Blue Hearts of Mars

by Grotepas, Nicole

“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?”

  “We leave, calmly. Find a place to stay.”

  As we walked back toward the elevators, a door opened behind us, cutting Hemingway’s planning short. We both turned.

  Two men wearing dark goggles, black slacks, and black shirts with a fist-sized red emblem over the left breast were coming out of another apartment. They looked up at us, pausing, each carrying a small white object. I don’t know what they saw when their eyes fell on us, but they immediately began to chase after us.

  “Run!” Hemingway hissed at my side.

  I broke into a run, my heart screaming in my chest. Our pursuers had been about forty feet away. I feared that they would close such a distance quickly. As we reached the elevator and Hemingway slammed his fist into the call button, they’d narrowed it by twenty feet.

  “Get in! Get in!” he shouted as I glanced behind me to see how close they were after waiting what felt like an eternity for the elevator. Before I could turn back around, I was yanked by the arm into the elevator car b
y Hemingway. As the doors snapped shut, a hand slipped between them. I screamed in shock and Hemingway slapped the “close” button over and over again, each time the doors tried to open. Soon the hand had grown into an arm that waved back and forth, grasping at the air. I dodged it, jumping back against the far wall of the elevator car, watching it searching blindly until finally, the hand jerked away and the doors sealed with a soft hiss.

  I gasped, shaking, falling against the wall of the car as the elevator shot downward.

  “Who are they?”

  “The IRS. At least, they wore IRS uniforms,” he said. “They must have been here wiping the Voice from people’s memories.”

  “Why?” I asked, choking on my breath.

  “Who knows? Control? Maybe something significant happened while we were on the train, and they want to stop it before it spreads further,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Their motives are beyond my understanding.”

  “They were chasing us. Why? It makes no sense.”

  “Maybe they think we live here,” he shrugged. “Maybe they think we’re trying to escape their treatment or something. No idea.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have run,” I said, wiping beads of sweat from my forehead.

  “Retta, running was the only right thing we did. Unless you want to have your memory indiscriminately toyed with. You saw how confused that Masumi guy was. Do you want that to happen to us?”

  I shook my head. “Now they think we’re criminals.”

  “That’s part of their game. Authority, even elected authority, loves to make innocent people feel like submitting is the right thing to do. It’s not,” he paused, looking at me, his eyes full of concern. “Listen, when the doors open, don’t stop and look around, just run straight for the doors to the street. We’ll keep running until we’ve lost them,” he said.

  I began to tell him that I’m not an android, that I can’t run like him, but the doors opened and he was pulling me along. The only breath I had was used to follow him. I heard the noise of feet scrambling after us, and it was all I could do to keep my chest from exploding in fear and to keep breathing as I ran.

  Down the hall to the doors, out onto the street, between the foot traffic rushing along the sidewalks, across the street, weaving around scooters, bike taxis, small cars, and up the street. It was nice how, in spite of running my legs to death, there were so many distractions to put between us and our pursuers. I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow managed to keep up with Hemingway. I kept waiting for my heart to burst or my limbs to give out.

  Everything was going fine—as fine as it can go when you’re being chased by a faceless law enforcement agency that has some arbitrary permission granted to it by someone other than you to wipe your mind—when I tripped on my own feet. I went flying, my hand jerking from Hemingway’s grip, and the pavement came up to meet my knees and the palms of my hands. I rolled and rolled and the world turned, spinning around me, until without warning, I was being scooped up.

  That was familiar. Sort of. Hemingway was carrying me slung over his shoulder, like a sack of trash. It could have been romantic if not for the circumstances and the terrible way he was lugging me. In short, it was really uncomfortable, especially on top of the bruises on my knees and the scrapes on my hands. From my vantage point I could see the muscles in his behind flexing and rippling as he ran. I focused on that, trying to ignore the discomfort of being carried.

  Crowds parted for Hemingway, and filled in behind him, pointing at us and talking, rather loudly, in Japanese or English, switching back and forth. Occasionally I arched my back to look up and search the crowd for the IRS men. It was always hard to see them, since the streets were so full of bodies and vehicles, but sometimes I caught a glimpse of them, shoving pedestrians aside, pointing, and darting toward us.

  After what felt like an entire lifetime of bouncing up and down on Hemingway’s jagged shoulder, I shouted to him that they were gone. Thankfully it had been about ten city-blocks since I’d spotted their red-emblemed shirts and dark-goggled eyes. Hemingway slowed to a trot, then bent to put me down beneath an awning, near the entrance to a sushi shop, away from the throngs on the street.

  “Thanks,” I said, rubbing my sore hands gingerly across my thighs. I looked around. “Sushi?” I asked, noticing the crowd within, taking small plates off a conveyer belt, all seated around an exposed kitchen full of chefs.

  “The Japanese didn’t want to part with their culture as much as the Fins,” he smiled. “They have artificial lakes on the other side of the settlement, I think.”

  “Fins like fish too. But not that drastically.”

  I glanced up and down the street. We’d come to a spot that looked surprisingly the same as every other street we’d been down. Tall buildings soared around us, the roads were as full as they’d always been, and signs flashed along the street, announcing the names of shops, the goods within, or other services. Need your skin rejuvenated? Pop in for an elastin replacement. Things like that. “Hungry?” I asked, peering back into the sushi place. It looked like a fun concept and I was famished.

  He nodded, “But first, let’s find somewhere to hide.”

  I studied the signs up and down the street. “That looks like it might be a hotel.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. “You can walk alright?”

  “Yes. Please, no more carrying.”

  “I thought you liked it,” he said, sounding slightly hurt.

  “Sometimes, but not when you do it like I’m a bag of rubbish,” I said, smiling. “Thanks, by the way.”

  He nodded. I offered my hand and we wove back into the stream of pedestrians and headed for the hotel.

  20: A Wedding

  It turned out that Hemingway had enough to pay for a hotel room.

  For five years.

  His mother began a savings account for him before he was born. Or made. Whatever. And she’d been squirreling away hundreds of markkas every month on his behalf. It was fully vested, or something, when he “turned eighteen,” which happened already. I guess his birthday was in January. I didn’t ask if they called it birthdays for androids. They must. I would ask later, when we weren’t anxious and scared.

  We got one room and headed up to it. It was a suite. Apparently New Tokyo was a big tourist destination. The room had a bathtub. Something I’d never seen before. I stared at it for a long time, thinking of all that water, just poured into a basin for one person to sit in. Soaking.

  “Want to take a bath?” Hemingway asked from where he reclined on the bed. It was big and lavish, with a white and gold colored comforter and loads of fluffy pillows.

  “No,” I said, turning. “The most water I’ve seen in one place, not counting the lake in Neuholland and those rice paddies, is the fountains back home. I just can’t believe people would waste water like that.”

  “It’s recycled,” he said, rolling onto his side.

  “Still seems wrong,” I said. I approached the bed, hesitated, then sat down in an armchair near it. I sank back into the cushions, sighing. I almost didn’t feel worthy of its too-grand comfort and the gold and white colored fabric. It matched the bed like God had designed beds and armchairs in the beginning, in Eden. The thought of sleeping in that beautiful bed with Hemingway scared me, to be honest. I mean, I wanted him. I had for a long time. But I’d never felt like there would ever come the choice between saying yes to myself. Or saying no.

  Because, how could I say no? He was what I’d wanted. Ever since that first day when I noticed the galaxies in his eyes.

  He watched me, his eyes glowing, his smile becoming devilish. “You OK?”

  “Sure. So, are you going to sleep on the floor?”

  He laughed. “Hardly.”

  “Well, I snore,” I said. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  “By who? Other boyfriends?”

  “Marta,” I said with a shrug.

  “What’s wrong? I promise to be honorable. We don’t have to do anything you
don’t want to do, Retta,” he said, giving me a look like he was so much older and mature than me. Maybe he was. It was hard to understand the difference of relative age between a human and an android.

  “It’s not you,” I said with a sigh. “It’s me.”

  “You can’t be trusted?”

  I shook my head. “Not with you, anyway.” I flashed a wry, embarrassed grin and glanced down at my fingernails.

  He sat up on the bed and crossed his legs in front of himself. “I’m that irresistible? Come over here.”

  I cocked my head at him.

  “It’s safe, I promise.”

  I joined him on the bed, sitting in front of him, imitating his position.

  “Take my hand,” he said, offering me his right hand. When I put my hand in his, he slid his fingers up my wrist, to touch my forearm with his index finger and middle finger.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Hold my hand and wrist the way I’m holding yours.” He adjusted my index and middle finger with his other hand. “Retta, this is a ceremony. Blue hearts perform it between each other when they want to marry. Because our marriages aren’t recognized by law.”

  “They’re not?” I asked, surprised.

  He shook his head. “Most people don’t know, since most people don’t know who’s an android and who’s not. It’s just not talked about. But if you go to apply for a marriage license, they check to see if you’re an android. If you are, you can’t get the license.”

  I took a deep breath. “How do you know about it, the ceremony?”

  “My mom.”

  “You’re not already married, are you?” I squinted at him suspiciously, hiding a smile. After everything, well, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

  “You wish. Then you could say no based on those grounds. Anyway, it’s just kind of one of those things you find out, and never forget. You don’t have to do it,” he said, his eyes becoming soft but penetrating.

  “No, I think I want to. I do. I want to. It’s what I’ve wanted from the beginning,” I answered, feeling a bit like I was floating. Marriage. I mean, marrying Hemingway? Did I want to do it? Was I making a hasty decision just because I wanted to be able to sleep with him and then go home and be able to face my dad? My mom had died, but I thought about her enough that I sometimes felt like she was watching my life over my shoulder. What about her?