Blue Hearts of Mars (7 page)

“Yeah,” I nodded. Beyond him, I could see the walls of his room. There was another window behind him and a bed with rumpled sheets. It looked like he was sitting in an armchair as he talked to me. The walls that I could see were decorated with images of some of the discovered solar systems and a few notable scientists and LED images of other people I didn't recognize. I realized looking into his room, that there was a lot I didn't know about him. The thought of having him ditch me before I got to know all his intricacies and details made my stomach pitch and roll. “Do you think she’d do that? Meet my dad?”

He looked away, apparently considering it. “Most likely. She’s really busy. But there’s a chance I could convince her.”

“I mean, why wouldn’t she? Does she hate people?” I asked it before I could stop myself. I swore mentally and then promised myself I’d never open my mouth without thinking twice.

Hemingway laughed, surprisingly enough. “No. She really is busy. You can imagine, right?”

“I guess so.” Relief washed over me. Maybe he was getting used to my tactless blunders.

“Can I come see you tomorrow?” he asked.

I couldn’t help but smile. “I think so. My dad told Marta he’d take her to the zoo. We can go with or do something else.”

“Great. I’ll come by at ten.”

“Perfect.”

*****

We ended up at the library. Dad took Marta to the zoo really early and while that sounded super fun—you know, seeing all the caged animals the first colonists brought from Earth—I didn’t want to be with my family. I wanted to be with Hemingway.

The library is one of the huge buildings in the center of the city. It’s made to look like a nautilus shell on its back, with the opening pointing up to the dome, and the whole thing sliced down the middle, so you see all the chambers of the shell. I’ve never seen a nautilus shell in real life, just pictures of them. So as far as I know, the shell looks accurate. Even if it’s not, the library is one of my favorite buildings.

There’s a fountain out front that recycles its own water. Maybe all fountains do that, I didn’t know. I just know this one did because when some of the upper classes wanted to put it in, there was a big fight about it from the scientist class, like my dad. It was a waste of water, a precious resource that we have too little of. But the pro-fountain people won because they illustrated how it would be so good for morale and not only that, water should sometimes be decorative as well as functional.

After that, several more fountains went in. Like the one where I saw Hemingway throwing in a cappa. I still wonder what he wished for.

We stopped at the fountain in front of the library and he threw in another cappa and gave me one to do the same. I sat on the edge and tossed it in. The sculptures at the center of the fountain were the two moons, one in a crescent shape, the other shaped like a star—because that’s how it looks to us. Water shot out of them and cascaded over their ridges and contours.

“What did you wish for?” Hemingway asked.

“Can’t say,” I said. “Won’t come true.”

“You think so?” he asked, sitting down next to me.

I shrugged. “It’s a risk I’m not willing to take. Tell me what
you
wished for.”

“It’s the same wish I’ve had for a long time. That’s a clue. I won’t tell you what it is, though,” he said with a tiny smile.

Nodding, I said, “Oh, I get it. You’re wishing to take over the world. Brilliant. I think you’d make an excellent dictator.” I kept a straight-face as I said it.

He laughed. “Well, I always thought I’d have a similar style to Kim Jong-il.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Kim Jong-il. He was a terrible dictator during the twentieth century. His people starved but he had them convinced he was taking care of them.” He stared at me. I knew my face looked totally blank. “Sorry, I forget sometimes,” he said, finally.

“Forget what? That some of us have terrible memories and lack an encyclopedic knowledge of history?” I smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze. It was all I dared to do, at the moment, even though I wanted to kiss him. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Should we go inside?”

I stood up. He took my hand and we headed for the large glass doors.

Maybe some people thought the structure gaudy. I squinted up at the largest chamber and sighed. I thought it was beautiful. I knew from Earth-science that there were places on Earth where deserts had once been ocean bottoms and people could find ancient seashells in the sand. So the giant seashell building in the middle of the Martian desert seemed fitting to me. Perhaps there had once been oceans where New Helsinki now was.

The library only held a few books. They were costly to send from Earth, and so far, no one had set up a printing shop. It wasn’t incredibly viable, not with the glass interfaces that could access the Web. Each chamber of the library was dedicated to a subject and there were things besides books that you could see. Like in the ancient Earth history chamber, there was a dinosaur skeleton. In the fiction sections, there were wax models of famous characters, like Sherlock Holmes holding an old magnifying glass up to his eye, Romeo and Juliet in a loose embrace, and Genghis Kahn.

Hemingway laughed at the wax figure of Genghis Kahn.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s just, well, you know, right?” he prompted. I shook my head. “Genghis Kahn was real. Not a fictional character. He was a Mongolian tribal leader. It’s just funny that he’s on display here as though he belongs to the fictional world.” He was standing next to the figure, which was dressed in robes and holding a sword.

“Maybe they didn’t know?”

“Yeah. Perhaps it’s an oversight. It just seems disrespectful to reduce him to standing among the fictional characters.”

“I’m sure Romeo and Juliet don’t mind. They’re probably wishing he’d come along and slaughter their families so they can be together,” I said with a laugh, touching the puffy sleeve on the Romeo statue.

“Poor kids. Their world just didn’t understand them,” Hemingway said, making a tsk-tsk sound and leaning toward Juliet’s face. “She looks so real.”

“Kind of creepy.”

“The world never understands love, does it?” Hemingway said, giving me a meaningful glance before strolling away from the Romeo and Juliet display. I caught up to him.

“Not from the perspective of literature. But maybe that’s just because drama makes a better story,” I said.

The next chamber was a visual history of robotics. I choked and looked around, wondering if there was a way to escape the room before things got too uncomfortable. “Hey,” I said, trying to get Hemingway to stop and turn around. “Let’s try the history of media. There are really old record players in there. Records! Do we even know what those are?” But Hemingway kept going.

It wasn’t like this stuff was new to him, was it? I mean, his mind came from the encyclopedia of all history. He knew everything. And evidently had perfect recall, judging from how he was constantly bringing up random facts like that one about Genghis Kahn. I went to his side where he stood in front of a display about transistors. I was really rusty on this stuff, and honestly, before I met Hemingway, I didn’t care about it. The display would have been laughable to me.

He moved slowly, staring intently at each object and the electronic placards next to them—small Gates with scrolling type. There were displays about air muscles, muscle wires, and electroactive polymers, going up to the big advancements starting with the first types of robots until the exhibit came to the extremely real, biological robotic engineering.

Hemingway was silent and withdrawn. Anxiety started to churn my stomach. Was he going to freak out? I took a deep breath and went to his side, took his hand, and gave it a squeeze. “You alright?” I asked. It was very grown up and mature of me, I felt. And I was secretly proud of myself.

He nodded. “Just, seeing the history of my people, displayed like this, as though, well, you know. As though all that we are is a bunch of parts. It’s weird. Kind of hurts.”

He turned and stared down at me. His eyes were on fire. It looked like there were tears welling up in them. “It’s incredibly insensitive of them,” I said. And I meant it. Why was there an exhibit about androids as though they weren’t alive and living as a segment of our society? I fumed inwardly.

“We’re more than that, you know?” He studied my face. “You do know, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I said quickly. “I look at that stuff and it’s totally alien from you and who you are. I don’t even think of you as being related to that history. You’re part of my history.”

“Let’s go. I hate it in here.” He pulled me away and I hurried along with him.

Hemingway’s mother was tall, for a woman. She had frizzy red hair and wore a pair of eyeglasses that constantly slipped down to the end of her nose. Hardly anyone wore eyeglasses anymore, so it seemed to be a fashion statement, or a refusal to accept the present, that kind of thing.

I liked her immediately despite the feeling that she was aloof and no-nonsense.

The four of us met at a restaurant in the posh section of the city early in the evening. Dad, me, Hemingway, and his mother. Hemingway said she was cautious like that, and didn’t invite just anyone over to their place.
But I’m not just anyone,
I thought to myself. I didn’t say anything of course. Simply nodded like that made complete sense.

“Well, I think I’ll be having the GE steak and locally grown potatoes,” Hemingway’s mother said, turning off her menu and looking around to see if anyone else had finished deciding.

I’m a vegetarian. And even genetically-engineered meats gross me out. And yes, I was enjoying Hemingway’s mother, but now I was going to have to find a way to not look at her plate. Or risk spewing my own dinner all over the table.

I sighed and found a soup and salad that were totally kosher for a vegetarian. I turned off my menu and watched Hemingway reading his. His eyebrows were kissing in the middle of his forehead and one hand was lightly caressing his chin while the other held the menu. My dad had picked his dinner before we even arrived. He was very familiar with this restaurant. They served everything and had been around almost since the beginning of the colonies. The menu was a veritable book. Sometimes I wondered how they kept that much food around. 

The server came and all of us ordered, even Hemingway, who appeared to have a decision-making problem. He went last so he could have more time to decide.

After that, they brought us some fancily cut carrots to dip in a creamy sauce and then we sat there, staring at each other. My dad appeared to be sizing up Hemingway’s mother, Sonja Koskinen. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He just sat there with his elbows on the table, looking at her over his fists that were balled up in front of his mouth.

It was becoming uncomfortable for me. Sonja just watched Dad herself, a slight smile touching the corner of her frost-lipsticked mouth. She was a red-head with that swarthy kind of complexion, not the very pale type that you usually see. I guess if you thought about it, there was something alluring about her. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I felt the fire rushing to my cheeks and I cleared my throat, realizing maybe that’s what my dad was thinking.

I had to break this up before he got any ideas and ruined everything.

“So uh, I’m very happy to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you from Hemingway,” I began, interrupting the staring contest.

“Not too much, I hope,” she said in her surprisingly dark voice, glancing at me and then back at Dad. “And nothing bad, I should add.”

“Not bad at all,” I said quickly, “just the normal stuff. And that you’re a synthetic-life engineer.” After I said that, I wondered if I shouldn’t have. Maybe Hemingway hadn’t told her that we knew. Maybe she wanted that to be a secret? But if so, well, why? Seems stupid to keep your profession a secret. It couldn’t be that.

“Was a synthetic-life engineer,” Sonja said. “I left my position at the Synlife facility.”

“And why did you do that? Synlife is the biggest, richest corporation in any of the colonies,” Dad said, getting right to the point. I coughed uncomfortably. Hemingway met my gaze and raised an eyebrow.

She flicked a hand in a casual gesture, as though to say that it hardly mattered, and that people left facilities all the time, what could possibly be special about this facility and her leaving it? “I didn’t appreciate who they were taking orders from. Conflict of interest,” she said.

“Which interests?” Dad probed.

“Pick one,” she shot back.

“And have you been continuing your work on the side?” Dad asked, taking a bite of saucy carrot.

Hemingway gave me another look. If we were thinking along the same lines, he didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. Dad was being aggressive. And Sonja was sure to get offended at his tactics.

But . . . well, she didn’t. She squared her shoulders and settled in as though gearing up for a good fight. The smile that had danced on her lips continued. Her eyes flashed vigorously. “That’s a bit personal, don’t you think, Nikodemus?”