The next day I spent an hour organizing the food stores. I did some systems checks, sent a transcript to the satellite station to let them know where I was, and then because I had nothing else to do I went into one of the greenhouse modules and poked at the wilted plants. I’d never grown anything in my life. My aunt used to keep herbs in containers on our back porch in the summer, to use in cooking. Rosemary, thyme, oregano. Lavender and mint. Watering them every couple of days was the extent of my knowledge of plants. I didn’t know if I’d ever even looked at a plant up close.
The day stretched out before me with no list of assigned tasks, no piece of equipment that needed attention, no system to service or replace or check. I experimentally tugged one plant from its tray and liked the satisfying sound of its roots pulling away from the soil.
I pulled out the next plant and the next, until I’d cleared about a quarter of the trays. I found some gloves and broke up the earth. Then I located some seeds, read the directions on the back of the packet, and began planting them. The soil was soft and cool on my fingers as I pushed each seed down, and a sharp and musty smell filled my nose. I got the irrigation system working and then turned on the temperature controls. The room grew warmer, the air more humid. I smoothed my hand over the top of each square of wet soil.
Through the walls the sun warmed my face and filled the room with a rosy glow. I moved without thinking, my body loose. The pain in my fingers receded. I had a feeling of freedom that made me think, for some reason, of my uncle’s paper airplanes. How we would stand at the top of the stairs, the three of us, my uncle, John, and me, and give them the slightest push into the air and watch them drift slowly to the ground.
I returned to the grow rooms every morning. I watered. I fertilized. A schedule for all these things was posted in neat script on the wall and I followed it. I’m not sure I had any thought the seeds I planted would grow, but every day I tended to them and planted more, until all the limp stalks and leaves were cleared away and both grow rooms were filled with neat grids of dark brown earth.
When I was done in the grow rooms I worked out in the gym. At first it was hard to do anything but run on the treadmill or ride the exercise bike because of my hands. But when they started to heal—the fingernails on two of my fingers pulled away from the skin and eventually fell off, revealing new pink nails underneath—I was able to lift weights, following the same routine Lion and I used at Peter Reed.
Only now I took my time with the exercises; I didn’t speed through them like I had at school, or squeeze them in between other tasks like I had on the Sundew. I did extra reps and stretched in between intervals. I noticed which movements came easy and which were more challenging. Some things depended on the day, or the hour. Squats were harder in the morning, running on the treadmill easier. I tracked my progress from one day to the next and noticed slight changes in my body in the mirror in the shower module. At first my torso had a lopsided look to it—my shoulders were round and strong from hauling water tanks and cleaning solar panels, but my posture was stooped from bending over the fuel cell for hours. My legs were pale and thin, my stomach soft. Now I watched as my arms shrank and the shapes of the muscles under my skin turned sharper. As my legs gained bulk and my stomach flattened.
I’d never paid much attention to my body. Now I slept when I was tired. I drank when I was thirsty and ate when I was hungry. I had time to make real meals. They were simple but were better than anything I’d eaten in months. My skin was healthier looking in the mirror; my nails grew and my hair seemed stronger and shinier. My teeth were the only part of me that wasn’t improved. When I pressed my tongue into the holes where my fillings used to be my molars throbbed.
At the end of the day, after I’d tended to my plants, worked out, and eaten three meals, I watched the light change through the transparent walls of the grow rooms. I’d thought the weather was almost unchanging on the Pink Planet, but it wasn’t. In the mornings the light was soft, almost woolly, and the gusts of wind gentle; in the afternoon the horizon grew sharper and the wind stronger and more continuous. At the end of the day there was a peculiar sort of twilight I hadn’t noticed until now, when the landscape grew long shadows and the color of the silt intensified and became almost jewellike. Then I’d shut the blinds before the smudgy gloom of night, when the ridges of silt yawned and the dust-covered junk started to look like things that weren’t real.
At night I read in bed. I’d pushed all the other cots to one side of the sleeping module, found a small table, and put it next to my bed. I set a pitcher of water on it, and a stack of books. The books I took from a shelf in the corridor that contained a hodgepodge of novels and poetry and old magazines. They didn’t teach literature at Peter Reed, and as a child I’d ignored my cousin’s picture and chapter books. Now I read it all, everything on that shelf—a book of Coleridge’s poems, Calvin and Hobbes comics, a biography of Jane Goodall. I liked the stillness of my room and the weight of a book on my lap. I liked being alone. My body was tired from the physical exertion of the day, my mind quiet and slack, receptive to whatever was on the page; it didn’t really matter what.