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  Eve wouldn’t hasten its demise.

  “Do nothing,” she displayed, opening her eyes to deliver the message to Charlie7. “Tell no one. Assign no blame beyond the obvious perpetrators. We will provide no fuel for this fire. If the complaints are ill treatment by Earth, let us Earthlings stay out of it. Unless Mars asks for our help, we’ll let them handle this themselves.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kaylee grabbed a tray from the cafeteria line, wondering how much it would take to convince Ned to ask Earth for a larger import ration of fresh produce. The local hydroponic orchards just couldn’t replicate the flavor of soil-grown apples from back home.

  As she carried her tray over to the table to eat with her coworkers, she realized that the topic wasn’t going to escape the Martian gravity well, let alone reach Earth.

  Ned was holding court with his senior staff, those few who hadn’t been reassigned during the temporary shutdown due to lack of resources. Kaylee was monitoring Site-1 for air quality, so she’d been exempted along with Miriam, Ben, Lijing, and a handful of others. There was raucous laughter at some joke too quiet for Kaylee to make out as she approached.

  “Wait. Wait. I’ve got another one,” Ned said, waving a flask that normally held water. From the flush of his face, Kaylee wasn’t certain of its current contents. “How do you tell a skin-job from a human at last call?”

  Kaylee’s skin crawled. The term originated as a slur in an old sci-fi movie and wasn’t used in the presence of robots.

  “How?” Ben asked, playing along.

  “Ask if you can crash at her place,” Ned said. “A human girl’s gonna kiss you or slap you. The robot’s gonna grab a tool kit and throw you over a shoulder.”

  More laughter.

  Kaylee slid in beside Miriam at the end of the row. She’d have chosen another table, but there weren’t enough people for her snubbing them to go unnoticed. After a few nods to acknowledge her colleagues, she picked at her rehydrated beets.

  “I have one,” Lijing said. “What’s the difference between dating a human and a robot?”

  “Hardware versus software?” Miriam guessed, drawing chuckles.

  Lijing grinned. “No. The human calls the next day—if you’re lucky. The robot sends an analysis.”

  Everyone at the table burst out laughing. There were veiled accusations that Lijing spoke from experience and suggestions that maybe she’d get called back more often if she studied those analyses a little better. Only Kaylee kept silent, eyes downcast and focused on the mush piled on her tray.

  “What’s the matter, Earth girl?” Miriam asked, quelling the mirth. “Sensitive topic?”

  Kaylee felt her cheeks warm.

  “Ah, lay off her,” Ned said. “Her man’s a halfsie. Earth’s lousy with them.”

  “You ever date a robot before Alan?” Lijing asked lewdly. “That why you don’t think they’re funny?”

  The room swayed. Kaylee could feel her heartbeat in her ears. Andy had stressed the importance of fitting in, of keeping in her coworkers’ good graces. She had to think quickly. “It’s not that,” she replied without looking up from her meal. “Mars is just behind the times. Robot sex jokes got boring on Earth ages ago.”

  “Oh really?” Ben asked, suddenly intrigued. “So, you must have some doozies.”

  “Yeah,” Ned said jovially. “Can’t drop a radioactive payload like that and leave it.”

  Oh, God. What did I just sign up for?

  Kaylee swallowed a mouthful of tasteless turnip slurry and wracked her brain. Sure, she’d gone to school at Oxford. Kids made up stupid, immature jokes all the time, especially right after sex ed. Too many years traveling in polite circles had isolated her from the crude humor her own children were no doubt picking up from their classmates. She had to think. She had to come up with something to satisfy the tastes of her boorish colleagues—and fast.

  She held up a hand as she took one more bite. By the time she choked it down, she had a plan. “OK. Woman wants to surprise her new robot boyfriend, so she stops by his place without calling ahead. Lets herself in. Shouts his name. No answer. Figures he’s recharging, so she tiptoes down to the charging closet and slips inside without turning the lights on. She feels around, finds him in the charging bed, strips down, and has her way with him. She’s having the time of her life when suddenly the door opens. Her boyfriend steps in with a pair of pliers in his hand. ‘What are you doing to that drained gardening drone? I just put it in to recharge while I went to find something to pry the cucumber out of its hand.’”

  Everyone guffawed and cackled like a pack of rowdy school students. Kaylee was mortified but smiled along, even forcing a little laugh of her own.

  “Never thought I’d hear that out of the mouth of an Earth girl,” Miriam admitted.

  “You kidding?” Kaylee replied. “I think half the jokes you’ve been passing around started at the girls’ dorms at Oxford. And listen, I know Alan’s dad is a robot, but Dr. Toby’s as human as robots come. It’s not like he’s a mix or anything. Besides, Alan turned out fine if you ask me—despite growing up with a robot for a father.”

  The lingering mirth quieted away as if the terraformers were students of Alan’s caught talking during a test.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Safely ensconced in downtown Curiosity, Alan’s class at Carter Multicurricular School was in session. It was the beginning of a new educational year, and the school’s newest teacher was introducing himself to the first class he’d have for an entire school year.

  Alan tapped and squeaked a chalk stylus along the touchboard set to mimic the dull, dusty black of old-fashioned slate of the real thing back on Earth. The tapping was the actual sound of the stylus contacting the glass surface; the squeaking and squealing were simulated for effect. There were more expedient ways to run a lesson, but the cadence of the old world had a certain rhythm and pace that gave time for minds to digest what they were learning, rather than force-feeding it. Not every child was a Madison clone like Kaylee, crafted from the genes up to interpret data at near-computer speeds.

  “Good morning, class. My name is Alan Greene,” Alan said as he chalked the name across the board. “The headmaster would prefer you to call me Mr. Greene, but if anyone were to slip and call me ‘Alan,’ I do respond to it.”

  A hand went up in the class. Without relying on technology of any sort, Alan’s finely honed peripheral vision took note. “Yes, go ahead. Name first, so I can learn them all.”

  The student sat momentarily flummoxed. “Haven’t you got a lens with all our names in it?”

  Alan fixed the girl with his full attention. Like the others, she was a minus one. All the Martian school system was predicated on passing the Emancipation Board. Alan’s students were all deemed to be candidates for emancipation in a year’s time. That put the girl asking the question at probably fourteen or fifteen years of age.

  “I could wear a data monocle,” Alan replied with a shrug. “I could cheat my way through knowing your names and birthdays, your overdue assignments and your extracurricular activities. But knowledge doesn’t come from toting a computer around with you. Computers can be hacked, damaged, lost, or corrupted. No one can take knowledge that you earn.”

  “Unless you pick a fight with a robot,” one of the boys at the back of the class called out, punctuated by giggles from around the room.

  “Now,” Alan said, ignoring the outburst. “Remind me of your name, and ask your original question.”

  “Lisa Martelle. Age fourteen. Year minus one. I want to know why you’ve come here from Earth? Didn’t you have a job there already?”

  Alan set his chalk stylus in the tray along the touchboard’s base and dusted his hands out of old habit from having Oxford’s real chalk caked on them. “Well, I think it’s human nature that demands change. My wife is a terraformer working at Site-1. Rather than separate, I joined her here on Mars.”

  “But why teach? Surely you could have left the job for a
Martian.”

  For the first time, Alan realized he was treading upon the surface of an icy lake. The first crack had spiderwebbed beneath his foot.

  “I was invited to teach here when Carter Multicurricular found out I was coming to live on Mars. There are more students each year, and they’re coming faster than new teachers are trained to handle them. It was either me or a robot,” he added with a challenging grin.

  Lisa Martelle looked aghast. “Mum would teach us at home sooner than that.”

  Alan spread his hands. “And thus, we come to our present state of affairs.”

  Another hand shot up. It was the boy at the back of the class from earlier.

  Tapping the air in the student’s direction, Alan invited the coming question.

  “Um, Vincent Lund, I guess. I just want to know, is this going to be the same minus one junk from last year? Nothing against these kids, but I’m half emancipated already. Just didn’t get by the board. My old man’s on odd shifts, and I look out for myself just fine. All I need is for you to fix what I got wrong last test.”

  That name was flagged red in Alan’s class roster. He was one of two in the class to have taken the minus one curriculum already, expected to pass the Emancipation Board’s recent graduation exam. Vincent and another boy named Darren Chedwick had failed to meet that expectation.

  Alan had read the dossiers on both boys prior to the start of the school year. He could have written a thesis on Vincent’s pathological hatred of robots. If there was any chance the message might sink in without sugarcoating it, Alan could have told Vincent that until he accepted that the mechanical half of society wasn’t out to get him, he wasn’t going anywhere but back to class.

  Telling the kid that would have been a quick road to a disciplinary hearing of his own.

  Instead, Alan smiled mildly. “Don’t worry. If you absorb the lessons from this year, they won’t dare hold you back next May. And no; it’s not the same syllabus as last year. You’ll also all be receiving personalized tutoring on your weakest points barring the way to emancipation.”

  That seemed to satisfy young Vincent. Someone else was responsible for getting him emancipated, not him. The Curiosity Colony School Board insisted on the emancipation-focused approach. If Alan didn’t like it, he was welcome to go back to teaching on Earth. There wasn’t room in the colonies for freeloaders, and Alan didn’t have any other skills that Curiosity was interested in. Keeping him and his wife together ranked well down their list of priorities.

  Alan played within the system.

  “Now, if everyone will pay attention as we view this brief introductory video, we will begin studying the Third Servile War and its eventual role in shifting Rome from republic to empire…”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ned Lund stumbled through his front door and blew out a long sigh. It was a struggle day in and day out to keep motivated when there wasn’t enough work to go around. He’d take overtime shifts for a month solid over the hollow feeling of exhaustion unearned.

  He rubbed at the triangular ring around his nose and mouth where his oxygen mask clung to his face all day. The smell of rubber permeated his lungs. A shower wasn’t enough to wash the stink away, and tomorrow he’d just seal the mask on again for a fresh whiff. It wasn’t worth fighting anymore, even if there was still an inkling in him to moan about it.

  “Ned,” Darla called out. “You should have called ahead. I’d expected you to be late again. We already ate.”

  Late? How could he be late when there was nothing to do?

  Ned shuffled across the living room and collapsed onto the couch. He was more tired than hungry, though the promise of a hot meal was the bait he’d dangled for his weary feet to bear him from the tram station to his front door.

  “Vinny?” Darla’s voice rang clear as a singer’s.

  “What, ma? I’ve got homework.”

  “Make your father a dinner. You already know all that minus one nonsense, anyway.”

  A melodramatic sigh huffed from the boy’s room, just down the hall. “Fine.”

  Without so much as a turn of his neck in the direction of the noise, Ned listened to the clatter of pots and pans. The freezer door opened no fewer than a dozen times. The whir of an induction mixer. The creak of the oven door opening and then closing. A crinkle of metal foil.

  Pawing along the couch cushions, Ned located the video screen remote. He flipped on the feed for an Earth-based soccer match. The Spirit Colony Craters were in Shanghai, playing the Dragons. The Craters were a rival of the Rovers, but Ned instantly found himself pulling for the visiting team. Anything to stick it to those smug Earthlings.

  He watched the officiating like a circling vulture.

  “Here you go, Dad,” Abel said, presenting him with a plate of mashed potatoes and grilled tofu steak.

  Ned glanced from the meal up to his son, then back down. He cut into the steak and took a bite, grunting his approval. Highlight of a grim day.

  “You should be cooking for a restaurant,” Ned muttered, half to himself.

  “I only learned how for the exams,” Abel pointed out. “I want to be a tram designer. Gonna need a ton more trams once we can breathe outdoors. Right?”

  The kid had a puppy-dog need for approval. But suggesting that a Martian atmosphere was right around the corner wasn’t the way to get on Ned’s good side just then. “And you’ll be heading to Earth to learn how to build them, won’t you?”

  “Well…”

  “From a robot.”

  “Maybe. I mean, there’s no guarantee that it’d be a—”

  “Except you didn’t get emancipated, did you? Your mother and I are stuck putting a roof over your head another year while you play computer games with your friends and make googly eyes at girls. Well, those girls from last year all got emancipated, all but you and Darren. And I bet the pair of you look like diaper-wearing toddlers compared to the lads out on their own.”

  “But Dad, I—”

  “Don’t you ‘but Dad’ me, little boy. I had a long, miserable call to Earth with that Emancipation Board of yours. When I demanded to know why you got held back, they scolded me. ME. As if it was my call to keep you in school another year.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I just—”

  “Did you know that we got approval to have a second child five years ago?” Ned demanded. “You could have had a little brother or sister by now. Heck, given my position, I might have been in line for three, maybe four kids. But every time your mother and I think about it, we think of the trouble you cause, and your mom goes in for her regular maintenance on her hormone regulator.”

  Abel shifted uncomfortably and looked down at his feet.

  Darla called out from her office. “Are you sure we should be discussing that with Abel?”

  “Why not?” Ned bellowed back. “That’s one class he never had trouble passing. Turn him loose with an unregulated girl and we’d have grandkids piled to the ceiling.”

  Noticing how pathetic Abel looked, Ned shooed him away with a wave of his fork. “Get out of here. Food’s fine. Quit fishing for compliments. Go finish your homework.”

  As Ned resumed shoveling his dinner into his mouth, he wondered if the Humans First Party was serious about their proposal to make emancipation automatic at fourteen. If it got Abel out of the house and Darla off her regulator, he’d have voted for a Bio-Ascendency candidate. Starting over with a new kid might be just what he and Darla needed to rekindle their marriage.

  Ned cast a glare over his shoulder in the direction of Abel’s room. Abel had until the end of Ned’s meal to show some progress on that homework of his. Maybe he’d been too soft on the kid, but that was going to change. He had enough problems without coming home to a no-good son who couldn’t get out of the house. Well, if Abel couldn’t fight the rigged system at school, he was in for a rude shock when he got emancipated. Better that Ned teach him what consequences felt like.

  Ned’s fist clenched around his fork as he at
e.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next night, Kaylee attended a Unity Keepers meeting at the Arthur Miller Theater. Alan was working late, so she was there by herself—well, aside from the two dozen or so other members present. She removed her jacket and hung it on a row of pegs by the door that held far more garments than she would have expected.

  Andy greeted her as soon as he took note of Kaylee’s arrival. “Sorry it’s just me tonight. Alan’s tutoring.”

  “Not to worry,” Andy reassured her. “Attendance isn’t mandatory, and we don’t take a roll call. This is a volunteer organization.”

  Kaylee kept her head low, wary of spotting someone she knew. Mars was a small place. Curiosity was smaller still. “How do we keep this many people a secret?” she asked Andy in a whisper as she followed him toward the makeshift podium at the end of the hall.

  “We’re not that secret,” Andy admitted. “Part of that is intentional. If the Chain Breakers keep failing their little plots, they might blame bad luck or incompetent leadership, but them knowing we’re out there somewhere, working against them, helps keep them in check.”

  Kaylee swallowed and took a seat near the front of the group. Andy continued on, stepping onto the podium to see out over the small crowd.

  “Glad so many of you could make it tonight,” Andy said, motioning with his hands for the group to quiet down. “With civic elections coming up in the next two weeks, you know what season it is…”