Page 4 of The Red Woman on Mars

After ushering the women down from the platform, Wim led them to the towering gates. “Welcome to your new home,” he said grandly, pressing his palm to the door key. The steel door swung open at his touch. When the women were inside, Wim dismissed their escort.

The gates swung shut and locked with a sharp click. Vivian’s muscles tensed at the sound. The interior of the gate had no palm lock or handle.

I’m not trapped. I’m not a prisoner.

Her breath came too fast, and the pace of her heartbeat felt alarming.

Delilah slipped a hand into hers. “We can climb these walls,” she whispered in Vivian’s ear. “This light gravity makes us superheroes.”

Vivian huffed a laugh. “Superheroes?” She focused on the pressure of her sister’s hand. Vivian was supposed to be the strong one. She was supposed to protect her baby sister like she’d done her whole life. Not fold immediately upon arrival.

I’m safe. I led us to safety.

She took a breath and let it out slowly, mentally counting backward from ten.

“Keep up, girls,” Wim commanded.

Delilah tugged on her hand, and Vivian allowed her little sister to lead the way. Ten paces. Twenty. They reached their destination—a squat building adjacent to the compound’s high walls.

Inside, the building contained a row of clean utilitarian bedrooms, each with two twin beds and a narrow closet, a shared bathroom with stalls and a row of showers, and a kitchen and dining area large enough to fit all thirty of them.

Vivian flashed to the rows of hammocks the thirty women had slept in on the weightless ship, and, before that, to the one-room tent she’d shared with her parents and Delilah. At the camp, the walk to the filthy bathrooms took ten minutes and could be so dangerous after dark that Vivian had learned years ago to monitor her water intake carefully after sunset.

“It’s not much, I’m afraid,” Wim bemoaned, oblivious to the way the women’s eyes fixed on the bowl of real apples, oranges, and bananas. “The Intelligence asks you to consider this place your temporary base until you select a partner.”

Vivian drifted to the kitchen. The sink turned on at her touch, letting out a stream of clean water. She opened the large refrigerator and stifled a gasp. Packages of fully cooked cultured meat, soy cheese, leafy vegetables, and berries greeted her. Vivian opened the cabinets to find sandwich bread, pita, bowls of potatoes and tomatoes, cooking oil, and spices. Her thin frame trembled, and she blinked back unwelcome tears.

Wim’s augmented eye swiveled to her face, unnervingly out of sync with his human one. “I will leave you to select bedrooms and settle yourselves. The clothier will be by this afternoon to take your measurements. I will return in one sol.”

When they were sure he’d departed, the women fell upon the kitchen, laughing as they haggled over food. Vivian wasn’t much of a cook and allowed Luz to take charge of her meal. Soon, thetwo women were seated at a side table away from the group, eating large bites of pita sandwiches with juicy cultured chicken, crisp tomatoes, and crunchy romaine lettuce.

“This tastes like my favorite street vendor in Manhattan,” Luz said around a mouthful of food. She closed her eyes. “Forty-Fifth and Ninth. When I was a dancer, I’d get shawarma every night before my shift. Until the flood.”

“I didn’t know you danced,” Vivian said. “Were you ever on Broadway?”

Luz pressed her lips together in amusement. “Viv, honey, it wasn’t that kind of dancing.”

Vivian flushed. “Oh, of course.” She was always stepping in it with Luz, unable to fully mask her naïveté.

“I don’t know if these Martians are going to fall in love with you or eat you alive.” Luz curled her full lips in a smile that mixed mockery and affection. Her friend was exactly what Vivian wished she could be. Confident, pragmatic, worldly. Gorgeous, with a full head of straight dark brown hair, glowing tan skin, and a lush curvy figure. Luz might have ended up the same as Vivian—trapped in a camp after losing her home to a storm—but before that, she’d seen the world. She’dlived.

“If we have food like this every day, it doesn’t matter. As long as Delilah makes a good match, and we both can send enough funds home for our parents to buy their way out of the camp, I’ll be fine.” Vivian looked over to Delilah where she stood on the other side of the room, playfully popping grapes into her friend Camille’s mouth.

“What do you want for yourself?”

Vivian shrugged. “I don’t care.” And she didn’t. Her only goal was finding someone who made her skin crawl less than Max Rinaldi.

“You must have some preferences. Men, women, other genders?”

Vivian rubbed her shoulder uncomfortably. “Men.”

“I won’t ask tall or short,” Luz continued. “Or hefty, muscular, or lean. These Martians seem to come in one body type. Do you think their cocks are proportional to their heights?”

Laughing involuntarily, Vivian pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks. She wished she could dash off a glib, unruffled response instead of giggling like a schoolgirl at the word “cock.”

“What do you look for in a man? Someone who can make you laugh? Or can take you on a nice date? Someone good in bed?” Luz waggled her eyebrows at Vivian.

“Stop it!” Vivian snorted and nearly spit out a mouthful of water. “You know I have no idea.” The only experience she had with men was avoiding them—or trying to. She remembered the expressive brown eyes of the glowering Martian that Wim had called Counselor Dorsey. He’d been glaring at Wim, she realized suddenly, not her. There was something appealing about the angular planes of his face, so different from an Earther man.