Lost on Mars Read online

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘They don’t want me to return to the City newspaper offices. Tillian says I’m suspended from work.’ He shook with anger. How dare they make him feel like this, I thought. ‘It’s because I performed an unauthorised search. Of course they discovered what I had done. Grandma’s name tripped an internal alarm. The machines are too precious for junior staff members to mess around with.’ He snorted back his tears and looked at me defiantly. ‘It was awful, Lora. Tillian sounded so angry with me. Like she couldn’t believe I’d done something so terrible. She says her father is apoplectic, whatever that means.’

  I touched his arm and he shrugged me off. ‘I’m sure that it’s not as terrible as all that. Look, they haven’t fired you. It’s just a suspension. They’ll let you go back to work.’

  ‘Tillian sounds so disappointed in me.’

  I placed my brother in the care of Toaster, who flapped around him in concern. I showered and dressed, all the while thinking I should punch Tillian’s face in. That girl had no right making Al feel bad just for being curious. The rules of the place obviously hadn’t been made clear enough to him. He probably hadn’t known he was committing such a great sin. I reckoned that young madam Tillian was gonna have to explain herself to me.

  Al drank some hot chocolate, and decided he might as well go back to bed. ‘What’s the point of staying up? I don’t have a job anymore.’ A hint of that surliness he often had as a little boy was back in his voice.

  I let him go to his room and turned to Toaster. ‘They really didn’t want him to extract that information about Grandma, did they?’

  ‘That would seem about the long and the short of it, yes,’ he said, carrying the mugs and plates back to the kitchen. ‘I must admit I didn’t get very far decoding that print-off last night. It’s such an arcane code. It will take a little extra work on my part. But I should be able to crack it.’

  I nodded. ‘Would you work on it today, Toaster? Just leave the cleaning and stuff. I can do that. I want to know why and how they’d know about Grandma, and not want us to know about it.’

  Toaster smiled at me. ‘Ah, I’m not sure if it’s as sinister as all that.’

  I refused to be cheered. ‘You said yourself there was something queer about the City Inside. You said it was all fake.’

  Toaster sat down heavily. ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? That’s how I felt about it. I felt … disoriented. As if we weren’t even on the same plane of reality anymore.’ He shrugged, realising he was talking gibberish. ‘I think my refurbishments have done something strange to my logic circuits. I need to concentrate on something meaty. This decoding task is just the thing.’

  Then came the second official thing of the morning.

  It was a letter on a very fancy, heavy paper. It was from the Dean of the Department of True Life Stories at the University of the City Inside. Dean Swiftnick, he was called. At first I thought it must be a mistake. What would the university want with me? My mind flashed on the old books I’d read. That’s where scholars went. Jude the Obscure, he went there, didn’t he?

  I stared at my name on the letterhead. It was the most exquisite, scrolling handwriting. Dean Swiftnick urgently requested my presence. My story was required. And he was inviting me to donate it to their storehouse of knowledge.

  33

  I went to the Downstairs Market with my basket and a list and my head swimming. Now they want paying back, the people of this City, I was thinking. They gave us a place to live and they’ve looked after us since we arrived. We assumed they were generous and cared for our welfare. But now it was payback time.

  I supposed it wouldn’t be too bad. Telling them our story for the sake of their records. Why, we’d already told the main points to the newspapers, hadn’t we? And maybe it would be a good thing to do. Maybe I wanted it all to go down in their archive. They should know more about Our Town, our family and the Homestead. Those things would all want to be remembered by someone.

  Little though we were, we were still a part of the story of Mars.

  The marketplace was less busy that day. It was easier to get a good look at everything. I paused at a stall of pets in wooden cages, all kinds of beasts. I wasn’t sure I’d want any of these monsters set free in my home. A large Jack Rabbit sat there, bulging its eyes at me.

  Just then I heard the rippling music of the harp.

  I went to the same spot beside the newsstand. Peter the vagabond was back. His tune was downbeat – even sombre – and fewer passersby were stopping to listen. I could hardly blame them. I saw what the cause of his mood must be.

  ‘Karl’s gone,’ I gasped, staring at the space where the cat-dog had been sitting last time.

  Peter nodded glumly. ‘Don’t worry. He hasn’t run away from me or anything. He just isn’t very well. I didn’t want to bring him out today. He was throwing up and stuff. Didn’t look like he could face coming out.’

  ‘Is someone looking after him?’

  ‘Everyone’s got their own thing to do,’ he said. ‘There was no one I could ask to keep an eye on him. All I could do was make up his little bed out of his hairy blanket in my alcove, and tell him to keep quiet so no one notices him.’

  It was obvious Peter was fretting desperately. All that anxiety was seething through his music, and it had cast a pall over the market stalls all around. Maybe his moody tunes were the reason the Downstairs Market was so much emptier today. I asked him how long he’d been there.

  ‘Since first thing.’ He glared down at his hat, which held less than a few credits. ‘It’s a slow day.’

  ‘I reckon you should go home to see Karl,’ I told him. ‘Take him some treats. You’re doing no good here. Your music’s dreadful today.’

  Peter seemed glad to take my advice. It was as if he needed permission to pack up his harp and leave his patch early. He used his handful of coins to buy a bagful of gristly lizard bones at the nearby butcher’s stall and then he turned to me. His handsome face was bright with a new idea.

  ‘Lora, you could come with me!’ He had the most infectious grin I’d ever known. Something about Peter made me want to hug him. It was ridiculous.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘You’ll be interested.’

  He grasped my hand and dragged me along. He was completely encumbered by the harp, the bag of bones and me. I struggled feebly as he led us towards the revolving doors.

  The fact was, I hadn’t been out of the building much since we’d moved in. There wasn’t much need. Truth be told, I found it all a bit overwhelming out there. The tallness and the pressed-in-ness of everything. And the buttoned-up businesslike way all the City Inside people went moving about.

  We were outside now, though. There was a misty fall of snow coming down, which made me catch my breath. Of course, it was something exceedingly rare on the prairie. I wanted to stop and stand in it, and marvel at the colours, but Peter urged me on, laughing. The flakes were soft and cinnamon-coloured. So cold, they made me feel like my skin was burning hot.

  We crossed an open space – a park, Peter called it – that I remembered seeing the first day we came here. I had meant to come here, to sit by the lake in the sun, and somehow I had forgotten all about that. I got used, very quickly, to living 202 storeys up. There was no time to sit today, apparently, and besides, it was too cold.

  Next, we were heading towards the train station. All the while he was telling me where he lived, how it was all an amazing secret. Something the Authorities must never know about. The Den was located at the end of the railway line we were about to ride. We joined a large crowd – lots of crinolines and topcoats and brollies covered in downy pink snow. I felt such a drab disgrace in my clothes.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be telling me,’ I warned Peter. ‘Why are you telling me your secrets?’

  He shrugged and smiled as we edged around the crowd together. Then he was coaching me how to jump the turnstiles so that we could travel for free. The City trains were known as the Pip
eline. I knew that Al used them every day. I tried to imagine him walking about, all confidently, in this echoing, fumey place.

  Next thing we were dashing down an escalator – a moving staircase kind of thing – that sent me dizzy first time.

  We were in a tunnel, deep underground, under flickering light from an electric chandelier. Others waited with us, no one speaking. The tunnel streamed with approaching noise and slow, warm gales.

  ‘I trust you, Lora,’ Peter told me. ‘I know that you don’t come from this City. You come from your prairie. Your Homestead. I remember that, from what you said in the newspaper. I thought then that I liked the look of you, and the sound of you. You had a great, plain, wide-open face. Haven’t you noticed the faces here?’ he gestured along the platform at the others waiting. ‘They’re so closed-in and sly-looking.’

  Now that he mentioned it, I did think the folk of the City Inside shared a certain expression. I wouldn’t have called it sly, though. It was more like they had a dozen things on their mind at once, and when they were talking to you, their thoughts were wandering elsewhere. Sometimes they didn’t seem altogether sincere. But what did I know? Peter knew what these people were really like. He’d lived here all his life.

  ‘I hate the way the City Insiders are,’ he told me, quietly, stepping closer. The harp case rested between us like a small black coffin. The reek of the lizard bones was making me nauseous. He went on, ‘So I live in the Den, way underground. And we look out for each other.’ The train came rattling out of the tunnel, and I stepped back in alarm as it dashed up to the platform.

  All aboard was plush red and polished wood and glowing brass lamps. We sat down. A woman with a high bosom looked repulsed by Peter and the sweetish smell of the butcher’s bones. Her husband glared at the pair of us, as if we had no right to be there.

  The train tooted and howled busily through the jerky tunnels. Yellow smoke leaked through the black windows and smelled deliciously toxic. We hurtled to the end of the line, to some sector of the City Inside I’d never been to before. And I knew – as Peter took my hand again and we hopped out of the Pipeline – that I was thrilled and excited in a way I hadn’t been for months.

  He took me to the corner of another park. I’d never seen so much green in one place. I felt like the grass was kissing my feet as we ran across the bumpy lawns. The reddish pink snow was falling, thicker now, slowly blotting out the green.

  Peter breathlessly explained that the park was rarely used nowadays. People preferred more dynamic entertainments. What did the park have to offer? Some stone dinosaurs lurked amongst the trees, boggling their blank eyes at us. They had a look of Molly and George about them.

  Peter took me to an old bandstand, where music used to be played on summer days. ‘You’ve got to be able to keep a secret. They aren’t to know that we live here, underneath the park. The Authorities, I mean.’

  I agreed. Why would they be bothered? It all sounded a bit paranoid to me but I thought I’d better humour my new friend.

  Beneath the bandstand was a mildewy door, hidden by snowy ivy, which opened onto a tunnel. Peter lit a match and took a candelabra from a side table just behind the door. The walls were covered in layers of newsprint from decades ago. The print was almost rubbed off. Peter closed the door behind us and I followed that naked flame as it bobbed ahead.

  We went downwards. I don’t know how deep under the park we went. It was quite steep. I was quite content, though, even as I held my breath and my heart hammered. This was adventure and life once more. I realised how hemmed in I’d been feeling in that flat on Storey 202.

  Soon there was noise up ahead. Voices.

  ‘Everyone’s friendly,’ Peter told me, his face pale in the torchlight. ‘Don’t worry.’

  We were in a widening corridor. Then in a gas-lit street with cobbles underfoot. Through gaps in the drizzly mist, I could see brick dwellings that seemed to rise out of the ground.

  We passed a few people and they nodded acknowledgement at Peter. They were dressed in less buttoned-up styles than the people above ground, perhaps. Shabbier, but more colourful.

  Everything was cramped, even when we emerged into a kind of town square. I had to duck to avoid banging my head on the ceiling of wet rock. Then Peter squeezed my hand and led me into a mean-looking building with narrow windows. Inside there were dormitories and small alcoves, like cupboards, and I realised that this stuffy, musty place must be where he lived. When we were both inside his alcove, he pulled a curtain across a rail and there was hardly any room for us both. I perched on the unmade bed.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so … awful,’ he smiled.

  He manhandled the harp into the corner of his tiny room and, as he did so, I noticed a squirming bundle of black fur in a nest of blankets on the bed. It was Karl, who had woken at the sound of our voices. His eyes shone like he recognised me. He tried to get control of his awkward, trembling limbs so he could come and sit on my knee.

  ‘Didn’t do so well busking without you, boy,’ Peter laughed. ‘But look what I brought back anyway!’ At first I didn’t know whether he meant me or the sack of bones, which he quickly opened for the cat-dog to see. Karl was sniffing crazily, leaping about the confined space, bumping into everything.

  It struck me that this was it. This tiny corner of a room, curtained off from a whole load of similar alcoves, was the full extent of my new friends’ lives. I thought about everything that the Authorities had given to my brother Al and me when we came to the City Inside. It hardly seemed fair. I felt ashamed. What was so special about us?

  I could hear shuffling, mumbling noises behind other curtains, so I kept my voice low. ‘How come you have to live like this?’

  Peter looked offended by my question as he sat watching Karl nibble and paw at the bones. ‘Hey, there’s nothing wrong with this place. I like it here.’

  Karl settled back on the bed, his limbs all over the place, chewing noisily.

  ‘But it’s so dark and dirty,’ I said, the words out before I even knew it. I sounded like such a prissy housewife. In our Homestead, and in my apartment, everything was scrubbed clean and kept immaculate. Even on our journey through the wilderness we never let our standards slip. But it was rude to judge other people like that.

  Peter’s face darkened. ‘Some of us don’t have any choices,’ he said.

  I remembered that I was stuck down here in this place he called the Den. No one else knew where I was. He could do anything. Though I was sure he wouldn’t. I was sure he was a good person.

  ‘We can’t all live in Stockpot District.’ He pulled a face at me to ease the tension.

  I tried to tell him, ‘Hey, Al and me, we’ve got nothing, either. We came to the City Inside with absolutely zilch.’ I could feel myself flushing with indignation. My embarrassment was making me defensive. ‘So you needn’t act the poor boy with me. You never had to walk across half the planet, did you? You never had to flee from the Martian Ghosts? You never had to fear being eaten or lose half your family…’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, taking hold of my shoulders. I shrugged him off. ‘It’s OK. You needn’t get upset.’

  I was getting worked up. Somehow the things I said to Peter and those he said to me felt important. For the first time in ages I’d met someone I wanted to explain everything to. Everything I’d seen and lived through.

  We sat on the lumpy-bed with his little cat-dog between us. Karl was making lip-smacking noises.

  ‘You’re an asset to the Authorities,’ Peter said. ‘They want you here. You and Al and Toaster – they stand to learn a lot from you. You’re the people of the future.’

  I stared at him. ‘How can that be? You all live in this totally magnificent City. We lived in a shack on the prairie…’

  Peter shrugged. ‘Maybe. But tell me, Lora. When did your people first leave Earth?’

  I answered automatically. We learned all this stuff by rote in the school house. ‘2094 was the year our first Settlers came to
Mars. Grandma and Aunt Ruby and old Toaster were on the first wave. Aboard the Melville.’

  Peter whistled at this. Then he looked like he was about to tell me something I’d find surprising. I braced myself. ‘And do you know when this City Inside was first built?’

  This had been puzzling me. I’d asked Toaster about it, but he kept saying his circuits were damaged and thinking was coming hard to him. I lay awake in our new apartment sometimes wondering how the City Insiders could have all this. These towers and pipelines and all these riches. How could they be as civilised as this?

  ‘When was the City Inside built?’ I asked Peter. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  ‘1900,’ he said. ‘It’s been here over 250 years.’

  34

  When Al and Toaster and me woke up in the City Inside, we didn’t know what we had fallen into. We stumbled into the streets and we couldn’t understand why everyone was wearing such old-fashioned dress, why horses pulled carriages, why men wore hats and women bonnets, and why everything seemed to run by clockwork. We thought we were dreaming. I thought we had fallen into one of my Victorian books that had got so mashed up in my electric machine. All the belching chimneys and the clattering hooves – surely we’d fallen down a rabbit hole and come up in the past?

  But the sky between the blocks was pink and orange and the dirt underfoot was good Martian dirt. The horses stamping impatiently through the traffic were green and reptilian. This was still the world we had known, but it was the human beings who were the mystery.

  They were surprised and delighted by us. They took us in and gave us medical examinations and they fixed up Toaster, so that he looked better than he ever had. But they couldn’t fix his memory circuits. The technology bamboozled them.

  The Authorities were astonished by us.

  And now I knew why.

  We came from a planet 250 years after they had left it behind. They were the secret City Inside, somewhere on the other side of Mars. No one on Earth in our time knew about them. But somehow they had thrived.