Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

‘Don’t say that,’ I said, but Josephine ignored me.

‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry. I want to be an archaeologist and a composer and I should be allowed to be, and if it wasn’t for them – and they were shockraying London on the day I left, remember? And that thing – all I want from it is an answer. I’m not punishing it, I haven’t said, “Let’s kill it with rocks. ” And after everything they’ve taken away, a lot of people, grown-up people, would think I was more than justified.’

‘Who did they take away?’ I said, very quietly, because I was sure we were talking about a person.

‘Guess,’ said Josephine bitterly.

I had, already, I was almost certain who it was, given the people she’d mentioned from home and the person she rather significantly hadn’t.

(I hate thinking about dead mums.)

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

Josephine swerved round. ‘Oh, don’t be,’ she snarled in a weird, strangled, horrible voice. ‘She was a musician on the Queen Guinevere when they sank it. I was one year old. I don’t remember her. So it doesn’t matter.’

After quite a long time of standing there, praying I wasn’t going to say the wrong thing, I said, ‘Of course it does.’

Josephine made a noise that was a bit like a laugh, although not very much, and did actually look at me. ‘Yes, it really does,’ she agreed. ‘Of course, Lena and Dad do remember her. I know it must be worse for them in lots of ways. But I hate that I can’t. I can tell when they’re thinking about her and sometimes they don’t talk about her because I’m there and I –’ She smacked her hand hard against the stalactite pillar. ‘I want to know why she’s dead. Is that so unreasonable?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course it isn’t. But not like this, OK? This isn’t like you.’

There was a soft splashing nearby and a murmur of long, mournful Morror syllables. The Goldfish spun round, but Th saaa was still hidden in the shadows and might as well have been invisible again.

‘You are speaking of your… mother?’ Th saaa said quietly from the darkness to Josephine. ‘I wish she could return to you. I wish my people had not harmed you. I… do not believe it should be forbidden to say that.’

Josephine didn’t answer straight away. ‘Why do you think we’re blank?’ she asked, at last, pacing towards the voice and the splashing until the Goldfish revealed Th saaa , flickering orange and green, and somehow I got an impression of confusion. Josephine tilted her head. ‘It’s because we don’t change colour, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ said the Morror, and went yellow.

‘Yellow!’ I said, suddenly getting it. ‘Yellow is embarrassment .’

‘No, it isn’t,’ insisted Th saaa, but not at all persuasively and more yellowly than ever.

Josephine’s lips parted with fascination and she breathed, ‘Oh, Dr Muldoon would love this.’

‘Noel would, too,’ I said. ‘Let’s go back and show him. Come on, it’s not as if anyone has got anywhere better to go, and I’m freezing. ’

So we splashed back to the ledge where Carl and Noel were, and everyone had some more oxygen, and Noel was duly thrilled by Th saaa the Alien Mood Ring. Th saaa might not have particularly enjoyed the attention, but Noel tried to give them a quick rundown on what all the various human expressions meant so at least it was reciprocal.

‘Look, THIS – GRRR! – is ANGRY! Like when you go…?’

‘…black, purple,’ supplied Th saaa.

‘Oh, are you angry now?’ asked Noel in concern, because Th saaa was mostly lilac and grey now. ‘I didn’t mean to annoy you.’

‘No. Not angry. Not this purple. This is… this is something else. I cannot… I do not know all the words,’ and whatever those exact colours meant, Th saaa sounded so weary that we left them alone for a bit.

‘ Can you lie?’ asked Josephine guardedly, from across the Paralashath.

You’d think it might have been in Th saaa ’s interests to say that they couldn’t, but they said, ‘Yes. One may force colours to some extent. It is not easy to maintain, unless you are very skilled or very talented. An actor, for instance.’

‘Is that why you wear invisible suits? So you can lie if you want to?’

‘No,’ said Th saaa , and clammed up again.

Josephine looked at the Paralashath. It wasn’t producing any colours at the moment, just heat, but Th saaa had said that wasn’t what it was for and we’d seen the patterns it could make.

‘Is this… art?’ she asked.

Th saaa went soft rose and amber and blue, reached out and swirled the tips of their tentacles across the Paralashath’s surface again, and it changed, whorls of turquoise and peach quivering over it. ‘Yes,’ Th saaa said. ‘My Ruul-ama composed it. They were a musician too.’

Josephine frowned, and either Noel’s Human Expressions lesson had done Th saaa some good, or the Morror had realised on their own that this didn’t quite make sense. ‘Ah. I suppose… this is silent, so not music? But art, yes.’

The Paralashath gave off little ripples of heat and cold in time with the rhythm of its colours, so you could feel the patterns of temperature play across your skin like feathers. Th saaa ’s colours gradually flowed into sync with it.

Th saaa said into the depths of the Paralashath: ‘My Ruul-ama died over Karaaaa , and my Suth-laaa-hum, working on the Northern light-shield.’ There was a pause, and then it explained: ‘My parents.’

Kara , I thought. The battle that made my mum famous. Maybe she’d even been the one who killed them.

‘Yeah, but how old are you?’ asked Carl, briskly.

‘Thirteen,’ said Th saaa.

‘…Thirteen of our Earth years?’ asked Carl, after a grinding silence.

‘Of course thirteen of your Earth years,’ said Th saaa witheringly. ‘Why would I give you an answer you couldn’t understand?’

We all wondered if maybe Morrors were like dogs and cats who didn’t live that long but were middle-aged at five or whatever.

‘And… er…’ said Carl. ‘Does that roughly correspond to… I mean, as a proportion of… I mean, are Morrors grown up when they’re thirteen?’

‘ No ,’ said Th saaa.

‘Oh.’

‘I’m eight,’ volunteered Noel, but no one else felt like saying anything much for a while.

‘We didn’t know you were a kid,’ Josephine said softly.

And us stranded war-kids sat there quietly in the Martian cavern, waiting for the rain to stop.

‘… Math, anybody?’ suggested the Goldfish.

Oh Christ, that maths lesson, you don’t even want to know. To cut a long story short, it became obvious that Th saaa ’s new position was that while humans might have a bit of emotional depth after all, we were still probably drooling idiots compared to the lofty grandeur of a Morror brain. That got Josephine’s back up – well, everyone’s, but Josephine was the one who challenged the alien to a Maths Duel for the honour of our respective species.

‘Is this really necessary?’ I groaned.

‘Yes!’ cried Th saaa and Josephine as one.

Noel lent Th saaa his tablet to work on, which Th saaa got the hang of pretty fast – we’d already seen that their tentacle-tips were at least as dexterous as human fingers. So the Goldfish sent a maths quiz over to both of them and Th saaa and Josephine were soon furiously hacking away at the questions.