Martians Abroad

by Carrie Vaughn

  I wasn’t sure I even had curves. Not like that, anyway. “Wow. I’ve never seen a dress like that.”

  “Don’t you have parties on Mars?”

  “Of course we do. But everybody just wears their regular clothes.” Importing fancy stuff like this got expensive, especially when there wasn’t much use for it. I’d sound boring, trying to explain that to Angelyn, so I just let it go.

  “We’ll find you something, don’t worry. What’s your favorite color?”

  Red, I decided. Dark Martian red. Angelyn started searching. She looked me up and down and announced that with my willowy frame I’d look good in something fitted and slinky, with a long skirt. I took her word for it and made a mental note to look up if “willowy” was good or bad.

  We narrowed down the choices. She showed me picture after picture and asked me if I liked it or not, and I went with my gut feeling because what else could I do?

  Finally, we found one. It had a skirt that flowed, long sleeves, and embroidered swirls on the neckline. It was rust red, like Mars at sunset. Angelyn said it would bring out the color in my complexion. I had never thought much about my complexion until I came to Earth.

  Then all we had to do was enter in my measurement scans, pay for it, and have it delivered. It was that easy. Almost.

  “There’s a problem,” I said when we got to that part. “I don’t know if I have any money.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know if you have money?”

  “I know my mother has money—she had to, to send us here. But I don’t know if I have any. You know?”

  “She didn’t give you an allowance? Like spending money?”

  “I think she figured I’d be at school all the time and wouldn’t need any. The school provides just about everything, and there really isn’t a whole lot on Mars to spend money on.” This was all getting exasperating. I sighed. “Can I get back to you?”

  “The dress isn’t going anywhere. Not until you order it, anyway.”

  Angelyn had done this before. Lots of times. She must have had closets full of nice clothes stashed somewhere. I couldn’t even imagine that. It seemed … excessive. On Mars, those bright fantastical colors would be covered by brown dust in seconds.

  I spent a day gathering intelligence. Recon. Surreptitiously, like I was just curious and not desperate for information. Ethan had a suit he planned on wearing; his family had ordered it and had it sent to him, knowing he’d be going to fancy parties. I didn’t ask Tenzig—I’d started blushing whenever we ended up in the same room—but I expected that he had a suit like Ethan’s. I kept stealing glances at Tenzig, wondering what he was up to. He always seemed to be watching me, which was kind of creepy, but kind of … not. He started sitting next to me at lunch, even. It meant one of two things: my status after rescuing Angelyn had gotten so great that he thought sitting next to me made him look good, or else he liked me, which felt weird.

  Marie had stopped talking to me, which made time back in the room awkward. That didn’t surprise me, but it made me sad. I was absolutely relieved that Ladhi and Ethan kept sitting with me at lunch. I wished I could find a way to tell them how much I appreciated that, without sounding awkward or weird.

  Finally, I messaged Mom about the dress.

  Dear Mom:

  I’ve got a problem. There’s a banquet coming up—it’s supposed to be a big party thing, everyone’s really excited, and apparently everyone gets dressed up in super-nice clothes. Like skirts and dresses and suits things. I’ve never worn a skirt, but I guess I’m supposed to. One of the girls here—a friend, Angelyn—said she’d help me buy a dress. But I don’t know how much money to spend. I’ve never really had to worry about stuff like that, you know? So, I wondered—do you have some money you could give me to buy a nice dress? Otherwise I’ll just wear my school uniform. Thanks.

  Oh—school’s fine, and Charles is fine. I know he probably hasn’t written you. But he hasn’t taken over the school. Yet.

  Your Daughter, Polly.

  P.S. I don’t know what Charles is wearing to the banquet. He probably has it all figured out on his own.

  * * *

  Mom answered my note the next day. She must have sent a reply as soon as she got my message. A day was pretty much absolutely the soonest my message could be transmitted to Mars and have her message get back to me. It gave me an idea how important this whole banquet with nice clothes thing was.

  Dear Polly:

  Your banquet sounds marvelous! Of course you need a nice dress for it. This is one of the reasons I wanted you to go to Earth—you’d never have such an experience on Mars. I’ve opened an account on Earth for just such purposes, for you and your brother. The access codes are attached—it’s set to your and Charles’s biomarks. Don’t worry about amount or expense. Just listen to your friend’s advice and have a good time. Snap some pictures for me, if you think of it!

  It’s so nice to hear you’re making friends and getting along so nicely on Earth.

  Love, Mom

  She’d never sounded so excited about anything. It made me nervous.

  Ladhi, it turned out, already had a nice dress. She’d brought it with her, in fact. Belt stations apparently had more parties than Mars did. She showed me the outfit, and it was gorgeous—a light, filmy fabric that wouldn’t have added much to her weight allowance. It draped around her in some complicated pattern that made her look so much better than the school uniforms, showing off her graceful limbs and coloring.

  Which was the point, I realized. None of us really looked good in our school uniforms. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. But I still thought I looked pretty good in my Mars clothes—they made me look like I came from Mars. I almost changed my mind about what to wear, but I’d already ordered the dress.

  Marie had a dress, of course. All the offworld girls but me had known to get dresses. Mars was the only place that didn’t have a tradition of formal clothing. I had to think about that.

  Last of all, in study hall fifteen minutes before lights-out, I cornered Charles.

  “What are you wearing to the banquet?” I asked him.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Oh. Because Mom sent us money to buy nice clothes. Apparently, we need nice clothes.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “She’s had investment accounts on Earth for years, that’s how she’s paying for tuition here.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t even thought about how long Mom must have been planning this, to collect all that money. “So, do you need money?”

  “No. I’ve got it all worked out,” he said. “What are you wearing?”

  “Angelyn helped me find something.”

  “That’ll be interesting,” he said, with that superior arc in his brow he always got.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I grumbled. “So when were you going to tell me that we needed a costume for this banquet thing?”

  “I did you the credit of assuming that you’d figure it out on your own. And I was right.”

  “Charles. We’re the only kids from Mars in this whole ratty school, don’t you think we should have each other’s backs?”

  “If I offered my help—if I walked right up to you and told you that you needed help and I was the one who had the answers—would you even listen to me?”

  “I’d probably wonder what you were up to,” I said. In fact, I might do exactly the opposite of whatever he suggested, just to keep from falling into the trap he’d set. Except he probably knew that was what I’d do, so doing the opposite would be exactly what he wanted me to do … That was the trouble with Charles. No matter what, I couldn’t win.

  “Exactly. You ought to just keep on doing what you’ve been doing. You’re obviously functioning well enough.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m shocked that you would even take the time to care.”

  “You are my brother.”

  “I’m fine. Really. You don’t have to
worry about me.”

  “And you don’t have to worry about me,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Right. Of course it is.”

  * * *

  The night of the banquet arrived. I’d assumed we’d be in the dining hall—sure, it’d be dressed up and polished. They might even be able to get rid of the constant boiled-vegetable smell. But no: we had fancy invitations, printed on real paper, informing us that the banquet would be held in the school’s main administrative building. Most of us had never even been there. That was where Stanton had her offices. Where the people who ran the school worked. Apparently they also had a banquet hall.

  “It’s for wining and dining the school’s patrons and sponsors,” Angelyn explained. “Rich parents and things. Makes them feel special.”

  “That seems excessive,” I said.

  “It’s how it goes.”

  Angelyn came to our room to get ready. I needed all the help I could get. Marie humphed at us and stormed off to one of her friends’ rooms. Every girls’ room in the dorm, and a couple of the guys’ rooms, had turned into a chaotic mess of makeup, shimmery fabric, and enthusiastic squealing. I’d never seen anything like it. It was a tornado made of clothes.

  Ladhi, Angelyn, and I wriggled into our dresses and helped each other with hair and makeup. They looked great. Angelyn’s slinky blue gown looked just as amazing as I imagined it would. She wore high heels that made her seem like a statue, a piece of finely carved artwork. And her hair—she brushed it out loose, and she’d done something to it so it lay in dark ripples down her back. She was self-conscious about the wide scar on her elbow from where she’d been scraped up in the fall. The concealer she put on it didn’t hide the pink very well.

  “As soon as we get a break in school, I’m going to have surgery to get rid of it,” she muttered.

  “It’s a badge of honor,” I told her. “Show it off.” I was one to talk. I still ached around my chest if I got tired, but I tried not to show it.

  But Angelyn washed off the makeup and let the scar go.

  Ladhi was magical, in purple silk that seemed to drape around her body, molding to her shoulders and hips. Gold earrings dangled, and she wore intricate sandals that laced around her feet. I had no idea how I looked. I didn’t look like myself, for sure. And those sandals—I’d let Angelyn pick out a pair to go with my dress, because they all looked horrifying to me. My feet would be practically naked. And what if I had to run in those? Angelyn and Ladhi just kept telling me everything would be okay.

  I was wearing the dress. It had arrived in a box just a few days ago, and I’d pulled it out like it was going to bite me. It looked … well, I’d never seen anything like it. Not clingy like Angelyn’s or airy like Ladhi’s, it flared out in the skirt, flowing like ripples in sand, and the wide neckline framed my face and neck. It was made of a shimmery red fabric that changed shades in the light, depending on how I moved. It looked even better in person than it had on the screen. It made me look older, sophisticated. Angelyn studied me a minute, then ran back to her room. She came back with a length of fabric, a filmy black shawl that she draped around my elbows and let fall behind me. I looked almost elegant.

  She also did something to my hair that made it fluff out and shine, like it was another perfect accessory. I looked older and taller—which meant I stood well above both Angelyn and Ladhi. A mutant. But an elegant mutant.

  “Wow, look at us,” Ladhi said, as we stood side by side in front of the square bathroom mirror. We looked like we should have been in some kind of video. I was actually getting excited about it all.

  We joined a stream of students walking from the dorms to the banquet at the admin hall. Just after dusk, the sky had darkened, gray clouds against deep blue. The concrete path was lit with solar lamps set along the sides, about a foot high. It was like we were walking on a trail of light. The girls had gone all out, with fancy gowns, hair styles, and glittering jewelry. I was glad I’d listened to Angelyn. For once I actually felt like I belonged. The guys wore suits, tailored jackets and trousers, with colored shirts, and ties. They looked slick and polished—strange, almost, after seeing everyone in plain uniforms week after week.

  I wondered what Charles looked like. I couldn’t find him.

  The admin building was at the edge of the Galileo compound. It didn’t look much different from any of the other buildings—a straightforward block, minimalist and efficient. The rows of small windows were all dark except for a few on the ground floor, which glowed with soft, dim light.

  The path of lamps steered us to a side entrance, where double doors stood open, leading to a short hallway that opened into a massive room. Bigger than the vehicle garage at Colony One. Bigger than anything. Three stories of nothing rose above us. I just stood there looking up, and up, my jaw hanging open. This whole night was make-believe.

  The room was decorated like something out of a video, again. Miniature fountains in the corners, multifaceted lights that glittered like crystals suspended from the ceiling, mountains of flowers in vases or molded into arcs and spirals made to look like they’d grown that way. They were cut—I checked, they didn’t have roots, just stems stuck in water. They’d all be dead in a few days. This room had more flowers than entire greenhouses on Mars, and they were all dying. It seemed a little sad.

  Once inside, people started pairing off. Two girls who everybody knew liked each other grabbed hands and bent their heads together, giggling. Their eyes lit up, and they were clearly having a great time. Elzabeth and George arrived arm in arm like some kind of king and queen of the universe. Marie tagged along with a group of offworld students, including Tenzig. He scanned the room as if looking for me, smiling wide when he saw me. I smiled back, but nervously. My beautiful gown suddenly felt tight.

  I looked for Ethan, couldn’t find him, so turned to go find Angelyn, lingering near the wall nearby.

  “Can I ask a question?” I asked her.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Are we supposed to be here, you know, with someone?”

  She got a sour look on her face. “It’s not a requirement.”

  “But…”

  Her smile was sad. “Be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “Is there someone you wanted to be here with?” I asked carefully.

  “You know that upperclassman? The one who helps run the track activities at PE?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s cute.” He was. Earth guy, fastest runner at the school, with floppy hair and a nice smile.

  “And he’ll never look at a first-year like me.”

  “You never know,” I said hopefully.

  She paled, worse even than when she was hanging on the side of a mountain. “What about you?” she asked, changing the subject. “You have your eye on anyone?”

  My brain flailed. “Not really.”

  “Tenzig keeps watching you. Maybe you should ask him to dance.”

  “Maybe I should look for my brother and make sure he’s not plotting total destruction.”

  Tables around the edges of the room held food. More different kinds of food than I’d ever seen before. I couldn’t even identify a lot of it. The vegetables I got, even though they were sliced into elegant little sticks with ruffled edges. There were bowls of things to dip the vegetables in. There were lumps of something on toothpicks. There was a cake—happily, I wasn’t going to have to get anyone to explain cake to me. We had round, fluffy, mooshy sweet things on Mars, because humanity couldn’t exist without dessert. I had to extrapolate from there to what I was seeing on display at the Galileo winter banquet. Because it must have been a cake, but it was taller than I was. It had multiple cakes stacked together and painted different colors. It didn’t even look edible.

  The rest of the hall was filled with round tables covered with white tablecloths, fancy place settings, and candles. Real candles with open flames. I even touched the first one to be sure—the teardrop of flame wavered and flared as I passed my hand over it, and
the brief sharp heat of it stung my finger. I resisted an urge to find a fire extinguisher and put them all out—it would have been my first impulse at home. Open flame and artificial atmospheres didn’t go well together.

  They were so casual about the air here.

  I folded my arms, hugging myself, and took it all in.

  “It does seem excessive, doesn’t it?” Charles had slipped in to stand beside me. He was wearing his Martian outfit: tan shirt, beige trousers, brown jacket with a Colony One patch on the sleeve, boots. He’d polished the boots, and the jacket had been washed and pressed. I had to admit, the outfit looked pretty good. Like a uniform, almost. He also seemed older, broader through the chest than I’d ever noticed before. He might have been one of the tallest guys in the room.

  People in their formal costumes did double takes when they walked past him, looking over their shoulders, like they weren’t sure they were really seeing him. Nobody could mistake him for anything other than what he was: a Martian. He stood with his shoulders square, hands tucked behind his back, and didn’t seem to notice the attention.

  I felt very small standing next to him. I kind of wished I’d worn my Colony One jacket and trousers, too. But I squared my shoulders, uncrossed my arms, and carried on.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Did you see, they’ve got open flames?” I pointed to the candle on the nearest table.

  “And running water. A flagrant display of excess resources.”

  “Is that what this is all about?” It suddenly hit me: were the fancy clothes and jewelry, the money this cost all for show? A display of waste because they could, including the three stories of empty air above us, which on Mars would have been filled with floors, rooms, equipment, or oxygen-generating vegetation?