Even In Another Age, Even In Another Place

Tobias was coughing again in the bunk above Martin’s. The thin metal-framed structure of the bunk bed wasn’t fastened to the walls, and there were just the thick nylon straps woven to hold a person’s weight between the two of them, so with every violent hack out of his lungs, the whole structure swayed and creaked. Tobias’s illness kept half their room awake, and while the poor man tried to stifle the noise, there wasn’t much he could do. 

Martin had found him crying in the outhouse the day before, bloody spittle on his lips and his eyes bulging and red in his face from the force of his coughing. 

“You’re all just hoping I’ll die so you can get some sleep,” Tobias sobbed, at least as much as he could heave breath in to sob with.

Martin told him that it wasn’t true, but it probably was. 

Tonight, there was no chance that Martin would fall asleep, at least not until Tobias had finally exhausted himself enough to pass out, so Martin pulled himself off his bunk, wrapped his blanket around his shoulders, and headed outside. He was already wearing his shoes and coat— it was too cold to take them off, even to sleep. The blanket, he pulled over his head, clasping the front of it shut with his hands as much as he was able. His hat had gone missing a few days ago and he hadn’t yet found another, so his blanket would have to do. At the door, he slipped his feet into one of the pairs of homemade “snowshoes” made of stacked cardboard, with a loop to hold them over the top of his shoes. They made trooping across the calf-high snow a lot easier— especially considering how little he weighed. He swayed on his feet, feeling faint and tired but determined to go out.

It was nearly suicidal to go outside, but that didn’t stop people from doing it. It wasn’t forbidden— there were no locks on the doors, and no guards patrolling their huts. It didn’t matter to the soldiers if the prisoners wandered off to die in the snow, which anyone would if they strayed too far from safety. Even though their dormitory shacks were barely heated, they at least provided sufficient protection from the wind, which cut across Martin’s face the moment he stepped outside the door. It wasn’t snowing directly, but the wind picked up flakes from the ground and swept them along in river-like streams, illuminated by the planet’s single, huge moon.

That was one thing Martin liked about this place. Odin’s moon wasn’t nearly so large. This one was bright enough to read by, even when it was only a quarter-full. One of the men who had been in the camp when Martin arrived had explained some of the physics of it to him, the way it had gotten tidally locked to this planet billions of years ago, and the way that this place’s gravity was slowly stretching it out, elongating it from a sphere into an ellipsoid. It was funny, the things that Martin remembered— he couldn’t recall the man’s face, nor did he think that he had ever learned his name to begin with. But he thought about his warm voice coming out of chapped lips and the shape of the moon every time he looked up at the sky. To think that the flat white cutout in the night had a hidden depth to it.

Even if it was cold outside, it was at least quiet, and the snowscape studded with their sleeping quarters had a pristine kind of beauty to it. Off in the distance was the entrance to the mine— that was guarded, unlike their huts— and further off was the processing plant. Martin’s eyes skated over them, and he turned in the other direction, intending to walk just a little ways away, over the crest of the next hill, so that he didn’t see any of the buildings.

As he climbed the hill, he noticed another figure down the slope, not even wearing a jacket. This was not the first time Martin had intercepted someone out here like this, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. He had a tactic for it— he’d tell the guy that if he was set on dying out here, could Martin please have his shirt and pants and shoes and socks and underwear? Otherwise they’d go to waste, get lost in the snow. Most people couldn’t bear to strip down to nothing, and so he had an excuse to get them back inside. 

Martin was mentally preparing his speech as he slid down the side of the hill. He wasn’t entirely sure that he was doing anybody any favors by convincing them to live— prolonging their lives for perhaps a year or two at the most— but he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving someone by himself. If he ever met someone he couldn’t convince to go back in, he wondered if he’d end up staying outside with him all night. He wondered if he wasn’t secretly hoping that would happen.

“I’m not gonna let you freeze to death out here,” Martin said to the man, who hadn’t noticed him coming— he was looking up at the moon, and the soft sounds of Martin’s snowshoes were easily covered by the wind. Martin held out his blanket as the man jumped and turned around.

Martin was startled, but it was the kind of surprise that one might feel in a dream, that made him aware that it was a dream, that he must be back in his bunk asleep beneath Tobias coughing himself to death. The man stared back at him with his own face— cheeks a little fuller, lips less blistered with the icy wind, the hollows of his eyes less pronounced, but his face nonetheless. He had almost forgotten what it looked like.

“I’m not cold,” the other Martin said.

“Take it anyway.” He held out the blanket until the visitor accepted it, wrapping it around his shoulders.

“What is this place?”

“Altair. For political prisoners.”

The visitor’s brow furrowed— it was funny to see his own familiar expressions on someone else’s face— searching for where he had heard the name before. He had heard it. “Not where Liesel ended up.”

That was a name Martin hadn’t heard in a long time— the idealistic young woman who had been his friend in high school, had taken him under his wing, until the community house where she and other anarchists had been staying was raided. “No, women aren’t sent here— I think she went to Fomalhaut.”

“Oh.” The other Martin looked up in the sky.

“Fomalhaut is that one—” he said, pointing to a dim star off in the distance. The night was completely unclouded, but the moon was so bright it crowded the smaller lights out. 

“Is she alive, do you know?”

“I doubt it.” Martin’s finger traced across the sky. “I was told Odin was that direction. But that’s Sol— Earth.”

“Do you do a lot of stargazing?”

“What else is there to do in the abyss?” Martin asked. He had pity on his visiting other self, giving him the missing information, the name that had been on the tip of his tongue. “Altair is where Arle Heinessen escaped from.”

“Ah,” the visitor said. He looked up at the sky. “He probably did a lot of stargazing, too.”

“Probably.”

The visitor seemed to search for words. “Will you escape?”

“I doubt it,” Martin said. “I probably have six months to live, give or take. Less, if I get sick. Nobody lasts long here.” He glanced at his other self, and he said it without rancor. 

He didn’t know how he could be so calm now. Maybe it was the grace that dreams gave sometimes, or perhaps he just wanted to comfort his visitor. It was very different from every shift he had at the mine, standing in line at lunch to receive the meager bowl of food that they were each given once a day. Then, he fantasized about snatching the guns from the guards, taking the planet’s leader hostage, demanding the ships come down from orbit, and commandeering them. He even talked about it sometimes, with a few of the others. But the visitor already seemed unbearably sad— though perhaps this was a projection, a remnant of Martin thinking he had come out here to die— so he didn’t mention his thoughts, since mentioning his thoughts would have meant dwelling on the frustration of futility.

“Is it worse to be here— knowing that someone did escape once?”

The question surprised him, and Martin thought about it for a moment. “No, not really.” He fixed the moon in his vision. “No— I don’t mind the hope.”

“Hundreds of years of people trapped in this place,” the visitor said, probably doing the mental math. There were maybe three thousand prisoners in this camp right now— if the whole population of the camp was swept out and replaced every ten years (Martin had never heard anyone living longer than that— and most didn’t make it nearly that long), that was well over a million people who had passed through the snow since Heinessen’s time.

“I like to think—” Martin said. “I like to think that he remembered everyone he was leaving behind when he got out. Even us— who hadn’t arrived yet.”

“I don’t know if remembering the nameless millions means anything,” the visitor said. 

Martin looked at him. “I always thought it did. If you’re going to do anything more than look out for yourself— you should know who you’re doing it for.”

“Right. It matters for everyone except the nameless millions.” He shivered, then shook himself and wrapped the blanket tightly around his shoulders. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m being grim. Sieg would tell me to—” He looked at Martin suddenly, as if realizing something. “He’s dead for you, isn’t he? This is— I’m knowing the alternative, if I lived. If he died for me.” Something broke in his throat, and Martin took a step forward and put his hand on the visitor’s arm.

“Hey— no— it’s alright. Who’s Sieg?”

This stupefied the visitor. “Who are you?”

“Martin Bufholtz,” he said. “And you?”

“Martin Bufholtz,” the visitor replied. “But you—”

“Who’s Sieg?” Martin asked again. “Tell me?”

“Siegfried Kircheis, he—”

“Oh! Yes, I know him,” Martin said. “It’s funny— I was thinking about him the other day. I ran into him a few months before I was sent here—”

“He’s alive? He’s free?”

Martin shrugged. “Unless he’s been killed in the fleet. But he’s the type to survive, it seems like.”

The visitor let out a breath of relief and smiled. “Good. That’s good.”

“You must have known him better than I did,” Martin said. “Except for that day last summer, I hadn’t seen him since we were both kids, after he ran off with that transfer student— Reinhard von Musel.”

This seemed to confuse the visitor even further. “He went to the Alliance?” he asked. “With Musel?”

“No,” Martin said. “They both left school to join a military academy.” Martin looked at the visitor sidelong. “Funny thought, Musel in the Alliance. He’s a rear admiral in the Imperial Fleet, I think. Wonder what he’s doing over there.”

“He worked at the embassy on Phezzan,” the visitor said.

“Ah.” This clearly wasn’t a topic that the visitor cared about, so Martin changed the subject. “But Siegfried Kircheis…?”

“He is— was— is—” The tenderness in the visitor’s voice expressed everything that Martin needed to know. Picturing himself with the stupidly tall redhead was a funny thought— one that would probably entertain him significantly during his shift in the mines tomorrow— but he didn’t let the amusement onto his face. “We only really got to know each other after Christopher died.”

“Oh,” Martin said. “That’s a long time.”

“Yeah.” Perhaps the visitor had been hoping to hear that Christopher was alive as well, but he wasn’t. He looked off into the distance. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me?”

“Aren’t you cold?” the visitor asked. “We’re standing out in the snow. And I took your blanket.”

“No,” Martin said, and found that although he would have said that as a lie, he realized after saying it that it was true. For the first time in months, he wasn’t cold. “I think I’m dreaming. We have time. The sun doesn’t rise for another fourteen hours.”

“Let’s walk,” the visitor said. He didn’t seem to mind shuffling deep through the snow, and he began climbing the hill. Martin had an easier time with his snow shoes, but neither of them walked quickly. Martin pointed out the few features of the moonlit landscape, and the visitor told his story.

It was a long one, though it proceeded in a single, clear line from beginning to end, this visitor seizing the single chance he saw to change the world. The story was full of characters, some familiar to Martin and some strangers, and it seemed to delight the visitor whenever Martin remarked on who of his old set remained alive. When Martin heard a name of someone who was dead, he made no mention at all. The visitor understood what his silence meant. Perhaps he should have lied, told him that they were all alive, that he was the only one who had ever been sent to this frozen hell, that everyone else had escaped— but he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

To Martin, the tale the visitor told seemed like something out of a dream. He couldn’t easily imagine himself charging through the palace, wielding a gun, trying to take the government by force. Or, he could imagine it clearly, but it was as distant from reality as the idle dream he had about taking hostages and escaping here. He studied the visitor as he spoke, trying to pick out what the essential difference between the two of them was. Perhaps there was no essential difference. This was simply a dream, his subconscious trying to cajole him into taking action— though even his subconscious assumed he would die doing so. Maybe he wanted to be told that anything was better than dying in the snow, or starving to death. But he accepted the dream-logic for what it was, and accepted the visitor’s story as true. 

The tale ended in Neue Sanssouci. The visitor said that Siegfried was in position to take the Kaiserin hostage and escape, but even at his most optimistic, the visitor was realistic. “There’s a chance he made it out,” the visitor said, allowing Siegfried only a chance. “He’s not here— with me, at least. And I’m dead.”

“He might have gotten out.” Martin looked off into the sky. “I don’t know. Like I said, none of that has happened here, so he’s still alive— and he seems like a survivor.” He kicked at the snow. “The Kaiser’s still alive, too.”

The visitor seemed startled by that. “What year is it?”

“486,” Martin said. “April.”

“Oh— it was 489.”

“You’re older than I am,” Martin said. And this time, he couldn’t get the bitterness out of his voice. “Lucky.”

“You’ll outlive me,” the visitor said. He sounded like he was asking Martin to promise to do so, which was something that Martin neither could nor would do. He changed the subject.

“It’s still funny to think of Siegfried as a revolutionary,” Martin said. “When I spoke to him—”

“Tell me about it?”

“There’s not much to say. He was visiting his parents back home for Whitsummer, and I ran into him at the fair. We ate some fried dough together in the park—”

“Is that horrible statue still there?”

“It is.” Martin laughed a little. “It seems like if Musel gets his way, it’ll be gone. He all but said that he wanted to tear down the old order.”

“Will he?”

“I don’t know. And I can’t really say what Musel would put in its place either.” He kicked some snow that had formed into a little peak, sent it scurrying down the hill away from them. “He’s a military man to the core.”

“Sieg’s not.”

“No— there was still something human in him.” He might have been unfair to Siegfried Kircheis, but the visitor seemed to understand.

“There still are things he’d rather see than a fleet of ships.”

“Yes,” Martin said. It had been a long time since he had heard any poetry— the half-quoted line warmed him. “It’s funny— he might be the only one who remembers me out there.”

“Really?”

“I gave him my thesis to read— I hadn’t finished it yet. I still haven’t finished it.” It was funny, the things that one came to regret in this place. “Maybe he’ll think of me sometimes, here in the pit.”

“I made him read mine over, too,” the visitor said. “Gods—” He seemed right on the edge of tears.

“Did he like it? I never got to hear what he thought of my draft.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“That’s good.”

They had come up to the mine, and Martin again knew that this was a dream, because the guards who usually stood at the front were missing. Aside from the guard housing, the mine and the processing plant were the only places that had any machinery or food, and thee things were kept strictly away from the prisoners, and strictly guarded. Martin was tempted to lead the visitor towards the dream-kitchen, but he had the sneaking suspicion that any food he got his hands on would vanish before he got it to his mouth— that was the way of dreams. Instead, he asked, “Do you want to see something?”

“Sure.”

He pulled open the rattling fence gate of the mine, and then turned the crank on the heavy metal door to go inside.

“Your ears will pop when we go down,” he said, leading the visitor towards the elevator shaft. “But we don’t have to go all the way down.”

The elevator itself was open-walled, a metal frame covered by thin fence-grate that was as light as they could make it, to carry as many men as they could fit. Sometimes fifty men would be crammed in there. It often broke— Martin had been trapped in it for more than an hour, once. To be in it empty, with just himself and the visitor, was a very strange experience. He rattled the chain door shut, then flipped open the control panel that would send them downwards. The whole thing moved with a clank and a shiver, sending them down into the depths. The visitor, standing directly in the scratched floor, shook and closed his eyes, clenching his fists. Only the single bare bulb on the ceiling, which flickered as the elevator descended.

“No, look,” Martin said. He stopped holding the descent button, and the elevator ground to a halt in the middle of the shaft, though the floor bounced slightly when he walked across it. He pulled on the visitor’s arm, and led him to the fence-wire wall. Their shadows almost obscured what was there, but when Martin shifted to let the light fall on the wall, the visitor could see it. He reached out a single finger to touch it, his hand coming away grimy with rock dust.

All through the shaft, scratched with the fine points of mining tools into the smoothed stone, were names. Martin had noticed them his first descent down, and on his miserable way back up from the end of his first shift down in the mines, the prisoner holding the button had stopped the elevator car just long enough to let him carve a clumsy MARTIN BUFHOLTZ into the stone. He had long since forgotten where it was, how deep in the shaft, or even what side of the elevator car it had been in. All he knew, and all that mattered, was that it was there. If the names had been scratched anywhere else, the guards might have had the writing removed, to get rid of any sign of rebellion or personhood, but it was far too costly to do that kind of work in the elevator shaft, so the names survived.

“Is Heinessen’s name here?” the visitor asked.

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “I don’t know how long this shaft’s been in use. Probably not— you can’t mine the same spot for a couple hundred years.”

“Oh, too bad.”

“Some other wall, probably. I’m sure he left one— everybody’s always trying to make their mark. Not be forgotten down here.” He leaned against the side wall, looked over at the visitor. “Will someone remember you?”

“If Sieg lived—”

“And if he didn’t?”

“No— I’m sure they won’t.”

“Here,” Martin said. He fished in the pocket of his jacket, pulled out his favorite possession in this place— a fork he had stolen from the guards. He kept it on him at all times, since someone would take it from him if he didn’t, and eating their meager lunches with it made him feel more human. The stone was just soft enough that almost any metal could scratch it, even a blunt piece of stainless steel. “Go ahead. Join our nameless millions.”

“Your name’s already here, isn’t it?”

Martin shrugged. The visitor looked at the wall, dragged his fingers across it until he found a blank space. Instead of carving his name, he painstakingly scratched a line of poetry,  something none of the men in the elevator had enough time to do. It was a single fragment where all the surrounding lines had been lost. As he did, he spoke. He was addressing Martin, but his words were clearly a comfort only for him. “If it’s only 486, just wait for the Kaiser to die,” he said. “Sieg will remember you— he’ll get you out of here. You and everybody else.”

“I’ll try,” Martin said, though he knew in his heart it was unlikely to happen. He lay his hand on the visitor’s, his bony fingers overlapping the other’s. “Shall we go back up?”

The visitor shivered again. “Yes— I won’t keep you down here with me.”

Martin shook his head. But he went over to the control panel, and they started their ascent. It was a dream, and time had passed strangely. When Martin opened the door at the top, he was blinded by the light of day, glinting off the snow.