The Mars of Malcontents

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Fellow Travelers

Her heart was pounding and she could not draw a breath, giving the pounding a desperate, dying quality. She went from hidey-hole to secret space, searching for any coin she might have overlooked before, no matter how worthless, but there was none. The tea tin was empty; the millet sack had very little millet left in it, let alone the little pouch of coins Ma had once secreted there. Still she searched the same places again and again fruitlessly, and her heart pounded, hard but empty.

She turned to tell Arturo that there was nothing left, no way to buy the medicine that Ma needed to live, but Arturo wasn’t there.

Valentina jerked awake with a gasp. Her heart really was beating hard and she gasped again, fearful that the station had run out of air, that she was dying, starving for oxygen, but the long breaths filled her lungs and her heart calmed down. Just a dream. Well, a memory twisted into dream, but she wasn’t dying. Not at the moment.

A flash of memory filled her mind: her mother thin and pale, barely able to sit up with Valentina’s arm around her to take a small sip of the tea that never really made her any better. She was nearly weightless in Valentina’s arms. Valentina had picked up toddlers with more heft.

She blinked back tears before they started to spill. Arturo was gone. And it was morning, time to move on.

Valentina suited up and went outside, the sun still some time away from rising, just a pink glow low on the horizon. She headed south as the first rays spread over the icy expanse to her right. She kept to more of a loping rhythm, hoping to maintain it for more than half the day. Exhaustion from the day before made her limbs feel heavy, but urgency still drove her.

She stopped briefly at lunchtime to eat the half an energy bar she’d put into the helmet’s snack holder that morning and take some longer sips of water. The logy feeling in her arms and legs was making her feel sleepy, almost to the point of napping there in her suit, her back to a drift of ice and snow. The dazzling brightness making it hard to keep her eyes open didn’t help. She didn’t dare rest long for fear she really would fall asleep and lose the day and the oxygen napping when she needed to be moving.

The afternoon seemed twice as long as the morning, her feet alternating between numbing cold and blistery soreness depending on how fast she tried moving. Her water bottle was nearly gone despite her careful rationing of sips, and her stomach was an angry fist of hunger. The smell of her own sweat inside the suit still had too much of a sick fever-sweat quality to it, not a healthy exercise sweat. It made it hard to ignore the ever-present ache in her joints and behind her eyes.

This time she reached the checkpoint while the sun was still a red glow low on the horizon. It helped that the light over the door was on, glowing starlike over the snowy expanse. She climbed inside the airlock and shut the door behind her, but when she pushed down on the lever to raise the inner door, it refused to move.

She looked around but could see no locking mechanism, no obstruction. The light had been on outside; did that mean there was someone inside, locking her out? But why would the station have locks? They were supposed to be open to all travelers. There were enough bunks to handle a dozen people at a time, more if they were friendly.

Valentina glanced at her diminishing air levels, then pushed on the lever again. Nothing. Not knowing what else to try, she rapped on the door. Through her helmet she had no idea how loud it was. She was about to try knocking again, harder, when the door started to rise. Valentina waited for the door to stop moving before stepping inside.

There were two men inside the station. The one standing at the instrument panel, turning the knob to shut the door behind her, was a few years older than she was, tall and skinny in long underwear and a jumpsuit left off above the waist, rolled down and tied by the sleeves like a belt. His hair was shaved on the back and sides, maybe half an inch of Afro left on top. A small gold hoop glinted from one ear as he turned to smile a greeting at her.

His companion only gave her half a glance and a scowl, occupied as he was with something on the stove. He was older. Valentina wouldn’t want to guess how much older; he had the look of someone going through life the hard way, accumulating scars and skin damage at a rate that made his actual age a mystery. Valentina recognized the cauliflower patterns of frostbite damage to his ears and nose, and he was missing some fingers at the first or second knuckle. Wisps of oily gray hair were plastered over his pale, blotchy scalp.

She wished she could turn around and keep walking, but that wasn’t an option. Instead she unsealed her helmet and set it on the shelf next to their two suits. She resisted the urge to scratch at her sweat-streaked hair.

“Hello,” she said carefully in English, the lingua franca in Hanako’s shop if not common to most of the north pole. “Heading north?”

“Yah,” the younger man said, putting out a hand for her to shake. She quickly slipped her arms out of her suit to take his hand.

“Valentina del Toro,” she said.

“I’m Pete. That’s Stu.”

“Hey,” said Stu, looking her over again as she stepped out of her suit and shook out her skirts. “You new to this, kid?”

“This?” Valentina repeated.

“You don’t look like a merchant.”

“They usually travel in groups,” Pete added.

“I’m not a merchant. I’m just going south.”

“Looking for work? Because there isn’t any,” Stu said.

“That’s why we’re heading north,” Pete said.

“No, I’m going to see my brother.”

“All alone?” Stu asked.

“Yeah,” Valentina said. “It just worked out that way.”

Stu made a humph sound and turned back to the stove.

“What are you cooking?” Valentina asked. There were two pots and both were boiling like mad.

“We’re not sharing,” Stu said, poking the contents of one with a spoon.

“Now, Stu,” Pete said.

“I’m not looking for a handout. It’s just, it smells like beans, but if you keep cooking them like that they’re going to be hard as rocks.”

“That’s beans à la Stu,” Pete said. “Comes with a side of crunchy rice.”

“I don’t doubt,” Valentina said, watching the steam billowing from the other pot.

“I know what I’m doing,” Stu said.

“I don’t think you do,” Pete said. “Maybe you did once, but you worked at the mining company for how many years?”

Stu mumbled an answer Valentina didn’t catch. “Replaced by a damn kid,” he added.

“I think you got used to eating at the canteen. I’m not criticizing, I never learned to cook in the first place. I’m just saying. Let her take a look at what you’re doing. If she cooks it up better, maybe we share a little.”

“A little,” Stu conceded. “Not a third. She don’t earn no third just for stirring what I paid for with blood, sweat, and tears.”

“You never shed no tears,” Pete said, giving Valentina a wink.

Valentina stepped up to the stove, taking the spoon Stu held out for her. She immediately turned the heat down to a lower setting. Then she poked at both pots with the spoon. The water was nearly gone but nothing was sticking yet; he had indeed been a diligent stirrer. It looked like he’d just started; he hadn’t had time to ruin anything yet.

“I need some water,” Valentina said. “And lids if you have them.”

“What good’s a lid? Aside from not seeing what you’re cooking,” Stu said as Pete handed her a water bottle.

“You need to contain the steam when you’re cooking beans and rice both, but especially the rice,” Valentina said. “Unless you like it crunchy.”

Stu looked like he wanted to say that he did, but instead just grumbled, “No lids.”

“OK, how about a plate that fits over the top?” Valentina asked. In the last few months, when she and Arturo had to start selling things, she had gotten quite skilled at improvising for absent equipment. Pete dug into a backpack and held out two stainless steel plates. Valentina added water to both pots, then inverted the plates over them.

“You should have started the beans first, they take longer to cook,” Valentina said.

“Canned beans are quicker,” Pete said with a pointed look to Stu. Clearly he was bringing up an old argument.

“Dry beans are lighter,” Stu said. “As much bitching as you’ve been doing about the weight of the sled I’d think you’d be on my side on that by now.” They must have pulled the sled around the back of the station; Valentina hadn’t seen it. Of course, she’d been pretty focused on the light over the door.

“You’ve been walking far?” Valentina asked.

“We come from Alba Patera, although we had a ride across Vastitas Borealis; we’ve only been walking since we got on the ice cap,” Pete said. “Haven’t found any work yet.”

“You’re almost at the end of the line,” Valentina said. “Nothing north of here but the polar station.”

“Any work there?” Pete asked.

“Maybe, I don’t really know,” she admitted. She thought about mentioning the troubles, the latest flare-up of street wars between the various gangs. But such things were usually short-lived. It had probably run its course while she was too sick to get out of bed and a new gang was in charge now. The fighting was getting more frequent now that don Abuelo wasn’t there to smooth things over, but she mostly kept out of it. Or she had, until the day her brother had been too near one of the fights and had been taken prisoner by a group of Nortes who mistook him for a Poltec.

She remembered standing in the middle of the brewery that was the Norte’s base of operations, standing in front of their don and demanding her brother’s return. He had looked to be past thirty, his bare arms a crisscross of knife scars. A particularly brutal one marred his neck from the clavicle to the missing lobe of his ear. But the scars were all old, faded to a grayish white against his brown skin. He hadn’t been a part of the fighting himself in quite some time. The man and woman on either side of him had been younger, midtwenties maybe. They were not as impressively scarred as their don, but judging by the reddish welts the man had been sporting and the bandage the woman had wrapped around her midriff under her Norte sash, they were working on it.

The don was probably dead now. Perhaps the man or woman she had seen was in charge now. Perhaps the Nortes were no more. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Pete and Stu were watching her face closely and she cast her mind about for something to say. “You both have experience mining. That gives you a better chance than most, I can say that for sure.”

“I was only working for the mine a few months,” Pete said. “Stu is the one with the skills.”

“How is the way south of here?” Valentina asked, adjusting the heat under the rice to the lowest setting, just enough to keep it warm until the beans caught up.

“You’re the first person we’ve met since we got on the ice cap,” Pete said.

“It’s early in the season for anything but rovers,” Valentina explained. “And rovers don’t use the way stations.”

“There are a few behind us that weren’t operational,” Pete said. “One was half buried in the ice and we couldn’t get in the door. Another looked fine but the generator wouldn’t run. No power, no air.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Valentina said.

“People mark the walls on the stations on either side, so you know when they’re coming. Stow extra supplies in your suit and prepare to march double time.”

“Start before dawn, stop after dark,” Stu added. “You got a locater?”

“In my suit,” Valentina said.

“Otherwise you might as well turn back now,” Stu said.

“I don’t like walking in the dark,” Pete said. “It’s too big outside. I swear there are things out there, walking with us.”

“There’s nothing out there,” Stu snorted.

“I never saw anything, but I felt it all the same. Someone or something walking with us, like it was part of our little group. Never anything there when I’d look around, though. It stayed out of the light.”

“Crazy talk,” Stu said, and Pete just shrugged.

They lapsed into a friendly silence as Valentina cooked the beans. Stu took some piece of equipment out of his pack and sat down with it on one of the bunks, taking off the back panel to poke at its innards with the air of someone taking up a familiar, nearly endless task. Like Valentina’s mother with her knitting.

At last the beans were soft enough and Valentina turned the makeshift pot lids back into plates. She divided the food up between the two plates and handed one each to the men. Stu made a grunt that didn’t sound much like a thanks, but Pete smiled at her.

“You got a fork?” he asked, and Valentina shook her head. “Then here, take my spoon. I’ll share mine with you.”

“Thanks,” Valentina said, too hungry to do the polite refusal thing. “I haven’t had black beans in ages.”

“You don’t get beans on the north pole?”

“Sure, but the last shipment we got from Earth was nothing but red beans and these little Japanese beans called adzuki. They’re tasty enough, especially if you have some ginger on hand, but I love black beans myself.”

“These are pretty bland,” Pete said. “Someone forgot to pack salt.”

“I heard that,” Stu said around a mouthful of food.

“Salt is good, but I like them with fresh salsa made with really hot chilies.”

“How do you get fresh salsa?”

“I have a garden. Or had,” she corrected. “Grow lights and heaters in a cave under the ice, but you’d be surprised how much plants can grow.”

“I bet you make a tidy profit, selling fresh food,” Pete said.

“A bit, but it costs a lot to keep it all going. One thing breaks and it’s all over.”

“Sounds like us,” Pete said. “We were living pretty good until out of nowhere a bunch of us were fired. No job, no place to live, no place to go. Everything changes in an instant.” He held the plate closer to Valentina, encouraging her to take more. Stu was nearly done with his share, shoveling forkful after forkful into his mouth at a methodical rate.

“Hopefully your luck changes at the north pole,” Valentina said.

“It’s a shame you won’t be there,” Pete said. “It would be nice to already have a friend. Or maybe I can convince you to come back with us?” he said with a wink that did funny things to her stomach that had nothing to do with finally having more than two mouthfuls of protein bar to fill it.

“I really can’t,” she said, taking another forkful of beans and rice when he once more gestured to her with his plate. “I have to find my brother.”

“Oh, I thought it was just a visit,” Pete said, moving his fork over the plate, collecting a little mound of sticky rice and plunging it into the sauciest pool of beans.

“No, he’s been kidnapped.”

“Sounds serious,” Pete said. “Does the pole have no sense of community? No one would help you get him back?”

“He was taken by my father,” Valentina admitted. “But they don’t even know each other. My father left before Arturo was born. It’s like being taken by a stranger; Arturo must be so alone and scared now in a strange place with no one looking out for him. But no one else sees it that way. Like sharing blood means something that sharing a home doesn’t. But I know he needs me. I have to get to him.”

Pete offered her the plate again but she waved it away. After days of so little food she wasn’t sure her stomach could handle so much at once. She took a sip of water from the open mouth of her suit bottle.

The last time she had seen Arturo before the confused half memory/half dream of her time in her sickbed had been after she had gone to the don to beg for his release. The don had laughed at her demands, mocked her for calling on the name of her grandfather don Abuelo to enlist his cooperation. Once that name had meant everything all over the north pole, was respected by even the smallest and most fringe of the street gangs. Now, just a few years after his death, his lifetime of work was a joke to those he had worked hardest for. Valentina had been shoved back out on the street empty-handed, showered with threats of what would happen if she dared to return, then left to cry hot tears among the heaps of garbage behind the brewery until Arturo himself found her. Arturo, who had talked his own way out of his captivity and had gone in search of her.

He had to help her home. The heat of the tears had not been from her frustrated anger but from the beginnings of the illness that would prevent her from protecting her own brother when he needed her most. She still wasn’t exactly sure how long she had lain too ill to move or even wake up for more than a few slow blinks of dry, hot eyes that wouldn’t focus on the world around her. She had fallen to her knees the moment she had entered the nearly empty cavern that was their home and Arturo had guided her crawling steps to her own bedroll. He had tucked the blankets around her as her eyes started to close and murmured a few words of comfort.

Then he had wailed, long and loud, and she had heard him but had been unable to respond, had slipped away into warm, dark unconsciousness despite fighting with every bit of her will to stay awake, to open her eyes, to sit up and put her own arms around her brother as he called for their mother again and again and again.

Valentina supposed that had been the moment, right there, when her mother had gone. Just before she herself had fallen ill. They had both abandoned Arturo at once. And he was still alone, alone among strangers.

She had to hurry. He needed her. She had to get to him, bring him home. The two of them together could figure out what that meant: home without mother.

Valentina bit her lip until the flash of pain drove the visions from her head, then got to her feet with a forced smile to help with the after-meal cleanup.