Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Anna
Anna winced as the antiseptic spray hit her hand.
Atlas leaned in close, bottle of antiseptic at the ready. Her cut palm rested on his knee. “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”
“Don’t you have the records? From the drops?” She rubbed her stomach in gentle circles with her other hand.
Atlas spread her palm further. “We do, but humans would tamper with our charity in an attempt to get more than their share. It’s a known issue. We don’t have any doses on board, but tetanus only lives in soil, so you should be fine.”
“Yeah, people did mess with the drops. All the time.” She didn’t add that Paul used to do that, making her ashamed every time.
“It is one of the difficulties in offering charity.”
Anna’s fingers twitched. “Yes, but even though a lot was stolen, you don’t know how much it helped us. For some people, the only food they had came from the charity drops.”
Atlas frowned, but otherwise didn’t respond.
The nausea had finally settled, and baby along with it, but it came back as Atlas poured something in her wound to flush out the glass. Not straight homemade alcohol like on Earth, but probably something similar. She tried her best to hold still as he hit the cut with cleaner again.
“Sorry. This is deep.” His voice was measured. “How did you clean these kinds of wounds on Earth?”
Anna winced again. “Whiskey and spit?” Her cheeks turned red. “Uh. Whiskey and prayers?”
Atlas just stared.
She cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m just babbling. We stitched with the sterile supplies from you in the drops, but cleaned with alcohol otherwise.”
“Crude, but effective.” Then he shook his head. “What were you doing in the kitchen at that hour anyway?” The assessing look was back in his eyes. “Trouble sleeping?”
Anna swallowed, tongue thick in her mouth, before she put on her professional bakery face. “Yeah. You too?”
He chuckled. “Androids can’t sleep. We do a stasis, but it isn’t the same. Sleeping, and dreaming, would be nice though.”
She tugged on her night shirt, adjusting the fabric so it covered all her belly.
This wasn’t one of the shirts she’d modified out of the new outfits the androids had given her, so it kept riding up.
Oh yeah. Right. She already knew that they couldn’t sleep from Simon.
Her face flushed. “Yeah. Sorry. Just tired and goofy.”
Atlas picked up the suture kit and smiled. A clinical smile. One that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re tired, yes. But not goofy.”
She pressed her lips together, resisting the urge to frown. Are you sure about that?
But her eyes instead focused on his perfect smile. None of the smiles on the androids seemed real, actually. Except for Simon, when he looked at Nora.
Atlas tilted his head. “Hm . . . your heart. It’s racing. I can hear it from over here.”
Anna recoiled. “You can hear that?” She swallowed. “Can all of you hear that?”
“Yes.” His eyes suddenly became intense. “Are you afraid?”
Anna’s breath caught. Yes. But Atlas was looking at her, unblinking, and waiting for an answer and she couldn’t say that. She placed her hand over her heart. “Ah . . . it’s more like I’m nervous.”
A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Nervous?”
“Yeah. I guess. Sorry. You are kind of . . . cleaning my hand.” She swallowed. “It hurts.”
The crease between his eyes became even more pronounced.
She cleared her throat. Is he . . . sad? “I’m not nervous about you. It’s everything that is new.” She waved her arm around. “Like all these plants. You have more plants, more green, than I’ve seen before. Do you grow them?”
“I did. Some of these I’ve had since we initially came to Mars.” He pointed to a small tree. “This one, in fact.”
Her fingers touched a leaf. “What’s it called?”
“M. emarginata.”
“Huh?”
“Oh. Sorry.” He said. “A Barbados cherry tree is the common name. It grows small fruits that are high in vitamin C. Plants, as long as you tend them right, can keep going indefinitely sometimes. I’ve had this tree for many years, growing it continually again from cuttings.”
Anna hunched in her seat. “I’ve never seen anything like them. Everything here is like a dream sometimes.”
Atlas’s next words were soft. “A good dream?”
“The best.”
“Oh, that good?” He flashed a quick grin. “Well, I want to help you feel better. What helps when you’re scared?”
“Running away? No. Sorry. Bad joke.” Anna pulled on her hair, putting it behind her ear. “Um. Distractions sometimes?”
“Is that why you bake so much?”
“Yeah.”
He tilted his head. “And if you can’t, then you run away?”
“Well, no.” She pointed up and down the hall. “Because like on Earth, there’s nowhere to go.”
Silence fell. Anna watched as Atlas’s expression became detached. By now she had been around androids enough to tell when they were processing. Why does he care though? Is this just something else about me he’s trying to test and figure out?
And then his eyes brightened. “Ah. Distractions. Let me show you something different? I’ll need to stitch this cut and for you to stay still.”
“. . . Sure?”
Atlas leaned over and opened a control that Anna had never noticed on the feed. His fingers skated over the buttons, and soon a hologram feed covered the stars. The scene displayed a meadow with grazing animals.
Anna squinted. “Cows. And green grass?”
“Correct.”
The light was bright in the feed with the same sun that shone outside the windows here.
She blinked as her eyes adjusted. The cows were familiar, but nothing else in the scene was.
Particularly that bright blue sky. Anna breathed deeply, sighing.
“Oh. I haven’t seen videos this close up of Mars before. ”
Atlas’s voice was hushed. “Maybe you can run away by focusing on something different. Something nice to get used to instead.”
Anna looked up into his hazel eyes, a shade darker than hers, but they had an intensity she couldn’t match. Her mouth went dry. “This looks make believe, actually. Is all this there? On Mars?”
“Yes.” But he was no longer paying attention to her; instead, he was manipulating the cut on her hand and readying his supplies.
She focused back on the feed, but out of the corner of her eye she examined Atlas.
His arms were loose at his sides but he still held himself with an unnatural stiffness.
The area where he was stitching her hand was numbed, but she still felt the pressure.
He was so focused on the slice on the side of her palm as he . . .
Oh, she couldn’t look.
While she turned away, he said, “I miss seeing home as well. The greenery.”
Anna frowned, keeping her eyes on the screen. “Oh, so the plants are more than just experiments?”
“Partially.”
The comment about his home hung in her mind. Mars is home for him. Not Earth. And it would be soon for her as well.
But what a home it was. The moving feed quality was so crisp that she could see the individual soft hairs on the cow’s back. The green was vibrant as the cow pulled up grass in mouthfuls. Mars is no home I know. She reached out to the feed with her free hand. But I guess it will be.
She glanced back at him. Was he even breathing?
Atlas focused in on her hand, making small, precise movements with the needle.
The feed showed her views of the cows, and then flowers, then nature everywhere. Large red barns stood tall, showing various grass pasture setups. It looked so peaceful. So unreal. Like a dream.
He let go of her hand. “Not only am I done, but your heartbeat is better now.”
“Oh.” Anna’s hands flew across her chest. “My heartbeat?”
“Nevermind.” Atlas said. “I forgot how sensitive nervous systems are when they are uncertain. This will take some getting used to. Again.” His jaw tightened. “The nervousness bothers me.”
“Yeah. Humans are a bundle of nerves and string.” Then softer, “And water, I guess. . .”
Atlas turned back to watching the nature scene, palming a control. “Let’s try something else. If you like this. . .”
The feed changed, showing a funny beaked animal that streaked on the water. He quirked an eyebrow.
Despite herself, she snorted. “What is that?”
He tapped on the screen, right over the creature’s long beak. “Ducks. You still had cattle on Earth and other basic farming animals, but ducks have long been absent. Especially where you lived in the desert. Am I correct?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen one before. It looks ridiculous.”
The duck dunked its head under the water before swimming across the pond and shaking itself. Water flew from its feathers as it puffed up. Several of the beaked animals dotted the lake’s surface, letting out a funny noise.
She reached out as if she could touch the feathers on the bird.
How do they swim like that? The lake was so blue on the feed.
Can we swim like that? The biggest amount of water she had ever seen before was where the town’s dam had made a tiny lake—but that was heavily guarded and not for swimming.
And definitely never had ducks. “Do you have all of Earth’s animals? There on Mars?”
“No. Unfortunately.” He sighed. “But most of the common ones. We brought as many as we could during the initial runs. And then some couldn’t adapt to Mars when we brought them over and the species died out.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “That’s a shame.”
He bumped her elbow with his, the fabric of the blue sweater he wore soft on her bare skin. “But we have ducks.”
“Right, you do.” Anna smiled back, using the expression she usually wore at the bakery when dealing with the customers.
But Atlas’s professional smile had dropped. Instead he changed the feed to another video of ducks.