This is a fan translation of Road to Mars (Дорога к Марсу) by fifteen Russian science fiction writers.
This chapter was written by Alexei Kalugin.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Chapter 19
Shadow Game
The treadmill was broken. And the engines were shut off, resulting in weightlessness. It was very easy to go out of shape in zero-g, so Jeubin started jogging in the corridors. In reality he wasn't running, of course, moving like everyone else, by grabbing on the braces. His arms were getting worked out instead of the legs. But the psychological effect was still there. It still seemed to Jeubin that he was jogging. Without it, Jean-Pierre felt that, with every passing second, his muscles were weakening, his skin was loosening, and he was turning into a flabby fat man. He couldn't even imagine a fat Frenchman! A fat American wasn't something out of the ordinary. But a fat Frenchman wasn't even a repulsive sight, it was pitiful. That was why Jean-Pierre was exercising as hard as he could, all the while imagining that it was his legs that were being exercised.
For his athletic activity, Jeubin had chosen the longest corridor on the ship. Since he couldn't jog in a circle, he was doing it along an arc. Jean-Pierre would start his jog from the hatch that led into the refrigeration chamber, move along the port side, reach the cockpit, and then go back to the fridge, this time along the starboard side. The starboard corridor came to a dead-end. Here Jeubin was forced to turn around. The corridor passed through three compartments, so Jeubin had to dive through hatches twice. When moving, Jean-Pierre counted how many times he had to grab a brace with his hands. Each time, it turned out that passing the entire corridor on the port side required grabbing twice as many braces as on the starboard side. There was no way to explain that fact. Just like many other things that were happening aboard the Ares. That was why Jean-Pierre wasn't particularly bothered by it.
On the way to the dead-end, Jeubin floated to the second intercompartmental bulkhead, grabbed the edge of the hatch, and froze.
His first thought was, What is that?
Followed by, What do you even call this?
What Jeubin saw looked more like the dense thick shadow of a tall broad-shouldered man. Except it wasn't a proper shadow. Because it wasn't lying on the wall, it was floating in mid-air maybe half a meter from the bulkhead.
Strangely, Jean-Pierre wasn't afraid in the least.
Surprised? Yes.
Confused? Definitely.
At a loss? Without a doubt.
But not afraid.
In addition, he didn't for a second doubt the reality of what was happening. Even though he couldn't find an explanation.
Jeubin's eyes slid along the gray box of the intercom secured next to the bulkhead. He wondered if he ought to contact the cockpit. Report to the Commander and have him figure it all out. After all, no one would believe what happened. The shadow was going to disappear, and there would be no proof that any of this was real.
Jean-Pierre reached out for the intercom, but then the shadow moved and got closer to him.
It was moving, not walking. Jeubin could see it very well. At some point, the shadow seemed to ripple. Its outlines grew hazy, as if blurred. It disappeared, only to reappear in another place at the same moment.
Did the shadow know of Jeubin's existence?
Could it see him?
Or was it sensing his presence some other way?
Jean-Pierre quietly touched the edges of the hatch with the tips of his fingers and slowly floated into the dead-end part of the corridor.
The shadow once again moved closer to the man.
They kept on slowly, gradually getting closer to one another. Until the distance separating them was reduced to two paces. Strangely enough, even in zero-g a pace was the most natural and convenient unit of length for a person.
Now, floating next to the shadow, Jean-Pierre was able to confirm that it really didn't have a volume. Even the volume of a sheet of paper. So it was as if it didn't even exist.
Jeubin was tempted to reach out and touch the shadow.
What would happen then?
Would the shadow disappear?
Or would his hand simply pass through without meeting any barriers?
Or would it run into something?
But Jean-Pierre knew that he shouldn't do that.
But how did he know that?
Jeubin was strangely anxious. It was like that feeling when standing at the edge of a precipice and carefully looking down. But it wasn't fear before the abyss, more like a temptation to step into the void. Obviously, this would never happen, but, for some reason, people always wonder if they would do it when standing on the edge.
"Who are you?" Jeubin asked.
The show didn't reply.
"My name is Jean-Pierre Jeubin."
The shadow remained silent and motionless.
"We can keep standing here and looking at each other," Jean-Pierre chuckled. "But what's the point? What do you think?"
The shadow lifted its hands and made a motion as if unrolling a large rolled-up sheet of paper.
At the same moment, a golden lattice appeared in the air between them. Transparent even squares, each slightly larger than a standard chessboard square. Ten by ten. Glowing golden symbols that looked like hieroglyphics or pictograms, but were neither, ran along the perimeter.
The shadow stretched out its left hand, and a circle with small pale-pink disks inside it appeared next to the lattice.
The shadow touched one of the disks with a finger and dragged it onto the lattice. As soon as it placed the disk on one square and removed its hand, the disk flared with a bright green light. The lattice immediately grew by one square both vertically and horizontally. And the disk itself was duplicated. One remained where it was, while the other returned to the circle and was once again pale-pink like the others.
Jean-Pierre waited to see what would happen next.
But the shadow remained motionless.
It was a game, Jean-Pierre realized suddenly. And it was now his turn!
But, at the same time, Jeubin realized that it was a very important game. And not even fully a game. Or maybe not a game at all. Even though it looked like one…
Now he was confused.
Well, he wasn't the one confused.
The shadow couldn't explain to the man what it was it wanted him to do.
Maybe the human mind lacked the necessary concepts and images. Or maybe understanding first required him to play.
Strangely enough, Jeubin quickly figured out the basic principles of the game. The trick wasn't to play against his opponent but to cooperate. Only together they could win or lose.
The symbols adorning the horizontals represented various human emotional states: fear, hatred, love… The signs on the verticals corresponded to particular actions someone might do. When a player put a pink disk at an intersection between a horizontal and a vertical, they correlated that particular action with that emotion.
As a test, Jeubin touched his finger to one of the pink disks. He didn't feel the touch, but the disk seemed stick to the fingertip. Jean-Pierre dragged the disk onto the game board and pressed it against a random square. The disk turned dark-purple and disappear. The board returned to its original size.
Jeubin felt that the shadow was displeased.
Even he knew that he'd done something stupid. If it was a game, then, obviously, not every move had to be a good one. As such, he had to make the right choice before placing the token on a square. It wasn't easy. Jean-Pierre could guess the meaning of the symbols lining the edges of the game board. Actually, he could feel their meaning. But the complexity had to do with, as Jeubin understood, the fact that this strange game didn't have right and wrong moves. The same action could be correlated with a dozen emotional states. And, respectively, one emotion assumed the possibility of a dozen different actions. Which one turned out to be right largely depended on the player. On the combination they wanted to play out. The first token could be placed anywhere. But Jeubin's move had been wrong. Because he'd done it thoughtlessly, without a particular goal in mind.
Meanwhile, the shadow made a new move. The game board expanded again, and another token was added to the players' bank.
Jean-Pierre also picked up a pink disk with his finger. But this time, before placing it on the board, Jeubin concentrated on what he was feeling at the moment.
Tension. Concentration. Excitement. And, of course, wild interest in what was happening.
That was enough to start.
Jean-Pierre moved the token to the chosen square and left it there.
The token duplicated, and the game board expanded.
They were now playing.
The man and the shadow took turns making their moves. The board was getting larger, and that also increased the number of possible moves and combinations. But the game was also becoming more difficult because they had to keep in mind the tokens already on the board: their positions affected whether the next move would be right or wrong. More and more the tokens placed by Jeubin were "burning up." His partner also had failed moves.
The game demanded maximum focus and dedication. Jeubin was engrossed in the game. He was entirely submerged in it, with all his being and consciousness. It was as if they were now one, if not in body then in soul. So much that Jeubin wouldn't be able to say how much time the game had taken. An hour? A day?
Only when his finger picked up the final pink token did Jean-Pierre realize that the game was coming to an end.
Staring at the game board almost the size of the corridor marked with green circles, Jean-Pierre spent a long time thinking. A lot, if not everything, was depending on his move. If he placed the token in the wrong place, the game was over. The right move would give the shadow another token. And so on until one of them made a mistake.
That was it, Jeubin realized suddenly. They couldn't lose the last token! They couldn't both lose!
He examined the board once again.
But no matter which square Jeubin's gaze paused on, he didn't feel confident that it would be the right move. On the contrary, the longer he spent choosing, the more the uncertainty inside him grew. And that was bad. Very bad.
Feeling that his nerves were starting to give way, Jean-Pierre finally decided to put an end to the ambiguous situation.
After all, it was only a game!
Nothing more!
So Jean-Pierre placed the token on the first empty square he saw.
For a moment, he thought he'd made the right decision.
But then the token flared purple and disappeared.
And the game board along with it.
And then the shadow.
As if it hadn't been there at all.
As if all this—the shadow, the game board with golden symbols, the pink tokens—had been merely a figment of Jeubin's imagination.
Jean-Pierre finished his story.
Silence fell in the room.
"That's something," Bull was the first to break the silence.
"Why didn't you tell us this earlier?" Anikeev asked.
"I was afraid you'd think I was crazy," Jeubin explained. "I didn't have any proof. Besides, there's nothing I can say about the shadow."
"But you talked to it, didn't you?"
"Well, that's pretty much what it was," Jean-Pierre nodded. "Even though the shadow didn't say a word. The game itself was like a dialog. A very dense, informative, and tense exchange of opinions. During the game, we learned a lot more about each other than if we'd been talking without rest."
"And you have nothing to say about the shadow?"
Jeubin thought for a moment.
"Nothing.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't describe it in words."
"Then why remember it at all?"
"I think it'll be back."
"To play again?"
"Yeah."
Anikeev just shook his head.
He didn't have any reason to disbelieve Jeubin. But it was also not easy to believe in what the Frenchman was telling them.
"Guys!" Givens spoke up near the console. "You're not going to believe it!"
"Really?" Bull chuckled. "Right now, I'm ready to believe just about anything! What's going on? Did a flying saucer dock with us?"
"The Chinese are gone."