We watched our Da lope off towards the Storehouse where he’d be meeting up with other farmers and men from town and they’d spend the remainder of the afternoon discussing the storm. They’d be jawing about the impact of the disaster and drinking the homebrew. Then they’d be congratulating each other on getting through the worst of another stormy season.
But more had been blowing through town than hot wind and sand.
There were rumours. Tales of something terrible. Everyone was talking about it, as Al and I found out in the cool interior of Mrs Adams’ store. There were hushed voices and a kind of electric nervousness in the air. Al and I joined the huddled group of ladies and we eavesdropped.
I breathed in the hundred spicy scents of Adams’ Exotic Emporium. I examined beautifully arranged displays of dainty soaps and candles and dried flowers. Everything was scented with lemon verbena, cinnamon and white musk. I gazed at ribboned boxes of jellied fruits and sugar biscuits and all kinds of unguents in jars for prettifying and pampering yourself. All these things were lavishly displayed, even though none of the townsfolk could afford them.
We went to Mrs Adams’ place to spend money on things such as flour and sugar, powdered milk and eggs. All them costly frou-frou things from the Earthly past were left to rot luxuriously on the shelves and in cabinets. Really, Ma would say, whoever had need of talcum powder from Paris?
Tittle-tattle would tell you they were all thieved goods anyhow. The Adamses were profiteers from other folks’ misfortunes and everything in the Exotic Emporium had been filched from a shipwreck out in the desert.
It was true that once upon a time it was thought a good idea to transport luxury items from Earth to Mars. This was back when they were expecting the rich to come here in great numbers and to find this a world full of hope. That seems like a fairytale now – to think that they sent their expensive goods ahead of themselves, as if pampering was the most important thing those Earthlings could imagine.
As we stood among those clucking women, Al was twisting and pulling faces. We were so crushed between the starched pinnies and the wooden baskets we couldn’t even see Mrs Adams behind her glass counter. We knew, though, that she was weighing out goods on her silver scales and talking all animatedly.
We caught the odd phrase echoed by the ladies around us. We heard the word ‘Disappearances’ several times and this made our ears prick up. I heard ‘just a baby’ and ‘one of her lovely twins’ and then a kind of ghoulish excitement rippled through the shop. A shrill voice piped up: ‘Like she foolishly left a window open … and during a storm! What did she expect to happen to her precious babies? Of course one of them went flying out the window…’
‘Or it was snatched,’ snapped another, croakier voice. ‘Snatched from clear under her nose. Just like it used to happen before. They could always get at you and yours, no matter how secure you thought your Homestead was. Even when you were under lock and key and all your hatches were battened down they could still get at you!’
This particular raspy voice rose above the others and I recognised it almost at once. It belonged to Grandma’s only friend, Ruby. Ruby was an engineer and a legend in Our Town. She was also Grandma’s only surviving contemporary. She had more memory and knowledge than anyone still alive on Mars. She was revered and respected and it was surprising for us to even find her here, wasting her time gossiping with all these old dames. If Ruby was here then it must be important, she was no idle chatterer.
‘Tell us, Ruby, tell us,’ urged Mrs Adams.
‘What’s to tell?’ said Ruby, smoothing down her tangled white hair. She glowered at everyone in turn. ‘It’s the Disappearances. Seems like they’ve started up once again.’
A horrible pause followed this pronouncement, as everyone struggled to take in what she meant. It was something we’d heard the older people saying. The Disappearances. The very word made the colour drain out of the ladies’ faces.
Then Mrs Adams saw Al and me standing there with our wooden baskets and our list and our handfuls of coins. She decided we ought to be protected from all this gloomy adult talk, so she brightened her voice. ‘Why, it’s the Robinson children. Thank the Lord that you’re safe, my dears. I take it you all came through the storm in one piece and that your family is well?’
I nodded firmly and the ladies sighed with relief. They knew that we faced the brunt of the storm on the prairie. Here in town they’d have been hunkered in their shelters underground. I admit that Al and I basked in their admiration as we went up to the counter with our empty baskets.
I gave Mrs Adams our list and watched her frowning at Ma’s handwriting and then set about filling our order. I felt Al’s hand reach out to take mine and I knew straight away how he felt about what we’d heard.
Da had heard similar things from the men. In the great wooden Storehouse, where they traded and loaded up their wagons with heavy sacks of grain and barrels of oil, the men gossiped just as much as the ladies did. They just swore and spat more, is all. He always said that we weren’t the same as town folk. We lived on the Martian prairie and we were made of tougher stuff. Yes, we traded with them and we were still related to them, and all of us sure depended on one another for survival, but Da insisted that we were crucially different. They were used to their huddling together with their softer, sheltered living and their fancier things. They had time on their hands and idle tongues to match.
That day, though, it seemed that the gossip reached out and snared Da’s attention too.
‘Old Man Horace. He’s gone,’ Da told us tersely, as we loaded the hovercart with new provisions. Da didn’t believe in sugar-coating the truth, even for kids. He thought it was best we knew the worst from the very start.
Old Man Horace had been the town vagrant. Going back way before I was born, he had been racketing about the town. He may have been a filthy tramp, but he belonged to us, and every single Homestead had taken him in at Christmas time or Martian Thanksgiving. I could remember the Christmas I was eight and he came out to stay in the Homestead with us; he’d carved wooden animals for Al and me.
Now, according to the men in the Storehouse today, after the storm came rampaging through town, and left the whole place smothered in dust and all topsy-turvy, there was not a single sign of Old Man Horace. No one could remember who had volunteered to give him shelter. It was assumed that the storm had simply borne him away like an old rag swept out of the road.
‘They’re taking it to be an omen,’ Da told us, as we strapped the last of the sacks into the hovercart. ‘Damn fools. They’re talking like that dirty old guy was our mascot or something.’
Al looked as if he was longing to tell him about the baby that flew out of the window. But I jabbed my brother with my bony elbow. I didn’t want him troubling Da right now. This was unsubstantiated tittle-tattle and Da surely wasn’t in the mood for it. I distracted them both by asking about our replacements for Molly and George.
‘They’ll be ready in two weeks,’ said Da. ‘They’re still too young to leave their mother. They’re having chips implanted too. But before the month’s out we’ll be able to take them home with us.’
I wished I’d gone to the livestock pens with him, just so I could have seen the young burden beasts.