Even more optimistically, the brightest of them were sometimes granted early education in aeronautical engineering, advanced sciences. The goal impressed to most children was to get the hell out of Dodge and make yourself useful on Mars, quick as you could. Or else try to invent your way out of the whole damned mess: come up with some miracle solution to the Comeback. But only the best were eyed for that. When the class size was reduced to two, the whole thing defaulted back to algebra and needs-based architecture, the latter of which robots still hadn’t figured out how to do.

At lunch, Park stayed in her seat and ate at her desk, watching the newstreams on her wrist console while she held one of Glenn’s vegetable patties in her other hand. When Ms. Allison left the room, Park kept her eyes fixed determinedly on her screen; Dataran Zinh, the Martian transfer student, was sitting a few rows behind her. He hadn’t left the room, either. Park understood that it was expected behavior for him to get up and approach her eventually, being that she was the only other person in the room. But she prayed that he wouldn’t do this. There was an odd peace about learning in an empty classroom: a balming quality, like the feeling of closing your eyes for the first time after a long day. Park hoped that Dataran understood this feeling; that he would respect and preserve it. Would in turn leave her the hell alone.

A chair squeaked. Dataran’s voice spoke, suddenly directly in her ear, though not so close that she could feel his breath. “So why did you come to class?”

“I like to learn,” Park answered curtly, without turning her head. Hadn’t they ever heard of personal boundaries on Mars? There was all that space—thousands of acres of red land granted to each family. Maybe he thought it was Earth custom to jostle close; maybe it seemed that way to him, seeing all the bodies crammed into a single biodome.

“Oh,” Dataran said. She felt rather than saw him lean back, probably dismayed that she didn’t make eye contact. “I like to learn, too.”

He watched her for a while after that; he seemed to find no problem in standing there, observing. Park tried to quell her irritation. Move along, she wanted to say. Nothing to see here. Certainly the other boys in her class seemed to think so, with their flat disinterest in her straight-hipped body, the prim, closed-collar clothes that Glenn warned her looked school-marmish. “I can download fashion software,” he’d offered, meaning into his operating system. “I could discern the popular patterns.” But patterns couldn’t help her knife-flat frame, Park thought, or the fact that making eye contact with her was like “looking into the windows of an empty house.” So she’d heard one classmate tell another.

“What are you watching?” Dataran asked.