Killing Time On Mars

by Alec Taylor

  That’s where I hit the end of the line on Eli. On the one hand, we had a suspect who had run, who had a motive (of sorts), who had no alibi for the time of the murder, who the Executive Office, and even my own team, thought was guilty of murdering his ex-lover. On the other hand, Eli maintained his innocence even when he had nothing to lose, June didn’t think he was capable of murder, and we couldn’t prove he was actually in the greenhouse at the time Imani was killed. We had no hard evidence.

  It also occurred to me that Imani could easily have made other enemies with her political views.

  The thing was, in the end Eli hadn’t seemed angry or vengeful, just very sad. I replayed our conversation at the canyon in my head again and again. I kept thinking of things to do or say to change the outcome. I felt responsible for his death and instinctively believed he was innocent. It wasn’t conscious at the time, but I know now that I wanted to clear his name, to make amends. I knew Pete would want me to stop there, but I decided to keep digging for just a little longer.

  And so I turned back to Imani.

  Security had access to every piece of information that we had collected since arrival—nearly seven Earth-years of fixed and personal camera footage, suit biometrics, memos, measurements from sensors in comms panels, satellite data and footage, readings from hardware sensors, including the telemetry of the buggies, hovees, and harvesters. We had enormous piles of data from many sources.

  A search for Imani’s face in the colony archives uncovered footage captured on the journey of the first fleet. I paused on an image of her in a reflective mood, staring out a porthole into space.

  I imagined what she was thinking. She was thrilled by the knowledge that she was on a one-way ride, going to another planet, going to have her name and actions recorded for all of humanity and future history. It would have been intense in the first fleet, not knowing what it would be like (pictures and samples can only get you so far), the anticipation of the initial burst of energy and action, the challenge of being the first to adapt to the hostile environment.

  Imani was in other footage several colonists had taken during the final descent of the first fleet. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide, but she smiled brightly. Their ship landed softly, using the last of their Helium-3 in reverse thrust.

  The ‘mother ship’ was a large vessel designed to be the hub of the colony on the ground until the first phase of construction was completed. Much later, after the underground colony was established, the ship was moved and converted into the launch pad terminal, where I arrived years later.

  When the first fleet arrived, the harvesters had been immediately sent to the dust fields, and the generators and refinery manoeuvred into semi-permanent positions in front of the rocky hillside JOSEV had chosen back on Earth. The water tanker had been sent to the pole to collect ice.

  Imani and her team had started working on their agriculture in their lab immediately. There was footage of them collecting Martian dirt (dust, really), testing it extensively, and then creating several experiments to test plant growth.

  They had worked on as the other teams encountered their first major problem. The cave system designated for the colony was little more than a crack, not the deep fracture that the scientists back on Earth had anticipated. There was a delay while JOSEV determined what to do. The colonists were told to down tools and wait. Imani was on the Senior Management team—a series of memos in her mailbox showed that suggestions had been made and ignored, a search party had been despatched to discover better caves, but in the end JOSEV had decided that the colonists would simply cut more rock than they had originally planned. By then the first harvester had returned and the refinery was working as planned. Purified Helium-3 had been pumped into the first generator, and rock cutting began. It took six Earth-months in round-the-clock shifts to cut the first permanent underground lodgings.

  Meanwhile, Imani and her team had started testing the preferred greenhouse design with plastic brought from Earth, growing genetically optimised plants in the low gravity, and trying to find the best source of oil for plastic production. They had the genetic signature of almost every known plant on Earth and had a pre-selected sample of variants to try. Markers for dwarfism, drought tolerance, cold resistance, high yield, and many other potentially attractive characteristics were activated on a range of base crops, including corn, cane, and palms. Imani’s work logs showed that a highly customised version of canola was used to make the first locally produced plastic.

  The level of bureaucracy in Imani’s work was exhausting. At the end of every day, she had recorded a detailed report of the day’s findings. She had documented the progress of each experiment, and went further—making suggestions for interventions or new variations. These seemed to have been almost universally ignored by JOSEV management back on Earth. She had executed every command and laboured toward the objectives of her mission, with unflagging enthusiasm. Her biometric readings showed that, during that period, she was sleeping around four hours a day. Her team was given no leave until the decision was made to commit an entire greenhouse to a single crop for plastic production. She unofficially gave her team two extra days of rest.

  Finally, moving day had arrived—195 colonists stood in front of the outer airlock as Karl gave a speech at the opening ceremony. They silently clapped their gloved hands, and the Colony Development team breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  Later that day, each team had bundled up their suits, bunks, and personal equipment, and made the trek across the dusty desert, through the haze, into the airlock and to their allocated rooms.

  Two days later, everyone had been evacuated back to the ship. The oxygen, water, plumbing, and electrical systems were all functioning as well as could be expected, but nobody had adequately anticipated the volume of dust that would come through the airlock with every entrance and exit. By the end of the second day, visibility inside the inner colony had fallen to just a few metres. The first settlers fashioned air filters from scraps of material. Karl made the call to evacuate until a solution could be identified. Two weeks later, an electrostatic field and extractor fans had been cobbled together and installed just behind the outer door.

  Imani’s team had spent a few days transporting their laboratory into a new purpose-built room in the inner colony, which was airtight and had high-capacity power and data access. Tables, robots, machinery, lights, everything had been carried inside, until the mother ship became a shell and was eventually relocated to become the launch pad terminal. The team’s focus from that point on had become maximising production and gradually adding new crops. Every couple of months, Colony Development would finish a new greenhouse, and Imani’s team would fill it with soil, crops, and a watering system. The greenhouses were systematically joined together by a backbone passage, and the outer colony gradually became a giant interconnected system of airlocks and greenhouses.

  During the first Martian-year (or roughly two Earth-years) of production, Imani’s team had exceeded their performance targets. They had created the plastic for ten massive greenhouses and sealed a cave system to house hundreds of colonists. Local production became the main source of food, and the greenhouses started to make a significant contribution to oxygen production.

  In that Martian-year, four loads of isotopes were returned to Earth, each worth the entire Gross Domestic Product of a small nation. The loads were divided three ways and securely shuttled back to each investor. New, fully automated Tobler power plants were fired up and the first workers were laid off from legacy power industries. They were told to reskill into new Tobler-related industries, which was ridiculous for many of them.

  Imani’s life settled into a cycle of experimentation and steady improvements to the biological production of the colony. Three-and-a-half Martian-years—or seven Earth-years—later, she was killed in one of the greenhouses that she had helped to create.

  *

  On Wednesday, the morning after my conversation with Jan, I went in to the office v
ery early and decided to look back at Imani’s movements around the time of her death. I accessed her position log for the hour before she died and overlaid it on a map of the colony. She had spent her last hour in her room, awake. Then she had gone straight to the greenhouse.

  I mapped the location of every colonist an hour before her death. When Imani was in her room, Hu’s suits were transmitting location from their room, but not biometrics—she wasn’t wearing an outersuit. Most of the colony were in their beds, though it was surprising how many were in the lounge or even in their workspaces. Nobody was in the outer colony. I moved time forward and watched as the little transmitter location dots flickered and moved around. People in the lounge visited the bathroom in quick succession, there were movements between rooms as friends and lovers visited and departed, but nobody visited Imani.

  June had been in the lounge. I remembered our conversation from the previous day and decided to talk to her again.

  She answered my call quietly and slowly. “Hi, Mike.”

  “How are you?” I asked, wondering if she was too upset to talk to me.

  “I’m all right,” she replied. “No, I’m not all right, but I guess I’ll be okay.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you able to talk about Imani?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d like to talk face to face. Perhaps we can meet in the lounge.”

  “Just come here, room fifty-one,” she said and hung up.

  On the way down to her room I reflected on my instinct to talk to June and wondered if I might be acting on a deeper impulse. I hesitated outside her door, collecting my thoughts, deliberately breathing slowly.

  June opened the door, “Come in, sit down.”

  I sat next to her on her bed. June saw me glance at the other bunk, which was empty and looked unused.

  “My roommate moved out a few weeks ago,” she said. “I’m getting a new one in the next batch of newbies.”

  “Right,” I replied, hesitating. I needed to extract as much information as possible from her, but I wanted to be sensitive to her grief.

  She had a faraway look in her dark-brown eyes, as if she was seeing through me, through the rock and out into the desert. There were dark smudges under her eyes and I could tell she had been crying. Her hair was pulled back into a loose pony-tail and she was wearing two undersuits—she wasn’t going to work.

  I said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t bother you. This must be a terrible time for you.”

  “No, it’s all right. Actually, I don’t mind having someone to talk to and I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  She took a deep breath and sat upright.

  “Thank you,” I replied, and paused again. “You worked for Eli, but you didn’t start in Colony Development, did you?” I asked, remembering her file.

  “Oh, no. In fact, I was on Harvesting at first. It’s funny how JOSEV does that, you know. You can be qualified in one thing, but they put you in another. Anyway, I spent a year in Harvesting and asked for a rotation as soon as I could. I never wanted to be out on the plains; I wanted to be designing towns. I spent a few months on Imani’s team—that’s how we became friends—and then managed to get a role in Colony Development, working for Eli.”

  Her face briefly crumpled as she said his name, but she caught herself and wiped at the corners of her eyes.

  “Were you close to him?” I asked.

  “Well, we worked together for about five Earth-years and were good friends. Less so after they split up, I suppose. I didn’t want to take sides, but he wanted a running commentary on Imani’s life, which I just wasn’t prepared to give. He found that frustrating, I think. But he was a good person and a friend.”

  I thought for a moment about Eli’s obsession and how desperate he might have become when he had lost Imani.

  “Can we talk about the last few days?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “June, did you know Imani was going to meet someone out in the greenhouse?”

  “No, she didn’t say anything about it. And it seems so strange. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I really can’t imagine why she would go out there.”

  “You said you saw her at dinner. She didn’t mention it then?”

  “No, nothing. She said she was going to turn in early and catch up on the news.”

  “The news?”

  “From Earth. We were talking about what the US did last week.”

  “The airspace restrictions?”

  “Yes.”

  I doubted that news from Earth had much significance, but I wasn’t ruling anything out at that point.

  “Does that sort of thing affect people here that much?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t make a big difference. I suppose it’s just that the investors are getting more and more confrontational with each other. And you can feel it here, too. You should be glad you’re from Australia; you’re neutral.”

  “It has some advantages,” I said and then turned the conversation back to Imani. “So, she was only in her room for a couple of hours and then went to meet someone in the greenhouse. Do you know if she was in a new relationship?”

  “No. I don’t think so, not since Eli. She was taking a break from dating. Why would she meet someone out there, anyway? It’s not that hard to find an unoccupied room. It gets really cold out there at night.”

  “What was happening between Imani and Eli after the break up? Was he angry?”

  “No. I mean, sure, he was upset. Anyone could see that. But he left her alone and she was getting on with her life. I think he was just very sad and lonely. And now he’s killed himself...”

  She choked on the last word, bowed her head, and wiped tears off her cheeks. I leaned toward her as a wave of sympathy swept over me, but I quickly pushed it aside.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was out there with him when...it happened.”

  “Oh, God, Mike,” she said, leaning toward me and putting her hand on my arm. I was touched by her warmth, but I had a job to do.

  “He was very upset,” I said. “I think he still loved her, very much.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. He was a sweet guy, and he was smitten. Such a shame, because she isn’t…I mean, wasn’t going to settle down with anyone. She told him that from the beginning. He knew it was never going to be serious.”

  “I can understand her position,” I said. “But then why did he take it so badly when she broke it off?”

  “His heart was broken. He couldn’t help falling in love with her. We didn’t see him for a while; he avoided us in the lounge and dining room, everywhere.”

  “Do you think he was angry enough to hurt her?”

  “No, absolutely not,” said June as she frowned and leaned forward.

  “Why not?”

  “Not Eli. He wouldn’t hurt a soul. And he wasn’t angry, anyway. He was heartbroken.”

  That aligned with my perception from the canyon. Eli had been upset, but not angry or vengeful. However, June had worked closely with him and she was kind-hearted and generous. I knew from experience that people could be disappointing, particularly to those who saw the best in them. I needed to explore parts of her story.

  “Had she broken it off before and then taken him back?” I asked.

  “No. In fact, I was starting to wonder if she was falling for him, despite her usual opposition to any real commitment.”

  “How about after they broke up? Did she…feel sorry for him and sleep with him again?”

  “No, never. She knew he was terribly upset and told me that she wanted a clean break. She was hoping they could eventually be friends and I’m certain she didn’t sleep with him again, not once.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And she wasn’t seeing someone else yet?”

  “Not that she told me. She was sensitive to Eli’s feelings. She didn’t want to make it worse for him.”

  “Perhaps she got back together with a previous partner? Perhaps one of her exes?”

  “She
was on good terms with all her old partners. She had always been up-front about not wanting commitment and none of them were ever surprised when it was over. If she had someone new, she was keeping it secret, and I don’t see why she’d keep it from me. She told me everything.”

  “Hmm. Would anyone else want to hurt her? Did she have any enemies in the colony?”

  “Well, not really. You met her, didn’t you?”

  I shook my head, as I had never actually met Imani.

  “She always spoke her mind,” continued June, “and wasn’t afraid of sharing her opinions even if they were unpopular.”

  “That could have put people off side.”

  “She was never dogmatic or overbearing. She wouldn’t argue for the sake of it—in fact, she often agreed with other people. She just had some views about the colony that were controversial.”

  “Who weren’t they popular with?”

  “Well, almost everyone at first. You had to be willing to listen with an open mind and then you could see that she had a point.”

  “What were her unpopular views?” I wanted to hear June’s perspective, even though I’d heard it in Eli’s recordings.

  “She thought we needed to be independent. Control our own destiny. Make decisions about what to do and where to go. We’ve all worked so hard for so long and we’ve got no say in our lives or our community. None at all. Most people on Earth have at least some say in the political decisions that affect their lives, but not here. A faceless joint venture back home decides everything, often without really understanding what happens here at all, and always in the interests of harvesting more isotopes. They sometimes take unreasonable risks with our lives.”

  Those ideas had initially sounded treasonous to me. I had dismissed them on the basis that Imani was probably just venting some understandable stress and frustration. But now, listening to June, I was somehow hearing them for the first time.

  “Nobody has died yet. And the joint-venture investors,” I said, jumping to the first counter argument that popped into my head, “have invested a huge amount of money in this colony. We can’t just take it away from them.”