What happened here? It was a question more to himself than to the girl, who stood a few feet away. She was the first person he met since landing. She and her dog. The first living thing in three days. The dog seemed friendly. She didn’t. If anything, she seemed slightly irritated by his presence, and by the fact that her dog, in its excitement of making friends with this stranger, seemed to be completely ignoring her pleas to get back on heel and continue walking.
She looked like she was about fifteen or sixteen. Maya had been eighteen when Neel had left. They had had a fight when he had told her he was leaving for the Space Corps. She had stopped speaking to him, refused to meet him when he had gone to say goodbye, and not returned any of the calls he had made from his training base at Luna. At the end of six months he had stopped trying and had decided to volunteer for Deep Space instead of Solar as he had originally planned. And then he had been gone for fifteen years. Fifteen years of his time. A lot more on Earth because of the time debt.
He glanced one more at the girl from the corner of his eyes and decided she looked nothing like Maya. The height and features may be somewhat similar, but Maya had so much life in her. Whereas this girl had such a bored, sullen and uninterested look about her. Like she had seen what was there to see of the world in her sixteen years and decided that it was a somewhat distasteful place one had to somehow endure rather than enjoy.
What do you mean what happened?
Never mind. There was probably no point asking her. She would be much too young to have seen anything but the frozen waste anyway. He had heard rumours of the Fall but had never imagined it would have been so severe. If the Space Corps were good at one thing, it was controlling what information reached the frontline. Only indication he had had that something major might have gone wrong was the quizzical look and the You would probably be disappointed from the rehabilitation officer when he had requested the dropship. He had to spend a bit of a fortune for a personal pod which he could land near his village rather than go to one of the main ports in the public shuttles. After fifteen years, a few extra hours had somehow felt unbearable. Luckily they had managed to find him one, one of those early models, salvaged and refitted for hire.
The village had been in ruins. His house – or rather his parents house, all of his uncles houses, Maya’s house a few houses down the road – when you were a child in the village it was all your house, you probably spent more time in the houses of your cousins and relatives and neighbours than in your own house, flowing like water from one to the other, eating somewhere, sleeping somewhere else, playing somewhere else. All fused together now in one continuous block of broken walls, collapsed roofs and that greyish green vegetation which seemed to cover everything now, half moss, half grass. Maybe the only thing which survived in the cold.
He had tried looking for something, maybe a wall from his parents house he would recognise, maybe a shattered photo frame which once held the family photo, a piece of furniture. Something which would remind him. Maybe something from his childhood to take into his pocket and keep with him for the rest of his life. But it was as if someone had taken the village through a paper shredder. The little pieces which were left were too unrecognisable to piece together into anything meaningful.
Standing there amongst the ruins, he had tried to imagine how the last days would have felt like. He had just felt blank. And guilty. Guilty because he felt blank. And guilty as he had not been there to help. Not that anyone would have expected him to. They had always had his older brother for that. Rudro, the dependable one, the one everyone liked and respected. Even when they were kids, somehow Rudro used to become the unelected leader of their gang, no questions asked.
Rudro is my little fire, people will be drawn to his warmth. His grandmother would say, running her wrinkled fingers through Rudro’s neatly combed hair, messing them up a little and then straightening them again. She liked making predictions about people. But Neel she would say drawing him into her lap and planting a soft kiss on the top of his head, Neel would slip between your fingers and go, like water, and like the ocean he would have strength and depth but most people would only ever see the surface. See. See how he is running away from his poor old grandmother she would call out to whoever was in vicinity, as Neel would struggle to escape the little prison of his grandmothers affection, her sweet grandmotherly smell of spices and talcum powder and ghee lingering on him like a benevolent ghost.
He had never thought about joining Space Corps. But then, he had never thought he would lose Maya as well. She was the closest thing to a friend he had. You are like an onion Neel, layers and layers. I probably know more of your layers than anyone else but even I don’t know everything Neel. She had said once while they were lying on the grass, his head on her lap, the cool breeze of the summer evening making little waves in the grass all around them and making an occasional strand of her hair plant little kisses on his face, even as the fireflies in the tamarind tree started practising their daily lightshows.
Maybe it was his layers which had frightened her off. Maybe it was Rudro’s warmth which had drawn her near. He had seen them kissing, not too far from the spot he and Maya had spent countless hours sitting and watching the river, talking and sleeping, eating those tangy little wild berries which grew all over the place, and dreaming about the future. He had turned his bicycle around and pedalled as fast as he could. Had kept going, for hours, till the river trail ran out near the sea and fatigue overcame the strange burning he was feeling inside.
It’s there he had seen it for the first time. The dark, austere, almost forbidding walls of the Space Corps training school. The only indication of what lay inside was the the rather bland looking engravings on the wall near the gate. Space Corps Training School it stated simply. And then in a smaller font below, their cryptic and somewhat menacing recruitment slogan. Not many make it.
He had made it. It had taken blood and sweat and months and months of preparation. He had not told anyone he was preparing. You only get one shot at it and he had been afraid of failing, of hearing people trying to console him. …Space Corps is for a different type of people, even if you had made it you wouldn’t have liked it there you know……and after all no one from our village has ever made it. Or even tried…Now maybe if it was someone like Rudro then…
See, I knew my Neel would do great things. His grandmother, ninety, bed ridden but still sharp witted, still smelling of spices and talcum powder and ghee was the first person he had told, along with his parents. The silent pride in his parents eyes had made him feel for the first time in their lives he had done something for them. Rudro had hugged him and said I will miss you my little brother. He had wanted to say a lot of things. Look after mom and dad. Give Maya a happy life. In the end it had all seemed foolish and the choking feeling inside him had stopped him from saying anything meaningful.
He and Maya had grown somewhat distant ever since the day he had seen her with Rudro almost a year ago. Initially she had been her same old self with him. But he had never quite been able to become normal with her again. He had become closed and formal, like he was with most people. As the months had passed she had moved closer and closer to Rudro, caught up in his world, his friends, his dreams. Like a comet caught up in his gravitational field. Whatever Neel and Maya had had seemed more and more like a distant dream, like one of those childhood things which makes no sense as an adult.
He had initially not planned on telling Maya but she had heard from Rudro and had come to meet him. When will you be back Neel? she had asked. Why does it matter to you? It was as if his reply had hit her like a bullet. He had felt something exploding inside her. He had looked away when she had turned silently back and ran out of his room. He had never felt so much satisfaction from hurting someone before. The guilt had come later. By then it had been too late.
***
I am looking for someone. A friend. She used to live here….Neel had managed to say to the girl. And then he had collapsed.
The next few days (days, or was it weeks?) had been a blur to him. Light, darkness, space, time, dreams, nightmares, waking up, going back to sleep. He had been back in the killing fields of Ikarus sector, and the magnificent savannahs of c42s exoplanets. He had relived the unbearable throbbing headache of his countless cryogenic thaws, felt again the terror of watching someone being thrown out of the airlock for the first time and the save joy you get when you watch one of the torpedoes you fired making the tiny red dot of the enemy ship disappear from the tactical screen – the tiny red dot you know carried a few thousand living things.
He had cried out in his sleep at times and had felt someone hugging him and comforting him, someone’s hands gently stroking his hair. He had calmed down and gone back to sleep and dreamt of his childhood. The long lazy summer afternoons, running to the mango trees after a thunderstorm, flying kites in the warm winter sunshine, catching fish in the overflowing streams in the monsoon. And he had dreamt of his times with Maya, Maya the little kid who once punched him on his nose when he had stolen her favourite toy, the schoolfriend Maya always sitting on the desk next to him, sharing the lunch packed by their moms, sharing homework , the sixteen your old Maya, the first girl he really fell in love with. The only girl he ever really fully fell in love with.
Then one day he had finally woken up in a dimly lit room and had seen Maya sitting on the bed staring into his face. She had looked older, the first strands of grey had started invading her thick black hair. Her face was more mature now. A woman’s face not a girls face. A mother’s face. But her eyes were still the same, they had the same brightness, the same twinkle. It had taken her a moment or two to realise that he was finally awake and conscious and was looking at her and recognising her.
He was still too weak to talk but she had somehow sensed his question. They told me that they had found some Spacer. On the verge of death. Apparently mumbling my name in his delirium. I was pretty sure there is only one piece of space junk that would do that. I went to see you and asked them to bring you back here. And so here I have you now. She said, planting a little kiss on his forehead. He had wanted to talk but she had said he needed rest. He hadn’t protested. He had gone to sleep holding her hand in his. And had slept like a baby this time.
***
It had taken weeks for him to fully recover. And as he had grown better, he had started seeing less and less of Maya during the day. Like weeds slowly taking over your garden, the demands of her old life had started creeping back on her. She was a busy person now. Head of the local Survival Committee. The fact that they still called these things Survival Committees ten years after the Fall showed how much of a struggle it still was just to survive on this dying Earth. With very little central government left and the the Space Corp being a distant and somewhat disinterested benefactor pre-occupied with bigger problems elsewhere, the Survival Committees were all that stood between utter chaos and some semblance of normal human life. And now that Maya wasn’t worried any more of him dying on her, the needs of keeping her community alive had taken precedence.
The nights were still theirs though. She had moved him to her room when she had got him from the hospital. Not that there were many other options. The need to live underground since the Fall meant space was limited. Most of the young and single lived in dormitories. Couples got a room (if they were lucky, and had spent enough time on the waiting list). Maya still had the room she and Rudro had shared, one of the little luxuries of being the Committee head.
They talked a lot during those nights. Mostly about the first twenty years. The warm, beautiful spring of their lives. Relatively little about what happened after. Neel was afraid of asking Maya about the Fall and what happened after; about the family photographs which Maya dutifully dusted and cleaned every day after her bath and before she knelt down in front of the little altar she had in one corner of the room. He recognised the little Gods in the altar. They were the same ones his mom and grandma had in their house. At least most of them. His house Gods had been lucky, most of them had survived the Fall; unlike the rest of his family and almost eighty percent of humanity.
They had started making love. It wasn’t the hot passionate love making of their youth but slower, more affectionate, less of two bodies exploring each other and more of two bodies just coming home to something warm and familiar. She had started talking about what happened, bit by bit each night, as he held her in her arms and felt her warm tears slowly rolling down her cheeks onto his hands. It had been hard on her. It had been hard on everyone who had lived. In a way those who had died quickly had been lucky.
They had started going out together sometimes. Not that there were too many places to go out on the dreary surface. But still, it was a break, from the equally dreary underground. And they liked walking together, hand in hand. Sometimes going to the places from their past. Like the river bank where sitting under the tamarind tree they had spent countless happy afternoons. The river was gone, the site covered by the same greenish grey stuff which covered everything else. Maybe slightly thicker where the river was supposed to be. And trees didn’t exist on the Earth any more.
They both enjoyed these walks. The exercise and the chill outside seemed to improve Neel’s mood. And Maya liked listening to Neel’s stories of Space Corps, of all the world’s he had visited, the things he had seen. He generally left out all the violence and the gore and the pain and the frustration, she had been through enough already. The rest sounded like some grand and colorful cosmic adventure. Maya had never been off planet. She was supposed to go to Luna. She and Rudro and the kids. If they had planned the holiday a month earlier they would have been on the Luna and escaped the Fall. She particularly liked asking him about “all his Space girlfriends” as she liked saying and then pulling his leg about his “sexual adventures”.
He wanted to take her to Luna. There was a Space Corps base there, one of their large training centres in Solar since the one on Earth got destroyed. He was sure he could get a job there. And he had enough savings from fifteen years of continuous service for them to live fairly comfortably. It wouldn’t be a life of luxury but still a thousand times better than what they had here. If it was in his hand they would have left in a week. But she seemed to be reluctant. He didn’t understand why. There wasn’t anything here to stay for. Except her memories. Fifteen years ago Rudro had kept her from him. And now his memories were doing the same. But he didn’t want push her. Maybe she will change her mind. Someday. In the meanwhile, he would try to do his best here. To fit in.
He tried very hard to fit in. Maya helped him get a job in the Survival Committee. With his fifteen years of military skills and ten years of command experience it shouldn’t have been difficult. But it was the people. Everyone, especially the young, had the same air of somewhat hostile indifference which he had noticed in the girl on his first day. Maybe it was because they knew he was Space Corps. They somehow blamed him. It made working difficult. Except the scouting jobs which he could do alone. He liked those, even if it sometimes meant staying the nights out in the open, being away from Maya.
It was on one of these scouting jobs that he saw it. It was a somewhat longer job than usual, he had already walked for a day and a half and was about to camp for the second night when he saw it, a black bob jutting out of the snow which the setting sun had turned orange. From the distance most would have mistaken it for a somewhat strange looking boulder and probably not glanced at it twice. But to Neel’s trained eyes there was no mistaking a Space Corp dropship. He had decided to approach the wreck to investigate. Yes it was definitely a wreck, that much was clear even from some distance away. It looked as though the heat shield hadn’t completely held up during reentry. The whole thing was charred, the poor guy inside would have suffered horribly, slowly suffocating and getting cooked alive, a much worse fate than if the shield had failed completely, in which case the explosion would have killed anyone inside in milliseconds.
He had decided to go closer, maybe he could salvage something. That had been his first mistake. The ship had looked strangely familiar. A cloud of dread had started to envelope him like, telling him to go back. But he had no longer felt fully in control of himself. The composites around the hatch had melted in the heat and sealed it shut. It wouldn’t even budge. But the impact had knocked a hole in the bulkhead. Big enough for someone to squeeze through. Despite the cold, Neel had felt his palms sweating. The sky had turned from orange to pink to a deep red. It would have become totally dark in a few minutes. Neel had checked his pouch. He still had the torch. With heart pounding, he had pushed himself through the hole.
The torch had cut a narrow yellow beam in the pitch dark. Everything was as he had remembered it. The instrument panel, the location of the portholes, even the stupid mermaid figure on the food unit, now turned into a black stump of carbon. As the torch slipped from his hand and fell, Neel caught a glimpse of the pilot’s seat in the dying light. There was a familiar figure sitting in it, the heat had burnt away almost everythinf but the safety harness still held onto the skeleton.
Neel didn’t remember how he had managed to crawl out in the dark. There was something warm and sticky inside his clothes. He must have cut himself on something sharp as he had been struggling to get out. He felt there was no point in trying to go back to the camp. He had just wanted to lie down. It had started to snow. He had never realised the snow was so beautiful. As he started losing his sense, he had heard Maya. Please don’t go Neel. Don’t leave me again. He had tried to say something but no sound had come off his lips. The snow had kept falling peacefully.
***
What happened here? It was a question more to himself than to the girl, who stood a few feet away. She was the first person he met since landing. She and her dog. The first living thing in three days…
Invictus 
