Tiro whimpered.
“Calm down, Jirair,” came a woman’s voice from the back of the room. “There’s no need to act the fool.”
Jirair whipped around. “What are you doing here, Sahar?”
A woman moved forward. Layers of heavy gray clothing swathed her from neck to ankles, but her head was shaved bald. “Naghmeh said you were up to your old tricks.” She looked Tiro over, gray eyes shining from her angular face. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” Tiro said.
“There is no possibility that you are eighteen.”
“Sixteen.”
Sahar scrutinized Tiro’s face. “Possibly.”
“It doesn’t matter how old he is,” Jirair said. “I’m in charge of security. If you have a problem with it, run against me next cycle.”
Sahar lifted a hand in objection. “I’m here on Naghmeh’s behalf, not mine. She says the boy’s not alone.”
“I knew it!” shouted Jirair.
Sahar moved smoothly past him, coming to Tiro’s side. She held up a data globe. Its readout lights flashed in morse code. S.O.S.
“Who is this?” Sahar asked.
Tiro slumped. “My brother.”
Sahar instructed the men to unlock Tiro’s restraints. Rubbing his wrists, Tiro collected his helmet and followed Sahar out of the cell and down the glowing path to the dome exit.
“What did he threaten you with? Iron drops? The pain candle?”
“Nerve ripper,” Tiro mumbled, heart still pounding.
“There’s no such thing. He was trying to scare you.” Faint light illuminated her harsh features. “Jirair’s a good man. He’d be harmless in any other job, but give him security work, and he starts to think like a tyrant. He thinks the only way to protect the colony is to act like a bully. I argued against electing him, but too many people think aggression is the same as defense.”
They approached an air lock leading out of the dome. Sahar used her retinal scan to open an adjacent storage locker. It was filled with space suits. Sahar began putting one on over her clothes. “Put your helmet back on,” she instructed.
Tiro hesitated. “Where are we going?”
Sahar gave him an amused look. “You’re bold for a prisoner, aren’t you? I’m giving you a room in my compound tonight.”
“Aren’t you worried I’m a gang scout?”
“Are you a gang scout?”
“No.”
Sahar paused to adjust her suit. “Naghmeh says you are who you say you are. A teenager making a suicidally stupid journey alone—well, almost alone—from New Virginia to Kaseishi.”
“Who’s Naghmeh?”
Sahar grunted impatiently. “Enough for now,” she said, sealing her helmet.
Tiro sealed his, too, and they made their way outside. The lights lining the path shone like fairies at their feet as they hiked to the largest dome.
They stopped at a small, dimly lit dome entrance. Sahar spoke through her transmitter. “This is my door. It has security you can’t break, even with your brother’s help. Do not try to go through without me.”
Once they were inside, Sahar started removing her suit. She glanced at Tiro. “Don’t you want to get out of that thing?”
Tiro paused. He’d been traveling for so long that his suit felt like a second skin, but it would feel good to wear just a shirt and pants again. He stripped down, enjoying the sensation of air on his arms—until he noticed Sahar tossing his discarded suit into a bin in the storage locker.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“A little insurance,” she said, locking the crate.
Sahar started toward a large building. Fuming, Tiro followed.
The structure was larger than any private building Tiro had ever seen. He gaped as Sahar opened the door onto an unbelievably enormous room.
It smelled of baking bread. Bowls of fruits and vegetables glistened on the counters that ranged across the back wall. Chairs sat stacked on two long, parallel tables, each of which could seat at least twenty.
“You live here?” he asked.
“I do,” said Sahar, heading up the immense staircase that stretched away from the dining hall. She took a right from the first floor landing and opened one of what seemed like an infinity of doors, revealing a narrow bedchamber.
She nudged Tiro inside. “You’ll sleep here until your arbitration with our elders. I’m locking you in tonight, but I’ll come by in the morning for breakfast.”
Hesitantly, Tiro reached toward the polished headboard. “What’s this made of?”
“Wood. From settlement trees.”
“You harvest wood?” Tiro asked incredulously.
This elicited a genuine smile. “Get some sleep.”
Tiro turned. “Wait!”
Sahar stopped with her hand on the door. “Yes?”
“Please. My brother. Can’t you give him back?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Please!”
“We’ll return him after arbitration.”
Tiro started toward Sahar. “When will that be?”
“A few days. . . .”
“But he’s never spent the night alone!”
Sahar held out her hand to prevent Tiro from coming further. “Calm down.”
Tiro stopped advancing. He dropped his balled fists to his sides.
When Sahar seemed satisfied that he’d regained his self-control, she continued. “Your brother will be fine. He’ll stay with Naghmeh until your arbitration.”
Tiro’s patience snapped. “Who’s Naghmeh?”
Sahar paused. “My daughter,” she answered at last. “She was lifted, too.”
Tiro was too surprised to know how to respond.
Sahar closed the door.
Tiro had hazy memories of the day Eo was born: the blue blanket his aunt shipped from Earth for the new baby, the red bag his mother packed for the hospital, the burned toast his father made for breakfast. He didn’t remember putting on a space suit and trying to run away, but that was what his parents always told stories about. “At first, Tiro wanted to get away from Eo so badly that he ran away from home,” his dad would say. “Now they’re inseparable.”
At first Eo seemed healthy, but soon he stopped eating. His stomach swelled. One night their father found blood in Eo’s diaper, and then it was back to the hospital for test after test. By the end, they’d plugged him into machines that breathed for him and machines that pumped his heart, even machines that spun tendrils into his brain.
Tiro didn’t remember any of that. He did remember his parents taking him to the hospital where they put his hands into gloves mounted in a clear plastic wall so he could touch his brother one last time. His mother cried because it was so sterile and remote, but Tiro didn’t feel that way. To him, it felt like touching anyone through a space suit. Just part of growing up on Mars.
Scientists had never reached a consensus on how lifting occurred. They did identify the responsible technology: a recently introduced monitoring system intended to track global mental function. The system kept records of brain activity for physician review and, over time, these created a holistic representation of the brain in motion.
Dead patients’ records were dumped into the hospital system. When cognitive development specialist Dr. Joshua Roanoke went to access the records for his research, he discovered the presence of distinct personalities haunting the system like ghosts. He told the press, “It’s as if the children have been lifted from their bodies and moved into the machines.”
Only patients in a narrow age range seemed to be susceptible. Dr. Roanoke hypothesized that, in order to transfer successfully, infants had to possess a concept of object permanence but still be in the sensorimotor stage. Except for the fact that affected infants fell roughly into the predicted age range of three to twenty-four months, no proof had been uncovered to substantiate his claim.
While scientists argued over how the lifted children had been created, politicians debated what to
do with them. Mars was still recovering from high profile technological disasters: six hundred colonists had died at Juel when a new biotic system poisoned the air instead of providing oxygen, and another two thousand died planet-wide when an innovative dome synthetic developed microscopic fractures. The technophobic climate combined with calls from a number of dominant religions for the lifted children to be exorcised so they could properly enter the afterlife.
The governments of Mandela and Marston—the other two colonies that had used the brain monitoring technology—ordered their hospitals to purge the lifted children. Working under more stringent property laws, New Virginia ruled that the lifted children were equivalent to remains and left it to the parents to dispose of them. All three governments placed heavy restrictions on the brain monitors to prevent further incidents.
Average citizens called the lifted children ghosts. They told each other horror stories about haunted machines.
Most parents, already grieving, had their children’s remnants wiped. A few brought them home.
“Even if it’s only an echo, how can we throw that away?” asked Tiro’s mom. “He’s our little boy.”
Eo grew on the home computer. He navigated data streams like a rafter in white water, skimming through the public nets with abandon. He pulled pranks on the neighbors’ private machines, too, until their parents lectured him about trespassing.
Their family shaped itself around Eo. All day, they laughed at jokes he sent their visors. During the evenings, they watched movies he spliced together from free footage on the nets. At night, Tiro wore his visor to bed so he and Eo would never be apart.
Everyone adored Eo, but their father still drank in the evenings, his expression tired and forlorn. Once, Tiro asked what was wrong. His father gave him the saddest look he’d ever seen. “I want what any father wants. For both my sons to become men.”
Tiro went to their mother. “Doesn’t Dad love Eo?”
She sighed. “Of course we love Eo, but it’s hard. We’d give anything to fix what happened. To make him what he should be.”
Tiro never forgot what his parents wanted for Eo. A body, so he could be a man.
Tiro was still sleeping when Sahar returned. She wore even more gray this time, a heavy ankle-length dress. She led him downstairs to the kitchen where she picked up a basket of red fruit.
“We’ll eat outside,” she said.
Tiro blinked as they emerged into brightness. Trees arrowed toward the dome, branches woven into a dense canopy. Creepers garlanded the trunks with emerald, scarlet, and amber leaves.
Tiro wandered, dazed by the mingling scents of flowers and wet leaves. He paused beside a whip-slender sapling that was putting out new fronds. “I’ve seen these in New Virginia.”
Sahar was crouched a meter away, spreading a blanket over the grasses. She looked up. “Those are comfort palms. We export the seeds.”
“People pull off the fronds to wrap up in. They keep you pretty warm.”
Sahar settled on the blanket. “That’s why we made them. All our plants are engineered to be useful. We call it anthropocentric ecology. Once there’s a thick enough atmosphere to sustain life, we’ll seed our plants across Mars. Think about it. Our jungles won’t be hostile. They’ll be full of plants that exist in symbiosis with us, that help us survive and prosper.”
Tiro kicked a clump of bluish weeds. They released a pleasant almond scent. “What’s the point? It’ll be centuries before plants can live outside.”
Sahar held up a chiding finger. “It’ll take centuries under the plans made by government colonies. They’ve introduced oxygen-generating and nitrogen-fixing microbes, but we can do better than that. We’re engineering microbes with more efficient metabolisms. Once they’re ready to be released, our new strains will accomplish the process in decades.”
“Why can you do that better than the colonies?”
“We have better computers.” Sahar smiled. “But more about that later.” She pulled a fruit from her basket and held it out to Tiro. “Try a promise. They’re superficially a mix of pomegranates and apples, blended with more supplementary genomes than I can remember. They’re calorie rich and extremely nutritious. Humans can survive on them for weeks at a time.”
Tiro took the fruit. The first bite was a perfect, pulpy mix of sweet and acrid. His spine prickled. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Why are you going to Kaseishi?”
“Didn’t my brother tell you?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
Tiro hesitated, choosing words carefully. “We heard there’s an engineer there who can make special mechanical bodies.”
He stopped. “Yes?” Sahar prompted.
“Ones that lifted kids can move into,” said Tiro. “To make them normal.”
“It’s only worked once. It may not work again. The integrated body frames were built to interact with computers, you know, not for lifted kids.”
Tiro said nothing.
“How are you going to afford one?”
Tiro shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Your brother said you had a plan.”
Tiro clenched his fists in frustration. What was the point being careful if Eo told them everything? “Kaseishi takes contracts for indentured servants, okay? If someone buys my labor for ten years, I can get a body for Eo.”
Sahar ignored his exasperation. “If I accessed your records from New Virginia, how old would they say you were?”
“Sixteen.”
“Really.”
“Okay, fourteen. But that’s old enough! I’m a man. I can sign my own contracts.”
Sahar’s eyes narrowed. “You look like you have African ancestors. If you’re from New Virginia then your parents or grandparents probably came from the United States. Am I right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So you’ve probably got a family history of slavery. I can’t imagine your ancestors would be happy about one of their sons selling his freedom.” She gestured to herself. “My people are Parsi. For generations, they were marginalized in India. We know what it is to be not-quite-people under the law.” She paused. “What do your parents think?”
Tiro thought fast. “They’re dead.”
“Are they?”
“I have to do it for Eo.”
“What if it’s not the best thing for him?”
“He needs a body!”
“My daughter runs this settlement. The computer enhances her so she thinks faster than any human, and she enhances the computer so it works better than anything on Mars or on Earth.” She paused, eyes searching Tiro’s face for his reaction. “Do you understand what that means? It’s a gift beyond measure. With Naghmeh’s help, any plant I design can become reality in months. Without her, I’d have been lucky to construct even one species. That comfort palm, for instance. That would be my life’s work.”
“That’s nice for you and Naghmeh, but Eo needs a body.”
“Does he? Or do you need one for him?”
Tiro turned away, flaming with anger. Sahar called after him. “Think, Tiro! What does your brother know about flesh and bones? Are you doing this for him or for you?”
“I’m doing it for Eo!” Red anger flowed through Tiro’s face and fists. He bolted into the trees, feet pounding across springy ground cover. At first he was surprised that Sahar let him run—but then, where could he go? She’d taken his suit.
He slowed in the middle of a grove and sat among the fallen leaves, trailing his fingers through the wet soil.
He remembered when his parents had first read about the mechanical bodies. They spent weeks arguing over their finances, trying to conjure what they needed. His father examined Kaseishi’s laws and discovered the corporations there had agitated to legalize indentured servitude so they could bring up the droves of willing but impoverished workers from Earth and force them to repay their travel costs. He considered selling himself, but he was too old to get a contract.
�
��I’ll do it,” Tiro had said.
Both his parents looked at him like he’d just turned pink and sprouted wings.
“The devil you will,” said his mother.
His father just shook his head, slowly. “No, Tiro. We won’t sell one son’s potential for the other’s.”
So Tiro ran away. What was ten years of his life if it could buy Eo’s humanity?
Tiro didn’t know how much time had passed before he heard Sahar’s footsteps. He looked up. She held out her hand to help him stand.
“I shouldn’t have pushed so fast,” she said. “I’m passionate about what I do, about Mars and plants and Naghmeh. Please accept my apologies.”
Every morning, Tiro asked when his arbitration would be. Every morning, Sahar answered, “Not yet. You need more food and rest anyway.”
She took him to look at water-filled flowers that could be plucked and used as canisters, and at creepers that froze into durable ropes. She showed him how they planned to incorporate mechanical elements into future plants, such as trees that could monitor human heart rates and issue distress signals.
Tiro asked whether they could change humans the way they were changing plants. “I’d like to live in the cold. Or maybe you could make us fly . . .”
“Perhaps once the atmosphere is ready,” said Sahar. “For now, we have more than enough to do.”
Tiro enjoyed helping Sahar plant seedlings. Infant plants couldn’t save lives, but they were fragile and green. He loved wriggling his fingers like worms in the dirt.
Sahar told him about the settlement. “Things have changed since Naghmeh integrated with the computer. We have more money now, more time, more knowledge. If people hadn’t reacted ignorantly to the lifted children, more settlements could prosper as we do.”
The settlement had welcomed Naghmeh by agreement of the elders and also by popular vote. Some of the population had been ready to surrender total control to Naghmeh, while others worried about what would happen if they allowed a child—however mechanically enhanced—to take authority over delicate systems like life support. In the end, they compromised, walling off a section of the system where Naghmeh could live, separated from processes that could threaten the settlers’ lives.
Life on Mars Page 21