Blue Hearts of Mars (38 page)

He turned and saw me hurrying toward him, a hesitant smile breaking across his face. He caught me, and pulled me close. Androids gushed around us, hurrying toward the doors, shouting at each other. I thought I saw Dr. Craspo over Hemingway’s shoulder, his eyes slid across my face, his expression brightening in recognition, but I had no time for him. I had my blue heart, I’d caught him, I’d found him. I’d beaten the IRS agents and the government and Synlife.

I held onto Hemingway, leaning back to look up into his perfect face. He smelled dusty and sweaty, but I didn’t care. “I found you,” I said.

“You did.”

“The holo-documentary,” I began.

“It worked?”

I nodded. “I think it did.”

“They were chanting. I heard them. Did they say, ‘the children of Mars’?”

“Yes,” I said, barely containing my excitement.

“Wow,” he whispered.

He kissed me. It was like the first kiss. The danger, the thrill, the desire to become lost in him.

I pulled away. “Hemingway,” I said, then hesitated. I didn’t know what I wanted to say exactly, or how to explain it, anyway. “I just noticed something. All the other androids have these marks. Like stars. Like galaxies. Some of them are in their eyes. Some are on their faces. Some on fingernails.”

“Our
tells
,” he answered.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’d never seen so many at once. But, they look like stars. Galaxies. Solar systems. I mean, is that . . . something . . . what is it?”

He nodded somberly, his eyes getting a far away look in them.

“Are they—” I stopped myself. “Never mind. It sounds crazy.”

“What is it? What are you thinking? Tell me.”

“Well, are they star-maps, or something? Maps of solar systems? Of the universe?”

He smiled, slowly, and pulled me into a kiss. When he stopped, he blinked down at me, the lights in his eyes flashing, swirling. “I only just put it all together myself, seeing all these androids together in one place with me. Retta, we carry the keys to the universe in us. Maps. Planetary systems. Locations of habitable planets. We have all the secrets. And I believe amongst all that, we carry the location of our home planet in us.”

Marta lived.

It took a few months before we started to see signs that the android heart gave her something more. At first it was sort of intangible, like an air that she was just slightly enhanced. She could eat twice as much as she ate before, and run and never seem to grow weary.

Hemingway began teasing her that she couldn’t beat him in a race through the borough. And then they’d compete. I’d stand on the side of the street and watch them weave through foot traffic and the grocer and vendor stands, laughing, until I couldn’t see them any more.

I would wait, and soon Marta and Hemingway would come strolling up to me. Marta would seem completely rested, giving no sign that she’d just run several blocks. But she never actually beat him. Till one day.

“Retta, did you see that?” she asked me one afternoon, as I sat on the stairs going up to my dad’s building.

I nodded and smiled nonchalantly.

“I just beat Hemingway!”

“Of course you did. Hemingway’s a slowpoke,” I said. My throat clenched just a bit, thinking of it. I had promised her that she would be the same as she’d always been, even with the android heart.

Hemingway came trailing in after her, his eyebrows raised. We exchanged a look.

“It’s weird. I feel like I could run forever and never stop,” Marta said.

“Yeah, I feel that way too sometimes,” I said casually, lying. But I could see where she was going and I didn’t want to alarm her. A little white lie never hurt anyone.

She furrowed her brow at me, then looked away.

“I think the heart changed me,” she said at last, giving me a sidelong glance, climbing up to sit down a few steps below me, her back turned to the smooth, redstone railing.

I swallowed and hid the guilt this admission fostered in me. “Yeah, it seems that way,” I said. “Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

She nodded hesitantly, a distant expression on her face.

Neither of us said anything for a while. Eventually Hemingway sat down with us. He was carrying a bowl of honey-melon that he’d picked up from one of the market stands. He gave the bowl of fruit to me.

“I got this for you when I realized I was losing,” he explained.

“Thanks doll,” I said to him. He gave me a jeering smile. He hated when I called him doll.

“Hey Marta,” he said. “Fantastic race. You wasted me!”

Marta flashed a worried look at him. “What else do you think the heart changed about me?” Her eyes flitted back and forth between us.

Hemingway opened his mouth, but stopped whatever he was going to say. He turned to me. I shrugged. What to say to comfort her?

Hemingway finally spoke. “Marta, how do you feel about me?”

She lifted her shoulders and sighed. “I like you, I guess. You’re—you’re pretty cool. I’m glad you’re with my sister and glad they didn’t send you away.”

I listened quietly as I snacked on the melon.

“I’m happy about that too, believe me,” he said amiably. “So, do you ever think ‘Hemingway’s different. He’s an android’?”

“Not really, no.”

“So I seem pretty normal to you. Almost human?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

She laughed. He was always good at putting her at ease. And my father at ease too, now that he’d almost totally accepted that Hemingway wasn’t going to disappear or go away.

“Yeah, pretty normal. I’ve always felt like you were human,” she said, blushing for some reason.

“Good, good. So, you can run fast. You might be able to do some other cool things with that strong heart you’ve got, and that might make you feel just a little different. But you’ve got to trust me: you’ll always be Marta. You almost died. That will change anyone. No matter what, though, you’re Marta Heikkinen.”

She was silent for a while. “I guess so,” she said, finally. “I guess that’s OK.”

Hemingway put his hand on my thigh and I took it, interlacing our fingers together.

Across the street, a new vendor appeared, putting up his stand. The three of us watched him as he scrambled to raise the uprights and stretch the canvas over the roof. As the sun passed its zenith and began dropping into early afternoon, he lifted the sign over the front of his stand. “Android-Grown Coffee Beans,” it read. I laughed, thinking of the coffee bar back at the mall. Cassini Coffee. I wondered what they were up to.

“Android-grown, eh?” Hemingway remarked.

“Androids can do anything a human can do,” I said.

“And usually better,” he joked, looking at me, kissing the back of my hand. I finished the melon and put the empty bowl down on the stair next to me.

“And a hybrid can do everything better than either of them,” Marta said, smiling coyly at us.

We laughed. The vendor began setting up his wares, constructing a display of personal espresso machines and beautiful wooden boxes full of roasted coffee beans.

“You guys going to sit out here all afternoon?” A voice asked from behind us. I turned and looked up my dad. He was standing in the doorway, holding it open with one hand, looking just slightly impatient.

“Hey!” I greeted him.

“I thought you were making us dinner today, Retta,” he said.

“Oh right,” I answered, then grimaced, slapping my forehead. I groaned. “I left the groceries for it at our place.”

“Come on,” Dad said, climbing down a few steps and waving for us to come up to the apartment, “Sonja’s waiting upstairs. You can throw something together from my cupboards or have Mei pick something up on her way over. She’s still coming, isn’t she?”

I let go of Hemingway’s hand, stood up, and dusted my pants off. “Yeah, I think so.”

Dad looked up as he turned to go back in and caught sight of the new vendor across the street. “What? ‘Android-grown?’ Idiotic. I don’t put ‘human-grown’ on my orchid stand.” He shook his head and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I guess that’s how it’s going to be now. Androids bragging about being androids.” He gave a long-suffering sigh as he turned and went back up to the apartment.

The three of us exchanged a look and began laughing. That was definitely going to be how it was now. The blue hearts were staying and they didn’t belong to anyone but themselves. And if they wanted to go out into the stars, looking for new worlds, they could do just that. Some of them did. But, a whole lot of them stayed, and things were improving for them.

Not perfect, yet, but . . . better.

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Blue Hearts of Mars
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Blue Hearts of Mars
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Blue Hearts
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Thanks to my ever-supportive husband Stoker—for willingly giving me so many nights off and time away to do my writing, in addition to all the hours patiently spent listening to my ideas about plot and character. Thanks to Cassi Grotepas for the advice and consultation. And thank you to Carrie Westover.

FEED

WORLD IN SHADOW (ILLUMINATED UNIVERSE BOOK #1)

Prologue

Greasy smoke rose from the pyre—it was a pyre, wasn’t it? She didn’t know for sure, but the word seemed to fit and of course she didn’t have the luxury of asking her English teacher at the moment. A crowd of drab, downtrodden people watched the flames. Some of them looked official, wearing similar robes and tending the fire. But most of the dismal group looked like they might belong to those that burned. Their fair-hair blew in a smoky breeze that whipped around the burning pile and several of them coughed and backed away.

A few of the bodies were small, like baby-sized and of course that made her feel worse about it. The whole affair was disturbing and gut wrenching, but the thought of children in that human-bonfire really upset her. She felt like she should look away, out of respect and, she admitted, fear. Someone in the crowd of bystanders let out a wail. A howling, weeping sort of wail that made the hair on her arms stand up even straighter than it already was. The whole thing was creepy and it wasn’t getting any better. What if someone looked over at her? Would she run? Would she attempt a smile? She could imagine herself giving an awkward, involuntary smile. Sometimes she did that when she felt really uncomfortable.

If she could go back, would she? Just to avoid this horrendous sight? If only there were such a thing as time-travel. Maybe she could go back to before and just never go home that night, when everything changed. But time-travel was totally impossible, no matter what the sci-fi TV channel said. Right? She almost laughed aloud at the thought, considering where she was and what she was seeing. A bad idea, laughing right now. Besides, she didn’t really want to.

The companion at her side suddenly bolted, and she looked after him. She had no choice but to run as well. Before she could leave, one of the robed figures near the fire looked at her—
right at her
. She turned and ran, too, her pulse galloping.

1

Party

“Sarah! Your turn,” Noah shouted from the center of the room.

Sarah St. John jumped, surprised to hear her name after blending into the background for so long. Sliding down from her seat on top of a beat-up bookshelf against the wall, she glared at
 Noah. He turned from the television, offering her one of the plastic guitar-controllers. It might as well have been a rattlesnake, hissing and staring at her with fangs bared or something.

“Come on,” he urged with an encouraging smile.
 

Sarah didn’t move.

Heads swiveled in her direction, waiting expectantly. The audience was all crowded onto two Salvation Army couches, taking turns playing the old video game because it was ironic now. Noah was on a roll. He’d beaten nearly everyone in the room except for Sarah and maybe two other people.