Second generation, p.25
Second Generation, page 25
“Stop worrying,” said Georgia. “Nothing we can do now but wait.”
“Can’t help it,” said Leo. The villagers had lit a fire and were grilling mackerel that Plato and Aristion had brought as a peace offering. Most of them accepted it gratefully, but Leo noticed that Hanta and a few others had turned their backs. He frowned. He didn’t want them slipping back into hostilities again. He also noticed Demetria sitting close to Chen, their hands surreptitiously clasped between them. That made him smile, then frown again, “Hope they don’t fall out. It’s a long way back to Mars.”
“There you go again,” said Georgia. “As it happens, I’ve already had that conversation with our daughter because she was fretting about it too. Wonder where she gets it?”
“Am I that bad?”
“You’ve got better.”
“Thanks. I think.”
Georgia held his cheek and kissed him on the lips.
Leo felt like a youngster again.
Leo woke in a way he had never done before. Sunlight caressed his face. The hum of insects under low branches, a gentle rustle as they brushed against each other. The salty air mingled with pine needles and the embers of last night’s campfire. He stretched and wriggled his toes, then half opened his eyes, squinting at the rays of light that slipped beneath the tree canopy. Long shadows stretched out across the beach; each a tiny pebble made huge by the angle of the morning sun. He lay a few moments, taking it in, then struggled to sit.
Georgia helped him into his exoskeleton, “Good morning.”
“Yes. It is, isn’t it,” agreed Leo. “Wish I could wake up every morning like this. Though I could do without the struggle against gravity.”
“Small price to pay for the freedom to sleep outside. Wherever you like.”
Feng joined them, “I think I see their shuttle,” he gestured high above the Bering Sea.
Leo and Georgia stood beside him and squinted, their hands cupped against the sides of their faces to block out the sun.
“Where?” asked Leo, aware others were standing and looking alongside them.
Feng pointed.
Following his finger, Leo saw a grey smudge against the blue sky. He frowned, “Why is their trail so dark?”
“They’re on fire as they hit the atmosphere. Just like we were.”
Leo swallowed. He knew the shuttles had heat shields and they’d proved that the shield still worked… for their shuttle. The dark line grew stronger, sharper. He could see a bright point of light at its head. That would be the flames enveloping the cockpit. “Bloody hell, did we burn like that?”
“Guess so,” shrugged Feng. “Still here, aren’t we?”
Leo lifted an eyebrow at his friend then went back to peering at the approaching shuttle. It seemed a long way off. After some minutes, the bright flare extinguished and the trail turned from dark grey to pure white. It seemed to stay that way, not getting any larger or nearer for a long time.
“Stef? Pawel? How’s it going?” asked Feng over his comms.
“…”
“Stef, Pawel, do you copy?”
“…”
“Hello?” A hint of worry was creeping into Feng’s laid-back voice, which was itself something to worry about.
“Hello Earth,” came Stef’s voice loud and clear.
Leo let out a deep sigh of relief. Though he knew her well enough by now to detect some emotion in Stef’s voice.
“You are most welcome to this beautiful planet,” beamed Feng.
There was a pause. Stef was uncharacteristically quiet. “Thank you,” she whispered eventually.
At last the trail seemed thicker, nearer. Leo could see sunlight glinting off a tiny shape at its head. It was getting closer to the horizon. Eventually it veered away from them, giving a flash of light off its delta-shaped underbelly.
“Turning to make our approach,” confirmed Stef.
Dozens stood watching, hands up against the sun, as the shuttle shone. It took a wide arc then came around, lining up with the shore. As it levelled out, Leo could hear the roar of its engines, see the detail of the cockpit and portholes over its wing. The roar built, deafening. He clamped his hands over his ears. The thunder of the engines subsided, flaps going down to slow it.
“Pawel swears this’ll work,” said Stef. Leo could imagine her making a sly smile. “I said I’ll give him one hell of an earful if it doesn’t.”
There were a series of tiny explosions along the belly of the shuttle and bright orange tubes inflated.
“Hey!” called Feng, “Son of a gun! Those are the inflatables off my Plan B!”
“Looks like Pawel re-purposed them,” said Stef. “For Plan C.”
Leo put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, “As long as they make it down, okay?”
“I think I’m more impressed than angry,” admitted Feng.
The shuttle was shuddering now. The orange inflatables were making it hard to keep the shuttle on a steady flightpath and there was no further chat from Stef. The engines revved to give enough thrust to stay up, then she eased them off again. The shuttle seemed to hover only metres from the surface of the sea, then dropped. A mighty spray was thrown in all directions hiding the shuttle itself. Leo heard a collective intake of breath from everyone around. The cockpit re-emerged from behind the curtain of water. The shuttle was sliding sideways, slipping across the water and tilting.
“Oh shit, it’s going to flip over,” said Feng.
Leo didn’t know whether to look or not. The wings were at a wild angle to the water. The noise of the engines cut abruptly and the shuttle teetered on one edge before slowly flopping back onto its belly. Jaunty on its bouncy orange undercarriage.
“Need some practice at that,” came Stef’s voice.
“Thank heavens, you made it,” called Leo. “Stay there and we’ll come get you.”
“Stay there and we’ll get closer,” replied Stef.
A hatch flew open above the main crew section. A turret emerged that looked like a gun. The sea and forest dwellers all took a few paces back into the trees. There was another explosion and a harpoon sailed over the beach, pulling a fine cable. The harpoon buried itself in the mud and stuck fast while the cable was reeled in. The shuttle nudged the shore and stopped, bobbing gently against the waves of the inland sea.
“Sweet touch,” grinned Feng. “How are we letting Pawel steal the engineering show?” he asked his nephew, Chen.
“Docking and anchor, all in one. Nice,” admitted Chen.
“Seems he was watching our own landing very carefully,” suggested Leo. “Come on, lets go greet them.”
They jogged across the mudflats to the shuttle. It had arrived about a hundred metres down the beach from their own. Not bad considering how far away they started.
The airlock door was swinging open to reveal one final surprise. An inflatable orange slide to get the passengers to ground level. “Ah, come on, Pawel’s just showing off now,” complained Feng.
“Its good?” asked Pawel, poking his head out the door.
“Too damned good, come down here you clever bastard.”
Pawel crossed his hands over his chest and lay back against the slide before pushing off, as if he were following the instructions of some extinct airline brochure. He stood up, feet floundering a little in the mud. Feng and Chen embraced him like a hero.
Then Leo saw Stef.
She stood, gripping the rim of the doorway, with her face turned up towards the sun and her eyes shut. She had loosed her long grey-white hair so it flowed around her in the breeze. She breathed deeply, savouring. A tear slipped down her cheek and dribbled across her lips.
She was smiling.
Slowly she knelt and tipped her long legs over the edge, then leaned back to slide down. Leo and Georgia caught her, lifting her to her unsteady feet. “Good to see you Stef. That was an impressive landing.”
She opened her eyes, looking steadily at Leo then Georgia, then the throng of Martians and assorted Earth survivors around her. “Not nearly as impressive as this,” she gestured up at the sky. “I never thought…” the words caught in her throat. “Never thought I’d see this again,” she forced out between sobs and leaned into Leo and Georgia’s embrace.
Leo looked at Georgia then back at Stef. Despite her exoskeleton and her natural height she seemed slight. Frail. It rocked him. He realised he had looked up to Stef for strength and leadership. However tough things had been, he had taken comfort from knowing that she was tougher. That she’d steer them through. She may have been the last of the Martians to step onto Earth. But she was the first Earthwoman to return, having left over forty-two years ago.
Stef was home.
22
Poles Apart
Regeneration 11 – Gliese
Their task was finished, their marks had been made. They had slept again, for a long, long time, though they had little knowledge of it passing. After their extraordinary journey, they were about to wake because they were nearing their home.
Home.
How long would it endure? Rather, how long would they and their kind endure? Their numbers generated insufferable pressure, despite all they had learned.
They had travelled to strange worlds. Privileged to witness the genesis of new lives and the very end of others. It was a privilege and also a curse, to live in the between time. They would never know peers with which to share their wonder at the universe. Only themselves.
Perhaps their marks would be understood. Perhaps someone would come, eventually. In time.
Perhaps some of them might survive to see that day.
Only time would tell.
Aleutian Peninsula, Earth – Leo Meier
“Mission Control want us to head for the South Pole, straight away,” grumbled Stef.
“I can’t see why,” said Leo, stroking his curly red beard. “Whatever they want us to see will stay there a while yet.”
“That’s what I said. And I’ve only just arrived, goddammit!”
“I’ll send them a message, explain we need more time here to make sure relations between the sea and forest folk don’t disintegrate again. Mishka’s been amazing but I’m still worried about Hanta and some of the others.”
Leo worded his report to stress the knife edge on which they stood. Leaving early could put lives at risk.
Sam replied relatively quickly to confirm they had a month, no more. Reading between the lines, Leo detected some frustration in his old mentor. Not at Leo, for Sam made it clear he had the right priority, but at the wait.
Why?
Why did they need this survey of the South Pole so badly? What could be so important?
Aleutian Peninsula, Earth – Demetria Philippou
Georgia had requested feedback on her idea for the Berries and Bees as she called it. It had been reviewed in depth by many of the best minds on Mars and a list of suggested improvements returned. The basic idea was unchanged. It seemed an ideal opportunity to help the survivors get started. Georgia made sure to involve Timaeus, Aristion and the others. Symbolically it was they who carried the seeds out to pre-dug locations, scattered across the forest for planting. It was they who nurtured the first batch of queen bees and placed them in hives that the villagers had been building.
Despite pre-knowledge, Stef had found her first meeting with Timaeus and his family a challenge. But like many others in the village, she was won over by his quiet charm. She worked hard helping with the new planting programme, to the point that Demetria had to tell her to ease off. Stef would argue that planting seeds outdoors in a forest was something she’d never get to do on Mars. But she would start and finish each day paddling in the sea, then take a little time to sit on the shore to watch the world roll by. Sometimes Aristion, Hedistē or one of the villagers would join her. One evening Demetria came to sit with her.
“I guess you enjoy breathing fresh air again,” she began.
Stef nodded.
“This must be so different from when you were last on Earth.”
Stef smiled. “You say the same things to me as everyone else. This isn’t that different. I grew up on the coast of the Netherlands. What little was left of it after climate change and sea rises. I used to walk along the new shore beyond the treeline. Much like this. Now you’ll ask me what it was like. And why I travelled to Mars,” she added, looking at Demetria over her shoulder.
“Um, yes.”
“It was a world full of people, rushing, stressing, worrying their lives away, without time for each other. I became a pilot so I could look down on it all. Then I took the opportunity to become a spaceflight pilot. And then to Mars to escape the madness. Seems I escaped the trauma of Goliath as well.”
“But there were things you missed?”
“I missed this. Sitting at the shore, listening to the sea,” Stef paused and frowned. “Would it be evil of me to say I think Goliath changed Earth for the better?”
Demetria flinched, remembering the dark crater that had been North America. The desolation of the shattered cities. “What do you mean?”
“Not a day goes by without me thinking on the loss of so many souls. I lost people I loved, just like all the colonists. But… there had been too many people on Earth, too greedy, too wrapped up in their own small thoughts. They called it a consumer society. We had all but consumed Earth before Goliath obliterated the consumers. Leo and Samaira’s studies are showing that the dreadful impacts of climate change were largely counteracted by the impact with Goliath. The Earth is healing… I hope…” she stared away at the horizon.
“What is it you hope for, Stef?”
“It’s insane because I know we’ll only make the same mistakes again. But I hope humanity learns and changes. I sometimes wonder if there were such a thing as intelligent life elsewhere, whether they’d make the same mistakes as us, over and over through time. The thought comforts and depresses me in equal measure.”
“Don’t you think we’re making some kind of progress on Mars?”
Stef nodded, “Yes. But it’s early days. It took many thousands of years for humanity to strangle the environment that nurtured it. What worries me is that we’re restarting with much greater technology. We could end up trashing our planet and ourselves so much quicker than before.”
Demetria sat in silence a while, taking in Stef’s bleak thoughts. “Perhaps the survivors of Earth will watch us. Remind us of our past when we might be tempted to consume too much. Just as we might watch them. We may be far apart, but we can’t ignore each other now.”
Stef looked at Demetria, then slowly a smile crept back to her lips. “The optimism of youth. I hope you’re right. I hope I’m wrong. I’m sure we’ll make mistakes, but there’s no point setting out to fail. We must do better.”
“Is that why you work so hard planting seeds?” asked Demetria.
“No,” her smile widened. “It’s because I want to eat Earth-grown strawberries.”
Pawel wasn’t interested in strawberries. He was fascinated by the range of mutations suffered by the survivors in the village and set up an improvised tech lab in the back of the first shuttle where he cannibalised a couple of spare exoskeletons for parts. Occasionally he would emerge to take measurements from someone’s deformed foot or another’s withered arm and disappear again, leaving them scratching their heads, bewildered.
Demetria was hauled into his lab one day and asked an exhausting list of questions about the attachment of prosthetics, the ways to avoid excessive wear and abrasion, how much to allow for natural growth.
At the end of Pawel’s interrogation she said, “What you’re trying to do for them is wonderful, Pawel. But why don’t you wear your own prosthetic?”
“Quicker without,” He muttered, then flicked his stumped fingers nimbly through the projection field of his tablet as if demonstration were easier than words.
“Perhaps some of them might feel the same?” she suggested.
Pawel shrugged, “They get to choose.”
Demetria smiled, “Yes. They will. I’ll help you with the fittings.”
Hanta frowned at the two Martians wandering about the village with their strange equipment. Grigoriy was fascinated by the prosthetic hand Pawel brought him, but wary of putting it on. Although he’d seen exoskeletons on the Martians, he’d never seen anything like that on his family or friends. Pawel put on his own prosthetic and wiggled the bionic fingers. Grigoriy raised his eyebrows, surprised. After some hesitation he offered his withered arm for a trial fitting. Demetria could see it wasn’t a perfect fit yet, but Grigoriy managed to make the fingers move and he gave the two Martians a warm grin. Solid progress since the time he’d dragged Demetria into his treehouse and thrown her across the floor.
They returned in a few days with the refined work. This time Grigoriy was eager to wear it and after an experimental waggle of the digits, he picked up a cup. It trembled in his uncertain grip, dribbling water all over his chest before he could drink any. The next try it popped out of his hand altogether, but this only strengthened his resolve. After a couple more abortive attempts he got the remaining drops to his lips and drunk. He turned the cup upside down and slammed it on the table with pride. Then he attempted a high five with Pawel which almost worked. More of a fist bump with metal knuckles.
Grigoriy’s friends were fascinated in his new hand. Very soon Pawel and Demetria had a waiting list. Pawel was delighted.
Then the inevitable happened. The first one to start sneezing was Ilya, quickly followed by Inessa. Within three days most of the village had a severe cold. The Martians had brought their bacteria with them and it was inevitable that after so long among a different community, it was a strain that the Earth survivors immune systems struggled to process. Demetria found herself pulled in all directions, administering most of the Martians’ first aid stock of paracetamol while trying to relieve her patients of the worst symptoms.
