Alfarroba

It was at least two hours after dawn when Camel-Lips came back for her and had her enter another room, expensively furnished and with a window giving a view over the city.

The robed man sitting the other side of a wide, immaculate desk was familiar to Nowal. He was the chief secretary of a certain minister who had never been at all cooperative with SSI. She would skip the preliminary questions about her abduction and get to the heart of the –

"It's all over, ya sayyida," the portly man said in a composed and polite manner, as he would if being interviewed for the six o'clock news. "You have been removed from your position as of yesterday evening."

Part of her wanted to fall over in shock, but instead her lips moved of their own accord. "No such thing has happened. You do not have the legal authority to remove and appoint directors of private corporations."

"Nevertheless," continued the secretary, "this is our situation. You would make it much easier for all three of us if you would kindly take a seat."

It was only then that Nowal noticed that there was a woman sitting quietly to one side of the office. A moment later she realised that it was Elham Shireen Al Dawudi, her one-time partner in SSI. Elham smiled icily and moved to one of the large chairs at the nearest end of the desk. Nowal's insides suddenly felt as though they had been popped by a pin, and she folded herself into the nearest wing-backed chair.

The secretary continued. "Good, good. You see, this Mars mission was meant to be a great coup for our nation and the financial supporters involved. Instead," and here the temperature of his tone dropped by fifty degrees, "you have let it become a disaster."

She began to interrupt and object, but he rolled onwards. "We know all about the Brazilian's death."

"He's not been confirmed as dead! He's most likely –"

"The other crew are losing electrical power and will probably die within a day or two."

"Not so! I have been following –"

Elham leaned forward and cut her off. "And the world is watching! They see the first great venture of an Arab, Islamic corporation into space faltering! And all stemming from poor management. Weak leadership!"

Nowal did not allow herself to react to this unfair, untrue thrust. She ignored Elham. "Sir, allow me to correct the false information that you have been fed."

He acted as though he had not heard her. "How will SSI recover from this? Not under the same leadership. The only way, you see, is to replace you. The public and the sponsors want to see that something has been done, that those responsible for this farce have been removed."

She found herself rising to her feet. "You have fed this exaggerated story to the media! You have made it into an attack on my leadership in order to replace me!" She turned to Elham then. "And you have come up with this plot simply to grab what you think you deserve but have not worked for."

Elham's lips compressed into a tight line, and she was on the verge of an angry retort. But the secretary cut in first. "So Madam Al-Dawudi here will do a much better job. She has the qualities you lack – the ambition, the ruthlessness to do what must be done. She is not hindered by your strange sense of destiny, or whatever you call it."

Elham swallowed hard and said, calmly, "We will introduce the needed economic viability into the new Mars colony. Along with that will come a simpler leadership style."

"What do you mean?"

"Until the colony is large enough, there is no need for consensus or for all to participate in decision making. A more military-shaped structure is necessary."

"No! Once you start that, the leaders will not give up their power willingly! You will almost certainly end up with a police state. A hi-tech dictatorship!"

Elham shrugged. "That's your opinion. It will be more honest than tricking the colonists with a dream of independence."

"Enough talk," said the secretary with a wave of the hand. He summoned Camel-Lips. "Take her away."

Elham couldn't resist a final jab at Nowal: "I did tell you that you would lose it all. But don't worry – they are not going to hurt you."

The grotesque smile on Elham's thin lips was the last Nowal saw as she was led away. She felt nothing except a sharp regret that she could not play her part in the drama that was still being played out on the surface of Mars.

Through doors, corridors; in and out of elevators, black limousines, another elevator; another door; she floated as though only half-conscious. There seemed to be no point in more protest or clever speeches. These people held all the cards, it seemed.

She found herself confined in reasonably luxurious quarters but with no outside contact and no windows. The television gave her only a news feed. She already knew the kind of coverage to expect.

She looked around the apartment. She would make the best of it. Perhaps escape would be possible. She was terribly hungry, and the large fridge over there was probably stocked. Oh – it was Eid – she would miss out on Hind's dinner party. They would gather and wonder why she had not turned up. They would think that she was too busy – again.

But that was nothing. What about her people back at SSI? Mohamed Al Mo'nem and Izhaq could tell them what had happened, but who would be left on the morning after the Eid? If the director could be replaced at the whim of a government minister, how much more the chief engineer, the rest of the Board, and – her heart was breaking now for real – the upcoming mission crews?

She sank to a chair at an ornate, scroll-legged, glass-topped dinner table and put head on folded arms. They must be watching. Try not to weep.

- + - + - + -

A long beach of grey and brown pebbles in the darkness, speckled like the eggs of many great birds, all strewn in a slow crescent and washed with dreaming waves, shu-shu-shush, shu-shush. Feet on the pebbles, eyes watching the quicksilver waves as the long night begins to retreat, looking further out, a dim line on the far horizon, waiting, resting, just being, and it grows brighter, redder, crimson. Still a few stars linger. Tracts of sky less visible give hints of coalescing mist.

A line, then a disc of blood-red edges into sight and invades the still vault of heaven. The refractions of layered air, warm and cold, smear and shimmer the rising disc and the surrounding waifs of cloud. In the air is patience, wise and ancient.

Watching, waiting, drinking in the brilliance of sunrise. There is peace here. Then more mists begin to form, in shreds and twists and isolated banks, massing, until the sun is hidden and there is no horizon, just a closed curtain of condensed vapour hovering over the rippling sea. The beach grows darker, monochrome, desolate. What is this? The light was good, and warming, and promised a good day, and this fog threatens to take all that away. A chill descends, tricking its way through to the heart.

Desire to see again! Long waiting for dawn – thwarted! To be sunk in this half-light, captive to condensation clinging and mocking – the promise unresolved. Fog is far from dispersed – growing clammier.

How long this goes on, hard to tell. Standing, waiting, losing hope.

Prestar atenção!

Like the chiming of a hundred heavy brass bells! A vast voice from the mist!

Turning, seeing a movement, a darkening of the vapour, a form emerging. What is it?

Prestar atenção!

Tall, bushing out widely, feet planted in the waves, arms spread higher than sight, trunk of lined sinew, and from it the mists flee, so that it is revealed, a curtain pulled back.

Prestar atenção!

Prestar atenção? Pay attention to what? Bafflement, a shivering in the presence of powerful mystery. Is it a tree? Do trees talk, and in perfect Portuguese? Shuddering with the unexplained. Strangeness.

But this one is not a stranger. That tree – I knew it before – long ago – when? Dark oval leaves clustered on stems, trunk knotted and weathered from a thousand storms, and hanging from branches are long dark pods the colour of fresh grass. The clotted sap the colour of berries, or wine.

I was standing here – for so long – not knowing who I was, or that I was really here at all – an indistinct dreaming. Now, somehow this vision of a tree coming out of the fog – it's calling me, and I have come into focus. Because it is there, I can be who I am.

Now, where do I know it from? What other places are there, apart from this lonely shore? I wrestle with stubborn memory. Was I ever in a place other than this one?

Who was I? My hands, feet, body, indistinct and unimportant. No clues there. But there was something about rocks and dust. A place with no sea at all. A place of leaping high, floating in the freezing air. Trying to go somewhere to help my friends. Did something happen? An accident? No, that can't be true. Must be a dream that I had. Just imagination. This is the real place. Everything is good here, until this mist.

This tree, it reminds me of a happy time. There were other people back then – Oh, so good that there are other people, somewhere. But not here.

The happier time is coming into focus – walking with taller people, and I was smaller, and simpler, and newer. Younger. Looking up at this beautiful tree, an alfarroba tree, with its unripe carob pods swaying and the cracked bark slowly weeping with sap. I remember now. Mother, father, me, brothers and sisters, walking near the beach, picking the dried ripe pods and gnawing them to taste the raw sweetness. We kids were laughing, because it was the sort of thing that poor kids did when they were hungry, and we weren't far off from being poor, I think. Mum and Dad didn't approve, but they smiled at us. Yes! The alfarroba! So good! Life was so sweet, then!

And so far away.

This tree is life.

The bell-voice again. Not so loud this time. It's more like someone speaking from beside me, but there's nobody there that I can see. This should make me nervous, but it's alright. Someone can see me, but I can't see him, that's all. Someone is trying to tell me about this carob tree.

The alfarrobas that I remember were shrunken, like wrinkled old men or women hunched over. This one is like a king tree, ancient but unbowed. It is life. I can feel the life, like a kindly radiation, striking me and making me live. I can smell the sap, and if health and joy ever had a scent, this is it. If the tree withdrew, I think I would die, or perhaps drop back into that not-knowing fog of night. The leaves shine, although the sun's still hidden in the mist. The tree makes its own light.

I take a step closer. I'm drawn to its beauty. The legions of leaves shimmer in a faint sea breeze. The cracks and twists in its bark score deeply into the trunk and there are rivulets of dark, sticky sap in there, lying almost as if frozen, but surely running down at their own glacial pace. I reach out a finger, thinking to try the sap on my tongue, for it would be so good for me, an elixir, the fountain of eternal youth, but I don't touch. A deep down warning in my soul tells me that I must treat this tree with every respect that I can.

This tree is life for you, and for all people!

Wait, I don't understand, I think. How?

Nothing happens. I am standing here, gazing at the tree. Then there are pictures blurring in my head, like fragments of memory.

In these fragmentary pictures I saw people staggering across the plain of waves. They were hungry, or wounded, or desperate in some way. They had been fighting.

I think one of them staggered to the tree and fell against it. I knew she scraped some of the sap to her mouth and was healed. She straightened and called to the others.

The next glimpse is of crowds of people crowding around, clamouring to touch the tree.

Blind eyes opened – opened wide in surprise. Lame legs began a shambling dance. Weeping was stilled. Old enemies embraced. There was a celebration!

What came next? I'm not sure. At one point I saw that a small group of the crowd began organising, making a fence around the tree, ordering people to line up and take their turn.

Storm clouds crept together and hid the risen sun.

The rest of the broken memories confuse me. There were people protesting against the organisers. There were fights amongst the crowds, terrible fights. The tree seemed mostly forgotten, since some had set up a log or a stick here and there and gathered around them. Many wandered away.

The sap still oozed, despite the tragedies that played out around it.

I want to shout out and get people's attention! I want them to come back and enjoy the tree's healing again, but it's only memory; it all happened so long ago that the people are nothing more than dust now, and the fragments and pictures are fading away into the mist. I'm on the beach, the morning sun is burning through the mist, and the slow waves are dreaming with a melancholy shu-shush, shu-shu-shush.

Go now, whispers that bell-voice again. You cannot stay here.

I'm wondering what this is all about. I ask, out loud, hoping against hope that there's an answer. Don't send me away!

What you saw has already been. What you must do is still to come.

But what must I do?

Do not be afraid. Do not be deceived. Don't give up!

But… what does it all mean? Who are you? I'm still looking around, hoping to see someone. But the voice continues, gently, kindly.

I am the Tree of Life!

I am the Architect of All!

Search, and you will find me.

I will never let you down!

Now, go.

Even while the voice says this, vision fades. The beach vanishes into fog. Or maybe I'm the one who's fading. It's like falling asleep, except that I'm starting to feel a kind of throbbing. My head hurts. My leg. I ache all over! What's going on? Am I dying? The sound of the waves grows quiet and ceases. But I hear another sound. Is it voices?

- + - + - + -

She steers around a field of metre-tall boulders and surveys the landscape ahead. There's a good view down onto the plain. The morning sun streams over from behind them and paints it all golden. She glances at the passenger next to her, who's holding the binoculars up to his eyes. She stops the rover to give him a steadier view, and waits. They haven't spoken more than a few words since beginning this drive.

He moves his field of vision fractionally by a few degrees, and again, and again, then swings back, fixes on one bearing and gives a low grunt. She finally leans over and grabs the binoculars and has a look herself.

"They're down," he reports. "About thirty-five kilometres out."

She adjusts the focus a little and soon locates what he has seen. He doesn't sound at all excited or even interested, but that's just how some people are. They survive by shutting it all out. And he's speaking his stilted Mandarin again, so that's a good sign. He's trying to build bridges. She likes speaking her mother tongue, even if his Malaysian Chinese still rubs her ears the wrong way.

There's the lander, there's the habitat. Little more than tiny specks to her, but definitely she is looking at artificial objects, about the right shape, the right separation between.

This will change everything, but whether for better or for worse? For now she has no idea.

"They found a good level area," she murmurs, continuing the Mandarin that he began. Scanning around the two objects, she can't locate anything else nearby. "Wonder how long?"

"We would have found them days ago if it wasn't for –"

"Let's not get into that again." She lowers the binoculars and stows them.

He glances at her. "So? Let's get back."

She frowns to herself. "OK – but I think…" She isn't sure what she thinks. "You know we never surveyed this area of the hills. Let's go further. I want to see it."

He glares at her. "That wasn't the deal! We need to get back. Are you just trying to avoid him? Is that it? I used to think you two were best buddies." He snorted. "It's some sort of control thing, isn't it?"

She slams the rover into forward drive and smacks the dashboard with one fist. She forgot that she has taken off the suit gloves and hits harder than she means to. Oww! "No! It's exactly not about control! And I'm not avoiding him, I just want to look over here, OK?"

Silence. Finally: "OK." He knows by now that team dynamics are more important than winning an argument. "Just don't do any more damage to my rover."

"Hey! It wasn't me! When are you going to understand that? I'm just the one who discovered the drive train problem."

They drive on in silence. The land dips here into a bowl, near the top of the ridge, then after some more flat grey basaltic caps it begins to slope away towards the western plain, the ancient crater. That's when Hung Song cries out and slams his gloved palm down on the dashboard. "Stop!"

The rover jerks to a stop, and she sees what he has seen: a suited body, lying on its back in a depression. It's not moving. She swears in Mandarin, which she hasn't done for years. "It's a – there's someone –"

"It's one of them!" Hung Song climbs out of his seat and grabs his helmet from its rack. "I'm going out!"

"Wait – you don't know –" Ju Leung knows there's a procedure for this, and that they trained for it, but that was long ago. The details escape her now. "OK! Go, go, go! I'll get us a bit closer!" The rover is still twenty or more metres from this unexpected apparition. It's as if the figure was dropped from the sky into this parched, lifeless landscape.

A few minutes later Hung Song is carrying the body back into the rover's airlock. It's a tight fit, but doable. "I can't tell if he's alive. I don't recognise him. I think it must be their NASA astronaut, Chase. I can't remember if that's his last name or his first." He's panting with the exertion and the tension of not knowing.

"Did you see anyone else out there?" she asks. She has scanned the surroundings, but doesn't have a 360-degree view.

"No. Didn't look. Too busy."

Finally they get the SSI suit into the rover and Ju Leung gently unlocks the helmet. It disconnects from the suit with the slightest of hisses. "A small pressure difference," she notes. Looking down at the man's pale, shaved scalp and pale, blue-lipped features, she doesn't recall seeing his photo in their file on the primary SSI crew, whom they had been looking forward to seeing for so long. That is a mystery that will have to wait.

There's plenty of dust on the suit. They had no time to brush it off. Her eyes begin to sting with it. "Can we… should we get him out of his suit and clean it up?"

"No," says Hung Song, "we'll only have to put it on again. Won't be long." He frowns. "That is, if he's alive. He doesn't look too good. We have to get him back to the cave." The face is white, drained of blood, the eyes closed, the features strained as if caught in a moment of exertion. But now there's no movement, not even the slightest sign of breathing.

"You drive," she says. "Drive fast. I'll try to revive him." There's more long-ago training that she needs to recall – and quickly. She reaches up for the medical locker and gets to work.

- + - + - + -

Those voices are coming again. They float in and out, but they never stay long. And why can't I understand them? The intonation and lilt of their language is familiar, but the words mean nothing to me. It must be because I'm dead. They sound bored, or depressed. Am I in a morgue? I wish I could get back to that beach and be near that tree again. Here, the air carries a heavy dust like the inside of a mine.

Now there's a long silence. They have gone away again. But I can't open my eyes. It's too much of an effort. Well, since I'm dead, of course I can't. Best to rest again. At least I'm somewhere comfortable. I'm at peace. I can't recall much, but it seems like I haven't had that peace in me for ever so long. It's still new, like a fruit I've not tasted since childhood. I was broken for ever so long, but now I've been fixed.

Later, awakening one more time, I hear one of those voices. It sounds like a woman, and it's like she's talking to herself, or perhaps she's talking to me, even though she knows I'm dead. A picture flashes at me, a memory: a movie on a screen, warriors flashing through the air and performing acrobatic feats, with people talking like this. There were words in white at the bottom of the screen. A layer of fog lifts from my mind and I know with startling clarity that the voice is speaking in Chinese. How could this be? Have the Chinese sent a crew already, in secret?

With that thought, all the terrifying and urgent details of reality fall like a sequence of stone blocks from the sky, into my fragile mind. Launch! The long Trans-Mars trajectory! Approach, and A.Q.'s self-sacrifice! Then landing! So I'm on Mars! And the base, the five of us, something went wrong and I had to… but some accident, falling off, disaster, horror, despair, asphyxiating, dying, a beach… that's where the great Tree came into it! So I'm really dead?

My eyes fly open and if I wasn't as weak as a newborn I would sit up and cry out. It hurts, all at once like that.

My eyes are so blurry. All I can see is a figure, just out of reach to one side, doing something on a bench with their back to me. I'm in distress, no idea what's going on, and how I wish that person would turn around and notice me! I always read that a near-death experience gives you a view from up in the ceiling somewhere, looking down on your own body. I try and fail to speak or even make more than a tiny grunt in my throat. But I think I'm in a small, dark room with a low ceiling. It's a rocky ceiling, rugged and unfinished. That's all I can tell. This isn't like being dead, as far as I know. But what do I know about being dead? This is my first time.

The effort of keeping my eyes open is too much. And the darkness is soothing, if it wasn't for the thick smell of ground rock.

Then there are more voices. In amongst the nonsense Chinese words I hear a new voice, a man, saying something about food. Ah, he's telling the nonsense-speaker to go and get something to eat. In English! That's better. That's much better. Unlikely that I've been kidnapped by secret Chinese taikonauts if they speak English together.

Oh, it's obvious where I am! Now I remember! The NewSpace crew had one Chinese-born woman, and maybe another Asian, a man. So I'm in their place, wherever it is. They rescued me. Or they retrieved my cold, stiff corpse.

So whether or not I survived my insane accident, Don and Asya and Annika and A.Q. are slowly running out of power for their life support! I need to get the spare connector to them! This time I open my eyes and move my head to one side. The rest of my body is coming into focus. I think I can sit up. My head is spinning. I have to tell them about this.

Hey, I'm breathing! I only just noticed. But I feel I want to cough up all this dust. Does that mean… Surely it means I'm alive!

Wheeeoow! I have never felt such relief in my life. I get a coughing fit that convulses my body.

Whoa – I think I just rolled off the bed onto the floor. Ouch.

- + - + - + -

Ju Leung stares at Marco da Silva across the small table. "There's nothing we can do until our rover is recharged."

"Just give me an oxygen refill and I will walk back! I'm fine, really!"

Just then Leo Fortuyn walks into the tiny meeting room carrying two mugs of steaming tea. Ju Leung notices, as if for the first time, how his stained and tattered flight suit and scraggly beard make him look more like a shipwrecked sailor than the commander of the first Mars mission. She will have to give the appearance of following his lead for a while more, but he knows very well what hold she has on him. Sooner or later the matter will resolve itself, and this farce will be over.

"No, Mr da Silva," says Fortuyn, placing one of the mugs in front of Marco, "I'm afraid you'll be staying here until we can make the journey. It's unfortunate about our comms rack, as I explained, so we can't even notify your crew that you're safe. The rover's radio is the best we have left." He takes a seat at one end of the room and puts his feet up. "To be totally honest, you're in no condition to be travelling. Concentrate on resting up, and we'll concentrate on getting our rover ready for an extended drive." He chuckles. "It's in almost as bad a shape as you are."

Da Silva groans and put his face in his hands. "Right. I can see that," he mutters, while coughing sharply. He raises his head again, and his expression has cleared. "But I want to tell you about what happened," he says brightly. "You know, when I died. Or nearly died, or whatever."

Fortuyn glances at her and raises his eyebrows in a question. She shrugs. "It's true," she says quickly, "when we found you I couldn't find even a heartbeat. So you may have been clinically dead for a short time. You're a very lucky man."

"Yeah, man, you came along at exactly the right time," da Silva says. "It's amazing how it all worked out. I mean, I'm not a religious person, okay? I'll just tell it to you like it was. I'm still trying to understand it myself."

Fortuyn sips his tea and watches the Brazilian. Ju Leung notices that da Silva hasn't touched his. She nods cautiously. "Go ahead. We're listening."

Da Silva looks at her, then at Fortuyn, seemingly at a loss for where to start. "Well, I, umm…" She waits. He seems very uncertain of himself now. "Uhh… maybe later," he says finally. "Just let me get it straight in my own head first." He tries to smile. "You might not believe me."

- + - + - + -