frozen solid, but the temperature in the room made the wound ooze the longer I took to make the cut. And I took a long time. Nobody knew I was here, nobody but Anna and Roger, and they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, alert the others to what was happening.
The knife pushed down and parted the fascia and the tendons below.
The subcutaneous fat was yellow, the tendons along the spine were stark white, and the exposed muscles had a slightly greyish color. I swiftly carved sideways through the body, exposing the muscle. A quick cut at either end to loosen it, a sliding cut along the pelvis, and it was free in my hands. Without adding any thought to the process, I put the knife on the table beside the body, the steak on the plate I had readied earlier, and covered the wound with the fabric from the vacuum-suit he was still wearing. My hands were rock steady.
The body lay on a steel table in the middle of the small room. It was originally intended to be used as a staging area for collecting rocks and small samples of ice, and thus had both a nonpressurized door leading to the outside and an airlock leading to the rest of the habitat. It provided both a staging area and a working area, although it required a few minutes to prepare for either function as it was unacceptable to lose any kind of atmosphere by quick-cycling through the locks. Oxygen was too precious a commodity to waste because a second-rate scientist was too lazy to wait the necessary minutes while the air was pumped out.
I stared down at the steel plate in front of me. My salvation. My damnation. So be it. If my survival required my damnation, then damned be I. I would render all disputes moot, I would force my will upon those opposed to me and I would survive this. Mars would not kill me as it had killed the captain. I picked up the plate and went to the airlock.
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Nadia was waiting just inside the airlock when he emerged. It cycled from red to green long before he actually stepped through, but it was still a shock to see what he carried. A plate, with a two-pound steak on it. That was what her mind’s eye saw. Not a piece of another human being, not a part of a man she had called friend. A steak, a piece of meat, a way to survive. She felt the bile rise in her throat and she turned hastily away and vomited loudly in the corner. Her friend passed her by without so much as a glance, carrying her lover on a plate.
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I passed Nadia just as she hastily turned away to vomit in the corner. I never did get to exploit the dubious nature of The Cage with her, but I considered her a friend after having spent many hours together in the dining area of the ship. Hopefully she would not turn from me after this moment, I would need someone like her on my side in the times to come. I ignored her and strode into the meeting room, carrying the plate with the meat in front of me like a sacrifice to some elder god. And why not? Was not Mars itself a strong feature in many stories, religions and characters? A sacrifice was surely in order, and this sacrifice held the obvious benefit of helping us survive.
The good doctors Stokes and Wells fully knew what was going on and what I was intending to do, but the rest of them didn’t have a clue. They just knew that I had called a general meeting, and after the last one they knew that it was a bad idea not to attend one of those.
Conversations broke up, glances were averted and a silence settled upon the crowd. Forty-six souls. All that was left of the original personnel: specialists, colonists, media, crew, and myself. One by one the realization of the moment settled on them. Some knew at a glance what I carried; they had done the calculations themselves and found them lacking. Others were bewildered and tried to ask questions of those in their cliques. Some were answered, but most were ignored. The enormity of the situation silenced any explanation they could give. True to his word, Roger had the methane igniter going with a steady flame, and the pane over the flame was searing hot. I walked up, faced the crowd and let the moment flow through me.
“You know my name. Some of you know me. Some of you think you know me. Some have felt my annoyance, some have seen me smile, and some have heard me laugh. Some may think I am their friend, and some may think themselves my enemy. You are wrong. You have not seen me frown, you have not heard me laugh. You have not enjoyed my happiness, and you have not felt the bite of my scorn. You have not seen my true emotions, and you have never witnessed my anger. Anger is an emotion best left checked, and I have checked it my entire life. It can lead to bitterness, injury, and hatred. It can lead to lovers leaving their lives, and it can lead to hatred taking a life. Anger is dangerous, and it is cleansing. When anger is gone, when the damage is done, then what is left has been cleansed. I have been angry, but I have also been cleansed. What I have left is the clean scent of purpose. My purpose is thus: I will survive! Nothing and nobody will stand in my way. My anger is still there, ready to cleanse what is needed. You may do as you wish, but know this: I am in control. I once read that “democracy is for fools and ancient Greeks,” and those words struck true. This will not be a democracy. You will not get a say in the decisions that need to be made. If you do not do as I demand, then you are working against my survival. I will not toler
ate this. You will obey, or you will be cast out and you will not survive. From this moment forth my feelings are laid bare; you will see me as I am, not as I have chosen to perform to be accepted in the herd. This is me, and this is how I will survive."
I put the meat on the sizzling pan.
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As the meat hit the pan, Roger keeled over, and Nadia spun around and vomited again. How could so much come out when her stomach contained so little to begin with? For the past few months they had been living on the bare minimum required to survive, and her strength had been seeping away, day by day. The red dust permeated everything, even though the filters in the airlocks were supposed to take care of it all. It was in her nose, in her bed (which she shared in a three-way shift with the rest of the occupants of her room), in her socks and even in her underwear. It drove her crazy, and it continually drove home the one fact that could not be ignored—she was not home. This was not her home, and it never would be.
As the words of the Billionaire hammered into her, she could feel the truth of them. Here was a man who knew what needed to be done, here was a man who could provide the will she so desperately needed to borrow. As the meat slowly cooked in the pan, she straightened and knew what had to be done. She watched as he cut a piece, put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. As his eyes met hers, she squared her shoulders and strode forward. She would place her faith in this man, she would let another decide her destiny, and she would do whatever it took to survive. She would not die, not her, not on this day. As she skewered the offered piece of flesh, she eyed the gathering in front of her. A ragtag gang if she ever saw one; the events of the previous months had nearly broken them. They had broken her, that much she knew. But to be rebuilt, you first had to be broken. As the red dust rose outside the windows, she swallowed her bitterness together with the small piece of her lover that had been offered, and strode toward survival.
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