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The Snows of Earth

by Michael Heald

      Martin Inuk grimaced. He dropped his hoe and put his gnarled, trembling fingers into the small of his back as if such an act of faith regarding the touch of a human hand would dull the searing flare of unrelenting pain. While taking deep, cleansing breaths, he wiped the sweat and dust from his eyes with the callused palm of his hand.

      The creek at the edge of his land flowed black and deep and slow from the snowmelt of the distant mountains. Only the waving fronds of the turnip greens and the bare furrowed field that was ready for planting beyond the irrigation ditch broke the oppressive monotony of the red scrubland and shimmering heat.

      A final spasm straightened him up in a painful rigor, as if reminding him that he was no longer the captain or the author of his fate.

      As the waves of pain receded, he let a moan escape from his lips despite his clenched teeth. For a moment, he regretted discarding the Araya root tea that the nurse prentice in First Landing had given him last month for the pain. She had told him to move closer to where the Landers could help him. When Martin had grown tired of angrily replaying her words in his mind as he hobbled home, he had poured the amber liquid onto the cracked ground. The scorching dust hissed like a snake as it licked up the moisture.

      He rubbed his eyes. With the ending of the spasms, he crouched down and let his head rest in his hands in order to catch his breath.

      The turnips would have to wait a bit while he rested a spell. Not that his work was doing any good. No one came from First Landing to see their crazy old captain and what he had found that this new world had to offer.

      When would they become settlers instead of castaways?

      “Great Gramps!”

      Martin looked up. Rust-colored dust devils puffed up around a running figure in the adjacent red and cracked field. Jumping over the irrigation ditch, the hazy figure escaped from the swirling dust and slid on its knees in the ochre mud, emerging as a laughing twelve-year-old boy in gray shorts. He vaulted onto his feet, covered the final fifty meters in six strides and began to jump back and forth over Martin’s head, squealing with delight as he somersaulted in the air. Each time he landed, his feet sank into the thick ooze with a soft squishing sound.

      Martin grabbed the handle of the hoe that he had worn smooth over the eighty years since planetfall and pulled himself to his feet. His knees ached just watching the boy. “Your ma won’t be happy seeing you coming home filthy again.”

      Jimmy slid to a halt and leaned over to examine the thick layer of mud that coated his feet and lower legs. “It’s not as bad as last time, Great Gramps,” he said solemnly when he stood up, “so she won’t mind!” He broke into a broad smile that reflected the unconcerned certainty of someone who has satisfied the cardinal rule of boyhood.

      Martin snorted and unwrapped a dirty yellow rag from his head that served as hat and towel. He dabbed at the sweat that trickled off his bald scalp and pooled onto the scratchy whiskers of his chin. The beard felt strange. He had always demanded a clean-shaven crew on his starship, but he had given up the razor after the cancer spread to his bones. After all, a man couldn’t go to his grave without some semblance of rebellion before accepting the judgment of fate. Death whispered to him, but had not called his name yet.

      “What brings you visiting, Jimmy?”

      “The ship!”

      Martin nodded once. His dead starship had burned up in the atmosphere eighty years ago, but occasionally Landers still uncovered twisted pieces of blackened debris. He held his hand out. “Let’s see what you found! Same bet as last time—a dozen of your ma’s cookies if I can tell you where it came from on the ship?”

      Jimmy shook his head and small flecks of mud flew off his lank black hair. “Not that ship. THE ship. The one ma and pa are always telling me about!” He grabbed Martin’s hand and yanked up and down as if he were working a piston. “We’re going home! To Earth!”

      Martin grimaced as his lower back twanged painfully. He retrieved his arm and stretched backwards, but the pain seemed to rumble menacingly, like a bear hunting seals across the snow. Maybe he would get some Araya root tea after all, he thought as he took a deep breath. “Hold on! What ship? What did you see?”

      “The rescue ship, silly! What other ship would be coming? And Governor Bremer told me to get you, and I got you. Now, come see!”

      Martin frowned in puzzlement and glanced at the sky and land round about for anything different on this day compared to the last twenty-five thousand. Pale green saltbush as tall as his waist enclosed his small field and cleansed the river’s brackish snowmelt. Rows of turnip shoots alternated with onions and beans in the irrigated field. The pregnant air smelled of salt. Further out, the red clay and sand of the barren plains harbored islands of yellow scrub grass that thrived despite the infrequent rains, and ran on to meet a horizon of cloudless turquoise. To the north, jagged snow-tipped mountains of burnt orange clawed at the sky.

      Martin shook his head. “There’s nothing out there. You’ll get your ma upset with talk like that. There’s no rescue ship. This is our home!”

      Jimmy grabbed Martin by the hand again and started to pull. “Come see!”

      Martin lay on the ground to rest halfway through his ten-kilometer trudge to First Landing. Despite careful footfalls, his back had seized him with hard spasms. As he lay panting, he remembered just two years before that he had been able to make the trip in an hour, often accompanied by Jimmy, and always laughing happily with the delicious freedom each long stride brought to him in the half-g gravity.

      Grunting, he planted his cane into the ground, and gingerly climbed to his feet. He could never tell when some small misstep would cause his tumor-infiltrated vertebrae to collapse, leaving his body numb and lifeless like a dead shell, but his mind alive to curse the way of his dying. He hobbled along, thankful that he could still feel the grinding aches in his 120-year-old knees and ankles.

      Dust coated Martin’s throat, and he spat to the side to cleanse his mouth. Despite the remnants of the red clay-packed road, he nearly stumbled into a shallow pothole. He cursed Governor Bremer for refusing to use the last of the fusion generators to prepare the surrounding lands for roads, fields, and farms, always maintaining the fantasy that the continuous power boost to the comm link would send their distress signal to Earth—if it pierced the intense magnetic field and radiation belts that bathed the planet, if it found the ephemeral worm hole open, and if the activity of system’s flare sun was at low ebb.

      “Ifs” kill men.

      Martin tasted bile and spat again, numbly watching the rusty earth suck up the moisture. For the good of the Service, for the greater glory of Humankind, and for his love of the Challenge, he had gambled his ship eighty years ago to find the worm hole and open the quadrant—gambled and lost, killing his ship and most of his crew in the process.

      “Captains don’t fear death,” he said in a choking voice, and he repeated it again and again until his breathing quieted.

      He squared his shoulders and started for First Landing. “Rescue ship, my ass,” he grumbled. The distress signal could not penetrate the magnetic field and radiation belts then; it couldn’t do so now. Maybe when Bremer squashed everyone’s hopes of rescue once too often the Landers would start trying to survive on this world instead of whining for rescue. The fusion power generators would give out soon, and if they lost the cryogenic plant and animal DNA stock, they would not just be thrown back to the stone age like ape men instead of star men—they would be dead.

      Martin snorted. No one had listened to him in forty years, not since he had “voluntarily” retired after the last of his crew died.

      He passed a scrawny cow grazing saltbush next to a patchy field of untended flax—all that Bremer would allow from the DNA stores. Martin turned towards the heart of First Landing that bordered the river. The paths projected inwards like bent spokes of a half wheel. On the periphery, the dwellings were little more than hollowed out piles of pink clay housing fourth generation families who had no claim to the gleaming structures of the first Landers at the center. Further in, the houses grew in size to mounds that boasted walls of rusted metal sheets that had been scavenged from broken and discarded landing craft. At the center, six white domes, streaked with rust and flaking paint, surrounded a small commons of red scrubland.

      As Martin approached, the wind whipped up playful dust devils that danced around the buildings and then plunged into the silent black river that flowed as smooth as glass behind the domes. Every one of the two hundred people of First Landing milled around a white needle ship that stood in the center of the commons. The older children sprinted from side to side and somersaulted over its five-meter height while the hum of excited conversation hovered over the milling adults like the drone of bees drunk on the leavings of an apple press. The young children contented themselves by leaping several meters in the air like grasshoppers of Earth and yanking the arm of any adult who was too slow to move out of the way.

      Jimmy ran to Martin. “You’re here! I told them you’d be here. The governor didn’t believe me, but I knew you’d come. We’re going home!” Jimmy grabbed his arm and pulled him forward.

      “Gently! Gently!” As Martin tottered forward, the crowd parted around him; a few snickered, others touched his shoulder gently. Jimmy hugged him quickly around the waist, blushed as if in embarrassment over such a display of affection, and then leaped away to join his friends. At the front, Governor Bremer stood next to a thin, frowning woman with skin that held the bronze luster of freshly irrigated scrubland. Her straight black hair fluttered over her ears in the gentle breeze, and her black eyes darted suspiciously to follow the fluid movement of the Landers. She wore the unadorned blue jumpsuit of Earth.

      “Captain Inuk, it’s good to see you!” Governor Bremer held out a thin hairless arm and took Martin by the elbow to guide him forward.       “Captain, may I introduce Lieutenant Cosway. Lieutenant, this is Captain Inuk.”

      Martin reached out hesitantly, but she grabbed his hand. Her cold and dry skin felt like a mountain frost before a spring sunrise. He grimaced as Cosway squeezed his hand. With a twitch of a condescending smile, she flicked his hand away.

      “Captain, it’s good to finally meet you. And still alive after eighty years! The disappearance of your ship has been the stuff of myth. I’ll be happy to report on my return to Earth that it seems to have been nothing but faulty navigation.”

      Martin stood at attention and kept his trembling hand frozen behind his back. “That, and fate.”

      Cosway raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize a Captain believed in fate.”

      Martin shrugged as he worked his aching fingers back and forth. “A captain learns many things waiting for a rescue that never comes, and even more when all hope of rescue is lost.”

      Cosway chuckled. “I am not your rescue, but I may be your hope.”

      Governor Bremer broke in. “Don’t talk nonsense, Martin. Of course she’s come to start our rescue. She followed the worm hole just like you did!”

      “Not quite like you did. I’m going back.”

      Governor Bremer nodded at the white ship. “How long will it take Earth to send back a transport for the rest of us?”

      Cosway’s smile twitched again. “For the descendents of the Flying Dutchman? Ten years after I return to Earth, I imagine.”

      Governor Bremer frowned as his smile melted away. “So long?”

      Martin cleared his throat. “Perhaps you should reconsider deploying the DNA stores?”

      Governor Bremer bared his teeth at Martin, and his nose whistled like a seal in heat. “We’ve had this discussion before,” he hissed. “How many people died when you first tried to terraform?”

      Martin sighed. “We’ve been through this. We made mistakes. I’ve told you that, but they’ve been corrected and ...”

      “No!” Bremer shouted. He shot a side-ways glance at Cosway and then screwed his face up with a crooked smile. “Besides,” he said loudly to mask the sudden quiet of the crowd, “We ARE going home! We will NOT terraform!” He patted Martin’s shoulder as if he were some misguided child and then turned and faced the crowd. “We’ll live off the stores for the next ten years till the rescue ship comes.” He raised his outstretched hands over his head. “We are going HOME!”

      A cheer rose. Fists pumped the air, and children somersaulted to dizzying heights. Bremer melted into the crowd to acknowledge their thanksgiving. The people pawed at his shoulders and back as he passed through.

      Martin watched him go for a moment and then said absently, “The Ampoliros.”

      “What?”

      “It wasn’t the Flying Dutchman.” Martin raised his eyes and met Cosway’s gaze. “The Ampoliros. That was the name of my ship.”

      “Of course. My apologies.” Cosway bowed stiffly. “May I give you a tour of my ship?”

Martin turned and scanned the vessel. At its base, it was wide enough for three men to walk abreast and tapered to the front like a sleek icicle the color of sunlight in deep winter. “It looks like one of my scout vessels,” he said.

      “Ah! But your scouts had to return to the mother ship. Mine is a worm ship with extended range, designed to burrow through the holes in space and map the labyrinth.”

      “How did you find us? Did you receive our distress signal?”

      Cosway laughed. “No, I’ve seen your comm rig in the dome. The signal is too weak to reach space, let alone pierce the worm hole.” She led Martin to a small platform that seemed disconnected from the rest of the ship. Soundlessly, they began to ascend.

      “How did you find us then?”

      “I followed a worm hole. You happened to be here. Luck.”

      “You believe in luck?”

      “As much as you believe in fate. Sometimes luck is all that keeps a wormer from coming out in a nova! But when I bring back word of the Dutchman ... eh, the Ampoliros, I think they’ll make me give up wormer’s luck and put on a captain’s uniform!”

      “I’m glad we could be of service,” Martin said dryly.

      Cosway smiled hungrily with symmetric white teeth.

      The lift opened into the belly of the ship. Martin shuffled after Cosway into the cargo bay. “They’ll die if they go back to earth,” he said quietly. “Four generations in half gee and you tell them they’re going back to Earth!”

      Cosway stopped and turned to face him. “Do you think I’m a fool?” she sputtered. “Of course they’re not going back!”

      “Then why did you tell them they would?”

      “Landers tend to develop quaint ideas about Earth. It’s best to humor them.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      Cosway sighed. “I just want to go home, all right? If I have to tell some ignorant Landers what they want to hear, I’ll do that!”

      Startled, Martin drew away. Quizzically, he examined Cosway and then the cargo bay. Something was missing. A soft white glow suffused the small storage room and the white metallic bins seemed to fade into the white walls. Several displays the size of his hand blinked red and blue at eye level. A closed hatch blocked the way to the forward compartment.

      And he realized what he missed—the crystal thrum that every spacer recognized in his bones.

      “You can’t get back, can you?”

      Cosway’s right eye twitched, and she crossed her arms in front of her. “I can get back. The question is—what will I tell Earth when I do?”

      Cosway bared her teeth like a trapped bear and grabbed Martin’s arm. She leaned close and her breath felt warm and moist on Martin’s cheek and smelled faintly of apples in the frost of a clean fall morning.

      “I’m not staying here,” she hissed. “My place is Earth.” She narrowed her eyes as if considering. “I can take you with me,” she said too quickly. “I can take one other person. Earth would want to hear the fate of the Ampoliros from you!”

      Martin chuckled quietly. “I’d die before you left orbit. And you know that, don't you? It'd be easier for you that way.”

      He reached up and grasped Cosway’s wrist, peeling her hand back like a dirty bandage that was stuck to a deep sore. She gasped in embarrassment when he held her hand up in triumph. But then, his wrist snapped with a quiet pop. Trembling, he dropped her arm and clutched his wrist to his chest.

      “You know the regs,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Once the first generation is born, a lost ship becomes a new colony. No rescue. Ever. That’s why each ship carries animal and plant DNA in cryo. A cheap way to seed the stars without the risk of returning contagion! Bremer's convinced everyone that Earth wants us back, no matter what the regs say!”

      He snorted derisively, winced, and then took a shuddering breath.       “How many crystals shattered when you came through?”

      Cosway stepped back and licked her lips. “I didn’t shatter any crystals!”

      Martin breathed quickly to fight the red haze of pain that rose from his wrist. He glared at Cosway and refused to speak.

      “One!” Cosway finally blurted out.

      “Which one?”

      “Navigation!”

      “Better than us.” Martin muttered. He coughed and took a deep breath. “Don’t try to pierce the worm with a cracked crystal. I lost eighty per cent of my crew when I tried.”

      Cosway licked her lips. “I only need one more crystal.”

      “I don’t have one to give you. Our Nav crystal cracked first.”

      “Do you think Earth technology has been sitting still for eighty years? It doesn’t have to be the Nav! I can bypass the matrix from any crystal and feed the input directly into the interstitial array of the string matrix!”

      “It won’t matter. Only one of our five crystals survived our second attempt to open the worm hole. With the stellar flares, the fluctuating magnetic fields, the irregular gravity waves, you’ll blow up just trying to stabilize the worm even if you get it open.”

      “With your crystal, I’ll make it! Where is it?”

      Martin shook his head. “You want me to give it to you? The fusion generators will fail soon. My one good crystal will keep the DNA cryo units operational for hundreds of years, long after Bremer is dead and my people realize that no rescue is coming. But you've sentenced them to death! They’ll drain the DNA stores in the next ten years because of your stupid promise, living day to day for the memory of Earth rather than preparing this world for the promise of tomorrow. You knew there would be no rescue and you killed them!”

      Martin’s shoulders slumped with sudden fatigue. He turned back to the lift. Cosway stepped in front of him and held her hand up to stop him.       “What do you want?” she pleaded.

      Tiredly, Martin squinted at her. “I want to birth a world.”

      “What do you mean, there is no rescue?” Bremer held his arm over his head with a finger pointing at Cosway’s disappearing needle ship. “And you have the gall to tell me now? When it is too late to demand from Cosway the simple justice of rescue?”

      In the commons, the silent unmoving throng of the Landers—all clad in the white of celebration clothes—surrounded Martin and Bremer. Even the continuous somersaulting of the young children had died away. They stared at the sky with gaping jaws and upraised eyes.

      The faces of the adults changed from the flushed excitement of impending rescue, to the shock of hope snuffed out, and, finally, to the burning fury of betrayal. One by one, they lowered their gazes from the sky and glared at Martin.

      Bremer clenched trembling fists in front of his chest. “She promised us! You promised us!”

      Martin continued to stare at the sky. Cosway had become irrelevant. She would not return. He took a deep, satisfied breath. Hope was not crushed, but birthed anew.

      Martin wished Cosway wormer’s luck, and, suddenly, he realized that he meant it.

      “Goodbye,” he whispered.

      “What?” Bremer shouted.

      Martin looked away from the empty blue of the sky and met Bremer’s unblinking stare. Martin chose to lower his eyes first. It was not time for such games. He sighed and shook his head. “Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

      “Oh, I understand,” Bremer hissed. “I understand completely. You did this. You and your paranoid fixation on some dead world! You convinced her to leave us here to rot, and you’ve condemned us all to death!”

      Martin nodded once with resignation. “Better you believe that. Better for the hard life that comes next.”

      Bremer’s face turned dusky red as he sputtered incomprehensibly. Martin did not wait to discover the lost words, but shuffled over to the edge of the crowd. He locked eyes with a bearded man whose straight blond hair reached to the middle of his back.

      “Step aside.”

      The man held Martin’s gaze for a moment, his snarling rage clashing with Martin’s cool certainty. He exhaled suddenly and seemed to collapse in on himself. He stepped aside. Like the cracking of an ice shelf on summer’s eve, the people behind moved aside, and Martin hobbled through their midst.

      As Martin approached the edge of the commons, Bremer shouted, “You did this!”

      Shouts of “Scum!” and “Traitor!” and “Get him!” sprang from the crowd. A moment later, Martin felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. A red stone the size of his thumb clattered to the ground beside him. Martin pitched forward onto his hands and knees. Warm blood dripped onto his neck and shoulders, and his hands stung from the imbedded grit in his bloody palms.

      The next stone struck him in his back. His fractured wrist collapsed, and he screamed as he fell onto his shoulder.

      A cry of triumph rose from the Landers. A barrage of stones cascaded around Martin—the smooth stones bruising the thin muscles of his legs and back, and the sharp rocks cutting exposed flesh.

      A wail rose above the cries of the Landers. Suddenly, Jimmy landed next to Martin.

      “No!” he screamed.

      He draped himself over Martin’s quivering body. The barrage of stones petered out. Jimmy winced through hot tears as the last stones cut his back. He refused to cry out or move.

      Silence followed, broken occasionally by the rustle of shirts as the light breeze fluttered among the Landers who stared unblinking like alabaster statues.

      Jimmy rolled onto his feet and helped Martin up.

      “You shouldn’t have come, Jimmy. But thank you.” Wheezing, Martin bent over, supporting his body with his hands on his knees. He turned his bloodstained face and looked at the crowd. Their fury had melted away leaving ... nothing. No remorse. No pity.

      One by one, the Landers turned their backs on Martin.

      He lowered his head and patted Jimmy on the shoulder. “I’ll be all right. Go back to your parents.”

      “But ...”

      “I’ll be all right.”

      Alone, Martin Inuk hobbled away from First Landing.

      Martin lay dying three months later.

      No one came to visit.

      No one but Jimmy.

      Martin lay on a pile of dried saltbush cuttings in his dark hovel that he had cut out of packed red clay long years before. The dead ashes of the fire pit swirled up with the occasional hot breeze that rippled through the crawl hole that led to the outside. A thin ray of light crept inside from the small chimney hole in the ceiling.

      Jimmy sat on the cool dirt floor and leaned back against the wall.       “Governor Bremer has turned on the terraforming units. A lot of people are grumbling because he’s shut down the stores and sent them to live away from First Landing. He said Cosway lied to us.”

      “Do you believe that?”

      Jimmy shrugged and stared at the ground. “She didn’t say anything. Just got in her ship and went away.”

      They were quiet for a moment and the sound of a gentle blowing came from outside. Jimmy rubbed his nose. “Governor Bremer says it’ll take ten years, but we’ll have enough of everything by then.”

      Martin swallowed and took shallow breaths. “That’s good. Cosway helped him decide that.”

      “Will I have a dog? Ma showed me an old picture from Earth, and it had a dog in it. I think I’d like that.”

      “Maybe some day.”

      Jimmy drew on the dirt floor with his finger. “Ma told me not to come here. She said you told Lieutenant Cosway not to send anyone back when she left, to leave us here forever.”

      “Your ma is a wise woman.” Martin coughed once and grimaced.

      “I wanted to see Earth,” Jimmy said reproachfully. “I wanted to go home!”

      Slowly, Martin rolled onto his side and reached underneath the saltbush by his head. “I have a secret for you. You promise never to show these to anyone?”

      Jimmy nodded and wiped his eyes.

      Martin opened his palm. Four round crystals shimmered in the darkness of the hut. “Even dead and cracked, their beautiful.”

      “What are they?”

      “Hold out your hands.”

      Martin held up a sphere of clear crystal the size of his thumb. A golden spark shimmered inside and a series of fine cracks radiated outwards from the center. “A single snowflake in the dawn light,” Martin said. He dropped the crystal into Jimmy’s cupped hands. “Now, a dust devil under a cloudless sky.”

      He held up a second translucent crystal that sparkled pale blue amidst the faceted cracks that ran throughout its body. “Frost under the full moon.” It gave off a soft tap as it settled next to its brother. “Now, cool sand in a hollow during the heat of day.”

      A third crystal appeared dull white in the glow of the other two. A myriad of surface pocks marred the surface. “A wet snowfall in the noon day.” It clinked into Jimmy’s palm. “The shimmering plains in the morning’s sun.”

      A fourth crystal was warm to touch, but completely black and opaque.       “Drifting snow in the shadows of night.” He dropped it onto Jimmy’s hands. “Red dust on black waters.”

      He enclosed Jimmy’s hands with his own dry and gnarled fingers. “My Inuit people name the snows of my home. Now, when you look at these crystals, you will see a land and a world waiting for new names and fresh beginnings.”

      Martin rolled off the saltbush cuttings and grimaced I pain as he rose to a crouch. He laid a thin, trembling hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.

      Jimmy stared wide-eyed at the crystals in his hands. “What will they do?”

      “They will help you to find home.”

      He shuffled to the crawl hole and then dropped to his hands and knees.

      “Where are you going, Great Gramps?”

      Martin Inuk looked up as if listening. “To find the snows of Earth. Death has called me home.”

Michael Heald is a physician working with the U.S. Government. Currently, he is stationed overseas with his wife and two teenage children.

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