The sunset was orange again, strange, beautiful, and serene. It had a saffron edge, then it blended down to yellows, getting milder and milder the farther it spread along the horizon. It hung there slowly, spilling its colours gently across the sky, with a thin dash of red or rose blending then fading.
The ocean was almond-coloured, and slow. The biggest problem, Jenks said, was that she couldn’t swim in it.
“Like swimming in a pillow,” Brute snorted. “No, the biggest problem is we can’t drink it. Tired of water rations. I mean, I’m okay with water rations unless I have to look at a whole lot of water all day.”
“See, the real problem is, you insist on calling it water. If you stopped calling it water, you’d feel right as rain.” This came from Squirrel, who always thought he had the essential point.
“Rain,” Brute sighed, and they all stared out at the ocean, observing it. Was it water? It spread out wide against the horizon, as oceans did. But the water was thick and rolled; it was theoretically possible to walk on it, if you shifted your weight in the pockets the water formed and if you didn’t go too quickly, which would cause a widespread line of waves, or worse, one of those sinkholes that never even glugged before it covered over.
They hadn’t touched it; they still wore suits. But they had a piece of it in a tube in the lab room, and Sibbets was writing lots of meticulous things about it in her reports. Good for Sibbets. Brute didn’t think they needed the suits any more; the air could be handled with just one of the simpler filters, a light mask over the nose and mouth. But Sibbets was cautious; Sibbets said wait.
The trolley wasn’t due back for another year. The crew—two men, three women—had a habit of nicknaming everything, and the trolley was their name for the long-range transport.
Jenks, who was head of the exploratory team, said, “Maybe we’re in at the beginning—you know, before life evolves.”
“There’s some kind of seaweed on the rocks,” Darcy pointed out. He was polite and gorgeous and well bred, and Jenks—the reader in the group—had named him Darcy.
Their colony of two and a half domes was on the first shelf of a kind of stepped ascent from the beach. Discarded containers and broken equipment were left in the open next to it. There was no wind so they weren’t careful about securing it.
They spent half the day outside, just poking around and observing, except for Sibbets who worked on her own inside. One day they gave themselves the task of examining the smooth, cigar-shaped stones that sat around on the lip of the beach.
It was natural, after handling the stones, to want to wash the dust off their gloves. They went to the sea and cupped their hands and pulled out gobs of thick water. It amused them to carry the water around, and eventually they took some of it back to their collection of rocks. Darcy leaned over too far with his hands full, and he made it into a fake fall and rolled onto his back.
“Now look at that sunset,” he said, pointing. His hand, blunted in its dirty tan glove, rose to the horizon.
The sunset was a long line of shadow, a pale hue up in the sky that drove along the surface in a line. It started from one direction and then—unlike an earthly sunset, which went down—it shifted around in a 180-degree arc. The light reflected off a series of moons, so it was handed across the horizon from left to right. It took hours. The sunrises were quieter, like pale ribbons. Midday was cream-coloured, with hints of salmon along the edges.
“Go get Sibbets,” Jenks said. Squirrel ran inside, but Sibbets wouldn’t come out.
“She said she can see it from inside,” Squirrel reported.
Strike one against Sibbets, Jenks thought.
The rocks seemed smooth, but they must have had an abrasive component to them. Darcy found, one night, a tear in two places on his right glove. He got alcohol and cleaned his hands. Of course, he should report it. He didn’t.
Jenks found a tear in her suit, around her knee. She put it in the daily report. They were out of range, now; there was no one to check with, to discuss it with. She didn’t want to alarm her junior officers.
Darcy got a new glove and saw within a day that it had shredded along the wrist. Nothing had happened to him after the first hole, so when Brute said, “Damn, my suit’s ripped!” Darcy said, “It doesn’t matter. Mine ripped a week ago. I’m fine.”
They were coming inside. Jenks heard them both. She didn’t say anything; she kept thinking about it at dinner. “My suit was torn too,” she said finally. “No signs of anything.”
“You can’t be sure,” Sibbets said. “An alien bacteria, a disease—who says you would know by now? Take some antibiotics, get some new suits.”
“We’re pretty much already done for, if we’re done for,” Darcy said.
Sibbets, always in her lab, could be seen as a figure bending over or lifting things, tapping at her computer or putting something in a jar. They could see her through the plexi-window; she never seemed to look for them.
“She’s so stuck,” Darcy said. “Never tries anything. Never takes a risk. And she calls herself an explorer.”
“She calls herself a scientist,” Brute said.
“
I’m
the explorer,” Squirrel said. The face window on his suit showed a big grin. He lifted his hands and took off the hood.
“Put that back on,” Jenks said.
“Look at my hands.” Squirrel lifted them up and showed the holes. “The air’s been getting in for two weeks, at least. Let me tell you,” he said, breathing in deep, his nostrils working, “it’s got a strange smell.” He sucked in air so hard his chest rose up. “Spicy.” His chest relaxed. “Good.”
“Oh hell,” Brute said, taking off her hood as well. “It’s not like I haven’t done it already. I’ve been out sniffing it when no one’s looking. I swear, sir, it’s harmless.” She looked at Jenks and saluted.
Darcy already had his off. “Sir,” he said, “the smell gets better at sunset. It has something to do with the colours, I think.”
They looked at Jenks, waiting. She considered the facts: they were all exposed anyway. So she took her hood off. The air was moist, which was surprising; the sea never evaporated, it just rolled around. There was never moisture on their suits. But the smell was good, indeed.
“The colours are brighter,” Brute said, looking at the sea. Even though it wasn’t evening yet, the colours wove into the sky: yellow, saffron, salmon, butter, carnelian, ruby, blood.
They shed their hoods and then they shed their suits. The weather was perfect. There seemed no variation in temperature as they felt it. They did keep on shoes, because the arches of their feet were always tender, but they stripped down to their underwear.
And then they began touching the water.
It was irresistible. “Did you notice the variations?” Brute asked. “The variations of shade. How it runs from almond to cream? How you can watch the colours move?”
“To think I didn’t notice it before,” Darcy said. “What do you think caused that? The hoods? Maybe it was too subtle to make it through that plastic window of ours.”
“Plastic window,” Jenks laughed. “I think so. Look at Sibbets, now, she doesn’t notice anything.” They turned and looked at Sibbets, who straightened up and looked out at them, then turned away again.
“See that colour there,” Squirrel said, pointing. “The way it laps.” They came up next to each other, forming a line. They stood very close. They were naked along their arms and legs, and they pulled in close to each other, so their skin touched. “I would hate to leave this place.”
“True, it’s getting to be more and more like home.” This was from Brute, who stepped forward and bent down, scooping up a ball of water. “All the comforts.” Her face got a sudden illumination and her eyes narrowed a little and she got a wicked grin. She looked at the ball of water in her hand, said, “Here goes, kids,” and neatly split it in two, dropping half and popping the other half in her mouth.
Jenks wasn’t fast enough to stop her, and it would have been half-hearted anyway. They understood each other better, so they all knew that they agreed with Brute: test the water. The air had proved to be all right, the temperature was perfect. They had never felt better, never been happier. Sibbets in her little window looked ridiculous; out here, in the creamy sunlight, near the iridescent sea—out here was a higher order of perfection.
Still, they watched as Brute swallowed and her eyes went internal, tracking the feel of the water going down.
“Brute? What’s it like?” Jenks took a step closer.
Brute sighed. “It’s good.” She looked around, to the sea, the horizon, the rock shelf behind them. “It’s very satisfying. I can feel it.”
Brute was fine that day and the next and the next. Jenks caught Darcy and Squirrel pulling small rolls of water from the edge, pushing it around in their palms, eating it. She watched in silence.
“Everything’s sharper,” they said. “Not at the edges, no, in the centre. It’s hard to describe, but it’s great. Don’t be afraid.”
That was from Darcy, who whispered to her. Jenks was already considering it. She bent down and pulled a bead of water out. It had soft edges, reforming slowly. She took it in her mouth, rolled it on her tongue, and swallowed.
“Well,” Darcy said. “Welcome to the club.”
The thick water was all they needed—that and the gray seaweed that formed like a frost along certain rocks; slightly crisp, a small taste that lingered. “You guys are nuts,” Sibbets said tightly when they showed dutifully up for meals. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, the effects, the long-term significance. You’ve left me all alone here now. If something happens, I’m the only one who can take care of you.”
“You could join us,” Brute said, shrugging. “We’re not so bad. And you’ll have more fun.”
“I have work to do,” Sibbets answered, lowering her eyes. She ate her food industriously, chewing vigorously and swallowing carefully. They all watched her.
“Why are you watching me?” she said finally.
“You don’t look comfortable with us,” Squirrel said.
Sibbets put down her fork. “You’re not wearing clothes. You don’t eat. You stare at me when you come in. You eat the water. None of you is acting normal.” She looked around the room. They looked at her, all of them, and they were all smiling. One by one, they held their hands out to her. “You should come with us,” one of them said. She couldn’t tell which one.
The next day Brute came up to the plexi-window. Sibbets didn’t see her at first; she was waiting for the centrifuge to stop spinning. She had no hope that anything new would be discovered, but she was thorough. If she did a test once, she did a test twice.
She looked up to relieve her eyes from the fine work. She looked out the plexi-window.
And there was Brute, grinning at her through the window, staring and grinning, her lips pulling back more and more from her teeth. Brute’s eyelids rose even higher and she moved back as if confounded, then she pushed her head fast against the window. Sibbets could even see the plexi move a little, and she was annoyed.
What if she broke it? Sibbets stood up, raised her hand, about to yell, when her hand dropped and her mouth opened.
Brute’s face was smack against the plexi-window, yes, and it was entirely flat. Like a balloon against the plexi. Sibbets stared, her mind slowing down, trying to make it into some trick, when Brute slowly peeled her flat face off the window, and Sibbets watched as the face reshaped itself, back to Brute’s face. Even then, she stood frozen, waiting for some explanation to occur to her, something sensible. Brute stared at her, winked at her!
Sibbets stood there, trying to think, watching Brute wave at the others, who were standing together and watching. They all met together, waving arms gently, bobbing in and out. She could almost feel how much they gravitated together. In the old days, they wouldn’t have tolerated that. Everyone had been conscious of personal space.
She spent the afternoon wondering if she had caught some kind of dementia; if she were seeing things. She checked herself and doubted herself and shivered a little, and took some antibiotics.
They ate less and less, yet they seemed healthy. They came to dinner most of the time, arriving together and staying for a while, then drifting away. Drifting. Well, it was hardly drifting with all that laughter. They giggled together, they cast glances together, they squealed with joy when Sibbets asked if they had done their reports, if they had checked any of the equipment, if they had brought more samples.
“Samples?” Darcy asked. “Samples?” And with that he pulled a hair out of his head. He held it out dramatically and then dropped it into the soup. His cohorts laughed again. Sibbets could feel herself tense: laughter laughter laughter. They were monsters.
“I don’t like that,” she said. “That’s food. Who knows what contamination—”
“Absolutely none,” Jenks said. “You can write that down somewhere.”
Sibbets looked at the captain cautiously. She had gotten thinner, tauter, quicker, but there was a little blurring around the edges. Her chin wasn’t exactly the same shape. Could that be possible?
The rest of them all looked at Sibbets eagerly, as if she might perform. Then they laughed again, their bodies bouncing around. They each rested their right hand on their stomachs, as if the laughing hurt.
Sibbets lowered her head and ate her soup. When she was finished, she looked around. None of them had eaten and they were all still looking at her, expectantly.
“What?” she said.
“We can see that soup move down your esophagus,” Squirrel said. “Like going down a drain.”
“No you can’t,” Sibbets said.
“We have x-ray vision,” Brute said. And she winked.
Sibbets’s heart was racing. “If you guys don’t eat, then I’m going to stop cooking for you. We shouldn’t waste food. But you have to eat?” She had changed her tone halfway through, careful not to be out of line. The captain was her superior, after all.
“We eat the
urden
,” Jenks said.
“Urden?”
“The seaweed thing. It’s delicious. And it takes care of your appetite for hours, maybe days. You don’t need much and your whole body feels light and clear.”