Old Mars

Shoals MARY ROSENBLUM

MAARTIN XAI GRABBED HIS COVERALLS FROM THE HOOK BY the door, checked the charge on his breather, and headed down the street to the public lock, the one closest to the garden domes. Outside, the usual afternoon winds swirled, twisting dust devils across the red-and-ochre plain that stretched beyond the dome, bounded by the spires that edged the canal. A half dozen dust devils skittered across the dull green-brown of the cyan fields, raising thin trails of red dust.

That’s where Dad was, off with the other grown-ups, planting more cyan fields where they found enough water, down deep. Making oxygen.

Dad couldn’t see it the way it really was. None of them could. He strolled toward the garden dome until he was out of range of the lock cams, tasting Mars on his tongue, even as breather air filled his lungs. The dust devils changed course and zigzagged toward him and he smiled. Soreh, who ran the weigh room, had been complaining last night as she drank beer with Dad that the dust devils hung around the settlement, that they followed her. Dad had laughed at her.

She was right, but he didn’t tell her. She’d told Dad that he must have gotten brain damage in the blast.

Out of cam range, he hiked away from the low garden domes. Have to stop and check the lines on the way back. Not now. The leading pair of dust devils converged as he reached the edge of the cyan field, their passage a dry scuff in the thin atmosphere. He stopped, braced himself as they twirled around him. Let his eyes go blurry.

He stood on a mosaic plaza, the tiles of shimmering green, ruby, and deep azure laid out in swirling arcs radiating from a cluster of crystal basins. Water leaped in the center of each basin, giving off the tinkle of glass chimes as it splashed back down, overflowing the rim and trickling across the plaza in snaking streams. The two Martians stood in front of him. He smiled at them, recognizing them. He’d named them Rose and Shane because he liked the names. He wasn’t sure that “name” was something that they understood. It wasn’t like they talked in words.

Tall and skinny as the winter trees he’d seen vids of from Earth, they pirouetted, bathing him in their smiles. Well, it felt like a smile. He pirouetted with them, laughing without his mouth because they heard that. Their faces had looked weird at first, with a ridge pushing out down the middle from forehead to chin, so that their elongated, cloudy eyes were set back on either side of the ridge. Their mouths were perfectly round, mostly closed with pale lips, although now and again they opened wide to show darkness and nothing like teeth that he could see. He had no idea what they ate, had never seen a Martian eating.

They fluttered their long, six-fingered hands, and he followed them toward the canal along a long, curving street paved with azure tiles edged with silver so that it flashed in the sunshine, a ghostly image overlaid on red dust and rock. Tall, twisted spires of buildings rose on either side and the tall, slender Martians strolled in and out, crossing the spaces between the buildings on narrow, arching ribbons of crystal, like graceful tightrope walkers he’d seen in vids of old-days circuses. Only, you could see in the circus videos that the tightrope walkers were afraid of falling.

Nobody here was afraid.

Five more Martians had joined them, fluttering their hands as they strolled along the azure path in a ghostly shimmer, their half-length robes fluttering in the breeze, a shifting rainbow of color, like an oil slick on the air. Small thorny plants covered with pink blossoms lined the path here, barely visible in the noonday sun, and the spires were less crowded. Maartin stopped, fascinated, as one of the plants began to rock back and forth. It slowly worked thick rootlets free of the soil. The rootlets, pink and fleshy, flexed like fingers, stretching and elongating, reaching away from the path to bury themselves in the reddish soil. Slowly, the rootlets contracted, pulling the plant away from the neat row along the path.

A Martian hurried up, long fingers of one hand fluttering furiously. The other hand held a slender black wand. The Martian poked the tip of the wand into the soil where the plant had anchored its rootlets. The rootlets whipped out of the soil, coiling tightly under the plant’s thorny branches. It shook its dull green leaves with a threatening rustle and all its thorns slowly aligned to point at the Martian with the wand. The Martian shook its fingers at the plant and poked the wand tip into the soil again. Slowly, the rootlets extended on the far side, and the plant began to drag itself back to the path and the space it had left between its neighbors. Just like the school av’. Maartin covered a smile because moving his mouth made his Martian friends finger-laugh at him. The plant looked defeated, its leaves drooping slightly, its thorns no longer erect.

A finger of urgency prodded him and he looked up. The group of Martians had stopped and were looking back at him. Rose stepped forward. It was her urgency he’d felt. Her. He shrugged as he hurried to catch up. She felt like a her, and he wasn’t sure why, but she did. She looked the same as Shane and he felt like a he.

The canal lay ahead. Towers soared gracefully along its rippling expanse. Barges floated on the water, moving slowly along. When he sneaked out at dusk, the water looked almost solid, but in the sunshine, you could see the empty bed through the barges and the water. Colorful awnings flapped in the breeze, and, in their shade, Martians reclined on footed cushions, their fingers flickering in conversation. A trio stood at the bow of one barge, blowing into polished and twisted horns that branched into multiple mouths. He couldn’t hear anything, but they gave out a soft blue smoke and suddenly he was filled with gentle feelings, sort of like the way he felt at night, when Mom used to tuck in the covers and say good night. He swallowed, and Rose drifted back to walk close to him, floating along on her long toes, as if she was nearly weightless. She waved her fingers in front of him and her head dipped, mouth opening briefly.

Sharing his sorrow. He blinked. They had never paid this much attention to him before. Sometimes they walked with him, but there was no … communication. He felt them some, but they usually didn’t really feel him.

Maybe that was changing.

He closed his eyes, remembering. Mom and her gentle hands, her touch on his face, the way she laughed when Dad looked at her. A tear slid down his face and he wiped it away, Mars dust gritty on his skin, his eyes on the crystal spires, the sparkling water of the canal. Mom would believe him. That he saw … this. The way it really was.

If she was here.

An explosion shattered the quiet, and Maartin flinched as an invisible hand shoved him. The canal, the barges, vanished. On the far side of the canal, where the Rim rose against the pale greenish sky, a burst of red dust fountained upward and a narrow and elegant tower of rock dissolved into a waterfall of pulverized fragments. More clouds of dust billowed outward, and a faint thump followed. Dust devils skittered around him, zigzagging angry patterns across the ground, and he blinked, his eyes tearing as they filled with dust.

Miners. He swallowed. Hard. Felt the swallow turn to stone as it sank into his belly. He blurred his eyes, tried to see the spires again, the barges, through the drifting curtains of dust. He could see them to the left, to the right, way down the canal. Martians stood on the barges, fingers flickering and pointing.

In front of him, only dust, the canal bed empty and dry.

The pile of rubble that had been the rock tower seemed to smoke as dust seeped from it. Machines crawled around the edges, swallowing broken red stone, spewing tails of red dust and rock now. On either side, more columns of rock twined skyward, forming the rim, twisted like the horns of the unicorns he’d seen in the kiddie videos he used to watch. Carved by the wind, Dad said, they all said. The dust devils drifted across the plain toward the dust cloud, zigzagging around the machines. One of the figures grabbed at his full-face breather as a dust devil snatched at it, and one of the machines bogged down and stopped. More figures hurried to it.

He veered left, to the crumbled edge of the canal, where you could scramble down to the bottom. The sides were mostly still clean and vertical. Only here and there had they crumbled so that it wasn’t a sheer drop to the floor. He slid down, dust a red flag trailing away in the always-wind, stretched his eyes, trying to see water, barges.

“Hey.”

He froze. Looked over his shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing down here?” A short, squat figure, bulky in dull, metallic-colored coveralls, stepped forward to block his path. Maartin had missed him in the morning shadow.

A miner.

He stared into hard gray eyes behind safety goggles, a weathered face with a scraggle of beard sweating beneath a full-mouth breather mask.

“I asked you a question, kid.” A gloved hand clamped down on Maartin’s arm. “You coulda been under that rock when it came down. You wanta die?”

He shook his head, his stomach twisted up in his throat.

“Hey, we warned you folk at the settlement to stay away, didn’t you hear?” The gray eyes softened a bit. “We’re gonna be blowing another outcrop. You’re underneath, you could get dead.”

Dad hadn’t said the miners were coming. He wouldn’t. He struggled to find words.

“Hey, I got a kid brother about your age.” The miner let go of his arm. “I wouldn’t want to see him get hurt, neither.”

“You … killed … Mother.” That burst out, as clear and edged as broken glass. He swung at the man’s face, wanting to hurt him, wanting to …

“Hey, hey, whoa!” The man put his hands up, held him off, ducking the swings. “Cool yer jets, kid. We don’t kill anybody.”

Maartin grabbed at his breather hose, struggled as the man gripped his arms. The words were gone as abruptly as they had come and his tongue knotted, threatening to choke him.

Another figure came around the bend in the canal. “Hey, Jorge …” The man stopped, fists planting on narrow hips, his lean face sharp-edged as a Rim rock in the morning light. “Jeez, these hogs don’t have the sense God gave rocks, do they? Don’t they get it that they gotta stay clear? Bring ’im in.” He started to turn back. “We’ll ship ’im back, prosecute for trespass. Maybe that’ll keep ’em away.”

“Ah, it’s a kid, Ter.”

“Can it, Jorge, you’re a damn softie.” The skinny man stepped forward, pulling plastic cuffs from his belt. “C’mere, kid. You’re in trouble now.”

Suddenly, the air was full of hissing as dust devils circled, zigzagged. The skinny man yelled as a rock bounced off his forehead and Maartin caught a glimpse of bright blood. The other man, Jorge, ducked as a rock screamed past his head. Maartin tore free and ran, pushing off the smooth floor of the canal, stretching out and really traveling now, the walls flashing past, the man, Ter’s, shout torn away by distance. The dust devils danced around him, to the side, behind, so that he ran curtained by red dust, the canal an open path ahead. He didn’t slow to climb out where he’d come down, just kept running, settling into a rhythm so that his breather could keep up.

Anger filled him, deep and dark, heavy as stone, an anger as big as the planet.

He looked back, and the dust devils veered, so that he could see through the thinning dust. They weren’t chasing him—but they couldn’t catch him if they did. He could outrun any of the grown-ups in the settlement. Adaptation, Dad had called it when Maartin started winning their races, back when he was ten. “The planet is shaping you.”

They weren’t going to catch him. His breather was working hard and he slowed, kind of pushing himself off with his toes, letting his body do the work, like the Martians moved, like their bodies could sort of float. He could see them again now—they weren’t dust devils anymore—pushing along beside him with the same floating gait, but lighter than he could do it. Rose drifted beside him and anger hummed in the air, making his back teeth ache.

It would never be there again. The canal. The barges and the towers. He’d only see red rock if he came this way again. His stomach cramped up and he skidded to a stop. There was another collapse a klick farther on. He walked now, trudging along the smooth floor of the canal. The vague shapes of barges drifted above him on the surface of the water that used to be. The floor was like glass but not as slick. Dad said he’d looked at it … or one just like it … from Earth, when he was a boy and wanted to come here.

Long time ago.

Maartin stopped. The Rim came right down to the canal, as if the rock spires were ready to step into the water that used to flow here. He found the small fall of rock that let him climb the smooth face of stone to the foot of the Rim. Above him, two spires twisted skyward like dancers, upraised hands joined. A soft whisper tickled his mind.

Grief. Anger. Maartin leaned back against the stone. Maybe it was dead for them, too, the canal, the water, the barges and players? A slow, depthless sadness filled him, their sadness. He blurred his eyes and looked out at the canal. Here, water still sparkled in it and on the far side, glittering crystal spiderways arched and twisted, crisscrossed and vanished into the distance. The people floated along the strands, long fingers waving at each other. Vines twined around the base of the spiderways here, thick with red, purple, and orange leaves. Their leaves were shaped a little like the tomato plants in Kurt Vishnu’s plot, even if the leaves weren’t green. Other plants that looked like spiny melons dotted the ground. That kind moved, too. He watched as one tall one stretched its branches, bruise-purple leaves quivering.

A Martian drifted up and over the canal on one of the tall, looping arches that crossed it, coming quite close to where Maartin was standing. He, Maartin thought. The Martian stepped off the web strand where it ran past the Rim and looked at him. Really looked.

Only Rose and sometimes Shane had looked at him, up until now. He shivered, couldn’t look away, and that dark sadness filled him, streaked with fiery veins of anger. He couldn’t look away. It was as if he were diving into red dust, dry, suffocating. He gasped. Jerked back. The long fingers curled, just so.

A smile?

He curled his fingers, felt … amusement. Approval.

Another blast rocked the ground.

The web and the water and the Martian all shimmered and …

… were gone.

Maartin slumped back against the rock tower, his gut hollow.

He could see the towering plume of dust, couldn’t see which spire they had blown apart this time. How much more had died? He pushed himself to his feet, broke into a trot, measuring his breathing. Time to get home before Dad got back with the cyan crew and found him gone.

To his left, all he saw was the empty red dust and scattered rocks on the canal floor. He slowed to a walk as the rows of low, inflated greenhouses came into view. Bad to show up panting. No reason to hurry. Their plot was at the far end, closest to the vestibule. He entered, sealed the door, and opened the inner door. The rush of warm, humid air soothed his dry lips, and he pulled off his breather for a moment, so that he could smell the rich green-and-dirt-scented air. Too bad you had to use a breather in here, but the air from the settlement filters was heavy in carbon dioxide, very low in oxygen. He’d passed out once, and Dad had had a fit. He pulled the door closed behind him. Seaul Ku was working in her plot, just across from theirs. “Were you lost?” Her narrow dark eyes, nested in smile-wrinkles, fixed on his face. “I saw you out there, following the dust devils. You looked lost.” She shook a blue-gloved finger at him. “You should not follow the dust devils. They can knock you down. Break your breather. Then what would you do?”

“They … wouldn’t.” His tongue struggled, let the words out. Mistake. Too late to call the words back now. “I … I’m care …” He gave up, pulled his pad out, tapped it. I watch how the wind is blowing them along and stay clear. He smiled, but her eyes had narrowed with that look. Oh well. Your beets are bigger than ours. He gave her a big smile. Howcum?

“Ah, it’s that greenish rock you find sometimes.” She wagged her finger at him again, her back not quite straight, even when she stood upright, so that she had to tilt her head up to look at him. “It’s got a lot of phosphorus in it, I guess. And the beets love it. Only because you help me when my back hurts.” She gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Try it, but don’t tell anybody else, especially not Sascha. He thinks he’s such a hot gardener.” She cackled. “You’re always wandering off, keep an eye out for it, bring some back. Bring some back for me, too, since I told you.” She gave him a sly look. “And I won’t tell your dad that you were out there. Your legs are younger than mine. Soreh told me that Rav, the market guy from town, asks specifically for my beets. And pays extra for them, too. Now, he’ll pay extra for yours, too.”

Soreh said a lot of things. Won’t tell anybody. U want help? He didn’t need her headshake to know she didn’t, he could always see it when she was in pain, sort of like a heat shimmer in the air. Wasn’t there today. He nodded, waved, and stepped over the plastic tape that marked the boundary of each plot. “Dad … back …?”

“Ah, they’re already in.” She squatted amidst the beet rows, gently loosening the reddish soil around each crown of dark green leaves. “I guess the patch wasn’t as big as Gus said it was and they got the seeding done early. He came by to see if you were here.” She kept her eyes fixed on her cultivator as she worked the moist soil. “I … said I didn’t know where you were. But you shouldn’t go wandering off like that.” She shot him a quick sideways glance. “You could get lost. Those dust devils could knock you down.”

He shook his head, knelt, and started checking the drip lines, looking for any telltale dry or soggy patches that might mean a leak of too much precious water or a plugged line. He hurried. The longer Dad wondered where he was, the more likely he was to check back on the house database. Sure enough, he managed to find a couple of drippers that were partially plugged. Dad would probably go over to Canny’s place. She brewed beer out of all kinds of stuff, and he’d heard Dan Zheng say that this batch was really good. Dad was pretty easygoing about his skimping on lesson time after a couple of beers.

The sun was pretty low by the time he headed in, and he didn’t have to blur his eyes very hard to see the plaza and the fountains. Four or five musicians were piping pink and green mist from the twisted horns, over near the fountain. Some of their spinach was ready for market, and he detoured to the settlement-warehouse entrance. The weigh room was cold, right down near freezing. He set the unit basket on the scale, entered his dad’s code and contents. The scale beeped, uploading the weight of spinach contributed to their ag total for the month. Rubbing his stinging hands together, he headed for the door.

Just as it scraped open.

“Darn dust gets into everything. You gotta replace bearings here all the time.” The mayor, Al Siggrand, shoved the door all the way open. “Hey, your dad’s lookin’ for you!” He gave Maartin a fake scowl. “You weren’t wandering out there by yourself again, were you?” He talked a little loud, as if Maartin couldn’t hear right. “You know your dad told you not to do that. Do you remember?”

Maartin nodded, but his eyes went to the man standing behind the short, squat mayor, dressed in a full miner’s suit. The miner he’d talked to.

“Maartin, meet Jorge.” The mayor jerked his chin at the miner. “I guess these guys are tired of freeze-dried. They’re willing to pay good market price for some fresh stuff for a change.”

Oh great, and now he’d tell the mayor that Maartin had been in the canal. Maartin swallowed.

“Hey, Maartin.” The miner was smiling at him. He had a long, freckled face and hair that wasn’t quite the color of the Martian dust that coated the spots where the breather mask didn’t cover. “Nice to meet you. Want to sell us some of your produce? What do you and your dad grow?”

Maartin pushed past them, out into the settlement alley.

“Don’t mind him.” The closing door couldn’t quite block out the mayor’s words. “He’s not quite all there, got a head injury in a rockfall accident a couple years back. Can’t talk anymore. He gets lost, wanders off. We all kind of look out for him.”

Fists jammed into his pockets, Maartin headed left, toward their rooms. He could feel the old city around them. Through the transparent skin of the settlement dome, dust devils danced in the fading light, weaving complex and angry patterns across the barren ground beyond the garden domes. The spires and spiderways shimmered in the bloody light of the setting sun.

Angry?

He stopped at the intersection to their alley. Blinked.

Yes. Angry.

Their door slid open to dark rooms. Dad would be at Canny’s. He headed there, feet scuffing up a thin haze of dust that seeped in no matter what you did. Canny’s big two-room place was just around the corner on the street and the door was open, which made the mayor mad because the rooms were all a higher O₂ concentration than the dome itself, but with the jam of bodies crowding the space, you could see why. A half dozen people stood around the doorway, mugs in hand.

“Hey, Maartin.” Celie, who made the mugs and some pretty cool dishes from the red Martian dust and sold ’em to the produce buyer from City, waved hers at him. “Give your dad time to finish his pint, eh?” She winked at him, her round face framed by gray curls.

“Th … mayor … selling …” His tongue struggled with the words. To the miners, he tapped out. He faced her, horrified to feel a hot sting behind his eyelids.

“Honey, it’s okay. Really.” She put her arm around him. “It’s a good thing they’re buying from us. They’re not the bad people who were responsible for the accident. They like our veggies. And they’re going to pay us a lot of money.”

It wasn’t an accident and everybody knew it. And now they were killing the city. He blinked, struggling to hold in the tears.

“Hey, Maart, where were you?”

Dad saved him, face flushed, pushing through the crowd. “Darn, kid, I was worried. And then Seaul texted me and said you were cleaning drippers after all, that she figured you were working on someone else’s plot out there and that’s why she hadn’t seen you. Was that where you were?” His face relaxed some as Maartin nodded. He had the tears buried deep now.

“… helping,” Maartin stuttered. He nodded some more.

“Okay, then, you text me next time, let me know where you are.” Dad put an arm around his shoulders. “I don’t want to be organizing any search parties for no reason, hear?”

He nodded, got a head tousle from Dad. He smelled faintly of cyans and a little bit like drying-out water. Maartin had helped them seed a few times, mixing in the cyanobacteria spores, setting up the pumps and microdrip system that brought the deep-drilled moisture up and wicked it into the soil. They didn’t need a lot of water, the cyans. They were engineered, just went into biosuspension when it got too dry, came back to life with more water. Sometimes Dad would squat over an established patch and take off his breather. He said you could smell the oxygen, that before Maartin died, he’d be able to walk around without a breather. Maartin couldn’t smell anything but cyans. He walked around without oxygen all the time in the dome.

Dad got him a mug of juice and Maartin retreated to his usual perch on a plastic bin that stored bar towels and stuff, over in the corner. Nobody much noticed him, it was kind of dark there and, sitting, he was down low. People didn’t much look down when they were drinking Canny’s beer; they looked at each other or around the room at other faces. Four or five kids were playing some kind of chase game, running in and out. Celie yelled at them for it. He knew them. The girls were okay, he pretty much steered clear of the boys. Especially Ronan. He was the smallest, but he made up for it in meanness. Whenever the adults weren’t around, they did a great job of illustrating the pack behavior he’d read about in his school programs. He wondered if the Martians behaved like humans. He’d never seen any sign of conflict on the streets or the spiderways. No yelling. No pushing. Or maybe they weren’t all that different, just used another way to push one another around and call one another names.

Rising voices snapped him out of it. The kid pack was back, hanging around the door. Hanging around five miners. Maartin stiffened, pulling back into the shadow beneath the makeshift bar.

“Hey, folks, nice to meet you, just wanted to stop in, sample the local brew.” Jorge was in front, smiling and easy.

“You guys aren’t finding any veins of your druggie-ore running our way, are you?” Celie spoke up and it went quiet, right now. Maartin watched as people moved or didn’t move. A small space opened up around the miners, and the hellos were halfhearted from the ones that didn’t move.

The mayor bustled through the door, slapped one of the men on the shoulder. “This round’s on me!” He beamed, but he was looking to see who moved and who didn’t, too. “Let’s show these hardworking boys our hospitality. Fill ’em up, Celie!”

The moment broke. Celie opened her mouth, but already people were crowding to the counter, their mugs in hand. And Dad? Maartin didn’t wait to see. He slipped to the wall, away from the rush to the bar, slipped along the wall to the door and out.

“Hey, it’s the retard!”

Maartin flinched as a hand closed on the back of his shirt and yanked him backward, around the corner and out of sight of Canny’s doorway.

“They texted an alert, retard, and we had to go lookin’ for you.” Ronan’s breath was hot in his ear, stinking of garlic. “That was my time on the game-net and I had like five minutes left by the time they said we could quit lookin’.” He twisted his fist, and Maartin choked. “Retard, somebody’s gotta pay for my game time!”

It was going to hurt. Maartin closed his eyes, but he could feel the other two boys, hanging just back from Ronan. Hunger. It felt like hunger. He shivered.

“So.” Ronan’s voice was buttery and he twisted the shirt harder. “How do you think you oughta pay, retard?”

He couldn’t breathe and in a minute he was going to start to struggle, his body wouldn’t obey him anymore. Red and green spots flashed against the blackness of his closed eyes and his chest was going to explode.

Ronan yelped and let go. Maartin stumbled on his knees, barely feeling the impact, sucking in painful shuddering breaths that made him dizzy.

“You got a thing about picking on people?” a slow, familiar voice drawled.

Maartin scrambled on his knees. Jorge had Ronan by the back of the neck, was holding the boy about a foot off the ground, the way you’d hold a bag of fertilizer. Ronan’s eyes were wide and his skin had gone about three shades paler.

“I’m talkin’ to you, kid.” Jorge shook him very very gently, and Ronan squeaked as Jorge let go suddenly and dropped him to his feet.

He bolted to the corner. “I’m gonna tell the mayor,” he yelled back. “You can’t do that!”

“Go tell him.” Jorge smiled. “And I just did it.” He looked down at Maartin for a long moment. “You need to learn how to do something to people like that, kid.” He held out his hand. “C’mon. Get up.”

Maartin sucked in a breath. “Hit …?” The words came this time.

“Yep.” His eyebrows rose and he tilted his head, frowning. “You’re not retarded. So how come people say that about you?”

Maartin shrugged, looked away.

“I mean, you act like an idiot, sure. Nobody oughta be runnin’ around out on a strange planet on their own. You get hurt, could be a while before your people get to you. I’ve seen miners die a couple miles from a dig just because they wandered off and didn’t tell anybody. This planet’s got more bad luck than a picnic’s got ants.”

Maartin frowned. Shook his head. “Not … luck. Not … alone.” And he clamped his lips together. Those words had come out on their own, he didn’t mean to let them.

“Yeah, I heard you got invisible buddies out there. I hope they can carry you home when you bust a leg.” But his eyes had gone very narrow, and Maartin had to look away again. “What do you see out there?”

He sounded funny … as if he maybe didn’t think it was just imagination. Or the head injury, like Dad did. He shrugged, stared down at the patterns the dust made on the street.

“I know why you hate us now. Celie in there, she made sure I knew. She’s got a tongue on her, that gal. I’m sorry, Maartin. I’m sorry that you got hurt, that your mom got killed. Yeah, you got some rogue companies, and man, you just don’t know what it does to guys, thinkin’ they got their hands on enough money to go back home, live like a prince. Most of us … we’re never gonna get home.” Shadows moved in his dark eyes. “Costs a fortune to pay transport and you never really get your ticket out here paid off, it’s too easy to spend what you get on beer, or booze, or chemicals so you can go home the easy way.” He laughed harshly. “Only way you’re gonna make more than your ticket back is to find a shoal. That … I guess that was what made those guys crazy. You hear about ’em. Pearls all over the place, the whole crew can go home in style, awake, no danger of cryodamage from steerage. Buy that palace when they get there. Take care of their families.”

Maartin looked up. He sounded so … sad. “Why … people want … pearls?” The words were coming easier now, easier than with Dad even. “Why … so much?”

“You never held one?” Jorge chuckled and reached into his pocket. “I guess they do different stuff to different people. Mostly, they make sex feel really really great.” He winked. “Kind of like you’re givin’ and takin’ at the same time. That sells really well back home, you better believe it. Up here, sometimes you can see weird stuff.” He held out his hand. “Pick it up.”

Maartin looked at the small ovoid on Jorge’s palm. It was the color of dust, but veins of silver and gold swirled through it, and, as he stared at it, tiny starbursts of light seemed to flicker off and on, deep in its depths.

“I should turn it in, I guess, but I … I see stuff. Pretty stuff. Cheaper than the drugs.” He laughed that harsh laugh again. “Kind of holds your eye, doesn’t it?” He pushed his hand closer. “Pick it up. See what it does for you.”

Maartin reached for it and just before he touched it, the hum of the city around him intensified, rising instantly to a howl as his fingers brushed the smooth …

He let the flow of the crowd carry him along the wide boulevard, where conversation flowed like the sparkling waters of the canal in the distance. Happy, comfortable, belonging. All around him, slender residents of the city floated along the twisting spiderway … the name for it flashed in his mind. They were all heading toward the canal, and suddenly, the happy/comfortable feeling cracked, streaked through with ugly red anger. Anger. He looked ahead, where the spires twisted into the sky and the fragile bridges crossed the canal in soaring arches. And winced as he spied the empty, dry, ugly space where the miners were working. The anger was building, building, building … washing back across the plain, choking him, turning the sky and air the color of dead dust, blurring the lovely spires, blurring … All around him people stretched out long-fingered hands, reached death from the air, held death like silvery spears that shimmered and twisted, humming, humming, humming, death … He gasped for air, choking on anger-dust, struggling …“Maartin? He’s waking up.”

Dad’s voice.

Arms were holding him. Dad? He blinked, his eyelids gummy, sticky, forced them open.

He was in the infirmary. Everything was white, and a screen winked numbers and flickering graphs beside the bed. Dad leaned over him, his face blocking out the screen and the people strolling through and around his bed, fingers flickering in conversation. “You had some kind of seizure, son. Jorge here brought you in. He said it happened when he touched a Martian pearl.”

It wasn’t a pearl, what a silly name. A pearl was from the shell of a mollusk, a creature from Earth’s oceans, how dumb to think that this was from some kind of sea creature. The people standing around his bed waved their fingers in agreement, flicking laughter at him. Silly comparison, not-too-smart, not-worth-our-attention. They just don’t know. His fingers twitched on the white sheet covering him and he absently noticed the garbled sounds coming from his … from his mouth. It took him a moment to remember the right word.

“Maartin? What are you trying to say? Stay with us, son.”

He blinked, and the strolling people faded a little. He could see through them now, see Dad’s face again, more worried now, see Jorge standing at the foot of the bed.

“Maartin?”

“I … oh … kay. Dad.” He shaped the words carefully, closed his hands into fists as his fingers tried to move. Mouth. Focus. “Fain. Ted?”

“Hello, Maartin, how are you feeling?” Another face swam into focus, pushing Dad aside. Dr. Abram, the settlement’s health-tech person. Dr. Abram was smiling one of those too-wide smiles that meant stuff was wrong. “So what happened? Mr. Moreno here says that some of the boys were getting a little rough. Did you hit your head on something?”

He could feel the pressure of their attention, Dad and Jorge. His fingers twitched again, trying to explain. He clenched his fists more tightly, made his head rock forward and back. A nod. The word for the gesture came back to him. He nodded again. “On. Wall.” It was getting easier to find the words for the lie in the tumbled chaos inside his head.

“I told Al that the boys were bullying Maartin.” Dad’s voice rose as he faced Abram. “But no, he’s not gonna do anything but shake his finger at those punks. When did that ever do any good? And now this …”

“Easy, Paul.” Abram put his arm on Dad’s shoulder. “There’s no hemorrhaging, no pressure on the brain or areas of injury, according to the scans. Apparently the bump caused something like a short and sparked a lot of unusual brain activity, that’s all. The root cause is probably the earlier accident, the original brain trauma.” He was speaking very soothingly, and Dad looked away. He was trying not to cry.

Maartin looked at Jorge. He was frowning. Yeah. He knew that the doctor was wrong. Maartin waited for him to say so, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he gave Maartin a crooked smile. “Glad you’re feeling better, Maartin. Hey, you get better, okay?” He lifted a finger to his forehead in a kind of salute and left the room.

“I’m … I’m glad he came along.” Dad looked after him, his face tight. Nodded grudgingly. “Good to know a few of ’em are okay.” He turned back to Abram, anger in his eyes once more. “I’m going to go talk to Al. Right now. This is a matter for community intervention.”

“You heard what the boys had to say.” Abram shook his head.

“They’re lying.”

“He’s going to be fine, Paul. Kids are rough. They act like bullies once in a while. This scared ’em. They learned from it.”

“Maartin, I’ll be back in a little while.” Dad was talking to him like the mayor talked to him. Too loud and too slow. Maartin swallowed sadness. Nodded.

“You’re going to be fine, Maartin.” Abram wasn’t looking at him, was looking at the screen with all the numbers and graphs. “But we’re going to keep you here a little while longer.” He gave that too-wide smile again, but he still wasn’t looking at Maartin. “You were unconscious for over three days.”

Three days? Maartin nodded, but the doctor wasn’t looking at him and didn’t notice. He lay back on the pillow and let the crowd in the plaza come back into focus. It had thinned now. People walked away, through the walls as if they weren’t there at all, and he could see the buildings, the road, the spiderways arching overhead. The curved wall of a building crossed through the room, right through the end of the bed. He watched Abram walk through it and right through a trio of people fluttering an intense conversation as they strolled into its wide, arched doorway. He shoved a foot out, tried to feel something as his foot pushed into the building’s wall. Nothing. One of the people rippled her fingers in a smile and said something that didn’t quite make sense, but almost. About his foot. And the building.

“What are you seeing?”

He startled and red flashed on the screen. Jorge stepped forward quickly and touched it. The red went away and he glanced furtively at the door. “Man, they’ve got the alarms set way high. I guess the doc is afraid you’re gonna seize again.” He perched awkwardly on the foot of the bed, oblivious to the two people who hurried through him. “So what do you see?” His dark eyes were intent on Maartin’s face.

“I … the city. Spiderways. People.” He let his fingers talk, too. It helped the words come. Jorge stared at them.

“With long fingers and they wave ’em all the time, right? Silvery hair? Skinny? Kind of weird.”

“… Beautiful. Like … spires.”

“Yeah.” Jorge sighed. The sound was tired. Old.

Maartin squinted at his face, at the shadows in his eyes.

“So it’s not just me.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I couldn’t figure out how I came up with this stuff. What are they, Maartin? Do you know?”

“… people.”

“Martians?”

Maartin shrugged. Silly question.

“Ghosts?”

Maartin frowned. Shook his head slowly. “Ghosts … dead people.”

Jorge groaned and buried his face in his hands. “I’ve been asking around. For a long time. Yeah, the guys who handle pearls see stuff, but nobody keeps a pearl very long. Well, me. But I wanted to figure out what I was seeing. I figured they were ghosts.” He raised his head and fixed his eyes on Maartin. “I did some checking. Found the old news post about your … about the accident. You and your mom got caught in a debris slide from a blast. It took out a small dome.”

They’d been visiting Teresa, Mom’s friend. She’d laughed a lot and taught him to play poker. Maartin closed his eyes as once again, the dome above them buckled, split, and red dust and rock flowed in like water. Screaming split his ears, then silence, darkness, and …

… people.

“I’m so sorry.”

Maartin opened his eyes as something brushed his face. Jorge was wiping tears from his cheeks.

“That was the richest shoal of pearls ever found. People … people went crazy. So, what are they?” Jorge was whispering now. “The pearls. Do you know?”

Maartin thought about it. He did know. He wasn’t sure he had the words, wove a faltering explanation in the air with his fingers, biting his lip, waiting for the breath-words to come. They didn’t.

“What does that mean? What you’re doing with your fingers?”

Maartin shook his head. “I … I think they … like …” He drew a deep breath. “… a soul. No.” He shook his head. “… projector? From long ago?”

“So they are ghosts.”

He sounded so relieved. Maartin shook his head. “… not dead. Alive.” He struggled to find words that would explain, as his fingers quivered. “Dif … different way … of being.” He raised his head, stared into Jorge’s dark eyes. “They live forever. But … when … when you take … pearls away … they … die. Everything. City. Spires. Spiderways.”

“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.

He looked old. Maartin straightened to his knees, his fingers asking what was wrong, scattering soil crumbs across his thighs.

“What are they?” Jorge squatted to face him. “What are the people you see if they’re not ghosts?”

His fingers danced, explaining. He shook his head. Groping for words. They were getting harder to find. “They … are … the pearls.” Inadequate. “Like … like …” He thought hard, running through all the earth-things he’d learned. “Projector? Storage? They … live … forever. Until the sun … eats the planet.” Gave up, slumping, his fingers snapping and weaving his frustration in the air between them.

Jorge was staring at them. “Live forever?” He shook his head. “They can’t be alive. Like you said, they’re images. Ghosts. Not real. The pearls are rocks.” He lifted his head to meet Maartin’s eyes.

He wanted Maartin to say yes. Wanted it a lot. Maartin shook his head. He studied the explanation as his fingers rippled and twined it in the air. “Spectrum.” That was close. “Energy?” Not quite. “Different spectrum. They live.”

Jorge closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the hope was gone. “Cory and Bantu have been scratching around here when nobody was watching.” His voice was hoarse. “Your settlement is sitting on a shoal.”

Maartin didn’t bother to nod. Sharp-edge-alert had drifted up behind him. It occurred to Maartin that Sharp-edge-alert always seemed to be close by.

“I’m …” Jorge sucked in a ragged breath. “I’m going to warn your mayor. To leave. Just clear out of here. The settlement. I’ve … you can’t talk to them. It’s all about … going home. Like I told you.”

They would destroy the settlement, the way they’d destroyed the other one. Worse, because the shoal was beneath them, not up in the rocks above. He closed his eyes, imagining the mayor, his father, when the big earth-chewers rolled up to the gardens. “The mayor … will call the Planetary Council.” Maartin groped for the words, forced them out. “They’ll help.”

“No, they won’t.” Jorge shook his head, looked away. “We got better weapons and they know it. We’ll pay off the people who need paying off—you can do that when you’ve got a shoal’s worth of pearls. Everybody wants them, Maartin.” His voice was harsh. “Everybody. You better ask your Martian buddies to defend you if you want to stay here.” His laugh came out as bitter as the bleakness in his eyes. “Nobody else is gonna do it. Come on.” He grabbed Maartin’s arm. “I gotta get back before they suspect I came over here to warn you, or I’m dead meat.”

“You’ll kill …” His fingers writhed outrage. “You’ll kill … the city.”

“The settlement, you mean? Not if you guys don’t fight back.” Jorge was dragging him along the path now, toward the exit lock.

He didn’t mean the settlement. Sharp-edge-alert drifted along behind.

Anger.

And then he left, loping across the pastel tiles. Everybody in the plaza stopped and turned toward him. The water in the fountains subsided into low, burbling mounds and the mists drifting from the pipes turned an ugly shade of brownish green. Cold sweat broke out on Maartin’s skin, and he thought he was going to faint as Jorge yanked him into the lock and closed the inner door.

They found the mayor at Canny’s. Maartin hadn’t realized how late it was; the sun was sinking into the red crags beyond the city and the canal. Most people were there. Dad was leaning on the barplank, and he looked about as old as Jorge. Maartin hadn’t noticed it before. There was a lot of gray in his hair now. A crowd of people streamed through the room, heading toward the canal, slipping through the settlers, through the walls, hurrying. He’d never seen one of the people hurry. Maartin peered after them, the anger-hum intensifying steadily, making his bones ache.

“What the hell are you saying?”

The mayor’s angry bellow yanked Maartin’s attention back to the room. Jorge stepped away from him as the settlers gathered to face him, eyes hard, mouths grim. The people streamed through them, more of them now. Maartin doubled over with the pain of the anger-howl. Jorge retreated a step. “There’s nothing you can do.” He spread his hands. “You fire a shot at them, they’ll raze this settlement. Get your stuff and get out now and we’ll try not to damage too much.”

“You do that and the Planetary Council will issue death warrants in a heartbeat.” The mayor stepped forward, chin out. “You’ll all die.”

“You think so?” Jorge stopped retreating, his eyes as bleak as they had been in the garden dome. “I lied to you.” He was speaking to Maartin now, only to Maartin. “I was there, I was part of the crew that brought the rock down on the settlement over near First Down. I … knew what they were gonna do. I just quit, walked away. But I didn’t warn the settlers. I … I’m sorry.” His eyes were dark as night. “I’m sorry, Maartin.” He faced the mayor again. “Every one of those men got a death warrant. Every one went home. Rich.” His voice grated, harsh and loud, in the sudden silence. “You got real pearl-money, the death warrant gets kind of delayed. Until the next ship leaves. Got it?”

“Paul, get the rifles. We’ve got twelve in the vault in my office.” The mayor blocked Jorge as he edged toward the door. “Grab him.”

Jorge lunged, went down with a half dozen settlers on his back. Somebody shoved through the crowd with restraints from the little jail room behind the mayor’s office and they strapped his hands behind him, feet together.

“You’re not going to stop ’em.” Jorge shouted the words, his mouth bloody. “You don’t have to die! Just get out! They’ll pay damages after, if you don’t scream to the Council.”

“Fifteen years.” The mayor stood over him, fists at his side. “We’ve been culturing those cyan beds for fifteen years! And you’re just gonna plow ’em all up? And then go home? We can’t go home, and we want to breathe.” He kicked Jorge in the side. “Let’s go!” He turned, grabbed a projectile rifle from someone behind him. “They’re gonna pay for this! We’ll spread out, take cover, and drop a hell of a lot of ’em, soon as they come in range.”

“You do that, and they’ll kill every last one of you!” Jorge yelled from the floor. “There won’t be anything left here!”

Nobody listened.

“Come on, Maartin.” Dad grabbed his arm. “I can’t leave you here. God knows what they’ll do when we start shooting. Stay close!” He dragged Maartin along with the settlers pressing through the door, grabbing breathers.

Dad was scared. His whole body shivered with it.

Wait, wait, wait, don’t go, don’t go that way! His fingers snapped with urgency, but Dad didn’t look, didn’t notice. “No!” He finally forced the word out. “Wait!”

“We can’t wait, son. It’ll be too late.” Dad wasn’t speaking slow, wasn’t really paying attention as he dragged Maartin along.

No one would pay attention. The anger-hum was squeezing his brain, his organs. The plaza was undulating under his feet so that he stumbled, and Dad lost his grip on his arm. He yelled, trying to turn back, but the press of settlers swept him on. The others pounded past him, ignoring him. The spires swayed with the anger and the spiderways shivered; clouds of silvery sparks spouted from the columns in the now-dry fountain, hissing and crackling with an ugly sound.

Dad and the mayor and Celie and all the others were way ahead of him now. He cut right, following his shortcut to the canal. That was the way they’d come. He could get there first. His teeth felt as if they were loosening in their sockets and he clenched them, leaning against the anger-hum, homing in on it.

The people stood in a graceful, curving line, hes and shes, facing the oncoming rumble of the earth-eaters. The machines wallowed along on their heavy treads, churning up clouds of red dust, open maws like fanged mouths ready to suck in red dirt and rock, sieve out the pearls, the city. They rumbled through spires and a landscaped garden of paths and sculpted shrubs surrounded by flocks of creeping plants with purple and silvery blossoms.

The tread didn’t harm the plants or the paths. Not yet.

Not until they started digging up the pearls.

They couldn’t see the people. Neither could Dad. Or the mayor.

The anger formed like milky clouds over the heads of the people, thickening as he watched, a pale fabric that floated above them, a sickly color. They raised their hands, all together, fingers weaving, shaping, twining the scalding energy of the anger into that thickening fabric. Some were turning to face Dad and the mayor. Celie was marching along beside Dad, and, behind her, Seaul Ku panted to keep up. She carried one of the projectile rifles. A small part of Maartin’s brain noticed it and was surprised.

He leaped in front of the people, hands in the air, shrieking to them, fingers wide, hands waving. Not them. They are not bad. You do not understand. We are not the same.

At first, he thought that none of them would look, but they did. The weaving and spinning slowed and the fingers flickered sharply.

Defective. Defective units.

Not bad, no harm, we live here, too. They do not. And Maartin flung his fingers out to point at the miners, saw a faint ripple of shock at his terrible rudeness. But most of the fingers snapped and flickered discussion, too fast for him to follow, flashing and twisting.

Sharp-edge-alert brought his hands down in a slashing gesture, faced the miners. Maartin spun to face the settlers. “Stand back!” The air words came to him, his fingers spread stiff and still, silent, in front of him. “Stand back, the people are going to destroy the miners.”

At first, he thought they’d ignore him, although he saw Dad’s eyes go wide. Then they halted, murmuring, and fear shrilled the murmur, brought their hands up, pointing crudely.

He turned.

As one, the people pulled the woven fabric of the anger-hum from the air and …

… tossed it.

Lightly.

It drifted over the oncoming machines, over the miners trudging purposefully along on either side with energy weapons in their hands. Settled lightly, gently, over them.

They began to scream, backs arching, breathers ripped from their faces as they convulsed, limbs spasming, flopping like the pictures of fish that Maartin had seen on vids, pulled out onto a riverbank to die. The sickly veil dissipated, leaving twitching bodies and machines that lumbered slowly forward. One of the big earth-chewers ran over a body, grinding the man’s torso into the dust.

“Holy crap!” The mayor’s harsh voice rose above the machine rumble. “What the hell happened?”

“Get the machines stopped.” Dad ran forward, grabbed a handhold, and swung into the seat of the lead earth-chewer. He fumbled for a moment or two and it stopped, tracks grinding to a halt. Dad leaped clear as the machine behind it ground into it, slewing it sideways.

The mayor leaped onto that one, and now everybody was running—toward the machines or to the fallen miners or back to the settlement. In a few moments, all the machines had been stopped. None of the miners were moving. Settlers were standing up, shaking their heads, their eyes scared, faces pale.

“My God, storm …” “Dust devils …” “Nasty little twisters …” “Like little tornadoes, like they were … attacking …”

The settlers were all looking at Maartin.

The people were drifting away, heading back to the plaza or stepping up onto the spiderways. A few strolled in the garden and one man played a trio of twisted purple tubes that drifted lavender mist streaked with silver into the air.

“What did you do, son?” Dad’s voice was hushed.

They had gathered in a semicircle between him and the settlement. Scared of him. Looking around. For more dust devils? Maartin faced them, the air words playing hide-and-seek, his fingers weaving an explanation, flickering and twining.

“He sees the Martians. They live here. Right where your settlement is.” Jorge panted up, his wrists welted angry red from the too-tight restraints. “I can see ’em just a little when I hold a pearl. I guess they … they killed the crew.” He swallowed. “I … did you tell them not to kill us, too, Maartin?”

He flickered affirmative. Gave up on the air words.

“I think he means ‘yes.’ ” Jorge stayed back with the crowd, didn’t get too close to him. “I … I caught a few glimpses.”

Everybody wanted to know about the Martians. They asked him questions for a while but gave up when only his fingers explained, talked to Jorge instead. Jorge got things wrong, but Maartin didn’t bother to try to correct him. Dad put an arm around his shoulders and led him away, back to their rooms. Dad asked questions too, but Maartin kept his hands clasped, and, after a while, Dad stopped asking.

They reported the incident to the Planetary Council, and a few people came out. They listened, shook their heads at the evolving interpretation of hidden Martians and long-range energy weapons, and, for a while, everybody was afraid, looking out at the hills as they walked through the strolling musicians on the plaza or through the lower curves of the spiderways.

They were afraid of him, too, but that was actually better than before, since they no longer led him home when the plaza and the walls got tangled up and he walked into something.

And, after a while, they stopped looking for Martians they couldn’t see, and they stopped being afraid of him. The abandoned machines got hauled away and settlers grumbled in Canny’s that the settlement should have been able to claim salvage rights, not the Council. And they went back to planting new cyan beds, and Dad started talking about smelling the oxygen again.

Mostly, Maartin weeded the garden because he liked the smell and feel of the soil, and Seaul Ku had decided he was still the same old Maartin, and he liked that, too. And when he got tired, he strolled in the plaza with Soft-sweet-happy or Firm-thoughtful. Sharp-edge-alert didn’t follow him anymore; he hadn’t seen him since the attack on the miners.

One day, Jorge came into the garden. He’d been working with Dad planting the new bed and had rented a room a few doors down from Canny’s. He squatted down in front of Maartin. “I’m leaving. Gotta stakeholder grant in a new one just going in, over a day’s ride south of City.” His dark eyes held Maartin’s. “I can’t mine anymore.” He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his pearl. “I need to put this back. Where does it go?”

He reached for it and lifted it from Jorge’s palm before he could pull it away. Soft-sweet-happy was crossing the plaza and he called her over with a flick of his fingers, offered it to her. She touched it, vanished it back to its place, and smiled as they both felt the tiny ripple of its return.

“What did you just do?” Jorge was staring at his empty palm. He raised his head. “I hope you’re happy.” He said it softly. “I hope they’re friends with you.”

Pity, Maartin thought. Did he need pity? He thought about it. What needed pity was gone, he decided. His fingers flashed and flickered as he told Jorge about how, even now, his every action, every vibration of every molecule in his flesh was feeding into … a pearl. He would stroll this plaza, share the mist-music, wander the cities and spiderways forever, once it was done.

No. No pity.

“We. Will. Protect.” He managed to find those three words.

Watched the fear creep back into Jorge’s eyes. “The story’s got around among the miners.” He expelled the breath-words on harsh puffs of air. “But stories get ignored. When there’s money.”

Maartin shrugged. Sharp-edge-alert had learned what he needed to know. About imperfect units.

Jorge headed for the lock, taking his fear with him.

It did not matter. The transfer completed.

He stood, stretched, and strolled through the dome and across the plaza, savoring the drift of mist from the fountain, heading for the spiderway where Soft-sweet-happy flickered him a greeting.

No longer imperfect.

Behind him, very faintly, he heard the harsh sound of breath-words.