The boy from mars, p.2
The Boy from Mars, page 2
Thomas breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t the cause.
“Two of them hijacked a water tanker from some perma-dig,” he said, referring to one of the frozen permafrost mines that supplied the Station with water. “But they’re not in camera range yet.”
Thomas understood that it would be up to the Ramjets, with their sophisticated tracking equipment, to provide the video feed.
“It shouldn’t be long now,” Varik shouted, unable to hide his exhilaration.
Escape attempts had occurred before, but only recently were the boys permitted to watch live coverage. A forty-wheel water tanker appeared on the screen along with a digital time code. It was headed toward the Valles, the subterranean canyons that stretched for miles between the Station and the towering Olympus Mons.
A pair of Ramjets shot into view at the six-second mark. Varik led the boys in a cheer.
“Oh, dear,” came a voice from behind Thomas. “Another one?”
Thomas turned to see Eno, still in his eye patch, which he wore whenever his replacement eye was in docking mode. He slid in between Poke and Thomas.
“You got here fast,” Eno said. “I’d barely opened my eye and you were gone.”
Thomas shrugged, not wanting to discuss his absence.
“I can’t quite believe we’re being required to watch one of these dreadful things at this hour of the morning.”
“Your presence isn’t required,” Poke said, without turning back.
“I beg to differ,” Eno said. “Only last week Professor affirmed the necessity of bearing witness. He said the escapes had civic import.”
Thomas glanced at his counterpart. “What’s so important about seeing outnumbered men hunted down by superior forces?”
Before Eno could respond, the Ramjets began to descend, and the boys got their first glimpse of the two men in the tanker. They wore the protective gloves of drillers, and both appeared to be in their forties, though Thomas guessed they were probably younger. The radiation exposure caused by working outdoors, even in protective gear, inevitably took its toll.
“They’re heading toward the Valles,” Poke said. “I wonder why?”
“If they could climb far enough into the canyons,” Thomas said, “they’d be beyond the reach of the Ramjets.”
“Sounds like you’ve given it some thought,” a voice called out.
Thomas looked over to see Varik staring at him.
“It doesn’t take much to see the obvious,” Thomas said.
“Even if they could get there in time,” Varik said, “the Mastership can see everything.”
“It can’t see through rock,” Thomas said.
A few boys laughed, but when the Moons glared at them, they fell silent and went back to waiting for the arrival of the Mastership, which was an event in itself. Coated with a rare composite that produced a perfect reflection of its surroundings, it was constantly camouflaged. At night, it seemed to be wrapped in the darkness itself. The boys let out a gasp of awe whenever they saw it.
“There it is!” shouted Varik, thrusting a fist in the air.
The Mastership leveled off and took on the reflection of the Martian landscape. The color reminded Thomas of dry blood. It held its altitude while the Ramjets began descending over the tanker, which wove back and forth in an attempt to evade the jets.
“Shoot,” shouted Varik. “Now!”
As if obeying his command, each Ramjet fired a mini-missile, blowing out a bank of tires and forcing the tanker into a violent roll.
It came to a rest roof-side down with its wheels still spinning wildly. One of the doors burst open, and the two Returners rolled out of the cabin. The moment they hit the ground, a digital time code appeared beneath them.
“Eight seconds and counting,” Poke said.
“Why do they put that up, I wonder?” Eno asked.
“For our benefit,” Thomas said. “To show us it’s useless to run.”
“The record’s forty-one seconds,” Varik said.
A pair of vertical aircraft dropped into the frame, stopping just a few feet from the ground. Their hatches opened to reveal a team of Commandos in hazard suits and combat gear. Riding single-wheel motorized terrain bikes, they shot out of the verticals and sped off in pursuit.
“Twenty-eight seconds,” Varik called out.
A pair of bikes zeroed in on the first Returner. One of the Commandos swerved behind and struck him on the back of the head with a baton. As the Returner skidded across the frozen ground, another cheer echoed from the boys.
“That’s your survivor,” Varik said. “They always take one alive, so they can get information on the others.” The Moons bobbed their heads with relish.
The Commandos turned toward the driver, firing their laser guns. Two shots tore into the driller’s hazard suit, one at the ankle and the other near the shoulder.
“His suit’s torn!” Varik said. “He might as well give up now.”
Everyone understood that the driver was now vulnerable to Mars’ sub-zero temperature. He wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes in the freezing cold.
But, for some reason, the Returner kept running toward the rim of the Valles.
“He’d better slow down,” Varik said, “or he’ll go over the edge.”
The canyons were thousands of feet deep, and it was unlikely anyone could survive the fall. As the driller came within fifty yards of the rim, he glanced back at the Commandos, revealing a thin layer of permafrost on his face. He was turning blue. As the camera came closer, Thomas recognized him as one of the Nursery Prefects from many years ago.
“It’s Benjamin.”
Eno squinted with his good eye. “It can’t be.”
“No,” Poke said. “Thomas is right. It’s him.”
Benjamin had been removed from the nursery pods the year after the boys started school and sent to work in the drilling fields. It was a cause of great confusion to the boys at the time, as no one could understand what he could have done to warrant such a demotion. They watched with renewed interest as Benjamin began to slow.
“He knows he has no chance,” Varik said. “He’ll surrender soon.”
But suddenly Benjamin summoned a final burst of speed.
“What’s the fool doing?” Varik asked.
Benjamin reached the edge of the rim and leapt into the air, flying over the dark abyss of the canyon. For a few terrible moments, his arms and legs flailed against the thin Martian atmosphere, and then he disappeared inside as if swallowed by a black hole.
The Magnum Screen went blank.
A hush fell over the boys. No one could quite comprehend what they’d just witnessed. Finally, the silence was broken by the voice of a One-Classer so small he was barely visible in the crowd of older, taller boys.
“What happened to him?” the boy asked.
“He killed himself,” Thomas said.
“But why?” asked a Two-Classer, even more confused.
Everyone turned toward Thomas as if he alone could explain the mystery.
“Because he’d rather die than be taken alive,” Thomas said.
“How do you know that?” Varik asked in a demanding tone. He headed toward Thomas and Eno, as the Moons cleared a path with their beefy arms. Eno’s breathing quickened.
“Well, Thomas, we’re waiting for your explanation.”
“It’s pretty clear,” Thomas said. “Not everyone thinks life on the Station is so wonderful.”
“Does that include you?”
Eno began to wheeze. “I think what Thomas is trying to say…”
“Shut up,” Varik said. “No one asked you.”
Eno lowered his head, as if hoping to hide. As the smallest boy in their class, he’d always been a favorite target. Once, after he’d made a class presentation about the uselessness of certain bodily appendages, Varik cornered him in the Boys’ Quarters and ordered the Moons to cut off his little toe. Thomas had arrived just in time to prevent the surgery, but since then, Eno couldn’t look at Varik without a shiver of panic.
“Benjamin is a traitor,” Varik continued. “And if you have any sympathy for him, you’re no better. Perhaps you’re a Returner in the making.”
Varik took a final step forward, nose to nose with Thomas, who stood his ground. Eno put his hand to his chest, wheezing loudly now.
“For all we know your little counterpart’s one as well!”
Eno gave out a final wheeze, accompanied by a groan, and fell to the floor.
A pair of Prefects appeared at the edge of the crowd and ordered the boys to return to their quarters. Thomas dropped to his knees and reached into his pocket for the chemical patch he carried for emergencies. He pulled Eno’s pajama top up and placed it over his bad lung, a procedure he’d performed so many times he could do it with his eyes closed.
Varik, no longer able to command Thomas’s attention, turned and walked away. The rest of the boys in his immediate circle took his cue and did the same.
After several seconds, Eno finally opened his eyes and took a few deep breaths.
“Are you all right?” Thomas said.
Eno nodded, and Thomas helped him to his feet.
Alone, they walked slowly and silently back to their cell.
CHAPTER 3
In the aftermath of one of his attacks, Eno always fell into a deep sleep. Thomas, haunted by the image of Benjamin going over the cliff, remained wide-awake. He couldn’t help thinking about what Varik said. Indeed, he’d always felt sympathetic to the Returners and couldn’t understand why the Station reacted to their escape attempts by hunting them down. But sympathy for their cause was one thing and being a Returner was another. While he couldn’t deny his fascination with the origin planet, it had never occurred to him that he might want to leave the Station, even if that was possible.
Thomas turned on the monitor above his sleep platform, hoping for news. High Governor Balthazar, flanked by the ten members of the Governor’s Council, was making an address. After every remark, the council nodded its approval. The only exception was a man at the very end, with close-cropped, gray-black hair and beard. Thomas guessed he was approaching fifty, old enough to have been born on the origin planet, and recalled that he was the sole council member from the original settlers. His shuttle, the last to arrive from Earth, had crashed upon landing, and he managed to survive several weeks on the harsh Martian landscape before reaching the Station. He leaned on a cane, his eyes cast downward, as if he found the governor’s speech difficult to tolerate. And when it ended, he didn’t join the council members in their enthusiastic applause.
Thomas turned off the monitor and tried to sleep.
At 2:00 a.m., he gave up and got out of bed. The Eight-Class Annuals, a yearlong report that counted for half of their final grade, were due the next day. Each student was required to compare an aspect of Station life—such as waste removal, food production, or incarceration—with its counterpart on Earth. The objective was always the same: to demonstrate the Station’s superiority.
Thomas’s chosen topic was transportation, and he’d devoted much of his report to the train system on Earth. He’d been enchanted by the powerful-looking locomotives ever since he saw an image of one in the Artifacts Museum. On one of his nightly forays, he located some maps that revealed a vast network of railway routes. Some included photographs of trains crossing rivers or climbing mountains. Despite their primitive engineering, they gave off a dazzling appearance and made the Station’s fleet of vehicles seem dull by comparison.
At 6:00 a.m., the first summons—a pulsing orange light—invaded their cell.
Eno rolled over and opened his good eye. “Thomas, what are you doing up so early?”
“Working on my Annual.”
“The one about supply carriers on Earth?”
“They’re called trains. And they carried passengers, too.”
Thomas knew that Eno didn’t share his affection for the origin planet and expected some snide comment. But Eno was silent as he removed his prosthetic eye from its docking chamber and slid it into his empty eye socket. “I assume these trains were restricted to adults?”
“No, somebody our age could ride one, too, as long as he had a ticket.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then he’d have to ride in the freight compartment with the hobos.”
“Hobos?”
“A secret society of train travelers, who built fires in the woods for cooking.”
“Fires, of course. They were quite fond of those on Earth.”
Thomas knew that Eno was parroting the official Station view. Their professors never tired of telling them how their ancestors, unable to curb their use of fossil fuels, warmed the origin planet, eventually causing the great floods.
Thomas preferred to let the conversation die, but Eno continued to give it life. “Was there no penalty then, for not having a ticket?”
“Of course. If you were caught without one you were tied to the tracks. And then the train drove over you until you were pulverized.”
Eno raised his eyebrows so high that his replacement almost popped out.
Thomas couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“Very humorous,” Eno said. “Let’s hope Professor finds it more amusing than I do.”
The boys walked to the Nutrition Court in silence. Like the Station itself, the tables were arranged in a series of concentric circles. Varik and the Moons always commandeered the innermost circle, which only seated ten boys, forming their own little ruling council.
Thomas and Eno took their trays and passed through the automated line. There was no choice in the daily menu; each meal contained a blob of spirulina, the blue-green algae that provided the boys with protein. The remainder consisted of freeze-dried segments of the six items grown in the Martian terrafarms: squares (soya, spinach), circles (rice, onions), and triangles (tomato, potato). The food was sprayed with a light mist to add water, resulting in what Thomas thought was a soggy, tasteless pulp.
Thomas and Eno took their seats at the outermost circle. Continuing an arrangement established in One-Class, they silently traded soya squares for tomato triangles. But before they could take a bite, a commotion erupted across the room, and several boys rushed to the portal as a red light flashed outside. Varik and the Moons pushed their way to the front.
Thomas stood up, though Eno stayed seated.
“What’s going on?” Eno said.
“Not sure,” Thomas said. “But I can see an ambulance outside.”
“What on Mars for?”
Eno stood up to see two attendants slide a gurney containing a frozen corpse out of the ambulance. The man’s hands were enormous, and Thomas realized that it was Benjamin, still wearing his drilling gloves. The ambulance pulled away.
“It’s the Returner,” Varik said, “the one who was driving.”
“Why did they leave him here?” asked one of the Seven-Classers.
“There’s a problem at the morgue,” Varik said. “Can’t any of you read?”
In unison, several hundred heads checked their wrist pods for news.
Eno whispered. “Apparently they ran out of the chemical used to dissolve corpses.”
“So, they had to leave his body where everyone can see it?”
Varik swiveled toward Thomas and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s a demonstration of what happens to traitors.”
Thomas shouted back. “We had a pretty good demonstration last night. That seems like more than enough to me.”
“Perhaps you should confide your dissatisfaction to the authorities.”
“And save you the trouble?” Thomas said.
Varik and the Moons started toward Thomas, and Thomas pushed his tray to the side, ready to defend himself. But the third and final summons, announcing the beginning of class, flashed in the background.
Varik stopped, then turned, along with the Moons, and made his way out. Thomas started after him, but Eno grabbed him by the arm.
“Let him go, Thomas. He’s not worth it.”
The boys were barely seated in class when Professor entered, looking more serious than usual. “I’ve just received an urgent communication from the governor’s office concerning suspicious activity in the corridors last night. A boy was seen leaving Observation Tower Twelve after curfew.”
Professor gave the announcement time to register the predictable shock from the boys, scanning them for some sign of complicity. “Does anyone have information regarding the identity of this person?”
Varik’s bony hand leapt into the air. “I was watching the defection last night when Thomas appeared. Everyone was in their sleep uniform except him, and he was wearing his daily.”
“Is that true, Thomas?”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “I woke early to do some extra work on my Annual and got dressed. As far as I know, there isn’t a rule against that.”
Professor nodded thoughtfully. “Very well, I’ll submit your excuse officially.”
Thomas gave Varik a victorious smile and slid back into his seat.
“And now,” Professor said, “if you would all direct yourselves to unit seventy-eight for a review of the Third Unified Field Theory.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, though Eno was unusually quiet. Thomas wondered if he was beginning to think Varik’s suspicions about him might be true, that Thomas was the boy at Tower Twelve. His counterpart had always been a loyal cellmate, but he was equally loyal to the Station. Thomas had no real idea what Eno would do if the two things came into conflict. He hoped Eno would at least confide his suspicion and give him the chance to explain. But there was no way to know for sure. And Eno never said a word about the matter as they climbed into their sleep platforms that night. Within minutes, he was snoring.
