Martians Abroad

by Carrie Vaughn

  Then a voice hissed at him from out of sight. “Just tell her!”

  That sounded just like Victory Mason. Prettiest girl in class back on Mars. And she’d stolen my boyfriend. Because I was two hundred million kilometers away and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  Beau finally said, “I’m really sorry, but … I think we should both be open to seeing other people. I mean, we knew it probably wasn’t going to work out, with you being so far away and everything.”

  No, we hadn’t known that. We’d sworn undying loyalty. Or rather, I had.

  “You’re a really good person, Polly. It’s not you—”

  “Oh, don’t say it,” I muttered.

  “—it’s me. And we’ll still be friends, I know it. But, yeah. It’s just not fair to you, you being on Earth and probably meeting all these great guys. You should enjoy yourself. Yeah, that’s it. Um—I’m really sorry.”

  And the picture cut out. The screen went to black, and I spent a long time staring at it, not knowing what to think. I thought about playing the vid again, studying every nuance—every time his gaze had swung to the left, offscreen, he must have been looking at Victory, who’d been egging him on the whole time. He could have just not broken up with me and I’d never have known, and I wouldn’t feel like such dirt now. Ignorance would have been better.

  Really, I should have been happy that Victory made him tell me. He could have just gone out with her and I’d never know. In the end, I’d rather know.

  I thought about playing the message again, but instead I deleted it. I would never talk to Beau again.

  I was glad of the restricted study hall then, being in my own cubicle where no one could see me. Where I didn’t have to talk to anyone, tell anyone why I was staring at my handheld like I wanted to kill it. I really could have smashed it to pieces at the moment, except for being numb. I couldn’t move, I realized. The more I thought of it, the more I thought it wasn’t even Beau I missed. Would miss. He said, “It’s not you, it’s me,” but really it was me, wasn’t it?

  Because I wasn’t worth waiting for.

  I had to sit for another fifteen minutes before I could go back to the dorm for lights-out. I wanted to do anything other than sit here. I wanted to run, scream, fly, anything. But none of it would help. So I went numb.

  Then, finally, it was time to go, all of us filing back to our dorm rooms.

  Charles sidled up to me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Beau finally broke up with you, didn’t he?”

  I looked at him. “I hate you, Charles.”

  “He’s not worth it. You can do much better than him.”

  “I don’t want better. He was my boyfriend. I like him.” At least I used to. I frowned hard to keep my stinging eyes from tearing up.

  “I heard a new Earth saying. ‘There’s always more fish in the sea.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means … there’s always more fish in the sea.” He turned the corridor to his wing of the dorm. And I … I didn’t know how I was going to sleep.

  * * *

  I didn’t care about the restrictions anymore because the constraints and isolation reflected my mood. If I didn’t have a chance to talk to anyone, that was just fine. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  Other kids screwed up and got put on restrictions. George got caught sneaking out of the dorm after dark. One of the older students had hidden tobacco-based drugs—cigarettes—in his locker. Angelyn had to explain cigarettes to me, and I was baffled, because it was another example of how people on Earth wasted their air. Trying to smoke tobacco at Colony One would get you deported, because it would ruin the air-filtration system for the whole settlement.

  Compared to things like that, my stunt with the bike started looking kind of cool. People didn’t give me quite such weird looks.

  Sometimes, walking back and forth between the dorm, classes, and meals, my friends would walk with me to keep me company. That was how I finally figured out I kind of had friends here. Usually, it was Ethan, Angelyn, or Ladhi. Charles never did, and that was okay. But I was shocked one day after astrophysics on the way to lunch, when Tenzig trotted up to me and walked alongside. Suspicious, I looked at him sidelong. He was studying me. I waited for him to say something, kind of hoping that he would get tired of staring at me and walk away.

  “I could help you, you know,” Tenzig said finally. “That stunt with the cycle—that took guts, if nothing else. You might actually make a pretty good pilot.”

  If nothing else—like brains and common sense? As far as I was concerned, I was already a pretty good pilot. I just hadn’t had a chance to fly anything bigger than a scooter. Yet.

  “Help me how?” I said.

  “Like I told you—I have connections. I could put a good word in for you.”

  “You think I can’t do it on my own?”

  “I’m just trying to help, that’s all.”

  “What are you going to expect in return?”

  “You’re suspicious. Can’t I just be a nice guy?”

  “Gosh, why start now?”

  “You’re kind of a hoot, Polly. Maybe I want to help because I like you.”

  I blushed in spite of myself. I didn’t want to blush, or have him looking at me like he really did like me. He seemed amused, but I was afraid he was laughing at me. I could have kept the argument up for hours, and he would have just kept smiling like that.

  “How about if I need help I’ll let you know?” I said.

  “That’s a deal.”

  There went that blush again.

  While we picked up our trays of food, Ladhi pulled me aside and hissed, “What did Tenzig want?”

  “He was just giving me a hard time,” I said.

  “The way he was standing? No way.”

  “I didn’t really notice how he was standing,” I said, but I was blushing again and angry at myself for it.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice how close he was standing to you.”

  “I can’t say that I did.”

  “He was standing very close. I think he likes you.”

  “No way. He thinks I’m weird.”

  “Maybe that’s why he likes you.”

  “He should chase after Marie, the way she’s been hanging all over him.”

  “That’s just it—he doesn’t have to chase her.”

  “I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it.”

  “You should at least enjoy it. The attention, I mean.”

  All the attention I’d gotten so far had been horrific. Why would I go looking for more? And why couldn’t I stop blushing?

  12

  A week later came our first field trip. Field trips, I understood. We had field trips on Mars, to visit the early exploratory rovers, left exactly where they’d stopped when their batteries ran out and their missions ended, and to study local geology. A field trip on Earth couldn’t be that different, right? I thought I might be left behind—I was on the last week of my restrictions—but it turned out this was meant to be an educational experience. I couldn’t possibly miss out on an educational experience. So I got to go. Or had to go, depending on your point of view.

  Autumn had come to Earth’s northern hemisphere. Autumn here was nothing like autumn at Colony One. Colony One, in Mars’s northern hemisphere, had long springs and blustery summers that were only a little less cold than winters. Fall and winter got cold enough that most maintenance and science crews didn’t go out unless they absolutely had to, but at least they were shorter, because of Mars’s eccentric orbit. Apparently Earth had a lot of variations in weather and climate, but it went way beyond wind and temperature. Precipitation changed, depending on where you were and what season it was. Mars didn’t have any precipitation at all, no matter where you were or what time of year it was. I had to admit, I may not have liked Earth all that much, but liquid water falling from the sky? When I finally got to see it, i
t was crazy interesting, like a garden sprinkler big enough to cover everything you could see. The ground turned mushy, and the air smelled clean. Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t just thicker, it seemed alive. And then I found out that when the temperature got cold enough, the rain would freeze and turn into snow. Like the polar caps of Mars falling piece by piece. I saw pictures—snow-covered land looked like a temporary ice cap painted over everything. And then it just melted away.

  I’d never get used to any of this.

  We were making this trip before too much rain and snow interfered. It was our first trip off campus since arriving at the school, and we could have gone anywhere—a random museum, drive around the block, hole in the ground—and I’d have been happy.

  But we were going to the western coast. We were going to see the ocean.

  * * *

  Stanton and a couple of instructors acting as chaperones herded us onto a suborbital flight to a town called Monterey—this would be my first look at a real Earth town. I’d already gotten used to the idea of settlements that sprawled above the ground instead of under it; I understood the concept pretty well. What I hadn’t expected when I saw the paved streets, rows of buildings made of wood and concrete, was how fragile it all looked. Like a brisk wind would come in and knock it all down. And yes, the place had been here for hundreds of years.

  The ground transport—the bus—that took us to the coast was a lot like the one we rode when we first came to Earth, which gave me a weird sense of repetition, like I’d done all this before. Just like that bus, these windows were tinted, and I didn’t know if they were trying to keep us from looking out, or to keep the rest of the world from looking in. Maybe Earth kids rode in closed-in boxes all the time, because none of them seemed bothered by moving without knowing where they were going.

  The bus gave us a comfortable ride. I could hardly feel us turning around curves and climbing up and down hills. But we were, though I could catch only a hint of the landscape outside. It felt like traveling up and down hills on Mars.

  After we stopped, the biology instructor, Mr. Han, stood and lectured us for ten minutes about what we’d see and what we should be looking for—birds, shells, and seaweed that had been washed onto the sand by the water, animals that might be living in the sand itself, like insects or crustaceans. If we were very lucky, he said, we might see sea lions. Mr. Han was one of those excitable instructors who made everything sound like the most amazing thing in the world. He was so emotional about the sea lions he almost made me want to see one, except I knew from reading how big they were, and that they were predators with very sharp teeth, and I wasn’t sure anything that big and powerful should have a mind of its own. Didn’t large Earth predators occasionally eat people?

  Finally, Mr. Han stopped talking, the door opened, and we filed out to see it all for ourselves.

  I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know that I expected anything. I thought—assumed—that I’d be shocked. Overwhelmed by the sight of something I’d never seen and couldn’t possibly imagine. I had expected to be astonished. But the first thing that hit me was a brisk breeze that tangled in my hair. It was fresh and wet and smelled a little like a greenhouse compost pile—damp, decayed. It didn’t smell bad, but it didn’t smell like anything at Galileo.

  We were in a flat, paved lot, and Mr. Han gestured us to a path that led over a hillock covered with matted weeds and grass. We lined up out of habit and filed over the hillock and to the sand.

  The flat sheet of blue-gray water stretched to the horizon, turning to haze where it met the sky. It looked like the desert: a vast rippling stretch of sameness. Intellectually I knew it wasn’t. But that was what I thought of. I’d watched sand move across the desert like that, flowing and surging in a storm. I had to remind myself that this was water, and that I had never seen so much water in one place.

  A wide stretch of pale yellowish sand sloped down to the water, and that looked familiar, except where the water stretched and crawled over it, the waves coming in and out, reaching and splashing. The sand it left behind was soaked and rubbed smooth. The shore went on in both directions as far as I could see, curving around in the distance to a dark, rocky cliff.

  The students scattered, jogging along the beach in both directions, except those of us from offworld. We stood at the edge of the beach, staring. Not saying a word, not even noticing what the others were doing. Just staring.

  “Are you kids all right?” Han asked, looking down the row of us.

  “Yes, sir,” Charles was the one to answer, finally. “Just taking it all in.”

  “Well, you’d better get to work, we’ll only be here an hour before we move on.” He wandered off to go supervise or whatever.

  “What are supposed to do again?” Ladhi asked breathlessly. “I forgot.”

  “Come on, let’s get this over with,” Tenzig said, stomping away to cover up the fact he’d been astonished with the rest of us, instead of blasé about the panorama. He stomped so hard he slipped in the sand and had to put his arms out to keep his balance.

  “Mr. I’ve Done It All isn’t so used to walking on sand, is he?” I said.

  “And you are?” Marie said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I actually am.” This was coarser than the sand on Mars, worn down by water rather than pulverized by wind. Martian sand was mostly dust and rock, but it was slippery, just like this. I could walk on it just fine, and proved it, stepping carefully, knees bent to counteract slippage. Ladhi, who’d never even been on a moon before she came to Earth, looked terrified. I held my hand to her. “Come on, it’ll be okay.”

  She took hold of my hand and we walked toward the water together.

  After a few minutes, Ladhi—and everyone else—got used to the sand and the startling sight of endless water, and we worked on our assignments: hunting for shells and bugs and watching the slender gray-winged birds that soared overhead. They seemed to be watching us as much as we watched them, tilting their heads and looking down with strangely knowing eyes. Birds—the planet was absolutely littered with them. Like trees and grass and bugs and everything else. The Earth kids seemed to take it all for granted. They weren’t even looking.

  “Do you want to go in?”

  I blinked and shook myself awake. I’d been staring at the water, hypnotized, for who knew how long. Angelyn was looking back at me, amused.

  “What?” I said stupidly. “What do you mean, go in?”

  “Swim. You can swim, can’t you?”

  I said, “Why would someone who grew up on Mars know how to swim?”

  She laughed, but it was good-natured, her eyes alight. “I don’t know, maybe you have swimming pools?”

  “We have to filter every ounce of water we use. I can’t see anyone just … jumping into a bunch of it.”

  “We’ll wade, then. Just up to our ankles. You can’t come to the ocean and not go in!”

  She sat in the sand right there, pulled off her shoes and socks, and rolled up her trouser legs. Farther down the beach, a few others had already waded into the water, laughing as the waves tucked and lapped around their legs.

  What the heck. This was supposed to be an adventure, wasn’t it? We left our shoes and socks behind.

  The sand under my feet was cold, sending goose bumps up my legs. The wind got in under the cuffs of my pants. It felt … freeing. I wasn’t used to being open to the elements like this. The sandy winds of Mars could scour flesh off bone. On Mars, you respected wind. Here—this was like a game.

  I squished my toes in the wet sand, digging little holes, feeling the grit. Angelyn was already ahead, splashing in tongues of water washing back to the sea.

  “Come on! Just go for it!” She ran farther on, until the water was ankle deep.

  When the water approached, I almost ran, because it looked like it was attacking, that whole inexorable mass of it coming for me. Heart thudding, I stood my ground, and the edge of a spent wave ran over my feet, rubbing like silk, wrapping around my ankl
es.

  “It’s cold!” I said, hissing. Angelyn laughed and jumped, sending water spraying.

  I just stood there. So. I was standing in the ocean, my feet wet, and getting cold. Strange. Watching the waves, I tried to predict and dodge them before the water could rise past my ankles, but they always surprised me, surging unexpectedly, flowing on top of each other, sending me dancing away to keep from getting drenched.

  Angelyn was standing up to her knees now, holding her pants legs up to keep them from getting wet. Not that it worked, because the cuffs were damp with spray. The way she was grinning, it seemed to be part of the point.

  The churning waves generated a pale, frothy foam that collected on the sand and around my feet. I crouched to touch it, and it collapsed around my fingers. Another press of water, crisp and icy, splashed against my hand. Curious, I touched my finger to my tongue. It wasn’t just salty—everyone said the ocean was salty. It was also slimy and bitter, full of tastes I couldn’t name.

  The ocean, I decided, was like the deserts of Mars or the vacuum of space. It could swallow you up and no one would ever find you. I decided I’d keep my distance.

  We had our checklist of things we were supposed to look for, and images to take with our handhelds. I kept having to look at the sample images to be sure I was finding the right things. The idea of finding anything larger than microscopic creatures just running around was so weird. After finding a crab—what was supposedly a little one, as big as my thumb—with its claws, shell, and flat black eyes, my skin itched. The things could be anywhere, buried in the sand under my feet, crawling along behind me.

  We got a ten-minute warning to finish our work. Angelyn and I found our shoes and dusted off our feet the best we could. The wet sand stuck to my skin like glue. I rinsed off as much as I could in the water, watching Angelyn for how to do it, but I just got more sand on me, and when I tried to brush it off I got it all over my hands and arms.

  Angelyn just laughed. She seemed to love it. “Yeah, you never really get it all off until you get in the shower.”