Ian McDonald - Ares Express

When her feet had given her no answer to being dropped from a height of three metres over a sterile red desert by an air-borne cathedral waltzing away over the horizon in a gaudy of purple clouds, conned out of what she half understood was her greatest asset—the woman who created the world—Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th did an inventory.

Don’t think bruised maybe cracked ribs. Don’t think rim-rocks and rust. Don’t think, nothing that even suggests something I recognise. Don’t think which way? Don’t think how much food and water? Don’t think how soon the night, and how long and cold? All the answers have to be in this little black sack, so start there.

The sandwiches were long since mummified crescents but there were four bottles of oxygenated water. Sweetness set them out on the sand in front of her. With her pencil and paper she sat down to work out how many sips, then realised it was pointless without an idea of how long she would be walking, which was pointless without knowing where she was. And among the petty treasures, she had forgotten a simple map and compass.

One useful thing. Psalli’s emergency spell. Lost in a desert, no map, no compass, night coming on, four bottles of water between you and the condors; that’s an emergency. Sweetness unrolled the little scroll of paper, fastened with a hair-tie.

For Aid Beyond Comprehension in a Time of Direness, first light a beeswax candle…

What the hell kind of emergency spell is it that’s picky about the kind of candle you light? Or even that you light a candle at all? Sweetness hauled out her all-weather lighter and a tampon. She lit the thread end. It burned enthusiastically, then sputtered at the wadded cotton.

“Then face the sun…” She did so. “Call three times, ‘Aid me in my succour, Green Saint,’ then blow out the candle and say, ‘May my wish be granted.’ Okay.” She performed the recitations, blew on her light. The tampon guttered and expired in a curl of red embers and smoke. “May my wish be granted.”

Sweetness sat down and waited for Aid Beyond Comprehension. To keep herself amused in a Time of Direness, she thought. You’re lost in the middle of a desert without a map or a compass. You’ve got a radio. You’re facing the sun, which is about two hands above the horizon. You’re facing vaguely west, so most of the important stuff in the world is that way . Nine o’clock-ish. South. Walk and you’ll hit something human sooner or later. If you roll over—cock piss bugger bum balls, it hurts!—and use the top of this pen as one sight and the top of that finger rock as another and hold real still, you can guess how quickly the sun’s setting. Fast on the equator, slow up north. This season, hardly at all above the polar circle. Well, it’s definitely moving, so I’m not that far north. About three minutes from top of pen to top of rock. That’s up above the thirty degree line north. Where had that fly bastard Harx said they were going? Molesworth, for a mail run. That’s Bequerelly, west-southwest from Therme. Now, your watch is still on Deuteronomy time. So, you tune the radio to a Deuteronomy station and listen for the Evening Angelus. Star of the Evening, pale blue mother of men …Then you find a place where you can see the horizon. It’s okay to walk about a bit. The Help Beyond Comprehension isn’t going to miss you out here. There’s a gap in the shield-wall. Now count the time until the sun sets here. A few head-sums—how many degrees is it per minute? Three. And there it goes…Magic hour. Wooo, big blue. The rocks are so red, like they don’t want to let the colour go. No, no, it’s mine, not the black’s. Eight minutes. So, you’re mid Axidy, edge of Chryse. Not too many railway lines up here, which is arsebiscuits, but down south is Tempe and the thirty-degree orbital. That’s a walk. You’re going to sprout wings and fly? Getting night-wise. Best to walk in the night, sleep in the day. That sun’ll cook you like a stripey penis on a Waymender barbecue. Let’s not entertain that thought or those people. You’re warm already on forehead and cheeks. Upper arms are stinging. Also, you’ll drink less water. Snuggle up in your bag and sleep in the sun on the sand. So, Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer, best get booting. Wait wait wait. It’s night. No sun. So, how will you know which way is south? Moonring’s east–west, and south, but it goes all the way across the sky and a little error now can be days out. Can be leather and bones, Honey-Bun.

Wait. Your radio. That Deuteronomy station, it had been all fluttery and wowy and phasey, because they’ve only got low power transmitters and the mountains over to the east there interfere with the signal. No mountains to the south: so, pick up a Tempe Station—preferably one in a big place like Therme—and turn around until you get a clear signal. You’re on beam. She’ll lead you right into the Watering Rooms of the Great Bath itself.

As the last stolen light ebbed from the rim-rocks, Sweetness pulled Radio Pleasant out of the atmosphere. It twitched and chittered like a family of bats. Beneath the wheeling stars, Sweetness turned, listening to the airwaves. There. Honesto’s Used Yute Mart. Treat Ye Better’n Ye Treat Yerself. For a great deal on pre-cared Dorts and Stavingers, call…She opened her eyes. The stars seemed to line up above her into a hunting arrow. This way, traingirl.

“Right, then,” she decided. “South.”

She shouldered her bag and began to walk. The Bakelite cat and the used spell she left as offerings to the Big Red.

The Big Red, in the big dark, was extremely boring. Those things that give character to deserts; heat, space, desolation, grandeur, an atomising sense of isolation in a vast terrain, are erased by night. Dark made it a dimensionless expanse of tough trekking. Sweetness pressed on at a steady speed, fast enough to give a sense of purpose, slow enough not to flag too soon and leave her demoralised. To conserve the solar batteries, she listened in to Radio Pleasant only long enough to get a fix on due south. She sang songs from the shows. She recited chunks of the Evyn Psalmody. She counted from one to one thousand, then from two thousand back to one thousand. She took a sip of water and used it to explore as many aspects and crannies of her mouth as she could. She did seven times tables, eight times tables, all the way up to fifteen times tables. She engaged in convoluted games of word association, she formed great trains of thought, longer than any thousand-car-er out of Iron Mountain, then tried to trace back every step of the cognitive process to the originating engine. She wondered, when’s this Aid Beyond Comprehension going to arrive? She took another furtive grab at the airwaves, adjusted her course, walked on. It was still astonishingly tedious. It was much later than she thought when the “Radio Pleasant Pre-Breakfast Show” timechecks started. She slithered down dune faces, slogged along heavy, sucking sifs and thought about people in Therme’s tall tenements rolling over in their quilts for another five or sitting up and scratching or staring at their faces in the bathroom mirror or grumbling to their lovers over the morning bread and tea. Have you any idea, Mr. Deejay, what this one of your listeners is doing? When the edge of the world dipped beneath the sun, she unrolled her bag, found a sheltered place where the sand would not blow into her nostrils and remembered to set out the solar radio to recharge. Then she read a few pages of her unimproving book and was asleep before her powers of aesthetic discrimination could tell her they were excrement.

Sweat woke her. Sweetness licked the salt off her forearms and tried to find a sweet spot in the curve of soft sand that now seemed concrete. The next time she woke was with a searing headache from sunlight leaking through her permeable eyelids. Her face felt raw and sunburned. Sweetness wrapped a torn-off shirt-sleeve around her head and rolled over again, half stifled. The third time she woke, it was the hunger. She willed it down but it would not be so easily beaten. Sweetness tried eating pages of her unimproving book, washed down with sips of water. They stayed the belly gnaw. The last time she woke the sun was two fingers above the western rim rocks. Time to get up, get up, get on, get out.