“It is one of the difficulties in offering charity.”
Anna’s fingers twitched. “Yes, but even though a lot was stolen, you don’t know how much it helped us. For some people, the only food they had came from the charity drops.”
Atlas frowned, but otherwise didn’t respond.
The nausea had finally settled, and baby along with it, but it came back as Atlas poured something in her wound to flush out the glass. Not straight homemade alcohol like on Earth, but probably something similar. She tried her best to hold still as he hit the cut with cleaner again.
“Sorry. This is deep.” His voice was measured. “How did you clean these kinds of wounds on Earth?”
Anna winced again. “Whiskey and spit?” Her cheeks turned red. “Uh. Whiskey and prayers?”
Atlas just stared.
She cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m just babbling. We stitched with the sterile supplies from you in the drops, but cleaned with alcohol otherwise.”
“Crude, but effective.” Then he shook his head. “What were you doing in the kitchen at that hour anyway?” The assessing look was back in his eyes. “Trouble sleeping?”
Anna swallowed, tongue thick in her mouth, before she put on her professional bakery face. “Yeah. You too?”
He chuckled. “Androids can’t sleep. We do a stasis, but it isn’t the same. Sleeping, and dreaming, would be nice though.”
She tugged on her night shirt, adjusting the fabric so it covered all her belly. This wasn’t one of the shirts she’d modified out of the new outfits the androids had given her, so it kept riding up.Oh yeah. Right.She already knew that they couldn’t sleep from Simon. Her face flushed. “Yeah. Sorry. Just tired and goofy.”
Atlas picked up the suture kit and smiled. A clinical smile. One that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re tired, yes. But not goofy.”
She pressed her lips together, resisting the urge to frown.Are you sure about that?
But her eyes instead focused on his perfect smile. None of the smiles on the androids seemed real, actually. Except for Simon, when he looked at Nora.
Atlas tilted his head. “Hm . . . your heart. It’s racing. I can hear it from over here.”
Anna recoiled. “You can hear that?” She swallowed.“Can all of you hear that?”
“Yes.” His eyes suddenly became intense. “Are you afraid?”
Anna’s breath caught. Yes. But Atlas was looking at her, unblinking, and waiting for an answer and she couldn’t say that.She placed her hand over her heart. “Ah . . . it’s more like I’m nervous.”
A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Nervous?”
“Yeah. I guess. Sorry. You are kind of . . . cleaning my hand.” She swallowed. “It hurts.”
The crease between his eyes became even more pronounced.
She cleared her throat.Is he . . . sad?“I’m not nervous about you. It’s everything that is new.” She waved her arm around. “Like all these plants. You have more plants, more green, than I’ve seen before. Do you grow them?”
“I did. Some of these I’ve had since we initially came to Mars.” He pointed to a small tree. “This one, in fact.”
Her fingers touched a leaf. “What’s it called?”
“M. emarginata.”
“Huh?”
“Oh. Sorry.” He said. “A Barbados cherry tree is the common name. It grows small fruits that are high in vitamin C. Plants, as long as you tend them right, can keep going indefinitely sometimes. I’ve had this tree for many years, growing it continually again from cuttings.”
Anna hunched in her seat. “I’ve never seen anything like them. Everything here is like a dream sometimes.”
Atlas’s next words were soft. “A good dream?”
