Is there life on Mars?

'You see that star, right up there?' said the mother to her daughter as she pointed towards the window from their large reclining chairs on the observation deck.

'Right there?' asked the little girl, her eyes wide open and following the line of her mother's finger.

'Yes, the one that's shining just a bit brighter than the others.'

'Yeah, I see it,' said the girl squinting.

'That's Earth. That's where I came from.'

'Oh wow. That's really small!' remarked the little girl brightly.

The mother laughed. 'Not too different to Mars, actually,' she replied gazing at the small dot in the evening sky.

'Can I go there one day?'

'Not anymore, no...'

'But I want to see it. What was it like?'

Rebecca looked across at her daughter, who was drawing lines between the stars with her finger, and decided to share some memories about home.

'It was beautiful' she began, tentatively. 'There were a lot of colours. You've seen the films in your class, I know, but there was a feeling to it, too. On your skin, or under your feet. When the weather was hot, we'd go to the beach. I always had to catch my breath when I put my shoulders under the water and started to swim, because it was so cold. But once my body started to move around in the water I'd soon warm up. We used to go a lot when I was a little girl.'

'Did all Earth people like swimming?'

'I'm not sure. I guess a lot of people enjoyed playing in water. It was a sensory experience. Or maybe we waded into the sea just to be closer to nature; that always felt uplifting to us. Hey, but you're almost old enough to leave the compound, you know. We can do a bit of hiking if you like, when the time comes.'

'Will there be any beaches?'

'No. There aren't any beaches on Mars.'

Elena, still looking out at the view, frowned and turned to her mother.

'Mummy...Why didn't my daddy come to Mars?' she asked innocently, without any real understanding of who her father had been.

'That's complicated,' answered the mother resting back into the reclining chair with her hands behind her head. 'He stayed to try and help the poorest people get places on the last ships to come here. He cared a lot and wanted everyone to have the same chance. But they didn't build those ships properly and they couldn't launch...'

The little girl sat quietly and began the process of plaiting her doll's hair while her mind absorbed all the words that her mother had spoken. 'Maybe they're all at the beach in the water, then?' she said as she carefully separated and brushed three sections of her doll's hair. Rebecca laughed gently as she observed from a distance the mind of her daughter. She hesitated for a moment because of a dilemma: how to balance protecting a child's happiness with the responsibility to convey uglier truths. After a moment, she continued softly, 'I think that's what they're doing right now. I bet they're having a lot of fun.'

It was probably for the best that her daughter had never experienced life on Earth; there was so much to miss about that distant star. Rebecca remembered evenings on the veranda with John when they were younger. The air was hot at night so they would sit on deckchairs in their underwear sipping ice cold beers while old electronica music pulsed from the stereo. Everything was so effortless back then. On clear nights, they looked at the stars and joked about putting their names forward to be on the first colony missions. No one imagined that these would progress at the pace that they did. But as governments grew tired of fighting over the earth's fragility they lusted after a new prize: a Mars colony. The quest for land on the red rock was a race for domination and any romantic notions of 'A New Home for All!' quickly transpired to be naive. Many things had been promised but constant disagreements and territorial disputes prevented any real progress, so life in the compound remained simple.

Rebecca's daughter, Elena, only knew the cocoon of this compound. She was tightly wrapped up in the alien structure in order to breathe. Born at the colony's main hospital six years earlier, the little girl was native to Mars and its red barren landscapes. The accent that she had developed was common to the young Martians. There was a strange twang on certain syllables and a downward tone at the end of sentences, which all came from the mix of languages and accents in the colony. Elena sometimes had to remind her mother of the meaning of words that described emerging Martian concepts. 'Marawnan' described the age when a child was allowed to suit up and leave the compound with an adult for the very first time, but Rebecca couldn't always keep up with the vocabulary of her Martian daughter.

'Mummy, if we go hiking, can we take a picnic?' asked Elena, who was now also resting her hands behind her head in the chair.

'Yes, we can take some food packs with us, why not? We can take some of those juices you like, too. They've really nailed the flavours recently, haven't they?'

Elena finished the hair plaits, put the doll down on her lap and announced firmly to Rebecca: 'Mummy, when I grow up I'm going to be an astronaut.' Rebecca looked at Elena with an exaggerated o-gape of surprise on her face. 'Wow! That's great! I'd be on your crew any day. Sign me up, Captain Elena!' she laughed, giving her daughter a salute.

Elena looked at the view from the window thoughtfully as if her mind were plotting an adventure. 'Yes! I'm gonna go back to Earth to fetch daddy,' she said resolutely. 'If I tell them that he only didn't come because they couldn't launch his rocket, I bet they'll let me go back and get him.'

The smile drained from Rebecca's face. Her eyes began to fill with tears, though she blinked quickly and swallowed hard. She reached over and held her daughter's hands. 'You know, why don't you train to be an astronaut so you can take us all to the next planet in the galaxy? Captain Elena, only you can find the next planet!' said Rebecca forcing a bright tone of voice from her throat.

Elena jumped up, walked over to the window and pressed her nose against it.

'Can we go to a planet with grass next time?' she whined, pushing her whole body against the window so it was as close to that star as possible. 'I want to go somewhere like the places in the films we watched in class. There was a forest and the children were climbing trees. That looked like fun.'

'Of course, Captain! We shall look for another planet with some grass and some trees,' nodded Rebecca to confirm the order.

'Yeah, let's do that!' the girl replied triumphantly, before turning away from the window and adding, 'It's called 'Midoripang', mummy.'

Rebecca cocked her head slightly and looked at Elena with a puzzled expression, 'What's that, sweetheart?'

''Mi-do-ri-pang', mummy. It's what the Earth people call the feeling they get when they miss the green from home.'

If you enjoyed this, you might also like my short story about Japanese translation and Mars:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/human-creativity-die-art-translation-lucy-kikuchi-1c/