SEEING THINGS
an excerpt

Chapter 1

Rab Munro looked out over the charred remains of the Potterrow Central Archives, his expression as desolate as the blackened wasteland under his feet. He was a tall man with a thin face, blue eyes, and brown hair flecked with gray at the temples. As he picked his way around a pile of burnt books, CDs and film, he coughed and wrinkled his nose with distaste. The air was bad. Paper and plastic at high temperature, he thought.

He leaned down to pick up the remains of a book. A couple of pages cracked, broke off, and fluttered to the ground. The book had no title on its green leather spine. Just a librarian’s decimal. He recognized the bookshelf marker. This was somebody’s personal journal, he thought. Most likely their memories of the early days of colonization. Maybe even of the flight to Rhea. Irreplaceable. His shoulders sagged.

It wasn’t just that a precious library had burnt down. Or that his place of employment was now a pile of smoking ash. It was that folk in town, especially the Municipal Guard, thought someone might have set the fire deliberately. That it might have been arson. He flinched. The idea left him numb and incredulous. The loss was incalcuable; no one here could write like Shakespeare or Rumi; direct like Coppola, or compose a sonata worthy of Chopin. Worse, the early colonists were all of an age now. They were starting to die off. This meant the colony’s collective human repository of memory was literally disappearing.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He blinked back tears. It puzzled him deeply why anyone would want to destroy the archival matter of this tiny outpost, this strange, lingering remnant of humankind. Nobody was going home. Not ever. As the pilot who had brought them to Rhea was eternally fond of saying: 'We are where we are, lads and lassies, and that's a fact.'

Rab wondered if the Egyptian librarians at Alexandria had felt this dispirited when their great library had been razed by the Romans. That, too, had been arson. Barbarians all, he thought. He let the blackened book in his hand fall to the ground. A fine spray of ash scattered outward.

His lips twisted with ambivalence. He shook his head. It was laughable really -- the situation. Well, hey, he thought, his brilliant blue eyes now darkening with despair, why bother learning anything from history when we have a new planet to ruin?

***

James Ross was an old man now. Whatever he did, he did slowly and with great deliberateness. He stretched out his arthritic fingers and pulled a piece of coarse brown paper under and over his sketchbook. He hands shook slightly as he folded back the corners of the paper. He touched the edges with glue and held them down until they stuck together. Then he tied the package as tightly as he could with string.

He pushed the wrapped sketchbook gently across his desk as though it were something infinitely breakable. When it was out of the way, he set to work on the three-hundred page hand-written book that lay to his right. He enfolded it in brown paper as tenderly as the first. These were his memoirs. Kiss and tell, oh yes. But they deserved it.

He smiled bitterly. In his hands he held his own eyewitness account of the extraordinary decisions that had led to the funding of a secret spaceflight from Earth to Rhea in Rhean Year 1. He grunted with disgust. And who better to write it than he, the substitute pilot? James Ross: bought and paid for by big business. Aye, he thought. That was the long and short of it back then.

Fold and wrap. Fold and wrap. The only sound in the room was the crackle of brown paper. It took him little time to finish the packaging up of his memoirs. He wrote the recipient’s name and address on both books: Dr. Rab Munro. He included no return address.

There was a sharp knock at the door. It was the courier come to take the paintings and writings away. He opened the door. A young man no more than eighteen smiled brightly at him and requested a signature. James wrote his name carefully. He wanted the ones who came after, the ones with the questions, to be certain that it was he who had given these things away. He dated the signature and then unbidden, added the time.

"That's not necessary, sir."

"You just never know," said James quietly. Despite having spent the last fifty years off-world and far from his beloved Highlands, he still spoke with a gentle Edinburgh accent. He handed his sketchbook and memoirs to the young man. “Lad, promise me you’ll be careful with these."

“I’ll be careful, Captain,” said the young fellow. He gave the elderly man with the white fly-away hair a shy smile.

Among the good citizens of Potterrow, James Ross was a legend. People called him ‘Captain’ and ‘Pilot’ to his face. Behind his back, they referred to him as ‘The Mad Scot.’

For his part, James accepted all their names for him with equanimity. There was one, though, that he longed to hear and knew he never would. It was his wife’s nickname for him: Jimmers. She was dead now. Dead and buried in the garden outside. Forty-years ago, the utopian architects of the colony had recommended he give his wife a green burial. Coffins were passe in the New World; only biodegradeable materials would be permitted. In truth, he hadn't cared one whit about the latest fad. So, when he was sure that all the mourners and town dignitaries had finally left, James planted a cutting from a weeping-willow tree at the head of Olivia's grave. He had smuggled the willow stick aboard the spaceship -- along with a few other items. It had pleased him mightily that the cutting had grown well in the alien soil.

James sighed. “You’ll hand-deliver these to Dr. Munro?”

The courier peered at the address on the brown paper. “Yessir. I’ll take them straight to his home address. He shrugged. “And anyway, I can't take them to where he works. Ain’t nothing left of the archives. Terrible what happened.” He paused. “Did you hear the latest, sir? They’re saying it was arson.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Ross softly.

The young man peered at him. “Why’s that, sir?”

James pressed his lips together and refused to comment. After a few seconds, he gave the courier a broad smile and reached into his cardigan sweater pocket. He pulled out a ten note bill. Like all ten notes printed on Rhea, it had the face of Jessica March Tiller on the front and a picture of Earth on the back. “For your trouble,” he said warmly.

“Thanks! Have a great afternoon, sir.”

Ross nodded. When the courier was out of earshot, he murmured, “Unfortunately, son, I think there’s little chance of that.”