‘We’re past the point where the recycling pumps take back the water,’ Mela said. ‘Nobody tries to grow things further west than this any more. It’s too hot and dry. And every year this point is pulled further back.’ She looked up at Symat. ‘So we can’t go on.’
‘Look.’ Tod pointed at the bare ground, a hundred paces from the canal. ‘There’s a flitter.’
Symat shielded his eyes from the sun to see.
Mela said, ‘It’s your parents, isn’t it? They’ve waited for you here, where you could walk no further.’
‘I have to face them,’ Symat said grimly. ‘Maybe now they’ll take me seriously.’
Another Virtual coalesced out of the dusty air. It was Symat’s mother, grave, soberly dressed. Symat was astonished to see the streaks of tears under her eyes. ‘Come home, son,’ she said. ‘We’re here. In the flesh, in our flitter. We’ve come for you. Please come back.’ She didn’t even seem to see the Virtual children with him.
Impulsively Symat opened his arms. ‘I’ve made friends. Let me take them back with me.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘One, then. Let me take one.’
His mother glanced sideways; Symat imagined her looking at his father back in the family flitter, listening to that gravelly voice. Give him a victory. What does it matter?
‘Very well,’ his mother said. ‘Which one?’
Symat turned to Mela. ‘Come with me.’
She hesitated. ‘What about the boys?’
‘I think I need your help.’
She looked at him, and again he had an odd sense that she knew more about him than he knew himself, that other minds watched him through her eyes. ‘Maybe you do.’
‘No!’ Chem grabbed Mela. ‘Don’t leave us!’
Symat could see she was torn. ‘I’ll come back,’ she said. ‘This could be important. Just stay out of the way of the bloodsuckers and you’ll be fine.’
Symat’s mother put her own Virtual arm around Mela. ‘Come, dear.’ They started walking across the sand towards the flitter.
Chem, desperate, called after Symat, ‘You promised you’d stay, you promised you’d keep us alive.’
‘I’ll come back.’
‘They always say that. You won’t. You won’t!…’
Symat followed Mela and his mother, his heart breaking.
II
The flitter arrowed with perfect accuracy towards Kahra, capital city of Mars, where Symat had grown up. The ease of the journey was galling, after Symat’s slog on foot through the echoing deserts.
And as the flitter dipped low over the rooftops of Kahra, he saw lines of people snaking towards the transfer booths. The human population of Mars was passively draining into another universe. Symat glanced at his father, wondering if this part of the flight had been set up deliberately to show him the booths and the patient lines, to make a point. Hektor returned his gaze, impassive.
Symat’s parents’ villa, on the outskirts of Kahra, was spacious, airy. Mela and Symat wandered through it. The glass walls shone like fire in the light of the sun. Even after a million years on Mars some deep instinct made you aware that this tall, open design would have been impossible on heavy Earth, and the place felt all the more remarkable.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Mela said.
After his abortive adventure Symat wanted to puncture her awe. ‘It isn’t so special. There are much grander buildings than this, all over Kahra, in fact all around the twilight belt. All empty,’ he said harshly. ‘You can just walk in and take whatever you want.’
‘But this is home, to you. That’s the most important thing about it.’
‘I don’t like being here.’
‘But you don’t have anywhere else to go. You’re all stuck here together, you and your family.’
He studied her. ‘You’re very smart about this stuff. Perceptive.’
‘You think I’m too smart.’ Just briefly her projected image seemed to waver.
Symal felt angry. Why did he have to make friends with a weird, superhuman two-hundred-year-old Virtual? Couldn’t he just have found somebody normal? ‘You’re not even here, are you? Not really. You’re just a projection of some vast cobwebby thing.’
‘I’m here.’ She tapped her head. ‘It’s just that I hear things. I can’t help it. I’ll go away, if you like.’
‘No.’ It had been a long time since anybody else of Symat’s age had come here. There had been few children around to begin with, and all his childhood companions had long since followed their parents into the booths. He couldn’t bear the thought of being left alone again. ‘You’ll have to do,’ he said.
She seemed to understand; she nodded.
They completed a circuit of the villa and found Symat’s parents. Hektor and Pelle sat in the grandest of the villa’s living rooms, while a small, silent bot, glass-hulled in sympathy with the architecture, laid out food and drink on a table.
Hektor stayed seated, but Pelle, Symat’s mother, stood up, a hopeful smile on her lips. ‘You two. Come and sit down. Are you still hungry?’ She waved her hand over the table; some of the dishes shimmered and broke up. ‘We have something for you too, Mela.’
Mela smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She selected a seat and, cautiously, sat down. The smart environment gave her a surface that matched the real-world seat flawlessly. She reached forward, picked a piece of fruit, and began to eat.
Symat sat too. Back home, he felt as if he had been reduced to a child once more. But it was obvious his mother, at least, was making an effort to reach him; she was even being considerate to Mela. And somehow with Mela here it wouldn’t have been right to show his resentment. So he accepted a drink.
As he had grown, Symat had often felt uncomfortable around his parents. They were so different from him, both tall and slender, matching the architecture of their Martian villa, while Symat was dumpy, squat, thick-set. Today Pelle was casually dressed, but Hektor wore the orange robe of a scholar, and his head was shaven. Both Symat’s parents had dedicated their long lives to archiving the human past on Mars, participating in a community act of remembrance to be completed before the final transfer through the booths. But in this domestic environment the robe made Hektor look formal, severe, the contrast with his son only more accentuated.
When he spoke, however, Hektor’s tone was mild. ‘So where do we go from here?’
‘We just want to know what you’re feeling,’ Pelle said to Symat. ‘What made you—’ She faltered.
‘Run away?’
‘You don’t have to say sorry, son. We just want to understand.’
His father leaned forward. ‘What I want to know is, where did you think you were going? You know your geography. There’s nowhere to go.’
Pelle snapped, ‘Hektor. He’s fourteen years old. What kind of plans do you expect him to make?’
Hektor said, ‘This is all about the booths, isn’t it? Everybody else goes through happily enough. All your little friends have gone.’ He ticked off names on his fingers. ‘Jann. C’peel. Moro—’
‘I don’t want to go into a booth,’ Symat said testily.
As always his father seemed genuinely mystified. ‘Why not?’
Symat waved a hand at the shining glass walls. ‘Because this is my home. My world. My universe! I hardly know anything about it. Why would I want to walk into nothing?’
‘Not nothing,’ Hektor said. ‘A pocket universe, connected to our own by an umbilical of—’
‘Symat,’ his mother cut in, ‘I wouldn’t change a hair on your head. Don’t ever think that, not ever. But I want what’s best for you. And this—it’s as if you are refusing medical treatment, say. We can’t just ignore it. Believe me, going into a booth would be the best choice – the Xeelee are coming – in the long run it’s the only choice.’