"So," said Bill Tembo two weeks later. "How did they persuade you to change your mind."
Andrew sighed and paced across the floor of the garage. His rover stood beside him, gleaming like new. Its new cockpit window reflected the LED clusters that lit the underground chamber. The cleats that lined each two metre wheel looked sharp enough to pick a finger on and the underside of the hull, about level with his head, was smooth and shiny in contrast to the rest of the hull that was dulled by a thousand tiny pits and scratches. Best of all, the entire rover had had a complete thousand day service at absolutely no cost to himself.
"They just kept on and on," he said, glancing across at his wife who stared down at her feet in amused embarrassment. "Wearing me down a little bit at a time. I suppose it was the kids in the end. How the other kids in school are treating them." He looked at where they were walking around the rover, frowning critically as they studied the repairs from all angles. "The bullying stopped, but they keep telling me about subtle things. Sideways glances at them. Conversations stopping when they come close. They're being excluded from teenage social life and that's bad for their development. Maybe worse, in the long run, than the danger posed by remainers. The remainers have always done their best not to harm anyone, so long as they think they can get what they want peacefully." Tembo nodded solemnly.
"The biggest danger, I think," Andrew continued, "will be if we successfully gather the dysprosium and are bringing it back to the city. They'll be desperate, maybe willing to take more extreme measures, but I'm going to insist that the disprosium isn't carried on our rover. If they destroy a rover to scupper the mission, it'll be a cargo rover with no-one aboard. I'm more than willing to hire one."
"Sounds like a sensible precaution," Tembo agreed. "And you won't have to pay to hire one. The city will supply it."
Andrew nodded gratefully. "Will there be other children on the expedition?"
"All the other families are just as wary of remainers as you are. The trouble is finding people we can trust. We just have to take a gamble, I'm afraid, but there is one family we're sure we can trust. The Badgers."
Andrew nodded and felt a great wave of relief inside himself. Joe Badger, Philip Badger's seventeen year old son, had been tied up and gagged by Fox when he'd originally stolen the dysprosium from the Sellafield dig site. The Historian had had to physically overpower the teenager to stop him from raising the alarm. That meant that his father almost certainly felt the same way, and having someone on the expedition that he knew he could trust was a great weight off Andrew's mind. Philip Badger was a large, physically intimidating man. Having a man like that on his side made him feel a lot better about the whole thing.
"What about the other two families?" asked Susan. The number of families who ventured up to the surface was still quite small. They were bound to be people they'd heard of.
"The Yangs and the Inyosis," Tembo replied. "You've worked with them before."
Andrew nodded. "On the Tate Gallery dig. Good, solid workers. That was before Malina was discovered, of course. Before The Return existed as a possibility. I haven't spoken to anyone from either family since so I've got no idea what they think about the idea."
"We do. We've been talking to all their friends and colleagues trying to get a handle on what they think about The Return. They've both been openly sceptical about it, which I take to be a good sign. If they were returners hoping to be recruited into a position where they could take a hand in preventing it they'd have been saying it was the best idea ever."
"Unless that's what they want us to think." Andrew laughed as he heard the words come out of his mouth.
Tembo was forced to smile as well. "Yes," he agreed. "We can overthink ourselves into never trusting anyone, but circumstances force us to trust someone and they're the best we've got. You'll be in overall charge. You'll be leading the expedition."
"I'm not sure I'm qualified," said Andrew doubtfully. "I've never been in charge of anything in my life. Not even her, it seems." He indicated Susan, who smiled as she nodded her agreement.
"Well, you are now, if you think you're up to it."
"I'll do my best, Sir."
"As it happens, the Yangs and the Inyosis are up here right now," said Tembo. "Looking over their own rovers. Making sure they'll be ready ro depart in two days time. Want to meet them?"
"Sure," said Andrew.
Tembo nodded and led them to the fitters' recreation room, beside the main machine shop.
☆☆☆
A couple of the fitters were in there, having their lunch while watching basketball on the wall mounted television. They were happy to move over to a corner in response to Tembo's polite request, and then the Surface Operations Administrator went off to bring the other families.
When they arrived, David immediately became the centre of attention. "Look how white he is," declared Halona Inyosi. She put her hand on the boy's arm to compare his ivory white skin tone with her own dusky pink "He has blue veins, just like in the old stories. How long since any natural born child had skin as white as that?"
"Two hundred years of racial intermingling," said Li Yang. "With such a small population, we have to preserve the genetic diversity we have left. That's why they offer such large sums of money to marry the spouse they recommend. The one with the greatest genetic difference from ourselves."
"And is that the only reason you married me?" said Val, his wife, with a mischievous grin. "For the money?"
"There may have been one or two other reasons," said Li Yang, furrowing his forehead as if deep in thought. "Maybe you can remind me later."
"So," said Lungelo, Halona's husband, still staring at David. "A fossil child."
"We prefer Promise child," said Andrew with a warning gleam in his eye.
"Yes, of course," said Lungelo, nodding his head to him. "I meant no offence." He turned and made the same gesture to David, which he returned with an embarrassed smile.
"Promise children stand out so much," said Halona. "Two hundred years of racial interbreeding. There are no truly white people any more, nor any truly black people, or red or yellow. Only people who are a little more black or white than average. And then you see a child like this..."
"There was a promise child in my class when I was at school," said Izindaba, Lungelo's twenty three year old daughter. She stared at the boy in fascination. "He was truly black. Even blacker than our ancestors, dad. Not just brown, but a glossy blue black whose skin reflected every source of light like a star, as if he was a boy-shaped piece cut out of the sky. He was truly beautiful. He attracted every eye in every room he walked into."
"He's just a boy," said Susan, coming forward to stand beside David and put a hand on his shoulder. She gave at the other woman a stern warning glare. "Not a freak show exhibit."
"Of course not!" said Izindaba, taking a step back, her eyes widening in alarm. "I meant that it makes him exotic, like a rare orchid. The Genetic Council will be picking out the finest girls in the city for him to marry. A fresh infusion of genes into the population."
"How does it feel?" Li Yang said to David. "To know that your parents were heroes? That they died defending the city? Without them, none of us might be here."
"These are my parents," said David firmly, waving a hand to take in Andrew and Jessica.
"And we're his brother and sister," said James as he and Jasmine also stepped forward to stand beside David like bodyguards.
"Are we interrupting something?" said Phil Badger, entering the room with his two children, Joe and Stacey.
"Phil!" cried Susan, running over and giving him a hug. "Wonderful to see you again. Stacey, how big you've grown! And Joseph!"
"Good to see you, Mrs Birch," said the boy with a polite nod of the head.
"Joseph!" scolded Susan with a fake frown. "How many times do I have to tell you about this Mrs Birch nonsense? How long have we known each other?"
Joe's eyes flicked momentarily to his father, then back to Susan. "Sorry... Susan."
Susan smiled and went to give him a hug. Joe backed away, looking momentarily alarmed and hid eyes darted towards his father again, but then he made himself relax with a visible effort and allowed Susan to gather him up in his arms.
"So," said Philip Badger, looking around the room. Andrew thought he pointedly avoided looking at his son, who was gently trying to disengage himself from his wife. "We're the people who have been entrusted with the most important mission in the history of the human race."
"So it seems," said Lungelo, coming forward to shake his hand.
"Lungelo Inyosi," said Philip, smiling with approval. "You did some good work in London. You headed the British Museum dig."
"I had good people with me," Lungelo replied modestly.
"And you, Valentina," said Philip, offering her his hand. "I see you're bringing your husband this time."
"I finally managed to persuade him to come topside," Valentina said with a mischievous smile. "Show him that there's a whole planet up here."
"A whole lot of ice," said Li Yang. "A whole lot of dead people under the ice. Life is underground. The surface is only death."
"So why are you coming?" asked Philip. "Why not stay down below where it's safe and warm?"
"If my wife insists on going into danger, I want to be there to look after her."
"How lucky I am," said Valentina. "A frail, little girl, to have a big, strong man to look after me."
"You can mock," said Li Yang, "but people were injured chasing after Fox. A man died..." His eyes jerked guiltily towards Andrew. "Oh! I'm sorry. I spoke without thinking."
"No need to apologise," said Andrew. "Kartoshka made his own choices. He's the only one responsible for being dead." He'd been trying hard over the past couple of weeks to make himself believe it and thought he was finally succeeding. Certainly no-one else seemed to blame him for the man's death.
He went to stand beside Joe Badger and put a hand on his shoulder. "What about you?" he asked. "Are you okay with this?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" the boy replied, looking curiously up into his eyes.
"What happened to you. What Fox did to you."
"I was tied up for a few hours. It was uncomfortable and frustrating, that was all. Frustrating that Fox was getting away with the dysprosium and there was nothing I could do but lie there. And embarrassing when dad came in and found me like that. At least you managed to free yourself."
"Only because Sue likes to keep her fingernails neat." He would make sure there were nail files in the childrens' bedroom, he decided. So they'd have a chance to free themselves if... Not knives. They might slash an artery trying to free themselves.
"And what about you?" Andrew asked Philip. "How do you feel about what happened to him?"
"He wasn''t hurt," Philip replied. "As he said, it was just embarrassing. The most embarrassing thing was probably that such a fit, strong lad got himself tied up by a man he should have been able to overpower easily."
"He took me by surprise," said Joe sullenly.
"Men don't make excuses," his father replied unsympathetically. "They learn from their mistakes and do better. He didn't even have to knock you out like he did Windsor and Cheval. Just trussed you up like a Christmas turkey. I'd say that was embarrassing."
"Just because you're strong doesn't mean you're skilled at fighting," said Andrew, coming to the boy's defence. "Reg knew he might end up having to fight someone. He probably took lessons while your son is just a peaceful construction engineer, like yourself, without a violent bone in his body."
Philip nodded his head, conceding the point, but he still didn't look at his son.
"What's going to happen to him, do you think?" said Halona, anxious to change the subject. "Fox, I mean."
"Prison," said Tembo, coming over to join the conversation. "At least until The Return takes place. Once we're on Mars we'll need every able bodied hand to get the place going, and Fox will no longer have a reason to cause harm. It'll be as much in his interests as anyone else's that the colony is a success."
"It'll be strange to think of him running around free after what he's done," said Susan. "He could have killed everyone chasing him. He shot at people. Tried to kill them."
"Oh he'll be watched," said Tembo. "You can be sure of that. Someone like that, who thinks he knows better than the majority of his fellows and isn't afraid to take matters into his own hands, can never be trusted again. Everything he does will be closely supervised. Look, I've got to go, but I'll leave you to get to know each other. There's going to be a meeting in the Civic Centre, in conference room two, at ten tomorrow. Tony Shark will be briefing you on the geography between here and LaSalle and helping you pick the best route. We've got the latest satellite images and information gathered by drones. Plenty for you to pore over."
"See you there, Sir," Andrew replied.
The others offered their thanks, and the Administrator left the room.