Blue Hearts of Mars

by Grotepas, Nicole

  “Not too much, I hope,” she said in her surprisingly dark voice, glancing at me and then back at Dad. “And nothing bad, I should add.”

  “Not bad at all,” I said quickly, “just the normal stuff. And that you’re a synthetic-life engineer.” After I said that, I wondered if I shouldn’t have. Maybe Hemingway hadn’t told her that we knew. Maybe she wanted that to be a secret? But if so, well, why? Seems stupid to keep your profession a secret. It couldn’t be that.

  “Was a synthetic-life engineer,” Sonja said. “I left my position at the Synlife facility.”

  “And why did you do that? Synlife is the biggest, richest corporation in any of the colonies,” Dad said, getting right to the point. I coughed uncomfortably. Hemingway met my gaze and raised an eyebrow.

  She flicked a hand in a casual gesture, as though to say that it hardly mattered, and that people left facilities all the time, what could possibly be special about this facility and her leaving it? “I didn’t appreciate who they were taking orders from. Conflict of interest,” she said.

  “Which interests?” Dad probed.

  “Pick one,” she shot back.

  “And have you been continuing your work on the side?” Dad asked, taking a bite of saucy carrot.

  Hemingway gave me another look. If we were thinking along the same lines, he didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. Dad was being aggressive. And Sonja was sure to get offended at his tactics.

  But . . . well, she didn’t. She squared her shoulders and settled in as though gearing up for a good fight. The smile that had danced on her lips continued. Her eyes flashed vigorously. “That’s a bit personal, don’t you think, Nikodemus?”

  “Hardly,” he answered. “We’re scientists, intellectuals, we thrive on the challenge of our work, and if we shelve it, we might as well be shelving our souls. Stuffing them into little boxes and asking them to hide until they die. You know as well as me, that you’ll always keep asking yourself ‘why’ or ‘how far can I take this?’ Pushing the borders of your mind and the known limits is what you live for. So, well, I suppose given that, I don’t need you to answer. I just thought I’d ask so you could tell me what I already know. Honesty. Transparency. That sort of thing,” he chuckled like he had everything figured out and ate another carrot.

  I gave Hemingway a wide-eyed look and sank lower into my chair. What was that? I wanted to shout at my dad. I felt like I was spying on them. Neither of them were really acknowledging Hemingway and me. We could have jumped up and headed for the holo-films and they wouldn’t have noticed. We could have been groping each other and they wouldn’t have noticed.

  And well, Dad had a point. If she was like him at all, she was certainly continuing her work on the side. I wondered how they were surviving without money. Maybe she had millions of markkas tucked away in her mattress or something.

  “You certainly raise some pertinent issues. Believe me, I’ve considered them,” she said, grinning. “Perhaps we’ll get to that later. When we know each other better.”

  Dad nodded and I began nervously munching on a carrot. Hemingway had settled back and was smiling now, too. He was directly across from me and I suddenly felt his foot nudging mine. I jumped a tad, startled, and hoped no one noticed. Hemingway laughed into his hand.

  Why I worried that anyone noticed, I can’t say, because Dad and Sonja were totally absorbed in their conversation. They moved from subject to subject, coming eventually to Dad’s work. She asked a bunch of questions which I considered to be done out of utter politeness. But maybe I was wrong. Once Dad answered, she asked follow up questions that seemed to be informed by what he already said.

  Our food arrived and I did my best to ignore the disgusting slab of meat on Sonja’s plate. Dad got the gourmet grilled cheese, so there was nothing unappetizing about that, and there was a large plate of pasta in front of Hemingway. Sonja was the odd one, it seemed. No biggie, I told myself. Just avoid looking at the very rare steak on her plate.

  And somehow I did. I managed to get through the ordeal of a steak being on her plate. Unfortunately, Dad seemed to have completely forgotten the point of our visit. But at least he would come away from it with a new view of Hemingway’s mother. In fact, he seemed to be developing a crush or something.

  Hopefully it would stay just that: a crush.

  It wasn't like any of us wanted to talk about Hemingway at dinner, anyway. There were too many people around and we were constantly interrupted by the server. Plus Hemingway was there. I could just see my dad asking Sonja questions about his birth and life as though he didn’t exist or have feelings.

  If they wanted to talk about him, I guess they were going to have to do it on their own time. Maybe they would. I had no idea. Adults can do whatever they want. Like jerks. My dad could just call up Sonja and say, “Let’s meet,” and I could do nothing about it, even though that could totally ruin my plans.

  I mean, what would I do if my dad decided he liked Sonja? And he wanted to date her? It would be weird. That’s what.

  Anyway, if I wanted to know something about Hemingway, I would just ask him. I obviously wasn’t going to get anything useful from his mother at the moment.

  When we were finished eating, we exchanged a look, stood up, and excused ourselves. “Well, you kids seem like you’ve got a lot to talk about. All that science and stuff. We’re going to take off,” I said. “Hemingway and I have a thing we need to go work on for school.” That was a complete lie. And if they saw through it, I didn’t care.

  “I’ll see you at home later, Mom,” Hemingway said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. I smiled. Whenever a guy was sweet to his mom I melted.

  Sonja reached up and hugged Hemingway from her seated position, stretching her arms around his neck. “Be careful, Hemingway,” she said firmly. Her eyes flashed behind the lenses of her glasses. “Watch your back,” she added. “And take care of Retta.” I felt a little mystified by her warning and the stern look in her eye. A bit excessive, I thought.

  “I will,” he promised. “It was nice seeing you again Mr. Heikkinen,” he said to my dad, who nodded politely back.

  “Where will you be?” Dad asked me.

  I sighed. “We’re going for a walk. That’s all.”

  “Be home at eleven.”

  “Fine,” I growled. Seriously, someone needed to address the unequal standards parents impose on their sons and daughters. Hemingway gets a “be careful” and no mention of a curfew, and I get a “be home at eleven.” It truly sucks.

  We burst out into the street, eager to put the stifling conditions of dinner—with parents, no less—behind us and headed north, along the narrow street, dodging between pedestrians coming toward us.

  “That was torture!” I shouted. “A nightmare, really,” I said more calmly, realizing I was drifting toward exaggeration and drama.

  “It was rather miserable,” Hemingway said. “We were totally ignored. I wasn’t sure if we should try to conduct our own side conversation or pay attention to our parents.”

  “And what’s my dad’s deal? He ogled your mom the entire time. It was disgusting. I’m completely embarrassed by it.”

  Hemingway took my hand and we slowed to a normal pace, no longer itching to put distance between us and our parents now that we were on our own. “When did your mother die, Retta?” Hemingway asked softly.

  “What?” I asked, shocked by the change of subject.

  “Sorry, I just wondered. I’ve been meaning to ask you. And after tonight, well, you can see why I might be curious. You know, your dad. Ogling my mom,” he said with a laugh.

  “Right, of course,” I said, pausing to collect my thoughts. “Um, I was twelve. So, a few years ago.” It was one of those things I didn’t like to talk about. You could pretend it didn’t happen if you ignored it. But it was always there, hiding over my shoulder, waiting for me to turn and look at it. How do you get over something like that, anyway? You don’t. Or maybe you do and I just hadn’t yet.
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  “Do you hate to talk about it?” Hemingway asked, glancing at me. We were coming to the outskirts of the city where the fields of wheat hugged the edges of the settlement. I could see them through the occasional spaces between the apartment dome-scrapers. I always liked to come out here but I didn’t do it very often. There was something refreshing and comforting about things that grow.

  “Well, yes. Mostly because I try to forget about it. It’s one of those things. You know, things that are no fun?” Even coming up with an explanation of why I wanted to forget about it seemed pointless. And saying it was no fun was about as descriptive as I could be without resorting to words like pure anguish and relentless ache. No one wants to hear about that. And no one wants to try to comfort me. There are no words of comfort, anyway. What do you say? “Ah, it’s OK. Things will get better. ” No, because they won’t. For the rest of my life she’ll be dead. Gone. And a lifetime is a long time to live without someone you love.

  Unless I died young.

  I’m hoping I don’t, though.

  “That makes sense. I would be ruined emotionally if I lost my mother,” Hemingway said. “There’s nothing else like a mother. And everyone has one.” He smiled comfortingly at me and I liked it that he didn’t try to hug me or something, as though he could make it all better.

  “Yeah. What would it be like if your mother was a man? I mean, she created you. But some androids are made by men, right?”

  He laughed. “Then I would have a father. Who would be a mother.”

  I laughed with him.

  Eventually we left the sidewalks and the structures of the city behind as we came to the fields and walked out into the thick, golden rows. The wheat was bent in a dry breeze. The stalks were nearly full-ripe and they swayed from side to side like drunk men singing in a pub. Late summer and the days were longer, so it was still light out. Our feet sank into the soil where we walked. This was the changed soil—worked over for years by the first colonists, which were androids like Hemingway. Fields like where we walked were the only places that plants could grow, except in the greenhouses, which were stocked with soil from Earth.

  In the light of the setting sun, I could see fields for miles around the inside edge of the giant dome. Some of them were being drenched in an evening watering from the giant, wheeled, agricultural sprinklers. Rainbows danced in the arcs of water raining down from so high above the fields. The entire view of it was breathtaking.

  “I love it here,” I said.

  “It is beautiful,” Hemingway agreed. He sighed, turning a complete circle to take in the fields and the city in the distance. The sun glinted off his forehead and illuminated his eyes like I’d never seen before. Honestly, his beauty never stopped surprising me. He took a breath. “People always find a way, don’t they.”

  “Humans on Mars, you mean?” I blinked against the light of the sinking sun, and shielded my eyes so I could watch him. He lifted his arms in a victorious gesture and twirled slowly.

  He threw his head back and gazed up at the orange sky. “That, and everything. You. Me. Life.”

  “Do you think you’ll have a family?” I asked.

  He straightened and looked at me, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you want one?”

  “Yeah, probably. I haven’t thought really hard about it yet.”

  “What do you know about it, anyway?” he asked. There was a tone in his voice that I hadn’t heard before—embarrassment or defensiveness, I couldn’t tell which.

  “I’m not sure I get what you mean.” I turned my back to the sunset and stared at him as I tried to puzzle out what he meant. He bent, reaching beneath the blanket of wheat, picked up a handful of dirt and let it fall, sifting it between his fingers.

  “Can I have a family?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. I think? I—I guess I thought you were capable of replication.”

  He smiled. “We are.”

  “With other . . . androids?”

  He blushed and studied his fingers. They were slightly red from the dust. “I think with anyone. There’s not, I mean, it’s not talked of. And there’s nothing really written.”

  “So, I mean, we could—-?”

  He nodded. “If it came to that.”

  I took a deep breath. “What’s it like? I mean, being you?”

  He brushed his hands off on his pants and then pulled me close. “I wonder the same about you, Retta. What’s it like to be you? To be so human that no one questions what you are? I’ve been what I am my entire life. I don’t know how to be anything else. The real question is, do you want someone like me?”

  I nodded, feeling breathless. Speechless.

  “Good. Then let’s just be together for now. The rest will figure itself out.” He leaned down and kissed me.

  The wind picked up, hot against us—a dry, desert heat that was so familiar, it felt like Mars cradling me, whispering to me to wake it from its dormant repose. I breathed Hemingway’s breath. He held me. We kissed and then fell onto the dense field of wheat and lay there, laughing, staring up at the sky as it bled to black and the stars lit up.

  8: Rights

  We lay there, avoiding discovery for hours. We talked. That’s it. Well, and we kissed a bit more, to be honest. But Hemingway never pushed me, even when I got overeager. Which seemed to happen a lot. It was hard to resist him. Not that I was resisting him very much.

  He told me how he remembered seeing his mother for the first time. He woke up and she smiled at him. “My son, my son,” she said. He didn’t understand at first, he told me. But later, when he was more aware, he remembered the words and knew what they meant. “You are mine. I made you. My firstborn, my son. My blood runs through you. Flesh of my flesh.” She cried tears of joy.

  It sounded a bit creepy. I tried to imagine that frizzy, redheaded woman being emotional about Hemingway and I couldn’t see it. What did she mean, anyway? Her blood ran through him? I wondered, but didn’t dare to ask Hemingway. He’d just told me his memory of his birth and it seemed rather private. I almost asked him about the other memory—the one about eating, the one he told me that day in Cassini Coffee and said was his oldest memory. I didn’t. If he was anything like me, memories were incongruent—a mishmash of images and words and you couldn’t always place them in a timeline. Perhaps he just barely remembered it this very moment.

  Near eleven, he sat up and suggested he walk me home. We retraced our steps, cutting through the rich section of the city where Mei and others like her lived. As we passed the capitol building, something out of place on the yellow, old-world style walls caught my eye. Wet paint. It reflected the light from the street lamps shimmering above us.

  I gasped. Hemingway turned and saw it too. WE ARE ALIVE. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ANDROIDS EVERYWHERE. It was emblazoned across the front of the building.

  “Who do you think did it?” I whispered.

  Hemingway put his arm around me and hurried us on. “Who cares. Let’s get out of here.” We cut through a narrow alley that led to the street that would connect us to where my apartment was, about fifteen blocks down.

  “But what does it mean? You know, beyond the obvious,” I said, shrugging away from his arm and stopping in the alley, near a stack of crates. A rat squeaked and dodged out of the meager light into a space between the stacks. Hemingway stopped, turning.

  “What rights are androids denied?” I asked.

  He scoffed and laughed mirthlessly. “Come on, Retta.”

  “Come on, Hemingway. What kind of answer is that? Most of the androids live without anyone ever knowing they’re an android,” I said.

  “And when someone deciphers their tell? Then what? What is life like for that android?”

  I paused. “Explain it to me,” I said. “Because I don’t know. I can only imagine and that’s probably not enough.”

  He turned in place, a complete revolution, threw his head back, staring up at the indecipherable night sky, and rubbed his hands across his face. “I don’
t want to talk about this, Retta. I want to ignore it.” Stopping, he looked me over and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You don’t want to know this stuff. I promise.” He sighed heavily. There was about three feet of space between us. He met my gaze levelly and I could see the little neurons behind his eyes flashing—tiny red and blue lights flickering back and forth as though to reflect his mood.

  When I didn’t say anything, he finally spoke.

  “Total outsider status, for starters. There are impolite terms for androids that I’m sure you’ve heard. It starts with that, usually. Sometimes it’s painted on your door. Sometimes it’s scratched into your skin while you’re held down by ten men. We feel that. We have sensation in our skin. We bleed. Not just from the wound, but in our hearts. Our blue hearts.” He sighed again, then continued. “Occasionally I’ll be asked to leave a store, a restaurant, a classroom, if my presence offends or upsets anyone. ‘Why do you even need to go to school? You don’t need to learn.’ I’ve heard that one often, as though every bit of information was simply loaded into my brain at birth. I can’t blame them. It’s not like androids come with a manual, right?” He smiled weakly at me. “You know, well, you need to know that if the types who hold us down and brand us find out about you and me, they’ll accuse me of rape. They’ll taunt you for being with an android. They’ll ask you crude questions about my size. And I don’t mean how tall I am. Do you want that? Because I don’t. I don’t want that for you.” His voice had risen and his breathing had become erratic. He lowered his eyes. “I can’t believe I would let you go through that. I know it will happen.” He shook his head, a crazed look crossed his face and he began to say something.

  I cut him off before he could go on. “I didn’t know, Hemingway. I had no idea those kinds of things happened, at least not to this extent.”

  “That’s only the beginning. But I deal with it. We deal with it.” I took a step toward him, reaching for his hand.

  Suddenly there was a commotion coming from behind us—voices shouting, the sound of sirens, and rapidly approaching footsteps.