on the scale of what's around and tripped out drunk
on starlike possibilities
I find that I'm staring at the stars, my eyes wide and
burning.I shake myself, tear my sight away from the
view outside, turn back to the camera.
I look at a group photograph from the
orbital.People I knew; friends, lovers, relations,
children; all standing in the sunlight of a late
summer's day, outside the main building.Recalled
names and faces and voices, smells and
touches.Behind them, almost finished, is - as it was
then - the new wing.Some of the wood we used to
build it still lies in the garden, white and dark
brown on the green.Smiles.The smell of sawdust
and the feel of pushing a plane; hardened skin on
my hands and the sight and sound of the planed
wood curling from the blade.
Tears again.How can I help but be sentimental?I
didn't expect all of this, back then.I can't cope with
the distance between us all now, that awful gap of
slow years.
I flick through other pictures; general views of the
orbital, its fields and towns and seas and
mountains.Maybe everything can be seen as a
symbol in the end; perhaps with our limited grasp
we can't help but find similarities, talismans but
that inward facing plate of orbital looks false to me
now, down here, so far away and lonely.This
globe of ordinary, soft, accidental planet seems the
cutting edge and the flat knife of twinned
adamantine thoroughness, our clever, efficient little
orbitals, lacking that fundamental reality.
I wish I could sleep.I want to sleep and forget
about everything, but I can't, tired though I still
am.The suit can't help me there, either.I don't even
remember dreaming, as though that facility, too, is
damaged.
Maybe I'm the artificial one, not the suit, which
doesn't try to pretend.People have said I'm cold,
which hurt me; which still hurts me.All I can do is
feel what I can and tell myself it's all anyone can
ask of me.
I turn over painfully, face away from the
treacherous stars.I close my eyes and my mind to
their remindful study, and try to sleep.
'Wake up'
I feel very sleepy, the rhythms all wrong, tired
again.
'Time to go; come on.'
I come to, rubbing my eyes, breathing through my
mouth to get rid of the stale taste in it.The dawn
looks cold and perfect, very thin and wide through
this inhospitable covering of gas.And the slope is
still here, of course.
It's the suit's turn to walk, so I can rest on.We
redeploy the legs and arms again, the chest
deflates.The suit stands up and starts walking,
gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the
bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.
The suit walks faster than I do.It reckons it is only
twenty percent stronger than the average
human.Something of a come-down for it.Even
having to walk must be galling for it (if it feels
galled).
If only the AG worked.We'd do the whole trip in a
day.One day.
We stride out over the sloped plain, heading for
the edge.The stars disappear slowly, one by one,
washed out of the wide skies by the sunlight.The
suit gains a little speed as the light falls harder on
its trailed photopanels.We stop and squat for a
moment, inspecting a discoloured rock; it is just
possible, if we find an oxide of some sort but the
stone holds no more trapped oxygen than the rest,
and we move on.
'When and if we get back, what will happen to
you?'
'Because I'm damaged?' the suit says. 'I imagine
they'll just throw the body away, it's so badly
damaged.'
'You'll get a new one?'
'Yes, of course.'
'A better one?'
'I expect so.'
'What will they keep?Just the brain?'
'Plus about a metre of secondary column and a few
subunits.'
I want us to get there.I want us to be found.I want
to live.
We come to the edge of the escarpment about mid-
morning.Even though I am not walking I feel very
tired and sleepy, and my appetite has
disappeared.The view ought to be impressive, but
I'm only aware that it's a long, difficult way
down.The escarpment lip is crumbly and
dangerous, cut with many runnels and channels,
which lower down become steep, shadowy ravines
separating sharp-edged ridges and jagged
spires.Scree spreads out beyond, far below, in the
landscape at the cliff's foot; it is the colour of old,
dried blood.
I am suitably depressed.
We sit on a rock and rest before making our way
down.The horizon is very clear and sharp.There
are mountains in the far distance, and many broad,
shallow channels on the wide plain that lies
between the mountains and us.
I don't feel well.My guts ache continually and
breathing deeply hurts too, as though I've broken a
rib.I think it is just the taste of the recycler's soup
that is putting me off eating, but I'm not
certain.There are a few stars in the sky.