MEEK

by Richard Johnson

  “A momentous and historical directive, that reduces our presence on Earth to that of resource collectors only. I suppose it was inevitable, but definitely regrettable,” Oaken reflected aloud. The director looked out his window at the altered landscape of the Mars colony and felt a wave of nostalgia for Earth. He, unlike the future generations, had been born there. It held memories and had helped shape him. “Mars and Earth, linked together through our desire to survive.” He called in his aide and carefully repacked the scrolls. The aide waited while Oaken ran his hand slowly over the package and then handed it over to be assigned to history.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1640 AD

  “Adaptation and change are inescapable but not always desirable.” Wisdom of the Elders.

  The three elders walked for the last time throughout the complex on the Island and then out onto the rocky landscape. They had chosen to do this on a clear day, when the seagulls circled around the Island as if they too had come to say goodbye. They were about to lose an ancient nesting place. There was to be a short ceremony. The whole proceedings were being filmed and were to end up in the museum on Mars. The Island had been sinking for thousands of years as the oceans of the world had risen and was now unstable. The constant mining and expansion of the underground and undersea living areas had made its mark. Everything possible had been done to save it, but nature would have her way eventually. Anything portable had been removed and, after ten minutes of speeches, the elders boarded a disc ship. They hovered at a safe distance and then pushed the button that set of a sequence of explosions. The explosions destroyed the foundations and roof support beams so that the entire Island collapsed in on itself. Via television the Tuathans watched as the place that had provided them with protection for such a long time now disappeared beneath the waves and became a part of Earth’s folklore. A small tsunami headed for the Irish west coast. It would do no damage. No one there was likely to take much notice of it, anyway. They would progress and the world would be unaware. Only the stars looked down and smiled.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1916

  “We have tried to control our future and had partial success.” A presidential address.

  Rose was in the University library studying for her degree in applied politics and social management. At twenty-nine years of age she was the youngest in this the end of her final year. She had not made a career choice yet as the prospect of joining the administration of any of the three colonies on Mars did not excite her. In the morning, she would sit her last exam consisting of a question and answer interview. Then she would give her full attention to her future career. Only 800 metres away Orion was sitting in a bar in the entertainment quarter of the town. At seventy-one years he was a veteran of the enclaves and had mined every type of mineral on Earth known to science. He did not have a female partner and had no children, his life on Earth did not seem conducive to such pursuits. He had lost more than one close friend to a lucky rifle shot from a native. He was drinking beer and playing skittles with friends. It was good to be able to make noise, laugh, jump around and sing. These simple pleasures were not permitted in the enclaves. Now the beer was taking affect, he had volunteered himself to sing a folk song from Earth. Sitting on the bar with a guitar taking a sip from his mug he decided to sing a drinking song, but then Rose walked in and she was breathtaking. Her hair was indeed rose-coloured. It had become the fashion for women to cut their hair short and dye it. Her skin had the pallor of a Mars-born girl and her eyes were bright green, slightly slanted but larger than the natives. Orion quickly changed his mind and decided to sing a love song. Rose ordered a drink and listened to the weather-beaten man on the bar. He was Earth-coloured .His voice mirrored the melancholy of the song and she was enchanted. His looks, his voice, the song, all were of Earth. It made her realise that her own looks reflected her origins. Orion finished his song and refused to sing another, Rose’s gaze had made him lose his alcoholic confidence. He had found himself singing just for her and gave her an embarrassed smile before returning to his friends. Rose waited until Orion had returned to the bar to order once more and went to his side. “Excuse me sir, you have the look of someone who has spent a lot of their life on Earth. Am I correct?”

  “You are indeed. I work in the enclaves as a personnel trainer.” He was thinking, Oh, I wish I had not drunk so much.

  “Your skin colour gives you away.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I am losing the paleness of youth faster than most.” She smiled at this .

  “Where would you rather be, Earth or Mars? Your singing seemed sentimental for the former.” Orion decided it was time to take the initiative.

  “My name is Orion. May I ask yours?”

  “It is Rose, I’m pleased to meet you, Orion.”

  “The pleasure is most definitely mine, Rose. The answer to your question is very complicated, shall we sit down?” They moved to the quietest spot they could find. “I love Earth; it is our ancestral home, our mother. We will never be able to deny our mother our love. It is not our mother who rejects us but our cousins who mistreat us, each other and their mother.” Rose was impressed; this man had a poetic understanding of her own studies. Not a macho thrill-seeker at all, which admittedly she thought he would be.

  “Then what do you feel when you are here on leave?”

  Orion laughed at the question. “I mainly feel a sense of relief to be alive and not having to sneak around all the time.”

  Rose laughed also; the ice was broken. They continued talking, Orion described life in the enclaves including the nasty stuff that comes with living in close quarters. Rose told of her uncertainty as to a path to follow in life and that she envied his certitude. Orion indicated he was not sure how long he wanted to continue with his present lifestyle, he was sure there had to be something better out there. Rose realised the conversation was taking an intimate direction. She remarked how late it was and that she needed to be alert in the morning as she had exams. Orion asked if she would dine with him tomorrow evening: she said yes, without hesitation and gave him her contact number and a kiss on the cheek before leaving. Orion watched her leave the bar, feeling something important had just happened in his life; then came the sinking feeling in his stomach when reality struck home. He only had eight days leave left.

  At dinner the next night, Rose was relaxed and in a mood to celebrate, her exam had gone well. She had decided Orion was an exceptional man, a small age difference that did not stop him from being attractive to the opposite sex and an air of being confident and self-reliant. Orion for his part could not remember how long it had been since a beautiful woman had looked at him so deeply. He was flattered and delighted. for Rose was intelligent and sensitive. Towards the end of the evening Orion became uneasy, Where was the future in this? I really don’t want this to end badly. He felt the chemistry was overwhelming both of them. Then he gave up and let the inevitable happen, but made sure she knew his leave was reaching a conclusion as he did not want her to think he was a glib opportunist.

  They slept at Rose’s home, a small singles unit set near the University. They had gone to bed as single people and awoke as a couple, their heads on the pillows; looking in each other’s eyes they knew things had changed. It had seemed fated and so comfortable. For Orion, it had left him afraid of the future and full of self-recriminations; but for Rose it had given her a sense of direction, she was going to hold on to this man with both hands. She had decided, so that was that. Rose had the luxury of time for the next three weeks while her final results were collated, they were both intent on living life to the full together until Orion had to leave. Orion wanted to visit the other two colonies, in past leaves he had always seemed to have become stuck in colony number one, or Primo as it had gradually come to be called over time. Other enclave workers also seemed to lose their taste for adventure once they got to Primo. During the next week they became tourists. They visited art galleries which had some native works as well as tuathan. These had been collecte
d gradually and handed down from one generation to the next. Eventually, once the time had come to leave Earth, people had donated these objects d’art to the administration. They in turn had had sent them to the relevant building for public display. Orion was amazed at how little he knew about the colonies. The size of them, 130, 000 people on average in each and still growing, impressed on him the fact that the enclaves were becoming less and less important in the great scheme of things. The disc ships with their near light speed capacity, carried more raw materials from the other planets and the asteroid belt than was collected on Earth. The number of enclaves had diminished to seventy-two; only 800 operatives in total with less than 600 at any one time on the planet. It impressed on him that the time would soon arrive that his life would be an anachronism. The night before his departure another one of the returning probes was detected. This would be number twenty-three. Even though the results so far had been less than spectacular, they still created excitement. The others had detected nothing better to live on than the planet they currently inhabited and no life signs that could be detected. The probes were programmed to go into fixed geostationary orbit around Neptune and their payload would be collected by a disc ship. This was done as a form of quarantine measure. Although the probes themselves did not land on any planets in the solar systems they were sent to, there was the possibility of a malfunction on their return, “or a situation we have not imagined” as the then president said. It was estimated that at least 180 planets would be examined with a possibility getting as high as 200. Therefore the odds looked good, but to date it was zero out of 162 – not even a hint of life. Excitement still gripped the colonies with each return because the probes now returning had travelled the farthest. The last two would have gone approximately 500 light years from Mars and were due back in just another twenty years.

  Orion and Rose discussed the possibility of Orion making this his last trip and resigning. Rose didn’t want to seem possessive, but she didn’t want him away all the time, surely that was natural enough? He would be gone for six months and said he could not expect her to wait that long for him. She of course said she would wait, and meant it. Orion had received such promises before, and yet found he believed her which surprised him. “Don’t put your life on pause, Rose. Look for a career, something you really want. When I get back we will organize things then.” Rose hugged and kissed him.

  “You have never told me what you do in the enclaves, I really know almost nothing about your life on Earth. Have you ever talked to an earthman?”

  Orion laughed. “Yes, actually. My job involves me communicating with them on a regular basis.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Big.”

  “Big and fat mostly. Oh, and wrinkly with darker skin than us, you must have seen pictures?”

  “Of course,” replied Rose. “but what I meant was, what are they like to talk to, do they understand who you are at all? Are they intelligent enough to be curious and ask questions?”

  Orion did not like the direction of this conversation, but he was not going to be evasive in his answers, it would set a bad precedent. “We have been trained to recognise their mindset. I choose my subject according to a set of criteria that is very rigid. I choose those who have average or below average intelligence. They believe we are mythical creatures as you would have read at school. I play on that perception and of course their greed. We work in pairs, but the subject is only aware of me. I do the deal as we call it, the backup has a range of technology ready to distract and confuse the subject should it become dangerous. As you know, I pay mainly in gold for the items that are on my list. The required items lists are received in the enclave. I go out and make the contact.” Orion hoped that she would be satisfied with that.

  “How often do they become aggressive?”

  “It is estimated that twenty percent will attack. However, they try to capture not kill us. Our curiosity value is greater if we are alive.”

  Rose’s expression changed. “There was a report here that a worker was caught and tortured to death and another shot on sight.”

  “They are sometimes unpredictable,” Orion said, remembering things that had gone wrong with increasing frequency lately. It was regulation practice to try and recover bodies when things went wrong. This was the worst scenario of all. In every case they had been successfully retrieved but always at considerable risk. Sometimes they could not get possession of the body and would have to burn it wherever they found it. Rose now looked very unhappy. In both the cases she mentioned, the bodies had spontaneously combusted leaving no evidence of the technology employed. This system had been adopted in the last ten years to minimise danger to recovery crews. This of course was devastating for loved ones on Mars, who had no one to bury. Rose took his hand and they went into the bedroom. He loved the way she led him to the bed.

  They both were up at sunrise and set off for the elevator. The sky was a pale lemon colour. The trip to the surface was always exhilarating and the view over the colony amazing, thousands of lights in the darkness were gradually turning off as the pale sunlight hit the magnifying transparency of the dome. They held hands until they reached the top. Once in the hovershuttle, they huddled together to keep warm until they reached the disc ship, which only took a few minutes. They both went in the airlock and Orion put on his standard space one-piece lightweight suit. The ship’s hatch opened. They kissed and held each other tightly, made promises to each other, then Orion turned quickly and walked into the ship, the hatch slid noiselessly closed and he was gone. It had that surgical knife-cut feel like an umbilical cord severed. All lovers who are parted know that moment, and dread it.

  Rose had never felt so empty before. With tears running down her face she returned to the hovershuttle, drove to a safe distance and sat shivering, waiting for the disc ship to leave. Orion registered his embarkation and sat in a padded seat. As the familiar hum of the antigrav started to build up in volume he looked at the other two members of his new team who had been waiting for him. They nodded polite hellos. There would be time to get to know each other before they landed. It was mandatory to have a mission briefing in orbit before landing near the enclave. Antigrav reached negative mass and a small jet of gas lifted the ship slowly and silently off the surface. Orion sighed, he had never worried too much about leaving Mars before.

  “Oh well, there is nothing I can do about it now, I need to pull myself together and focus on the job,” he said to himself, knowing it was going to take more than a pep talk to make him feel better.

  Rose watched the silver-grey disc disappear, then returned to her unit, having made up her mind about what she was going to do next. She wasn’t the type to give herself pep talks.

  The disc ship, once in high orbit, set navigation co-ordinates and applied the photon thruster.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1916 AD

  “To be truly human is to make yourself truly vulnerable.” Wisdom of the Elders.

  The briefing was very standard except for an update on the latest European war. The death toll was frightening and the advancements in weaponry were being watched on Mars with alarm. Enclaves in England were going to be closed and destroyed permanently. This meant that Orion might be a bit busier than usual because Ireland was not in the heat of things, especially on the west coast. The native technology had advanced to a stage that they had primitive flying machines. This could prove to be an extra problem for the disc ships. By the end of the briefing Orion was convinced his promise to Rose to resign was a very sensible one, especially as it was becoming obvious enclave operations would shortly be too dangerous. Orion said his farewells and jumped from the hatch to the ground. The disc ship lifted into the night sky. Orion recognised this enclave, it was one he had worked with ten years ago, it was very well camouflaged which was why it had not been seen as necessary to move it. Because it was a lot older than average, it was also more comfortable. As he approached, a small hatch opened in the grass and Orion squ
eezed himself inside. One man and two women were inside. Orion introduced himself, “I am Star, this is Sunshine and sitting at the consol is Stone,” Star said. Star was probably close to his own age. Orion summed her up as a career operative like himself. Sunshine was the youngest, probably here to gain experience, a stepping stone to something else. Stone looked like he had been sitting at an enclave console all his life and looked fairly happy about it. There was no such thing as a leader in an enclave, the operatives did their jobs according to their individual expertise. The requests came from Mars and the operatives decided if and how they would comply.

  “Come here Orion, I will show you the set-up,” said Stone.

  “No need, I was here eight years ago, it looks like you are still using the same equipment.”

  Stone laughed. “No doubt. The enthusiasm on Mars for the enclaves is on the wane, I feel.”

  “Is there an assignment waiting for me?”

  “No, not yet, our services are not in demand like the old days. Get something to eat, there is stew in the pot. You can rest up for a while, I’m sure something will come in tomorrow.”

  Orion lay in his bunk that night thinking about Rose and what a waste of time this was turning into. Emotional attachment does not belong here, it is dangerous in so many ways, he thought.

  Back on Mars, Rose had been busy pursuing her own agenda. She did not want to wait six months, she was looking at ways she could perhaps get to Earth and join Orion. Rose entered her father’s office at the Government Building in Colony 2. Her appointment was at midday, they were to have lunch together in his office. They hugged and kissed and then sat at a coffee table laid out with bread rolls and butter and a variety of fillings to choose from. Briar was 109 years old and had another forty-one years to go before reaching the mandatory retirement age. His title was Minister and his ministry involved monitoring social developments on Earth and producing predictions of likely actions currently playing out. Rose told her friends he was a fortune teller. Rose was there because every once in a while Briar would submit requests to the enclaves for samples or information gathering. She had seen an opportunity in this. “As much as I’m pleased to see you my dear, it’s time to come clean and put the question to me. Rose, what do you want?”