Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Okay,’ Harry threw his hands up in mock surrender. ‘I don’t see why we need to get all religious about this. We – humans – chose who would go. We—’ he waved at the party sat around the table, ‘were picked because we’re qualified. Not because of destiny or God or anything. Think about it: there’s no intelligent life on that planet, in the whole solar system, in fact. From where I’m sitting, consciousness seems like a pretty rare thing. Isn’t it our job to spread our ideas, our technology, our humanity as far across this empty space as possible? I don’t see why you’re so caught up on making Terra better; why can’t we just make it an-other? Another Earth, another Britain, another empire.’

Juno shuddered.

‘I hope you’ve realized,’ said Jesse, ‘that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty means that no one country is allowed to own Terra-Two. The moon doesn’t belong to the Americans and the Russians don’t own Mars. Assuming we are the first to land on T2, it won’t belong to Britain. It will be international commons. “The province of all mankind”.’

‘I know. I’m just saying,’ Harry continued, ‘that everyone says that humans are the problem, that we destroy everything we touch, but we’re creative and resourceful. We survive in the most inhospitable environments – like out here! – we build things out of nothing, we create diamonds in labs and we eradicated smallpox. We’re amazing. We’re fucking brilliant. We’ll make Terra-Two better just by being there. We’ll bring it to life. Intelligent life.’

Eliot saw it again, then. Some shape in the darkness behind the window. At first it looked like his own reflection but the second time he looked…

‘Eliot?’ Dr Golinsky’s eyes followed his to the window. ‘What is it?’

‘Oh… I just—’ he stared back at his bowl. ‘I thought I saw something, that’s all. ‘

He didn’t have to raise his spoon to his mouth to know that he couldn’t eat any more, and when he glanced up again he saw her. Ara. She was floating behind the glass, her lips stained black, her eyes half-open and sightless.

It was all Eliot could do not to cry out in horror. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the image would disappear. His heart was tight as a fist in his chest and the blood drained from his head.

‘Eliot?’ It was Dr Golinsky’s voice, but he was too scared to look up at her, in case he might have to see that face again, that terrible face. ‘Eliot, are you okay?’

He didn’t remember getting up from the table, only he must have because the next thing he knew he was running down the corridor. He made it to the bathroom just in time to vomit in the sink. Gazing at the sludge of macro broth curdled with bile as it washed down the plughole, Eliot knew that he would never be able to stomach it again.

He sank down onto the floor, his head pressed against his knees, shaking all over, his heart galloping behind his ribs.

A few minutes later, the door creaked open. Eliot dreaded looking up to find the confused face of one of his crew members. How could he explain to Juno or Harry what was wrong with him? He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Go away,’ he hissed, but a cold hand touched his. For just a second, he thought it might be Ara, as cold as she had been in his arms when he’d pulled her out of the river and clung to her until the ambulance came.

When he opened his eyes, Cai was crouching down beside him. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, his stained fingers tight on Eliot’s skin. ‘It’s okay.’ He said it again in a soft voice that Eliot had never heard him use before.

‘What is okay?’ Eliot heard himself say when he could finally speak.

Cai leant back on his feet, the bones in his thighs making a sharp line through his trousers. ‘When I was eleven, my father hanged himself in the downstairs bathroom. Tied an extension cable around his neck and the exposed piping in the ceiling and then let go.’

Eliot shuddered.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Don’t apologize,’ Cai said. ‘You can’t hold onto these things.’ He took a pen out of his pocket and pulled back a sleeve, exposing the olive skin on his wrist. He began to draw a hexagon, some bent lines, NH2, OH, OH, all the blue veins in his arm protruding. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘No, it looks like some molecule…?’

‘Dopamine,’ Cai said. ‘And this?’ He quickly sketched another molecule.

‘Serotonin?’ Eliot guessed.

‘These are the only things that really make you happy.’

Eliot glanced up at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘People will try to tell you that it was some misalignment of the stars, or that she had some sickness in her soul. Some blackness that, if you had fathomed it earlier, you could have called her out of and made her whole again.’ Eliot felt a lump rise in his throat. ‘But that’s not true. It’s just bad chemistry, mixed-up biology. Not enough monoamines to make her happy. Ara was a sick person. My dad was a sick person. There is nothing I could have done to save him.’

Eliot frowned.

‘I realized that when I was twenty-four,’ Cai said, ‘and it freed me. So I’m telling you.’