S Morden - One Way

And Brack knew about that. He’d been clearly doing his own poking around. Did he know who it was? If he did, why hadn’t he done anything about it? Frank was having suspicions that Brack’s claim to be all-seeing and all-knowing was just a crock. But then again, Brack refusing to eat anything but shipped-out food was beginning to make more sense.

It made Frank uneasy. He hadn’t really considered Brack at all for weeks. He was like a ghost in the background—odd noises, shadows outside, things getting moved, that was just Brack doing stuff. Maybe there was more to it. Frank didn’t know what, though.

But on the assumption that it was Brack driving to and from the ship at night, he needed to warn Declan off from poking around further.

Frank arranged things so that both he and Declan were outside at the same time: checking the buggies and tilting the panels. He motioned to him that he was turning his microphone off, and waited for Declan to finish cleaning the array as it turned towards the midday sun.

They touched helmets.

“It’s Brack?”

“It’s none of us.”

“What is it that he’s hiding from us? And why?”

There was dust between them. It grated and crackled against the faceplates.

“We don’t need to know. And we probably don’t want to know, either.”

“Well, I want to know,” said Declan.

“You ask him, then. I’m sure as hell not.”

“Of course you won’t. Why not? Because it’s not part of your mindset. He’s the boss, the mighty whitey, and you’re not to question what he does. You’re still a prisoner.” He tapped Frank’s helmet with his index finger. “Up here. My guess is that he’s talking to XO.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got the Comms center right there at the base.”

“So he’s talking to XO about stuff he doesn’t want us to overhear.”

Frank shrugged. “Why would that be unusual?”

“Don’t you want to know what it is he’s saying to them?”

“No. Not really. Because it hasn’t got anything to do with us.”

“Jesus, Frank. It’s going to be about us. Aren’t you curious? At all?”

“Maybe, on some level. But this is just causing trouble we can do without. Look, we’re doing fine. We’re doing what we came here to do. NASA’s going to turn up, and we get to hang out with astronauts. Let’s not rock the boat.”

“Frank, listen to yourself. You’re institutionalized. We need to know what Brack’s up to, in case it does rock that boat. I’ll talk to Dee. See what he can find out.”

“You’ve got to leave the kid out of this.”

“We can’t hear what Brack’s saying to XO, but maybe we can get the other half of the conversation as it’s beamed back.”

“I’m serious, don’t drag Dee into this. He doesn’t need it.”

“What he does is up to him. He’s an adult, Frank. And you’re not his father.”

That hurt. Hurt like a stab to the heart, even though Declan could have no idea why. Frank pulled back, almost reeling away, and Declan regarded him coolly. The electrician pressed the buttons on his suit control, and the conversation was over. Frank was left to walk away, to the other side of the base where the RTG sat, silently infusing the tank of water above it with life-giving, free, heat. He made a perfunctory pass of it, remembered Brack’s words about boredom, and decided to make a better job of checking it, in a minute or two.

He turned his microphone back on and stared out over the Heights, down over the tops of the Beverly Hills, towards the distant crater wall. It was always hazy, to some degree or other. There were days on Earth, just after it had rained, when the air was clear and the horizon pin-sharp. Mars didn’t do that: there were just shades of haze, from distant to near. In a dust-storm, visibility would be effectively zero, and they’d get no power from the solar farm at all, for days, possibly weeks.

That would be interesting.

He was still thinking in the long term. But this wouldn’t be for ever. Brack would take him home. Eventually.

What was he going to do? Was he going to tell Brack that they’d worked out that he was making nocturnal visits to the ship, and some of them—Declan, mainly—were more interested in that than they ought to be? He still had to live with the man, rely on the man, and work with the man.

What he was going to do was go back and check the water heater properly, all the pipework, and the fixtures into the rear airlock of the greenhouse.

He needed a new project. He’d overseen the building of the modules, done the majority of the driving: dangerous, difficult work. Now that was over, the constant living on the edge fading into memory, the one thing he missed was the sharp sense of feeling alive. Prison was dull, and he didn’t want to slip back into thinking the base was another prison. It wasn’t. Not to him.

So he would talk to Brack. Not about whatever the hell he was doing with the buggies, but about more building work. About soil ramparts and adobe bricks.

If Declan wanted to snoop… it was difficult to know how successful he’d be. And what Brack would do about it in return. The atmosphere on the base was OK. They were bumping along, mostly fine, with only the occasional source of friction. Mainly the power. Mainly Declan being Declan.

There was the drug thing—the possibility of the drug thing. There was a lockable room. Why not put them in there? Why hadn’t Brack put them in there as soon as he’d found the boxes had been tampered with?

Fuck them. Seriously, fuck them. If everyone was going to go all secret squirrel on him, let them. It wasn’t his job to keep anyone in line. Just as long as he kept his own nose clean, right?

He finished up by the RTG and went around the back to the workshop hab. It looked slightly different. Slightly wrong. Deflated.

He quickened his pace, pushed his hand against the end of the hab as soon as he could. There was normally much more resistance.

“Dee?”

“Frank. ’Sup?”

“I’m out by the workshop. You got any alarms from it?”

“I’ll check.”

Frank tried to peer through the plastic. The sun was overhead, and he couldn’t make out anything other than vague diffuse shapes.

“OK, I just remembered there’s a problem with the alarm: we turned it off.”

“And we did that because?”

“Because the telltale measures the amount of oxygen in the air, and the air in the workshop is pressurized regular Mars air, and it was doing nothing but triggering false positives.”

“Where’s Zeus?”

“Said he was going to the greenhouse to do something or other to the tilapia tanks.”

“I think we’ve got a leak. I’ll check it out. Can you dump some patches in the cross-hab airlock for me?”

“Sure.”

Frank climbed up the steps to the workshop airlock and cycled it through. He twisted the handle, and pushed, and found the door was stuck. He put his shoulder to it, wedging his hard external carapace against the dusty red of the airlock and bracing himself with his feet. If this didn’t work, he’d have to get some tools.

He shoved hard, and the door gave about six inches. Smoke started to peel around the opening, thick streamers of it, twisting away and vanishing in Mars’s hungry air.

“Fire,” said Frank. “Fire in the workshop.”

There was clamor in his ears, alarms sounding and Dee, then other people shouting. After a few seconds’ confusion, Brack shouted for everyone to shut the fuck up.

“There’s no fire because there’s nothing to burn, dipshit.”

“Then where the hell is this smoke coming from?” It was still boiling out, up and away, white braids dancing in the wind.

“It’s not smoke,” said Dee. “It’s not smoke, Frank.”