The Bookseller of Mars (Part 2)

They busy themselves raiding my shelves. Ben munches on some dried carrot chips I made last week. Jay stares out the kitchen window at the endless red ocean.

I open my box of tools, grab the magnifying glass, and get to work. But a few minutes in, I lean back in my chair.

“Who made this regulator?” I ask.

“Does it matter?” Jay snaps.

“Kind of. It’s a piece of shit.” 

It’s more than that. This regulator isn’t like the one I took from the SpaceCorp boxes when I landed, built to last a lifetime. It’s flimsy, designed to break after a few days. Why would anyone make this? Nothing on Mars is disposable. Every scrap we have is precious, used carefully, made for a reason. Sending someone out with this is a death sentence.

“Can you fix it, though?” asks Jay.

“I don’t know. It’s going to take me a little longer.”

Ben sat up. “How much longer? We uh… we need to get moving soon.”

“Why? Someone coming after you?”

He looks at the carrot chips in his hand.

“Fine, don’t tell me. But I need at least a day or two on this.”

“Shit.”

“Up to you.”

The boys whisper to each other in the corner.

“We can’t pay you for fixing the regulator. Or for letting us stay while we do,” says Jay, finally.

“Oh.” On Mars, nothing is free. “Then you can help out here –   the greenhouse needs fixing up and I’ve been meaning to repair the shelves.”

The boys nod, relieved. I set them up with their tasks and then spend a few hours tinkering with the regulator. In the evening, I warm up some soup for dinner and they sit on the blankets, flipping through my handwritten books and asking questions. It feels good to speak to someone who isn’t Cara.

#

The next morning, I go back to work on the regulator. The Martian time slips by, quiet and red.

“To Kill a Mockingbird?” asks Ben, in the afternoon. “What is it, like a guide?” 

“Sure, it’s a guide. But not one to do with birds,” I say. Jay looks up from the old drillbug he’s trying to fix.

“I don’t get it,” says Ben. 

“Sit and read it and you will,” I say. 

“It’s long.” 

“Ah but it’s worth it. Books are more nourishing than you know.” 

Jay and Ben share a look –   a hint of a laugh, a twist of embarrassment on my behalf. Not quite an eye roll, but nearly. I smile. My little brother and I shared that exact look about the nearest clueless adult countless times. He didn’t make it past the first wave of sickness back on Earth. 

I shake my head. “Take it.” 

Ben’s eyebrows shoot up and he looks at Jay. Jay smiles.

“Well, thanks.” Ben holds it gentler now, flipping softly through the pages.

That book is worth three weeks of food in a trade. I can practically see Cara in the corner, chastising me about economic irresponsibility. Well, she isn’t here and bad trades are kind of my whole thing.

Ben reads my rehashed version of To Kill a Mockingbird and I watch him out of the corner of my eye. It’s one of the few books with words I know I’ve written right. The lady who commissioned the first copy had the text tattooed on her shoulder, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

 I always liked that quote.

#

The next day, the intercom buzzes like a yellowjacket. I flick a look toward the screen. 

Now, these are the kind of guests I’m used to. A man and a woman stand tall, decked out in cobbled-together desert-gear and heavy-duty boots. Their faces are obscured by rags. Guns hang from their shoulders and grenades from their belts. Raiders or SpaceCorp, I can’t tell. All the same, anyway — grizzly bears.  

“Good morning,” I say over the intercom. “You’ve reached the bookseller.”  

“You seen two boys out here?” 

“Who are you?”

“Retrievers, from the SpaceCorp school. Those two students killed a member of staff and ran away. We’ve come to ensure they receive proper punishment.”

Shit. I take my hand off the intercom and spin toward Ben and Jay. 

“Is that true?” I don’t want trouble.

Ben shakes his head. Jay nods. 

“We each killed a guy,” says Jay. He talks fast like he can see I’m spooked. “But they made us, as part of our training. That’s why we ran away.”

“Training?”

“It’s not a school. They’re training kids as soldiers and planning to take over the other settlements by force and form a proper country, led by them. They haven’t come to punish us. They want to stop the truth getting out before they’re ready.”

This is huge. Finally making the settlements into one city, united, makes sense. Resources could be shared. A society could be built. Well, that’s what logic says. In practice, the one settlement that SpaceCorp already runs is brutal, with settlers fighting over scraps from the people at the top. A takeover is going to be violent. And bloody.

The intercom buzzes again.

“Bookseller,” says the man on the intercom. “Did you see the boys?” 

I press the mic. Ben’s hand twitches on To Kill a Mockingbird.

“Yes,” I say. “I have seen the boys.” Jay scrambles to grab his gun. “They passed through here a few days ago and left. Said they were heading to the northern settlement. One of them had a regulator on the fritz. I doubt they’ll have made it far.” 

The man and woman nod. This is no surprise to them. They know those regulators don’t last. 

“So you just let them go?” says the woman.

“Obviously. I don’t need two more mouths to feed. If they want to get themselves killed in the desert, that’s on them.” 

The man and woman scuff around in the dust, whispering to one another.

“On behalf of SpaceCorp, we’re requesting entry to your home, bookseller. To trade for supplies,” says the man.  

“I’ve got nothing to trade but books.”

“That’ll do.”

He’s clearly not coming in for books.

I consider my options.

“Guns stay outside. That’s my policy.”

On the little screen, the man nods and hands his gun to the woman. She takes a few steps back, looking at perimeter of my house. No doubt making sure no figures escape as her colleague searches inside.

Behind me, Ben and Jay’s panicked whispers fill the air. I usher them under my bed and pass them my pistol. Their wide-eyed faces disappear as I throw a blanket over the bed.

Pushing the button, I open the airlock and the man walks in. It repressurizes.

It’s not ideal. If he finds them, then what? Can I feasibly say that I didn’t know they were there?

Another press of a button and the man is in my home. He lowers his mouth rag. His face is pitted and scarred, like the surface of our new home.

“I’ll take a look around now,” he says. He’s done us both a favor by dropping the pretense.

“Go ahead,” I say.

He walks along the towers of books, and I look at my home of over a decade with fresh eyes. Not many hiding spots. The bed is glaringly obvious.

The man drops to his knees to check out the entrance to the greenhouse. He stands and cocks his head, reading the spine of a book on a precarious stack. My rendition of The Catcher in the Rye.

“Interested?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I’ve heard your prices. I’m not in the market to waste three weeks’ worth of food on a book.” His eyes linger on it, though.

“Well, they take me a long time to write. You read this one back on Earth?”

“Uh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Go on then, what did you do, before? Office guy?”

He considers me. “I was a teacher in New York,” he says, finally. “Math. Always liked that book, though.”

“Bet it’s a bit different now, working at SpaceCorp.”

His faces clouds over and he looks away. Wrong thing to say. Don’t remind killers of what they are. His eyes catch on the three mugs in that damn drying rack. The plates. He sighs and walks towards the bed.

“Don’t you miss stories?” I ask.

He turns back. “Let me just get this over with, lady.”

I ignore him. “There’s no TV here. No cinema. I think that’s why people like my books. Medicine for the mind –   a way to get lost.”

He blinks. More people need a mental escape on Mars than they’re willing to admit.

“If only there were a way for you to procure a story without having to trade your hard-earned food.”

I take Catcher in the Rye off the stack of books and hold it out to him.

His face is a mirror-image of Ben’s when I gave him To Kill a Mockingbird. On Mars, you only own what you need to survive.

Slowly, he reaches out to take the book. He holds it in both hands, eyes roving over Cara’s illustration of the cover. It’s beautiful, like everything else she created. He flips open the first page, gently.

“So… have you found what you’re looking for?” 

“Perhaps.”

His eyes flick to the bed again. What’s the price for two kids’ lives? 

“Take another,” I say. “For the road.”

He spins around and looks at the stack of books next to him. Percy Jackson and The Olympians. He pulls it out quickly and stuffs both books into the inside of his jacket pocket.

“My students used to love Percy Jackson,” he says. “Back on Earth.” 

That’s the thing about my sanctuary –   even killers have an inner child. And stories help them find their way back out.

“I bet,” I say and indicate the airlock.

He nods. I push the button and he walks out into the Martian desert.

I rush to the intercom screen. Outside, he gestures, talking to his colleague. She questions him. He shrugs. She tips her head, and they kick around in the dust for a while. Then, they turn and go.

My hands are shaking, white.

“You can come out,” I say.

The boys scramble out from under the bed. Ben runs at me and hugs me. Jay hovers behind. “Thank you,” he says.

Ben lets me go and I exhale all the tension.

To think, Cara left because of how quiet life was here with me, how slow.

We collapse at the table.

“So, you guys ran away from SpaceCorp. No destination in mind?” 

“Not exactly,” says Jay. “A few weeks ago, these girls from the year above broke into the SpaceCorp offices. They read through a bunch of documents. Plans for the new country, breakthroughs in terraforming. The girls stole the papers and a bunch of supplies then ran away to start a new settlement. A hidden one for Martian kids, where we can try to build something better.”

“And you’re going to follow them. How do you know their regulators didn’t break?”

“These girls are smart. Their regulators didn’t break.” 

“Do you even know where they are?”

“They’ve gone to the western mountain.” Jay's face looks young, hopeful.

I consider these two Martian kids. They aren’t killers. They don’t have claws and bite. Maybe they’re the butterflies on the predator’s nose. Or I’m confusing my metaphors; I said they were hollow-boned birds, right? Either way. They are a thing with wings. And they see a future on Mars, one away from the suffering and the violence. 

“Well, then I’d best get that regulator fixed up for you,” I say.

The boys spend the evening browsing my shelves while I tinker and process the impending doom of a SpaceCorp takeover.

An unfamiliar noise fills my home. I look up. It’s the boys, laughing. They’re reading bits of a book to one another, acting out scenes with big, exaggerated movements. I tilt my head. The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. How strange, to hear laughter. Not the broken half-hearted chuckle of a killer. Not the condescending bark of a lover who’s sick to death of my company. No, laughter like… in a family’s home.

I squeeze my eyes shut against a wave of unwanted emotion, and the tears that threaten to follow. What is wrong with me? If I didn’t know better, I’d say I didn’t want the boys to go.

#

The next morning, after breakfast, I spend a final few hours on the regulator. I reinforce Ben’s too, for good measure.

“Alright,” I say. “Your regulators are ready. Time to go. Quick.” 

“Why quick?” asks Jay, eyes darting, back on alert.

“I’m kicking you out. And myself, too.”

“You’re kicking yourself out?”

“I’m coming with you,” I try to sound confident, like when I used to lead my little brother in the games we played. “You need supplies and a plan if you’re going to make it west. I can provide at least part of that. Anyway, this hidden settlement will need books.”

I clamp my lips shut against the confession that threatens to follow. That I can’t stand to write here alone again, speaking only to killers and characters. That SpaceCorp won’t allow a writer to live unmanaged, out in the desert alone. That one of their retrievers knows about me harbouring two fugitives, and a bribe only lasts so long.

Ben tilts his head, looking at me with squinted eyes, like he hears my thoughts. He looks at Jay.

“You’re right,” says Jay. “The new settlement will need books. I hear they’re very nourishing.”

I exhale.

We spend the day packing supplies and planning our route. Finally, when we’re ready, we insert our regulators. Then, we step out into the light of that faraway sun.

“Ok,” I say. “Let’s go.”

We walk under the rocky outcropping and out towards the vast western horizon. I turn and look back at the little cargo container that has been my world ever since I escaped Earth. My refuge, filled with other people’s stories. Now it’s time to write my own.

 .