Old Mars Read online

  The inhabitants’ flowing attire seemed so much more comfortable than the binding suit she wore. She entered a temple, stood immersed in incense and the elegant curves of the abstract figures painted on the walls.

  The other worshippers turned to welcome her. For the first time in a long time, she was happy. She reached up and removed the bulky, confining helmet. Black hair tumbled onto her shoulders.

  But my hair is brown.

  Matilda Michaelson-McKenzie (Tilda to her friends and family) awoke with a melody on her lips, but a melody that had little in common with any Earth tonal system, Western or otherwise.

  She rose, sluiced off her face, and watched the water go swirling back into the recycling cisterns. This was the first time she’d had visions. Was that really what the Martians had looked like? Before, it had always just been sound without sight. And the memories seemed very human. Very explicable. Had she really been Miyako McKenzie?

  Tilda was desperate to talk to someone about this latest development, but the only other person who heard the music was her father, Noel-Pa, and if they did talk, they would have to be careful. Tilda didn’t want to bring down Grandpa Stephen’s anger on her father—any more than it already was.

  Noel-Pa had innocently mentioned the music the second morning after their arrival at the McKenzie farm hold, and received a barrage of abuse from his father-in-law. Daddy-Kane had shot his husband a pleading glance, and the slim, blond retired military man had pressed his lips together and hadn’t responded, though Tilda knew that it had cost him. Since then, Stephen had never missed an opportunity to cut at his son’s spouse.

  And Daddy-Kane doesn’t even try to defend him, Tilda thought bleakly. Thank God she would be leaving for Cambridge soon to start college, and out of the fraught situation where she currently found herself. But there was no escape for Noel—unless he left his husband, and that was beginning to seem likely, to their daughter’s dismay.

  Meantime, she was dreaming about a woman she’d never met, who’d walked into an alien city and committed suicide. Had Miyako been lured by the music? And what if it happened to her? Tilda felt panic fluttering in her throat. Now she really couldn’t wait to get off Mars!

  She thought back on how they had come to the red planet, the night their lives had changed. The call had come in from Mars, and Kane had gone into the study to visit with his father. Tilda floated in the sim cage playing a game, and Noel-Pa was kicked back in a recliner, reading one of his old dead-tree books.

  When Daddy-Kane walked back into the living room, the expression on his face, and the etched lines around his mouth, had the footrest smashing down and Noel-Pa out of the chair with the lightning reflexes that marked him for a soldier.

  “Your father?” Noel-Pa began, putting his arms around Kane.

  Daddy-Kane shook his head. “No, he’s fine. It’s my stepmother … she’s dead.”

  Tilda shut down the sim. Without needing words, they went into the kitchen and settled around the kitchen table. Outside, the fronds on the palms shook in an ocean breeze, rattling like living castanets.

  “My God, they’ve only been married seven months! What happened?” Noel-Pa asked.

  “She walked into the Martian city and took off her helmet.”

  “Good God! Why? What happened?”

  “The Syndrome … I guess. Dad found her body two days later.” His voice was low and heavy. There was a long pause. “He wants me … us, to come home,” Daddy-Kane added.

  Noel-Pa stood and busied himself pouring out iced teas for all of them. “This wasn’t how we pictured life after my retirement.”

  Kane gazed down at his hands. “I know.” To break the tension, Tilda darted up from the table and brought her father a cup of tea.

  Noel leaned against the counter and gazed at his husband, while Kane studiously avoided that blue-eyed gaze. “He married Miyako to try and replace you,” Noel said softly to himself.

  “I know, but he needs me now. It’ll only be for a while. Once he’s gone, I’ll sell the farm, and we’ll come back to Earth.”

  “That could be a long time.”

  “He’s seventy-seven. It won’t be all that long.”

  Noel-Pa swirled his glass, the ice cubes chiming against the sides. “I suppose it’s only fair. You’ve followed me from posting to posting—Luna, to Ceres, to Pinnacle Station, and around the world since.”

  So Noel-Pa mustered out of SpaceCom and they moved to Mars. To the McKenzie holding, five vast domes of red Martian soil under cultivation, and a sixth to house the homestead, bunkhouse, workers’ houses, silos, warehouses, and garages. What Tilda hadn’t anticipated was the delicate twisting spires of the ancient Martian city on the opposite shore of the old lake bed from the McKenzie farm.

  Those gleaming glass towers in rainbow colors had almost reconciled her to the move, and she couldn’t wait to explore the city. Except that Stephen had forbidden anyone to enter it after Miyako’s death.

  Tilda had surreptitiously done research after she started hearing the music some few days after her father. They called it Mars Reverie Syndrome, and, in its more extreme forms, people did enter the cities and die. Usually people who were in poor health, or those who were deeply unhappy. Which said a lot about the May/December wedding of Stephen and Miyako. There was no indication that the twenty-seven-year-old Miyako had been ill. Which left only one explanation. An explanation that didn’t redound to Stephen’s credit.

  It was the Syndrome, paired with the fact that most of the cities stood in places where the soil was rich, that had started the destruction. Cities were leveled, and the Syndrome became an epidemic.

  Hurriedly, the Union government put a ban on the destruction of the cities, but by the time the legislation made its way through parliament, only one city remained. The one across the lake. The cases of the Syndrome eased off, though it never completely vanished, and now the Martians were singing in Tilda’s head and she was walking in the head of a dead woman.

  She shivered and realized that she had been standing, lost in thought, for far too long, and Noel-Pa could probably use her help with breakfast. She dressed in the colorful, imaginatively patterned envirosuit and pulled on the thigh-high boots that marked her as a Martian farm girl, and that her grandfather insisted that she wear.

  Since most of SpaceCom’s facilities on Earth were closer to the equator for ease of launch, she had spent her life in warm, exotic locations—Australia’s Gold Coast, Hawaii, the Florida Keys, São Paulo, where sandals and shorts or swimsuits were the unofficial uniform. Now she lived on an ancient, nearly airless world where a dome leak or a freak storm that crashed an ultralight could kill you. She supposed that there were things that could kill you on Earth too, she reflected as she fluffed out her hair, the curls dancing on her shoulders, but the home world didn’t seem so actively hostile. God, she couldn’t wait to get out of here!

  She walked through the large living room, bootheels clicking on the stone floor. The McKenzie house had been hewn out of the redrock cliffs that lined three sides of the ancient lake bed. It stood three stories tall, and two generations back it had held a boisterous clan, but now there were just the four of them, Grandpa Stephen, his son, Kane, Kane’s husband, Noel, and their only child—Tilda.

  Tilda checked her ScoopRing. There was a message from Ali Al-Jahani, one of the few people in the area close to her age. His family owned the farm to the west, and they had given him permission to play hooky from chores and say farewell to Mars before he headed off to Paris in a few weeks to begin his medical studies. Ali suggested a flight out toward Mons Olympus. She messaged back that she would join him.

  Tilda had leisure time too, because while Noel-Pa had agreed to her learning to fly the long-winged ultralights that were the most common mode of fast transport on Mars, he’d resisted other Martian activities. Like Stephen’s trying to put her to work in the sorting and packing sheds. Just like Ali, she was leaving for college soon. She didn’t need to learn how to be a
farmhand.

  The yeasty scent of baking cinnamon rolls, cooking bacon, and the dark, sensual smell of coffee escorted her into the kitchen. Noel-Pa circled the big stone table, setting out plates and silverware.

  On Earth, Daddy-Kane had kept “the home fires burning,” as Noel-Pa had put it, but here at the McKenzie farm, Kane had skills that Noel lacked—how to run the big tractors, harvesters, threshers. Noel-Pa could have learned, but Daddy-Kane already had the knowledge, so they had switched roles. Tilda wasn’t surprised that the former military officer proved to be as adept in the kitchen as he had been in combat.

  He turned at her footsteps and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She hugged him tight. “So, what can I do?”

  “Beat the eggs for the frittata.”

  She beat three dozen eggs and helped Noel-Pa season them and pour the mix into an enormous iron skillet. The eggs joined the bacon in the oven.

  “I dreamed about Miyako last night. I think I was Miyako. She was greeting the Martians and they were making her welcome, giving her food, and there was a temple,” Tilda said softly to her father. He glanced at her, his expression tight and tense. “I’m not crazy!”

  “I know.”

  “So, you’ve dreamed about her too?” Tilda asked.

  Noel-Pa checked the watch set in the sleeve of his suit. Shook his head. “Not now. Not here,” he said. Then he counted down. “And three … two … one.”

  There was the babble of voices and the rasp of boot soles being cleaned on the scraper just outside the back door. The unmarried field hands who lived in the dorm just down the road, Daddy-Kane, and Grandpa Stephen flowed into the kitchen.

  Noel’s thoughts were in complete turmoil as he pulled the frittata out of the oven. How could his father-in-law’s dead spouse be invading both his and his child’s dreams? His dreams had not been so pleasant. He had experienced all of Miyako’s loneliness, sadness, and hatred. Resentment of her family for essentially selling her to Stephen. Hatred for her elderly husband. Or was he simply putting his own dislike of his father-in-law onto this phantom?

  Noel sprinkled fresh parsley across the puffed-egg dish, and sliced it into individual servings. Tilda removed the bacon and the rolls, and everything was set on a long counter. Noel stepped back as the hungry workers lined up.

  Stephen sat at the head of the table with Kane at the foot. No one left a seat open next to Kane, and Kane didn’t object. Feeling absurdly hurt, Noel found room on a bench and sat down.

  “What is this thing?” Stephen demanded.

  “Frittata … sort of an Italian omelet,” Noel replied.

  “Well, why not just make a damn omelet?” the old man asked.

  “A little hard to flip three dozen eggs, and this way I could time it for when you all came in,” Noel said placidly. Peace at any price, he reminded himself.

  The response from Stephen was a harrumph. Noel saw Tilda glance at Kane, but Kane kept his focus on his plate. In the first month after their arrival, Kane had constantly leaped in to shield Noel from his father’s verbal attacks, but that had stopped. Initially, Noel had asked Kane to back off, thinking that Stephen would eventually come to accept him. But his charm offensive had failed, and lately, it felt like Kane was starting to agree with his irascible father’s constant criticisms of Noel.

  They had always had a vigorous and active sex life, but even that time of closeness was becoming less frequent due to plain physical exhaustion on Kane’s part. At least that’s what Noel told himself as he lay awake listening to Kane’s snores and longing for his touch. Noel felt lonely and isolated.

  As lonely and isolated as Miyako.

  Noel studied his husband’s familiar and beloved profile and wondered when it had become attached to a stranger. He tried to catch Kane’s eye, and briefly succeeded before the younger man looked away. Noel knew that behavior. Knew what it meant. It meant something was up, something Kane didn’t want to tell him. His appetite fled, and the food smelled almost nauseating. Noel pushed away his plate.

  Stephen gave a loud snort. “Even you don’t like this damn thing,” he said.

  Noel kept his expression pleasant but pulled his hands into his lap so that no one would see when they balled into fists. Once again the litany was running through his head—have a stroke, have a stroke, have a stroke!

  He’d had very little interaction with his father-in-law prior to the move. Stephen and Catherine, Kane’s mother, had attended the wedding on Earth. Catherine had been pleasant in a bluff, hearty kind of way. Stephen less so. It was clear that he hadn’t wanted his son to marry a “mud crawler,” even though Noel had had plenty of postings off-world in his career with SpaceCom. For Stephen, that didn’t matter; you were either a Martian or you weren’t, and Noel wasn’t.

  Stephen had been alone when he came for Matilda’s christening, Catherine having died two years before from an aggressive cancer. At that time, the old man had tried to convince them to move back to Mars so that Tilda would be a true McKenzie. Kane had stayed firm and refused. Noel had just made commander, and admiral didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility, and Noel knew that Kane liked the soft winds and warm sun of Earth. Liked walking at twilight hand in hand without the separation of an envirosuit. And that he never wanted to dig potatoes or thresh wheat again.

  Noel knew that it had hurt Kane when Stephen had announced that he’d remarried, and the old bastard didn’t mince words when he told his son why. Miyako was just a walking womb as far as the old man was concerned. A chance to start a new family, a farming family, a Martian family. A family that would understand history and continuity and never leave. Then came the tragedy of Miyako’s death, and Kane had felt it was his duty to return—and if there was one thing Noel understood, it was duty.

  Breakfast ended with Stephen and the hands trooping out to work. Noel was surprised when Kane stayed behind and helped him and Tilda clear the table and load the dishes into the big industrial-sized washer.

  “What are you up to today?” Kane asked their daughter.

  “Ali and I are taking our lights out toward Mons Olympus.”

  “Good. You have fun,” Kane said, dropping a kiss onto her cheek.

  “You checked the weather?” Noel asked, trying to keep his tone casual and not sound like an overly anxious parent.

  “No dust storms predicted for the next two days,” she answered brightly. Resting a hand on his shoulder, she stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry.” Her blue eyes danced with mischief.

  They were the most obvious feature he had bestowed on their child. Her warm café au lait skin and curling brown hair were all Kane. His love for her manifested as a squeezing pressure in Noel’s chest. The back door closed behind her, and it was suddenly very quiet in the kitchen.

  He turned to his husband and smiled. “Hey, we have the house to ourselves,” Noel said, giving a suggestive edge to the words. Kane’s grim expression didn’t lighten. In fact, it became even more pronounced. “What? What have I done now?” Noel asked.

  “Let’s talk in our room.”

  Noel shortened his stride so as not to outpace his smaller spouse. Their room was a perfect mix of both their personalities. Dead-tree books on a shelf, a few of Kane’s abstract paintings that they had paid to ship from Earth. Kane had intended to paint once they got settled, but, like so many other plans, that had never materialized. Noel’s battle armor stood in a corner like a warrior sculpture from some alien civilization.

  “Okay, what’s wrong?” Noel asked.

  “Dad’s enrolled Tilda at Lowell University in the agronomy department.”

  “Well, I hope he can get his money back,” Noel said. “She’s going to Cambridge, and she leaves in three weeks.”

  Kane looked away, then walked to the dresser and began rearranging items. “I canceled her booking to Earth, and called admissions.”

  “WHAT?” It was a tone and timbre Noel usually reserved for insubordinate recruits.

  “
She’s the heir after me.”

  Noel forced himself not to shout. “What happened to we sell it after he’s gone?” Kane paced to the other side of the room and didn’t answer. “I take it that plan is no longer operative?”

  “It’s honest work, maybe noble. We feed Earth,” Kane said defensively. “My great-great-grandfather built this house, broke the soil for the first time in who knows how many thousands of years. It’s right that a McKenzie continue here.”

  “Tilda is also a Michaelson, and she has other plans. I had other plans.”

  “I thought your plan was to be with me,” Kane said.

  “It is, but …” Now it was Noel’s turn to pace. “You didn’t want this life. You said you never wanted to return.”

  “Things change.”

  “Obviously. But you and your horrible father don’t have the right to make that decision for Tilda.”

  “So, now it comes out.”

  “Yeah, he’s a bastard, and you know it. You used to say it. Tilda is going to Cambridge if I have to take her there myself.”

  “You can’t. We’ll stop you at the port. She’s the daughter of a natural-born Martian, and underage. We can keep her here.”

  Noel ran agitated fingers through his hair. “I don’t know who you are anymore. How could you do this to our daughter? To me?”

  Kane crossed to him and gripped his shoulders. “Look, let him think he’s had the win. When Tilda turns twenty-one, she can do whatever the hell she wants, but it gives me time to work on the old man … and … and … things can change.”

  “First, he doesn’t change. He reminds us daily about how goddamn resolute he is,” Noel said bitterly. “And second, I don’t think you can count on him conveniently dying and saving you having to confront him. Finally, three and a half years will be too late for Tilda. How’s studying agronomy at a shit college on Mars going to help her get into a quality university, especially after she backed out?”