Lakes of Mars

by Merritt Graves

  There was a meticulousness to everything she did. An intense focus that cut through the exhaustion. Her movements were fluid and so precise that it was like she was part of the lab, wired into it the same way Fingers was to his U-dev and Sebastian was to the Box.

  “And you’ll be testing how they fit,” she said as she continued to make adjustments. “Inject the mice with the virus today, then inject half of them with the drug tomorrow and analyze the blood samples. Simple enough, right?”

  “What about the other half?”

  “That’s the control group, so we know what the baseline behavior is.”

  “But aren’t we supposed to be doing double-blind tests or something?” I asked.

  Usually science and procedure made my eyes glaze over, yet it all felt vivid when I was close to her. It was like the electrons in the air were hyper-charged. The colors brighter. The voices talking around me louder, better defined. Everything was in a separate, more perfect state.

  She glanced up. “Ah, so you did do the reading. You’re right, that’ll need to happen before commercialization, but since we’re just trying to see if we’re on the right path, we need the data ASAP.”

  I looked down at the tray of needles. “And those are already loaded with Kamalgia virus?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s pretty nuts, that they’d have samples of such a rare colony disease on such a faraway space station.”

  “They don’t; I brought it with me.”

  “But they don’t let you take anything . . .You didn’t . . .”

  “I had to,” she said

  I couldn’t believe it. The room felt like it was on its side. “But you couldn’t have. They do a security—”

  “They do backscatter screening and a final battery of tests right before launch, but chronic-disease work happens thirty-six hours earlier. Time that you’re allowed to spend with your family, even your pre-contagious brother. So I pricked him while he was sleeping and infected myself.”

  “No, no. That’s crazy,” I said.

  “Is it?” asked Eve. “If you had the opportunity to save your family, you would do it, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a heartbeat,” I whispered, my face heating up, my voice barely audible amidst the filtration unit whirring behind us.

  “Right.” She paused and huffed out a sigh. “Besides, it’s two and a half years before it’s symptomatic, and three before it’s infectious.”

  “And you’ve been up here . . .”

  “Two years and five months. So, it’s getting a little tight, but I’m not too far off schedule.”

  I looked around the lab at the few kids who were working on projects or experiments, all out of earshot, before closing my eyes. “And if it gets infectious before . . .”

  “There are plenty of airlocks.”

  My face got even warmer. I felt like I was falling. Like the whole station had been knocked out of orbit and we were hurtling toward the planet, torqueing, and burning up as we went. I knew that I should be trying to do something—trying to brace myself somehow—but part of me knew, too, that it didn’t really matter what happened to me anymore. That just when I’d found someone who made this place bearable, she was being taken away.

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “Just you and Simon. But honestly, probably the Reds, too,” Eve said, looking up at a nearby vent. “Though for some reason, they’re letting me get away with it.”

  “Because . . . because you can find the cure, right? I mean, you’ve come a long way.” I gestured at the charts and data sets on the nearest lightpanel. “Look at all this stuff you’ve done.”

  “That’s the plan,” she said. “Nothing like a hard deadline.”

  The fluorescents above felt like they had actual weight now, making each breath shorter and shallower and harder to take. I nodded, vaguely, but I had to look away. I couldn’t get emotional in front of her. What she was doing was tough enough, so the last thing she needed was someone else to be worried about.

  “You’re going to get this. We’re going to get this . . . back home to your brother. I know we are.”

  She nodded. “I hope so.”

  Feeling my eyes start to cloud, I leaned back and decided to change the subject before it was too late. “Where is um . . . home anyway?”

  “Earth.”

  “Earth?” I repeated. “I don’t think I’ve ever met someone from Earth before. The place where the ‘magic’ started.”

  “Basically just a desert now.”

  “So I hear.” I rubbed my chin. “If only we could give you some of our water.”

  “Wait. Are you from Mars or something?”

  “Maybe,” I said, as jokingly as I could, hoping that it would lessen the impact.

  “You are, aren’t you? Jesus. I’m not trying to stereotype Mars or anything, but you don’t seem Martian at all.”

  “Oh, I’m not tribal and bigoted and elitist enough for you?”

  Mars wasn’t explicitly any of these, but since they historically placed a high value on societal cohesion—believing that it was a true precondition for democracy—it’s governance algorithms really laid into the people they didn’t want around. Like your ‘citizen score’ was significantly docked for not speaking perfect Confederate English or not joining enough approved community organizations. And you’d miss out on a large bonus if you didn’t have at least two kids, which was pretty hard to do if you were gay or religiously opposed. That was some of the obvious stuff that stood out, but there were millions of smaller, subtler things, too.

  “You must’ve caught me on some off days,” I said.

  “I think you’re forgetting greedy, vindictive, arrogant—”

  “Hey, hey, hey. Whatever happened to not stereotyping?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face. Even though I was completely flattened by what she’d told me about the disease, I knew the best thing I could do was to act like I wasn’t, trying to be buoyant and good-natured and just keep powering through it like she was. “That wouldn’t be a very Earthling thing to do now, would it?”

  “You’re a little arrogant.”

  “Really? Arrogant?” I said in mock astonishment. “Me? I mean I know I’m really great at flying and jumping over things on treadmills, not to mention—”

  “All right, all right, that’s enough. I don’t give a shit where you’re from,” she said, picking up one of the needles from the tray. “But anyway, I told you why I’m here—now you gotta tell me why you are, too.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s not a very good story,” I said.

  She gave me an earnest look, like she really did want to know.

  I sighed. “I will sometime, but it’ll take a while and we should really get started . . . considering that you’re a ticking time bomb.”

  Her look turned serious again, and glancing around at the Blues closest to us, she corrected me. “Silent countdown.”

  Chapter 30

  “Hey, where have you been hiding?” asked Fin, catching up to me in the corridor after the Tread Room.

  I scanned the white hallway and the faces of the Blues and Greens passing by. “In plain sight, by the looks of it.”

  “I see you haven’t had the sense of humor beaten out of you yet.”

  Her presence made me queasy. I touched a gash on my cheek, noting that the bruise on her chin had faded further, before resuming walking. “Getting there.”

  “Where have you been going, Aaron? Rhys says you’ve been waking up early and getting back late. Not showing up to meetings. Fingers thinks you’re trying to avoid him. In fact, I could swear you saw me back there and sped up.”

  “Fin, the last thing you need is something else to be paranoid about. I’ve just been busy.”

  “You don’t get to use the ‘p-word’ when it’s obvious that you’re blowing us off.”

  “Fine, I’m blowing you off then.”

  “Aaron, Jesus Christ, we need you
. There’s something really—”

  “For what, exactly? What have I done besides beat up a few people?”

  I stopped, studying her face for a few moments, waiting for some twitch, some flicker to give her away. But not wanting to give myself away either, I went on. “And okay, I racked up some pilot points. So what? I thought pilots were second-class citizens around here.”

  “They are when they’re just pilots, but when you’re good at everything else, too, it’s different.”

  She pulled out her U-dev. “Look, you’re in the top ten in the Tread Room and Weapons Room, top fifteen in the Mat Room. Pretty impressive for being a Blue for all of two days. I won’t comment on its deservedness, but people believe in you. It’s not that you stood up for your friend, but it’s to whom you stood up. Don’t you get that? That it doesn’t happen? And the fact that you’re still here—that they haven’t been able to get to you . . .”

  She was good. She was really good. It was starting to seem more and more plausible that she was a double agent. “Look, Fin, I don’t know what to say. I’m still trying to figure things out . . .”

  She frowned. “I did get your U-dev back for you, you know. A pretty perilous endeavor, given the circumstances.”

  I wanted to ask her just how she had been able to get my U-dev back but checked myself. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome, and you can pay me back by going to a meeting with us tonight.”

  “I’m tied up.”

  “Doing what?” she asked impatiently.

  “Doing homework. Lab work. I’ve got all kinds of work to do.”

  “That’s not even a good excuse.”

  “I guess I don’t have your knack for casual deception,” I said.

  She threw back her head and chuckled. “Whoa there, getting a little feisty now, aren’t we? I suppose that’s better than flippant.”

  “I’m not flippant—just not much of a talker.”

  “Or a listener,” she muttered. “The thing is, we’re all busy, Aaron. I’ve got half of that big IED project due in Field Chemistry tomorrow, but I still make time. We all do. Do you want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  I mulled over those words as I picked up the battery supplies that had arrived for my Chemical Engineering lab project and spread them out on a worktable in a corner of the classroom. I tried to stamp Fin out, focusing on what voltage I was going to wire my packs to, but she kept seeping back through little breaches in my mind that I couldn’t seal. She had known right where to hit me, and if I hadn’t known about the cord marks I probably would have fallen for it.

  It was becoming increasingly obvious how gullible I was. People lied here like it was nothing, so I was going to have to be suspicious like it was nothing, too, which was such a shitty thing because of how much of everyone’s time and energy that wasted. But more than that, it wasted their spirit. Their belief in things. In people. It was just so depressing watching someone like Fin, who you knew was lying but didn’t know you knew yet. And it was even more depressing watching them double down, and then trying to understand how they thought that was a good thing to do. But the most unsettling thing was the helplessness. Knowing you couldn’t call them on it, knowing that what little security you and those around you had would evaporate the second you did.

  Sighing, I took one last look at the spec sheet, cut the heat-shrink tubing to the correct dimensions, and began wrapping it around the terethium-ion cells with a heat gun.

  Chapter 31

  “All right, class. As I’m sure you know, samples and specimens aren’t always going to show up in the lab; you have to collect them,” Dr. Mitchell said. “As future officers commanding ships in deep space, you’ll frequently be passing celestial bodies of interest, and your science or medical officer will want to maintain orbit for a few hours so they can go have a look.

  “This is called a field expedition, and it’s important you know firsthand exactly what goes on during one so you’ll be in a position to make an informed decision about whether or not to grant their request. I’m a scientist, so obviously I’m biased. I think you should say ‘yes’ whenever you can, but I want you to make up your own minds, so over the next few days you’ll be going down to the asteroid to conduct a surface assay. The team to find the most promising commercial and scientific minerals and then explain why will win two hundred and fifty points of extra credit.” Dr. Mitchell paused as the kids around me sat up straight and began paying attention.

  “I’ll give you a few seconds to gasp and whisper because, yes, that’s the equivalent of one full letter grade. In the real world, whole careers can be made or salvaged with a single discovery, and since the significance of a discovery might not be readily apparent, please do note the exploratory element of the assignment. One team might collect a truly impressive inventory of conventionally valuable minerals, but if another group presents a fantastic way of utilizing a less conventional mineral, they could conceivably win the points.

  “As I’ve said before, science is nonlinear—most of the time it moves in baby steps, but then when you least expect it, it takes a leap. Don’t discount the leaps.”

  I looked over at Eve and she looked back.

  “Although in general I’m in favor of cross-pollination, I’ll be indulgent of your desire to work with your friends this time. But please try, try, try to have open minds and push each other. Homogenization is the great scourge of civilizations; don’t let it be here, too. Got it?”

  “Got it,” some of the class chanted back.

  “Good. I’ll send the time slots to your biopads, and let you sign up together after the first member of your group is drawn. The rest of the class today, however, will be dedicated to going over procedural and field safety rules to make sure no one here gives their life to science prematurely.”

  Someone raised his hand. “Are we going to be in space suits?”

  “I should surely hope so,” said the professor over a few laughs. “That is, if you don’t want to die from an ebullism after thirty seconds.”

  “I was just thinking we’d send the mechs out to collect them for us.”

  “I know, Everett—I was just giving you a hard time. Yes, we could have you use mechs, but there might not always be one available. Or the signal could be weak, like it is here in the nebula, and you could lose control. History’s shown it’s good to have an understanding of the base processes you’re utilizing in case the layering technologies fail or lose their critical requisite resources. This is rarely the most efficient way to do something, but it’s always the most sustainable. Please, please, please do not be dismissive of that second variable. Is there any question about that, specifically? Any? Good. I’m headed to another meeting, but you’ll be in good hands with Mr. Katz who will be accompanying groups on the scout ship, Pulsar, to the asteroid . . .”

  “I just got drawn,” whispered Simon, looking down at his U-dev. “Send me your schedules, and I’ll find the shared openings.”

  I sent mine and watched as each of our names appeared with our schedules on his screen. He stacked the rows and the spaces lit up green where each layer in the stack was open. “Saturday morning’s our winner. You guys cool?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a little weekend getaway,” said Daries, tapping his U-dev.

  Dr. Mitchell was still talking. “Remember, the surrounding nebula puts out a great deal of interference, so it’s important to maintain visual contact at all times when you’re on the surface. If you wander, we might not be able to find you, and given you only have a couple hours’ worth of life support . . . well . . .”

  Caelus and Professor Richter were speaking quietly when I arrived early to my next class, Military History. It was casual—students occasionally talked to teachers after lectures—yet there was something about the way his face lit up, seeming to agree with what the professor had just said. And then patted him on th
e shoulder. The expression stayed in place as Caelus turned around a few moments later, tilting his chin up at me as he walked out of the room.

  “Brownnoser,” said Castor Hall, when I sat down beside him in the nearly empty class. “Buddy-buddy with all the Reds. Of course things are going his way.”

  “I heard they screwed you over pretty good,” I said, recalling Fin’s saying that something had happened to Castor after he was demoted from student lieutenant.

  “You heard right.”

  “Because you tried to get a message out?”

  He seemed like he was about to say something but then paused as more kids filed into the classroom. It was a little surprising because instead of looking like someone who’d be breaking the rules, with his broad chest and stoic, humorless face, he appeared more in the mold of a cadet like Taryn Miller, who enforced them.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The better question is why you haven’t. Why everyone hasn’t. I mean, people tried to kill you, didn’t they, and the Reds let it happen. I’d say that’s pretty fucked up, no?”

  I nodded.

  “I guess I’m not so hot at playing along with that type of thing,” said Castor.

  “Good morning,” said Professor Richter, putting his U-dev down on his desk and powering on the lightboard. He gestured toward the window. “Another day looking at this stunning planet in this remarkable nebula, hundreds of light years from home. It’s the kind of thing we take for granted now, but at one point humanity’s interstellar existence—its ability to exist at all—was in serious doubt.

  “This week we’re going to talk about the Europa Standoff, examining it from every angle: the participants, the stakes, the positioning, and the strategy. History’s often presented as a mere recitation of poorly understood set pieces; we’ll be pushing past that, exploring context and motivation so we can truly learn from others’ experience rather than being waylaid on ground already covered.