You make me marvel, like a realised dream,
And you hurt me, like a dream from which
I will be forced to awaken.
I reflected on these words. They were left to me scrawled on a piece of paper, buried under rubbish where she knew I would find them. Because all the rubbish has to be thrown out. Otherwise, the return rocket probably won’t make re-entry.
This note was written by Françoise, on the final day before she went outside to look for the thing with the glittering horn.
This is our second voyage to the moon, and we’re at the backup station, Port Manteau. Port Ocali, the Orange Station, has been temporarily shut down. Something entered it while we were away, and we can’t scan the inside to see what it is. But it must have something to do with the horn Captain Pylades found when he was here.
That was decades ago. Spaceships were slower then. By the time Pylades, Despina and Sahara and all the rest came back they were old. Now our ship, the Waste of Space, had brought us back in record time to take another look at this place. ‘Us’ being myself, Françoise – the new crew.
Françoise loved me when we set off. Now…
‘A dream from which I will be forced to awaken.’
So you’re still in the dream? I wondered. Then why did you go? And where?
I thought I understood that part, though. I instinctively knew where she’d gone – because I, and the rest of the crew, felt an attraction, an irresistible compulsion, to travel to the same place.
The abandoned Port Ocali. With the mysterious force locked inside. There was, after all, nowhere else to go. The place Pylades found the horn…
None were game to go. It was only our second time here; there was plenty more to explore. But it was mostly hidden underneath the surface, within the caves. Occasionally, you’d spot a moon-jackal hunting for some burrowing silver mammal or feeding on a whistling luneroot, or a Will-less Wisp aimlessly lighting a crag. That was thought to be the extent of surface life until Pylades found the horn in the crater…
Where did she learn to write phrases like that? I’d thought Françoise was a scientifically minded, straightforward sort of person. I could see that straightforwardness in the brevity of her note. But I couldn’t reconcile its beauty with the woman I knew. She must have had a secret inspiration, a wellspring of poetry within her I’d never seen.
Perhaps, if I’d looked a little harder, I might have detected it. I could have asked her about it. And maybe, if I had, we could have drilled down to the source of the feeling within all of us that yearned to go to Port Ocali, yearned to see the source of the creeping feeling of evil that had slowly started to surround us.
Had I tried to look into Françoise’s secret heart, could I have saved us?
verso folio 