Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘I know. But the fact was, she had been dreaming about it all her life. Another planet with two suns and two moons and not a soul on it. Terra lit up her sleep at night, she painted pictures of it. So by the time she made the discovery it didn’t feel like a happy accident. It felt like a homecoming.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘There’s a whole lot of mythology surrounding the discovery of Terra-Two. Some people even think she was a prophet.’ Astrid’s wide-eyed gaze irritated him.

‘I think I do,’ she said. ‘How else would you explain it? She spends her whole life writing about Terra, claiming it’s habitable when they didn’t have the technology to know that then. Claiming there’s life somewhere else in the universe and years later we find that everything she said was correct. How do you explain that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Harry sighed. He hadn’t had breakfast yet and his blood sugar was low. ‘I think if you’re crazy – and she actually was sent to an asylum – you find what you’re looking for.’ Astrid’s face fell. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘she wasn’t right about everything. Have you read her papers? She says that Terra is like the Garden of Eden or something.’ Astrid was still staring at him in wounded disbelief. ‘Astrid? You know that’s just some New Creationist crap. That there are some people on this ship chosen by God who will make it to Terra. You can’t honestly believe it.’

‘I don’t know why I thought I could tell you anything,’ Astrid hissed, her face growing dark with fury.

‘Yeah,’ Harry said. ‘Why did you tell me? You know I don’t believe in any of that stuff.’

‘I don’t know. I came downstairs and you were here. I just wanted to talk to someone. Anyone.’

‘To tell someone that you’re part of some cult now? Because I think you should probably keep that stuff to yourself.’

‘I dream about it too.’ She waved a hand at the frozen projection of Terra-Two, which was casting a dull light on the side of her face. ‘Every single night.’ She stepped back. ‘For months I’ve been dreaming about the beach and the trees and the types of birds that land on them without knowing what it was. Then this footage from the cameras arrives, and it’s exactly the same as my dreams.’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘I know how it sounds, okay. But I also know how the sand bakes under the suns so at midday it’s too hot to walk on. The bittersweet fruits that grow in the forest: there’s one that’s bright red and hangs low on the trees. It’s the size and shape of a human heart. Tough as a mango but when you bite…’ Astrid closed her eyes for a half-second, her chest rising in silent rapture. ‘Juice bursts out, sweet and thick as blood that dries black in the sun. On the footage. You can see it on the footage – the fruits, just in the corner and just for half a frame, but they’re there. And the reefs, Harry. Don’t you remember, a couple of weeks ago in Cai’s lesson, I said that I was sure there were reefs. And now there’s evidence.’

‘I don’t know what that proves.’ Harry wondered if Astrid’s delusion was something he should mention to Commander Sheppard.

‘That I’m not making this up.’ Her voice was raised now, her cheeks flushed again.

Harry was still staring at her in amused scepticism. Astrid exhaled in fury and pushed him aside, striding towards the door.

‘Fine then,’ she said. ‘Ignore me.’ Her voice echoed down the corridor.

Harry pulled his goggles back on and returned to the simulation. He was running again on the treadmill, though on a lower speed because – though he didn’t consciously admit it – he was looking for something. He replayed the footage from the beginning, running through the forest, ankles rustling through the thick undergrowth. Most of the trees were tall, letting only slivers of light down into the forest floor. Harry ran past the ancient trees that lined the edges of the river, their roots bulging up from the soil, then he noted something. He paused the simulation, rewound, zoomed in. Blood-red fruit, the size and shape of a human heart.

Chapter 21 POPPY

²⁰⁰⁵

LATER, THEY WOULD TELL her that sadness was a sickness. Poppy suspected that she’d caught it from her mother. She imagined that it had passed like poison from her breast milk, or had been woven into her genes from conception. Perhaps it filled the air in their flat like a miasma, and drove everyone away, all the boyfriends Poppy’s mother invited into their home.

Poppy’s best memories were from those moments in between the boyfriends and the bouts of her mother’s teary-eyed self-loathing and depression. When they would watch Fresh Prince together while eating butter sandwiches and stuffing the crusts down the side of the sofa. Or staying up all night toasting marshmallows on the stove, and turning unpaid bills into origami boats that they sent racing across the bathtub.