Blue Hearts of Mars

by Grotepas, Nicole

  Dad choked back a sob. The only other time I’d seen him this ghastly was when mom died. He stood very still, hands shoved into the pockets of his dress jeans. His button-down shirt was rumpled like he’d been sleeping in it.

  “Marta, I don’t want you to die,” I whispered. “I need you to live. You give me a reason to live. You’re my hero. You have more courage than anyone I know.”

  She nodded, the tears continuing to streak down her face. Dad reached for her hand and took hold of it. The skin across his knuckles stretched and turned white as he held on tightly. Monitors connected to Marta’s vitals flashed and bleeped at the head of her bed. I ignored them—they only conveyed discouraging news.

  I went on. “I know you’re scared. We’re all scared, but you know what I’m the most scared of?” Her eyes searched mine. She shook her head. I went on, “Losing you. This will work, I know it will work. And you’ll be the same Marta afterwards. The same girl who loves to paint beautiful pictures on the Gate, who loves teenage drama shows.” I looked at Dad, then at her. “Mom’s watching out for you. She won’t let you die.”

  I leaned over and hugged her.

  After a moment, I heard a muffled, “OK.”

  I pulled away, leaving my hand on her shoulder and the other holding loosely onto her fingers. They were cold. “OK you’ll do it?”

  “Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes. I reluctantly let go of her hand and gave her a reassuring, confident smile.

  *****

  After informing Dr. Stebing and Sonja, the operating room was prepped quickly and nurses came to wheel Marta away. I watched with a sick feeling inside as they helped her to another bed. Every movement made her weaker. Her lips were almost as white as her face. She smiled bravely at me as they took her away, the wheels on the bed squeaking as they maneuvered her bed into the hallway.

  I followed Dr. Stebing out of the room. I wanted to ask him if he thought it would work, but was afraid to hear a no, so I gritted my teeth and kept silent.

  As we went down the corridor, a man in a white lab coat carrying a personal-sized Gate came toward us. He opened his arms wide as though to catch us and Sonja paused. The rest of us stopped. The man held up his Gate, squinted at it, then at us. “I’m the attending on duty.” He paused dramatically, letting that information sink in. “I regret to inform you that this surgery wasn’t properly approved. Therefore, it can’t go on until the correct channels of authority have been observed.” He glanced at Dr. Stebing, then gave Sonja a once over and frowned. She was wearing operating scrubs and her brilliant red hair was stuffed under a cap that matched her scrubs.

  Dr. Stebing motioned for the nurses to continue to the OR with Marta. I watched her receding down the corridor, the beds’ wheels squeaking in protest. A wrenching fear pulled my heart open, letting all the blood drain out, or so it felt. Dad excused himself and hurried after Marta.

  Sonja turned to observe the conversation, her arms crossed, a foot tapping impatiently. Overhead a light began to stutter like it was about to burn out. A hunched man in a hospital gown and slippers shuffled by, muttering to himself. I covered my nose as a bad odor permeated the hallway.

  Stebing spoke in a fierce whisper between his teeth. “Burnham, let the girl have this chance. Not approved? For as long as she’s been here, no one’s even suggested a treatment, not even looking for something experimental. She’s been wasting away. I OK’d the surgery and I’m going to help perform it.” There was a vehemence in his voice that made my esteem for him grow.

  The attending doctor listened with his head cocked to one side, a sneer growing as Stebing finished. “That’s not my problem. She’s never been under my care. I’m concerned about protocol being followed.”

  Stebing laughed. I was really beginning to like him. If this attending thought he was going to call off the surgery . . . I couldn’t even think of it without my blood pressure soaring.

  “Protocol, Burnham?” Stebing spat. “You worthless—you think you can lecture me on protocol after almost two weeks of disregarding the daily appeals for further scrutiny on this case? What if her condition is contagious? What if it’s caused by some dormant—” he looked at me suddenly, as though remembering he wasn’t alone with Burnham. He took two quick steps forward, getting in Burnham’s face, and they both began conversing in a series of hissing whispers, most of which I couldn’t hear.

  I strained forward, trying to pick up more of the conversation while feigning serious interest in my fingernails. I caught only confusing snippets.

  “Virus . . . Martian dust storms . . . Let happen . . . I will personally . . . ”

  Abruptly Stebing finished, turned on his heel and continued down the corridor at a brisk pace toward the OR without looking back. I saw him shake his head once or twice as though arguing internally.

  “When the operation fails and the hospital administrator comes looking to see who’s at fault, I will make sure you take the full brunt of the blame, Stebing!” Burnham shouted. The tips of his ears were blazing and his cheeks flushed as his eyes swept over Sonja and me. He sneered at Sonja before turning and moving stiffly in the opposite direction of the OR.

  I exchanged a glance with Sonja before hurrying after Stebing. She fell in step beside me.

  “Don’t worry, Retta,” she said, her voice full of confidence. “The operation won’t fail.”

  *****

  A part of me wanted to wait with Dad, but the surgery could take a while and I had other things that couldn’t wait. I kept thinking of Marta without a heart, laying cut open on an operating table. Sitting around waiting and having my thoughts drift to those images was making the wait longer. After I nervously bit my nails down to the quick, I decided to go find Hemingway. I needed the distraction.

  I found him all sleepy-eyed in the small apartment office, which doubled as a lab. He smiled when I entered the room and fell into his arms.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked when we finished a long hello-kiss.

  “Everywhere,” I said, a wave of exhaustion sweeping over me. I buried my face in his neck.

  He paused, “How’s Marta?”

  “She’s in surgery. Heart transplant.”

  “What? When did this happen?” He straightened, pushing me away gently so he could stand up and stretch. I went to the sofa and lay down with my legs slung over one end.

  “Long story. She’s going to have an android heart, Hemingway.” There was a thrill in my voice that I couldn’t suppress. She would be a hybrid.

  He looked down at me. There was a sharp glint of disbelief in his blue eyes. “Don’t joke with me about that, Retta.”

  “I’m not,” I jumped to my feet, battling a wave of exhaustion that crashed over me. I leaned a hand against the wall to steady myself. I’d been through a lot. Morning felt like it had happened eons ago. “Sonja’s doing the surgery.”

  “My mother?” he was watching me like a hawk, his eyes narrow and piercing.

  “Yes, your mother, who else?”

  “I’m sorry, Retta, I don’t know what’s going on. You’re only giving me half the story,” he said, his concerned look intensifying. “Start at the beginning.”

  So I launched into a narrative beginning with me arriving at the hospital earlier that morning. I told him about going to Sonja’s, my conversation with her, then meeting Mei and stealing the heart. He stopped me there, his face turning to stone.

  “Wait, wait. You’re telling me you broke into Synlife again?”

  “Well, it wasn’t breaking in this time. We went through the front entrance and rode an elevator. Security knew we were there. I wore a disguise, that kind of thing.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is that you stole from Synlife—not that I care about the morality of that, just that it’s dangerous. Bad judgment, Retta. Besides, you promised me you’d never break in again.”

  “It was Sonja’s idea. Your mother, Hemingway. Her idea.” I sounded defensive, but I couldn’t help it. It was her i
dea. If it was so dangerous, would she really have sent me? I said as much. Hemingway laughed.

  “My mother has as little regard for danger as you seem to have. You know she goes there at least twice a month to visit her little beau?”

  “Uh, yeah, Jaska? That’s who we pretended to be visiting.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, Mei went with me! I told you that already.”

  He sighed, long and deep, rubbed his forehead with the tip of his fingers, and stared at me, saying nothing. At last he spoke again, “What am I going to do with you, Retta?”

  “Do?” I asked, feeling embarrassed for some reason. “I don’t know. You don’t have to do anything. I do what I want. Does that bother you?”

  He shrugged and smiled slyly. “It’s what I love about you.”

  I took a breath of relief. “It better be.”

  He turned to the window. It looked out on a forest of dome-scrapers. The setting sun glinted through the buildings, reflecting off the windows and polished stone, casting everything in a red hue. Glancing back at me, he said, “What happened next?”

  I explained about stealing the heart, and then hurrying back to the hospital with it. “That’s it, not much more. Just a little run in with the head of surgery or some guy who thinks he’s the boss.”

  “And Mei?”

  My hand flew to my mouth. I gasped. “Blast! Mei. I can’t believe I forgot. She stayed behind when they caught us stealing the heart.”

  “Are you going to do something to help her?”

  I stared at him, feeling a blast of cold spraying over me like the unforgiving frozen dust of Mars. What could I do? “I have to. Let me think about it.”

  I stood up and paced back and forth between the door into the hallway and Hemingway, resisting the urge to swing my arm around his waist and bury myself in him and forget all my cares.

  My life felt like a series of dominoes, spelling out disaster, falling in a rushing wave every time it seemed I had them all stacked perfectly. One thing after another. I couldn’t keep ahead of it. Worse, there was no time to worry about it. But maybe that was good. Maybe it was best for me to keep moving, keep focusing on what I could fix or change. I looked up.

  At least I had Hemingway. We were a team. Whatever happened to Mei, he could help me.

  “I should go back for Mei.”

  Hemingway just nodded without saying anything.

  Then I got thinking. We’d stolen a heart. They’d want it back. Or compensation. Or something. And Mei was with them . . .

  What if . . . no. A sudden horrifying thought occurred to me. It was too extreme. There was no way, I mean . . . they wouldn’t do that, would they? It was impossible.

  “What’s wrong?” Hemingway asked, a frown marring his perfect complexion.

  “I just had a thought. A sickening thought. I have to go get Mei, somehow. I can’t leave her there. She needs me.”

  “So does Marta. What about her? Won’t she be out of surgery soon?”

  “I don’t know. They’ll ping me when it’s done. At least dad will.”

  “You’re worried they’ll take Mei’s heart, aren’t you?” He gave me a knowing glance, a slight smile tickling the corners of his mouth.

  “That crossed my mind,” I admitted feebly. There was no denying it. It sounded grotesque and silly when Hemingway said it aloud.

  “That’s barbaric. I don’t like Synlife, but they’re not quite that evil.” He laughed.

  I sat down, exhaustion turning my thighs to butter. “There’s so much to do. The list never seems to shrink, does it?”

  Hemingway sat down at my father’s desk, which consisted of a freestanding Gate, a seven-inch Gram, and several trays of soil samples. “It gets more complicated every day, I think. Especially if you have a cause.” He gestured at the Gate. “It’s done. The holo-documentary. It’s saved as a bundle file—so it can play on Grams and flattened, on a Link or a Gate.” He turned on the Gram. A holo-documentary began playing. “It’s done, I think. At least, I believe it will do the job.”

  “It looks good!” I said encouragingly, impressed with what he was able to get done in a day. I opened my mouth to ask how he’d worked so fast, wondering if he had some android secret he was keeping from me, when a loud pounding at the front door echoed through the apartment.

  Chills skittered over my arms.

  “Don’t answer that,” I said, knowing with every cluster of my DNA that it would be someone I didn’t want to see or hear from.

  Our gazes locked as the knocking continued. Hemingway’s face was a mixture of curiosity and wide-eyed concern. The galaxies in his pupils seemed to swirl in a pinwheel motion, as tiny lights blinked on and off.

  “No, Hemingway. We know it can’t be good.” I shook my head, the room seeming to swim as I did so.

  The noise became more insistent. A weird voice in my head began to ask if it was my dad. Or if it was about Marta. What if it was? What if it was a messenger from the hospital, come to tell me that she had died in the operation? I asked myself why they would send a messenger and not just ping me. Because they prefer to give bad news like that in person, I told myself.

  Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true. The hospital was full of doctors who’d been content to watch my sister waste away. Doctors who were overworked and underpaid, at a hospital that was understaffed.

  The knocking didn’t go away. We sat there in silence, frozen. A thousand voices in my head were screaming at me to run to Hemingway’s arms, to find a way out of the apartment, to hide him, to hide ourselves, to shatter the glass of the Gate into a makeshift knife and stab my way through whoever was at the door. There were knives in the kitchen. My thinking was irrational.

  My face felt cold as we stared at each other and the knocking boomed through the apartment. “Why are they here?” I hissed.

  He shook his head, blinked, and stood up.

  I jumped to my feet. “No, you can’t go.” I insisted. “They’ll take you away.”

  How did we know?

  He took me by the arms, kissed me softly, whispered, “I love you, Retta. I always will,” in my ear, and began walking heavily out of the office, across the great room to the front door.

  “No!” I ran for him. “You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?” The question came out sounding hopeful. “We’ll run, Hemingway, for real this time. Just knock them unconscious. We can make it to the station and go to New Moscow, New Hyderabad. They’re huge cities. We can disguise ourselves until this blows over.”

  “Retta, they can track me. That’s how they found me here. I didn’t believe it. But I know it must be true, now.” He sounded sad. Defeated.

  I followed him into the entryway. My back was against the front door. I could feel each thunderous knock shaking into my back and ricocheting through my bones. I pounded on Hemingway’s chest as he worked the handle.

  “No, no, no!” Tears of frustration slipped down my face.

  The door was open. Two uniformed IRS agents were waiting outside. They took Hemingway by the arms, one on either side of him. They led him away. He shot me a look over his shoulder.

  Those old tenterhooks gouged the flesh from my heart; my heart was trailing along behind him, skipping over the floor like a fish on a hook.

  My last coherent thought before collapsing to the floor in a hysterical mass was that I guess he wasn’t going to knock them out and run away with me.

  28: True Children of Mars

  Eventually, I recovered. I really didn’t have the luxury to pause and think. So when I finished having my meltdown, I knew what I had to do. First, I had to go for Mei, even though my brain throbbed with questions of how to save Hemingway and about why he’d just given up like that. Just do this first, I told myself, and then you can concentrate on Hemingway.

  I went to Mei’s apartment.

  Well, her house. Mei lived in an actual house, or an estate, because the capitol shouldn’t have to compete with the dome-scrapers. So al
l the buildings surrounding the Vantaa were only five stories high at most, because the dome of the Vantaa was twenty stories high. And it glowed at night in all its glory, a copper green dome like from the olden days. I asked myself why they didn’t go for a shinier color, but they didn’t.

  The Tanaka estate was daunting and unapproachable, but I walked up the driveway and concentrated on why I was there. For Mei. Mei who took the fall for me.

  There was a small garden surrounding the house. Ornamental shrubs were shaped into animals like lions and horses, many of them posed mid-leap. The whole thing hit me as entirely out of place. We lived on Mars. It wasn’t Earth, no matter how many places we named after Earth (almost all of them), and no matter how many pieces of that once-favored planet we brought with us.

  The driveway curved around and stopped at the house. There were several small cars parked out front and a single large one. I went to the enormous front door just past a medium sized dust-storm display—there was an artificial cyclone of dust spinning in the middle. Some kind of homage to Mars. Very gaudy, I thought to myself. But at least it wasn’t a water fountain. The displays were all part of the ceremony of coming to the home of this fine member of Parliament.

  I pulled the lever that rang the door chimes. A servant answered dressed in an old-fashioned butler outfit. I sighed and asked for Mr. Tanaka.

  “It’s about his daughter,” I said. The butler bowed and showed me into a sitting room. The place was decorated in a perfectly balanced combination of whites, reds, and rich dark browns. The floor was a cream, patterned tile and there were archways everywhere. I sat down on a plush couch of red cushions and ebony armrests in front of a dark-stained cedar coffee table that had a slash of a red, tasseled runner crossing it diagonally. I felt like I was in a palace and I kept my back straight as a rod, afraid to relax in such a grand setting. At my apartment, there was a good chance I’d put my feet against the “coffee table,” which was actually our Gram, because we couldn’t really afford to have both. Our lives were confined to six or so rooms. Mei’s house felt like a labyrinth of rooms. You could get lost. You would need a map to find your way through it.