The Perfect Red Rose

Debbie dropped her luggage on the floor of the little efficiency apartment allocated to her in the Bradbury habitat on Mars and sneezed. The sound bounced back and forth from one wall to another, increasing in annoyance with each bounce.

The apartment seemed spotless at first, but when she looked at the furniture, walls, and floors more carefully, she saw that they were covered with a light but uniformly thin layer of pinkish dust, possibly causing the subtle scent of peroxide that tickled her nose.

She was tired, and her muscles felt stiff, which was no surprise considering the fifty-some years she had already spent on planet Earth before embarking on the six-month voyage to Mars. It was good to be here at last. One more sniff and she knew that she was right. Mars needed fresh flowers and natural, pleasant smells.

She hoped she could get her “Martian legs” working well soon despite the unavoidable muscle atrophy caused by the long trip from Earth. Theoretically, she should find it easier to run around under Martian gravity. Right now, though, she just felt clumsy and slow.

First, she wanted to wash away the dust and then try to sleep. Tomorrow she had to find a way to talk to the agriculture director. That wouldn’t be easy, but it also hadn’t been easy to persuade the billionaire who was paying for this Martian colony that Mars needed flowers.

She had told him the colonists from Earth needed some familiar beauty of nature, living creatures they could care for and be comforted by. It would be a long time before it was possible to support animals on Mars, if ever. In the meantime, though, they needed to make room for flowers in the fields and gardens. In her opinion, it was just a matter of correct allocation of resources.

Possibly, she was influenced by her memories of her grandmother’s flower garden. When they retired, Grandpa and Grandma bought two adjoining lots in the little town on the Mississippi River that they moved to after they found a tenant for the farm. One lot had a huge old house with plenty of rooms for the grandchildren to play in. The other was empty, and Grandma spent the next ten years planting flowers there. Debbie had spent many wonderful hours of her childhood in that flower garden.

But now, she was in her assigned housing on Mars. Once she washed the dust away, she saw that the walls were a light crimson, the kitchen cupboards and appliances a darker red, making the dust almost invisible. Practical colors, but not necessarily the ones that would put her in a good mood. She needed more blue and green.

First, she had to get some sleep. She dug a sleep mask out of her bag, folded a cot down from the wall and crawled into what looked like a red sleeping bag on a thin, brown couch. She hadn’t slept well on the trip to Mars, but she hoped the similar hours of daylight, even with less powerful sunlight, would help her get back to a normal sleep cycle soon. The lower gravity here shouldn’t interfere with her sleep.

She did sleep a full seven hours. She didn’t exactly wake up refreshed but she felt determined. She dug out the handbook and found the instructions for a quick shower using the efficient facilities in her apartment.

Her medium-length, wavy, blonde hair felt greasy, and her face looked definitely puffy in the mirror. Her whole body felt dusty and itchy. These conditions did improve after enduring the brief jets of water and soap that spurted out at her in the upright coffin that claimed to be the shower. An overambitious fan dried her off almost instantaneously, and she felt more or less presentable.

That was all she asked. She wasn’t here to enter a beauty contest for middle-aged contestants. She was here to get her flowers planted.

Sometime today, she had to see about getting a little food for her miniature refrigerator, but the newcomers’ handbook recommended eating meals in the cafeteria. So, she took out her communicator and punched in a request for directions to the recommended source of nourishment.

Trudging her way up the light gray hallways was more tiring than she expected. Her apartment was two stories below the surface, and the cafeteria was on the ground floor. So, she had to learn to walk and run more efficiently on Mars. One more thing on her list.

She arrived out of breath at the soothingly light-blue cafeteria door. Before she could go in, a small but chunky woman with short, white hair threw the door open and smiled. “Come on in,” she said. “You must be Debbie Grace. I’m Emma Brooks, the cafeteria lady.”

Debbie tried to catch her breath. “Thank you,” she said and walked in a little uncertainly.

“Take your time,” Emma said. “There is a breakfast buffet available every day.” She pointed to tables up against the windows to the surface, all stacked with food. “But I’d be happy to make you something special to celebrate your first day here.”

Debbie looked around. The room, with enough tables and chairs to seat at least two hundred people, was decorated in a tasteful blue and yellow. The ceiling was a mural of the nighttime sky as seen from Mars, but with recognizable celestial elements exaggerated either in size or color. Phobos, Deimos, and Earth were easy to recognize. The view of the red, rocky surface from the windows was spectacular.

“I love the view,” she said to Emma and sat down, exhausted from the jaunt from her apartment to the cafeteria. Emma sat down across from her.

“So do I,” Emma said. “That’s why I insisted on having the cafeteria on the surface with windows all around. The settlers here can’t become moles. They have to know and identify with this planet as their new home.”

“Was it a struggle to get what you wanted?” Debbie asked.

“Well,” Emma said. “I had the good luck of only having to convince my brother Ned, the guy who is paying for this whole colony. He generally does what I tell him to. I only occasionally have trouble with the self-important little apparatchiks who have grabbed various administration positions.”

“Your brother agreed to finance my project,” Debbie said. “I just have to find a way to take care of details. However, he wants my flower production business to run a profit within ten Earth years.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Emma said. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you. First, you need some food, though. Otherwise, you won’t have the strength to tackle everything you plan to do today. We’re vegan here, but I’m making progress with creating almost-like-meat and almost-like-dairy dishes from plant fibers. We have some very talented chemists in the settlement. Would you like to try my almost-scrambled-eggs-and-ham?”

Debbie didn’t miss the eagerness in Emma’s eyes. “Sure,” Debbie said. “Thank you.”

The food tasted unexpectedly good. Debbie thought she should ask for cooking tips as soon as her own work took off. Instead, she asked, “Emma, who do I talk to about getting space in the fields to grow my flowers?”

Emma’s face lit up. “Flowers,” she said. “I would love to have flowers here in the cafeteria. I’ve missed them ever since I got here, but everyone said they were a luxury we would have to do without for the time being.”

Debbie shook her head. “Well, that’s why I’m here. I think Mars needs flowers and needs them now.”

“Well,” Emma said. “Zack Wilson is in charge of agriculture here on Mars. He is the first person you have to talk to, and he is a decent, intelligent man. I don’t know if he can help you, but I’ll order you a robot vehicle. It would take you too long to walk all the way to the tents containing the habitat fields.” Emma pulled out her communicator and started tapping.

“Thank you,” Debbie said. “I really need to get up to speed about all the things I can order or organize via communicator. Where do I take my dirty dishes?” She got up and looked around uncertainly.

“Put them on the cart at that end of the room,” Emma said, pointing to the opposite wall. “Good luck. Let me know when there will be flowers.”

Debbie took her dishes over to the cart and then walked to the exit door. A flimsy, dusty, red, plastic vehicle waited for her at the door, four wheels, one seat, probably electrically powered but no visible battery. A voice came out of the front of the car: “Debbie Grace to Zack Wilson at the agricultural fields office?”

“Yes,” Debbie said, not entirely sure how to proceed.

“Please take a seat and secure your safety belt,” the voice continued. Debbie complied, and the vehicle took off at a much higher speed than Debbie expected. The vehicle flew down the tunnels, by some miracle neither colliding with people nor walls. It came to an abrupt stop; Debbie was only able to remain in the car because of the safety belt.

“Here is your destination,” the voice boomed. “Please exit as this vehicle must pick up a new passenger.”

Debbie climbed out, feeling especially clumsy. She barely had both feet on the floor when the vehicle tore off. She walked to the red door with the sign “Fields Office” and looked for some bell or button to activate when a skinny man in his thirties with some short, brown hair beneath a receding hairline pulled the door open and said, “Ms. Grace? Emma sent me a message that you wanted to talk to me. Come on in. My office is compatible with the requirements of human beings.”

Not entirely sure what he meant by that, Debbie stepped into the room cautiously. The office looked a lot like her efficiency apartment, the same colors, the same furniture, just a few more chairs around a table. Mr. Wilson’s smile was friendly but noncommittal.

“I need your help, Mr. Wilson,” Debbie said as she sat down on one of the red, plastic chairs. Mr. Wilson sat across from her.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “But please call me Zack.”

“Good,” Debbie said. “And I’m Debbie. Did you get a message from Mr. Brooks saying that he will pay for me to start flower gardens here on Mars?”

“Yes, probably,” Zack said and sighed. “I get so many notices from him, and from Earth. Anymore, I don’t read most of them. I have work to do. I’m managing farms on a planet relatively hostile to human life. We need to produce enough food to feed a growing community. That has to have priority.”

“Yes,” Debbie agreed. “But don’t you already have fields now, and couldn’t I just have a few rows to grow my flowers on, a place where people could stroll through my flowerbeds and pick out the flowers they would like?”

“That would be a major problem,” Zack said. “You know, setting up fields for many basic grains and vegetables was the first thing we did here. It's not that easy to grow stuff on Mars. We have to crush the sand and rocks, add chemicals, and set up irrigation. Nothing gets enough sunlight here, so we have to calculate the use of extra lighting. We got robots programmed correctly so that they could do the backbreaking work of plowing, harvesting, and transport. We even have tiny robot insects that take care of other work.”

“It comes down to just ‘what do the plants need?’ Well, plants really don’t need the same air pressure as animals, and they thrive with more carbon dioxide than they would get on earth. They need some oxygen, but less than on earth. So we put the fields under indestructible, transparent, plastic, self-sealing tents, and set the air pressure, temperature, and gas levels to what is good for the plants. The tents are less fragile with respect to dust storms or pounding by fragments from space.”

“The robots can function in any environment. But no human being could survive long in one of the field tents. And I assume you weren’t thinking of sending people in surface suits to stroll through your flower garden.”

Debbie sighed. “No, that won’t work. And I suppose you wouldn’t want to change conditions in an entire tent just so people could walk through the rows.”

“Again,” Zack said patiently. “We have more and more people to feed, and we have come up with a very efficient way to produce needed food. But the system we have come up with won’t work for what you want to do.”

“And you also grow simple garden vegetables in these fields?” Debbie asked.

“Some vegetables are more complicated than others when it comes to harvesting,” Zack admitted. “In a few cases we do have to send people in surface suits into the tents to harvest things by hand like, for example, strawberries or asparagus. We can’t get the robots to do that without smashing or tearing everything. Using human labor in surface suits is a compromise solution. We have extra intermediary rooms containing surface suits for moving from the habitat to the rooms to the tents.”

“Hmm,” Debbie said. “Then you actually could use a different area for growing some vegetables, an area which I could also use for my flowers.”

“Two problems,” Zack said. “And I’m not the cause of either of them. One: You need a concept. People here are very multi-talented and resourceful. Once you have a concept, you will find someone who can make it work for you. But two: This will cost money that hasn’t been budgeted, and you won’t be able to pay for materials or labor.”

Debbie nodded. “Okay, I think I have the money, but I still need to give the details some serious thought. And where should I start my brainstorming?”

“Unfortunately, not with me,” Zack said. "Even though I like your idea. I have to spend every second figuring out how to make my fields produce better every day. Go back and talk to Emma. She knows everyone and has a lot of imagination. More importantly, she is about the only one who has any influence on her billionaire brother.”

“Thank you,” Debbie said as she stood up and fished her communicator out of her front pocket. “Could you show me how to call a robot vehicle to take me back to the cafeteria?”

Zack tried to show her how to work it, but maybe Debbie wasn’t acclimated sufficiently to her new home yet for her brain to work well. After four unsuccessful tries, he took his communicator from a shelf and tapped on it. “Your ride should be here right away,” he said. “Let me know what you come up with. If I can help, I will.”

“Thank you,” Debbie said as she opened the door. The robot vehicle beeped impatiently as she turned back and said. “I’ll probably have to take you up on that offer, if only to work out the details of soil and water for my flowers.”

“Good luck,” Zack said.

The ride back to the cafeteria was as harrowing as the ride to the fields. But when Debbie, to her grateful amazement, exited the vehicle and went into the cafeteria, she was uninjured.

“How did it go?” Emma asked.

Debbie sat down and frowned. “Not the way I had hoped. I won’t be able to plant my flowers in the fields. I have to find some way to plant them somewhere else, where there are conditions conducive to survival of human beings, not just growth of plants.”

“It sounds like you need your own greenhouses,” Emma said.

“Of course. That would be perfect, but how do I go about getting something extra built for me?” Debbie asked.

“You’d be surprised how many people manage to get things constructed just for themselves,” Emma said dryly. “My advice would be to ask Marvin Keel if he could build you something with those glass bricks he developed.”

“That sounds perfect,” Debbie said. “Where do I find Mr. Keel?”

“Here,” Emma said. “Let me show you how to use your communicator to find people and send them messages.”

After some lengthy practice, Debbie acquired in fact a minimal competence at both skill sets. Marvin Keel messaged back that he could meet her in the cafeteria in about an hour.

“Who is this Marvin Keel, and how did he come to make glass bricks?” Debbie asked Emma.

“It's very sad,” Emma said. “Marvin was a bricklayer on Earth, and his son Mikey was on his way to becoming a skilled bricklayer too, despite his Down Syndrome. Marvin was worried about Mikey’s future when he would no longer be around to watch out for him. So, Marvin got the idea that they would have a great future here on Mars. With every new settlement, there would be a need for skilled custom bricklayers.”

“So they came to Mars, but Mikey, who wasn’t overly verbal, hated it here. He missed the animals and even insects who had been his friends on Earth. One day they found him out on the surface. Somehow he must have gotten an exit door open and wandered out.”

“That must have been terrible for Mr. Keel,” Debbie said.

“He hasn’t recovered,” Emma said. "He is always looking for something to keep him busy besides repairing or renovating the walls of the buildings he’s constructed. He might be grateful for your idea about building flower gardens.”

Marvin Keel was a short, stocky man with unkempt, dark, curly hair, probably in his late Earth thirties. He walked into the cafeteria slowly, shoulders slumped, eyes staring at the floor. Debbie stood up and walked over to him. “Mr. Keel,” she said. “Thank you so much for talking to me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said softly. Emma motioned for both of them to sit down.

“How can I help you?” Marvin Keel asked Debbie.

Debbie explained how she wanted to grow flowers in little gardens where people could stroll through the rows.

“I think I can build something for you,” Marvin said. “But that’s all. I don’t know anything about gardening. You’ll have to tell me exactly what you need.”

Debbie said, “I have written a few things down.” She handed him a crumpled sheet of paper with sketches that she had brought along. “This is how many rows of flowers I would like, and I think this is the height the building would need. I want the flowers to get enough air and water and sunlight. But I’ve heard that the sunlight here isn’t enough, so I would need lights on the ceiling.”

Mr. Keel pulled out his communicator and tapped around on it. “I think you would be best served with a little rotunda made out of transparent glass bricks and connected to the habitat so that people only have to go through a door to get to it and not go out on the surface. And you wouldn’t need separate water and air delivery. You could use the habitat’s. We could install lights in the ceiling. A rough estimate for the materials and the robot work time you would need is about 150,000 Martian credits, which I will need before I can begin."

“Okay,” Debbie said. “I have to find out how to get the money credited to you. Emma, do you know how that works?”

“The settlement administration takes care of money transmission,” Emma said. “All you should have to do is tell them Ned guaranteed the money, and they can credit it to Marvin's account.”

“Then we’re set,” Debbie said to Marvin. “Are you willing to take this on and would you have time to start as soon as you get the Martian credits?”

Marvin looked up for the first time. “I think I would like to help you,” he said. “I hope you can get the financing worked out. It would be good to have flowers on Mars.” He got up and walked out slowly.

“So, how do I get to the settlement administration office?” Debbie asked.

Emma laughed and said, “Get out your communicator, and I’ll show you.” One call, and Debbie was off for another wild ride.

Debbie got out of the robot vehicle, again grateful to still be in one piece. She went to the administration office door and dutifully pressed the button. The door opened and an arrogant voice bellowed, “Do you have an appointment?”

“I just called, Mr. Mayor,” Debbie said. “You said I could come right over.”

“Then come in,” the voice snapped.

Debbie walked into a huge, wood-paneled room with massive teak-wood furniture. One wall was a huge monitor. Behind a large desk sat a thin, little man with slicked back hair and beady eyes. He pointed to a large upholstered chair and said, “Have a seat, Ms. Grace. What is it you want?”

Debbie started to explain why she thought Mars needed flowers, but Mayor Berry interrupted her after only a few words. “What do you want from me?” he asked in an unfriendly voice.

“150,000 Martian credits transferred to the account of Marvin Keel for construction of a flower garden rotunda,” Debbie said, barely managing to suppress her annoyance.

“No,” Mayor Berry said.

“What do you mean, no?” Debbie asked. “Mr. Brooks assured me that funds would be available for my flower project.”

“Don’t care,” Mayor Berry said. “I decide how the funds get distributed, and I won’t distribute any credits for a stupid flower garden. Do you want anything else?”

Debbie swallowed the retort at the tip of her tongue. There would be time for her epithets later. “No,” she said as she stood up to go. “Thank you for your time.”

Mayor Berry turned around to his video wall and started some virtual sports activity. Debbie went back into the hallway and managed to order a robot vehicle with her communicator. Not knowing what else to do, she punched in a request for a ride back to the cafeteria.

Emma was still there, though back in the kitchen area. Debbie stumbled through the door and said, “That miserable little bureaucrat wouldn’t even listen to me and he won’t transfer the funds. What do I do now?”

Emma came out to the cafeteria, wiped her hands on her apron, and looked at Debbie. “Hmm,” she said. “Mayor Berry has been a nuisance ever since he got here. I don't know why we didn't do something about him sooner. It's just that there has been so much to do to get this settlement working. However, I’ve been collecting complaints to give to Ned, hoping that when I had enough, I could get Ned to reassign Mayor Ben Berry.”

She sat down on the nearest chair. “I try not to give my baby brother the impression that I’m ordering him around. That’s counterproductive to getting him to do what I want. But maybe now would be the time to dump my list of complaints on him and ask him to fire the mayor and have your funds transferred.”

“Would you do that?” Debbie asked. “That would be a miracle, and it looks like I need a miracle right now.”

Emma nodded. “I have to go to my office and activate the earth link. Our little communicators only work for messages on Mars.”

“Do you mind if I wait?” Debbie asked.

“No, please do,” Emma said as she left. Debbie looked around the cafeteria. People were starting to wander in. They all seemed to know their way around. They must have ordered their meals ahead of time. They all just went to a slot in the wall, pressed some buttons, and a tray with food appeared. One more thing Debbie would have to ask Emma about.

But when Emma came back, Debbie wanted to hear if she had had any luck persuading her brother to do something about the mayor.

Emma smiled. “It wasn’t easy. The mayor has powerful political connections on Earth. But I managed to convince Ned that the mayor is becoming a hindrance to this settlement's becoming financially independent. Ned now sees the necessity of major wheeling and dealing on Earth. He promised me you would get your money, but you might have to wait a few more days. Ned is thinking about reassigning the mayor and making the sheriff the temporary mayor. Sheriff Curtis is a sensible, reasonable person. I’ll just have to help him with the bureaucratic process of entering the correct commands to release funds.”

Debbie said, “Thank you! I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t be able to get my flowers grown here at all. Now I need to hurry back to my apartment and make some serious plans and drawings for Mr. Keel. The seeds I brought with me are still stored at the spaceport; I have to get their delivery organized. How can I ever thank you?”

Emma smiled. “I should thank you for giving me the necessary shove to do something about the mayor. He has been making our work here difficult for far too long. Let me know if I can help you. I can’t wait for the first flowers for my cafeteria.”

Debbie called a robot vehicle; she didn’t want to waste any time hiking. This time she didn’t notice the speed or reckless driving style, lost in thought the whole way home. Now that her project could really begin, she had to make precise decisions about the details. What should the garden look like, how many paths for flowers, how many of each species of flower, when to plant which flowers, how many paths for vegetables, where to get the soil, how to get the irrigation canals set up. Once the plants were growing, she could do everything by herself, but before then she needed to find the people who could help.

Amazingly enough, it was easy to find her experts. Zack was a great help with the agricultural details, and everyone was enthusiastic about the idea of having fresh flowers on Mars. Marvin managed to get her glass-brick rotunda built in record time. His meticulous handiwork produced a domed pavilion that was absolutely airtight and transparent. The door led directly into the habitat, next to entrance of the cafeteria, so Emma would always get her flowers first.

After only a few months her domed garden was up and running. She only began with ten rows of flowers and ten rows of vegetables and fruits. She didn’t even have to advertise. From day one, the demand for her cut flowers and plants exceeded what she could supply. Eventually she had to ask for robot assistants, but by then she had earned enough to afford the programming.

The robots made mistakes, but the flowers were sturdy enough to survive.

Debbie was able to expand and grow all the flowers the rotunda had room for. With a little extra time on her hands, she started experimenting with creating new species of flowers, genuine Martian specialties. Videos from Mars made her flowers famous on Earth and she earned even more money exporting the seeds of her new creations.

Her flower gardens ― Zack talked her into having more than one as time went by ― were self-sufficient after two Martian years. Life was good. Wherever Mr. Brooks had Mayor Berry transferred to, the man never interfered with her work.

Medical care, especially internal nanobots, kept her healthy and active for Martian decades, but they weren’t magic, and the new Martians weren’t immortal. Her heart gave out while she was cutting one perfect red rose, a perfect tribute to her life and work on Mars.

Mary Jo Rabe writes science fiction, modern fantasy, historical fiction, and crime or mystery stories, generally displaying a preference for what she defines as happy endings. Ideas for her fiction come from the magnificent, expanding universe, the rural environment of eastern Iowa where she grew up, the beautiful Michigan State University campus where she got her first degree, and the Black Forest area of Germany with its center in Freiburg where she worked as a librarian for 41 years before retiring to Titisee-Neustadt. News about her published stories is posted regularly on her blog: https://maryjorabe.wordpress.com/