Jim Baen's Universe

Introducing: Stories by new authors

Johnny Plays 'Round Saturn's Rings

Written by Jason K. Chapman

Illustrated by Maurine Starkey

The hospital always smelled icky to Johnny, like someone was trying to scrub out the inside of his nose. He wondered if all hospitals were like that or just the one on the half-gee ring of Ares Station. If Dad would just get better, Mom would stop crying at night and Johnny wouldn't have to come to this awful place anymore.

He stared at the floor on the way to Dad's room so he wouldn't see any sick people. It's not that he was afraid of them. He was almost nine, after all. It's just that they made him feel weird, like he was supposed to feel stuff and say stuff and he didn't know what, so he stayed close to Mom and counted the floor tiles. That's why the first thing he saw of the mandroid was its feet.

Mom squeezed his hand. "Johnny, this is Miss Dimarco."

He'd heard of them, but Johnny had never seen one in real life. It was all white and kind of glittery. It was shaped like a person, except for the huge chest, but it didn't look like a "Miss" anything. Even though it wasn't wearing clothes, it didn't have any of the stuff he'd seen in those pictures Chaz Tyler had stashed on his datapad. It looked more like one of the evil robot soldiers on that episode of Warbirds of Mars. Captain Hawk really gave them what for, didn't he? The mandroid's face was a little scary. Flashy lenses instead of eyes and a mouth that was just a slit made it look mean.

"Johnny," Mom said. "It's not polite to stare."

"That's okay." The mandroid's voice was pretty. Not at all like one of Lord Maxtron's robot soldiers, but somehow that just made it scarier. "It's a lot to take in all at once."

Johnny pressed a little closer to Mom's side when the mandroid squatted down. It moved just like a person. It wasn't clanky or mechanical at all. The mouth curved up on both sides like it was smiling. That was creepy.

"Call me Mi," the mandroid said.

Still stunned, Johnny mumbled, "You you?"

"Johnny!" Mom used that voice he hated.

"Emm Eye," the mandroid said. "My name is Mi."

Johnny tried to remember all the junk he'd read about mandroids on the 'net. There wasn't much. "You used to be a person?"

Mi's laugh made him shiver, but in a good way, like when he got his hair cut, or when Mom just barely touched the back of his neck. "I'm still a person," Mi said. It—she?—it touched its enormous chest. "In here is the brain I was born with. The rest is prosthetics, like artificial limbs or picofilter kidneys."

He jumped when she held her hand out to him. Crap! Now everyone would think he was a baby.

"It's okay," Mi said. "Touch my hand."

He had to, now, just so no one would think he was scared. His hand shook as he touched her. The skin was warm and not as rubbery as it looked. It felt kind of good, actually. Then he looked up at its face again and jerked his hand back. He didn't know what to do.

Mom was no help. She just looked down at him. She was smiling, but she had that look like she was about to cry.

"Come on." Mi stood up and waved him along. "Your dad's waiting to see you."

Dad was in a different room. This one he had all to himself. The big wall screen was set to window mode. It wasn't really a window. Everyone knew that. It just slaved the screen to cameras at the hub of the space station. The mottled surface of Mars filled half the screen. Johnny tried to spot the dust storm his teacher said was one of the biggest in years.

"Hey, Jaybird."

He hated when Dad called him that—at least when he did it in front of other people. Johnny glanced at where Mi stood by the door. Maybe mandroids didn't count.

Johnny went to the side of the bed. "Hey, Dad." Dad looked worse than ever. His face was all gray and shriveled, like an apple that sat in the fruit bowl too long. The bed was tilted up. It looked like he couldn't even raise his head.

Johnny wanted to cry, but Mom said he shouldn't cry when they visited Dad. It just made him sadder, and that made him weaker. Johnny had to help his Dad be strong. He took Dad's hand, ignoring how dry and brittle it felt. Johnny was afraid the fingers might break off if he held it too tight. He tried—tried so hard—to be brave and strong. He didn't want to hurt Dad, to make him weak, but he couldn't stop himself. He began to cry.

"It's okay, Jaybird." Dad's voice was soft and whispery. "Everything will be okay."

Johnny leaned over and put his head on Dad's shoulder, wishing he could hug him, that Dad could pick him up and swing him around like he used to.

Dad reached over with his other hand and touched the back of Johnny's head. He began to sing the special song.

"Johnny plays 'round Saturn's rings/Teaching moons to dance and sing./When the moons have had their fun/Off to Neptune Johnny runs."

The song exploded into a fit of coughing and Mom rushed over to give Dad some water. It was better, then, with Mom sitting on the edge of the bed and all three of them huddled together.

With a finger under Johnny's chin, Dad lifted his head. "I see you've met my friend Mi."

Johnny had forgotten all about the mandroid. "Your friend?"

"She's a very nice person, Johnny." Dad's milky eyes stared, looking almost like they used to. "It's important that you get to know her."

"But they're bad!" Johnny pulled away, looking from Dad to Mom. "Everybody says so."

Dad closed his eyes and turned his head away, sighing. "I told you. It won't work. I can't do this to him."

Mom reached out and brushed Johnny's hair back from his forehead then swept her hand around to cup her palm against his cheek. "Johnny, sometimes when people get sick, the doctors can't make them well again."

"But you said—"

"I know what I said. I was wrong." She slid her hand down to his shoulder. "This way, your dad doesn't have to leave us."

Johnny stepped back, looking away. He caught himself before he turned to look behind him, staring instead at Mom's hand hanging where his shoulder had been. He thought he knew the answer, but he had to ask. "What way?"

Mom looked like she was trying to smile. It was the same look she'd had when she first told him Dad was sick. "As a mandroid."

****

Everything was ruined. Johnny stared up at the wall of sleeper tubes. He hated living in the 'combs. Stacked fifty high and wide enough that they disappeared in both directions where the floor curved up, the tubes weren't even big enough to sit up inside. In their apartment on quarter-gee, Johnny'd had a whole room to himself. That was before Dad got so sick. Now he and Mom had side-by-side tubes on row thirty-seven.

"Can I jump?" They were so close to the hub of the station that there was very little downforce.

"Use the ladder, honey." Mom frowned, watching a man jump up to level twenty. He grabbed the hand bar and swung, feet first, into an open tube. His hand snaked out and pulled the hatch closed. "Jumping is rude."

"Chaz Tyler says the 'combs are for losers." Chaz was in Johnny's class. He was a jerk, but he knew everything about everything. All the kids said so.

"Chaz Tyler is a—" Mom looked angry. She crossed her arms like she did when Johnny forgot to clean up after breakfast.

"Is a what, Mom?"

"He's just wrong, that's all."

"But he says—"

"Enough!" She looked really angry for a second, but only for a second. Then her eyes got all shiny. She knelt down and crushed Johnny against her. "I'm sorry, Johnny. Chaz is just being mean. Some kids are like that. Okay?"

Johnny nodded against her shoulder, wondering if he still had to be strong, because he felt like crying again. Seeing Mom sad made him hurt. "Mom?"

"Yes, honey?"

"I miss Dad."

"Me too, baby." She shook all over. "But he'll be back soon."

"No, he won't." He felt Mom stiffen when he said it. She wasn't holding him quite so close any more. "He's never coming back."

"Yes, he will!" She pulled away and looked at him. "He'll still be your dad."

Johnny just shrugged and looked up at the wall of sleeping tubes. "Mandroids don't sleep, do they?"

"Not really. They do have to rest, though." Mom scrunched her face up, like Johnny did during history tests. "They have to hook up to a device that filters the cerebral solution and adds nutrients, but they don't sleep the way other people do."

"Then they don't need a sleeper tube. They don't have to come here, right?"

Mom sighed. "No, Johnny."

The crowd swept past them, coming and going. No one paid any attention to Johnny and Mom. "Good," he said.

****

Except for his weekly exercise periods, Johnny spent very little time down on the full-gee ring. He hated feeling like he weighed as much as a whole planet. But Mom was at work and school was out and he was too old to need a babysitter but Mom said to go with Miss Dimarco and it was all just dumb dumb dumb!

They went to the bank, and then to a computer store, and then to a communications center. Everywhere they went, people stared or whispered behind their hands. Some pulled away, as if the mandroid really was one of Lord Maxtron's evil robots. Johnny tried to stay far enough back that people might think he just happened to be going the same direction. There was this one guy, with narrow eyes and dark, greasy hair, that just stared and stared. It seemed like everywhere they went, the greasy guy was there, watching.

Maybe it would be better if Dad just died. Johnny stopped short right in middle of the corridor, shocked at his own thoughts. Someone bumped into him from behind and muttered a quick "Watch it, kid."

Oh, please. Please. I didn't mean it.

His face felt hot. He wanted to hide, sure that everyone knew the terrible thing that was in his mind. Ahead, the mandroid paused and looked back. He hurried on before it could say something and let everyone know they were together.

He followed Mi into the offices of a place called StarMines. Inside StarMines, everything was different. The woman at the front desk jumped up and ran to the mandroid, squealing. "Mi! It's so good to see you. When did you get back? How's Max? Why didn't you call?"

Johnny stared, trying to understand. The woman kissed the mandroid's cheeks! Was she crazy? Other employees came by and they all acted like the mandroid was just another person, like they didn't even know they were talking to a thing. Maybe it had some kind of mind control ray.

With a quick "Wait here, Johnny," everyone vanished behind a plain plasteel door. Johnny sat down in the waiting area and poked blindly at one of the magpads. It wasn't like the waiting room at the doctor's office. The pad didn't have anything fun to read. A mind control ray would be great, wouldn't it? They could make Johnny think the mandroid was his real dad, make it so he couldn't see the people staring or hear the whispers. They could make him forget that everybody hated him.

It seemed like hours before Mi came back, even though Johnny's watch said it had only been thirty minutes. The mandroid stood next to him for a while before saying anything. "Are you ready to go? Or should I leave first and you can follow at a safe distance?"

Johnny put the magpad down. "Can we stay here?"

"Why would you want to do that?"

Johnny looked past the mandroid to the receptionist's desk. "Everyone likes you here."

The mandroid shook its head back and forth. "You can't worry so much about what other people think. You'll end up doing the wrong thing every time."

"Then how do you know what the right thing is?"

The mandroid looked at the ceiling then back down at him. "I don't know, Johnny. You just figure it out."

"Then I shouldn't care what you think, either?"

"I guess not." Mi turned and headed for the door. "Coming?"

Johnny followed, but not too closely. As they walked down the corridor, he stared at the floor or checked his watch, anything to avoid the stares. He tried not to care what the people in the corridor thought, hoping "the right thing" would come to him, but it didn't. He barely noticed when the hallway widened into an atrium. They were in the broad mall that surrounded the big elevator. The ceiling curved up and away, becoming a spoke of the huge wheel that was Ares Alpha Station. The whole place was smeared with green leaves and bright, colorful flowers. It made Johnny's nose itch.

Mi looked up at the departure screen. "Twenty minutes until the next elevator."

Johnny just shrugged, trying not to look right at the mandroid. It shrugged back at him, like it was trying to prove it was just like him. When Mi sat at the end of one of the benches, the guy at the other end jumped up and hurried off. Johnny took his seat.

"Everybody hates you," Johnny said.

Mi shrugged again. "Do you hate me?"

Johnny thought about it. He didn't, really. He just hated having to be seen with it. "No."

"Good." It did that creepy smile thing again. "Because I don't think they hate me. I think they're just afraid. I'm different. I can do things they can't. I can go outside