Before Mars

by Emma Newman

  “I’m going to have a look around,” I tell Petranek. “I want to see if there’s a good vista to paint.”

  “No problem. I’m going to scope out a location for a sensor station. I think we should spread out some more. Do some proper exploring again. We’ve got a bit . . . insular. I’ll have an argument with the prince about it later. ’Cause that’s always fun.”

  We climb out of the rover and Principia sends me a ping notifying me that I can call up a map of the local area and it will show my location and Petranek’s as we are monitored in real time, just like in a gaming mersive. The dot representing me is blue; Petranek is green. I almost expect a bunch of red dots to pop up all of a sudden, indicating incoming enemies. Maybe I’ve played too many games, just like I’ve experienced too many personal mersives.

  There’s a crater on the other side of the hill, Cerberus Palus, that stretches ahead of me, formed by the ejecta from the original impact. I feel a genuine thrill as I climb it, having stared at aerial photographs of it for years. Those photographs made me fall in love with Mars as a child, and as an aspiring geologist. To the north of the crater are spiral shapes in the rock, caused by ancient lava coils when the area was volcanically active. They can be found on Earth, and the day I saw that picture for the first time, shortly after my tenth birthday, I’d just been reading about a Terran example observed in Hawaii. It was the first time I really understood how observing geological phenomena on Earth could give us insights into Mars and its geological history. It blew my mind that the same things could happen on both planets. If only all observable effects were as easy to ascribe to common root causes.

  The suit performs well as I climb, the helmet drawing away the moisture from my breath and capturing it to be recycled by the two compartments on my back that also house my air supply. Petranek’s work is in evidence here too; the air tanks are small thanks to the excellent recycling processes being managed within the suit, and therefore not too heavy. I can feel the scree shifting beneath my boots and revel in the sensory feedback. The sense of disconnection is finally giving way to the joy of being in the moment and I laugh, actually laugh out loud with joy.

  I am climbing up the side of a crater on Mars!

  On Mars!

  “Petranek?”

  Hir voice comes loud and clear. “Yeah?”

  “I’m on Mars! I mean . . . fuck! I’m on Mars!”

  My helmet is filled with hir barking laugh. “Yes, you are! Having fun, then?”

  “It’s the Cerberus Palus crater! It’s like . . . I dunno, like meeting a mersive star or something. I can’t actually believe it!”

  “You just keep breathing steady, Kubrin, and watch your step. You sound as high as a satellite!”

  I do feel high. And even as I think that, I appreciate how low I have been, and for so long. It feels like a dense fog has been shrouding me for months . . . years . . . and has suddenly been blown away. I start to giggle, preserving enough presence of mind to close the audio link between Petranek and me, so ze isn’t subjected to it.

  This is no good; I can’t observe anything in this state. Seeing a large boulder up near the summit, I scrabble toward it, trying to calm myself down. I’ll give myself five minutes; then I’ll get to work.

  Looking down into the crater does nothing to ground me. My spirits soar even higher. It’s too wide to see the other side in any detail without retinal-cam enhancement, which I resist, so I focus on the crater bed below, thinking about possible paintings at last. It feels right that the first one includes those spirals, so I open the interface to the cam drones and instruct them to fly across the crater and record from the area just north of the top edge, expanding out a further kilometer on some high shots too, just so I get the background scenery right.

  I watch them fly off, feeling like a witch sending off flying monkeys, and decide to head down into the crater to take a look around and see if it’s worth getting some samples. Watching my step, I look down to make sure I don’t fall from the top of the crater edge, only to see a footprint a couple of meters ahead of me in the lee of the boulder.

  For a moment, I think it’s one of mine, before realizing I haven’t actually gone that far. No one else is supposed to have come this far either. Oh God, what if it isn’t actually there? I could verify with my lens, but I don’t want that query to be flagged up with Principia. A negative result could tell Arnolfi that I’m seeing things.

  But I can’t just ignore it. “Petranek, can you come over here?”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I just want you to look at something. Are you sure no one has been out here before?”

  “I’m sure. And didn’t the prince say as much? Let me double-check. Principia, confirm that the area in a half-kilometer radius from the rover has not been visited by a human before.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “What about a drone?”

  “This area has not been documented by any craft or drone on the surface. It has been mapped by several orbiting satellites.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I twist to watch Petranek climb the hill behind me and then look back at the footprint. It is still there. “If no one has been here, then who left that?” I say as ze arrives. I watch hir eyes follow my prints to where I am standing now, then to the gap between them and the print. Hir eyes widen and I am flooded with relief at the confirmation that it really is there. “It wasn’t me,” I add.

  “Are there any others?”

  “Not that I can see. I reckon the boulder must have protected it from a dust devil that wiped any others out.”

  “Well, shit,” ze mutters. “Principia, can you identify who made this print?”

  Ze stares at it as I fret. If that damn AI has already lied about us being the first people here, can we trust it now?

  “The footprint is an impression of a standard GaborCorp environmental protection suit.”

  “So anyone from the base could have left it,” Petranek says.

  “But could anyone from the base have scrubbed their trip from Principia’s database?” I ask and Petranek shakes hir head.

  “I couldn’t do that; I don’t have the correct level of privileges. Only Banks and Arnolfi would be able to do that.” Petranek looks away from the footprint and for a moment I wonder if ze is calling one of them. I watch the frown develop on hir face as ze stares into the distance. “Shit, I knew something was going on.”

  I take a picture of the footprint with my retinal cam and then turn back to Petranek. “What do you mean?”

  “I . . . I don’t know . . . I just feel like something hasn’t been right with Banks since you got here. Same with Arnolfi, for that matter. She seems a bit strung out, you know? I thought it was because Banks was being such a dick. She hates conflict, always has. But I can’t see why either of them would be sneaking around here. I mean, what’s to see? It hasn’t been flagged as an area of interest or anything. If it was, I could see the temptation to sell some information to a rival corp, but I’m not even sure anyone cares about Mars anymore. Even the ratings for the show have gone down lately.”

  “Maybe that’s why Banks is so uptight,” I venture. “Maybe he’s worried they’ll send him home and want me to take over or something.”

  “I don’t know. He’s usually more laid-back. And I can’t see what would bring Arnolfi out here. We’re the ones she’s studying, not the planet.”

  The thought of that makes me shudder, but it’s true. She’s studying the impact of prolonged exposure to low g on the human brain, among other things. I can’t help but think of that damn note. I reckon it must be Arnolfi’s footprint, but I can’t say why I think that without explaining about the note, and I don’t trust Petranek enough to mention it. Only the suspicion that note planted in me is making me think it is her instead of Banks. I have no evidence either way.

  “But what would
Banks be doing out here?” Petranek says as we both stare at the footprint. “Do you think we should mention it to them? Yeah, we could just ask them.”

  “No,” I reply, without hesitation. “If they’re up to something dodgy they’ll only deny it. And one of them must be. Why else would they hide the fact they came out here? Let’s keep this between us for now and just keep a close eye on them.”

  Petranek’s frown returns. “Banks and Arnolfi are solid. I can’t believe they’d do anything to jeopardize their contracts. There must be another explanation.”

  “Keeping quiet for now is the best thing for both of us,” I say. “Just in case.”

  Petranek reluctantly agrees, clearly shaken by the possibility that one of hir crewmates could be hiding something. I’m shaken too, but for a different reason. What else has been scrubbed from Principia’s database?

  8

  THERE ARE MESSAGES waiting for me when I get back and I realize that Principia doesn’t report their arrival when I’m outside of the base. I let the brief irritation pass; it’s probably good not to be distracted while outside. They’re only from family and there are no urgent tags. I’ve been here nearly a week now, so the messages are settling into casual updates on daily life.

  I empty the bag containing a few samples into the chute in the air lock that will clean the dust off of the bags and sterilize the outside of the plasglass tubes before delivering them to the lab. Petranek and I shake off as much dust as we can as a couple of drones roll in and start cleaning off the rover. We wait while the air that came in with us is sucked out with the majority of the dust and then replenished with filtered air from the base. The air lock repressurizes as we begin the process of going back through the dust lock and getting de-suited.

  “You won’t say anything to them, will you?” I say to Petranek. Ze didn’t mention the footprint at all on the way back.

  “I won’t—don’t worry. But I really don’t think there’s anything underhanded going on. I’ve known these people for years. You shouldn’t be so concerned.”

  It’s not the footprint that bothers me; it’s the pattern. The note, the ring, Banks being unduly hostile . . . The pattern is more important than the detail. Where did I hear that before?

  Soon enough I am distracted by getting out of the suit, which feels harder than getting into it, even though it’s the same process but in reverse.

  Dr. Elvan is waiting in the last chamber and I feel rather self-conscious in my base-layer onesie. Petranek seems utterly unconcerned and high-fives him as ze goes past on the way out, leaving us alone.

  “How was it?” he asks.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “There were a few stress spikes while you were out there, but nothing too unusual. Any dizziness or fatigue?”

  I shake my head, wishing I was in anything but this damn onesie.

  “Is there anything you’re concerned about?” he asks, taking a step closer.

  “No. Should there be?”

  He smiles and it makes me feel like an awkward student again. “Not at all. I’m just doing my job, Dr. Kubrin. Don’t worry—I haven’t seen anything from your MyPhys readings to suggest you need to be confined to base. You’re doing remarkably well, in fact. I thought that this would be the day you’d be just about shuffling around and doing your last physical tests. Maybe I’m being overcautious.”

  To look at, he is the opposite of Charlie in almost every way. His hair is black whereas Charlie’s is ginger. Elvan’s skin is brown whereas Charlie’s is so pale that if he wears yellow it makes him look like he’s about to die. Elvan’s eyes are dark brown and Charlie’s are the blue of a clear February sky. And there’s a warmth to this man that I don’t remember in my husband.

  I feel a pull toward him that I didn’t feel with Charlie before Mars and I head toward the doors, fighting that attraction with a polite smile, distancing myself. “Thanks for looking out for me,” I say, not wanting to seem cold, and then I hurry down the corridor back to my room.

  Peeling the onesie off and having a shower helps. It seems crazy that I can have a longer shower here than I can back on Earth. We can’t afford the higher band of water rates back home, but here, pretty much all of it is recycled right away. There’s no reason the same system couldn’t be implemented in our apartment block. No reason other than profit, of course. No doubt the gov-corp wants to keep its profits from its water company subsidiaries nice and high.

  Where I grew up, in our strange little commune, there was water everywhere. A loch full of millions of gallons of the stuff that we could swim in whenever the weather permitted. Rainwater that we collected on the roof and used to flush the toilet because Mum couldn’t cope with the dry composting toilets that Dad wanted to use. In Manchester it rains so much, but the permits required to set up rainwater collection on buildings without integrated systems are prohibitively expensive. I can remember Dad declaring that we should set up a water racket and ship it south to make a fortune. He laughed at the time, but I knew that he was actually tempted, more to stick one in the eye of the system than to make any money.

  Then, just as rapidly, I recall him months later, hollow cheeked and dark eyed: “I can’t stay here on my own. I’ll go mad.”

  No. I’m not going to message him. What would I say? Why do it now, after all these years? Does my mother think that being on another planet will make me feel safe enough to finally make contact? I wish she would just let it go.

  I review the messages from Drew and my other lab mates, most of them making requests for samples from various locations we’ve discussed before. All asked with a grin and some sort of precursor like “I know this is a bit cheeky, but if you could . . .” It saddens me that this is what we’re reduced to. We all felt that, even when the funding for the lab was secured, we were allowed to pursue only narrow lines of inquiry, all serving some project or plan in upper-management echelons trying to find new ways to monetize Gabor’s exclusive access to Mars without actually investing any more money in it. None of us could really understand why he’d spent so much on getting that access when he barely seemed interested in the big questions. It was clear at the dinner party that he wasn’t a naturally curious man. He was more like a shark, evaluating everything he came across in terms of whether he could eat it or not.

  Perhaps I’m doing sharks a disservice.

  By the time that we started eating, there wasn’t any need to try to enthuse at him about the lab—the deal had already been agreed—but I was still keen to find some reasoning behind his fascination with the red planet. Apparently the negotiations to secure the exclusive rights to Mars access were fierce and the money involved was enough to make one’s eyes water. What was it about this place that had motivated him to beat off the competition? But as the evening went on, I realized that he wasn’t fascinated by Mars at all; I had just assumed he was. I couldn’t understand why he seemed so uninterested in it. Even the biggest question—whether we could find definitive proof of life there—held no interest for him.

  “I’ve heard it would only be bacteria or something from, what? Millions of years ago?” he said between mouthfuls. “Not proper aliens or remains of buildings or anything impressive.”

  “But even just proof of bacterial life would be monumental,” Drew said, her cheeks flushed with wine and scientific passion.

  “Why?”

  When Drew spluttered for words, I said, “Because there are so many people who believe that we’re alone in the universe. Showing them that life, even in microscopic form, is there on Mars would prove we might not be alone.”

  Gabor shrugged. “Can’t see the profit in it myself. Though there would be a certain satisfaction in seeing how the Americans react.”

  I noted that Travis didn’t share that cruel glint in his husband’s eye. “Not all Americans are those fire-and-brimstone types.”

  “No,” Stefan agreed, “jus
t the rich and powerful ones, ironically enough. This sauce is excellent, by the way.”

  Even now I wonder if he bought that exclusive access just to spite the Americans. I’d like to think it was to ensure that any evidence of life wouldn’t be destroyed or at least hidden by a damaging religious agenda, but I think if anything, it was pure one-upmanship.

  I send replies to all of my former coworkers, promising to gather all the samples they want. It will take dozens of trips and no doubt just as many arguments with Principia, but I have to do my bit to push back against that willful ignorance. I’ll do what I can here and then when I take those samples home, we’ll analyze them in our spare time, outside of contracted hours. Doing the real science, as Drew would say, not just corporate shit shoveling.

  Not all of the work we did in the lab back home was useless; a lot of it made the previous geologist’s work here easier—finding those ice deposits as efficiently as possible and giving the base water sustainability for years, for one thing. But I want to understand the geological history of this planet, not just work out how we can best exploit it.

  There’s nothing new from Charlie but it’s my turn to send a message, so that’s to be expected. The routine we got into on the trip over has been disrupted. Before I respond to his last one, I need to record one to Mia.

  He’s told me she watches the ones I’ve sent already before bedtime as part of the going-to-bed ritual. Charlie likes his routine and there’s no denying it’s good for Mia, but I’ve run out of things to say to her. I was never very good at that. Anyway, I’ve always thought that it’s the tone of voice and the modulation that help children to acquire language. Charlie once caught me talking through a research write-up with her when she was about four months old. He stood in the doorway, watching us long before I noticed him, as I read out my draft conclusion to her in that singsong “motherese.” He teased me for days afterward.