by Greg Bear
“Learning was slower,” Letitia said.
“So were the kids,” Reena said with an irresponsible grin.
“I resent that,” Letitia said. Then, in unison, they all chanted, “I don’t deny it, I just resent it!” Their laughter caught the attention of an older couple sitting in a corner. Even if the man and woman were not angry, Letitia wanted them to be, and she bowed her head down, giggling into her straw, then snucking bubbles into her nose and choking. Reena made a disapproving face and Fayette covered his mouth, snorting with laughter. Not once did they mention Leroux, but it was as if he sat beside them the whole time, sharing their levity.
It was the closest thing they could have to a wake.
“Have you gone to see your designer, your medical?” Letitia asked Reena behind the stage curtains. The lights were off. Student stagehands moved muslin walls on dollies. Fresh paint smells filled the air.
“No,” Reena said. “I’m not worried. I have a different incept.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “It’s okay. If there was any problem, I wouldn’t be here. Don’t worry.” And nothing more was said.
The night of dress rehearsal came. Letitia put on her own makeup, drawing pencil lines and applying color and shadow; she had practiced and found herself reasonably adept. With Great-Grandmother’s photograph before her, she mimicked the jowls she would have in her later years, drew laugh lines around her lips, and completed the effect with a smelly old gray wig dug out of a prop box.
The actors gathered for a rehearsal inspection by Miss Darcy. Dressed in their period costumes, tall and handsome, they all seemed very adult. Letitia didn’t mind standing out. Being an old woman gave her special status.
“This time, just relax, do it smooth,” said Miss Darcy. “Everybody expects you to flub your lines, so you’ll probably do them all perfectly. We’ll have an audience, but they’re here to forgive our mistakes, not laugh at them. This one,” Miss Darcy said, pausing, “is for Mr. Leroux.”
They nodded solemnly.
“Tomorrow, when we put on the first show, that’s going to be for you.”
They took their places in the wings. Letitia stood behind Reena, who would be first on stage. Reena shot her a quick smile, nervous.
“How’s your stomach?” she whispered.
Letitia pretended to gag herself with a finger.
“TB,” Reena accused lightly
“RC,” Letitia replied. They shook hands firmly.
The curtain went up. The auditorium was half filled with parents and friends and relatives. Letitia’s parents were out there. The darkness beyond the stagelights seemed so profound it should have been filled with stars and nebulae. Would her small voice reach that far? The recorded music before the first act came to its quiet end. Reena made a move to go on stage, then stopped. Letitia nudged her. “Come on.”
Reena pivoted to look at her, head leaning to one side, and Letitia saw a large tear drip from her left eye. Fascinated, she watched the tear flow slowly down Reena’s cheek and spot the satin of her gown.
“I’m sorry,” Reena whispered, lips twitching. “I can’t do it now. Tell. Tell.”
Horrified, Letitia reached out, tried to stop her, lift her, push her back into place, but Reena was too heavy and she could not stop her fall, only slow it. Reena’s feet kicked out like a horse’s, bruising Letitia’s legs, all in apparent silence, and her eyes were bright and empty and wet, fluttering, showing the whites.
Letitia bent over her, afraid to touch her, afraid not to, unaware she was shrieking.
Fayette and Edna Corman stood behind her, equally helpless.
Reena lay still like a twisted doll, face upturned, eyes moving slowly to Letitia, vibrating, becoming still.
“Not you!” Letitia screamed, and barely heard the commotion in the audience. “Please, God, let it be me, not her!”
Fayette backed away and Miss Darcy came into the light, grabbing Letitia’s shoulders. She shook free.
“Not her,” Letitia sobbed. The medicals arrived and surrounded Reena, blocking her from the eyes of all around. Miss Darcy firmly, almost brutally, pushed her students from the stage and herded them into the green room. Her face was stiff as a mask, eyes stark in the paleness.
“We have to do something!” Letitia said, holding up her hands, beseeching.
“Control yourself,” Miss Darcy said sharply. “Everything’s being done that can be done.”
Fayette said, “What about the play?”
Everyone stared at him.
“Sorry,” he said, lip quivering. “I’m an idiot.”
Jane, Donald, and Roald came to the green room and Letitia hugged her mother fiercely, eyes shut tight, burying her face in Jane’s shoulder. They escorted her outside, where a few students and parents still milled about in the early evening. “We should go home,” Jane said.
“We have to stay here and find out if she’s all right.” Letitia pushed away from Jane’s arms and looked at the people. “They’re so frightened. I know they are. She’s frightened, too. 1 saw her. She told me—” Her voice hitched. “She told me—”
“We’ll stay for a little while,” her father said. He walked off to talk to another man. They conversed for a while, the man shook his head, they parted. Roald stood away from them, hands stuffed into his pockets, dismayed, young, uncomfortable.
“All right,” Donald said a few minutes later. “We’re not going to find out anything tonight. Let’s go home.”
This time, she did not protest. Home, she locked herself in her bedroom. She did not need to know. She had seen it happen; anything else was self-delusion.
Her father came to the door an hour later, rapped gently. Letitia came up from a troubled doze and got off the bed to let him in.
“We’re very sorry,” he said.
“Thanks,” she murmured, returning to the bed. He sat beside her. She might have been eight or nine again; she looked around the room, at toys and books, knickknacks.
“Your teacher, Miss Darcy, called. She said to tell you, Reena Cathcart died. She was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. Your mother and I have been watching the vids. A lot of children are very sick. A lot have died.” He touched her head, patted the crown gently. “I think you know now why we wanted a natural child. There were risks.”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “You didn’t have us …” She hiccupped. “The way you did, because you thought there would be risks. You talk as if there’s something wrong with these … people.”
“Isn’t there?” Donald asked, eyes suddenly flinty. “They’re defective.”
“They’re my friends!” Letitia shouted.
“Please,” Donald said, wincing.
She got to her knees on the bed, tears again flowing. “There’s nothing wrong with them! They’re people! They’re just sick, that’s all.”
“You’re not making sense,” Donald said.
“I talked to her,” Letitia said. “She must have known. You can’t just say there’s something wrong with them. That isn’t enough.”
“Their parents should have known,” Donald pursued, voice rising. “Letitia …”
“Leave me alone,” she demanded. He stood up hastily, confused, and walked out, closing the door. She lay back on the bed, wondering what Reena had wanted her to say, and to whom. “I’ll do it,” she whispered.
In the morning, breakfast was silent. Roald ate his cereal with caution, glancing at the others with wide, concerned eyes. Letitia ate little, pushed away from the table, said, “I’m going to her funeral.”
“We don’t know—” Jane said.
“I’m going.”
Letitia went to only one funeral: Reena’s. With a puzzled expression, she watched Reena’s parents from across the grave, wondering about them, comparing them to Jane and
Donald. She did not cry. She came home and wrote down the things she had thought.
That school year was the worst. One hundred and twelve students from the school died. Another two hundred became very ill.
Rick Fayette died.
The drama class continued, but no plays were presented. The school was quiet. Many students had been withdrawn from classes; Letitia watched the hysteria mount, listened to rumors that it was a plague, not a PPC error.
It was not a plague.
Across the nation, two million children became ill. One million died.
Letitia read, without really absorbing the truth all at once, that it was the worst disaster in the history of the United States. Riots destroyed PPC centers. Women carrying PPC babies demanded abortions. The Rifkin Society became a political force of considerable influence.
Each day, after school, listening to the news, everything about her existence seemed trivial. Their family was healthy. They were growing up normally.
Edna Corman approached her in school at the end of one day, two weeks before graduation. “Can we talk?” she asked. “Someplace quiet.”
“Sure,” Letitia said. They had not become close friends, but she found Edna tolerable. Letitia took her into the old bathroom and they stood surrounded by the echoing white tiles.
“You know, everybody, I mean the older people, they stare at me, at us,” Edna said. “Like we’re going to fall over any minute. It’s really bad. I don’t think I’m going to get sick, but … It’s like people are afraid to touch me.”
“I know,” Letitia said.
“Why is that?” Edna said, voice trembling.
“I don’t know,” Letitia said. Edna just stood before her, hands limp.
“Was it our fault?” she asked.
“No. You know that.”
“Please tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What we can do to make it right.”
Letitia looked at her for a moment, and then extended her arms, took her by the shoulders, drew her closer, and hugged her. “Remember,” she said.
Five days before graduation, Letitia asked Rutger if she could give a speech at the ceremonies. Rutger sat behind his desk, folded his hands, and said, “Why?”
“Because there are some things nobody’s saying,” Letitia told him. “And they should be said. If nobody else will say them, then …” She swallowed hard. “Maybe I can.”
He regarded her dubiously for a moment. “You really think there’s something important that you can say?”
She faced him down. Nodded.
“Write the speech,” he said. “Show it to me.”
She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. He read it carefully, shook his head—she thought at first in denial—and then handed it back to her.
Waiting in the wings to go on stage, Letitia Blakely listened to the low murmur of the young crowd in the auditorium. She avoided looking at the spot near the curtain where Reena had fallen.
Rutger acted as master of ceremonies. The proceedings were somber. She began to feel as if she were making a terrible mistake. She was too young to say these things; it would sound horribly awkward, even childish.
Rutger made his opening remarks, then introduced her and motioned for her to come on stage. Letitia deliberately walked through the spot near the curtain, paused briefly, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if to infuse herself with whatever remained of Reena. She walked past Miss Darcy, who seemed to want to ask a question.
Her throat seized. She rubbed her neck, blinked at the lights on the catwalk, tried to see the faces beyond the brightness. They were just smudges in great darkness. She glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw Miss Darcy nodding, Go ahead.
“This has been a bad time for all of us,” she began, voice high and scratchy. She cleared her throat. “I’ve lost a lot of friends, and so have you. Maybe you’ve lost sons and daughters. I think, even from there, looking at me, you can tell I’m not … designed. I’m natural. I don’t have to wonder whether I’ll get sick and die. But I …” She cleared her throat again. It wasn’t getting easier. “I thought someone like me could tell you something important.
“People have made mistakes, bad mistakes. But you are not a mistake. I mean … they weren’t mistaken to make you. I can only dream about doing some of the things you’ll do. Some of you are made to live in space for a long time, and I can’t do that. Some of you will think things I can’t, and go places I won’t … travel to see the stars. We’re different in a lot of ways, but I just thought it was important to tell you …” She wasn’t following the prepared speech. She couldn’t. “I love you. I don’t care what the others say. We love you. You are very important. Please don’t forget that.”
The silence was complete. She felt like slinking away. Instead, she straightened, thanked them, hearing not a word, not a restless whisper, then bowed her head from the catwalk glare and the interstellar night beyond.
Miss Darcy, stiff and formal, reached her arm out as Letitia passed by. They shook hands firmly, and Letitia saw, for the first time, that Miss Darcy looked upon her as an equal.
While the ceremonies continued, Letitia stood backstage examining the old wood floor, the curtains and counterweights and flies, the catwalk.
It seemed very long ago she had dreamed what she felt now, this unspecified love, not for family, not for herself. Love for something she could not have known back then; love for children not her own, yet hers none the less.
Brothers.
Sisters.
Family.
A Martian Ricoroso
In 1976, the Viking lander settled down on Mars, scooped up a shovel full of soil, and tested it. The results were negative … or inconclusive. But for a brief moment, following a radio announcement that organic chemistry had been revealed in the samples, I was positive life had been discovered on another planet. That feeling was unforgettable.
“A Martian Ricorso” scored my first magazine cover, a beautiful piece by Rick Sternbach on the February 1976 issue of Analog. I carried a copy of the magazine around for days, then wrote a letter to Rick. We became friends. The original cover art graces our house.
Today, there are still headlines about water being discovered on Mars. A cyclical Mars, as proposed in this story, seems less likely now, but current discoveries do not rule it out—and may actually lend it some support. Mars is probably more like I described it in MOVING MARS (1993) or WAR DOGS (2014), with a rich, wet past eventually giving way to steady aridity and cold. But this was my first bold attempt to stick a scientific hypothesis into a story of hard science fiction, and who knows?
I might still win the lottery.
Martian night. The cold and the dark and the stars are so intense they make music, like the tinkle of ice xylophones. Maybe it’s my air tank hose scraping; maybe it’s my imagination. Maybe it’s real.
Standing on the edge of Swift Plateau, I’m afraid to move or breathe deeply, as I whisper into the helmet recorder, lest I disturb something holy: God’s sharp scrutiny of Edom Crater. I’ve gone outside, away from the lander and my crewmates, to order my thoughts about what has happened.
The Martians came just twelve hours ago, like a tide of five-foot-high lab rats running and leaping on their hind legs. To us, it seemed as if they were storming the lander, intent on knocking it over. But it seems more likely now we were only in their way.
We didn’t just sit here and let them swamp us. We didn’t hurt or kill any of them—Cobb beat at them with a roll of foil and I used the parasol of the damaged directenna to shoo them off. First contact, and we must have looked like clowns in an old silent comedy. The glider wings came perilously close to being severely damaged. We foiled and doped what few tears had been made before nightfall. They should suffice, if the polymer sylar adhesive is as good as advertised.
&nb
sp; But our luck this expedition held true to form. The stretching frame’s pliers broke during the repairs. We can’t afford another swarm, even if they’re just curious.
Cobb and Link have had bitter arguments about self-defense. I’ve managed to stay out of the debate so far, but my sympathies at the moment lie with Cobb. Still, my instinctive need to stay alive won’t stop me from feeling guilty if we do have to kill a few Martians.
We’ve had quite a series of revelation the last few days. Schiaparelli was right. And Percival Lowell, the eccentric genius of my own home state. He was not as errant an observer as we’ve all thought this past century.
I have an hour before I have to return to the lander and join my mates in sleep. I can last here in the cold that long. Loneliness may weigh on me sooner, however. I don’t know why I came out here; perhaps just to clear my head. We’ve all been in such a constrained, tightly controlled, oh-so-disguised panic. I need to know what I think of the whole situation, without benefit of comrades.
The plateau wall and the floor of Edom are so barren, with the exception, all around me, of the prints of thousands of feet … Empty and lifeless.
Tomorrow morning we’ll brace the crumpled starboard sled pads and rig an emergency automatic release for the RATO units on the glider. Her wings are already partially spread for a fabric inspection—accomplished just before the Winter Troops attacked—and we’ve finished transferring fuel from the lander to the orbit booster. When the glider gets us up above the third jet stream, by careful tacking we hope to be in just the right position to launch our little capsule up and out. A few minutes burn and we can dock with the orbiter, if Willy is willing to pick us up.
If we don’t make it, these records will be all there is to explain, on some future date, why we never made it back. I’ll feed the helmet memory into the lander telterm, stacked with flight telemetry and other data in computer-annotated garble, and instruct the computer to store it all on hard-copy glass disks.
The dust storm that sand-scrubbed our directenna and forced me to this expedient subsided two days ago. We have not reported our most recent discovery to mission control; we are still organizing our thoughts. After all, it’s a momentous occasion. We don’t want to make any slips and upset the folks back on Earth.
