Read Online Red Desert - Point of No Return by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli - Free Book Online

so little a time, but nonetheless I kept on
looking around me, suspicious.
    While I was sipping
herbal tea in one of the bars, a pair of policemen sat at a table
beside mine. I couldn’t avoid staring at them. One of them turned
to me and our eyes locked for an instant. I turned to the opposite
side and started looking for nothing inside my handbag.
    “Madam?”
    I started on hearing a
voice so close to me. It was the policeman; he had risen from his
chair and was standing in front on me.
    “Are you alright?”
    I couldn’t understand
what he wanted from me. I looked at him, aghast and trembling. I
must have been pale.
    “Yes …” I babbled.
“Alright.”
    Then I realised he was
observing my clothes, not my face. I lowered my eyes and noticed
with horror a bloodstain on my white down jacket.
    “Are you sure you are
alright?” he insisted. His voice had become suspicious. His
colleague had stood up and was joining him.
    “Oh, you mean this!” I
exclaimed, cracking a nervous smile and gesturing. “No, don’t
worry. My nose bled … earlier. Unfortunately I don’t have a change
of clothes with me.”
    The policemen looked
at each other. I was trying to interpret their gazes. I had to stay
calm and behave normally, but I felt like I was about to vomit. I
could only think about my wool gloves, stained with my father’s
blood, which were in the handbag laid on the seat beside me.
    “It’s quite a lot of
blood,” the second policemen commented, doubtful. “If you want, we
will take you to the infirmary. Your blood pressure must be quite
high. It isn’t something you can underestimate.”
    When I heard his
words, I relaxed. He was just worried I was really sick. He wasn’t
thinking I had assaulted someone with a paper cutter.
    “Thank you, officer.”
This time my expression was no doubt much more relaxed. “But it
happened to me yesterday night. I’m fine now, believe me. I’ll pay
a visit to my doctor tomorrow. Thanks again,” I rapidly
concluded.
    I felt I hadn’t been
very convincing and their perplexed gazes seemed to confirm that.
The silence that followed seemed never-ending to me.
    “You’re welcome,
madam.” The first one had spoken, adding a reluctant nod.
    Then the policemen
returned to their coffee.
     
     
    I’ve stopped at few
metres from the precipice. This is the right direction, but I can’t
really go any further in the rover. Standing on the edge of the
canyon, I try to identify a point where the slope becomes gentler,
so that I can drive on it with my vehicle. Looking down, I realise
that the situation is far more complicated than I’d hoped. The rock
dips down for some hundreds of metres, where it meets a kind of
ledge, and then it dips down again, as a canyon inside a canyon.
The deepest point in the zone is over two thousand metres deep.
    I must not be
dejected. It’s essential that I remain calm if I want to find a
solution. I’ve come this far. I cannot get discouraged now.
    My eyes follow the
conformation of the terrain eastward. It seems to go on unchanged
for kilometres. Even when magnifying the image to see further, no
big differences appear to me, not from this position. Heading in
the opposite direction would mean going back, although it is a
different route from the one I took to come here. With more
detailed maps I could have saved some hours, but all I have derives
from satellite detections that, taken from above, have a poor
perspective.
    I look at the sun. It
is still high, but it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon. It
goes down quickly near the equator and in a few hours the night
will fall on Valles Marineris. And it will be cold, too. I have a
seventeen-hour oxygen reserve at my disposal inside the rover, in
the warmth, plus seven remaining in my suit, but actually only
three before the night comes. I can’t walk anywhere in the dark and
I can’t descend the cliff with my vehicle.
    I turn my gaze again
to the immense space opening up at my feet.