Mars Rising (Saving Mars Series 6)

by Cidney Swanson

  “Ugh,” said Pavel. “How does anyone live here in winter?”

  Jessamyn laughed. “You call this winter?”

  “Fall. Autumn. The prelude to winter.” Pavel tugged his hood forward. “I don’t know what Jumble likes so much about the Isles of Scilly. I really don’t.”

  “You didn’t grow up without rain,” said Jess. “I think it’s wonderful.” She pulled her own hood down so she could feel the soft rain against her face.

  “See, stuff like that. You and rain. You and gravity. On any given day, there’s all this stuff you say, and anyone who met you in person would know you’re not from Earth.”

  Jess felt a small smile forming on her face. “So you agree I should go to Budapest?”

  “I don’t like it,” said Pavel. “The idea scares me on a lot of levels. But I think it might be the only way to make sure Mars stays front and center in everyone’s minds.”

  “Less than four months,” said Jessamyn. Out of habit, she glanced up at the night sky, looking for Mars, but the clouds hid everything tonight.

  “Four months until the ships get to Mars?” asked Pavel.

  “Until they’re close enough to destroy us. They don’t have to get there to do that.”

  “We can’t let it happen,” said Pavel.

  “We can’t,” agreed Jess. She slipped her hand into his.

  “I think you have to go,” said Pavel. “It’s the best chance. Our defamation campaign is making more and more people distrust Lucca, but the best chance has always been to appeal directly on behalf of the people of Mars.”

  “I know.” Closing her eyes, Jess tipped her head up, feeling the rain, letting Pavel lead her along the pathway. “I guess I knew I’d have to go as soon as the Chancellor issued the invitation.”

  Pavel stopped walking, turned to face Jessamyn, and grabbed her other hand so that he held both her hands firmly in his.

  “Marry me, Jess.”

  She had too many responses to pick from. Pavel wouldn’t like any of them.

  “Pavel….”

  “Will you?”

  “You’ve got to stop asking me that,” said Jess. What was it with the women in her family? Her dad had proposed to her mom. It wasn’t proper. Jess was the one who was supposed to decide when it was time to ask. But maybe Pavel didn’t know this.

  “If you go to Budapest,” said Pavel, “there’s no telling what will happen.”

  “It’s not like it would change anything if I died and you hadn’t married me,” Jess said softly. “I’d still be dead.”

  “It would change things for me.”

  Jessamyn shook her head, sending drops of gathered rain flying. “Pavel, seriously, you know how I feel about you, but … you need to stop asking me.” She couldn’t marry Pavel now. She had an Armageddon to prevent. He knew that.

  “I keep hoping the answer will change.”

  Sighing, Jessamyn pulled her hand free. Why did she feel this reluctance, anyway? She wasn’t certain. She just knew she didn’t like Pavel asking her all the time. She tried to change the subject, just slightly. “Let me ask you something. On Earth, if a man and woman want to get married, who asks whom?”

  Pavel shrugged. “I don't know. I guess mostly the guys ask. It’s not like I’ve done a survey or anything. Don’t guys ask on Mars?”

  So he didn’t know proper etiquette. “Not normally,” Jess said.

  “How was I supposed to know that?” Pavel kicked at the pavement.

  Oddly, his admission of ignorance didn’t make her feel any better.

  “So, if I want to do things the Marsian way,” continued Pavel, “I’m going to need a little coaching. We haven’t recorded the session on marriage proposals yet.”

  “Let me ask you another question,” said Jess. “Not that question,” she added when Pavel grinned at her. “Why do people get married on Earth?”

  “Um, is this a trick question?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I guess because they want to experience life together. Why else would you get married?”

  This was surer footing. Jess turned the conversation back from the subject of her marriage to the subject of Marsian marriage. The anxious feeling inside receded slightly.

  “Back on Mars, if you want to spend your life with someone, you spend your life with someone,” said Jess.

  “Same as here.”

  “No. What I meant was, on Mars, if a man and a woman get married, it’s not just because they want to experience life together. It’s because they want to have a family together. It’s a much more permanent commitment. And out of respect for a woman’s interest or lack of interest in bearing children, guys wait for girls to ask.”

  Unless you were Jessamyn’s dad. Her heart pinched as she thought of her parents. They were another reason to put off the question of marriage. She could do without some Marsian traditions: the sprinkling of melted lucky ice on the bride’s head and red dust on the groom’s. But she didn’t want a ceremony where her mom wasn’t there to give her away. Would Pavel understand? She wasn’t really sure she understood. Even at the best of times, it wasn’t like she and her mom had an easy relationship.

  Pavel interrupted her thoughts with a new question. “I thought it was, like, a duty to have kids on Mars. The colony needs kids to survive, right?”

  “It’s complicated. Two centuries ago, there was talk about making reproduction mandatory. This was back when you could still change your mind about living on Mars and ship back to Earth.”

  “Because the two worlds were still friends.”

  “Right. So, there was a movement to say that if you were female, and if you didn’t want kids, you shouldn’t stay on Mars using up valuable resources when there were women on Earth who would gladly live on Mars and have kids.”

  “That can’t have gone well,” said Pavel.

  “It didn’t. I mean, it ended well, but only after political upheaval and votes of no confidence and a debate that nearly split Mars in three,” said Jess. “But in the end, the Rights of Women Act was passed to specifically provide that no woman choosing not to reproduce would get kicked off Mars for her decision.”

  Pavel chuckled.

  “This was serious. It still is serious. Mars absolutely needs kids or the whole thing is done. But not every woman can or should have kids.”

  “So, when I ask you to get married, if we were on Mars, I’d be asking you to start a family?”

  And there they were, back from a general discussion of matrimony to Pavel’s specific proposal.

  She kept her answer short. “Yup.”

  “And that’s why you keep turning me down?”

  Jess thought about it. It would be easiest to just say yes. But the truth was more complicated. Why did she keep putting him off?

  Was it marrying Pavel without her parents there to toast her health and happiness that bothered her? No. That would be sad, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker. Was it as simple as wanting to be the one doing the asking? That didn’t feel quite like the source of her hesitation, either. It must be Mars: she had a planet to save. But even as she told herself that, she realized she couldn’t use Mars as an excuse. This feeling, it ran deeper, ran through places more secret and hidden. It was more … personal. Every time Pavel asked her, she felt a chill deep in her belly.

  Fear. The chill was fear. She was afraid of something.

  Afraid of a life and family with Pavel? No. Never. But the feeling, solid and cold in her gut, was real. What was she afraid of?

  The answer trailed just behind the question.

  She was afraid of the kind of optimism that said yes to a request like Pavel’s.

  She remembered what optimism felt like—remembered the fierce joy she’d felt the day she first rocketed off Mars, the Red Dawn at her side. She remembered the hope, and just behind it, the gasping, sucking emptiness when the Dawn had been lost. She was afraid of trusting the future the way she had when she’d set sail in the Galleon. Saying yes to Pavel
felt too much like saying everything was going to be fine. It was putting too much trust in a future she couldn’t control.

  Hope could be destroyed by a moment’s miscalculation: Poof. Gone.

  And you were left struggling for air.

  She couldn’t put that kind of trust in the future. She couldn’t be that girl anymore—the one who’d boarded the Galleon with hope in her heart. Hope wasn’t a guarantee things would turn out in the end. And Jess didn’t think she could bear to start a life with Pavel and then lose it.

  Is that why you keep turning me down?

  She opened her mouth, hoping the words would form by themselves. But they didn’t. She couldn’t figure out how to say all of this to the boy she loved, loved so deeply that to live without him would rend her soul in two.

  “Jess? Is it about kids?”

  It wasn’t. She wanted kids. Lots of kids. But she took the coward’s way out.

  “More or less,” she said.

  The two began walking again. The rain had passed and a cooler breeze blew past them, causing them to shove hands in pockets and bend their heads down.

  “So, do you want to get married and table the kids question for now?”

  Persistent. She loved that about him, most of the time.

  “Is that a … yes?”

  “Pavel, I’m Marsian. If I want to get married, I’ll ask you.” Cowardly. Again.

  Pavel breathed out heavily.

  They walked a few more paces and Jess suggested they turn around.

  “I’m not getting any younger, you know,” said Pavel. His tone told her he sensed her need for a bit of lightness.

  Pavel did that, all the time: adjusted his mood to accommodate hers. He got her. And he loved her anyway.

  She leaned over to push his shoulder with hers. “Youth is overrated on your world,” she said.

  Pavel guffawed. “I’ll give you that. So, what do you think about Budapest? Should we talk it over with Zuss and your brother?”

  “I brought it up this afternoon with Ethan. He shot me down.”

  “He’s wrong, though. You and I both know that.”

  “My brother is hardly ever wrong, but this might be one of those rare times,” said Jess. “I think he’d admit that in theory, my going to the House of Parliament is the best way to do this thing, but he doesn’t want me to take that kind of risk.”

  “I don’t either,” said Pavel. “At least, I don’t want you doing it alone. You have to let me go with you.”

  Jessamyn was silent. For Mars’s sake, she could go to Budapest, risking her life. But even for Mars, she couldn’t risk Lucca recapturing Pavel. Cowardly or not, she couldn’t face it.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ then,” said Pavel.

  Jess tried to keep her answer light-hearted. Pavel had to stay behind. “Would you just quit assuming everything out of my mouth will be a ‘yes,’ already?”

  “Sometimes you say yes to stuff.”

  “I do?” Jess frowned as the light from the cottage came into view. “Like what?”

  “Kiss me before we go back inside?”

  Jess smiled softly. “Yes,” she said. “Definitely yes.”

  But as they kissed under the cloudy sky, Jessamyn was already making plans that didn’t include putting Pavel’s life at risk in Budapest.

  The next morning, Jessamyn stared with suspicion at a document transmitted to her by none other than Mr. Zussman. Entitled, “Plans for Miss Jessamyn, Should She Need Them,” the document contained detailed maps of entrances and exits (some of them secret) into the House of Parliament in Budapest.

  She found a chance to speak to the butler alone after lunch.

  “Zussman, I hope you’re not encouraging me to do something my government has not authorized,” she said, when the two stood doing the dishes.

  Jess was washing the cups and plates, Zussman drying. It felt like the ultimate decadence to the girl from Mars—using water to clean things. She still couldn’t bring herself to try a bath, even though she loved swimming in the ocean.

  “Not at all, miss,” replied Zussman, polishing a water spot from one of the glasses. “It would not be my place to suggest such an action.”

  Jess passed him another glass before it had a chance to spot.

  “It merely seemed prudent,” said the butler, “to pass you such information as I have access to, should you decide upon a course of action that might take you to the capital.”

  “Definitely falls in the prudent category,” said Jessamyn.

  “And I hope you will always consider me as being at Mars Colonial’s disposal, as it were.”

  Jessamyn stared at the wash water in the tub. It seemed so wrong to send it down the drain. But it would be a lot more wrong to endanger Zussman’s life by accepting his offer to help.

  “The stove and countertops are sadly in need of a cleansing,” said Zussman.

  “You noticed my thing about wasting water, huh?”

  “It is understandable, miss. And commendable, as are all of miss’s efforts, great and small.”

  Jess flushed and carried her sea sponge to the stove. As far as she could tell, it was clean as ever. Zuss saw to that. But he also saw to other things, like her obsession with making every drop of water as useful as possible. As she scrubbed, she wondered if maybe she should let Zuss accompany her to the House of Parliament.

  She flashed a glance his way. Zussman appeared, as ever, concerned with nothing so much as the maintenance of a tidy kitchen. But he knew what she was contemplating. And she couldn’t let him go. If anything did happen to her, Zuss would be all Pavel had left. It had been a selfish thought. She would depart alone.

  Today. She would have to go today. Before anyone else figured out what she was up to. Pavel and Ethan had gone to Old Grimsby to meet Jumble and collect supplies. She had three hours before they returned.

  She wrote a note for Pavel. She wrote half a dozen. But they all ended up crumpled and shoved in the recycler. In the end, there didn’t seem to be much point in elaborating her reasons for choosing to leave without him. He would know why she’d done it. He would hate that she’d done it. End of story.

  And so, the note she left for him, lying at her place at the rations table, contained only two words, the truest she knew how to write.

  I’m sorry.

  29

  A LOVELY CUPPA

  Jess took the 15:05 ferry from Carn Near, at Tresco’s southern tip, to the larger island of St. Mary’s. From St. Mary’s she was able to catch one of the frequent hovercrafts providing transport to Land’s End on the mainland. As she trudged forward, her muscles felt inadequate to the task, and her sling-pack dug into her shoulders, reminding her she still hadn’t recovered from her low-weight existence on the Moon.

  She’d packed lightly, at least. Just some ration bars, a change of clothing and a couple of the portable credit chips Brian Wallace had sent last week through Jumble. And several pair of dark false eyebrows from Mr. Zussman’s stash of disguises, one pair of which currently hid her striking red brows. Her hair, she’d tucked in a knit cap, hiding it additionally under the hood of an oversized jacket.

  She rubbed the spot where she’d cut out her most recent scan chip before sewing it into the sleeve of the jacket, just at the wrist. She hoped the trick would work if she needed it. The wound didn’t show; she’d learned a thing or two about using a heat-healer from Pavel. But she sensed the analgesic was wearing off by the time she stepped off the hovercraft at Land’s End.

  Tourists swarmed the place, identifiable because of their inexplicable obsession with being photographed at England’s western-most point. The Isles of Scilly were farther west by nearly fifty kilometers, so Jess didn’t see the point. She trudged forward, keeping an eye out for a vehicle to steal, but there were too many people here.

  Once she left Land’s End, the area was sparsely populated. If people in the countryside were like Marsians, they didn’t leave their vehicles secured against theft.
She certainly didn’t plan to walk all the way to Budapest. As she continued, striding forward as though she knew where she was going, the fog that had dogged the craft across the sea turned into a mist and then a steady rain.

  She didn’t choose the first lane she saw, or the second, but continued down a paved road until she’d gone maybe half a kilometer and reached a point where roads forked off both left and right. The one to the right looked bigger, as though it might lead somewhere with a greater number of watchful eyes. She chose the one to the left but was soon doubting the wisdom of her choice; it seemed to lead nowhere at all.

  And then she felt something cold on her shoulder. She jerked her head to her shoulder, childhood reflexes kicking in. Sudden cold was a sign of a suit leak; death could be seconds away.

  But not on Earth.

  Jess closed her eyes and gave her head a small shake and waited for her heart to stop pounding. On Earth, a leaky suit wouldn’t kill you. But Jess soon decided it might drive you to insanity by slow degrees. On Mars, no suit manufacturer would have dreamed of selling outerwear with such poor seam-seals. The rain, cold, tickled her neck and shoulders. She’d taken only the spare jacket from the cottage, in hopes that by leaving her normal jacket behind, it would look to Pavel, Ethan, and Zussman as though she wasn’t planning to be out for long.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered, plodding down the quiet lane. There were no indications of habitation other than the sign naming the farm where she’d turned in. She’d probably picked the wrong road. The lane turned sharply left up ahead, and Jess decided she would have a look around the bend before giving it up as a dead end.

  A minute later she was grinning ear to ear. Up ahead, to one side of the lane, she saw a vehicle. It didn’t look like it would hover, much less fly, but it would have a heater and get her out of this wretched rain. The wind was at her back now she’d turned, which felt good except for the place where her soaking jacket was now flapping against—and consequently soaking—the back of her thighs.

  She trudged up to the car, reconsidering her past appreciation of rain. The house looked abandoned—no lights on although evening was falling. Perfect. She had just reached out to try the vehicle door when something ahead caught her eyes. She glanced up. The house, previously dark, was now illumined from within. Warning lights for unwanted intruders or genuine sign of an inhabitant?