Exo Extract 2: Day One

Exo

19 Jun

DAY ONE

Mae was out checking her traps when she found the girl.

It had been a long, disappointing day. Most of the cages were empty. After consulting her map—three traps left before she was done, each a long walk, close to the Caul—she’d trudged reluctantly towards the shore. Her pack, a couple of meagre marbit carcasses hanging from it, felt heavy. Pebbles rolled under her moccasins, jarring her brittle bones. If you weren’t careful, you could turn an ankle. Once, she’d always been in a hurry, careless of how the stones shifted under her feet. Now she didn’t give them the chance. Besides, what need had she for hurry?

The persistent wind—some days it blew until your head hurt—gnawed her ears and needled the craggy contours of her face. Another winter on its way. Her thirtieth here. But who was counting? Who wanted to be reminded they were an exile, a prisoner, a ghost? She’d come here to find somebody and turned into a nobody.

Here and there, wiry sparsely-leafed bushes grew. Brittle and dry, they survived on frugal falls of rain. Numbers were thinned through uprooting by storms which spilled out of the Caul and by her fellow penitents’ kindling-gathering. She stepped over a grey-brown vine growing in a straight line. Its hard, succulent tear-shaped leaves, if eaten, would make you sick for days. These creepers grew in one direction: towards the grey mass to the south.

The distant booming on the shore was like hammer blows on stone.

She passed a rusted hulk sinking into the plain. An exterior door hung open, steps descending into the pebble grave in which the rocket’s nose was buried. Wind whistled through gaping plexiglass-scavenged portholes. Networks of alloy pipes clung to the hull like cobwebs. Ribbed burners pointed at the sky like giant clapperless bells.

The first two traps were empty, the second’s bait was gone. She scraped away the rust speckling the tripwire with her knife. She popped open a small plastic vial and applied grease sparingly, wishing she could do the same to her own joints. She replaced the lost bait with a succulent green leaf.

She looked up. Had she heard something? In the distance was another wreck. A brown pipe on the horizon. The feeling of being watched was strong. She shook her head. You had to guard against it. The Caul had you imagining all sorts of things. She sniffed the air: dust, time-pounded stone. For others it was metal, plastics, recycled air—the stale reminders of confinement. Hers was the quarried walls of the Mars orphanage and the church’s chill benediction. She hated the smell of dust.

The trap was set. Last one and then home.

The rusting hulk was long and thin. It had come down close to the Caul and years of storms had wrought brutal devastation: broken-backed, skin-pitted, holed. She gave the rocket a wide berth.

Hairs rose on the back of her neck. That uneasy feeling of not being as alone as you had thought. She still trusted her senses. Some of her fellow penitents called that a weakness. But in her former profession it had been her strength. Watching, listening, sniffing out evidence. Of course, none of it had helped here. Ghosts left no traces. Pausing, she peered closer at the ship’s carcass.

Out of a dark hole in its base a white face stared back at her.

Small, rosy-cheeked. Round, almost boyish, features that despite their paleness reminded Mae of someone. The same someone who’d damned her to this planet.

Neither of them moved for a time.

The face disappeared and a short while later a little girl emerged from behind the ship. She wore a red coat and red boots. The coat toggles were undone. Under the coat was an odd, ankle-length green dress with buttons down the front from collar to hem. The girl had long, straggly, chestnut hair and about her mouth and grey eyes there was a cool blankness. She stood stiffly, arms at her sides, as if chilled. She didn’t move, only stared. She appeared to be six- or even seven-years-old, but Mae knew she was younger.

Mae looked around but could see no sign of Magellan, her father. Where was he? The man knew enough not to allow his daughter to stray like this. She bit her lip. And Mae knew enough not to mix herself up in the affairs of other penitents.

She broke eye contact with the girl and continued walking.

After a hundred metres she turned and saw that the girl—her name was Siofra—was following, stumbling over the pebbles. When Mae stopped, so did the girl. They regarded one another for a short time. The girl looked miserable, weary. Mae wanted to shout Go back to your father, but didn’t trust her voice. They barely knew each other. The child wasn’t her responsibility. Siofra had to be made to understand that.

Mae carried on and this time she didn’t stop to look back.

Drawing aside the pleated folds of her coat, wizened fingers stiff with cold felt for the leather haft of her knife. Mae drew the blade and placed it on the ground. Next, she sat, an operation which took a degree of bodily coercion. Her lower back protested. She shrugged off her pack and took out a plastic cup, which she screwed firmly into the pebbles.

The wire cage of the final trap lay between her splayed legs. She carefully opened the door and grasped the marbit. In size, shape, and colouring, it resembled a cross between a marmot (front end) and a rabbit (rear). Hence the bland and, to Mae’s mind, inaccurate name of marbit. There wasn’t much meat on them and that little was stringy and tough. But if she cooked a stew with some of the samphire she cultivated, she could eke out a carcass to provide for five or six days. The bones would make a thin broth. Having a meagre appetite did not stop her stomach grumbling.

Dehydrated and weak, the marbit barely stirred as one hand grasped the animal by the back of its neck and the other took up the knife. A single cut slit its throat. She dropped the knife, took hold of the long back legs and flipped the animal upside down. It kicked, blood squirting and running into the cup.

She could feel the girl’s eyes on her back the whole time. What was wrong with the child? She had matched Mae, step for step. Not so hard. She looked over her shoulder as the last, sluggish drops of blood oozed into the cup. The girl sat fifty metres away, watching.

Mae knew she was supposed to feel something, but it had been so long since she’d felt anything but numbness towards anyone, she had no idea what it was she should feel. I am grey inside, she thought. Grey as the Caul, dead as this world.

She shook her head. If Magellan chose not to keep his daughter on a short leash, what business was it of hers? You used to care, she reminded herself. Once, it was your job. You were good at it.

She looked at the sky. Dark clouds promised rain—a promise so rarely kept.

She reset and baited the trap and tied the animal to her pack. She held the warm cup in her hand. She turned at the sound of pebbles moving. The girl was approaching. Mae sighed.

“Where’s your father?” she asked.

The girl stopped. Ten metres away.

“You’re far from home. Does he know you’re out here? It’s not safe.”

The girl’s face was expressionless, almost vacant. Her wary eyes strayed from Mae’s face to the cup.

“You want this?”

The girl shook her head.

“Where’s your father?” she repeated

The girl opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She held a folded piece of paper in one hand.

“Still not talking,” said Mae, wondering when she’d last seen the child. Months ago, at least. Penitents kept themselves to themselves. For who wanted to look into the eyes of another haunted soul? Not when it was a reminder of your own neediness, of the weakness that had driven you here—a humanity which, year by year, you were slowly surrendering.

The cup was warm in her palms. She raised it and sniffed. A hard, iron scent. She drank its contents. “You go home now, Siofra. Back to your father. And tell him if I catch you sniffing round my traps again, there’ll be trouble.”

Mae was not a born talker. Whenever she was difficult the sisters would remind her: you never spoke a word until you were five. As if those old nuns knew the whole story.

She’d been found, aged three, crawling around one of the habitat’s public areas. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk. Searches were made for her parents. No one came forward and no one was found. Not a single DNA match. You’d have thought it impossible to hide an infant aboard a habitat of a hundred-thousand souls, where resource allocation and orbital mechanics required measurements down to the exact gram.

But not so.

Mae had been birthed and nurtured for three years. And no one had noticed.

Admittedly, Mae K. Jameson was one of the poorer Jovian habitats. Low employment. Low wage. Low skills. A high percentage of people daydreaming 60/24, lost in their individual ideas of paradise. Whatever you wanted (read: could afford). Cosplay that allowed you to feel mud between your toes, a breeze on your face. The scent of freshly sliced coconut. Flex your muscles in a thousand activities impossible in a cramped, sweaty-socks-smelling wheel orbiting Jupiter.

A surprising number of kids were in Mae’s situation, which was difficult to understand. The single child policies, conception costs, habitat restrictions and overall crappiness of hutch life made having kids the hard option—and that was with full administrative support. Why do it secretly and alone?

Well, some people thought laws were made for breaking, until they found out too late why those laws existed in the first place.

Whether she had not been talked to or refused to talk before she was discovered or had simply given up on talking after being found, Mae left it another two years until she uttered a word.

By then, she’d been moved from one childless foster parent to another, rotated around the habitat like a rent-a-pet for anyone with affection or kindness to spare. That sort of love brought extra rations. Whether Mae saw any of those rations was another matter. She never stayed anywhere long enough to much care.

But that was to fit right in. Jupiter and its near hundred moons were their own miniature system. Teams of engineers shuttled back and forth to mines and refineries. Nothing and no one was ever still. Lives measured in arcs and orbits.

“Round and round and round,” one of her kindlier foster parents had laughed as they’d watched a borrowed hamster spinning its wheel.

What were her first words? Mae K Jameson.

“Her home!” Sister Joanna had proclaimed in delight and promptly christened the new arrival with her first utterance. An albatross to hang for life around a girl’s neck.

It wasn’t long after she started back that Mae realised she was going to have to take some sort of direct action to stop the child following her home. “You go the other way. Back to your father.”

This and other suggestions were greeted with wide blank eyes and pouting mouth. Mae took to throwing stones, but because she was afraid of actually hitting the child, her shots were unconvincingly short or wide.

“Are you lost? It’s that way.” She pointed back the way they had come.

Half an hour of this and Mae’s patience ran out. She turned and walked up to the child. “What do you want?” she shouted. The girl didn’t even flinch, just looked up at her. Mae put her hands on Siofra’s shoulders and turned her around, gave her a gentle shove. Siofra took two steps and stopped. She turned and faced Mae. Her grey eyes were cold. She held out the folded piece of paper. Mae swore silently, took it and opened it out.

She saw a crude drawing of a tree, done in pencil, and a string of numbers, in pen. A gust of wind nearly ripped it from her hand. “What’s this?” she asked, disgusted. She hated being manipulated.

The girl ignored her.

Mae clutched the paper tight. Was it a message from Magellan? Or did it mean something to the girl? I don’t want this, she thought, but for good or ill it was now hers and could not be dismissed.

“Shit,” breathed Mae, shaking her head.

It was the wrong direction. It would be dark in under two hours, it would take two just to return here and two more to get home. Perhaps she could talk Magellan into giving her a ride. He’d owe her for this.

It was over three kilos to Magellan’s place. She walked ahead, Siofra a few metres behind. The girl seemed reluctant now, lagging back. Perhaps there’d been a row and the girl was in the doghouse. Maybe she’d even run away.

So what was the paper for?

The girl and her father had always seemed close. Unlike so many strained relationships beside the Caul, there appeared to be a silent understanding between the pair. Might something have happened then? “You and your pa fallen out?” she asked.

The girl didn’t respond.

“Running away doesn’t fix anything,” she said. She could hear the Caul booming across the shore. “Just puts at least one of you in a very bad place.”

This was her bad place. Purgatory, hell. Call it what you like, Mae was being punished. Punished for having a heart, punished for daring to love someone and not being able to let them go. She looked at the girl, telling herself this was simply a head problem. Straightforward resolution, minimum involvement.

The clouds darkened as the light drained from the sky.

“How old are you?”

Siofra held up four fingers fully and one partially. She smiled.

Mae looked at her. “Well, Siofra Magellan, who is four and a half, this is the longest conversation I’ve had in months. Even if it is entirely one-sided.”

Siofra’s eyes returned to their vacant state.

They continued in silence, walking alongside the ridge pushed up by the Caul. Mae liked to keep the grey out of sight, if she could help it. They passed a few gnarled, twisted, deep-rooted bushes. Dead, killed by the slow toxicity of the encroaching Caul. She felt the shifting mass in the pebbles under her feet, the tug of it.

Control in all things. That was the secret. Over the years she had learned to devote her full attention to every action. But there was still that familiar tingling—a sense of being watched—when her back was to it.

She noticed Siofra’s gaze kept returning to the dead animals hung from her pack. The girl’s eyes narrowed, got a curious look. “Do you like marbit?”

Siofra’s mouth twisted in distaste.

Mae smiled. “We have to make do with what we can find. Of course, you and your father don’t do so badly.”

At mention of her father, the girl’s face fell. Mae said nothing more.

Mae supposed she’d been lucky those first few years. If it hadn’t been for the church, she’d have been passed around one foster parent to another her entire childhood. The church was visiting the habitat on one of their regular recruitment drives. Religions were popular, of course. People emerged from their hutches, peeling off haptsuits or climbing out of dreamtanks, to see what the preachers had to say. Curiosity, or perhaps boredom, brought them. They hung around, however, for the promise of hope.

If you could call such airy promises hope.

Each religion was selling something different. A new start. A return. The fires of damnation. A purgatory to be endured. Mae figured much of their success was down to how they all offered a good story. You just had to choose the one that most suited you.

Aged five, Mae had no choice. The Church of Venerable Light had got money from somewhere and they were splashing it on recruitment. They’d been given a preaching spot on the Mae K Jameson in exchange for taking the habitat’s orphans (and not mentioning the recent suicide epidemic). The promise of better prospects. Nearer the sun. On a planet. Light and solid ground. The administrators didn’t need persuading: they simply saw one less problem on their hands.

At the same time, Sister Joanna once told Mae, parents had queued, begging the church to take their children too. “They’d got it into their silly heads that you orphans were the lucky ones.”

Mae was happy to be leaving the habitat. She’d no access to dreamtanks or haptsuits. With no escape into other worlds, she was trapped 60/24 inside station life. No wonder the church wanted orphans. They knew nothing better.

The ship dashed back to the sun, taking them closer to the mass of humanity clustered on the habitats, asteroids, moons and planets of the inner solar system. Towards the dome-shielded cities and underground citadels of Mars, and Mae’s first experience of something approaching solid ground beneath her feet.

Mae K Jameson had been one of the first outer system explorers. Her namesake was going backwards.

It was twilight when Mae and the child finally reached Magellan’s place: a cluster of buildings arranged in a quincunx. Four plasto-fab cabins at the square’s corners and a long metal caravan in the middle. Perimeter lights were on. Strewn across the pebble ground between the cabins were small heaps of stone, some rusting machinery and rows of sealed plastic crates. There was also a wheeled jeep and a microsat launcher, both of which were weathered and dirty—one from overuse, the other from neglect.

As they approached, the child dropped back. The closer they got the more she slowed. Thirty metres away, she stopped altogether. Despite Mae’s encouragements the girl wouldn’t take a step further. She sat down on the pebbles, biting her lip.

“What’s wrong?”

She would not look in the direction of the cabins and caravan.

“Siofra, is there something I should know about?”

The girl wouldn’t even look at her.

Mae sighed. “Okay, you stay here. I’ll go find your father.”

While the perimeter lights were on, the cabins themselves were dark. She hesitated. She knew Magellan, but there were few worse crimes than trespass. You did not encroach on another penitent’s space without loudly announcing your intentions first and then awaiting an invitation. It avoided later misunderstandings. She put down her pack beside the girl. Stiff, wrinkled fingers checked the knife under her coat.

She approached the caravan, loudly calling, “Magellan.” A cabin door was banging in the wind. The light was falling rapidly, and she wished she was carrying her torch. Stupid. The wind, punctuated by the banging door, moaned as it tore through the camp. She passed inside the perimeter lights: solars, brightening. A pump beside a cabin hummed, lights flashing red. Touching ancient memory: red meant a fault, or warning.

Mae’s mouth was dry. Straining her ears.

She could hear the booming roar of the Caul pounding the nearby shore.

She walked around the caravan. It was larger than her shack. A long, narrow box with smooth, curved corners and an orange-stained, pitted silver skin. Metal, even alloys designed to withstand harsh environments, wasn’t proof against the Caul. The caravan was raised on deflated wheels which had sunk into the pebbles. She remembered the Magellans’ arrival, eight years ago. The consternation among the penitents as a pair of Main scientists lived among them—as if they belonged out here and not sealed in a lab inside their concrete bunker. She’d visited a few times over the years but not since his wife had vanished. She avoided coming out this way. She wasn’t one for getting involved. She hadn’t come here to study the Caul.

She looked back at Siofra, still sitting there. The girl had turned to watch her.

“Magellan,” she called. She rapped on the door. Bang, bang, coming from one of the cabins behind. She peered in a window. Saw an empty but made-up bunk. A dining booth covered in papers and some dirty plates and cups. A stove, with pans on it. A keyboard and a couple of blank screens. She pulled at the door. Locked.

Mae paused. She had to lean against the caravan. She felt dizzy, overcome by a sense of dread. The feeling of being watched was now overwhelming. She felt violated. Why was she doing this? She had an urge to walk away, a frightening urge to head straight to the Caul and . . . .And what? It hadn’t been this strong in years. She knew what it was. The stench of death. It was all around her. She should take the girl and go. Get out of here. Come back tomorrow when it was light. She took deep breaths, resting against the caravan’s side. Get a grip old woman, she told herself.

“You stay there, Siofra,” she called. “Okay?”

No response, but she hadn’t been expecting one.

“Magellan,” she shouted, walking towards the cabin to the north. A cube half the size of the caravan. Its walls made of a durable plastic composite that had been patched badly where it had decayed. A window shield was padlocked shut, as was the door.

That other door kept banging, an itchy sound that needed attending to.

She checked the vehicle—empty—and the other two cabins, both padlocked and window-shielded. Magellan clearly security-minded.

The fear of what she would find rose as she turned towards the large cabin. Wind swept the door back and forth. The Caul could blow up suddenly, angrily. It caught you out like that, even after thirty years. Taught you the necessity of respect.

The urge to turn and go was growing near unbearable. Home, the Caul, anywhere but here. Her hands fidgeted, her legs shook. She stopped to gather herself. She checked on the girl. Siofra still sitting there, arms wrapped around her drawn-up legs. Why not leave and come back tomorrow? The fingers of both her hands were entwined, aching.

She caught the door mid-swing and latched it open. The interior was black. She stepped inside and waited for her eyes to slowly adjust. There was a large window but the blinds were down. Tables, chairs. Tables under layer after layer of paper sheets, mostly photographic prints. A couple of terminals and a scabby mass-printer. Under the tables were stones. Books on shelves along with bottles holding liquids. Everything a mess, a jumble. Every few seconds a gust of wind would reach in and toss papers around.

In the corner, she saw him.

A mane of long shaggy grey hair half-covered his face, which was tipped forward, chin pressed into his chest. His tall, narrow body swung gently, slowly rotating, from a length of rope tied to a ceiling strut.

Ah shit, she thought and sat in a chair before her creaking, over-used legs dumped her on the floor. What am I going to do with the child now?

Outside, the wind gusted. Behind it, the Caul crashing against the shore.

It was easy to think of the Caul as something else: the sea, an ocean. Huge and indifferent, those grey waves didn’t look like they had intentions or wanted to harm. That’s how it seduced you.

Some days it was gloopy like oil, transfixing in its languorousness.

The research Mae had done before arriving claimed the grey was made of fluid nanoparticles. (Fluid particles? The Caul was an industry in paradoxical terminology.) That was about all scientists had learned after hundreds of years, she discovered. They couldn’t yet explain the Caul’s hypnotic allure or why it smelled similar but different to everyone, reeking of childhood memory. In Mae’s case that turned out to be the dusty stone walls of the church on Mars.

That was how it sneaked into your head, by preying on your weaknesses.

Because the Caul killed.

Or, more precisely, it took life.

Covering a third of the world’s surface like a liquid skullcap, the Caul compulsively drew to it every living creature that got too close until they were lost in its grey waves. Some succumbed in just seconds: on arrival, running for all they were worth towards it. Others, after many long, troubled years living by its side, just disappeared one day. And a few chose a very different way to put an end to the battle of wills. The outcome was always the same, however. The Caul got you.

For thirty years, she had been waiting for her turn to come.

From the chair, Mae noticed that Magellan’s feet in their holed socks only just cleared the floor. Took his boots off, she thought, before he did it.

She moved to close the door. A wall switch turned on an overhead light. She returned to the chair, breathing slowly. If she felt anything it was relief. The uncertainty over. Death she could cope with. Death she at least understood. If Magellan had been sick or mad or missing, she hadn’t known what she’d have done. She looked around the room. On the floor were papers and broken glass. Chaotically strewn about. The wind had made hay in here. Or someone had done this, as if in a sudden fit. There was a chair on the floor near the body. On its side.

She had better get it over with. She stood and approached the body. She reached out and touched a hand. It was cold, the skin puffy. She pulled back the hair, looked at the contorted face. The grey eyes were beginning to cloud over. His tongue protruded from his mouth. She tried to bend his fingers, lift his arm, but everything was stiff. It hadn’t been that long.

She thought about getting him down. She uprighted the chair, stood on it and examined the rope knotted to the ceiling strut. That wasn’t coming down without being cut or the body’s weight removed to release the knot. She didn’t have the strength or will to manage either. But she didn’t want to leave him like this, not with the girl out there. She shrugged. Magellan had left her no choice. She stepped back and looked at the body again. At the mess. The shutter open, but blinds closed. She turned away, resentful. As his discoverer, this was now her responsibility.

She looked at the papers and notebooks. If he had left a note it was lost in the mess. She thought of the girl’s piece of paper. Numbers.

On a high shelf she saw a clan-branded bottle, nearly full. She took it, unscrewed the cap. Sniffed. Sipped and winced. Another. Warmth burned inside her.

She turned the light off and closed the door, using the open padlock to hold it closed. Dark now. Siofra was gone. She picked up her pack. Nearly ten kilos to walk home, in the dark and without a torch. She slung the pack over her shoulder and looked at the cluster of buildings and the vehicle. In her hand she held the bottle.

She very nearly set off on her own and had to stop herself.

She checked the cabins and the caravan once more, but all were still locked. She could see if Magellan had a key, but she didn’t want to go back into that cabin. The wind whipped at her, snarling through the camp. Dammit, she didn’t have time for this. Where might the girl have gone? She heard a faint clunk. She swallowed. Was someone else here? She felt exposed, and, for the first time in a long while, alone. A tightness in her chest. The moon hung in the sky like a watchful eye.

“Siofra!” she called. This was stupid, she was stupid. Going senile, she thought.

The perimeter lights rattled in the wind, shadows shifting on the ground. Despite the fire in her belly, it was cold. Her eyes settled on the jeep. She went to the driver’s side, tugged the door open and climbed in. Slammed the door shut and was enveloped by a still, cool silence. She sat, staring at the cabins, detached from it all.

The girl was curled up in the passenger seat. Her eyes stared unblinkingly at Mae, who did not know what to say. She sipped the vodka.

Siofra looked at the bottle.

“Thirsty?” She almost passed it over. She stopped herself and took out a plastic bottle from the pack. She opened it and handed it to Siofra.

Siofra drank and made a face.

“Sulphurous? I know. We don’t all have access to a filtration plant.”

The girl continued to drink noisily.

“Do you know what I found in there?”

The girl looked away.

She tried again. “Have you seen . . .” She wasn’t able to say it out loud. She’d always been plain speaking, had once been known for her no-nonsense honesty. But she was out of the habit. “Look, your father . . .” She thought of the man hanging there. Should have got him down. She just couldn’t say it. She rested her hands on the steering wheel and stared through the windscreen at the camp. Lifeless now. She looked at the girl. Both parents gone. One had chosen to cross over, and the other . . . The other had made a different choice. An orphan child in a world that no longer had children. Perhaps it was best not to say anything.

“I don’t think we should stay here tonight,” she said. “I’m going to go home, and I think you should come with me, okay?”

Siofra looked at her but gave no other response.

“I’ll take that as an affirmative.”

In the back was a blanket. Mae reached over for it. She spread it over the girl. “Now, have you any idea how we are to get there?”

The girl’s eyes flickered towards the steering column.

Mae saw a bunch of keys hanging from the ignition socket.

“That, Siofra, is the best idea you’ve had all day.”