People of Mars (16 page)

Nobody.

To hell with him! She
headed for the laboratory, taking large paces. She had to find a
way to go back to Earth and she wouldn’t surely do that while
watching a silly film. She walked through the station in silence.
It almost felt like being in a cemetery. Death didn’t just hover on
the crew members’ faces, but also the walls seemed soaked with
it.

The light of the
laboratory turned on as she entered. She grabbed a white coat.

“There’s a message
from Aurélie Faty,” the AI’s voice announced.

The frozen image of a
video had appeared on the screen.

“Play it.”

Aurélie’s grin lit up
on the display. “Anna! What a pleasure to receive your message!”
Her enthusiasm looked genuine. She was exactly the same as Anna
remembered her, with her large white smile standing out on her dark
complexion. Her hair was arranged in thin, little braids, the only
ones able to tame it. “How’s life down there? Have you already
discovered the little green men?” And she laughed out loud. She was
bursting with cheerfulness.

Anna smiled back,
whilst feeling a stab of nostalgia. She longed so much to be in the
same room with people other than those of the crew. She would’ve
never believed that she’d miss the crowds so much, the queues of
traffic, even those odious children who escaped their parents and
went romping about in a supermarket.

Green men? It was she
who felt like an alien in that desert world. Just seeing a
different face through a video changed her slant toward all the
anxieties gripping her.

“The data you sent me
are really extravagant.” Aurélie’s voice lowered into a
conspiratorial tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll maintain maximum secrecy, I
wouldn’t like those at NASA to fire you. Where would you find
another job on Mars then?”

Anna burst into
laughter in unison with the recorded image of the French woman.

“Joking aside. I think
you are fixating on the wrong things. My opinion? There must be a
reason why those intact crystals ended up inside the bacteria in
the cultures you have prepared. Have you tried doing some cultures
with the sample taken far from the crack, the one with degraded
RNA?”

No, she hadn’t yet.
Maybe it was a good idea to prepare it right away and put it under
incubation to see its results on the following day.

“I bet that you won’t
find more crystal fragments inside the bacteria than those outside
them. Actually, I think they won’t be absorbed at all.”

She started sensing
where her colleague was driving at.

“I don’t want to
speculate, not yet.” She winked at Anna. “If I were you, however, I
would try to observe the samples with the transmission electron
microscope. You might be able to see some things eluding the
three-dimensional vision of the scanning one, and moreover you’d
have a higher resolution, which may open you to new …
horizons.”

How come hadn’t she
thought about that?

“Let me know how it
goes. I must close now. I cannot transmit for too long without
someone learning about it. They’re watching every step we make
here. Give my regards to the Martians and be good.” The video
stopped.

With renewed
enthusiasm, Anna went and took the sample collected from the crack.
She prepared it with extreme calmness, inside the sterile unit, and
placed it into the transmission electron microscope.

It would take some
time before the instrument was ready to play the images. So she sat
down on a stool and laid both arms on the counter. Suddenly she
felt tired. Her conviction of five minutes earlier was lessening.
She was looking for a phantom, something nonexistent, the result of
a weird phenomenon, which was making fun of her. It was the easiest
answer and almost always that was the right one. She laid her head
on her arm. She would close her eyes just for five minutes, until
she heard the buzz from the microscope.

She fluttered her eyes
open with difficulty. A repeating humming echoed in her ears. A dim
light filtered from outside through the semi-transparent wall
separating the laboratory from the greenhouse, and spread
throughout the room, casting long shadows. The sunlight.

Anna raised her head,
still dazed. She must have slept for hours. Shifting her gaze, it
stopped on the screen. Uncertain, she rubbed her face with her
hand, but the image didn’t change. A sound hammered inside her
brain, but her whole attention was focused on what she was looking
at: a circle with two layers; the external dark one was almost
perfect and the other one was lighter and irregular, while inside
it a thin, filamentous structure, wrapped in itself, stood out on a
whitish background.

Her mouth opened for
surprise. Aurélie was right. The adrenaline discharge finally woke
her up and it was then that she heard it. It wasn’t the buzzer from
the microscope. That had surely turned on for a few seconds, some
hours earlier, while she was sleeping.

It was a general
alarm.

She hadn’t heard one
for months, not since their latest drill. As far as she could
recall, there was none expected for that day.

She snapped to her
feet, overturning a flask, which shattered on the floor, tossing
splinters in every direction. A slight vertigo caught her. The
alarm had woken her up, not the light. Something was happening. The
control panel of the safety system indicated with a red spot the
area from which the alarm had been activated. A sudden sense of
anguish almost took her breath away, as she rushed out of the
laboratory and along the corridor.

Someone came out of
the gym and she bumped into him.

“Robert!”

“What the hell is
happening?” he asked, agitated.

He was wearing a
tracksuit and his shirt was soaked. The stink of his sweat ran over
Anna.

“It’s coming from the
area adjacent to airlock one.”

They exchanged
concerned looks, then started running toward the origin of the
emergency. When they reached it, they stopped abruptly.

Hassan was there,
motionless. He was staring at the closed door of the airlock. The
expression on his face was apathetic. He appeared to be in shock.
As she saw him, Anna felt a sense of relief. Beside that annoying
sound, it seemed nothing serious had happened, not to him at
least.

“Why have you
activated the alarm?” she asked him, as pace by pace she moved
closer.

She wasn’t sure he’d
realised they were there, and feared that, if frightened, he would
react in a violent manner. His face was pale. Only now, did she
notice that his gaze was blank, as if he could see beyond that
door.

With caution, she
placed a hand on his right arm. “Hassan,” she gently murmured.

His eyes turned to
her. A glow of realisation lit them up. “I …” he babbled.

“What’s happened?” she
pressed him.

“Christ!” Robert’s
scared cry behind her made her start. She turned round. Now he was
upset as well, looking at that door and backing off.

What was behind that door? What was
in
there
?

Anna’s sight focused
on a tiny stain, which broke the even surface of the little window
on the door. She released Hassan’s arm and walked forward with some
trepidation. Her gaze was drawn to the control panel of the
airlock. The alarm lamp was blinking. The message ‘EXTERNAL DOOR
OPEN’ cried out in very large letters.

The tiny stain.

She looked at it
again. Now that she was just a few steps from it, she could see it
better. It was red. Like blood. She rushed to the door and looked
through the window.

And started screaming
with all her breath.

“Oh God, no!
Michelle!” she shouted in despair, hitting the panel. Then she drew
back, aghast. She turned to Hassan, and met his gaze.

A horrible thought crossed her mind. Michelle,
unlike Dennis, was
indispensable
.
She had to be replaced.

“What have you done to
her?” At first, it was just a whispered question.

Hassan’s face scowled,
as if he hadn’t understood. Then he shook his head, looking
incredulous. “I …” That babbling again.

“You!” She pointed a
finger at him, menacing.

“She committed
suicide,” he murmured.

“What?” Anna was
beside herself by now. “Why would she have done that?”

“Dennis is dead.”

As she heard that
word, she lost her ardour. “Dead …?”

“I … think Michelle
killed him …”

Killed?

“She euthanised him.”
Hassan’s professional tone came out. It sounded like something
foreign, aseptic, among the whirlwind of emotions invading Anna’s
head.

“
No!” She jumped on him, punching him on his chest.
“
You
killed her! Just like you said,
she was indispensable to the mission.” She was hysterical. “Damned
bastard!” Her words were broken by the tears blurring her sight.
Pain was all she was feeling.

His hands grabbed her
wrists. “Anna, calm down! Anna!”

But she kept on
struggling. “Murderer …” she whined.

Hassan extended his
arms to hug her, but she reacted with violence to his attempt.

“Keep off,” she
exclaimed, escaping his grip.

“He’s right.” Robert
had spoken.

Upset, she turned to
him. What was he talking about? Robert was typing something on the
airlock control panel. Finally the alarm quieted.

“According to the log,
Michelle locked this control panel and activated the emergency
forced opening from the inside. She committed suicide.” He added
the last words, while casting an incredulous gaze in her
direction.

Anna was trembling. It
was nonsense. Michelle would never have killed herself. She was a
strong woman; she knew her. A dreadful sensation of cold ran along
her spine. She backed off, so that she could see the other two in
front of her clearly.

“You did it together
…”

“Sister, you’re upset,
calm down.”

“Anna, don’t talk
rubbish.”

Why were they so
controlled?

“You did it so that
they would confirm the launch with a new crew.” It was such a
horrible thing, but it made sense. “If I were dead, it would’ve
been difficult to explain, but she … her husband dies and she kills
herself. Very convenient.”

Now she was alone with
them in a desert planet, alone with no place to escape. It was a
fucking nightmare. Her breath was failing.

They moved a step
towards her. What would they do to her now that she had
understood?

She started moving
back and then running, as fast as she could.

“Anna, stop!” Hassan’s
voice echoed behind her.

They would reach her;
they were faster. She felt her lungs burning, her heart going crazy
as it tried to support her, and she pushed even harder. She just
had to take cover, in a place where they wouldn’t be able to
enter.

They were close.

With a last effort,
she reached the entrance of her quarters and placed a hand on the
opening control. As the door opened, she rushed inside, closing it
just a moment before they arrived.

She could hear hands
hitting the door.

“Open this door,
Anna!” Hassan’s tone was imperious, but his order was also
completely useless. Once she’d locked it from the inside, nobody
could enter her room.

“Go away!” she shouted
loudly so they could hear.

“You’re the only
person accountable for this.” She heard Robert’s provoking tone
through the door. “None of that would’ve happened if you’d avoided
screwing all women in the crew.”

There was the dull
sound of a bump. A punch? Then a rebound. Had someone fallen?

“You’re just a fucking
junkie, Green.”

“You’re a dead man,
Qabbani.”

A laugh from Hassan.
Then some footsteps. And silence.

A sudden bump on the
door made her start.

“Anna.” Hassan! He
wouldn’t be able to break down the door, no. Oh God. “Please,
Anna.” He kept on repeating her name. He was calm again. “Let me to
talk to you.”

She crouched on the
floor, with her shoulders against the wall and her eyes fixed on
the door. She was trying to avoid making the slightest noise, even
to avoid breathing.

“Please …”

He had to go sooner or
later.

Silence, then some
footsteps moving away.

It was hours before
she found the courage to get out of there. While moving with
caution through the station to find something to eat, it occurred
to her that Hassan and Robert did not appear to be anywhere. She
guessed where they were and, for some reason, she wanted to see,
too.

She donned her suit
and went out through airlock two. She walked around the building,
until she reached the other entrance and there she stopped.

Robert’s helmet turned
a bit toward her. She couldn’t say whether he had seen her.

“Anna …” Hassan’s
hesitant voice instead called her in the earphones.

But she remained at
least five paces away from them, while they opened completely the
external door of airlock one, thus releasing Michelle’s body.

When she had looked at
her corpse through the little window on the door, that morning, she
could have recognised her only by her blonde hair. Her face was a
shapeless, bloody mass. Her body wrapped by her clothes had swollen
in an abnormal way. Watching her now, so rigid, frozen, she looked
like a puppet in an old funhouse, not really the woman she
recalled.

Yet it was her.

They lifted and laid
her down inside the airlock, then they unlocked the door.

“I suppose you don’t
fancy getting in with us,” Robert said.

Her reply was a step
back. She got the impression there was a trace of irony in his
voice, but she wasn’t sure.