Old Mars

A writer whose work crosses several mediums and genres, Melinda M. Snodgrass was story editor on Star Trek: The Next Generation and wrote the award-nominated “Measure of a Man,” among other episodes. She worked on Reasonable Doubts, and was a writer/producer on The Profiler. She has written a number of SF novels, and was one of the cocreators of the long-running Wild Card series, for which she has also written and edited, and she has delivered a Wild Card movie to Universal Pictures. Her novels include The Edge of Reason and The Edge of Ruin, and she has just delivered the third book in that series. She also penned the Circuit trilogy, and Queen’s Gambit Declined. Her most recent novels are This Case Is Gonna Kill Me and Box Office Poison, written under the pseudonym Phillipa Bornikova.

This story shows that, even on Mars, family can be a strength and a refuge, and it can also be a claustrophobic, smothering trap—or, sometimes, both at once.

Written in Dust MELINDA M. SNODGRASS

The best memory is that which forgets nothing but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.

—PERSIAN PROVERB

It was a festival day, and crowds strolled the jeweled streets. Overhead, delicate glass spires echoed the colors of the pavements below and scratched at the sky. The perfume of flowers both sharp and sweet coiled about her.A sticky-bun seller offered her one of his wares. The long face like a horse’s, but with faceted, insectoid eyes, nodded in acknowledgment as she sang her thanks. She was small compared with the crowds surrounding her. Tall, slim, swaying like dancing reeds, every word a note, every conversation a symphony. The living and the dead walking together.The inhabitants’ flowing attire seemed so much more comfortable than the binding suit she wore. She entered a temple, stood immersed in incense and the elegant curves of the abstract figures painted on the walls.The other worshippers turned to welcome her. For the first time in a long time, she was happy. She reached up and removed the bulky, confining helmet. Black hair tumbled onto her shoulders.But my hair is brown.

Matilda Michaelson-McKenzie (Tilda to her friends and family) awoke with a melody on her lips, but a melody that had little in common with any Earth tonal system, Western or otherwise.

She rose, sluiced off her face, and watched the water go swirling back into the recycling cisterns. This was the first time she’d had visions. Was that really what the Martians had looked like? Before, it had always just been sound without sight. And the memories seemed very human. Very explicable. Had she really been Miyako McKenzie?