Saving Mars

by Cidney Swanson

  The nurse fluffed a pillow upon a small bed. “They’re asking for permission to monitor in-room conversations, if you can believe it.” She shook her head as though this would be the ultimate violation of patient rights. “Can I get you anything? Food? Something to drink?”

  “I’m fine,” Jess lied.

  “Okay, then, I’ll be back to check on you as often as I can. You can call for assistance right here,” she said, indicating a screen panel. “And if you see the monitor light on your cast switch from red to green, you let me know right away, okay?”

  Jess nodded.

  The nurse smiled one last time and left, scolding the security officer on the far side of the door as it swung shut with a dull thud. When closed, the door blocked all sound, including Nurse Yoko’s berating of the officer.

  Jess stared at her surroundings. No window. One door. A basin into which it appeared water might collect. A sink, she recalled. And a bed. Jess crawled up on top of the rather high and narrow bed and buried her face in the pillow. It smelled faintly of peroxide, of home. When the tears began a moment later, Jessamyn let them fall. She had failed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  DEFERENTIAL TREATMENT

  Pavel scanned into the exam-floor lobby alongside two hundred or so others who’d turned eighteen yesterday. A man dressed in a teach-suit approached Pavel, singling him out from the crowd as it shuffled forward.

  “Mr. Brezhnaya-Bouchard,” he said, dipping his head, “If you will step to one side, someone will be right with you to escort you to your exam screen. It is such an honor, sir.”

  Looking around, Pavel determined that no one else was getting this special treatment. He frowned. When his escort arrived, she chattered about high profile guests providing possible disturbances to other firsties.

  “We want to offer everyone an equal chance to do their best in a distraction-free environment. I’m sure you understand.” She smiled.

  “Sure,” muttered Pavel. He might despise the deference, but he had no wish to distract others on such an important day.

  His own video screen sat in a smaller room off to one side from the main exam room. From the window next to him, Pavel could look down over the pool beside which he and Jessamyn had traced the constellations last night. He glanced skyward and his resolve hardened. He would take this exam with his new goal in mind: he wanted to help Marsians, and that meant a political career path in civil service, not medicine.

  As he sat, trying to think about the exam and not the girl from Mars—Mars!—his mind raced, replaying the last twelve hours. He’d always planned to be a doctor, but in the past half-day of his life, everything had changed and now all he could think of was a red-haired girl from another world and how he might bring their two planets together once more.

  The video screen in front of him flared to life. A pleasant voice directed him to scan in. He felt an eagerness to answer the questions—to begin the realignment of his new goals with his new future. The first question appeared, asking him what he would be most likely to do in the event he came upon persons requiring assistance. That was easy: offer assistance while telling others to call emergency services.

  He flexed his fingers and glanced down at the pool once again. A second question appeared, asking him whether the statement, “I enjoy helping others and I am good at it,” was true or false for him. Clicking “True,” he advanced to the third question which asked him to indicate which of several dozen journals he followed.

  Pavel frowned. Why ask questions that could easily be verified? The examiners had access to the minutiae of Pavel’s life including where he spent vacations, what tooth cleanser he used, and the name of every vid-journal he’d ever subscribed to. He checked the boxes beside MEDICINE TODAY and GENETICS DAILY.

  The fourth question asked Pavel whether, within a surgery room, he could best imagine himself as a surgeon’s assistant or as a surgeon. The question seemed innocuous enough, but Pavel didn’t like the ways in which each question thus far seemed tilted toward a field in which he no longer had interest.

  He selected “surgeon” as more likely to indicate that he saw himself in leadership roles rather than supportive roles.

  The fifth question seemed to return the inquiries to more neutral territory: Did Pavel prefer tasks which were repetitive and predictable or those which provided challenge and surprise. He shook his head and chose challenges and surprises. But he didn’t like the surprise awaiting him on the following screen.

  Congratulations. You have been awarded a medical apprenticeship at New Kelen Hospital where you will train for a career in consciousness transfer.

  He stared at the screen, first in shock. Then, outrage followed, and he mouthed a single word.

  “Lucca.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

  Jessamyn allowed herself to cry for a long, long while. It was shameful, wasting so much water. But she didn’t care. She had no idea how to rescue her brother, much less how to find and rescue Harpreet or the Captain, and she felt alone and completely out of her depth. Jess may have been Mars’s best pilot, but she had no training in stealing bodies from a secure facility.

  A hospital orderly brought food to her room after an hour had passed. The smells assaulted her and she recognized the creamy scent of butter, but she found she’d lost her appetite for Terran foods. Ignoring the tray of food, she reached into her pocket, grasping the slippery foil wrapper of a nutrient bar. She was feeling the effects of sleep-deprivation, and she knew it would be foolhardy to add hungry to the mix.

  Peeling back the copper ration-wrapper, she ate mechanically.

  The food worked to warm her belly and the walls enclosing her offered comfort as well. Earth was too full of open spaces. She thought maybe she understood her brother a bit better, if in reverse. He reacted poorly to small spaces; she realized a slight level of unease had settled in her simply because she had been denied the comfort of low ceilings since arriving.

  She leaned back against the wall. It vibrated slightly—constantly—like the walls of the Galleon. She closed her eyes so that she could arrange her options before her like one of Ethan’s collections, but fatigue overwhelmed her, and in the small room—exhausted and insulated from all outside noise—she fell into a profound sleep.

  ~ ~ ~

  Pavel Brezhnaya-Bouchard had never felt so angry. He considered simply never returning home as he haunted Budapest’s avenues and alleys for the next several hours. He considered trying to find the girl from Mars—maybe she’d let him leave with her. This idea, he eventually rejected, reasoning that if he went missing, Lucca would call out the Red Squadron to find him. Pavel couldn’t risk drawing the Terran military onto Jessamyn’s trail. His hours of walking did little to calm him, only increasing his outrage over what his aunt had done. In the end, he hopped back on his hover-bike and sped home in order to rail at his aunt.

  Seeing Lucca’s palatial residence for the first time as a place he was about to leave instead of as a place he called home, he felt a flush of shame for his aunt’s extravagance. The ostentatious building served as a perfect example of the basic difference between them: Pavel saw others as his equals; Lucca saw others as her inferiors, to be used in ways that benefited her or her agendas. The palatial dwelling? It reminded others, before they’d even caught sight of the woman who lived inside, that Lucca was wealthy and powerful. It begged the question, “Can you really afford to pit yourself against my will?”

  “You can’t buy me,” growled Pavel as he parked his bike beside Lucca’s three luxurious travel-sedans.

  He stormed inside, shouting for his aunt.

  Lucca’s butler greeted Pavel. “Good morning, sir. I regret to tell you Chancellor Brezhnaya is sleeping and unavailable. May I offer you congratulations upon completing your examination?”

  Pavel didn’t respond. Lucca’s servants were accustomed to being ignored. But then, despising himself for behaving like her, Pavel made a point of an
swering politely. “Thanks, Zussman.”

  “Your aunt arrived back from Singapore only two hours ago,” said the butler. “She’s planned a dinner to celebrate with you when she awakens and will be accompanying you to the hospital this evening herself.” Zussman smiled. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No,” said Pavel.

  He took the set of stairs leading to his suite of rooms. When he reached them, he scanned his wrist to gain access to a passageway connecting his rooms with his aunt’s sleeping quarters. It was something she’d set up years ago, when Pavel suffered nightmares. He hoped his chip would still open the passage. A door panel slid back and he smiled in grim satisfaction. One more example of his aunt’s tendency to forget things she’d done for Pavel once they were done.

  Lucca Brezhnaya, Prime Chancellor of the Terran Central Government, arranged her morning wake-up calls to imitate the experience of re-bodying. She loved the moment of awakening as a newly thirty-six-year-old, and she’d repeated threebodying a number of times—often enough to have developed the particular habits of a connoisseur. For instance, she liked to begin her awakening—whether to a new day or a new body—to the sound of Tibetan bells. Upon awakening, she kept her eyes closed and flexed her fingers. This was the signal to her attendants to offer bowls of warm rosewater for her hands. The ritual continued with further ablutions until Lucca began her workday. These twenty minutes were stolen, in some sense, from other more profitable activities, but she found the trade-off acceptable.

  So, when her nephew stormed into her room three hours before she’d requested the Tibetan bells, she at first assumed she was having a bad dream. Pavel and his parents often featured in her nightmares. She supposed the bad dreams were a sort of punishment for what she’d done. If so, the nightmares were another trade-off she found acceptable for what her actions had bought her.

  But this dream was a little too real. Lucca sat up in bed and realized Pavel was actually in her room. Was actually shouting at her.

  “… no excuse,” he said. “And I won’t go along with it. I won’t. I’ll volunteer for work as a satellite harvester.”

  Oh, thought Lucca. We’re having the conversation now. She frowned, stretched her long white arms over her head and addressed her nephew. “Who, pray tell, am I to dismiss without references for letting you in at this hour?”

  “No one. I used the passageway you set up when I was little.”

  “Hmm,” she said, adding passage closure to a mental to-do list. “How did your exam go?”

  “Exactly the way you set it up,” said Pavel, crossing his arms.

  Things tended to go the way she arranged them, Lucca thought, allowing herself a small smile.

  “It’s unfair to others, it’s illegal, and I won’t go along with it,” he said.

  Lucca took a calming breath, reached for a drink of artesian well-water. “Pavel, you’re eighteen. It’s time you stopped acting like a child.” She let the barb sink in. “I’ve made certain provisions for your future. When you’ve heard them, I’m sure you’ll agree that I’ve been most generous.”

  “I don’t want your generosity,” he said. “I want justice. That exam was a farce. Allow me to retake it, properly, or I swear I’ll volunteer to sort space junk.”

  Lucca smiled. It was not a friendly smile. “I will pretend you’re not making threats you are powerless to act upon. You will listen to what’s going to happen. I’ve ensured you a career that millions would kill for. I’ve done so not because you are my nephew, but because, according to the surgeons and physicians who have worked alongside you, you are one of the most naturally gifted individuals they’ve encountered.”

  Pavel looked down. He’d grown accustomed to remarks like this in the past years.

  “In fact, it was the current Head of Global Consciousness Transfer who suggested to me that we treat you as a unique case. That it would be depriving Earth’s citizens to simply re-body you according to ordinary protocol. You are a prodigy. Like Mozart or Tsing.”

  Pavel’s eyes flicked up. A hundred years ago, Tsing’s government had refused to allow her to be re-bodied because of her musical genius. A war had very nearly ensued, but in the end, Tsing had fled to a neighboring country where she insisted upon being properly re-bodied rather than become the cause of global conflict.

  Lucca continued. “In your case, as in Tsing’s, to separate your mind from your body would be a crime against humanity.”

  “Tsing re-bodied,” said Pavel. “It was the right thing to do then and it’s the right thing to do now.”

  “Oh, grow up, Pavel. Of course Tsing wasn’t permitted to re-body. There are times when exceptions must be made. Without Tsing in her original body, there would be no International Anthem to Peace.”

  “Wait,” said Pavel, his mind jumping like a malfunctioning hopcraft. “Rosenfeldt wrote the International Anthem to Peace. Are you telling me Rosenfeldt was actually Tsing?”

  “Of course she was Tsing. The new name was a necessary concession to keep the peace. These things must be handled discretely.”

  “These things are illegal!” roared Pavel. “I will not break the very law that’s kept peace on Earth for—”

  Lucca interrupted. “I keep the peace on Earth. The system only works because my government makes certain it works. Behind the scenes when necessary. You have no idea what costs must be paid to keep peace as you call it.”

  Pavel, caught between shock and outrage, recoiled as he admitted to himself several uncomfortable truths about his aunt. All his life thus far, he’d seen what he chose to see: a woman who loved the law enough to pursue an exhausting career as a politician. But if Pavel had been honest with himself, he would have admitted it was power she loved and not the law. It had simply been more convenient for him to hide from this truth. Until now.

  His aunt was speaking again. “You will remain in your own body until such a time as age begins to affect your ability to treat patients. According to official record, you will be re-bodied. However, in actuality, your apprenticeship begins this afternoon. At New Kelen. Where you will pass yourself off as a fourbody who is very keen on volunteer work.”

  “No,” said Pavel.

  “I’m sorry, were you under the impression you could refuse this generous offer?” Lucca’s voice was icy, her smile lupine. She crossed to sit at a marble counter before a large mirror and began making up her face.

  “Of course I refuse,” said Pavel. “There’s nothing you can say to convince me. It’s wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t bother with the ‘I’d rather die’ part of your speech, if I were you. You don’t want to know what I’ll do to make sure I get my way on this one, Pavel.”

  “I’ll denounce you,” he said softly.

  Lucca chose a blood-red lipstick and applied it to her lower lip. “It’s good of you to let me know what you’ve got up your sleeve. I really must return the favor.”

  She drew the line of red across her upper lip and reached for a blotting tissue. Leaving the impression of her lips upon the cloth, she dropped it casually to the floor where it reminded Pavel of an ugly gaping wound. He’d always hated his aunt’s habit of placing messes upon the floor for the staff to clean.

  “Pick that up for me,” she said.

  He saw the action with new eyes now—she meant all who surrounded her to be reminded of their place: at her feet, in a posture of groveling.

  “No,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “It doesn’t matter, you see, whether you pick it up or not. Someone will, in the end.” She paused to let the idea sink in. Pavel was bright and would understand. “However, if I mention to Zussman that Talia has been shirking and leaving messes on the floor, he’ll dismiss her.”

  “You’re going to fire Talia if I—”

  Lucca’s laughter, harsh, cut Pavel off. “They told me you were a lot smarter than the average first-body. This isn’t about Talia, foolish boy.” Lucca paused, admiring her reflection. “No, I�
�m simply pointing out that when I convey information to someone, that information is always acted upon. What if, for example, I were to discover that the two hundred twenty-four firsties who took their exams this morning cheated? Tell me, my law-loving nephew, what would the punishment be for that?”

  Pavel’s face blanched. “Automatic sentencing to geriatric D-class bodies. Manual labor sentences.”

  “How lucky for you to have taken the exam in a separate room. Good thing you didn’t cheat.”

  “You can’t do that to them,” said Pavel, his voice a whisper.

  Lucca turned, her face powdered white and her mouth like a bloody gash. Meeting her nephew’s eye, she spoke. “I can do anything I like.”

  He was trapped.

  “Pavel, my dear, dear boy,” said Lucca, her voice suddenly warm. “I’m only doing this for your own good. You like to help people. You like to prevent suffering. It’s who you are.” She held her hands out, as if inviting him to take them.

  He stepped back and kept his own arms crossed tightly over his heart.

  “Well,” she said, “I can see I’ve upset you. I’m sorry, my dear. You can see that this is all for the best, though, can’t you? Humanity benefits, you benefit, over two hundred students benefit … It’s a win-win.”

  Win-win, thought Pavel. That was his aunt’s campaign platform for re-election. Was this the way she ran her office? He felt sick.

  “Think it over, dear boy,” said Lucca.

  He turned quickly, exiting the way he’d come in. In the years since he’d used the secret corridor to seek comfort from a bad dream, he’d grown large. The narrow passageway pressed upon him, his elbows grazing against one side and then the other as he hurried along the curving route.

  Arriving back in his room, he pulled the sheets from his bed, in part because it was an act that felt destructive (and he wanted deeply to destroy something just now) but also because it was a kindness he could perform on poor Talia’s behalf.