“…and no harm will come to Georgy, I promise.”
“Shit Donald, you know what the Martians are capable of — you can’t promise me a damn thing.” A light appears in front of him. It’s so bright he has to look away.
“It’s going to be OK, Frank.”
“I don’t get it. Yesterday you said we needed to leave. Now you want to stay forever. What have they done to you?” Borman’s eyes are adjusting. The light shifts from white to green. It’s the door Holtz opened to deliver him into this hell hole.
“Go,” says Menzel. “Before Skioth changes his mind.”
“Is that the deal? I go if you stay?”
“No. It’s my choice to stay.”
“He promised me he’d let you go,” says Borman.
“It’s my choice…”
“But what about your family? And your work? Surely Bermuda will come looking for you.”
Menzel smiles and shakes his head. “If there is one thing I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt, it’s that they won’t miss me. And they certainly won’t come after me.” He turns and starts walking back underground.
“How do I get home?” Borman asks him.
Menzel says, “That’s up to you.”
Though it jars against his better instincts, Borman isn’t about to chase him. He starts heading toward the light. Holtz is waiting for him in the forest. She seems genuinely happy to see him, although by now the feeling is far from mutual. At that moment, a dark cloud swarms down from the treetops and surrounds her. She immediately looks alarmed. Thousands of small flying insects swirl around her. She frantically waves her arms to bat them away.
“Mosquitoes,” says Borman. “Big ones. Where did they come from?”
She puts her arm around him. “Come on, I’ll get you home.”
It strikes him as a strange word to choose. Nothing about this place even vaguely resembles something he would choose to call home. She touches him on the forehead and he feels himself lapsing into a state of semi-consciousness, like she has given him a powerful sedative. In what feels like no more than an instant, they are standing on the front terrace of her abode. And compared to where he has just been, this does feel something like home. A sanctuary from the horrors hiding out there in the ground under the trees.
Horrors into which she delivered him.
“You left me there.”
“I did what I could to seek your release.”
“I’m pretty sure Donald did that.”
“There is much you don’t understand.”
“Then how about explaining it to me?”
She leads him inside the house. “You have to rest.” She lays him down on a couch of pillows. It’s unbelievably comfortable after being locked in a stone tomb.
“He’ll come for me, won’t he? Skioth?”
“Eventually.”
“And you won’t put up a fight,” Borman realizes.
“Trust works both ways. Try to remember all you have forgotten. It’s the only way to stop him in his tracks. Sleep now. Nothing bad will happen to you while you are here. That much I can promise.”
Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, he believes her. He’s also too tired to put up more of a struggle.
24
He is floating above her house, staring down at the forest. It’s beautiful, this place. It’s not home. It will never be home, yet a part of him would be happy to remain here forever. At the same time, he feels a rising anger at the people who sent him on this mission, when they must have known all along he would have no way of getting home. Menzel had said it was up to him, which might mean the Martians are capable of helping him if they so choose. If Borman somehow finds the answers to their impossible question — answers Menzel himself must be more than capable of providing.
Though this moment feels as real as any other he has experienced on Mars to this point, he knows he must be dreaming. He focuses his thoughts and finds this allows him to move in any direction. He floats down to the forest floor and stands alongside his capsule. He touches it. To his surprise, he finds it’s only made of paper-thin film. He is able to punch his fingers through the exterior shell. The hatch comes away in his hands when he grabs it. A terrible feeling of dread overcomes him — it’s make-believe. They’ve taken the real one away. But why go to the trouble of replicating it? The more he stares at it, the more obvious it becomes. The capsule’s nose is tilted to one side. It’s crude, this model. It’s starting to collapse under its own weight. The base of the ship, where it meets the ground, is already rotten. It’s soaked up moisture from the ground, which hastened the decay.
Menzel appears through the trees, and Borman wonders if this rendezvous was prearranged. He can’t remember having previously discussed it. But it makes sense they should find one another here.
“It’ll be gone soon,” Menzel tells him. “Better grab your spacesuit. You might need it.”
“I can breathe just fine.”
“Don’t you remember? I gave you the locator, so I’d know where to find you.”
“Is that how you found me?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
“You, Frank. You found me.”
“Yes, but…”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” He starts to walk away. “It’ll be gone soon.”
Borman watches him dissolve.
25
When he opens his eyes, the first light of dawn is visible through the open windows of Holtz’s home. He feels incredibly well rested, like it’s the best sleep he’s had in years. The weight of his predicament is not lost on him as he recalls everything that had gone down the previous day. But he can also remember every moment of his dream visit from Menzel. It’s in his head, as clear as if it had just happened. It’s the strangest feeling, the complete reverse of waking from a dream on Earth. Here the light of a new day seems to bring the dream to life, making it more vivid.
More real.
He has to see for himself. He’s down the stairs and into the trees when he hears Holtz calling out after him. He waves back at her dismissively without bothering to look back.
He starts to run, relishing the fact that the lighter Martian gravity allows him to move with remarkable speed. He’s light on his feet and he starts to run as fast as he can, maintaining the pace without once feeling the need to slow down. In almost no time at all he reaches the area where he last saw the capsule. It’s gone. All that remains is his spacesuit, lying across the indentation on the ground where the capsule had come to rest.
“It is as I suspected.” He turns to find Holtz standing behind him.
“Did Skioth take it?” She shakes her head. “Then who?”
“Mars took it.”
Confused, he looks at her with a growing sense of annoyance. He’s becoming awfully tired of people talking to him in riddles.
She says, “It was never your ship.”
“Of course it was. It’s the same ship I flew to the Moon. The Russians didn’t build it.”
“The spacecraft was your design. But we were the ones who made it. Until now, the possibility had eluded me, but this begins to make more sense now.”
“To you, maybe.”
“The plans for its creation were drawn from your subconscious. It was made by the Monument to meet your requirements.”
“What — in a matter of seconds?”
She nods. “The Monument is the focus of Martian intellect, an extension of our collective memory and knowledge. Everything we are is encapsulated within its walls. It exists simultaneously across two dimensions, yours and ours. As such, it acts as a receiver of all signals emanating from Earth.”
“How you know so much about us…”
“We have been watching for a very long time.”