The guy had been right. Jodi woke without the hangover most long sleeps leave behind. Rather, she felt refreshed and unnaturally optimistic. Happy had been an alien sensation since her mother had announced her decision to leave. Jodi smiled. No matter how unexpected, this was a happy feeling. Happy and hairy. Amazing what something as simple as survival will do for a person.
“Jumping Jehosephat, it’s like Planet of the Apes in here!” A petite brunette bounced up beside her in the shower queue. “Did you know a body could grow so much hair in four months?”
Jodi grinned. “I had no idea. Thank god for fast orbit transfers, huh? Imagine if we’d slept twice as long.” The fact that she was wrapped in a bath towel, sporting more leg and armpit hair than she’d ever thought possible, did not dim her mood. That didn’t happen until she’d waited half a lifetime to get to the front of the line. By then, she was just cranky enough that she didn’t care how long anyone else had to wait for her to finish. A girl had to do what a girl had to do.
Much cream, three showers, some tweezing and oceans of shampoo later, Jodi was at least physically clean. She wondered as she brushed her teeth how the craft’s storage tanks were coping with all the suds.
The little brunette reappeared beside her in the long mirror over the hand basins. “From Planet of the Apes to the missing link.” The woman examined her still furry eyebrows. “Millions of years of evolution in only two showers. Not bad progress, eh?”
Jodi smiled. “You too, huh?” It had taken her three showers to get sorted because she’d kept finding missed hairy pieces on her legs. Surely every other woman on the flight would have the same issue.
The woman nodded, winced, and started plucking.
“On the upside, I’ve got a lot more hair on my head, and my fingernails are amazing. I actually thought they’d refuse to grow, just out of fear.” Most times, Jodi was a nail chewer. Correction: unless she was sleeping, which she’d been doing for quite some time now, Jodi chewed her nails.
The woman handed her a nail file. “Here, it’ll help keep you from reverting to form.”
“Thanks.” Jodi took the gift and moved out of the way so others could see themselves for the first time in an age.
Once the accrued grime had gone down the drain, there was only the dirty, creepy feeling left to lose. While she had slept, people had scanned her, tested her blood and monitored her vitals. Quarantine was important and much, much easier when travellers were asleep.
Jodi ran the nail file across the rough edges of her new nails. Staff on the good ship Homeros worked in shifts, so there was at least two of them who knew what she looked like inside and out. That seemed like much more than complete strangers had a right to know. Sure, she’d signed permission forms and stuff, but still … . She shuddered. Gross.
Dressed in a new, clean travel suit, it was time to play tourist. Marilyn was still standing in the communal space, looking and frowning at a mirror while trying to make her eyebrows even and her lips more plump. Taking her window seat, therefore, seemed the best and most obvious thing to do. She zipped past her mum, with a quick salute to her in the mirror, then dodged her way down the aisle to nab the best view in the row.
Jodi strapped herself into the Formafoam seat and waited while the material puffed and squidged itself around her, slowly reforming from her mother’s shape to her own. Only then did she turn her attention to the space around Mars.
Passengers, tourists and immigrants alike were all woken early enough that they got a good sample of space, but not so early that they could be bored or get fidgety in their seats. That also meant that they wouldn’t pester staff who, while they were happy to deliver coffees and meals, were to a large extent trained more for technical and medical purposes than customer service. You could tell that by the lack of fake smiles and the appraising way they looked a person up and down. Much like they’d just seen you naked. Again, so gross. Jodi shivered.
In the window, her face was silhouetted against the darkness outside. With so long asleep, no matter how she tried observing space, her eyes were more interested in her reflection. She was a stranger to herself and weirdly attracted to the process of rediscovery.
Her dark olive skin barely showed up in the reflective surface, but light from inside the cabin glanced off the edges of her features. Even as only a semi-dark face shape, Jodi could tell she had a leaner, narrower face shape than before she went to sleep. She pressed her fingertips to the window, traced the gleaming edges of her reflection, and smiled. No more puppy fat for this sixteen-year-old. A solid diet of nutrient mixtures had whittled her down to her fighting weight.
Her white-blonde hair, all newly washed and combed back out of her face, also reflected the interior lights. Beneath that cap of white, her face looked a bit like an eyeless skull. Too much of a contrast between hair and skin tones, too many angles for a soft, pretty look. Jodi frowned at her dark self. How completely unsurprising: even with a lot of shaving and a little weight loss, space wasn’t a good look on her.
Luckily other, more heavenly bodies beckoned and offered themselves as burning, glittering distractions. Outside the window, beyond her reflection, the blackness was immense. Not night black, this was space black … a deep, scary kind of darkness that came with emptiness.
Night is somethingness. It’s atmosphere and dust and reflected light. It’s the period between sunset and sunrise. There is always an end to night black.
Space is nothingness. It’s a dark that is endless and eternal. Sort of like death, only with planets and stars. Space is a place where things remain unknown, where they hide, far out of sight in the cold.
On Earth the night sky had always felt familiar, a comforting blanket thrown over her world. Some nights, she and her mum had located Mars in the sky, and wondered about what her dad was doing right then. In space, nothing was familiar. She could have studied the books and vodcasts for a thousand years and none of this would have looked like she expected.
What if some stupid piece of junk hit the shuttle? What about the tails of asteroids? Were the heatproof shields designed for that? She really should have paid more attention in the training course. She should have listened when her mother prattled on about Mars and moving. She should have done her own research. She should have believed it would happen. At least then it would have felt known, if not familiar.
Yeah, yeah, yeah … shoulda, coulda, woulda – but didn’t!
Instead she’d done nothing. Actually, she hadn’t done exactly nothing. The one thing she’d done a great deal of was hoping. Well, she’d done two things really, moaning and hoping. She’d moaned every day about the unfairness of the move and she’d simultaneously hoped not to move. Hoped she’d get to stay on Earth with Ellie’s family. Hoped her dad got fired. Hoped the migration shuttle would break down. In fact, she’d hoped for a gazillion different things, anything at all that would keep her from having to move.
Moaning had done nothing except make her feel a bit better. Hope had failed completely. Now there was nothing to do but sit here, watch Mars loom closer, examine the surface of the moon Phobos, and chew thin edges off her newly grown fingernails.
A freaky looking conveyer belt with pods hanging beneath it snaked down through space in a pale slither that ran almost parallel with their own path. It was something to do with carrying minerals from this moon to Mars. She knew that much from science classes at school. Another time, she might have been a fascinated tourist.
Right now, she was a sixteen-year-old Earth girl, squished into a thermo-regulation-hyperspeed-resistant-heat-fire-and-everything-else-proof suit, surrounded by a Foamaform shock absorbing seat, about to land on Mars.
And live there!
She wriggled against the restraints of her seat.
“Stop fidgeting.” Her mum had snuck up and settled herself, without comment, into the aisle seat. Her face was perfectly made up, but from the stillness of her features, Jodi figured her mother was almost as nervous as she about landing. Finally! It was about time the woman showed some kind of concern over this whole ludicrous plan. If only she’d cottoned on sooner, they wouldn’t be here now. If only she’d listened to Ellie’s dad.
Jodi’s BFF was Ellie. Ellie’s dad was a pilot. One night on one of their many sleepovers, she and Ellie had both giggled at the dinner table while Renfield Wu had described being an airline pilot for some of his guests.
“It’s hours of mind-numbing boredom sandwiched between ten minutes of brain-frying terror either end.” He didn’t actually say ‘brain-frying’. He’d actually used a better ‘F’ word; the one that Jodi hardly ever even thought.
From a man who rarely swore, much less in front of children, Mr Wu’s statement had made quite an impact. The guests had nearly choked on their food. Ellie’s mum had gasped and playfully smacked her husband’s arm. Ellie and Jodi had sent secret, admiring non-verbal messages to each other. Brain-frying would officially become part of their vocabulary. Obviously, her mother hadn’t been listening back then or she would have multiplied air travel by, oh, a gajillion times, to arrive at space travel. What exactly was a gajillion times a brain-fry?
This whole move was her father’s plan of course. David Scarfield had been offered the opportunity to manufacture and grow crops in the Anphobos greenhouses. What botanist wouldn’t leap at that kind of chance? That had been his question. There had been no appropriate answer. Botanists had a history of stupid behaviour, and David Scarfield was continuing a fine tradition. That he screwed over his family in the meantime was, apparently, not important.
Jodi kept scraping the little rough edges off her nails. It wasn’t chewing really, so much as trimming.
Martian kids were a pack of self-important psylocrats. The ones she’d met on Earth barely spoke to other kids at school. They treated Earth technology as though it was backward and annoying, and they made constant comparisons between Earth and Mars, as though Earth could never hope to compete. Jodi felt her hackles rise just at the thought. Admittedly – and considering her latest exploits – she wasn’t the globe’s greatest patriot, but she wasn’t stupid either.
Everyone knew Martian and Earthen technology were the same. Anphobos was an Earthen colony, for crying out loud. Mars couldn’t do anything without Earth monitoring and approving of it. Even Martian inhabitants were screened by Earth’s health and quarantine officers. The whole red planet colony would barely exist if it weren’t for Earth. So who were these ego-inflated, technogeeks kidding when they poured on their attitudes? It was ridiculous, really. Or it would have been, if she weren’t about to join a school – nay a whole frying colony – full of them.
The shuttle whooshed and slid just the way it was supposed to. Mars, with its red dust, mountains, craters and unearthly land forms, grew closer and closer by the second. Then the colony came into view. Vast by comparison with what she’d imagined, Anphobos was shaped like a giant wheel. Concentric circles, joined by spokes, glowed white and silver against a blood-red planet. Nestled at the curve of Cydonia’s throat, her new home stood like a jewel on the surface of the planet.
As if the face-shaped mountain wasn’t enough of a threatening protector for the colony of Anphobos, this jewel also belonged to Mars, an angry and warlike god. If she let her imagination run too far, Jodi could almost feel Mars resenting their arrival. This god who lent his name was hoarding and hungry. Panic fluttered fast in her chest. She was going to be trapped here, just like all the other people inside that synthetic dome. Once you were in, you couldn’t get out. Mars wouldn’t allow it. There wouldn’t be any nice picnicking day trips across to the craters. Mars never needed day trippers. Mars had always been one for sacrifices.
Jodi breathed deeply and closed her eyes. Air-conditioned cool ran through her sinuses. What was she doing? No need to borrow trouble.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, trouble came for her. Trouble with a capital T.
The smooth descent of the shuttle changed. Jodi’s teeth snapped shut on her tongue. A jolt jammed her shoulders up hard against the straps and Foamaform. Her head punched against the squelching mass of pillow too fast for it to cushion her. The shuttle began a pattern of spin-fall, spin-fall, spin. Her space migration shuttle had become a giant human washing machine.
Alarms rang in the air. Blood filled her mouth. Terrified squawks and cries came in uncontrollable fits from the passengers. Lights flickered and flashed. Too frightened to scream, Jodi swallowed blood and stiffened against the pain in her shoulders and head.
Why couldn’t she shut her eyes?
She didn’t want to see but her eyes wouldn’t close. Instead they were wide open and watching everything; moments flashed in snapshots. Her mother’s fingers gripped at her own shoulder straps trying to escape the cut of their edges.
The brunette from the showers hung from her seatbelt harness, with her legs flopped uselessly around her head. She was beyond caring that she looked like some kind of contorted liquorice baby. The important looking man at the front bellowed for help. Idiot. Who did he think could help?
Staff who’d been walking in the aisles were pinned beneath trolleys. Arms and legs were all at odds and angles. Human debris crashed and broke amid spacecraft jetsam. The shuttle continued its pattern of flip-wallow-flip. The big important man didn’t seem to get it.
Everyone was going to die and there was nothing to help it. Screaming wouldn’t help it. Swearing wouldn’t help it. Threatening wouldn’t help anyone. He was going to die and ‘fry’ was going to form part of his last sentence. Not a good way to go. The lunch rolling in Jodi’s stomach also threatened to go in bad ways.
Then it stopped. The spinning, her stomach, and for a moment, her heart. The fall stopped, too. So did the lights and the alarms and the screaming. Only the quiet sobbing of frightened passengers indicated that anything had gone wrong at all. The rest was dim, grim and tangy, like fearful sweat and the blood in her mouth.
Slowly the noise level rose. A call for attention here. A plea for help there. A wept thank you. Capable staff pulled themselves together and scurried, holding bandages to their own cuts and grazes, to attend upon those in need. Others remained where they crouched, teeth chattering while they shook.
“Very sorry ladies and gentlemen. We seem to have experienced a small glitch with the tower, something to do with some negative vibrations in the magno-gravitational landers. Everything is back to rights now though, so please remain in your seats and let the attendants see to your needs.”
Bewildered attendants moved like stunned deer between seats to offer calm words in soothing voices. Someone tended to the brunette. They took her away on a trolley. Jodi gritted her teeth and looked out the window.
Marilyn held Jodi’s fingers tight and kissed the back of her hand. “Oh, thank god. Thank god!” Tears leaked from her eyes.
The important man leapt from his seat and raced past Jodi toward the toilet. She got a good look at the wet patch on the front of his travel suit and caught a quick whiff of him. She wrinkled her nose. He would have an interesting time trying to fix that. If she were an attendant she’d tell him there were no spare suits and let him suffer. Then again, that’s probably why she would never be an attendant of any kind.
The suited man’s assistant raised a shaking hand to ask for two drinks.
Jodi stayed numb. Negative vibrations from the landing gear? Had her own negative thoughts, cast out into the universe, caused bad things already? It was true that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, but psychic energy?
Nope, she was just being self-centred, stupid and super-stitious. Besides, it was best not to think about it, any of it, too much. Too much thinking and she would understand how close she’d come to meeting real gods face to face. Mars would probably have been there, laughing his butt off because she’d missed the planet but found the god.
She pressed her hot forehead against the cool of the window and closed her eyes. What could have gone wrong? Whatever it was, it wasn’t her negative vibes. Definitely, definitely not.
Martian gravity wasn’t much by comparison with Earth’s, so landings were just a matter of counteracting a falling motion with just the right amount of magnetic repulsion. The tower did that, not the shuttle pilot. Who knew what may have gone wrong? Very few humans controlled technology on Mars, so the problem was probably a technological failure, not human error or even human psyche. Maybe the pilots had saved them. Maybe not. She didn’t know how much power they had or what skills they possessed.
Amazing how much faith she’d put in people who may well have been nothing more than computer techs with ace console scores. While she’d been wishing and daydreaming her way back to Earth, a group of unknown people had taken charge of her life and nearly ended it. Now they were landing her on a new planet.
Scary what could happen when you weren’t paying attention.
* * *
Her father was waiting for them. Arms open, eyes glued to his wife, he was apparently immune to the blue. The beautiful, gemlike blue that replaced sky in a space station. David Scarfield wore a smile bigger than Jodi had ever seen on him before. The worry lines creasing his forehead were probably a result of their god-awful landing.
Marilyn beat Jodi to him. Wrapped together in a giant bear hug, with her dad pressing kisses all over her mum’s face, Jodi’s parents looked like they were in a scene from a romance. She looked away.
All over the reception area, couples and families embraced. Jodi stood apart from her parents and waited for them to finish. Her dad stroked her mother’s hair and muffled his words against her neck.
“Oh thank god, thank god!”
Jodi wasn’t exactly sure which god he was thanking but she figured any would probably do the job. “I thought something had happened. I thought I’d lost you. I nearly died from the fear.”
“I was so frightened! What happened? Have they said?”
This was going far too far. Public displays of affection were one thing. Public weeping was another. Combine them both and it was really too much of a scene.
“Freak me out! This is amazing. I didn’t imagine anything like this. Nothing at all.” Jodi tried out her perky, hyperactive teen voice, to see if it would separate them. Besides, it really was amazing.
Broadcasts from Mars, still or live, could never have got the colours, the shapes or any of the details right. In fact, the feeds she’d seen back home must have been carefully chosen to show as little of this Martian colony as possible. That or the camera people had just been the worst kind of bad.
Anphobos was incredible. There was no other word. Jodi couldn’t have found vocabulary even if she’d been thinking about words. Better still, if she felt this way about the little she could see through the transparent walkway panels that led from the ship to the landing station, what would the rest of it look like?
“I can’t wait to get a proper look.”
Okay, so she’d changed her tune, but anyone who’d nearly crashed and burned up on the most wondrous planetary colony ever probably would. Some kind of adrenaline induced euphoria left over from their spiral landing was only natural, right? Besides, speech was enough to get her parents to separate, to get her mother to look above her and around at the scenery. While Jodi watched her mum gape and grin, her father snatched her off her feet in a cuddle and pressed kisses to her cheeks.
“Look at you! Your hair’s grown and I think your skin is darker than ever. Have you been outside too much?”
She rolled her eyes. “Already with the parenting? No Dad, I’ve been this colour for a long time.” So maybe that was a small dig at his choice to leave them alone for so long. Maybe he didn’t remember exactly how she’d always looked. Was it wrong after so long apart that this reunion felt like being forced to cheek kiss a long-lost aunt? You know the one: bad breath, yellow teeth and too much lipstick. Jodi squeezed his biceps and pushed away from him.
Her dad’s frown lines grew deeper and his smile wavered, but he let her go.
“Come on then, let me show you around before we go home. I need to look at the pair of you for a while.” He draped one arm around Jodi’s shoulders and another around his wife’s waist.
“What about the luggage?”
Jodi inhaled so sharply she felt her nostrils flare. Back together after so long, the pair instantly fell into their old roles. Her mother hadn’t used that ‘useless woman’ tone of voice once while he’d been gone. Neither had she worried needlessly over petty details since her dad had left them behind. In fact, she’d been every inch the brave woman who soldiered on, while he sauntered off on his big adventure. Now he was back in the picture, suddenly she was back to acting exactly the way that made Jodi’s teeth grind.
Not noticing his wife’s regression, Jodi’s dad waved away her worries with a quick flick of his wrist and a bright grin.
“The bots will get the bags. They’re everywhere up here. I booked one to deliver your things to our place. That’s why your luggage dockets were imprinted with magnetic codes. Besides, I think that’s one of the advantages of low density travel. You’re all VIPs!”
That her mother already knew all this obviously didn’t cross his mind. Jodi kept her mouth clamped shut and let them keep pretending. The corridor from the docking bay to Anphobos was a series of sealed rooms. Jodi found herself wondering what would happen if she stopped between two sets of doors. Would she suffocate? If she stood inside the little rooms when they were sealed on both ends, and screamed her lungs out as the air was sucked away, would she hear her own voice dwindle into nothingness?
“The doors double as scanners. They check for weaponry and other suspicious or hidden devices. The rooms seal like they do in case someone is detected contravening the entry laws. The rooms seal to almost a vacuum. If it actually made a vacuum, blood would boil and bodies would explode, so they’ve opted for something a little less on the capital punishment side of things. The lack of atmosphere disables them, then as soon as the person is unconscious they unseal the room, let air back in and the person wakes up in custody. Brilliant really! We should do that back home in front of every school.”
“Perfectly passive aggressive,” Jodi murmured, then regretted it the second she saw her dad’s wounded expression. While he might sound just like a tour guide on speed, he obviously wanted them to like their new home, and Jodi had to love him for that.
“We can walk and get either shuttles or monorails every-where we want to go. That’ll give you both a chance to stretch your legs and to get a real feel for the place. I promise, Marilyn, you won’t regret coming.”
“Oh, I don’t!” As they exited the last room, her mother did a fine impression of an over-eager teenager out on her first date. What do you want to do? I don’t know, anything you want to do! Even without a vacuum sealed room, Jodi felt her blood approach the boiling point.
Stepping into the real Anphobos was even more incredible than looking at it, and Jodi felt her temper disappear. It’s hard to be angry when everything is so strangely beautiful. She observed her fingers, flexing them without drawing attention to the motion. The light – that glimmering, gleaming blue – changed skin tones, perhaps for the better. It was like standing inside a diamond. She shivered. It was beautiful, crystalline, and just a little bit cold. Her father seemed not to notice, so perhaps this chill was something to which Anphobosites became accustomed. Mars was further from the sun, after all.
Marilyn let herself be led by the hand. Jodi watched as her father dragged them past things she would normally have wanted to stop and investigate. The river, flowing through the centre of town, sparkling almost as blue and clear as the sky, invited them to dip fingers. Unfenced and unworried by the idea of people drowning, this river wandered happily through the settlement with just the smallest of gurgling bubbles.
“Water,” David began in his tour guide voice, “is naturally very important for human life. But even better, it’s a fantastic form of thermal regulation and sound absorption.”
Jodi just wanted to sit. Maybe dangle her feet in. Maybe just lie on the river’s edge and look for fish.
“Are there fish in there?” Could she sound any more like a three-year-old?
“Of course!” her father smiled down on her. “This river is a method of water purification. All the animals and plants have been specifically selected to ensure that the water remains as pure and clean as possible. Seems to be working, eh?”
“Does it end or is it a big circle?” She had no clue as to why that mattered, it just seemed an important thing to know about her new geography.
“It ends in a small lake down in the seventh sector. The lake feeds the water recycling plant and then it comes back out our taps. Better than new!”
“There are sectors?” Marilyn sounded disturbed.
“Yes, just like Paris! Remember when we were there and we could never remember what number arrondissement we were supposed to be in? I found the same thing here. People kept sending me to numbers inside numbers inside numbers. You know me, I’m a plant guy. I get lost in the engineering. Most of the sectors have nicknames now, though. I think that makes them much friendlier.”
“Nicknames like what? The Jewish Quarter?”
Her parents stopped as if shot.
“Really, Jodi, is that necessary?” Of course it was her mother who spoke while her father scowled and his dark eyes shot lightning bolts at her from beneath his shaggy brows.
Jodi brushed them off with a shrug and kept walking. They could think what they liked. Anphobos was a wonder, for sure. Beauty and science: perfectly balanced and seemingly natural. But it felt fake. Like staying in a hotel room. All the appearance of a home but none of the feel. It was supposed to be a colony, but could anything really human survive in a world where even the fish were organised? On Earth the cities had had hundreds, sometimes thousands of years to develop their characters, and the best ones, like Paris, were the ones decorated and filled with the remnants of human existence. Anphobos would never have that. All the debris humans created here was either reused, recycled or reduced to something that could be easily disposed of on the planet’s surface.
Very deliberately, Jodi turned her attention to other wonders. Between the sky and earth, or ceiling and floor, as her inner sceptic viewed them, there were trees and grass and a whole mass of gardens and playgrounds. Hidden against dimly lit walls, set amongst the trees, were houses – bubble houses that reflected and refracted light. In a dim atmosphere, Jodi supposed, it was important to use light as efficiently as possible. That meant lots of reflection.
“Where are all the people?” Amid all the glamour and gorgeousness, the silence was spooky.
Her father shrugged. “At work, in school, indoors. There aren’t many people here who aren’t employed during the day. Wait until a bit later on, they’ll be everywhere.”
“Oh good.” Jodi knew she would feel better when surrounded by people. It was one of those things you got used to when living on Earth.
“Why don’t you take us to see your work, Davey?”
Davey? Davey? Dear god, could it get any worse? Could she simper any more? “Mum! Work? Are you completely out of your mind? What about home? Let’s go see our house!”
If David Scarfield was shocked by his daughter’s demanding attitude, he covered his gape with a smile. “Bit less of a house, bit more of an apartment, Sweetie.”
“Whatever. If it has a shower and I can get out of this suit, I’ll be happy.”
“Huh, forget shower, think bath.” Her mother was finally getting with the program.
“Now you’re talking!” Jodi patted her mother on the head. The patting process had become a gesture of approval the day Jodi realised she was actually taller than her mum.
Her dad eyed them sideways. “You girls have become quite a team while I’ve been gone, haven’t you?” For some reason, he didn’t sound proud.
Her mum nodded. “We certainly have! You’d better look out Davey, you’ve imported independent women. What will you do if we don’t need you anymore?”
Despite her mother’s giggling laughter and teasing tone, her dad’s frown furrowed his brow. Marilyn slapped him on the shoulder. “Lighten up Davey! We may not need you, but we do still love you!”
“Well that’s lucky,” her father’s smile was tight and showed too many teeth, “because really, you are stuck on Mars with me.”
A panicked, tight feeling clamped hard around Jodi’s chest, tighter than any straps in a shuttle seat could have managed. All at once it came to her. Whether she liked it or not, now that she was here, her life was in the hands of others. The machines that scrubbed the air, the bots that maintained the scrubbers, the fish that cleaned the river and the plants that produced the oxygen – all of them had more power to control her life than she did. Her father was one of them, too. Really. It was a very small colony and there was no escape.
Now that she’d experienced it once before, Jodi could identify that desperate, clawing feeling. That sense of fading into oblivion with not a single thing to be done about it.
It really was too bad what happened when others were in control.