I CAN SEE only a few centimeters of moss near the door and that’s brown and mostly dead now. Everywhere else is filled from floor to ceiling with . . . stuff. My stuff. My life. Exposed.
There’s no way to see past it all. There’s a tunnel through it into the far end of the hallway and the light only penetrates so far into it. Every time I come home I crawl into my house, like some supplicant, some unworthy sinner.
The comb with the two broken teeth that I rescued from the Masher slides down and lands at the entrance to the tunnel. I thought I’d wedged it in but clearly not well enough. I hold my breath, fearful a little avalanche will begin there as well as in my heart. But nothing else falls.
I had forgotten that his hand is still holding mine and I only recall when his slips away. I feel like I’ve been cast adrift suddenly, that I was unknowingly tethered but now I could just drift away, spiral into myself and never come out.
“Ren,” Sung-Soo whispers and I look at him to make sure he’s real. He took his hand away because he needed to cover both his mouth and nose. “Oh, Ren, what is . . . Why is all that there? Do you actually live here?”
His voice is strained with disgust and disbelief. I can’t reply. I look back at the pile and the entrance to the tunnel and then put my hand over the sensor to close the valve.
“Do you really live in there?”
I look at the closed door. Other people live in their houses. I don’t. I cram myself in. I don’t want to say that though. I just nod.
“It’s not . . .”
“Normal?” I ask.
“Well . . . it’s not—” He finally lowers his hands. “I can see why you don’t let people in. Ren, don’t you think you need help?”
“No,” I say. “I just collect things, that’s all. Just because I have a lot of stuff doesn’t mean it’s a problem.”
“But the smell . . .”
The shame and embarrassment devour me. I start to shake more violently. “Just leave it. Leave me alone. You got what you asked for; now I really have to trust you. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
I’ve no idea why he looks hurt. “I won’t tell anyone,” he says. “I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”
He turns and walks away a few paces, far enough for me to feel better, and then he stops.
“Oh. I forgot. I made you something.” He pulls something out of his pocket, threaded onto a thong. He comes back to me and holds it out on his palm.
A tiny fist holding a stylized mallet has been carved from that iridescent deposit. In the daylight I can see it’s a pearlescent blue. It’s ready to wear.
I take it. It’s beautiful and still holds his warmth. “Thank you,” I say but he’s already walking away.
I hang the pendant around my neck and tuck it beneath my shirt. I don’t want to lose it.
For a few moments I just stand still, paralyzed. I want to go inside and find a nook to nestle in and find something to take me away from myself. But if I do that and Sung-Soo calls Mack and Kay, they’ll break in if I refuse to come out. If I’m not in there, however, they’ll have to leave it be.
I need to be somewhere else.
I turn and strike out into the grasses, walking swiftly and purposefully away from my house and the rest of the colony. I don’t have supplies, not even any water, but right now I just need to get away.
Each step is accompanied by a new stab of worry. I can hear imagined conversations between Sung-Soo and Mack, sometimes Kay, about what he saw.
“But . . . the smell.” I close my eyes at the memory of his words. He thinks I’m an animal. He thinks I’m broken in some way, like that printer with the defect.
Why hasn’t that person asked me to fix it? Do they not want me in their home or haven’t they realized there’s something wrong? How long will they wait until they act? Are they hoping it will just correct itself if they leave it alone?
These people . . . they don’t think about the things that underpin the life we have here. They just assume I’ll be there to fix it. What if I wasn’t?
There are two other people who can fix printers in the colony—or at least who were trained. It was a core policy of the trip: all critical skills had to be held by a minimum of three people, who would make Planetfall in separate pods to ensure that if anything catastrophic happened on the way down, the colony wouldn’t be left with a skills gap. But the other two haven’t kept those skills up since we arrived; they know I’m faster and that I’ve always been happy to fix and build. It was one of my primary roles after all, but secondary for them.
The colony would struggle without me for a while, but there are so many immersive tutorials, they would soon be up to speed.
Mack might miss me as confidante, but he’d probably be relieved. He wouldn’t have to worry about me telling anyone about what happened back then and what’s happening right now. Kay would miss me, maybe.
No one else though.
I could leave.
I look across the plain to the low hills beyond, the edge of the mountain range that curves around the grassland. Diamond Peak is behind me, the colony between us. The weather will be gentler ahead, without the mountains to affect it. I could download the maps and do some climate forecasting to pick a spot that would be sheltered and safe all year round.
I’d have to get hold of seeds and download instructions on how to grow and care for the plants. I’d need something to eat in the interim, and shelter that I could build without a large printer. I could make a small portable one that could make simple structures but nothing that would be fast enough to protect me from the elements quickly.
What else would I need to take?
The moment I think of all the things in my house, I know this flimsy plan is an absurdity. I couldn’t leave all that behind. There are holy relics in there, the last connections to my daughter, the book my father wrote, my mother’s art. Too much to carry.
My legs give out from under me and with an unceremonious rustling thud I land in the grasses, disappearing beneath the tops of the stalks. I cry and swear at myself for falling into Sung-Soo’s social trap. I was right; he will destroy the balance here. The balance inside myself.
I sit there and sob long enough for my back to ache. I’d curl up like a cat but I’m afraid of putting my face near the dirt and the microscopic organisms within it.
A message arrives and the “urgent” tag makes me almost vomit with fear. What has Sung-Soo said? Is this it? After all these years of hiding, am I about to be exposed?
I bring my knees up and rest my head on their bony hardness, wrapping my arms around my legs and squeezing them as tight as I clutched my dying child.
The smell of her hair, her tiny frame that I’m afraid I’ll crush, her limp, doll-like limbs. She’s barely there and no matter how much I want it and how hard I press her against my chest, my body can’t give hers life again.
Then I’m outside of myself looking at a grim tableau. It’s a study in futility: my face distorted and inhuman with grief, the sound of my animal roar slamming into the walls of the tiny hospital room. The doctor standing a meter or so away, her face the picture of sadness within permitted professional parameters and the nurse staring at me, his eyes wide at such a display of raw, brutal, ineffectual love.
Countless machines beeping and flashing impending death with cold impartiality. All of them useless. My maternal instincts equally so.
A second urgent message brings me back into my body, now wretched with tension. This one could be from Kay, saying she’s at my house and has seen inside, that they’re coming to find me and put me into treatment of some kind. There will be an emergency council session addressing how to deal with someone like me. They’ll vote to destroy my house and take my things away. They’ll force me to live in an empty shell and I’ll rattle around inside with nothing to hold me tight.
Eventually, the tears stop and I begin to ache too much to keep sitting so still and tight. The sound of the wind in the grasses becomes comforting, as does my little dell walled by the thick green stalks. I feel safer, sitting down here with only the sky above me, and it eases the panic.
I twist onto my hands and knees, turn around like a timid dog and raise my head slowly until I can peep over the top of the grasses. I expect to see a small posse heading straight for me, ready to cart me off for some sort of inquisition, but there’s nothing between me and the colony except the grass and the bugs lurking within it. I can’t see anyone near my house, but I can’t zoom in to see if the door has been forced. What am I thinking? No one has been near it; otherwise my alarms would have gone off. I lost sight of that in the panic.
I sit back on my heels. The stalks are squashed flat below my legs and pressing uncomfortably against them. Everything looks peaceful there. Slowly, reluctantly, I accept that I have to open these messages and face whatever is within.
They are both from Mack. I select the first, and after opening and closing my fisted hands a few times, I blink twice.
I don’t know what you said to him, but it worked—look at Carmen’s discussion group. Thanks, Ren—that’s a massive weight off me.
I read it three times, to be sure. Sung-Soo did what he said he would.
Then I remember the second message and the anxiety spikes. That could be the one about my house.
There’s nothing to do but open it.
I still need you to place the seed for me though. Carmen’s not done with this yet and I can’t take the risk. She’s sent me a message about wanting to revise the ceremony and questioning why things are done the way they are and all sorts of bullshit. I suppose she’s worked herself up so much she doesn’t want to see it all go to waste. Maybe she just wants to see me squirm for the fun of it. What a pain in the arse. You’re quiet, are you OK?
I flop backward, my shoulders, neck and head pushing back more of the stalks until they hold me at a fairly comfortable angle. Sung-Soo kept his promise.
I clasp hold of the pendant, which is slick with my sweat from where it’s rested against my chest. I don’t like him knowing about this, but I can cope if that’s all it’s going to be. I think I can, anyway.
A tickle on the back of my neck makes me leap up onto my feet and brush it frantically. Dozens of itches creep across my skin as I imagine some creature crawling around on me from the grass. After satisfying myself I haven’t been bitten and nothing is trying to hitch a ride, I head back toward the colony.
There’s nowhere else to go.