Blue Hearts of Mars (21 page)

As I reflected, I knew that was why I couldn’t just give up on Hemingway. He was true. He made me burn. As though he could hear my thoughts, he looked up at me, his eyes suddenly focusing on me. The lights and galaxies were alive in his pupils, swirling and twinkling like pools of stars. “What was that?”

“I didn’t say anything,” I answered, startled with the impression that he could hear my thoughts. “But, do you think they’ll catch the Voice?” I unfolded my legs and sat forward on my seat.

He shook his head. “Who knows. I can’t say. I sincerely hope not.”

“He’s human,” I whispered. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Neither did I.”

I thought of the IRS catching the man. Something about him was good. Not just good. Great. He had this innocuous aura, like I bet he’d never been the kind of guy who ever experimented with killing ants. Or other harmless, small creatures. In fact, I could imagine him on an elementary school playground coming to the defense of the weaker kids. He just seemed like that kind of person. And it frustrated me to think of him being captured and killed.

Something in me—indignation and the certainty of being right, perhaps—fused together and I felt this strange power surging up in me. I pulled my eyes from the barren night outside and looked at Hemingway, wondering if he sensed it. It was like I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Hemingway was good and deserved to live his own life. The Voice was right about everything—the IRS was this enormous dragon of runaway power that should be stopped, and I couldn’t be afraid to do what I knew should be done.

But then, what about the android who attacked me? What was that and where did it fit with this newfound conviction? I needed to sort it out. How could I believe in freedom for Hemingway, but not for the android that had clearly been crazy?

“What’s wrong?” Hemingway asked, smiling at me as though to reassure me.

I shook my head. “Nothing, nothing. Just thinking.”

“About your dad?”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Worried about him and Marta.”

“I don’t blame you. I feel this strange ache in my chest. Don’t know when I’ll see my mom again.”

“It’s scary,” I said. I was worried about my dad and Marta even if that hadn’t been what I’d been preoccupied with when Hemingway asked. If I let myself think of them too much, I would begin to cry. Leaving them behind was a mess, but I couldn’t fix it. I had to do what I thought was right. I was eighteen already. Legal. An adult. I could leave home if I wanted. I could vote. I could have a job as a space-elevator pilot. I could be a pilot on one of the transport and trading vessels between Earth and Mars or Mars and one of the asteroids. “It’s really just that I didn’t say goodbye. And they don’t know where I’ve gone. It’s not like I think I should live at home for the rest of my life,” I explained, as much to myself as to Hemingway.

“Of course,” he said, nodding. “Come here.” He beckoned me with one finger.

I laughed, a bolt of desire shooting through my torso. I crossed the little space separating the seats and fell against him. He wrapped me up in his strong arms, switched off our compartment light, and we kissed for a while. It was still dark outside the compartment and I could see Phobos setting in the east and the hills outside became black creatures of some growing abyss. I closed my eyes and let the darkness of our compartment take me deeper into Hemingway’s embrace.

New Tokyo was a desert flower. That’s what Hemingway said when he saw it for the first time. We came down from a low mountain pass and it unfolded before us under the largest dome I’d ever seen. Hemingway said there were desert cities on Earth that were this big, and they called them desert flowers. Everything was a desert on Mars, so it wasn’t hard to imagine more deserts.

They didn’t need domes on Earth. I envied them that and I imagined that it would be interesting to go anywhere you wanted. We almost had that luxury. But there was this constant tension between feeling safe and knowing you were living on a dangerous planet. People called Earth, Mother Earth as though it was this nurturing place that embraced you and took care of you. No one called Mars, Mother Mars. Mars had always been a god of war and he’d be that way until the terraforming was finished. It was taking longer than expected.

Our train slipped through the lock in the dome and soon we were zipping into the fringes of the settlement, and down the terraced hills of the mountainside where the rice paddies were. The mountainside was really the slopes of the plain dipping down into the remnant of an ancient crater. I saw the conical hats of the paddy-workers as they waded through the ankle-deep water, bending to tend the green stalks of the plants. In no time, we passed through the farms, which were just past the paddies, and then we were in the city proper.

I gasped. The buildings in New Tokyo were thin and narrow spires. It looked like an enormous cluster of spikes. Like a billion claws of some pre-Earth monster, that lived in the aether. They reached toward the dome, which was blue with a hint of orange during the day like all the domes, towering over the wide, scooter-filled streets. I watched people zipping here and there, some in the small, two-seater cars, others on standing scooters.

There was this faction of colonists that hated everything that the Mars settlements had become. Sometimes they staged demonstrations in the public areas of each colony, chanting and shouting and rallying.
We had the chance to make a clean start! What did we do? Imported all the worst parts of Earth!

Like streets. Cities. Scooters. Cars. And classes.

New Tokyo was the biggest of the seven colonies. I’d only ever been to Neuholland, by way of New Hyderabad. Those colonies had their quirks, and I’d gaped at them an appropriate amount. But so far, New Tokyo won for being the strangest of the settlements.

There were brightly lit signs everywhere, flashing on the sides of the dome-scrapers, telling me what I needed to buy and how to live appropriately, like how much water to use and how much food to eat and how to conserve. Hemingway put his arm around me.

“What a strange city,” he said.

“Completely. Those signs are telling us to conserve resources while consuming resources to tell us that.”

“The eternal quandary of government,” Hemingway said.

“And all that water for the rice paddies. I mean, is that the best use of our resources?”

“I don’t know. Would you want to live without wheat? Bread? Pastries?” he asked with a sarcastic grin.

“No, but if it wasn’t economical to grow it, well,” I said with a shrug.

“The Japanese settled New Tokyo. They picked this spot so they could grow rice. None of the other settlements feel like telling them they can’t grow their favorite staple,” he laughed.

“Guess not,” I said, watching out the window as we passed some strange place—a park or something—that had red, natural-looking arches made of wind-carved stone and crowds of people walking through it, gleefully wandering beneath the arches.

“They also liked it here because it resembled the old west back on Earth,” Hemingway explained, seeing the same thing.

“How do you know so much? And why?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

He ran a hand through his hair, sat back and smiled. “One of the perks of being a blue heart, I guess.”

“What, like encyclopedic knowledge?”

He shook his head and laughed. “Hardly. I have to learn everything, just like you.” He winked and snatched my hand up and kissed it. “But I have better recall.”

“So, none of your knowledge ever decays?”

“Maybe. Mine hasn’t, yet, and no one has ever told me to expect that.”

You can learn some things from books, or at school—like, you can study New Tokyo, for example, but you don’t really get it until you’re here. It was the same with androids. There was information that was shared about them from how they built the infrastructure that helped settle Mars and fought on the Martian side during the revolt against the Earth oligarchy, to how their bodies are built.

But I had never known an android personally who I could ask about these things. How did it feel to be an android? What was it like to know an android? These weren’t questions with answers you could learn from school or history lessons.

Besides, so much of what I’d been taught had been colored by fear and the plethora of lies we’d been told to calm us.

“I wish I had perfect recall,” I mumbled, as we slowed into the station. Out my window I watched as a gust of air from the train sent a bunch of litter flying.

“Would you give up being human for it?” Hemingway asked, taking my hand and standing up.

“Uh, no,” I said. “But I’d be with an android to reap the benefits.” I let him pull me up and into his embrace. He laughed and kissed me on the nose.

*****

We had an address, given to us by the Voice. That was it. That was our plan for survival in New Tokyo.

We left the station and found a bike taxi service to pull us around. The currency of New Tokyo was different from New Helsinki’s. They used a Martian denomination that New Helsinki had opted out of for some reason—I’m totally positive it was a good reason too. So we converted some markkas to solars before leaving the train station and that was how we paid for the luxurious bike taxi ride. The sign over the taxi promised as much.

It was
not
luxurious. The driver sped through the streets, hunched over his handlebars, pedaling as fast as he could. Hemingway tried telling me the history of the bike taxi, shouting it to me as the driver sped around a turn and we nearly spilled out onto the street, scooters and cars zipping past us.

Finally the driver pulled into the outside lane and stopped. “Here you are,” he announced, holding his hand out to be paid. “Twenty solars,” he said, grinning at me with crooked teeth.

I put the crisp bills in his hand, feeling a pang of concern as I parted with my hard-earned money. Hemingway had mentioned having a bunch of money saved up, but didn’t offer to help with the bike taxi. I began to wonder how much he really understood economics, money, and the value of work. As I paid the driver, he stared up at the narrow, dark red building as though he were trying to count the floors.

Hemingway climbed out of the bike taxi and helped me out.

Before I could thank the driver, he pedaled away, spinning a wide turn without warning, to head back the way he’d come.

I let out an anxious sigh. “That was pure torture,” I said. “Let’s never do that again.”

“What?” Hemingway asked, glancing at me. “Oh, the bike taxi. Right. OK, we’ll never do that again.” He grinned and took my hand. “Let’s go meet this mysterious benefactor.”

I gulped—feeling apprehensive for some reason—and nodded, letting him lead me through the glass doors. We rode the elevator up to the fiftieth floor and before I knew it, we were knocking on an apartment door. The floor of the hallway glowed with the reflection of blue sconce lights lining the walls. The building was lush enough that perhaps the man could help us go underground.

“Let me do the talking,” Hemingway said. I was only too happy to allow that. No problems there.

A short, good-looking man with dark skin and almond-shaped eyes answered the door. He stared at us a moment, blinked, and said, “Hello. Can I help you?”

“Is this the home of Masumi Kim?” Hemingway inquired. Though he tried to block my view of his apartment, I could see beyond him, over his shoulder. There was glass furniture everywhere and hanging lights that illuminated wall sized paintings. His accommodations suggested wealth.

“I am Masumi Kim,” the man answered, bowing slightly, his eyes glittering as he smiled politely.

“We were sent by a mutual friend.”

“For what purpose?” Masumi blinked, as though startled. He kept blinking repeatedly, like a bright light was shining straight into his eyes.

Hemingway shrugged. “For help. Asylum? Anything.”

“Who sent you?”

I shifted uncomfortably. It was like we were at the wrong place, and I would have thought so except that the man had the right name. My palm felt wet against Hemingway’s.

“The Voice,” Hemingway said, finally. I knew he’d been avoiding actually saying as much. But he was grasping at straws by then.

“The what? Voice?” Masumi’s nose wrinkled in confusion. “I know no one by that name.” His eyes darted from side to side suspiciously, he took a step back, hunched his shoulders and began edging the door closed. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know who the Voice is?” Hemingway asked, patiently.

The short man shook his head. His door was only cracked open by then and most of his body was hid behind it, his face peeking around its edge.

“Right! Well, thank you for your time,” Hemingway said cheerfully. “Let’s go,” he muttered to me and began walking away. “Go slowly, casually. Nonchalantly.”

“What’s wrong?” I whispered. “Why doesn’t he know who the Voice is? Why did the Voice give us his name?”

“The IRS has already gotten to him. He must have been a big player in the equal rights movement.”

A shower of ice descended into my stomach. I wanted to run, but Hemingway had a tight grip on my hand. “What now?”