George Martin - Old Mars

“No.” Jorge spun to his feet, heading for the door. “Kid, you’re dreaming. They’re not alive, they’re just visions. Yeah, they seem real, but that’s all they are. Ghosts. Visions .”

“No.” Maartin clenched his fingers into fists. “… alive. You kill them.”

Jorge left.

Maartin listened to his footsteps fade. Around him, the city hummed with life. People slid across the spiderways and a trio of musicians shook bouquets of delicate silver wands that gave off a shimmering, crystal music that rose and fell, filling the air with curtains of rose and golden light. A city. He strained his eyes so that the dome faded away and all he saw were the streets, the free-form plazas paved here with opalescent tiles, the silvery arches of the spiderways overhead, the delicate walkways that connected the tall buildings’ soaring spires.

Full of people.

Full of life.

A shoal.

Dad took him home the next day, treating him as if he were made of delicate glass and might break. He had rented a mover, as if Maartin had a broken leg. Maartin felt silly, perched in the seat next to Dad as they hummed past people walking to their gardens or shopping or doing whatever. They all looked at him as soon as they could. He didn’t have to turn around, he felt the stares like prodding fingers on his back. But he found he could let the Martian city come into focus and didn’t have to feel them. But even that wasn’t comfortable. The feel of the city was changing and that anger-hum threaded through everything. Everything. South, toward the canal, the empty red space where the spiderways ended and the canal gaped barren and dry nagged like a missing tooth. When they got back to their rooms, Maartin told Dad that he didn’t feel good and Dad gave him one of the pills Dr. Abram had given him. The pills made him sleep and he didn’t even dream about the city. Dad was relieved when he took the pill. Now he could go return the mover and didn’t have to worry.

The city got in his way. He had to concentrate in order to keep the dome in focus. If he forgot, if he lost focus, the city buildings and the people and the spiderways tangled up with the corridor walls and the dome and he stopped when he didn’t need to or ran into people. Or walls. Everybody was really nice about that, they’d all heard about the “seizure.” They just walked him back home, even if that wasn’t where he wanted to go, saying soothing things in too-loud, too-simple voices. Their kids slunk away whenever they saw him.

But the anger-hum was fading. Dad took him to Canny’s one night and he heard people talking about how the miners had quit blasting, that they weren’t finding any pearls, that they were doing some test digs, but if nothing turned up, they’d move on.

He hadn’t seen Jorge since he’d walked out of the infirmary.

Dad took him back to Dr. Abram again and asked the doctor to do another brain scan.

“Yes, there has been an increase in random activity in the temporal lobes.” Abram didn’t bother to lower his voice even though the door was open between his office and the exam room where Maartin was sitting. “It’s a significant increase since the scan I ran after the initial accident.” The doctor reached across his keyboard to put a hand on Dad’s arm. “Speech, hearing, visual processing … it all comes from that area. Think of an old-fashioned Earthly thunderstorm. The lightning made the lights flicker, caused static on the radio, interfered with old-fashioned cable TV. That’s what’s going on in Maartin’s brain.” He sounded almost cheerful now. He loved lecturing, Maartin thought. He’d logged in to some of Dr. Abram’s video lectures on health issues and they were pretty good.

Not this one.

Dad’s sadness dimmed the city plaza that overlay the office. One of the people strolling by flickered sympathy to him and he rippled a weak appreciation. “Is there any way to fix the problem?”

Abram shook his head. Such a crude gesture when the slightest curve of his third finger could have conveyed so much more. Maartin watched Dad’s shoulders slump. “The drugs quiet the activity, but since they sedate him …” Abram shrugged. “And a lower dose doesn’t seem to do any good.”

Well, it dimmed the city some, but that was all.

“What about his hands … they twitch and spasm all the time.”

“I don’t know what’s causing that.” Abram frowned.

Thunderstorms. Maartin frowned. Dad was feeling pretty bleak and Dr. Abram was patting him again. A shoal, Jorge had said. Lots of pearls in that avalanche of dust and rock when the miners blasted the escarpment above Teresa’s settlement? And he’d been buried in them for a whole day. That’s what Dad told him after, anyway. It had taken that long for someone to dig him out. Sleeping in the pearls, touching them? Thunderstorm?

Two people carrying purple flowers paused as they crossed the plaza and flickered a negative at him. Not quite right. The taller one fluttered rapid fingers, waved emphatically. Rippled a smile.

We fixed you .

You are whole now. You were broken. Imperfect unit . They rippled smiles, comfort, and approval and strolled on their way, their arched feet barely brushing the polished tiles.

Wait! He waved both hands. They paused, looked back. Fix the miners! Fix them! His fingers snapped together with urgency and both of them curled disapproval at his tone, but softened their fingers into a long arc of understanding. Imperfect unit, still. They rippled a shrug and went on. Maartin flinched as his father’s hands closed over his.

“Easy, son.” His eyes were full of pain. “Try clasping them together when they want to do that.”

You don’t understand . His fingers writhed in his father’s grasp.

“They …” He forced out the crude huff of air. “Don’t.” His fingers twitched, stifled in his father’s grip. “Care.”

“Who doesn’t care?” The smile looked artificial. “The miners, Maartin? These aren’t the bad men who … who hurt you.”

I want them to make you whole, too . His fingers struggled. I want you to see. We’re not alone here. She share. We just don’t see .

He started going to the garden domes every day, weeding all the beds. They’d built the beds on a pretty plaza, a graceful, free-form space tiled with pale blue and soft green octagons that sparkled with crystal dust. Two fountains played watery music and soft blue and pink mists spread from the slender black tubes that rose from the tumbling water. Sometimes one of the people stopped to speak to him. He recognized them by feel; Soft-sweet-happy, or Firm-thoughtful—he had had word names for them once, but he couldn’t remember those. Then there was Sharp-edge-alert. Sharp-edge-alert didn’t speak often. He thought about the miners a lot, Maartin could tell. He sometimes felt Maartin. Well, felt wasn’t quite the right word, ’cause they couldn’t really touch each other, like you’d touch a plant or dirt or a stone. But he would sometimes put a hand on Maartin and it would … sink into him.

Maartin didn’t like the feeling much. It didn’t hurt, but it felt … wrong. Like something was stuck in his flesh and shouldn’t be there. When the others “touched” him, their hands brushed his skin the way any human hand would do, but he didn’t feel anything. If he tried to touch them, he found, they shied away if he let his hand slide into them. So he didn’t.

Only Sharp-edge-alert pushed his hands into Maartin, and Maartin never saw him do that to any of the people.

The human residents mostly left him alone, although Seaul Ku, who weeded there a lot, too, sometimes talked to him. But even she did the slow-talk thing and used baby words. So he didn’t try too hard to talk back, kept his fingers working in the soil. She wasn’t there the afternoon that Jorge came to the gardens.