Moving Mars by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online Page B

thin curling puffs as static blowers in the trains nose cleared the tracks ahead.
    I did not much enjoy the train ride to Times River Canyon Hospital, however.
    We didnt have much to say. We had been elected by the scattered remnants of the protest group to visit Sean and Gretyl.
    We accelerated out of the UMS station just before noon, pressed into our seats, absorbing the soothing rumble of the carriage. Within a few minutes, we were up to three hundred kiphs, and the great plain below our ports became an ochre blur. In a window seat, I stared at the land and asked myself where I really was, and who.
    Charles had taken the seat beside me, but mercifully, said little. Since my fathers stern lecture, I had felt empty or worse. The days of having nothing to do but sign releases and talk to temp security had worn me down to a negative.
    Oliver tried to break the gloom by suggesting we play a word game. Felicia shook her head. Charles glanced at me, read my lack of interest, and said, Maybe later. Oliver shrugged and held up his slate to speck the latest LitVid.
    I dozed off for a few minutes. Charles pressed my shoulder gently. We were slowing. You keep waking me up, I said.
    You keep napping off in the boring parts, he said.
    You are so tapping pleasant, you know? I said.
    Sorry. His face fell.
    And why are you I was about to say following me but I could hardly support that accusation with much evidence. The train had slowed and was now sliding into Times River Depot. Outside, the sky was deep brown, black at zenith. The Milky Way dropped between high canyon walls as if seeking to fill the ancient flood channel.
    I think youre interesting, Charles said, unharnessing and stepping into the aisle.
    I shook my head and led the way to the forward lock.
    Were stressed, I murmured.
    Its okay, Charles said.
    Felicia looked at us with a bemused smile.
    In the hospital waiting room, an earnest young public defender thrust a slateful of release forms at us. Which government are you sending these to? Oliver asked. The mans uniform had conspicuous outlines of thread where patches had been removed.
    Whoever, he answered. Youre from UMS, right? Friends and colleagues of the patients?
    Fellow students, Felicia said.
    Right. Now listen. I have to say this, in case one of you is going to shoot off to a LitVid. The Times River District neither condones nor condemns the actions taken by these patients. We follow historical Martian charter and treat any and all patients, regardless of legal circumstance or political belief. Any statements they make do not represent
    Jesus, Felicia said.
    the policy or attitudes of this hospital, nor the policy of Times River District. End of sermon. The public defender stepped back and waved us through.
    I was shocked by what we saw when we entered Seans room. He had been tilted into a corner at forty-five degrees, wrapped in white surgical nano and tied to a steel recovery board. Monitors guided his reconstruction through fluid and optic fibers. Only now did we realize how badly he had been injured.
    As we entered his room, he turned his head and stared at us impassively through distant green-gray eyes. We made our awkward openings, and he responded with a casual, Hows the outside world?
    In an uproar, Oliver said. Sean glanced at me as if I were only there in part, not a fully developed human being, but a ghost of mild interest. I specked the moments of passionate speech when he had riveted the crowded students and compared it to this lackluster shell and was immensely saddened.
    Good, Sean said, measuring the word with silent lips before repeating it aloud. He looked at a projected paleoscape of Mars on the wall opposite: soaring aqueduct bridges, long gleaming pipes suspended from tree-like pedestals and fruited with clusters of green globes, some thirty or forty meters across A convincing mural of our world before the planet sucked in its water, shed its atmosphere, and withered.
    The Councils taken over