“You know those features have official IAU titles?” It was the first time Isla had spoken. To him, certainly. It might have been the first time she’d spoken, period.
“No. No, I didn’t.” No one had bothered to tell him, or correct him, because he was supposed to be fucking dead, like Dee. And some of that deep reservoir of anger leaked out in his voice, despite himself.
He didn’t know how to apologize, or make it better, so he just shut up and concentrated on not turning the buggy over and killing the new people. He pointed the wheels uphill and remembered to soften the front tires more than he normally would to compensate for the extra weight on the back.
“If it starts to roll, just jump clear.”
“You won’t roll it,” said Leland.
“That’s kind of the plan. But, you know. Stay frosty.”
“Frosty. Got it.”
That was what they’d said to each other. Frank and his crew. And now he was trying not to cry again. His emotions were all over the dial, and he just couldn’t control them: from despair to rage to grief, and back again. He was a wreck. An actual physical, psychological car crash of a human being, swinging between extremes with no middle ground.
He widened his eyes, let the fans dry him out, and thanked whoever had designed their suits that the faceplate only allowed ten-to-two vision.
The buggy growled and chewed its way up the drop-off, and leveled out on the Heights—or whatever its proper name was—and he dialed the stiffness back into the tires so that they once more skipped over the surface.
“That’s your MAV,” said Frank, and pointed. “And there’s the base.”
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” said Leland.
“It’s what we’ve got. Breathable atmosphere, hot water and enough juice to keep the lights on.”
“Sounds perfect. Isla’s looking forward to seeing the greenhouse.”
She was the plant specialist, right? “I’ll give you a tour later on. I just follow the instructions, though, I don’t pretend to know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve made modifications?”
“I don’t know about that. I did what I thought was right.” He probably ought to explain more. “I had problems with the fish.”
“Problems? The reports said protein output was right in the middle of the expected mean.”
Frank took a moment to work out what she meant. “They grew fine. I, I just couldn’t eat them. I couldn’t kill them to eat them.”
“Oh. So…”
“So I grew more grains and nuts and peas and beans, and cut back on the fish production. I ramped it up again for you guys. I think I’ve timed it right.”
“I’ll take a look. We’ve dehydrated meals to fall back on.”
“You won’t be short.”
“I’ll still take a look.”
“You won’t be short,” he repeated, again with far too much venom. “I got drums filled with dried grains and nuts and I freeze-dried my own herbs rather than throw them. I did my job. There’s plenty.”
OK, so he should probably apologize now. So should she. But she didn’t know what she’d done wrong, and he didn’t know why he was taking offense so hard.
They drove the rest of the mercifully short way in silence, and when they pulled up outside the base, Isla climbed down, thanked Frank formally for the ride, and walked straight towards the cross-hab airlock without asking for directions.
They’d trained for years for this. They knew the layout as well as he did.
“It’s hard adjusting, Lance. No one here hasn’t got a massive self-belief in their own opinions: they wouldn’t have got picked for the mission otherwise. No harm, no foul. Let’s go and get the others.”
Frank watched Isla’s retreating back, and still couldn’t bring himself to say even the simplest sorry.
“Sure. Let’s do that.”
13
[Message file #137405 2/11/2049 0812 MBO Rahe Crater to Ares IV Mission Control]
We understand that what makes a man good at being on his own for eight straight months is not what makes a man good at being around six new people in close proximity. He’s taken to us pretty well, considering. Teething problems only. XO made a fine pick.
Leland
[transcript ends]
Music. Frank hadn’t expected music. He—his old crew—hadn’t had speakers, and they’d only arrived later, in boxes that he hadn’t opened. Yet it was one of the first things that the new crew had done: find them, sync them to the base’s computer and start banging out an eclectic mix of songs, old, very old and new.
Some of them were so new that Frank hadn’t heard them before. And when he thought of how new they might be, he realized with a start that for him, new meant “since he’d been in prison”. Ten years of popular culture, current affairs, scientific advances, and everything else, skipped like a time-traveler.
He hadn’t missed it, until confronted by the fact that he had, in fact, missed it.
He couldn’t take it. He felt overwhelmed. Everything was crashing in on him, a perfect storm of absence and recollection, remembering what he’d lost and remembering that other people hadn’t had the same experience. In prison, the cons ended up adrift in the past, while the present moved on without them. It was partly why there was such a revolving door of recidivism: it wasn’t criminality as such, more future shock. The outside world was a foreign country, with strange customs and a different language.
Frank hadn’t paid attention to any of that, since he thought he’d be inside until he died. Suddenly confronted with the truth of how the world had turned without him, he ran away.
Though that was a lie. He didn’t run. Everyone, and he was stumbling over that word as much as he was “we”, seemed to be in the kitchen area, getting one or another briefing of some sort. If he’d been meant to attend any of them, he was certain that Lucy would have told him. So he suited up and went outside. He didn’t ask anyone’s permission. He didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t leave a note. He just wanted to pretend he was still on his own in his own, perfect bubble.
Even that was a lie. He just couldn’t stop himself piling on the fictions, one on top of another. He wasn’t alone. Even though he didn’t have his ghosts any more, there were six astronauts inside the habs—his habs—and there was another XO base, full of XO people, on the other side of the volcano.
He could hear violin strings sing even through his helmet and the closed airlock door, though indistinctly. It was only when the air pumped away that it became silent.
He fell back on routine. He did a walkround of the habs, checked that nothing had come loose, made sure the RTG heating system was still intact, and remembered he had to clean the panels after their two dustings. There was plenty to be getting on with, while the crew settled in and got to know their surroundings.
They seemed competent. He was certain they already knew how to do everything that he did—the basic functions of running the base—and that he could reasonably sit on his ass for however long it was, and then just go home with them. He knew he wasn’t going to do that, though. He’d find something to do, in time, even if it was just chauffeuring them around and carrying their bags.
And for now, he still had jobs to do.
He untied the large square of parachute canopy that Declan had used to clean the panels, and had habitually looped around the underside of one of the supports. It was past midday, and the flat black circles were angled to the west. Before he’d set up the new array, the job hadn’t taken much time. There were over twice the number now, and it was something that had to be scheduled rather than done while passing.
He worked his way methodically along the rows, cleaning the upslope sides, then brushing off the grit onto the ground from the downslope. They had plenty of watts, even with seven on board.