Alluvium (12 page)

I always had the mind for it, and I suppose that's why I became a good dealer. I just needed that extra push to go beyond the drug scene, which eventually I did once I got my internship at the university’s botany lab, but that's another story.

Tell me about the day she died.

“Well, it was on a day like any other. I remember, I was laying in the garden in the backyard, thinking about what to do next, when the house nurse came and sat down in the grass beside me. She said, ‘I’m sorry’, and that was it. My mother had passed away that morning and all my efforts to save her had failed. It was that simple."

You did well, Hollis.

“But it wasn’t enough. After that, I was alone with the devil. My father became power hungry and tried to assert his dominance over me in every situation.
Machismo
he would call it. ‘I’m the man of the house, you must obey!’, he would yell. ‘Your mother's death was your own doing! You brought no money into the family and she had to take the work!’. Over and over again he would belittle me, blame me, and forget that he was the cause of everything. Each of our fights would end in punches and blood and hatred. ‘You are a shadow of me, nothing more!’, he forever reminded me. Soon I found out he had another family on the side, many others actually, and he would spend more time with them than with me. I got comfortable being alone, and I actually preferred it. But what’s funny is that he was right. I am his shadow. Fifteen years later and I retraced his same sins: adultery, substance dependence, betrayal. We had the same sins, just in different circumstances. I treated my own family just as he did. I am just as bad as him."

This is not true.
Your father’s actions do not reflect your own.

“No, they do. My fate was decided by my maker just as yours was. It’s a sad truth but a truth nonetheless."

You are not a prisoner of your maker, Hollis. You are your own.

Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but that’s why I known I need to grow the tree, save the baby, and hopefully save the colony. That’s what I’m fighting for. Not because you’re telling me to, but because I’m finally brave enough to tell myself. I’m fighting to wash away my past, my sins, and my demons, in the wave of this single action. Maybe by saving my humanity I can save humanity."

You have already been forgiven, Hollis. You have nothing to prove.

“I’m not forgiven until I forgive myself. I need this. I need this baby to be born in a forest, not a desert. I believe you. I trust you. The tree will come before the birth."

[SUBJECT 22 PREPARED]

Then make it so. Bring life from death. Bring something from nothing. Bring a forest from the sands. Bring a Heaven from Hell. However, let me remind you that you must beware of the devils that are rising in the colony before you can save the child. A great change is coming. I can sense it in the voices of the others. You will face this truth soon, and you must be ready in both mind and in body, but for now, our time is up. I will see you in two days to continue discussing your new responsibilities. Goodbye, I have another waiting.

[...PROGRAM END]

Such a thing is a gift from God, concluded Saul as he let the Martian rock drop from his hand. The red rock curled off the peak of his palm, and Saul was relieved to see it fall to the ground. Over and over again, the rock dropped to the floor, and it fell always, faithful to its own law and limitations. He knew that the rock would never stay frozen in the air, suspended like a cloud in the sky, but would always tumble down, like heavy rain. It would never fall upwards or to the right or to the left or any other direction but downwards. One direction, one way. The rock’s fall was inevitable and reliable in its inevitability. It was safe, and Saul liked safe. He liked safe so much that he knew the colony must be made as safe as a rock alone in the air.

The rock clattered on the metal tiles, and Saul bent to pick it up. He stroked his finger against its rigged crust and gripped it tightly in his hand. Who commands the rock to fall? Gravity? God? Saul Lind? There may not be much of a difference between the three. The rock fell again, and the same thing happened as it did thirty-seven falls before. There was no difference and no divergence. Always the same. Stable by law. Magnetic. Saul would try again, just to be certain. Perhaps the next fall would prove him wrong. Prove God wrong. Down the rock went, hitting the floor for the thirty-ninth time, as it would forever and always.

Saul stood from the main chair in the Command Center at last satisfied and placed the rock on the elongated counter before him. All along the counters surface were a series of monitors that glowed a soft green into the shadows around him. Saul moved around the U-shaped room, his hand sliding against the sleek counter, and he passed each illuminated monitor while observing the faces that materialized in the pixels of each.

Inside one of the screens was engineer Alexander Orsa, flipping through the books in the colony’s library. He sat cross-legged on the floor surrounded by stacks of leather-bound books. The colonial library’s contents were carefully selected before the colonists left for Mars. There was a great effort to collect the most valuable literary artifacts of Earth history and human novelty in one place, safe from the fires of war. The library was a cultural codex for humanity, and a method of remembrance, and there were hundreds of titles to the assemblage. There were books about the world economy, about abuses of power, and human greed, and kindness. There were stories of death and desire. There were tales of the past, the present, and the future. There were dictionaries of different dialects and peoples and religions. There was the Amazon, the Antarctic, and the Atlantic, all in one place. There were tales from the Mongolian war, the American revolution, and the three World Wars, the last of which to be unfinished indefinitely. There was a story about a little girl in a red hood and a fat man in a red hat. It was Earth, alphabetized and materialized.

Saul watched as Alexander opened the dusty cover of one of the unread and unmarked novels. He rapidly read the first sentence and then quickly shut it again. He was looking for something in particular and seemed to have a lot of trouble finding it. Alexander tried the next book, and then the next, and each of them was not what he wanted. The pile of discarded books grew at Alexander's side until there were no more books and no more words to search through, and the library was emptied dry.

Saul moved on, down the electronic lane, as if he were drifting through the channels on a television. The star on the next monitor was a thin and dark-skinned man, and from the back of his head Saul confirmed that it was Julius Douglas, one of the colony’s drone technicians. He was staring at something in his hands, hunched over in secrecy in the drone workshop, and Saul squinted trying to see through his body as it blocked the object.

“What are you looking at?" muttered Saul to himself.

Saul fiddled with the holographic keypad laid-out before the monitor, and the perspective of the video shifted to another corner of the workshop, overlooking all the cluttered machines and mounds of drone parts that piled in the space. The new vantage-point captured Julius’ tear-filled face and a fraction of the object in his grip, which now looked to be a frail square of white paper in his hands. By the action of another command on the keyboard, the image flew forward, towards the paper as if it were a ghost in the room, and now Saul could fully see what was on the papers cover. It was a photograph of a young man no older than Julius and of similar complexion, standing on a boardwalk, or a pier in what looked like South Africa, and both had a wine glass raised to the clouds in a toast. Julius himself was in the frame with his arm around the man joining in the cheers. Was it a brother, a friend, a lover, a mentor? Saul did not know and did not worry any further. Julius was not a part of his plan. The quiet man served no use to him.

Saul continued down the flickering lane towards another surveillance monitor, lusting for data to extract, or a scandal to realize, or anything worth his newfound authority. He would use his time in the Command Center to discover the truths of all the colonists, in secret, and use these truths for his advantage. He wanted to play watchmaker and see how the minds of each subject ticked and turned, and so by knowing their gears, he could fix what he needed to and build a better machine. He wanted to make the others reliable and predictable. He wanted them to be his own creation, to fulfill his own commands, and make the colony stable again.

The third screen had potential, and Saul froze like a frame on a broken reel. He saw the skin first, uncovered and sprinkled with drops of sweat, sliding through the sheets. Rolled in the fabric waves of her own bed was Colleen Ralph, another of the colonial engineers. She was alone, and her eyes were sealed shut, but she moved in her bed as if she were a puppet being played with. The dull light in her personal cabin cast an amber glare on her bare body, and the glistening sweat on her skin made her look like a marble statue of the perfect female form. Saul felt his own body grow stiff as he watched Colleen thrash about, and he inched the camera closer, as if he were quietly slithering in her room, up the bed-post, beneath the sheets, and between her legs. But the camera could only do so much, and his eyes were left unsatisfied. He thought that his hands could do more for him, and he crept them down to the base of his suit. As Colleen thrashed about in her bed in a haunting nightmare of a burning Earth, Saul imagined it being his own hands that shook her. He was the one making her scream, and hurt, and cry for her the ghosts of the past to save her from the Hell of the present. It made Saul feel alive as he did this, and he felt no shame as his heart pounded and his breath quickened and his hands moved.

Before he could go any further in his fantasy, a flash appeared in the corner of his wide eyes. There was quick movement on video that was playing down the lane, and he turned to it. The screen showed Autumn standing in the middle of Hollis’ cabin. Blocking the door was Hollis himself, and he was aggressively gesturing with his hands and mouth. He looked enraged, and Autumn looked guilty in his anger. There were no sounds to the surveillance videos and as such Saul could not investigate more into what the situation was. It could be nothing more than a petty argument, or it could be something more.

Saul drew his face close to the virtual window as if he could peek his head through and hear the words being exchanged, but his nose only prodded at the glass and sprinkled with static. He was pushed back into the same room he was in before and could hear nothing but the sound of a dozen humming monitors and himself slowing his breath. He tried to read the lips of both Hollis and Autumn but failed to pick up any words. How the ex-Commander had spied on the colony without the aid of sound was at a loss to him, and it was evident that more efficient security tactics were necessary for his new reign. Saul would need to find a way to hear their words.

He left his seat in the Command Center, shutting down all the monitors to leave no trace of being there and locked the door on his way out. Saul could not let the others know that he had rebooted the surveillance system in the Hub and was using the cameras for his own personal espionage. In the last few moments that he had alone with the dying Commander at the Decompression Room, Saul had demanded for the entry code into the Command Center. He knew it was the only way through the four-inch steel door that separated him with the control he wanted over the colony. Without total awareness of what was happening, the hysterical Commander told Saul, and Saul alone, the code to enter the room, giving Saul access to all the executive power within. When Commander died shortly after by Saul’s hand, the others believed the access code was lost with him and that there would be no way to enter the room. Saul knew that he would need to maintain this belief if he wished to have any authority as the new leader of the colony.

The further he marched down to Hollis’ cabin, the angrier Saul became. Autumn was his. What right then did Hollis, an outsider in their relationship, have in demanding things by her? Autumn was Saul’s, and only Saul’s. He had been too lenient with Autumn and Hollis’ friendship for too long
.
However close they were, Saul assured himself that Hollis was not a threat, at least not romantically. The man was attractive, in a rugged way, and perhaps one of the most intelligent members of the colony, but his meek and mild personality could not allure a girl like Autumn. She needed someone strong and in-charge. An alpha, not an omega. A lion, not a mouse. Autumn needed Saul: a builder of things and a commander of the things he builds. She had no use for a drug-addicted Mexican who spends all his time with flowers.

But Saul was smart enough to know that jealousy could undermine his authority and cloud his mind. The colony’s progress within the last week had been a tremendous improvement since Richard Virgil was the last to be calling the orders, or rather the last not to be calling the orders. Saul sought to hold his newly acquired position in the chain of command so that the colony could stay functional and productive under his guidance. He had to contain himself for the sake of his people, and he saw a drastic improvement in them in a week. At the very least, he had Hollis to thank for convincing the others to become productive again after his speech. Saul would keep this in mind when it came to confronting the man. As Saul pressed his thoughts and worries into the far-reaches of his mind, he pressed his ear against the door to Hollis’ cabin.

On the other side of the entry, through the inches of alloy, Hollis pushed off the dresser and stomped towards Autumn. His hands interlaced at the top of his head, and he moved sorely in circles.

“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t need you looking after me, Autumn. I’m a grown man. Save your motherly instincts for when they’re needed," he rumbled.

Autumn tried not to move. She would hold her ground. “I told you before, and I’m not telling you again- I didn’t take any of your things. Your business is your own and if you want to smoke dope all day then that’s fine by me. I could care less what you do."

“It’s not cannabis, don’t act so stupid. They’re herbs that can save lives and could have saved the Commanders life if you hadn’t hidden the box from me in the first place. Don’t patronize me and make me out to be something that I’m not. I’m not an addict, I’m a botanist. It’s my job to help people with these plants and by hiding them from me you're risking their lives."

“I would believe that if I hadn’t saved you from jumping to your death during one of the highs you got from your ‘life-saving plants’," Autumn mocked.

Hollis sighed. “I was never going to jump. And before you make any more misunderstood judgments about me I want you to know that it’s been two months since I last used any sort of psychoactive or drug. I know very well that I can’t say the same about you."

A stillness fell in the cabin.

“What is that suppose to mean?" asked Autumn with a shot of offense.

“What it means is that you’ve been prescribing yourself all kinds of drugs these last few weeks. Clearly you’re the bigger addict of the two of us. Hell, maybe that's why you stole the lockbox from me, so you can use the herbal medicines inside."

Autumn leaped forward. “Well, considering my
condition
it only makes sense that I’m allowed to have a few reliefs in a day. With Doctor Novak disappearing out of thin air, I don’t have a professional consultant to go to for these types of things. My headaches are worsening and my stress is nearly unbearable with the fluctuations in my weight, so spare me the accusations. When you’re a woman with my responsibilities then get back to me."

Hollis joined her in the center of the room. They were face to face and closing in like colliding storms on the open ocean. “I have responsibilities too, Autumn. You seem to forget this. You act like my research is nothing more than playing in the mud but it’s much more important than that. The Computer understands the gravity of my position, so why can’t you?"

“Don’t bring him into the discussion," Autumn cut in.

“And why can’t I?" he nearly shouted. “Actually, you should be thanking him, he’s the one who convinced me to help you in the first place."

Autumn lowered her brow to further emphasise the next point. “Convince you? Sure, I believe that. I wouldn’t be so surprised you need convincing. Without his guidance, you would have already lost your mind. These sessions are the only thing keeping you sane."

Hollis looked at Autumn as if she had suddenly changed form into something completely foreign to him.

“If you think I’m so helpless then why even try? If I’m so damn incapable then maybe I should just leave you alone and let you figure out your own problems. I can walk away, as you tend to forget. I have no obligations towards you. Let's just think of everything I’ve done so far as charity, but since my kindness is not being acknowledged then I guess I’ll stop giving. You can move on to another caretaker, to Saul for all I care."