We were settlers – third generation – and it was our duty to grow up and spread out and occupy new land and have more children who’d carry on the sacred mission after us. Me, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life and, for as long as I could remember, I’d been learning and memorising all the skills and knowledge bound up in Ma and Da about surviving in our world. Al was the same. Well, I’d always assumed he was the same.
But something weird was going on with Al. He had started to question things. He wanted to know why our whole purpose was to thrive and proliferate and multiply and colonise Mars. He was thoughtful, Al. Thoughtful and deep and troubled. At first he only voiced his questions to me, his older sister, and I only half-understood what he was talking about. I mean, what else would he or anyone else do with their lives? What else was there to do but try to survive?
Ma once said, ‘Mars doesn’t want us here. This whole world wants us to go back where we came from. The planet is rejecting us and trying to kill us off.’ She had been sick with a fever for some time after Hannah was born.
Funny thing was, the questions Ma asked then were just like the ones Al was asking lately. All that why why why. It shook me up and made me uneasy. I preferred just to get on with things.
In town we took Grandma to her appointment with Doc Eaves and left Toaster to wait for her while we took ourselves off to visit our new reptiles. The new Molly and George gazed at us sadly, I thought. As if they knew they had a whole lifetime ahead of nothing but servitude until the day they died and we chopped them up for another neighbourly barbecue. What was wrong with me? I should be happy. We had new members of the Homestead.
Then we found out that we’d have to stay in town overnight. Grandma didn’t just need work done, she needed a whole new cybernetic limb. She kicked up a ruckus and Da didn’t look too pleased either, when we returned to the surgery and heard. The good news, said the Doctor, was that he had just the right model of leg in stock and it was almost the correct size. He could effect the replacement almost immediately. But it was going to be expensive. Da blanched when he heard the figure.
‘Don’t pay it,’ cried Grandma, lying there on the Doctor’s bench. ‘Just take both my legs right off, why don’t you? What does an old biddy like me want legs for anyway?’
But Da told her she was shaming him, carrying on so. He said, yes, she would be having the leg, thank you, and he quickly made an appointment for the fitting the very next day. Grandma was helped down from the examining bench by Toaster and now she was looking smug at the prospect of a whole new robotised limb.
That night we stayed at the home of old Ruby, Grandma’s last surviving girlhood friend. Over the years we had stayed with her a number of times and her ramshackle place was familiar. She was a gruff old lady who’d lived through some rough times. She always boasted that she’d buried three husbands and nine babies and whenever she said that she always scared Al and me half to death.
Her house was pretty dirty and nasty inside. Ruby kept small lizard birds as pets and they left their slimy droppings just any old place. They skulked about in the rafters of every room and it was easy to imagine they were thinking up ways of doing their mess on us, or pecking out our eyes.
Ruby also had great piles of papers everywhere. Books and magazines in sliding heaps, dangerous as the shifting sands. All these things had been salvaged years ago from one of the crashed ships. Ruby’s home was the town’s unofficial library, though no one ever came by to read. Maybe because everything was stuck with lizard mess and old feathers.
Grandma and Ruby greeted each other noisily and straight away Grandma started bragging about the new leg her beautiful and marvellously generous son was going to buy for her.
Ruby talked as we ate the meal Toaster had made. She talked about a new spate of mysteries. It had now been confirmed that the Simcox baby was gone and the mother was inconsolable. Old Man Horace’s body had not been found, plus there were two other Disappearances rumoured in the past week. So it seemed to become official. The Disappearances were back.
‘Exactly like before,’ said Grandma so gloomily that Al and me didn’t dare ask what had happened. We sat at Ruby’s table under a giant orange lamp, eating our supper capsules off of china bowls. The whole wooden table was covered with an exotic rug. Because Ruby believed in equality for all sentient beings Toaster sat up at the table with us. He looked very pleased to be there. Da said Toaster would be incorrigible after. He said the two old women were giving the sunbed ideas.
Bedtime, and Al and me were sent off to the attic where we always slept, going back years of visiting Ruby in town. Da hugged and kissed us goodnight at the bottom of the staircase. He told us to pay no heed to those crazy old ladies. It made them feel more alive when they dwelled on stories of terrible things in the past, but we kids weren’t to feel frightened or upset by it.
I looked at Al and he looked at Da. Al’s pale, wide-open eyes were luminous in the dark hall. But like I say, he was always more sensitive than me, plus he was younger. I told Da we were disturbed by none of it. Da chuckled and gave us each a five-credit note. We were absolutely stunned by this. As our reward for recent help and support, we were free to spend all this cash at Adams’ Exotic Emporium on just anything that we liked.
Al and me went up to the attic. We were so tired we fell asleep almost at once. I was in my clothes, clutching my five-credit note in my fist.
I woke up in the early hours to the noise of Al and the lizard birds snoring. Something told me I had to get up at once and move to the window. I don’t know why. I had to clamber up, peer out of that dusty old window and look down at the street below.
Ruby lived at the corner of First and Fourth. You could see the red rutted Main Street from this gable window. I’d always loved the view from here. In the daytime you could see all the townspeople passing by, but not now. The streets at night were deserted. The red sand looked pale under the Earth light.
I stayed there, looking down at the street, as if I knew something was about to occur.
And, sure enough, after a minute or two, it did.
They came out like dancers floating onto an empty stage. There was no music, just my brother and the lizard birds breathing heavily in their sleep.
Down there, outside, the dancers moved along dreamily, as if to music of their own. Music I’d never heard before.
They were the ghosts of Martians.
6
These weren’t townsfolk out there, down on the streets. No one I had ever known looked anything like this. They were taller than the human beings I knew, and skinnier – way skinnier than anyone I had ever seen. Skinny like old bones you find sticking out of the sand. They had no facial features I could see – just eyes. Glowing purple eyes, flickering like candles in a window. They were mostly naked. Some wore red-and-white striped hats, others wore socks or gloves. One had a scarf streaming over its shoulder.
There were eight – no, nine – of them below on the street. They were coming off Main Street, round the corner of Ruby’s house. Mostly they clung to the shadows, but one or two dared to stroll down the middle of the road as if they just didn’t care if anyone saw them.
They moved stealthily on those long naked legs. They paused now and then and I realised that they were peering inside the shrouded windows. They gathered together, and the pale beams from their eyes seemed to shine into the buildings. As if they were looking for something in particular.