1
There are a thousand shades of brown.
My scooter skimmed above the surface so fast the ground blurred, kicking up a wake of dust that hazed from the color of dried blood to beige, depending on the angle of light. Ahead, rust-colored hills made chocolate-colored shadows. The plains before the hills were tan, but in a few hours they’d be vivid, blush-colored, beautiful. Right now, the sun was low, a spike of light rising from the rocky horizon in the early morning. The sky above was pale cinnamon.
I had nothing to do today. Classes were over, I hadn’t started my internship at the astrodrome yet. So I went riding, just out, as far and as fast as I could. A track ran around the perimeter of the colony—a service road, really, but no official vehicles went out at this hour, so I had it to myself. Made one circuit, then headed to the open plain, avoiding weather stations, mining units, and other obstacles. I revved the engine, the battery did its job, and the lifts popped me half a meter into the air. Dust flew behind me, and I crouched over the handlebars, sucking air through my mask, blinking behind my goggles. The wind beating against me would be cold, but I was warm and safe inside my environment suit. I could ride around the whole planet like this.
“Polly? Are you there?” The voice of Charles, my twin brother, burst over the comm in my helmet. Of course it was Charles. Who else would want to ruin my perfect morning?
“What?” I grumbled. If I could turn off the helmet radio I would, but the safety default meant it stayed on.
“Mom wants to see us.”
“Now?”
“Would I have bothered calling you otherwise? Of course now. Get back here.”
“Why couldn’t she call me herself?”
“She’s a busy woman, Polly. Stop arguing.”
Charles and I were only nominally twins, in that we were uncorked at the same time and grew up together. But I’m really older because my embryo was frozen first. My unique collection of DNA has been in existence in the universe longer than his. Never mind that Mom decided later that she wanted a girl and a boy rather than just a girl, and that she then decided that it would be fun to have them together instead of one after the other. Or maybe she thought she’d save time that way, raising two babies at once. At any rate, I was frozen first, then Charles was. I’m older.
But as Charles always pointed out, we’ve been viable human beings for exactly the same amount of time. The seals on our placental canisters were popped at exactly the same moment, and we took our first breaths within seconds of each other. We watched the video twenty times to be sure. I didn’t even have the benefit of being five minutes older like a natural-born twin would. We were twins, exactly the same age. Charles was right. He was always right.
I would never admit that out loud.
“Okay. Fine.” I slowed the scooter, turning in a wide arc and heading for home. I’d gone farther than I’d thought. I couldn’t see the bunkers over the garages, air locks, and elevators leading down to the colony, but I knew which way to go and how to get there, and if I got off track, the homing beacon on the scooter would point the way. But I didn’t get lost.
* * *
I took my time cleaning up and putting things away, waiting in the air lock while vacuums sucked away every last speck of Martian dust from my suit, putting the scooter through the scrubber so not a particle of grit would get into the colony air system. Once everything was clean, I checked the scooter back into its bay and folded my suit and breather into my locker. I put the air tank in with a rack of empties for a technician to refill. I carefully double-checked everything, because you always double-checked everything when things like clean air and functional environment suits were involved, but no matter how long I took with the chores, it wouldn’t be long enough. I couldn’t put off talking to Mom forever. So I brushed the creases out of my jumpsuit and pulled my brown hair into a tail to try to make it look decent. Not that it helped.
The office of Supervisor Martha Newton, director of Colony One operations, was the brain of the entire settlement, overseeing the engineering and environmental workstations, computer banks, monitors, controls, and surveillance that kept everything running. The place bustled, various department heads and their people, all in Mars-brown uniforms, passing along the corridor, ducking into rooms, studying handheld terminals, speaking urgently. It was all critical and productive, which was exactly how Mom liked it. Supervisor Newton herself had a private room in the back of operations. Her office as well as her house, practically—she kept a fold-away cot there, and a stack of self-heating meal packets in one of the cupboards for when she worked late. Some days she didn’t come home. Usually, when she wasn’t sleeping or fixing casseroles, she kept the place clean, spotless, like a laboratory. Nothing cluttered her gray alloy desk except the computer screen tilted toward the chair. Two more chairs sat on the other side of the desk. The cot, her jacket, and emergency breather were tucked in a closet with a seamless door; her handheld and other office detritus remained hidden in a drawer. A window in back looked over the central atrium gardens. Anyone entering, seeing her sitting there, expression serene, would think she ran all of Colony One by telepathy. I wouldn’t put it past her.
When I finally arrived, sliding open the door, she was sitting just like that, back straight, her brown hair perfectly arranged in a bob, wearing neither a frown nor a smile. Her beige-and-brown uniform was clean, neatly pressed, buttoned at the collar—perfect.
Charles was already here, slouching in one of the extra chairs. My brother had grown ten centimeters in the last year, and his legs stuck out like he didn’t know what to do with them. I’d been taller than him before last year. Now he stared down at me and made jokes about my scalp.
They both looked at me, and I felt suddenly self-conscious. My jumpsuit was wrinkled, my hair was already coming loose, and I could feel the chill morning air still burning on my cheeks. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t been out racing on the scooter for no reason at all. Maybe she wouldn’t ask.
“Polly, thank you for coming,” Mom said. As if I’d had a choice. As if I could find a place on the whole planet where she couldn’t find me. “Have a seat.”
I pulled up the other chair and sat; the three of us were at the points of an equilateral triangle. I wondered what Charles and I had done to get in trouble. This wasn’t about taking the scooter out, was it? I couldn’t think of anything else I’d done that she didn’t already know about. Charles was usually too smart to get caught when he did things like hack a mining rover or borrow gene-splicing lab equipment to engineer blue strawberries just to see if he could. I glanced at him, trying to get a hint, but he wouldn’t look at me.
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We waited, expectant. Mom seemed to be studying us. The corners of her lips turned up, just a bit, which confused me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing at all,” she said. “Just the opposite, in fact. I’m sorry—I was just thinking about how quickly time passes. It seems like yesterday you were both still learning how to walk.”
This was starting to get weird. She usually talked about how much better she liked us once we started walking and talking and acting like actual people instead of needy babies. Mom wasn’t a fan of neediness.
She rearranged her hands, leaned forward, and even seemed excited. Happy, almost. “I’ve got some really good news. I’ve secured a wonderful opportunity for the both of you. You’re going to the Galileo Academy.”
Frowning, Charles straightened. I blinked at him, wondering what he knew that I didn’t. I said, “What’s that?” The way she said it made me think I should have heard of it.
“It’s on Earth,” Charles said flatly.
“You’re sending us to Earth?” I said, horrified.
Earth was old, grubby, crowded, archaic, backward, stifling—the whole point of being on Mars, at Colony One, was to get away from Earth. Why would she send us back there?
“This is a wonderful school, the best there is. Kids from all over the system go there, and you’ll get to learn and do so many things you’d never have a chance to if you stayed here.” She was eager, trying to sell us on the idea. Trying hard to make it sound like the best thing ever and not the disaster it was. This was clearly for her, not us. This was going to be good for her.
I wanted to get up and throw the chair into a wall, just to make noise. I wanted to either scream or cry—both options seemed reasonable.
But I only declared, “No. I don’t want to go.”
“It’s already settled,” Mom said. “You’re going.”
“But what about my internship? I’m supposed to start at the astrodrome next week. I’m supposed to start flying, really flying—” No more skimmers and scooters and suborbital shuttles, I was going to bust out of the atmosphere, get into pilot training and starships. I didn’t want to do anything else, much less go to school on Earth.
“The astrodrome will still be there when you’re finished,” she said.
“Finished when? How long is this going to take?”
“The program is three years.”
I had to do math in my head. “Their years or ours? How long is it really?”
“Polly, I thought you’d be excited about this,” she said, like it was my fault my life was falling apart before my eyes. “It’ll be your first interplanetary trip—you’re always talking about how you want to get into space—”
“As a pilot, not as baggage, just to end up dirtside on Earth. And you didn’t even ask! Why didn’t you ask if I wanted to go?”
Her frown hardened. The supervisor expression—she was right, everyone else was wrong. “Because I’m your mother, and I know what’s best.”