Mars (13 page)

Sighing heavily, he pushed his chair away from the comm console and stood up, almost six and a half feet tall, lean as a broom handle. The tightly buttoned collar of his coveralls hid the old scar on his throat, a reminder of the riots during his student days in Shanghai. The only decoration on the olive drab outfit was his name tag on the left breast and the shoulder patch of the First Martian Expedition.

Silly of the Americans to be troubled over a few words, he thought. Yet they have never fully resolved their problems with the Indians. Li frowned. No, they did not call them “Indians” anymore. Native Americans? Amerinds? Words are important, he realized, especially in a nation ruled by its media.

As commander of the First Martian Expedition, Li Chengdu had both absolute power and absolute responsibility. Two dozen human beings were under his charge, their very lives in his hands. Half of them, the envied half, were down on the surface of Mars. Waterman was not the first choice among the geologists, not even the second. But the young man is down there on the surface of Mars; his Tao is so powerful that it shapes and transforms the paths of all others who come in touch with him, even my own.

Those of us remaining up here, coasting in orbit, secretly consider ourselves second-rate. There is important work for us to do here in orbit, but except for the few who are going to probe the tiny moons, the scientists here would gladly commit murder for the chance to replace any one of the men or women’ down on the planet’s surface.

I am being melodramatic, he sighed to himself. These are all adult human beings, the healthiest and most stable men and women who could be selected out of the thousands who sought positions on this expedition. The best of the Best. They have their problems, naturally. We all face stresses and emotional tensions. It would be foolish to expect otherwise. My task is to reconcile these problems and make certain that they do not interfere with the performance of our mission.

But how healthy and stable was it for that American to speak Navaho to the world’s media? How healthy and stable is it for anyone to want to fly off to another world, risking one’s life for the thrill of setting foot where no one has stepped before?

Ah, said Li to himself, perhaps that is a form of madness that is divine. The human beast is an explorer, a wanderer, and always has been. Young Waterman’s ancestors would never have roamed from Asia to America if it were not thus.

Dealing with two dozen such wandering souls while simultaneously trying to keep their overseers back on Earth placated—that requires the patience of a Confucius, the intelligence of an Einstein, and the guile of a Machiavelli. I am none of them.

Yet as far as these young men and women are concerned, as far as the mission controllers in Kaliningrad and Houston are concerned, I am all of those things and more. And so I must continue to appear to them. If for no other reason than to protect them from their politicians back on Earth. Even when I really want to pursue that slender young blonde who is running the cartographic cameras. Such a tempting smile!

Li sighed heavily. Damned annoying being a sage.

“TOSH-ima,” the Japanese corrected. “Not Tosh-EE-ma.”

Jamie unconsciously bowed his head slightly, acknowledging the meteorologist’s pronunciation. Toshima’s voice was soft and he smiled as he spoke, but it was clear that he wanted his name pronounced his way. He seemed big for a Japanese: slightly taller than Jamie himself, thick-bodied, with a round flat-featured face.

The wardroom felt almost crowded with all twelve of them sitting together. They had pushed the three tables together and, after a long day of unloading supplies and equipment, were celebrating with a festive dinner.

Vosnesensky and his fellow Russian, Mironov, sat shoulder to shoulder at one end of the table, two squat fireplugs in gray coveralls. The American astronauts, Connors and Paul Abell, were on the Russians’ left. The three women sat across from the Americans, and the other scientists had seated themselves around the rest of the table.

Jamie had spent more than an hour during the free time after they had finished unloading the second L/AV composing a conciliatory note for Houston. He had used Li’s words as exactly as he could remember them: “I was overwhelmed with emotion upon stepping onto the surface of Mars and relapsed into the language of my ancestors.” That ought to satisfy the pisspot sons of bitches, he thought as he transmitted his apology to the spacecraft orbiting above.

Now he sat at the improvised dining table flanked on one side by Seiji Toshima and on the other by Tony Reed.

“I’ve wondered why the Japanese weren’t represented in the first landing,” Reed mused as he picked at his tray of precooked beef slices. “After all, if it weren’t for Japan’s
contribution of funding and electronics hardware we would never have gotten here.”

Toshima looked up from his rice and fish at the Englishman. “Such decisions were made by the politicians. Japan is not so prideful that one day’s difference matters to us. It is enough to be part of this expedition.”

With a winking glance at Jamie, Reed teased, “Yes, but after all—even Israel and Brazil were represented before Japan,”

“And even England,” said Toshima thinly.

“Ah, but England,” Reed countered, “represents the European Community.”

Toshima bowed his head slightly.

“Then of course,” Reed continued amiably, “there is the Navaho nation.”

Jamie put down his plastic fork. “Tony, you know as well as any of us that the final decisions on who went aboard which ship determined the order of landing. Why make an issue of it?”

“Indeed,” said Toshima, “it is sufficient for us to be here, regardless of which hour each one of us put his first boot-print on the ground.”

Reed made a gracious nod and brushed back the stubborn lock of sandy hair that fell across his forehead. “I accept your superior wisdom. Excuse my English gamesmanship, please.”

Reed broke into a conversation on his left and Toshima started talking to the Egyptian geophysicist on his right, leaving Jamie sitting alone and wishing that there was a burrito or even a supermarket taco on the microwave tray before him. He had not tasted real food since he had left Houston, more than ten months ago. The nutritionists who planned the meals for this expedition had paid careful attention to the varying national tastes of the Mars explorers—so they had thought. Jamie was eating their version of the Italian meals prepared for Father DiNardo: soybean paste attempting to look like veal cutlets; spaghetti that miraculously managed to be dry and mushy at the same time. And it was all so bland! DiNardo’s damned gall bladder problems had ruled out spices, apparently. That’s what you get for taking another man’s position, Jamie told himself. Eat DiNardo’s meals and be grateful you’re here in his place.

He glanced at the three women, talking among themselves.
Ilona’s patrician face was animated, smiling as she spoke, her hands a flurry of gestures. Little Joanna looked almost solemn, as if hearing bad news. The other woman, Monique Bonnet, was nodding in rhythm to Ilona’s gesticulations.

Bonnet was tiny, even shorter than Joanna, but as plump as a Provençal matron. She was older than the other two, her thick dark hair speckled with gray, laughter wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her face was round, with ruddy cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. She must have been a beauty when she was younger, Jamie thought. And thinner.

Liquor was strictly off-limits, as far as the mission regulations went. So naturally every member of the expedition had carried aboard a bottle or two among his or her personal baggage. Jamie, inserted at the last minute and flown unexpectedly from his quarters in Houston to the launching center in Florida, never had a moment to buy, borrow, or steal so much as a can of beer.

Vosnesensky rapped his knuckles on the table, making it rattle dangerously.

“I want to make it clear,” he said, almost in a growl, “that this is the last occasion on which liquor will be tolerated.”

Groans and grumbles down the table.

“We have much work to do and little time to do it. Liquor is strictly forbidden; it could be a safety hazard.”

Vosnesensky was simply stating the mission rules, but no one felt happy about it.

“However, since this is the first night here on Mars for all twelve of us,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, “I wish to propose a toast.”

Relieved sighs and grins broke out around the table. Seven men and the three women raised glasses of whiskey, vodka, brandy, wine, and sake. Jamie lifted his water glass and noticed that whatever Vosnesensky had in his plastic glass was also clear.

“We have been through a difficult time,” Vosnesensky said, his heavy features quite serious. With a glance at Ilona Malater he went on, “Nine months aboard the spacecraft created certain tensions, certain problems.”

“At least no one got pregnant,” Tony Reed whispered loud enough to generate a few giggles.

Vosnesensky glared at him. “Tomorrow our true work begins: the conquest of Mars.”

Conquest? Jamie’s mind flashed pictures of the white man’s conquest of America. That’s not what we’re here for. Nobody’s going to conquer Mars.

“The next seven weeks will test us,” Vosnesensky was going on. “Make no mistake about it. Each of us will be tested to his limit. Or hers. Mars will test us all.”

“Our arms are getting tired, Mikhail Andreivitch,” quipped Mironov, grinning. “Is this a toast or a speech?”

Vosnesensky did not smile. Quite seriously he raised his glass even higher and said, “May each of us find on Mars what we are looking for.”

“Zah vahsheh zdahrovyeh!”
exclaimed Mironov.

“Zddhrovyeh,”
Vosnesensky echoed.

They all drank. Jamie’s water tasted flat, sterile.

“I wonder just what it is that each of us is looking for,” Tony Reed called from his end of the table.

“Good question,” said Abell, the American astronaut, with a grin that creased his face from chin to hairline. He reminded Jamie of a frog: bulging eyes, round cheeks, and a wide grinning slit of a mouth. “Me, I’d like to find some beautiful Martian women who’ve been without men for a thousand years or so.”

A few tolerant chuckles from the scientists. Ilona cast him a sultry look.

“No, seriously,” Reed said. “I’m curious to know what each of us hopes to find on Mars.”

Jamie grumbled to himself, Tony’s taking his assignment as team psychologist too seriously.

“For myself,” said Vosnesensky, placing a stubby-fingered hand against his broad chest, “I wish only that we can work in harmony and no one becomes injured so we all return to our homes in happiness.”

Mironov added in a stage whisper, “And that you could weigh only thirty kilos even back on Earth!”

“I’m looking forward to flying the soarplane,” said Pete Connors in his resonant caramel voice.

“I desire very much to see the great Olympus Mons with my very own eyes,” said Ravavishnu Patel, the Indian geologist.

“Mount Olympus, the largest volcano in the solar system,” agreed the Egyptian geophysicist, Abdul al-Naguib.

“I want to prove that a permafrost ocean exists beneath the surface of the ground,” Ilona Malater said. “Theory predicts it does, but I want to find it for myself and map its extent.”

“Life.”

Joanna Brumado spoke the one word, and all other talk stopped. Everyone turned toward her. She looked embarrassed. Her heart-shaped face colored slightly.

“Of course life,” said Monique Bonnet, sitting next to her. “Joanna is right. The most astounding thing we could find on this world would be life.”

No, Jamie corrected silently. The most astounding thing we could find would be
intelligent
life. Or its remains.

The Old Ones taught that miracles are not rare. The world is filled with them.

Life is a miracle so commonplace that it can arise wherever there is water and sunlight. Even in the desert life abounds, as long as there is a little water and sunlight.

Did life arise on the red world? Did Man Maker and the other gods of creation start their work there? If so, life may have begun there earlier than on the blue world, because the rocks of the red world’s crust cooled sooner than those of the larger, warmer blue world. In the shallow seas that dotted the red world’s surface, life could have taken shape and begun to reproduce itself. It would have been difficult, because the red world was always colder than the blue. Often the waters would have frozen and the living things in them would have died or gone into a long hibernation that was the next thing to death. Still, life is persistent.

The Old Ones taught that this blue world of ours is not the first world in which The People have lived. Our songs of the beginning tell how First Man and First Woman struggled upward from one world to another, from a world of darkness and cold to a red world where Water Monster tried to drown them in a raging flood because Coyote had stolen his baby. Finally they climbed to the fourth world and came out into the golden sunlight here at the center of the universe, among the mountains that mark the four corners of existence.

First Man and First Woman did not come alone. They brought the plants and animals and all good things with them. They were also accompanied by Coyote, the Trickster. Coyote, the force of chaos. Coyote, who always worked to ruin The People’s search for order, and harmony and beauty.

Jamie was in Galveston when the long-awaited, long-feared final decision was unmade.

Ever since he had joined the Mars Project, Houston had been as much of a home as he could claim. Although he had spent months on end in training sites all across the globe, nearly half a year in Antarctica, week after week in Florida, and even weeks aboard space stations orbiting the Earth, always he returned to Houston. And Edith.

Edie Elgin was the co-anchor of the seven and eleven o’clock news at KHTV in Houston. She had interviewed Jamie when he had first arrived at the Johnson Space Center. A dinner invitation turned into a relationship that both of them knew was temporary, at best.