‘I have no home,’ I say. The words slip out before I can stop myself. I laugh, and the sound comes out vaguely hysterical. ‘I mean, you know, Earth isn’t really an option... and Mars, well, she’s not home yet. You know?’ I rub my forehead. He knows what I mean. And it’s not the same as what I’d just said.
I focus on the grass between my toes, the subtle scent of summer on the air, the clear notes of the piano. And then I tell myself, insistently, that I am in space, far away from Earth and this garden. I don’t want it to feel too real because it makes waking too hard.
‘She’s close now,’ says Dumza. He’s staring up at the sky where Mars is unrealistically close and large as the moon. The curves of her desert plains are stained orange, her naked mountain ranges discernible. I feel like I can reach out and touch her. I wonder if the sim is supposed to act against the laws of physics. I thought it was supposed to be realistic, not dreamlike.
I frown at him. ‘Why did you do it?’ I ask. I’m safe here, I remind myself. He’s not even real. This is the Dumza I loved, the step-father I cherished. This is not the murderer he became.
He looks up at me as though he were expecting the question. ‘You know why,’ he says. There is no remorse. There never was. I can’t seem to reconcile that with the man I knew and loved.
Emotions swell and swirl inside me.
‘Then you don’t need to be here,’ I say.
‘I didn’t bring myself here,’ he says. ‘You did.’
‘Then I can get you to leave. Go.’
He stands there, unmoving, hands pocketed, staring between me and Mars. ‘Was it so bad you had to leave the planet?’
‘Yes.’ Unfortunately, the heart is an organ you need to be alive, so I couldn’t leave my broken one on Earth, I had to bring it with me. My on-board luggage. And it seems no matter how far away from Earth I am, the grief—the horror—follows thick and heavy.
‘You aren’t going to leave, are you?’ I ask.
He shakes his head.
‘Then I will.’ I turn my back on him and go.
#
‘Your fitness stats are exemplary,’ says Lucky. Lucky is an androgynous android, with a human face. A Caucasian face, of course. No one has thought to make a black skinned robot—because technology and blacks are not synonymous, even after Wendel Nkomo and Skyward. I don’t know how many more intrepid blacks we need before that changes.
‘Are you alright? You are staring,’ says Lucky. It tips it’s head in too human a way and smiles.
‘Fine. Daydreaming.’
‘Do you do this a lot?’ It holds up the clipboard before it, pen poised to write some gleaned information.
‘I guess. As a child, I spent a lot of time staring at the sky and now I’m in it, so...’ I don’t know why I say it.
‘I see,’ says Lucky.
‘Do you?’
Lucky looks at me expectantly and when I don’t respond it says, ‘I noticed your sim logs have been much shorter the last few cycles. The language is sparse. Are you experiencing any anxiety about the simulations?’
‘Anxiety? They’re supposed to relax us, aren’t they?’
‘Theoretically but experiencing such life-like scenarios and finding yourself back in space can be disorienting. There can be a period of mourning. Have you experienced this? Your heart rate seems elevated in the sims.’
‘Mourning?’ I echo the word. How appropriate it is.
‘Mourning life on Earth. A life you will never return to.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘It is entirely normal.’
‘Is it?’ Normal to mourn so damn hard that you leave your wailing aunts and uncles to move to a different planet?
‘Does that word make you uncomfortable?’
‘Which word?’
‘Mourning.’
‘It’s just... my mother... well, my step-father...’
‘Yes, I have your file in my database. I know what you have experienced. Psyche evaluation tests proclaimed you fit and healthy for duty. Are you finding this to be a problem?’
I take a deep breath. One, two, three, place yourself back in reality. One, two, three, orient yourself. One, two, three, be mindful of your breath.
I am fine, okay, alright, coping, fit for duty.
And Dumza has found his way into my sim.
‘No problem at all. Listen, it’s my slot in the gym, so would you mind if I go? I don’t want to miss it again. Got to keep these muscles ready for Mars gravity, you know?’ I keep my tone light.
‘You may go. Make an appointment if you are experiencing any concerning symptoms.’
‘Sure.’
I slip off the gurney and leave the small health cube. The corridor is windowless and stifling—the metal and resin and perspex all too inorganic, the air smelling faintly like recycled sweat. I take another deep breath. Mars is what I have always wanted. Always. No memory, or amount of grief, is going to stop me from getting there whole and sane.
So, I go back to the garden.
#
Dumza killed my mother because of the man she was having an affair with.
In my contract with the ASA one thing they stressed was that I could not be affiliated to anyone with questionable politics. They were very specific about this: any politician with shady dealings, criminal records, or even simple lawsuits against them, could not hold company with me or my family. Any connections or ties to such political personalities would result in my immediate dismissal from the program. My tarnishing would be ASA’s tarnishing, and in a climate where funding is extremely difficult to come by, ASA was taking no chances.
The man Dumza found passionately kissing my half-clothed mother was a notorious, extremist politician with fundamentalist fans. Any link to him and my career would be done for. Besides the fact that she was married, my mother knew what this would mean for me and she kept kissing him anyway.
It broke Dumza’s heart. Of all the men she had loved, he was least deserving of betrayal.
When I found him, he was standing in the middle of the twilight-hazed living room, staring at the two bodies half-dressed and tangled on the floor. There was so much blood. The knife was still in his hand and he seemed surprised when I mentioned it.
‘What did you do, Baba?’ I asked him, turning away from the blood, trying to keep my tears and bile inside so I could get the knife, not sure who I was dealing with. He looked like Dumza, but Dumza would not do this.
‘He’s Jared Hlope,’ said Dumza, as if that explained everything.
‘The old finance minister?’ I asked, not looking at the bodies. I knew who he was, but I needed Dumza to keep talking.
He nodded, tears streaming silently down his face. ‘I thought he was hurting her but... he wasn’t. I didn’t want him—them—to ruin your chances. I didn’t want you to miss Mars because of this.’ He looked down at them, then looked at his hands. ‘Will you miss Mars anyway, because of me?’ He looked up at me in horror, then back at my mother. ‘Oh God, what have I done?’
I think that’s when it hit him because he dropped to his knees and started screaming and wailing. Nothing I said calmed him down.
I left him there—left the bodies, the blood, the iron stink of the house—and stood on our front lawn to phone the cops. I was trembling, too afraid to stay in the same room with whoever that was. Because whoever he was, he wasn’t my sweet Dumza.
I waited on the grass for seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds before I heard the sirens, reciting flight procedures in my head to anchor myself. Chaos broke out on my lawn where I was questioned and man-handled into a police vehicle for my own protection. Someone recognised me from the latest promotional vids ASA had released one month ago, and soon the lawn was encircled by reporters and cameras.
Eventually Dumza was dragged from the house, cuffed and screaming something about my mother being a whore. He did not look at me. He pled guilty and was found dead in his cell two months later. Never once did he show a moment�
��s remorse, but I still remember that look on his face when he realised what he had done. I remember the regret.
There were more hearings after that—mine. It had to be decided whether I had breached my contract by being affiliated with a murderer. In the end, no one was willing to waste the money they’d spent training me, nor the resources setting things up for me on Mars, not so close to the launch. I had to go—it was too late now—so they spun it as a second chance for a girl hard-done by.
An orphan in space. I wonder what Wendel Nkomo would say about that.
#
Our ship is only one-third living space—including the med-bay, gymnasium, and sim annex. The rest is mail, supplies for the Martian, and the engine. The ship is aesthetically minimalist—not like some of the first mission ships with their convoluted passages and visible mechanics. All the white should be clinical but somehow it isn’t. I think it must be the darkness of space and our strange human inclination towards light. They’ve been very conscious of this in their designs of future missions, citing that pleasant surroundings help the space farers acclimatise better to space. I think they did it because it gives the impression of spaciousness to our tight quarters. After only eleven days, I wish I could thank the person who considered that.
But even in a ship this small, I am alienated. The crew meets up once a day for reports and general notes, meaning they are forced to be in the same room as me, but I sense the others are waiting for me to break down. They avoid me, like I’m contagious, dealing with me only on the most practical level. Sending a newly bereaved black woman into space is a terrible risk as far as they’re concerned. I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt; after all those months of being stuck with them, learning to love them and create a coherent team, they found it so easy to stop believing in me. Or maybe they’re just scared I’ll jeopardise their one shot. Maybe we all are.
#
Seven days to go and we will be in orbit. So far, the voyage has been uneventful. Not counting Dumza’s appearance in my sim. No one has lost their minds, hurt anyone else, or tried to leave the ship—not even me, though they’re waiting for it. Maybe I’m just the excuse but on some level, we’re all on the edge, waiting for things to go wrong.
The world we left was so messed up—personal issues aside—so why aren’t we taking better care of each other? Where is the Ubuntu that Wendel Nkomo wrote about?
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, contemplating this journey and our abysmal lack of care for one another when Grey appears beside me. Grey is a Spatial Sociologist from the UK, a swarthy reed of a man with a nice smile. He doesn’t talk much about his personal life but get him started on the possible societies that might develop in a space colony and he will talk for hours. He stares out the window along with me for a moment, his hands gripping the back of the bench. It’s an awkward silence, and I’m keenly aware of the space between us and the space outside and the space within. I wonder why he isn’t speaking because he keeps taking breaths like he’s about to, but no words come out. I wait, patiently, because he is one of the few on the crew who has gone out of his way to make conversation with me in the last two months. I wait a long time.
Finally, he jerks his head towards me. His eyes are bloodshot, the same as mine, and his brown knuckles are pale from holding on to the bench so tight.
‘You okay?’ I ask. I watch his neck, looking for a throbbing pulse but find nothing.
‘Sure. You? I’m tired, you know. Nothing major. All of us are tired, right? Can’t remember when I last slept. My log could tell me, probably. I think it can. That’s what it’s for, right? I’m just...’
He grabs my hand and squeezes painfully. ‘Does that hurt?’ he asks, eyes wide.
‘Yes,’ I say, yanking my hand away. I move sideways on the bench, but he follows, shadow-like, too close.
‘Tell me something, Amahle. Are we real? Is this real? I’m not sure if this is happening. Are you? Sure?’
‘Pretty sure,’ I say. ‘Maybe you just need to sleep. Lucky could give you something...’
‘Medical sleep is never good. It’s dreamless. That’s not good. Or maybe it is. Would it be better?’
‘Just this once,’ I say, urging him. My hand still hurts where he gripped it, and my heart is pounding. ‘Or maybe you could go into the sim?’
He barks out a panicked laugh. ‘The sim? Want to make it worse?’
Silence falls again so I stand, ready to get out of there. I feel like I should call someone, but I don’t want to be melodramatic. Everyone is expecting that of me and I’m not eager to give them ammunition.
Grey grabs my arm, his fingers biting painfully into my skin. ‘Can you feel that?’ he asks me desperately. ‘You know about pain, right? Better than any of us. Is this real pain? You know about pain. Is this real?’
My blood slows, and I am atrophied in place for a moment. ‘Grey, you’re hurting me. I don’t understand what you’re asking.’
‘Pain! Can you feel it? You should know—pain is closer to you. It’s what makes us alive. I think. I can’t remember. I can’t feel anything, you know, and I’m thinking maybe it’s because I’m still in the Sim but I’m not sure. So, I’m asking you—are we real? Is this real?’
‘Yes. It’s real.’
He leans in close, breath stale, and puts his fingers around my neck, squeezing very slowly. ‘You sure? Because I’ve been having dreams—are they dreams, I don’t know—about the code of the sims and they’re growing legs and arms and hands and they’re reaching out to strangle me while I sleep. Except I can’t sleep so how am I dreaming. Maybe I’m not.’
I try to swallow but his hand is tight on my throat. I glance up at the tiny camera in the corner of the room and plead with whoever’s watching to send someone to get him. My breathing is short and sharp, the anxiety clasping down on me as tight as Grey’s hands.
I’ve never been this close to breaking and I’m angry because so much has been lost for me to be here. So much. And now this guy wants to kill me in space to prove that he’s alive?
Grey’s fingers loosen from my neck and he steps backwards. ‘Are you real?’ he asks me again. ‘Is any of this real?’
Lucky appears at the doorway, syringe in hand. ‘Hello, Grey. Could I be of assistance?’
Grey grimaces at the android and then backs into the corner, whimpering. ‘Am I real?’ he repeats over and over while I retreat and walk-run down the corridor to my bunk where I collapse. I ignore the hands shaking me, asking if I’m alright, and instead, I cry myself to sleep.
#
At dinner, none of us are hungry but we linger in the cafeteria—all of us except Grey. His absence is glaring. Down the passage, he lies sedated where he’ll stay for the remainder of the journey. Flight risk, Lucky called him. Even flight risks still make it to Mars.
‘First breakdown in two tours,’ says Otar. ‘I didn’t think it’d be him.’
No one looks at me. I resist an ironic smile.
‘You’d think they’d have worked out the meds by now. I mean, two clean tours...’ Otar stares out the portal window and I swear I see tears in his eyes, like this is his failure somehow.
Greta snorts. ‘You realise the people making the med cocktails have never been to space?’
‘It’s just science,’ says Elizabeth.
‘It’s psychiatry actually,’ says Rajesh, rubbing his hands together in a habitual way, like he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. ‘Psychiatry and science. The science is easy—the rules are obvious—but the psychiatry? It’s unpredictable, you know? Too many variables...’
‘Someone in the psych department needs to be fired. How can they put us on a spaceship with a crazy? Aren’t those tests supposed to weed them out?’
‘They let Amahle on,’ says Otar, nodding at me. ‘I don’t think weeding out crazies is part of their M.O.’
An awkward silence descends, and no one looks me in the eye.
‘Okay, can we just get this out there?’ I
say. I’m so tired of this bullshit. This is my crew. I have no family left but them. ‘My stepfather killed my mother and her lover—who happened to be a shitty politician. My step father went to jail. He died. I am not my stepfather. I am not a murderer. I am not the one who broke down, Grey is. So now that we’ve established that I’m not the flight risk, can we get on with our mission and get to Mars together. Please.’
I see Greta hiding a smile.
Maybe I can’t win them all, but I think I may have made at least one friend.
#
Mars is close now, larger than the moon from Earth. I shouldn’t be glad, but Grey’s breakdown has had an interesting effect on the crew. The incident has acted as a shift, loosening our tightly wound psyches. A comradery is growing again. Maybe it is because we have passed the halfway mark and Earth is forever behind us. Maybe we feel drawn to each other now that we are the only touchstones of Earth that exist out here. Is this finally Wendel Nkomo’s Ubuntu in space? It seems a weak shadow of the concept but this far from home, I’ll take it.
Dumza is a constant feature in my garden now, always pruning things and chatting incessantly as I watch Mars growing ever closer through the telescope. I think I keep him there because I want to remember this version of him. I don’t want to keep seeing the bloodied Dumza with horror in his eyes—I want my dad. I want this version of him to come with me to Mars.
Today, Mars is so large it fills up the sky. Even my subconscious is reminding me I don’t have much longer in this garden.
‘What will be the first thing you do there?’ asks Dumza.
‘Kiss the ground,’ I say, smiling. This is something we always talked about. Somewhere in the intricate tunnels under the surface of Mars, where we’ll all live, is a room called ‘The First’. Inside it are the first soil samples, the first comms, the first habitat suits, a first edition of Wendel Nkomo’s A Native in Space—a museum of sorts as we establish a new culture on Mars. And inside this room is a bowl of Mars soil, from the surface, that you can touch with your bare hands—because someone was smart enough to know how important it is to literally ground yourself in a new land. Dumza and I always talked about that room and the miracle of touching the soil of another planet.
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