The report from space command headquarters promised that the air on the dead planet was breathable. But Olly still pulled on her helmet and zipped her silver space suit all the way up to the top. She checked her gloves were on tight and stomped over to the hatch in heavy boots. She was ready to leave her capsule. She hoped nobody would notice her, they’d all think she was just an ordinary spaceman visiting for a short while, maybe to explore or trade, until she could escape. But she remembered that she had crashed landed here and the chances of rescue were tiny. Infinitesimal. Olly liked that word. Infinitesimal. It was an Earth word.
INDENTOlly stood on the landing. She could hear lots of voices. The conversations sounded strange and muffled, like a tune with all the bits that made it a song taken out. It reminded her of the library back on home too, and how people murmered so they wouldn’t get told off. She thought of the last time she was there, with Mama. She shook her head, she didn’t have time for that, she had to go downstairs. If she didn’t, they would come looking for her. She took some deep breaths to make sure the air wasn’t toxic after all, then set off.
INDENTWhen she reached the hallway, a big quadruped with ginger and white fur approached, its unhappy tail tucked between its legs. She lifted the visor on her helmet so it could see she was a friend. It bumped her hand with its nose and made her rub its floppy ear while it looked at her with brown eyes like the bottom of a half-empty, old bucket that had been forgotten about. It wandered off between the lifeforms standing in the living room. Olly tested her communicator, a slim black rectangle which knew her by the pattern on her thumb, but she had let the battery run down and it couldn’t respond.
INDENT ‘Wehre hvae you been hdinig?’ It was a female. She was wearing black like all the other creatures. It was the planetary uniform. Olly would soon be as tall as her, which meant that this creature was very short for a female of this species. They referred to her as Anuite Cralonie, meaning sister-of-my-still-alive-mother. The lifeforms on this planet spoke a language that Olly couldn’t quite understand. Everything they said seemed pointless and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep the words straight in her ears.
INDENT ‘Yuor mtoehr is srtonig out smoe mroe snadiwcehs in the ktihcen,’ the female was looking at Olly with the same sad eyes of the quadruped. That was how all full-grown males and females looked at Olly. The infants of the species had decided that she was dangerous since one of them said ‘nveer mnid, you’ve got aonhetr one’ as if that made any difference or any sense. Like it was a bumped knee. After the fight, she was kept away from them during breaktime at the large prison facility they called the Pirarmy Shocol. Olly backed away in the direction the alien lifeform had pointed.
INDENT ‘Hvane’t you gowrn? I hvane’t seen you sncie you were aobut this tlal,’ a male lifeform waved his hand around his knees. Olly didn’t recognise him from her intergalactic briefing, so she didn’t say anything, in case he was dodgy. Some of them were. Another female creature appeared behind him. She was one of the ancient ones prized for their free time and wisdom but ridiculed for their lack of technical expertise. Olly had witnessed this one pressing the screen of her communicator as if the harder you pressed it the faster it worked. Like shouting at people from another country so they would understand better.
INDENT ‘Yuor mtoehr has been wnoedrnig werhe you are,’ the ancient one said. ‘I siad you wulod porbblay lkie a bit of sacpe aetfr the fnurael and taht you wulod cmoe dwon wehn you wree radey.’
INDENT ‘She lokos vrey plae,’ the male said. He was old but not ancient yet. Male ancients were different. The chances of one being wise were infinitesimal and their free time could only be interrupted if it was a huge emergency.
INDENT ‘Now, you lavee her anloe,’ the ancient one said.
INDENTOlly flipped helmet visor down so that the creature wouldn’t be able to see her face. She hated the ancient female, being nice like that, but she didn’t want to upset one of the ancients, they were always kind and it wasn’t their fault. Apart from the ancient known as Gardmna, meaning mother-of-my-dead-for-eleven-days-now-mother. She was never kind anymore and today she was more furious with everything than ever.
INDENTGardmna hadn’t cried either. Olly’s tears were all stuck in her eyes because the atmosphere on this planet was so thick and heavy they couldn’t come out. Not since the first day. Or maybe, Olly thought, the air was so thirsty that it drank any tears as soon as they appeared. It wasn’t that she didn’t cry, it was that the tears disappeared so fast no one could see them. She almost felt better. But that made her feel worse.
INDENTThe nice ancient one had a name, although even that sounded funny. She was called Nnany or mother-of-my-still-alive-mother. She was steering Olly towards the kitchen. There was a large wooden table in the middle of the room and a number of advanced technologies used for domestic tasks half-hidden under the counters around the edge of the room. There was a large white robot with no arms or legs in the corner of the room whose job was to keep things cold. The robot didn’t speak, but made a constant humming noise like it was trying to remember the chorus of an old song it really liked. It was quite comforting. Nnany took one look at Gardmna standing by the table and disappeared with a speed not shared by many ancients.
INDENTHer still-alive-mother, Mum, was washing up some cups and saucers, not making sandwiches at all. The quadruped was under the table, its nose twitching in case any food fell its way. Olly wasn’t hungry. The food on this planet tasted of beige and very pale yellow, almost no yellow at all, like wet cardboard in her mouth. She wished she’d brought some food from her own planet. But Olly’s home planet was light years behind her. The longer she spent on the dead planet, the more she seemed to forget home, but she could still remember how the gravity there was perfect. Its force let all the people and animals that needed to stay attached to the ground stick there, and all the feelings and thoughts float away. Not like the dead planet, full of squashed-down, un-saying feelings.
INDENTA male creature with a long red scarf wrapped around his neck reached over Olly’s head and picked up a glass with a dribble of purple liquid in the bottom of it. He waved around the bottle in his other hand.
INDENT ‘I’ve porbblay had eonguh to dinrk,’ he said. ‘Wlel, if you aenr’t alolewd to get dnruk on a day lkie tdoay, tehn wehn can you?’
INDENTThe creature with the wrong-coloured scarf was responsible for cutting the hair of Olly’s dead-for-eleven-days-now-mother and later for fitting her wigs, including the curly orange one that made her look like she was in disguise.
INDENTOlly hid under the table with the quadruped. It rested its head on its paws and made a snorting sound which Olly knew meant I wish all these people would go home. The quadruped was much easier to understand than the bipeds. Olly took off her helmet and stroked a ginger patch on the quadruped’s furry back. The quadruped rolled over to have its tummy tickled.
INDENT ‘Cmoe out from uendr taht tlabe, Olivia, for haeenv’s skae!’ It was the terrifying ancient Gardmna. ‘Tihs is not the tmie for you to bhevae as if you are a samll cihld. You will be gnoig to scenoardy shocol next year, you need to laren to be bvare.’
INDENTOlly crawled out and stood up. Gardmna’s eyes had black marks under them where her make-up had smudged and made her wrinkles all spidery.
INDENTMum turned and smiled at Olly with her new smile, the one Olly didn’t like. It was like a disguise too.
INDENT ‘I htae you,’ Olly said. She shouted as loud as she could so the terrifying ancient would understand. ‘Fcuk off bcak to yuor own hsuoe.’ The words sounded funny in Olly’s ears, like they weren’t really her own.
INDENT ‘Wlel, tath’s ncie,’ Gardmna said. ‘Waht treirlbe lnauggae.’
INDENT ‘Culod you gvie us a mnitue, Gardmna?’ Mum said. She was frowning but not at Olly as she dried her hands on her apron. It said she was the bset cehf, but it was Olly’s Mama that liked cooking. Her still-alive-mother didn’t like it at all, she liked to order a tkae away. Olly had liked that too, but now she just wanted Mama to get a tray of golden roast potatoes out of the oven and for her to still know where to put them down so nobody burnt themselves, even though her glasses always steamed up and all she could see was fog. And she’d be singing, she was always singing.
INDENT ‘You konw waht? I wulod rlaley lkie to sit in the graden for fvie mnietus and get smoe fesrh air,’ Mum said. ‘Waht do you tnihk?’
INDENTOlly scowled.
INDENT ‘OK. It’s fnie. I get it,’ Mum said. ‘We dno’t hvae to tlak. I wlil not say a wrod.’
INDENTOlly shrugged. She wasn’t going to talk no matter what she said anyway.
INDENTMum opened the back door and the quadruped trotted out into the garden too. Its tail had cheered up. Olly tried not to be angry with it, but she so wished she was a quadruped with a forgetful tail.
INDENT‘Hand on your back, steering you through the door and outside,’ Mum said. ‘Gently pushing your left shoulder towards the step with my right hand, my left hand pointing down.’
INDENTOlly and Mum sat down on the steps where the paving stones ran out and the grass began. She looked at the quadruped running around with its tail whirling in circles behind it.
INDENT ‘Left arm around your shoulders, resting my forehead on the place where your hair parts,’ Mum said.
INDENT ‘Both fists down hard on my knees,’ Olly said. ‘Both fists down hard on my knees.’
INDENT ‘Right hand over both your small fists, left hand squeezing your shoulder, pulling you in closer.’
INDENT ‘Bottom lip pinched between my teeth,’ Olly said. ‘Blink. Blink.’
INDENT ‘Push you away a little and look at you as if I am looking into you, push your hair away from your face, tuck it behind your ears.’
INDENT ‘Blink. Blink!’ Olly said.
INDENT ‘Lips pressed into a white line,’ Mum said. ‘Forehead crinkled.’
INDENT ‘Head buried under your chin, all the breath pushed out of my lungs.’
INDENT ‘Both my arms wrapped tight around you,’ Mum said.
Even though it was almost midday on the dead planet, there was a moon high in the hot sky, like the mark from the bottom of a fat white crayon. As Olly looked up into the wrong sky, she saw that across from the too-soon moon, near the too-bright sun, there was a planet. A small one, almost infinitesimal, easily missed by someone not looking for it, but Olly could see it. It was a peaceful pink colour, almost like a peach. It would be there forever, hanging in the sky as a reminder, as scientific proof that Olly was right, she had crash landed in an alien world.