Blue Hearts of Mars

by Grotepas, Nicole

  “So? Why would I think about it? They were made to do a job and now they’re still here, living amongst us out of our own goodwill. They haven’t the right to marry us and you shouldn’t have done it.” He leaned forward, fixing my gaze with his intently. “Retta, do you really want to tie your future up with him? You’ll never be able to have children. You know how important you and Marta are to me. Don’t you want that for yourself?”

  I straightened, appalled and slightly pissed off that he’d play the children card. “How do you know I can’t have children with him?”

  He turned his palms toward the ceiling, cocked his head to one side and shrugged. “Common knowledge.”

  “I don’t care. I want to be with him. You don’t even know him. You don’t know what we’re like when we’re together.”

  “I know he’s hurt you, that’s enough for me.” His voice was grim and accusing, as though I had run to the arms of some abusive monster and he was disappointed in me for not being stronger.

  “He was doing that to protect me!” I shouted. “He knew how bad it would be for me—and he was right. Look at you. You don’t even know him, Dad,” I spat. “Mom would like him. Mom would have supported me.” I couldn’t help it. It came out of nowhere. But before the words were fully out of my mouth, I regretted them. I watched him, feeling my eyes widen, a bit worried that he would—I don’t know, hit me? Or something, for invoking my mother. My dad had never struck me. I knew he wouldn’t, but I’d never really pushed him as far as I was pushing him.

  Dad glowered at me, then heaved a sigh. “Fine, Retta.” He ran his hands over his face and blinked a few times, as though he was clearing his vision. “Fine. You want to use your mother’s name, so be it. I can’t stop you from being with Hemingway. It’s your choice. Just remember that I warned you. You’re not picking an easy road for yourself. Marriage is hard enough without stacking the deck against it.”

  That was it? Wow. I couldn’t believe I’d won. I suppressed my euphoria, trying to be mature, and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe so. But we’ll cling to each other because the world will always try to tear us apart.”

  “I hope you do. For your sakes,” he said, taking a long drink.

  I stood, wiped my palms on my jeans, and went to my bedroom. Knocking lightly, I paused before pushing the door open softly.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Hemingway lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. He sat up and smiled. “How’d it go?”

  “What, like you weren’t listening,” I said from the doorway.

  He began to act like he hadn’t been, shaking his head and appearing innocent, but gave it up quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I was. Your poor dad. He just wants what’s best for you.”

  “What he thinks is best for me.” I went into the room and shut the door behind me. “I’m the one who has to live my life. Not him. If I only did what he wanted me to do, I’d be living his life.”

  “Do you think he’ll be OK with it? Us? Forever?”

  “Who knows?”

  “He’s wrong, I think, about blue hearts and humans having kids together.”

  “It doesn’t even matter to me. I picked you—kids or no kids. We can also do what your mother did and have blue heart kids.”

  “She wants to talk to us, together, did I tell you? I meant to. But your dad’s greeting distracted me.” When Hemingway had gotten to the apartment, earlier, Dad had glared at him coolly and said nothing. He just left the door open and walked away, turning his back on Hemingway and everything. It was very grown up of my dad.

  “When?”

  “It sounded urgent, but . . . I don’t know for sure.”

  “Have her come over?” I offered.

  “Smart. I think I’m safer here. From, you know, the agents or whoever they’ll send for me.”

  “They won’t send anyone if they know what’s good for them,” I said, threateningly. It made Hemingway laugh, but I was serious. I knew what kind of ferocity was in me now. I was fiercer than Mei. Than Hans. Than anyone I had ever known except maybe Hemingway.

  25: Two Plans

  “Retta, it’s so good to see you again,” Sonja said as she breezed into my apartment, her velvet voice full of friendly energy. She gave me a light peck on the cheek and streamed warmly through the small foyer, into the kitchen area and great room. My dad’s apartment seemed safe—Hemingway did a sweep (he called it) of the area—so we were using it for now. Sonja went on, “Although, I do object to how you and Hemingway just ran off like that.”

  “Hemingway explained, didn’t he?” I glanced at him. He shook his head and gave me a look.

  “He explained something.” Sonja turned from inspecting the apartment in time to see Hemingway biting his lip. “Apparently not everything.” She pursed her lips and tilted her head down in motherly disapproval. The gesture was so reminiscent of my own mother that I felt an ache shoot through me.

  “Nikodemus,” Sonja said, sidestepping me to get to my dad. “It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” She smiled and took his hands warmly, then gave him a kiss on either cheek. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  “Nice to see you again, Sonja,” Dad said. His cheeks flared red. He cleared his throat. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way back to the hospital for the night.”

  “Marta?” Sonja asked, letting his hands go reluctantly. At least it seemed reluctant to me.

  Dad nodded.

  “What’s wrong with her, if I may ask?” She watched my dad with concerned eyes as he explained the diagnosis—heart disease, dilated cardiomyopathy. Sonja’s hand went to her chin as she listened, nodding sympathetically at appropriate times. Occasionally she asked a question, which Dad answered as best he could. Hemingway and I went back to our seats on the couch, whispering together about their conversation.

  “Does she know a lot about hearts?” I asked quietly.

  “She makes hearts. She should,” Hemingway said.

  “Why don’t the doctors just make a new one for Marta?” I took my water off the edge of the Gram, sipped it, and put it back. The Gram doubled as a coffee table, since we didn’t have room for both.

  “Good question. There must be a good answer and I don’t know it.”

  Finally their conversation seemed to wrap up and Sonja gave Dad another hug—which he accepted awkwardly, fumbling with where to put his hands—before he left. “I’ll see you again soon, Nikodemus,” she said.

  Dad shot me a red-cheeked look as he went out the door. “Tell Marta I love her,” I shouted after him.

  Sonja joined us in the front room, took off her light jacket and sat down. “Well,” she said breathlessly. I noticed that her cheeks were a bit red too. But maybe it was her normal complexion. I hoped it was. “What’s this that you haven’t told me, Hemingway?” She rounded on him, suddenly serious, her gaze piercing.

  “Nothing too serious,” he said casually. He pulled my legs onto his lap and held my hand as I leaned against the arm of the couch.

  “It is serious,” I interjected, launching into a tirade. “I don’t know what he’s told you already, but the reason we ran off was because the Unified Martian Government is planning to send all the androids away to settle a new colony. And the androids have red hearts, not blue ones, but you already knew that. I didn’t know, and now that I know, I’m mad that I’ve been lied to, and they can’t just send them away like they don’t have lives of their own. Like they own them.”

  “They do own the androids,” Sonja said. It took me by such surprise that I just stared at her for a minute, my mouth hanging open like I’d swallowed a bug.

  I coughed and cleared my throat. “What? I mean, you’re kidding. Right?” I said at last. She stared at me seriously.

  “No. I don’t agree with it—at all, Hemingway is my son, not theirs, I made him—but that’s the law. Synlife made them. Most of them. Synlife claims ownership. The bodies are just on loan.” She looked grim. I turned to Hemingway, but he was staring at h
is hands where they rested on my legs.

  “Do they know? I mean, do the androids know?” I gathered from previous conversations that Sonja didn’t like to call them blue hearts.

  “For the most part. That’s why if their tell isn’t very obvious, they prefer to remain secretive about their nature. Especially when they begin to assimilate more. Like the other members of Parliament that just revealed that they’re androids,” she crossed her arms and sat back into the cushions.

  “I didn’t know,” I said. Hemingway continued to stare soberly at my legs.

  “The news about the plans to send the androids to a new colony is upsetting,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face. “I knew, of course. I’ve been trying to change it. That’s what I intended to tell the two of you, to warn you, Hemingway. This is why you ran off?”

  He looked up at last, absentmindedly rolling his fingers across my jean-covered shinbone. “You knew? And you didn’t tell me?” He seemed stunned.

  “I’d hoped I could change their plans somehow before it affected you. I’ve been consulting with the government and Synlife. Trying to make them see reason.” Sonja flicked her hand, bracelets sliding along her wrist and clacking together. “I wasn’t purposely keeping it from you.”

  “But how long have you known?” he asked. I felt him tensing up.

  The corners of Sonja’s mouth drooped into a frown. She shook her head. “Long enough to realize that there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

  “I don’t believe this, Mom. You knew, all this time you knew, and you were hiding it from me. My future. My life. Held in the balance and you didn’t think to tell me.”

  “I was protecting you, Hemingway. If I could have gotten them to change their plans—at least their plans to force androids to go—you would never have needed to know. It would have been a pointless worry, it would have made you feel—” she broke off, biting her lip and shaking her head as though to herself.

  “Feel what? Feel like I’m a slave. Like I’m owned? Like I’m just an android. A machine,” he sneered.

  “No. Stop it. You’re being ridiculous. You’re a man. You’re as human as any of us.” She leaned forward, raising a forefinger and shaking it at him.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I shrank back into the couch, wanting to hide from their conversation. It was private. Even though Hemingway had heard plenty of arguments between my father and myself, I wasn’t enjoying this.

  “This is pointless,” I said, pulling my legs off of Hemingway’s lap to put my bare feet on the ground. I sat forward. “We should be figuring out what to do next. We obviously can’t stop them from moving forward with their plans to send the androids away. What, then?”

  Sonja put her chin in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. “It’s tough. Synlife believes androids are their property. Therefore, if they request that the androids come forward and take their places on the ships bound for the new colony, they’re within their legal rights to use force.”

  I nodded, a cascade of cold rushing into my stomach. The thought of them taking Hemingway by force hollowed out my insides. I’d already lost my mother, and there was this creeping fear that I might be losing Marta. I couldn’t lose Hemingway too.

  “I won’t go,” Hemingway said quietly. His hand rested on a throw pillow. He toyed with the tassel, his eyes fixed on its yellow and gold threads.

  “Of course you won’t,” I said. “I’ll murder them before they take you.”

  “Please, let’s not plan to resort to violence,” Sonja said. “There are more diplomatic methods, I’m sure.”

  “Are there?” I asked pointedly. “Do tell. I haven’t seen any work so far.”

  “There’s always a better way,” Sonja said, her intense blue eyes drilling holes into my head. “Violence is a last resort.”

  “What do the androids think?” I asked, turning to Hemingway, hoping he’d back me up.

  “She’s right,” he said, after hesitating a moment. I felt like pouting, but held my face still. “Turning violent just reinforces the notion that we’re dangerous and scary and that we should be controlled . . . or owned.”

  I snapped my fingers, feeling on the edge of an idea. “That’s part of the problem. Fear. How can we stop the fear of normal people? Not the government, but the people? If the people want the androids to stay, we can make them stay.”

  “Maybe. Maybe so,” Sonja said, nodding, her eyes staring into the distance as though solving a problem in her head.

  “The question is how to eliminate that fear.” I stroked my chin, feeling like Sherlock Holmes solving a very life-threatening mystery.

  “Dispel the myths of how we’re made,” Hemingway spoke up, suddenly. He watched his mother’s face as he said it.

  “Yeah, how—um, how do you do it, Sonja?” I asked.

  “It’s extremely complicated, and I worry that if we revealed it, it would actually create more fear and disgust.”

  “The blood?” I asked.

  “How did you know about that?” she asked, her gaze darting to me, all suspicious, as though I’d just announced that I had access to the codes that kept the domes in place.

  I shrugged.

  “She broke into Synlife,” Hemingway answered for me. “Like a crazy woman.” He gave me a fond look that made my stomach turn somersaults.

  Sonja shook her head, her red hair bouncing around her face. “That was stupid of you, very stupid and dangerous.” She gave me a weighing look, her eyes surveying me from head to foot. Her eyes flickered away. “But I like that about you. Living on the edge. Not afraid of the dangers, or just unaware of how bad they can be.” She gave me a mysterious smile. “It might come in useful.”

  “Wait,” I said with a jolt, leaping to my feet. “I just had an idea. Something I got from the Synlife building. I have it, somewhere. A document. It’s here, saved in my Link.” I scanned through the files saved on my Link and opened it. “I doubt it’s true, but what if it were, Sonja? We could use it. If it’s true.”

  I let Sonja read through it as she stood beside me. When she finished, she became quiet, staring at the floor, frozen like a statue.

  “What?” I asked, glancing back and forth between her and Hemingway.

  “Nothing, nothing,” she said, gripping my arm with one hand. “We can use this, Retta.”

  “So it’s true?” I asked, feeling the ground reeling beneath my feet. “It changes everything, doesn’t it?”

  Sonja turned to me, her eyes like augurs. “If it will keep Hemingway here, does it matter?”

  I looked at Hemingway, he was finishing reading through it, standing close to me, his chest bumping my cheek. He smelled like heaven, like the other half of my soul. “No, it doesn’t matter. He stays, or I go.”

  “So then, what’s your plan?” Sonja sat down, leaned back, and crossed her legs, businesslike.

  I paced back and forth in front of the couch, circling the Gram, gesticulating wildly as I outlined my idea. It would work. Wouldn’t it? It was the only thing I could think of, a long shot, my last hurrah. It was the difference between losing Hemingway and finding a way onto the ship that would take him away from me, or, worse, running forever from the agents.

  *****

  Marta was getting worse. The doctors gave her medication, but nothing was working.

  “What, precisely, is wrong with her heart?” I asked a doctor after he checked on Marta. I followed him out of the room and drew him back into conversation a few feet from her door. “Please. My dad told me it was some kind of cardiomyopathy or something, but isn’t that fixed pretty easily?”

  He turned. Dark brown hair curled around his ears, in desperate need of a trim. A few days’ scruff outlined his jaw and lips. Blue eyes flickered over my face as he shifted uncomfortably. “Eh, yes, some of them are. But not this one. After monitoring it a few days, we’ve watched her heart capacity steadily decline.”

  Panic streaked through me. I searched his face. “And w
hat? Does this mean it’s just going to stop beating? And you’re going to let it?”

  “We’re watching it. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of organ donors giving away hearts. And if there were, there’s a waiting list.”

  “Why is it slowing down?” I tried to remain calm but could feel myself growing more anxious.

  He turned his palms up as though in surrender. “We’re not certain. It seems the condition has progressed into a form we’ve never seen before. It’s as though the muscle is seizing up.”

  “But isn’t there something you can give her to make it . . . get better?” I was breathing rapidly, my thoughts circling a million miles an hour.

  “That would only delay it.” He shifted uncomfortably, struggling to meet my gaze.

  “What about an artificial heart? The kind they put in the androids?” I didn’t care if he thought that was unorthodox or crazy. If it could save my sister, it was worth it.

  He laughed—a short, bitter laugh. “We don’t use those. They’re blue hearts. Inferior, in other words. I’m not even sure how they work. Studying their anatomy is pointless, since they never need our help.”

  I’d had enough. “You should be embarrassed to admit that. Ashamed and embarrassed. How many humans have died because we’re too good for android organs? Thousands? Maybe more?”

  “Look, Miss—”

  “Retta.”

  He nodded, “Retta, no one wants to be a cyborg. People have made that pretty clear, otherwise perhaps we’d be more inclined to use those tainted parts.” His tone was long-suffering. He shook his head at me as I glared at him. “It’s not my fault.”

  I turned and went back into Marta’s room, fuming.

  “Retta? What’s wrong” Marta asked, her voice sounding weaker than ever. I wanted to cry hearing her sound like that.

  I kept myself under control, taking a few deep breaths and managing a weak smile. “Nothing, dear, nothing.” Her breathing was labored and I brushed a strand of sweaty hair out of her face. “How are you feeling?”