We set out as evening fell. It was not the most auspicious time to begin a journey, but Dig Town was not far—an hour’s walk, at most. Joe Reilly carried a backpack with our heat tents. We packed whatever other small items we thought might come in handy into Watson’s chassis, scooped from the ship’s inventory and stored in his small cargo compartment: food and water, a cookstove and pot, tinder for fire.
Anyway, neither of us wanted to wait for daylight. Joe because he was afraid of being hanged, me because I couldn’t bear to be near any of them for a minute longer.
I expected a feeling of grandiosity as we took our first steps away from town. Here was a beckoning adventure, the kind I’d read about in the magazines. I wanted that feeling of momentous occasion, of thrilling possibility. But there was nothing like that. It was just a long, boring walk—three miles to Dig Town, and then God knew how many beyond, until we found whatever dark cranny Silas and his cohort used for shelter.
New Galveston receded steadily behind us. I found myself looking back often, until it was nothing but a soft glow on the edge of the horizon, like a lamp somebody had left on in an empty room. The twilight sky was as beautiful as I had ever seen it: the sunlight was a pink and purple flourish on the horizon, and the Martian moons shone. Without the habs and the municipal heat lamps to act as buffers against the coursing wind, there was nothing to protect us from its bone-numbing chill. It came barreling in from the dark plains like some ancient intelligence, primal and ravenous.
Now that the journey had evolved from a scheme born from my anger into reality, I felt the first gust of doubt. I wondered if I’d made a dangerous mistake. Maybe I was just a stupid child after all, and had started a process that would kill me.
Joe Reilly must have seen something of this in my face. He laughed. “Getting tired already, kid?”
“No.”
“You’re starting to fall behind.”
“I’m keeping pace with Watson,” I said. This was partially true. Watson’s slow legs hampered his progress. But it was also true that I was tired. The day had undermined me.
The ground between New Galveston and Dig Town was hard-packed and well-traveled, so Watson could manage it well enough. But once we went into Peabody Crater, where we’d contend with rock and drifting sand, things would change. I feared for his ability to keep up with us, even with treads. The wind would blow the sand hard at us, and it would clog his gears. I could do simple Engine maintenance, but I didn’t know enough to see him through anything serious. I hoped Joe did.
“Are you doing okay, Watson?”
“I am in capital condition, Miss Crisp.”
Joe said, “Why does he talk like that, anyway?”
“Like what.”
“Like a Limey.”
“That’s his cylinder.”
“Yes, Anabelle, I know that’s his cylinder. I’m asking why it’s programmed to sound British.”
“Because it’s Watson,” I said, as though speaking to an idiot child. “Don’t you know Watson?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
I didn’t want to tell him, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to hold back beyond pure mulishness. “He’s Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick.”
He thought about it for a moment. “I think I heard of him. He’s from those detective stories, right?”
I let silence serve as my answer. I wasn’t inclined to educate this man in literary matters.
“So does that make you Sherlock Holmes?”
I flushed. “No.”
He laughed but didn’t push that line. He just said, “Pretty fancy for a dishwasher.”
“Watson ain’t fancy.”
“No, he sure ain’t. Just like everything you see around you, kid. None of this is like the stories you read in your books. It’s all dirty and dull and real. I just hope we don’t have to die before you figure that out.”
DIG TOWN RESIDED at the top of a small plateau, situated beside a steep drop-off into Peabody Crater. Coming to it from New Galveston, the series of shacks that made up the town looked like a crown of spiky hair atop the head of a buried giant. From a distance it had looked like the miners’ community stayed dark at night, but upon getting close, I could see that there were in fact a few lamps burning, a few homes that still seemed to harbor heat and light.
Still, its reputation as haunted seemed well-earned. I was grateful for Joe Reilly’s company as we ventured into that blighted place, though I would have let you pull my tongue from its root before admitting it.
Sometimes, when the air was still or the wind was southerly, the sound of working machines would drift down to us in New Galveston, giving the impression that Dig Town was a place of constant labor. So as we ascended the mild slope into the settlement, I expected an atmosphere of busy industry, a bustling of men and a grinding of machinery. But when we entered, it seemed dead. What few people I could see lingered on porches or moved sluggishly along the tangle of dirt roads wending their crooked ways through town. No machines voiced their power. No foremen bawled commands. The air was heavy with a chalky green dust, as though the great hole in the earth exhaled the grit of the Strange into the atmosphere. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and wrapped it around my lower face. I must have looked like a bandit, but I desired to keep as much of that grit out of my lungs as I could manage. Joe Reilly observed this action without comment. He did not repeat it for himself.
Of course, we attracted attention: a girl, the pilot who wouldn’t fly, and a Kitchen Engine. While no one was sufficiently roused to address themselves to us, we pulled every gaze as though magnetized. I felt their eyes on my skin. Everyone would know of what’d happened at the Mother Earth. They would know who I was, too.
It struck me that I did not see a single woman. I knew Widow Kessler lived here, but were there any others at all? Was this a place of men and for men? I felt vulnerable in a way I was unaccustomed to. Watson’s bulk, normally so reassuring, seemed only to invite greater attention. If only he wasn’t so loud.
Mr. Wickham’s place of business was a large shack a short distance from the mine. The word “Parts” had been applied with simple white paint over the door and had flaked to a ghostly hint of itself over time. The chimney was cold and the windows were dark. I hesitated, but Joe Reilly approached the door and rapped his knuckles on it.
A muffled voice sounded from within. Joe took it as an invitation and allowed himself inside. I followed close behind, while Watson waited at the door.
The interior was dark but for a few slender strands of moonlight slipping in through ill-fitted boards. It was crowded with metal parts: drill bits great and small, wheels, metal wagons, dead cylinders, Engine parts of every vintage. A cold hearth dominated the back wall. The place smelled of machines: oil and grease, metal and ash. The whole room had the feeling of a heart gone still.
After a moment, I was able to distinguish Mr. Wickham from the scrap. He was seated at a table near the hearth. His huge form, so striking when he was out in the world, seemed to blend naturally with the great pieces of machinery stacked and suspended all around him.
“Well, this ought to be interesting,” he said. He did not rise from his chair, nor did he invite us to sit. He looked like a creature from a fantasy, sitting in the shadows with his drooping black mustache and his reflective green eyes. His arms were huge, as though he were fashioned for the particular purpose of flinging men through the air like sticks.
Joe Reilly said, “We need some desert treads, Harry.”
Mr. Wickham glanced at the pilot, but only for a moment; his attention stayed fixed on me. “This maybe isn’t the best place for you to be walking around in, young lady.”
He had always been pleasant to me on the occasions he’d come to New Galveston, so this statement unnerved me more thoroughly than had our reception outside. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That don’t always make a difference.”
Joe said, “We’ll be on our way as soon as we get those treads.”
Mr. Wickham looked behind us, toward the open door. From his vantage point he could see that Watson waited outside. He appraised the Engine for a moment and then looked back at me. He had not addressed Joe once, nor even acknowledged his presence. “What are you up to, Belle?”
I was glad of the question, because it recalled me to my purpose. I decided not to tell him about Sally Milkwood. I didn’t know whether he knew her, or whether I could trust him not to warn her if he did. “I’m going into the crater to hunt those bastards that stole my mother. The ones no one else around here has the stomach to face.”
He let the accusation float by. “I thought your mama was on Earth.”
“I mean her recording cylinder.”
“Oh, I see.”
Joe spoke up. “Harry, if we could just—”
“Reilly, you shut your goddamned mouth. You don’t get to talk where I can hear you. Do you understand me?”
Joe put his hands in his pockets and half turned away. He nodded and looked at the floor. He was a beaten dog, here the same as anywhere else.
Mr. Wickham put his hands on his knees and pushed himself standing. I heard his joints pop. He extended a hand to the wall to steady himself when it looked like his legs might not be up to the task. I’d never seen him struggle before, and I wondered if he was ill. It’d been some time since he’d come down to New Galveston. He brushed past us and headed to the door, where he cast an eye over Watson’s chassis, at the legs made for short, easy treks, at the rubber-soled feet designed for navigating slippery floors. He did not seem impressed by what he saw.
“You’re taking a dishwasher.”
“They raided our diner. If I leave him, they’ll strip him down, too.”
I wondered if he’d offer to watch over Watson while I was gone. He didn’t. “Belle, that recording cylinder isn’t programmed with your mama’s personality. It’s a message she left you, that’s all. It’s not like what Watson here is.”
I wanted to be angry with him, but he did not sound patronizing. He sounded as though he was trying to understand my motivations, trying to piece together my reasoning like a jigsaw puzzle. So instead of barking at him, I said, “I know that. I’m not stupid.”
“Stupid is the last thing you are. But the world isn’t the way you think it is, and I worry for you when you find that out. And you might have chosen better company for the journey.”
“Watson is my best friend.”
“It’s not the Engine I’m talking about, and I think you know that.”
“Mr. Reilly knows how to get me there.”
Mr. Wickham gave me a level stare. “I doubt that very much, Anabelle. I doubt that man knows much of anything beyond a hundred-foot radius of his own front door. I think you need to be aware that by going out there—with him and some Kitchen Engine, or even by yourself—you are going to a place you might not come back from.”
I listened in silence. He was telling me I was probably going to die. I was not accustomed to adults speaking to me so frankly. Wasn’t he supposed to care about me, since I was still a child? Wasn’t he supposed to try to stop me? It was exhilarating and terrifying at once.
“Mr. Wickham? Where is everybody in Dig Town?”
He tapped Watson on the shoulder and gestured for him to go around the side of his shop. Watson went in the indicated direction as calmly as though he were merely here to receive his long-overdue cleaning.
“They’re down in the mine. They pretty much live there now. I’ll be joining them soon, I guess.” He started to follow Watson around the side of the building. “This’ll take me a while. Don’t touch anything in the meantime.”
“Actually, we have another stop to make anyway,” Joe said. “We’ll give you the night, come back in the morning.”
Mr. Wickham kept on going, as if he hadn’t heard.
“I’M CURIOUS WHAT your plan is,” Joe said. I followed him out onto the road, under a dense curtain of stars. He seemed to know where he was going. It was a natural question to ask, but it caused a spike of anxiety in me. I didn’t really know what I was going to do.
“I’m going to force her to take me out there, same as I forced you to take me here.”
“Threatening Sally with the law might not have the effect you think it will.”
I let that go by. We’d see soon enough.
“And once you get out there? You think you’re going to threaten the Moths with Sheriff Bakersfield?”
I cut a glance at him. “I guess you think I’m going out there to talk.”
“Well, what the hell else would you be going there to do?”
I didn’t want to say the words aloud, for fear he’d laugh at me. And I feared that laughter might undo my resolve. But the truth was I had no desire to barter or plead. It was my ambition to descend upon their camp like an angel from hell, burning them all down to the soles of their shoes. I had no idea how I’d do it, but I was determined to leave that place a smoking ruin.
Still, I knew we were just a couple of city folk going to a camp of lunatics and thieves. I didn’t answer.
Joe didn’t press me further. He just shook his head and kept walking.
If there was an organizing principle to the roads in Dig Town, I could not apprehend it. It seemed its layout had been conceived by a child. The steam rising from the mine froze in the Martian night and drifted back down over the city in an icy mist, covering the roads in a light snowfall which would burn away at the touch of sunlight. Our footsteps crunched through it, ruining any chances of passing unnoticed. Occasionally I saw a movement at a window as a curtain was pulled aside and a ghostly face peered out, eyes reflecting the weak light in pale green discs. There were rarely any lights on inside; most who still resided aboveground lived in darkness, as though they were preparing to join the others below.
The Strange was already coursing through their blood, changing them. Making them different.
My skin prickled with fear. I imagined that dead miner’s friends huddled in the shadows along the road, peering at me from alleys or from behind curtains, sliding long daggers out of their sheaths. A door opened behind us; I turned and saw the shape of a man standing against the star-washed sky, staring after us. Joe yanked me quickly along, not pausing to look himself.
We quickly approached the edge of Dig Town and stopped at a small home on the outskirts, situated at a slight remove from the leaning wooden structures that preceded it. Though it boasted a wooden front wall and even a porch, the rest of it had been built directly into the sloping earth. It seemed a hybrid between the homes around it and the ones you could find back in the Taproots: cheap, earth-made, integrated with Mars in a way our habs in New Galveston never could be.
The warm glow of firelight filled its single window. Joe rapped on the door, the sharp sound of it echoing up the road.
The door swung open. Sally Milkwood filled the opening, one hand on the door and the other holding a rifle under her arm, the barrel hovering a foot above the floor. A cigarette hung from her mouth, and she removed it lazily as she looked us over. She seemed so much bigger up close: nearly six feet tall, thick as a barrel, her short, chopped hair ragged around her face like the nimbus of an evil sun. The furrow in her brow made a single dark line down her forehead. I thought I’d prepared myself for seeing her up close but felt suddenly cut loose from myself, as though the ground were falling from beneath me.
A young woman and a teen boy sat behind her, to either side of the lit hearth. Those two looked so much alike—dirty-blond hair, round, freckled faces—that I understood they must be siblings. They looked familiar to me.
She did not step aside, nor did she put down the rifle. “Joe,” she said.
“Hey, Sally. Sorry to drop in on you unexpected.”
She just stared at him, waiting.
“This here is Belle Crisp.”
“We’ve met.”
“That’s right, I guess you have.”
“If you’ve come for a batch, you’re too early. I told you you were going too hard. If you’ve run out, that’s your own damn fault.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
She looked at me, her eyes spearing me to my place. “No, I guess not.”
The boy sitting by the fire sauntered closer. He had a wide, moon-like face. I recognized him once he got close enough. “See if she brought any sticky buns,” he said. This was Billy Shank, and that must be his ugly sister Laura. I used to see them in school, until one day they stopped coming in altogether and rumors arose that they were running a still. These were Jeremiah Shank’s kids. Joe must come here for his goddamned booze.
“I didn’t bring shit for you,” I said to Billy.
“Since when did you ever?”
Sally leaned her rifle by the door and turned back inside without shutting the door on us. She took a stool in front of the fire and ground her spent cigarette beneath her boot. The place looked like a nest for rats. The floor was unswept and strewn with the clutter of people who didn’t give a damn about their own lives: gnawed chicken bones, sand and dirt, bunched laundry, and scraps of paper. A small opening in the back wall led to another room, where I saw the outlines of their still.
After a moment’s hesitation, Joe asked if we might come in. When Sally didn’t trouble herself to answer him, he took a seat on the floor next to her and held his hands out to the flames. “Come on, Belle. Come sit down.”
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I couldn’t bring myself to sit beside them at the fire, though, hovering instead by the door, cold and hesitant.
Sally looked at me, the fire lighting up the smooth plane of her cheek. The light leapt in her eye; I thought of the dark powers ascribed to the cultists, and I shivered.
“Sit down,” Joe said again, and I did. The floor was hard earth with a rug thrown over it; I found it surprisingly comfortable after the long walk. The muscles in my legs were painful and stiff. This would be my first night spent away from my heated hab. I studied the fire and thought that soon we wouldn’t even have this crude comfort.
Laura just watched me from Sally’s other side, a rail-thin creature of bone, gristle, and bile. She didn’t say a word nor react to me in any way I could detect, except to stare the way a farm animal stares at a passing tractor. I felt as though I had stepped into a trap, surrounded by hostile intent, and my chief regret was that I was to be done in by a gathering of fools.
Sally retrieved a tin plate from the floor and started chewing at a chicken leg. The grease covered her hands and her mouth; she ate unselfconsciously, as if no eye could reach her. I watched her, fascinated. She was a thief, apparently a moonshiner, possibly a murderer—but she exuded a power and a presence I was not accustomed to seeing in a woman. Mother had been strong, and Widow Kessler commanded deference no matter where she went in town, but this was something else altogether. There was a danger coiled in this woman that hypnotized me. I was hungry to see it expressed.
“You might as well tell me what you’re here about.”
“You’re gonna take us into the crater to see Silas Mundt,” I said. I was shocked by the sound of my own voice. It sounded small and pitiful in this wretched place.
That put her back on her heels, though. She squinted at Joe, the fire lighting their faces, and then she looked at me. I did my best to glare back at her, but I was sure she could sense the fear in me. She chewed for a while as she thought. “What are you up to, Joe Reilly? Why are you taking the Crisp girl?”
“Why are you talking to him? Talk to me, I’m the one in charge. We’re going to get my mother back.”
I waited for Sally to shut me up, but she looked at me like I’d spoken French. “What the hell are you talking about?” To Joe, she said, “Silas start kidnapping folks now?”
“She means the cylinder,” Joe said. “The one with her mother’s recording. Silas and his crew took it when, uh… when they robbed the diner.”
Sally didn’t say anything to that right away. She leaned back on her stool and pushed her feet closer to the fire. She stared into the flames for a little while, and when she started to talk, it took me a moment to understand that she was addressing me. “There’s a whole way things work out here, a way you don’t have any knowledge of. That ain’t your fault, because there’s no way you would. I’m sorry your diner got hit, and I’m sorry your dad couldn’t handle the injury to his pride. But you can’t come out here and expect people to—”
“My father ain’t to blame for a damn thing that’s happened!”
Sally spat into the fire. She looked right at me. “Sure he is. Silas came into his place and made him feel small, and that made him afraid. And see where that got him. Killed some loudmouth horse’s ass when all he had to do was push him out the door. Now look at him.”
“That man had it coming!”
“Kid, that fool didn’t have any more coming to him than a good beating. Your dad couldn’t handle his fear, and that’s the simple truth. Now you better look to your own before you follow him to the rope.”
I couldn’t take another word of it. The anger boiled up inside of me and I screamed at her, at Joe, at those other two jackasses sitting like gape-mouthed imbeciles at her side. It was just a wordless sound, a shout of hate, inarticulate and unchained. I kicked a stray mug at my feet and stormed outside, my hands clutching my elbows. I never felt more like a child in my life, but I was afraid that if I stayed there I might go after her with my teeth.
I expected laughter, but no sound followed me out. It was some kind of mercy, I guess. But no one called me back, either. I kept going, walking fast, knowing I risked running into trouble out here but determined to put distance between me and that den of criminals at the very least. The wind was cold, the night so dark it felt like a living presence.
Tears threatened but didn’t come. As I stormed down the narrow road, I thought of my father sleeping on that cot in his cell, with just that stupid thin blanket to keep him warm, and nothing but the silence of an empty building to keep him company. I thought of my mother, millions of miles away from me, on Earth.
Was she sleeping now? Was she cold, too?
Yes, I thought. She’s sleeping in the desert, in the custody of thieves. She’s sleeping in that cylinder and you can listen to her and talk to her just like Father does as soon as you get her back.
The thought was like a rebuke: How could I have lost control of myself so easily? How could I have stormed out of that shack exactly like the spoiled child everyone thought I was? I had to go back, despite the shame I’d feel walking back through that door. I imagined the snickering of the Shank kids, the knowing condescension of Joe and Sally, and it made my skin crawl. I didn’t know how I’d regain whatever authority I might have possessed, but I had to try. I had to endure the shame, and I had to somehow get Sally to guide us.
Looking around, I realized that I didn’t know where I was. Stupid to get lost in such a small community, but the streets made no damn sense. I backtracked along the road I was sure I’d been on, but nothing looked right. Each road kept branching into smaller tributary paths, or joining larger ones, until I couldn’t even tell which direction I was headed. I had the notion that the shack was a kind of trickster, winking out of sight as soon as I rounded a corner, only to appear again behind me.
I turned around in the middle of a frozen street, the misty snow falling around me more heavily as the temperature continued to drop. I was wearing a coat, but the heavy gear and the heat tents were with Joe. Fear crawled up the back of my neck. It seemed absurd that I might freeze to death in the middle of Dig Town, standing in a street surrounded by shuttered buildings, but suddenly the possibility pushed every other thought from my head.
A figure emerged from the snowy veil. Then another behind it. Two men, their eyes shining that pale under-leaf green. They wore rough work clothes, the sleeves bunched over their elbows: nothing to protect them from the night. They should have been paralyzed by cold, but they seemed as comfortable as though it were midday.
One of them had an arm in a sling. My stomach dropped.
He said, “That’s the girl from the diner.”
“I told you.”
I turned away from them and started walking.
“Hey, girl. Hold on a minute.”
I picked up my pace. I’d forgotten the chill: a flush of fear coursed through me. I had nowhere to go. Their footsteps crunched through the ice behind me.
“I said stop!”
I ran.
I used Dig Town’s chaotic layout to my advantage. They knew the town better than I did, of course, but the narrow lanes were so tightly packed that I was able to turn corners faster than they could follow. A weird sound bounced along the walls after me: a mixture of keening and something guttural, something despairing and broken, like an old language articulated by the wrong tongue. A language of monsters. It chilled me, and I ran harder. I had doubled back on myself enough that the tracks were confused—the first thing that saved me that night.
In a few moments I was huddled against the side of a small wooden house, doing my best to quiet my breathing while I heard the men crunch through the crust of ice, trying to find me. I couldn’t tell how close they were, but their eerie sounds seemed to come from everywhere.
And then, the second thing that saved me: a woman, tall and angular, emerging from an alley and beckoning to me.
Widow Kessler.
Without thinking, I dashed over to her, the echoes of my own footsteps skittering through the dense little neighborhood. Nothing I could do about that. She grabbed my arm in a vise and hauled me quickly behind her. Snow gusted around us as the wind kicked up, and it seemed to me that we were running through a drift of falling stars. I cast a glance at her face, stern and gaunt, creviced like old rock, only barely lit by the ambient light of this drowsing, haunted town.
Almost since I had known her, she’d been little more than a figure of sorrow, wearing black in mourning for her dead husband, still answering to a name that defined her by his absence. It seemed pathetic to me sometimes, the way she surrendered her full claim to personhood, accepting her new life as a dead man’s shadow. To see her now, a flare of purpose and hard motion, was to see someone altogether new.
She was the first adult I had seen act with something other than derangement in a long time; caught in the fog of my own terror, I followed her gratefully.