Glory on Mars (33 page)

"Governor, you there? Lock my suit joints."

"Claude, are you ready to open your door?"

"Ready."

The airlock pressurized quickly.

Yang banged against Emma's legs as he crawled through
to the module.

Claude pushed her walkabout's pack up and dragged
Emma out, leaving the suit braced against the door.

"Hurry. I can hear air leaking around the door."

They both sneezed violently as they crossed the
module and closed the Plaza airlock behind them.

"There," Claude said, giving the last door an
unnecessary push. "The Plaza pressure will hold that closed."

"Let's never do this again." Yin wrapped his arms
around Yang.

"It was easy-peasy," Yang said, grunting in Yin's
bear-hug.

Still sneezing, Emma spun towards Claude and hugged
him. Her face was flushed and her eyes glittered.

"The walkabouts were great. Look how much taller Yang
is than me, but his suit adapted perfectly," she said, beaming.

"What about you risking your life? Any comment on
that?"

"We're all risking our lives." Winning was
exhilarating.

"My hero." Claude planted a kiss on her lips.

Chapter Forty:
Winter

After the triumph of blasting Claude's data into
space, it was hard to huddle in the greenhouse and wait.

They had the cryochamber with them, plugged into an
airlock outlet where the cold air rolling off wouldn't damage any
plants.

Any more plants, Emma thought.

Frost had touched the greenhouse. Tomato and squash
leaves drooped, sadly wilted. The banana leaves were limp and
blackened, though Liz said the corms should be okay.

"And potatoes in the ground are just fine," she said.
"We won't starve."

Dead leaves didn't bother the cat. He rolled through
wilted squash vines as enthusiastically as ever.

Yin spent an entire morning carving a pattern of
holes into the floor while Liz assembled handfuls of different
seeds.

"I recognize this. It's Star Halma," Claude said when
he examined Yin's work. "I haven't played this game since I was a
kid."

"If you remember the rules, you can explain," Grace
said as Liz handed her some seeds to be playing pieces.

Liz sat next to William, cross-legged on the floor,
while Yin and Yang perched on opposite bed walls, leaning down
between their legs to reach the game board. Grace held up the last
seeds. She glanced to the far end of the bay, where Daan and Melina
sat close together, their backs to the crowd. She left them
alone.

"Emma? Sanni?"

"Oh, Chinese Checkers," Emma said as she looked at
the board, the holes patterned as a six-pointed star.

"You play, Sanni. The mealworms need feeding - Liz
had them buried in blankets. I'll harvest a batch for supper."

"Would you rather play?" William held his seeds out
to Claude.

"No, no. I'm the referee. Ten seeds each and no
cheating."

"I'll watch, too," Noah said. "It's great input for
my psych evaluations." Yin gave him a good natured smack and
everyone laughed.

While they set up the game, Claude followed Emma.

"What do you think our chances are?"

"I worry about the CO2 to oxygen balance. With so
many plants dead and no way to adjust the mix - drowsiness or
headaches will be the fist symptom."

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.

"If MEX receives your data, I'm pretty sure they can
work out a frequency to cut through the storm."

"If?"

Emma avoided his eyes.

"How long can we survive in here?"

"I haven't asked Governor to estimate." She pressed
her lips firmly together.

"I can't think of anything else to do."

"I have no regrets." Claude hugged her close.

She hugged back, blinking at tears. She could think
of one more thing to do, though she didn't say it out loud. Fewer
people in the greenhouse would survive longer. Maybe long enough.
It would be hard to decide when to leave, to step into the cold
dark Spine. Not yet. Not now.

Everything depended on Ruby, if she was still alive
somewhere in orbit. Because, without its link to Governor, if Ruby
hadn't contacted the jumpship, it blasted straight past the
satellites into space. Nowhere near where MEX would be listening
for a signal.

***

The whole sol passed before the steady white-noise
hum of comms began to crackle.

"Ruby to Kamp Kans. You guys still down there?"

Between cheers, Daan answered.

"We're here, we're fine. Where the hell are you?"

"Phobos Base. The habitat here is in perfect working
order, thank goodness. I've been eating buckyball pasta and playing
vid games, bored to tears, while MEX fiddled with Claude's data.
Seems they got the comm frequency right."

Shortly after, Governor reported receiving
transmissions directly from Earth and after a few diagnostic runs
they were back to full power. Daan reset all the circuits in the
Spine and the comforting whoosh and hum of the nederzetting
returned.

Only William was somber as they downloaded
messages.

"There's fallout from the loss of that bank of
embryos," he said. "I've got a folder of news stories. Here's one
about donors demanding the return of embryos from Colony Mars' S-5
bank."

"No one can do that," Hannah said. "All identifying
data's been stripped away."

"Really?" Sanni asked. "Surely they can reconstruct
it."

"No way." Hannah shook her head. "Colony Mars did
that to ensure settlers will use the full genetic diversity
available, with no biases about race or ethnicity, not even
subconsciously."

"It was specified in the donor contracts," William
said. "But apparently that doesn't stop lawsuits." He scrolled
through the list.

"Here's something. MEX flagged this vid." He tapped
the play icon.

"In a rare public statement," the announcer said,
"reclusive financier Amelia Lambert issued the following statement
regarding Colony Mars."

Emma shifted to watch over William's shoulder, but it
was a thin, formally dressed lawyer and not Mlle Lambert who
continued speaking.

"Mademoiselle Lambert extends her condolences for the
loss of the embryos in a tragic accident on Mars. She wants the
donor families to know that she, personally, has both a financial
and genealogical stake in the colony. To demonstrate her
commitment, Mademoiselle Lambert has arranged for ten clones to be
created from her own somatic cells. These will be randomly placed
in the primary cryogenic chambers, without identification, to take
their place among the donated embryos traveling to Mars." The
lawyer looked up from the pad he was reading.

"Mademoiselle Lambert said, she has always known
humans would walk on Mars, but never expected to walk on Mars
herself." His eyes returned to the pad.

"She believes that a permanent colony on Mars is the
first step on humanity's voyage into the universe and has dedicated
her life and her fortune to achieving this goal. You can help -
Colony Mars now reopens donor applications for embryos to replace
those lost on Mars."

"Savvy old woman," Ruby said in admiration. "I wonder
what it cost to clone herself ten times?"

"I wonder how many thousand people have already
applied to donate," Emma said. She stepped around to face
William.

"Does this balance the loss?"

"Every life is precious," he said. "My purpose here
is to nurture life and I've lived to continue that mission, thanks
to you."

"We give birth to a living world," Liz said, as if
quoting something important. She snuggled into William's side.

"Look, I found the revised launch schedule." Yang
waved his pad. "They've shuffled the missions."

The S-5 Kinderen Mission with its two thousand
embryos was delayed. Settler Six, the Blacksmiths, would launch in
its place, and was scheduled to leave Earth orbit in early
December.

"Governor, translate that date. When the hell's early
December?" Ruby asked.

Emma laughed at her snarl.

***

Later, alone in her own bunk, Emma set her personal
messages on text to avoid disturbing anyone trying to sleep and
scrolled through. There was nothing about Malcolm. There shouldn't
be, of course, but she was relieved. She wondered if he'd been
prosecuted, but decided against searching for information. Let
Earth take care of Earth's problems.

There were cheery updates on the arts circuit from
her mother, one from each week, and a couple more files for the
holograph pedestals. In recent messages the cheerfulness seemed
forced. Her mother was worried. Emma sent back a long reply, with
stories about Ruby, the cat, and Claude. Her mother liked
stories.

There was a message from her father, sent shortly
after Ruby had blasted into orbit. Emma opened it, planning to send
him a report on the walkabouts. His message started with a stiff
greeting and she would have skipped straight to her reply, but the
message was longer than usual and she began to read, then turned on
the audio very low and held the pad to her ear.

"If you're seeing this message, then things turned
out well. If you haven't viewed the statement Aunt Amelia issued,
take a look. She's rescued me again by rescuing the colony - by
rescuing you." He sounded oddly bitter. And who was Aunt
Amelia?

"I never told you, I didn't want you to know... I was
a failure. It's a good thing your mother never understood finances
or she'd have left me long before she did." He chuckled sadly.

"When you were born, your great aunt contacted me and
offered a deal. No one knows we're related... my mother's pregnancy
was an embarrassment, I guess. Anyway, Amelia was the venture
capitalist for my company - no one knows that, either. I worked
every waking minute to prove I could make it, that her money wasn't
charity. And I succeeded. With the company, anyway.

"I promised Amelia I'd hand you a Colony Mars
application, and I did. But I cried the day you left Earth. And
now, maybe you'll never get this message and I'll never hear from
you again." The message ended abruptly.

Emma lay in her bunk, staring at the ceiling. He
cried? She couldn't picture that. He was gone so often when she was
a child... trying to prove himself? That took grit.

What about Great Aunt Amelia? With a creeping
certainty, Emma knew. Miss Lambert had never met with any settler
crew but hers. The lawyer said something about her having a
genealogical stake, even before the clones. Amelia Lambert. God
damn. Emma's voyage to Mars was payment for her father's debt. She
laughed silently until tears choked her. She probably should be
furious, but it was too late to change how she felt. Her mom was
right - people count.

"I love you, Dad."

***

The storm thrown up by the asteroid raged through the
northern hemisphere winter, but there were gardens to replant, fish
and mealworms to farm, equipment to maintain, and all the new
components to install, so the settlers kept busy.

They hoped to salvage most of the equipment in
Medical. Yin and Yang planned to build a second bay on top of the
bay to seal it.

Emma talked with Ruby every sol she was stuck on
Phobos Base, discussing upgrades to the jumpships. They even shared
a couple video games, using Governor to relay moves.

At last the cat was happy to spend his sols with
Melina. Heaters warmed the new garden bay and everyone took turns
helping Liz.

When the cloud's density tapered off near the
surface, Yang started the beetle-bots digging out. They shifted
sand from the maintenance bay doorway first, feeding it to the
fabricator inside to form construction blocks. As Yang said, there
was no need to waste time getting back to construction.

"The bots are sweeping off Ruby's landing pad this
sol," Yin said as he fried mealworms and potatoes one morning in a
warm, bright Plaza kitchen. "The high clouds are thinning and
she'll be able to land this sol."

"Surface opacity readings are way down," Yang said
over a pot of beans. "We can take the rover out again."

"Alright," Claude said happily. "I'll get back to
prospecting."

"Governor, send activation codes to the beacons at
the lava tube and Rover One." Emma gripped Claude's hand as she
talked.

"I have contact with both beacons, Emma."

"Yeah." Claude slapped the table with a grin. "Let's
retrieve the rover I rolled into that south-flank channel."

"We'll relinquish Rover Two to Emma and Claude for
their trip," Yin said. "We can walk to Maintenance for a while." He
heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"I've been talking to Ruby about your idea, Emma,"
Daan said. "To take a jumpship to the Olympus caldera rim. I can
scope out a climbing route for later, but I think I'd like to learn
something about the peak and not just haul my sorry body up and
down."

"Bring back samples," Claude said.

Ruby's landing became a celebration. She even allowed
Governor to stream the imagers live to MEX despite the indignity of
being carried from the jumper. Her months on the tiny moon left her
weak in Mars' gravity. Grace, with her space medicine expertise,
fussed over her.

"I can't decide," Liz said. "Should we have an annual
Doomsday Holiday on the sol the asteroid hit? The sol we regained
contact with Earth? Or now, when Ruby came back safely?"

"How about all three sols?" Daan asked.

"Anyone want a vodka martini?" Liz asked. "Very dry,
since all I've got is vodka."

But Garec held out a cup to Ruby.

"What's this?"

"Water. No alcohol for you. I'm going to get
excellent data from your recovery."

Ruby groaned good-naturedly.