Red Sky: Chapter 16
“Our hair and fingernails don’t grow” Max said as we chipped and sifted through rock. “Have you noticed that?”
“Yes,” I said.
I always figured it was something they put in the paste. It was so we wouldn’t have to use sharp instruments like scissors and clippers. It was no different than not letting us use utensils. If I were running a prison I would do the same.
“It’s that damn airtag they gave us when we arrived. It’s a virus and that virus stops the growth.”
At various times, Max claimed the airtag was a tracker that allowed Goodwell to monitor our movements, a bomb that would explode in our heads if we left the moon’s atmosphere, or even a simple injection that stopped us from catching the native diseases of the red moon. The airtag was one of Max’s favorite topics. He could talk about it for hours. I would listen patiently as he spun his theories. The more he talked the less I cared if the actual theory was true. I listened for enjoyment of the story itself.
“It infiltrates our circulatory system and stops all regular growth of hair, nails, even skin. It affects the nervous system. It allows us to work longer in the mine. The side effects must be profound, we’re practically guaranteed to have neurological disorders after we get out of here.”
I nodded along as Max continued. I wanted to ask him where he could have possibly heard such a theory. We spent every minute of every day together. The only time Max was out of my sight was when we were locked in our cells and couldn’t talk to anybody. He couldn’t stop his mind from spinning and the constant creation of theories and rumors was his way of coping. Prolonged confinement has a way of letting the imagination loose from reality. Sometimes, I think the only thing there is on the red moon is imagination. Imagination, dreams, memories, these are the only way to cope with such a mixture of monotony and fear.
Max continued talking about the airtag. I mentally checked out, lost in the repetitive motions of my work with the pickaxe. I was sleeping while being awake, my body so accustomed to the routine I found it restful as I pounded away at the rock, breaking up the tunnel wall so Max could work the sifter. That’s why Max’s next remark startled me. I expected him to be talking about the airtag. But he wasn’t talking about the airtag. He was holding a brilliant shiny object in his hand.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Max said. Then he turned to me and held up a piece of Qalladium Ore the size of a curled finger.
“What?”
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Max said again and thrust the Qalladium towards me.
The reflection from the freeze light on my uniform bounced off the Qalladium and into my eyes. It took me a second to refocus and see the mineral clearly. Max was right. It was beautiful.
Normally, even the largest pieces of ore were too small to appreciate. They were mere slivers or tiny balls, but this one was an entire rock. You could hold it in your hand or wear it like a ring. I marveled that so much energy could be contained in that brilliant little sphere. I expected a piece that size to vibrate as though it were trying to unleash itself onto the world. Something so powerful should jump about instead of lying dormant in Max’s hand like it was any other common gemstone.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Max asked a third time. “My beautiful Goldie.”
Despite Max’s nickname Qalladium had more a silver shimmer. Max said he called it Goldie not because of the color, but because it reminded him of a former girlfriend with golden blonde hair who had mysteriously disappeared from his life one day.
“I looked for her for ten years. Every day when I woke up in the morning and walked outside, I expected it to be the day I would find her. I still expect it, even here. That’s why I call it Goldie. That way I can still find her,” he told me during our first week. The rest of us just thought he called it ‘Goldie’ because he was colorblind.
“Savor it. It’ll be a year before you see another one this size.”
And I could savor it. One that size would meet our quota for a week. And it was beautiful like any gem is beautiful. But I couldn’t appreciate it like Max could. He appreciated it as an accomplishment, as an achievement, as a long-lost lover finally found. I only appreciated the practical relief it might bring. Maybe we could take it easy in the mine for a few days after finding such a large piece.
“Eventually, this moon isn’t going to have any more of these.” Max was still talking about the little rock in his hand. “It will only be the dust.” He seemed saddened by this thought. “These caves become mined out. You know this isn’t the only one.”
I looked to Max, surprised.
“Dominic and I found another mine by accident. These tunnels snake all over the interior of this moon. One day the entire moon might crumple in on itself when we’re finally done mining.”
“Maybe it will fall apart before we’re done mining,” I said darkly.
“Maybe so, maybe so. Dominic was a good digger, he was strong, much stronger than me, built like Ray. We were digging and hit this open patch. At first, we thought it was an air bubble. Only it wasn’t a bubble, it was small and long. We flashed our lights down it, but couldn’t see the end. I got the job of crawling down the hole first. The tunnel kept shrinking. I was sure I was going to hit a dead end. It took me two hours before I finally hit it. I noticed something funny in the wall in front of me. I was holding a freeze light in my teeth. I positioned my head as high as I could to shine the light in the corner and saw a giant white tube. I punched through the wall and there it was, a completely different mineshaft.”
“Who dug that tunnel?”
Max shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe a team in an escape attempt. If you look closely when we’re marching, around the fifteen-minute mark as we’re passing through the valley, you can barely make out the tops of the elevator towers of the other mine above the hills.” I tried to remember the terrain from our walks, but sadly I couldn’t. It all looked the same to me, the same red desert with a few red hills and mountains off in the distance
“I think Dominic and I are the only inmates to discover it. I left a freeze light to mark the spot and we covered it up. We lost track of where it was as the year went on. Dom was happy we couldn’t find it. He thought Hades would kill us on the spot if he ever found out we’d discovered it. I didn’t see why. It’s obvious these places get mined out. Of course the moon has more than one mine, it probably has half a dozen.”
The idea of a secret tunnel that could lead to freedom. It was easy to fantasize about. But it was always difficult to tell which of Max’s stories to believe. And if it did exist, it didn’t lead to freedom, only another mineshaft with elevators like ours. Elevators abandoned years ago. Even if those elevators worked, Hades was right, there was nowhere to go once you were on the surface.
Centuries ago they would build prisons on islands in the middle of the ocean. This prison isn’t in the middle of an ocean. It’s in the middle of a solar system most people on Earth have never heard of. Earth not only seemed millions of light years away, it was millions of light years away. The more I thought about Max’s secret tunnel the more depressed I became. Which is better; to try to survive five years in the mines of the red moon or to dive into the greatest ocean with no boat, no compass and no idea how to swim?