Blue Hearts of Mars

by Grotepas, Nicole

  The group surrounding me swelled until the entire station was filled with people chanting, “Free the androids, free the androids.”

  A train departed, empty, and another swept into the station. The passengers filed off and joined the mob surrounding me. I raised my arms in triumph, and Mei mimicked my movements.

  “To the warehouse!” I shouted, and a thunderous roar nearly blew the roof off the station.

  How it grew, I don’t know. Maybe it was the electricity of being in a mob. Maybe it was simply the fun of rebellion. Or maybe it was all that righteous indignation at the injustice of robbing an entire population of its voice and rights. I hoped. It could have been anything and all of those things at once. Whatever it was, it united us.

  Soon a sea of chanting people followed Mei and me out of the station, down the cement stairs, past the space elevator tunnel, and fifty yards across the plaza to the warehouse. We had no weapons. We had nothing but our voices and our bare hands. I hoped it was enough to overcome the IRS agents. They couldn’t be prepared for a riot. They were arrogant in their absolute power and their belief that most humans didn’t care for the androids.

  At least, that’s what I hoped.

  Taking a deep breath, I marched us the rest of the way across the plaza to the warehouse. There were no windows. The building was long and wide, with doors as tall as the building—big enough to hold a small cargo ship.

  At the doors, the mob surged forward and began banging on them. We pounded and pounded until they rolled open.

  Beyond the doors, dim, blue light fell upon thousands of android bodies, packed into the warehouse, pressed up against each other like canned fish from Earth. Overhead, on scaffolding and catwalks, IRS agents looked down on the prisoners, patrolling in an indifferent manner like the cold, heartless beasts they were.

  As we stood there, staring as one into the warehouse, silence descended. We watched, aghast at the sheer number of androids stuffed into the warehouse. I thought I heard someone cough and begin crying in shocked sympathy. The opening of the warehouse doors was like a dam breaking. Androids fell out, bursting into our arms, blinking their eyes against the light of the dwindling day, confused and disoriented. Their faces were masks of fear, uncertain whether we were there to save them, or inflict harsher sentences on them.

  We scrambled to pick them up, dusting them off, pulling them into our ranks, saving them, clapping them on the backs, whispering, “You’re safe now, come with us.” Expressions went from horrified to relieved, to thankful.

  The chant went up again, “Free the androids, free the androids. The children of Mars!”

  We pointed at the IRS agents up on the catwalks and scaffolding. They clutched their weapons to their chests, and their two-pronged mind-wipe instruments, calling out orders to each other, but none of them moved to stop us. When two of them charged at us, we surged over them and stole their weapons. We threatened them that we would fry their minds. We subdued them into frightened, blubbering heaps. After that no agents moved against us. We let them surrender or run away.

  A continual stream of androids bled into our ranks from the gash made by the warehouse doors.

  “Mei!” I shouted, across the current of escaping androids, “Mei!”

  She jumped to see me through the confusion, her dark hair surging around her face. “Retta! Retta!”

  “Have you seen Hemingway?” I shouted.

  Mei looked around, searching through the commotion for him, “Not yet!”

  Where was he?

  The hole in my chest grew. Was he gone already? Chills coursed over me.

  I couldn’t wait. I pushed into the warehouse against the tide of bodies, rushing between them, dodging men and women, my eyes scanning each face, looking for the one that I knew best, the one that would fill the chasm in my chest. As I searched the faces, I began to notice something strange. Beneath the blue lights, pupils glittered and winked at me. An occasional mark on a cheek or a chin, or a swirled dimple on an earlobe caught my gaze. Wide grins exposed a starry-tattooed tooth, a galaxy-embedded fingernail swept past my eyes as I searched and searched for my love. What was it all about? Did it amount to anything?

  I neared the middle of the warehouse, the hole where my heart belonged stretching to its limits, I clutched at my breast, my breath coming in sharp, panicked gusts. “Hemingway!” I shouted, “Hemingway!”

  A gap between two bodies. There! I thought I saw his face. I rushed toward it, “Hemingway!” Please let it be him.

  A curtain of figures parted. It was him. The crush of bodies loosened around him, he stretched his arms up, finally freed of the press of androids. His face seemed to glow, his eyes lit up and shone with all the luminosity of stars and galaxies that I ever remembered. My heart began to pump like a rushing wind.

  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.”

  Epilogue

  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 nonchalan
tly.

  “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.

  Author's Note

  If you enjoyed Blue Hearts of Mars, please leave a review on Amazon.com or Goodreads. Your review will help new readers find this book. I appreciate your support!

  As a thank you, for every twenty-five reviews, I'll release a bonus for Blue Hearts of Mars—such as professionally done maps of the settlements—or a short story from the Blue Hearts universe, on Facebook and Twitter.

  Follow me on Twitter here.

  Follow Blue Hearts on Facebook here.

  Acknowledgments

  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.

  Other Books by Nicole Grotepas

  FEED

  WORLD IN SHADOW (ILLUMINATED UNIVERSE BOOK #1)

  EXCERPT FROM 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.

  She groaned inwardly. Why had she even bothered to come? She could be home watching Star Trek or Dr. Who reruns or the recent adaptation of that obscure 18th century novel by the BBC. Anything would be better than this on a Friday night.

  Swallowing, she tried to ignore their attractive faces, tight T-shirts, and tighter jeans. Most of the eyes watching her belonged to guys Noah’s age from nearby Middle Arizona University. But, a few of them were girls from Sarah’s high school. They had hipster hair, outfits, and attitudes, and they laughed prettily as they hung on the arms of the older guys. Something about them screamed Pocahontas. From the Disney cartoon. Which, if you asked her, she’d deny ever seeing. Because…