Searchterm Entry #9: Long Way Home
This entry stands apart not only for its genre — science fiction — but also due to the style: a series of letters written from a son to his mother. For details of the challenge, and to see other entries, click here.
This entry — the winning entry! — was penned by Chris “Ruzkin” Hayes-Kossmann. More information about him and his writing may be found over on his website.
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Long Way Home
Day 22
Mother,
I was sorry to hear that Marie’s baby was stillborn. She and I haven’t spoken since deployment and I’d almost forgotten the baby entirely. Five months in storage eats your brain in strange ways. They say you lose a handful of memories every time – just the old ones. Memories you never bothered holding on to very tight. The important ones, like you and Marie, they’re okay.
Send her my love, if she’ll have it.
I said in my last letter that the gyptrees here were beautiful, and you asked if they were like the cedars out back. You said I was lucky to be sent to Markourya, instead of Lorrin or the mining moons. I don’t know if I agree but I can’t send patrol vid so I’ll just tell you what I can.
Life on base goes like this, three days out of four:
Wake up.
Shower.
Gruel and protein breakfast.
Run maintenance on the drills and excavators we never use.
Watch the grunts do combat practice they’ll never use.
Go to the greenhouse and watch our gyptrees bloom.
Write.
Sleep.
Every fourth day we go on patrol with the soldiers, doing big circles through the cleared areas and blowing up the gyptrees that’ve grown since the last round. You have to poison the ground as well, to make sure they don’t come back. It sounds pretty easy but there’s a lot of stuff we don’t understand happening out there. We lose maybe two people a week. Being an engineer is a little safer than being a grunt, but not by much. This week has been good though, no casualties yet.
I have patrol tomorrow but I swear, even after three weeks it scares the hell out of me. Better to stay at base and be bored crazy than inside one of the rovers, past the walls.
I’ll do some drawings of the gyptrees for you. Might even mail you the originals. The other soldiers think I’m weird for using a pen – I’m the only one here that still writes longhand, but it keeps me calm. It doesn’t feel so bad heading out on patrol, if I have a half-done letter to return to.
I’ll talk to you soon, when the storms clear,
Love,
Andrew.
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Day 30
Mother,
The money should be arriving every fortnight. Please send half to Marie. I know she doesn’t need it but I think she should have it anyway. I don’t have much use for it here.
Sorry that I scared you with the last letter. It’s not as bad as I make out. Just strange. I thought we’d stay in the clear zones while the soldiers did patrols, but it didn’t work out that way. An adventure every day, like they say on the posters! Except when you’re stuck on base watching gyptrees grow, ha ha.
I haven’t made any real friends yet but I’m working with good people. There are some nice girls in botany as well that I’ve been talking to. Only talking. I don’t do any other stuff. I’m still thinking of Marie. I know we aren’t so close now but I still hold her in my heart.
The others are teaching me poker. I’m pretty terrible, but Toby is showing me the tricks. He’s one of the new herm soldiers, one of those guy/girls with an extra sex. I know you don’t like that but he’s a good guy (or girl… I don’t know what’s proper). Has a good eye. Better than the two Parker kids, they’re young and noisy and stay up late drinking and singing. Toby calls them the bellowing bastard brothers but he won’t argue with them. He knows they’d break him in half.
Toby is usually on guns when we head out on patrol. We talk about home.
You asked why it’s so dangerous if there’s nothing out there. I don’t know, really. Mostly mistakes. You get confused on long patrols. I heard a unit drove straight into a crevasse last week, because the storms threw off their nav equipment. They get real thick out here, the storms.
The gyptrees are also a part of it. They’re not really trees at all, as far as I can tell. They burst from the ground with the outer shell already formed – like big pink balloons, the sort you can tie into knots. They look fragile, but I knocked on one and the shell was hard as slate. It echoed in my suit.
We blow them up then, before they get too established. They’re much harder to kill after the veins have started to form.
This is why we call them trees. When they first emerge they’re just a sac of jelly in a transparent pink shell. Then nodes form on the inside, thousands of little pimples. They start to stretch, making little inquisitive tendrils that split into more tendrils and more again until they’re all squirming about inside the sac. They look like capillaries, or old roadmaps. Like a tree turned inside out.
The gyptrees don’t grow slow. They break through so fast that they go straight into the bottom of the patrol units. If you’re lucky they only blow out the treads, but if they pierce the steel then you lose atmosphere, and if they come up under your seat then they’ll tear you in half.
It’s funny, how this happens to so many units. Maybe it’s the vibrations that makes the gyptrees pop. Either way, it gets a lot of us. Almost as many as the bad suits.
You should see the forests. Thousands and thousands of wriggling pink pods catching the light of a distant red sun. It makes Toby talk philosophy until I punch him.
I have patrol now. Kiss Marie for me.
Your son,
Andrew.
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Day 49
Mother,
Bad day today, so this letter will be short.
We lost three – two soldiers, one engineer. That makes ten for our divison since I arrived. They think a gyptree came up under the left side and blew through the cells. I guess their suits didn’t hold.
I want to go out and see where they died but I’m stuck at the firebase. Stuck here rechecking all the suits in storage. Tedious and frustrating.
Talk soon,
Andrew
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Day 67
Mother,
No, the suits aren’t anything like police armour. They’re much stronger. Layers and layers of smart membranes covered in heavy ceramic. They’re bulky and uncomfortable but they’re the very best. If it weren’t for the suits, we’d have a lot more dead than we already do.
They have to be strong because the air here will kill you.
Extended contact with the skin has an effect similar to oxidisation. Basically, you crumble from the outside in. A good lungful will melt you. It gets into your bloodstream and calcifies your eyes.
The botanists and geologists here say it’ll be another century before we get any sort of grip on the ecology. Their problem, not mine.
We had a big presentation by the research team yesterday, all about the gyptrees. I think you’d be fascinated by some of the things they discussed. All about how they leach nutrients from the megastorms. If they can use the gyptrees to build some sort of atmospheric converter, we might be breathing outside air within a decade. Again, too late for me, but any news is good news.
Still doesn’t tell us what the trees actually are. Toby thinks there’s a huge creature living below the crust, farting out eggs so hard they bust through steel. Or maybe the eggs are like snorkels, and whatever lives underneath uses them to breathe.
I’m not that stupid. This firebase has been operating for more than a year, now. They’ve sunk drills down for kilometres. Nothing living there. But I wonder.
I think it’s fair to assume the gyptrees don’t know we’re here, or have any malice towards us. They’re just trees.
I miss you. How is Marie?
Your dedicated son,
Andrew
***
Day 92
Mother,
Would you believe that some of the men have started snorting the outside air?
Not straight, of course. They collect it on patrol and dilute it through our purifiers down to about 1/1000th strength. Then they bottle it in the vials we use for blood samples and stick it up their nostrils.
I’m not that stupid. I know you wouldn’t like that sort of thing. But Toby loves it. Says it gives him insight. He looks out the window at the storms and says he feels like he’s a bird being tossed over and over through the storms.
I would never try it. You know that. But I thought you’d want to know.
Three days until my next patrol. You get itchy, waiting for the next one. I’ve only had one close call so far. The soldiers say I’m blessed. They like riding with me.
I don’t even know why we’re clearing the gyptrees. I think they send us out just to keep us occupied. Blow them up, lay concrete, put down a beacon. Do it all again four days later. I didn’t go to university for this.
Waiting is worse than anything.
Love,
Andrew
***
Day 128
Mother,
Another close call! On demo duty today when the ground just split under my left track. Barely had time to swing around. Got a look over the edge – I think the crevasse went three or four k’s down. Nothing moving down there, so that nukes Toby’s theory about the gyptrees, ha ha!
I was shaking all the way back but by the time we hit the base I was laughing. Just so happy that I came so close and made it out. You want to dance and hug everyone. Makes you feel like you’ve been snorting, but without the hangover.
Maybe I really am blessed?
The ground is rumbling a lot out here. They say there’ll be a big upheaval. May have to pack everyone up and ship back to Earth. The gyptrees are shrinking down, like they’re scared.
Gotta check the drills and write a report. Times are busy, here! You don’t want to do much but get out on patrol again. The trees are so beautiful.
Andrew
***
Day 131
Mother,
A bad day.
There’s a waterfall about forty minutes south of the firebase, hidden beneath a little cliff, well away from the track. We only found it through luck — we were on patrol and a storm had formed, one of the big gas typhoons that rolls through every few weeks and eats into the firebase concrete. Tobes was gunning. He thought he saw something through the clouds that might’ve been a copse of gyptrees, and we went to see.
It turned out to be nothing but stone and shadow, but from there we saw the line of the cliff, and the peeking edge of a rainbow.
It’s not really a waterfall — there’s no natural water here, after all. More a weird point in the crust where temperature inverts and the heavy metals in the air coalesce long enough for gravity to catch. It was a sunshower of mercury and molten iron, and I swear it bent the light into colours that ached at the back of my eyes.
Tobes wanted to stand in it but I wouldn’t let him until I’d thrown a probe in and made sure it wouldn’t melt straight through his suit. He went in real slow, one hand first, palm up. He said he could feel it tickling, the patter of metal strong enough to set off the servos in his gloves. Then he stepped in.
He said something that didn’t make sense. It came through all spitting and distorted by the fall. I think he said my name but he could have said anything, really. Then he collapsed into the stream.
We got him back as quick as we could but the patrol units don’t move that fast, especially when it’s so hilly. A gyptree almost took out our right track, which made it worse. He kept talking the whole time, getting real philosophical. I didn’t hit him that time, of course.
So he was number eleven.
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Day 136
They’re not letting me out on patrol for another week. They say I’m still hung up over Toby. I don’t know what they mean. It wasn’t like we were close.
I’m sick of staying inside. I miss the smell of the units, all that stinky grease and sweat and the weird tang of aluminium.
I hope these letters aren’t boring you, mother. I just like to write.
Two hundred days and thirty days till I come home. That’s fifty seven patrols. Fifty seven lucky days.
You don’t tell me about Marie anymore. Please do.
Love,
Andrew
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Day 142
Mother,
Another patrol didn’t come back. Beacons say they were headed straight south and just didn’t stop.
Maybe they went in a crevasse. The ground does just keep on rumbling here. But maybe they saw some trees?
Andrew
***
Day 145
Mother,
I remember the last time me and Marie fought.
It was about a week after they confirmed my engineering contract on Markourya. Came home after a few days training with the grunts. I was hungry and pissed. Knocked on the door. Nobody answers.
I opened the door and found shoes in the hall, stacks of old newspaper, a plastic bag of cat shit on the carpet. The whole house stank. I went away for half a week and she let the whole house just turn to crap.
She was upstairs, watching some show, I don’t even know what. I told her, I’m going to go build bridges on another planet to provide for you and you can’t even keep the place clean? She said something back. Something rude. You would’ve been angry if you’d heard, mother.
I only yelled at her. I promise that.
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Day 148
Mother,
The Parker brothers didn’t come back. They found Benji still in his suit. Rip in the knee. No sign of Jacob. Just footprints headed south, into the trees.
I’m back on patrol tomorrow.
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Day 149
There’s a lot our here I don’t understand but there’s a lot back home I don’t understand either. The earthquakes are getting stronger. Don’t know if we’ll even be here in a month. So I might as well spend my time seeing what I can see.
The firebase is filthy, another dirty house, but out there you never know what you’ll find. Sometimes the alarm goes to tell you the patrol is over and it feels like minutes since you left. Sometimes you don’t want to turn back.
Heading off soon. I might take the patrol past where the Parkers died. Then to the waterfall, if they’ll let me. It’s gorgeous.
You’d really like it.
***
Day 158
Dear Mrs. Turesk,
I can sympathise with your request, as I am also one of the few here that still writes longhand, and we have collected…
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