For the next few minutes he makes good progress, descending to about thirty feet off the ground, where the branches are a lot further apart. Too far for him to use the branches like a ladder. His next descent will be a jump. He hangs himself down as far as possible and then lets go. His feet hit the branch below, but he immediately feels it giving way under his weight. He overbalances and plunges forward into the air.
The fall feels strange. It’s slow. Martian gravity is about a third as strong as the Earth’s. He comes to ground with a relatively light impact, but with no control over where he lands. He ends up hitting a fallen log with one foot and instantly feels his ankle snap. His leg crumples as he tries to shift his weight off the broken bone and he falls in a heap to the forest floor.
12
This is not as it was meant to be. The five Outliers touch hands in unified bewilderment and fascination as they observe the unfolding events. This is perplexing, because they don’t know what it all means. The unknown is simply something they have never before experienced. It’s both exciting and terrifying. From this moment on, nothing is assured, nothing will be as was expected.
Their lives are predicated on knowing, on predicting the future based on the certainty of the past and the present. This is not magic or supernatural ability; it is total command of the elements. It has given meaning and comfort to their lives. Enabled them to feel safe and assured of all that has come before and all that shall come to pass.
Until this moment.
The five have known one another for a very long time. They are intimately acquainted. Even now, in this moment of great uncertainty, they know without speaking what they must do next.
He does not yet see them, though they stand but a short distance away. This is according to their wishes. He is small, this man from Earth. This much, at least, was proclaimed in the Story of Arrival. He will look up to them and, in so doing, see them as greater than they really are. This will be their advantage.
He will find them strange and intriguing, just as they look upon his appearance with curiosity and a certain degree of sympathy. So many weaknesses. So many contradictions. Head so small and round. Mind so closed to possibility.
But this too will be fit for their purpose.
Romsoc, Edvyrl and Parxotic tilt their heads as one to the right.
He behaves strangely, Parxotic thinks.
Edvyrl agrees. He appears confused. Possibly even demented.
Romsoc tilts his head back in the other direction. It is pain you see. His leg is broken.
Parxotic sees this now. The Arrival says nothing of this… And the timing of events cannot be ignored.
Holtz and Skioth — the elders among them — simply exchange a knowing glance. Their mental communion is silent to the other three, for it is born from the knowing of the true union, a deeper Martian sensibility that takes hundreds of years to master. It transcends even the expression of thought. In this way, the two are as extensions of one another, each incorporating the other’s mind and body into their own. They are two faces of the same polished stone. They agree upon a course of action that must, by its nature, unbind them in extremis.
We must do what we came here to do, Holtz and Skioth finally declare.
Holtz stares hard at the visitor. He believes he is the first.
Skioth concurs. We must not allow matters to run further off course by failing to act.
When Parxotic understands what they have in mind, she moves to object. Skioth raises his hand in acknowledgement and reassurance. But the emergence of disquiet in their ranks at the onset of this most solemn occasion is itself a concerning development. A dark omen of catastrophic importance.
Holtz sums it up perfectly. The importance of this moment cannot be underestimated. Yet the meaning remains far from clear. This we must determine for ourselves. That task falls upon us. There are no others to do it.
Skioth closes his eyes for a final moment of communion. If you deign it, let it be so.
Holtz nods solemnly.
She speaks aloud now, as if in so doing she formalizes her pronouncement. “We must assume our guest is hostile.”
13
Borman sits himself up and examines his broken ankle. His foot seems to be locked at a strange angle and the ankle is already purple, swollen and hurting like hell.
He promised Susan. Gave her his personal guarantee. Now he’ll never see her or his boys again. This will kill her. Menzel will never tell her the truth. She’ll disappear into a bottle and never come out.
But worse than all of that, he’s failed before he’s even really started. He can’t move with his foot like this. It’ll be weeks before it’s strong enough to walk on. He’ll almost certainly be dead long before then. Waves of emotion sweep over him in great tidal surges. He leans back and stares up at the sky for what seems like ages, trying to calm himself down and figure out what to do next.
There’s no point in simply giving up. He must at least try to find water. Strangely, he doesn’t feel tired. After a prolonged spacewalk followed immediately by the stress of that makeshift re-entry, he should be exhausted. But he’s not. The Martian air almost seems to have a certain rejuvenating capacity to it.
He takes a deep breath and quietly tells himself all is not yet lost. Quietly, he locks the fear and doubt down in that mental vault, where he has trained himself to store everything that is not mission-critical. He wills himself into the same state of almost sociopathic single-mindedness that got him to the Moon.
He slowly struggles to stand up, putting all his weight on his one good foot. The good news is his muscles feel remarkably strong and reactive in the lighter gravity of Mars. Here he is only about a third of his weight on Earth. He’ll need to come up with a walking stick or some makeshift crutches. He scans his immediate surroundings, but there’s nothing suitable. There is forest all around him. The forest floor is in deep shadow, which suits him fine. He has no way of knowing what’s out there. If there is intelligent life of any type (and surely there must be), his arrival will not be lost on them. Based on his brief time on Phobos, he feels certain he’s not alone. The forest is further evidence of that. The Mars he knows is a barren, lifeless rock.
He decides to hop a few steps, finding he can move forward about six feet with a single hop. His footfall is light, which reduces the jarring on his broken ankle. In a moment of madness, he chances stepping on his bad foot. This is a mistake. The pain shoots up his leg and he crumples to the ground again. He takes a few moments to catch his breath and wait for the agonizing pulse in his ankle to subside.
He hears strange noises in the distance. Could they be birds? He sits up and spots a fallen tree branch, forked at one end and robust enough to act as a walking stick. Using it to lever himself upright, he experiments with using the branch as a crutch and quickly finds it works fine. He starts to slowly make his way through the forest, past some of the most incredible trees he’s ever seen. They must be ancient because they are breathtakingly tall.
He whistles in the hope of catching a response. It echoes back to him from a gully in distant hills. He sets off in that direction.
“You’re going the wrong way.” A woman’s voice behind him stops him in his tracks. Is it the same woman? He can’t be sure. Surprised, he forgets he’s using a crutch and tries once again to stand on his broken foot. Instead, he falls to the ground again.