Mars Life (25 page)
“He’s fighting to keep them from closing down our work here,” Vijay said.
“Good for him,” said Carleton. “But I suppose that doesn’t leave him enough time for you.”
Vijay marveled at the man’s self-centeredness. I was right, she thought: he’s a complete narcissist.
Misreading her silence, Carleton said, “I shouldn’t be poking into your personal life, I suppose.”
Vijay picked up her fork and surveyed the slices of soybeef on her plate. “We all live in each other’s pockets here, don’t we?”
“I suppose we do.”
They ate in silence for a few moments. Then Carleton said, “God, what I wouldn’t give for a decent glass of wine!”
“It’s a sacrifice we make for working here,” she said.
“I suppose so. But still. . .”
Is he angling to see if I’ve got some booze stashed? Vijay wondered.
As if in answer, Carleton said, “I brought six bottles of single malt with me, but they’re almost all gone now.”
“Alcoholic beverages are forbidden by mission regulations.”
He grinned at her. “Everybody brings something in their personal belongings. The bio boys cook up some interesting pharmaceuticals in their labs, you know. I’ll bet even Chang has some rice wine stashed away somewhere.”
Vijay chewed on the underdone soymeat, then asked, “You don’t like Dr. Chang much, do you?”
With a shrug, Carleton replied, “As long as he doesn’t get in my way he doesn’t bother me.”
“Does he get in your way?”
“He tries to, now and then. It doesn’t do him any good.”
She speared a leaf of lettuce from her salad. “He
is
the mission director, after all.”
is
the mission director, after all.”
Carleton hmmphed. “He’s a bureaucrat, not a scientist. He’d make a perfect mandarin bureaucrat for some Chinese emperor.”
“Dr. Chang’s a world-class geologist.”
“Was. He hasn’t done any geology in years. Decades.”
Vijay fell silent, digesting Carleton’s assessment. Sooner or later I’ll have to get Chang’s reading on Carleton, she told herself. That should be illuminating.
* * * *
Next to them, Jamie and DiNardo were discussing the video broadcast they wanted to make from the cliff dwellings.
“If people could see the structures,” Jamie was saying earnestly, “understand that they’re real, that living, thinking creatures made them while dinosaurs were living on Earth, then . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Then you think that they would give more support to our work here,” DiNardo finished for him.
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
Gently, DiNardo shook his head. “I hope so, too. But I do not expect it.”
“You don’t? Why?”
“Mars is not important to them. It is that simple.”
“Not important?”
“As horrible as that may seem to you, I believe it to be the truth. Most of the people on Earth simply do not care about Mars. Their concerns are much closer to home.”
“The greenhouse warming,” said Jamie.
“And even more personal problems. Crime. War. Half the people of Earth don’t have enough to eat. Food is a very real worry for them.”
“I suppose so,” Jamie admitted.
“It is an old, old problem,” DiNardo said. “Galileo had trouble finding money to support his work. Leonardo da Vinci wrote job application letters to the rich and powerful.”
Jamie made himself smile at the priest. “Today we write grant applications.”
“But the problem is still serious. In democracies such as the U.S.A. the people are the ultimate decision makers. And I am afraid that the people think Mars is a luxury that only a small elite band of scientists cares about.”
“But don’t you find,” Jamie asked, “that there’s a concerted effort to downplay what we’re doing? An organized campaign to belittle our work, to keep it out of the public’s eye?”
“An organized campaign against us?”
“By the New Morality and other fundamentalist groups. Even some ultraconservatives in the Catholic Church.”
Jamie feared he had gone too far, but DiNardo looked thoughtful for a moment, then replied, “There are ultraconservatives in the Curia, this I know. I have to deal with them.”
“That’s why you’re so important,” Jamie said, some urgency returning to his voice. “You can show the people that there’s no basic conflict between religion and science. Show them that we’re not a bunch of atheist monsters trying to destroy their religious faith.”
DiNardo glanced down at his half-finished meal before replying, “I am not so certain of that, I’m afraid.”
Jamie blinked at him.
“Mars is testing my faith,” said DiNardo, looking suddenly bleak. “Testing it severely.”
* * * *
Slowly, patiently, Vijay swung their conversation to Carleton’s relationship with Doreen McManus.
“I’m overwhelmed with what a rumor mill this place is,” she said as they worked on their desserts: a fruit cup for her, a lemon tart for him.
Carleton said, “It’s like a university campus, only worse. We’re smaller. As you said, we’re all living in each other’s pockets.”
“Or pants,” she said, grinning to show she meant it to be humorous.
“There is that,” Carleton agreed, smiling back at her.
“It’s a pressure cooker in here, all right.”
Carleton nodded.
Vijay plunged, “Doreen McManus went back to Selene, di’n’t she.”
Carleton’s face went taut for an instant, but he quickly regained his composure. “Good for her.”
“The word is that you two were a couple.”
“She’s just a kid. She got too emotional to stay here.”
“Too bad.”
Vijay waited for Carleton to say more, but he concentrated on mopping up his lemon tart.
She decided to push a bit. “Do you miss her?”
Carleton looked up and made a crooked little smile. “It was fun while it lasted. At least she didn’t accuse me of rape.”
Vijay asked, “Can I ask you — “
“No,” he snapped. “I’ve talked enough about that. It’s over and done with.”
“I suppose so,” she said weakly.
“A moment ago you called this place a pressure cooker,” Carleton said, almost accusingly. “But it’s worse than that. It’s Coventry.”
“Coventry?”
“A place of exile. A place where they send troublemakers to get rid of them.”
She blinked with surprise. “That’s how you think of Mars?”
“That’s what this is. You, me, all of us here—we’re exiles, outcasts. We don’t belong here. We can’t survive here without this dome. We can’t even breathe the air outside or walk out in the open without spacesuits. We’re aliens. Exiles.”
“Most of the people here worked their bums off to get here,” Vijay protested.
“And now that they’re here,” Carleton retorted darkly, “they all wish they were home.”
“No!”
“Yes. They may not admit it, but there isn’t anyone here who wouldn’t prefer to be back on Earth.”
“You, too?”
He folded his hands in front of his face, half hiding his expression. At last he admitted, “Me, too. But I can’t go back. I’m really exiled.”
Vijay thought it over swiftly. “I can think of one person who prefers it here.”
“Your husband.”
“Yes. Jamie
wants
to be on Mars. He’s at home here.”
wants
to be on Mars. He’s at home here.”
“He’s a madman, then,” said Carleton.
Vijay started an angry reply, thought better of it, and said nothing. Carleton returned his attention to the remains of his dessert. A tense silence stretched between them.
She could see him struggling to regain control of himself. He’s let his mask slip, Vijay thought, and now he wants to get it back in place.
At length, Carleton’s smile returned. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “I still have some single malt back in my room. Care to have an after-dinner drink with me?”
Vijay automatically glanced at Jamie, sitting with his back to her.
“I’m not sure that—”
Something exploded out in the night. The dome shook, glasses and dishware rattled, Vijay’s tea sloshed in its cup. People jumped to their feet, staring, looking around. Someone knocked his chair over with a crash.
“What the hell was that?”
Suddenly everyone remembered that they were on Mars, millions of kilometers from help, with the thin cold air outside keening like an alien beast.
Exiles, Vijay thought. He’s right. We’ve exiled ourselves.
TITHONIAE FOSSE: HAMMER BLOWHalf the people in the cafeteria were on their feet. Everyone was staring, wide-eyed, fearful.
Chang bolted out of his office and looked up at the dome’s structural support beams, lost in shadow.
“Something exploded!”
“I didn’t see a flash.”
“Nothing’s on fire.”
“Are you sure?”
Jamie headed for the monitoring center. Check the life-support consoles first, he told himself. He noted that the dome didn’t seem to be punctured. There was no rush of air, not even the high-pitched whistling of a pinhole leak. My ears haven’t popped, he said to himself. Air pressure’s holding okay.
The monitoring center was the largest cubicle in the dome, packed with consoles that kept constant real-time watch over all the sensors and observation equipment on the ground and in orbit high above. Four people were sitting in the middle of all the screens, earphones clamped to their heads, eyes focused on their displays.
Before Jamie could ask, their chief, standing near the cubicle’s entrance, said, “Got a satellite image of a big flash up on Tithoniae Fosse, ‘bout a hundred, hundred-ten klicks from here.”
“Up on the plain?” Jamie asked.
“Right.”
Chang pushed past Jamie. “Life-support systems?” he asked sharply.
“All in the green,” said the chief technician calmly. “No problems.”
Chang gusted out a pent-up breath.
“Might be a meteor strike,” Jamie said. “A fairly big one.”
“Goddamn seismograph gave a big lurch,” the chief technician said, pointing to one of the screens.
“Let me see,” said Chang.
The nearly flat line of the seismograph record spiked sharply, Jamie saw. An impact. The technician monitoring the satellite sensors powered up a blank screen. Standing to Chang’s side, Jamie saw a false-color infrared view of the plain spreading northward from the rim of the valley: Tithoniae Fosse.
Several others were crowding up at the cubicle’s entrance.
“It’s okay,” Jamie said, raising his voice. “Seems to be a meteor strike up on the plain.”
Izzy Rosenberg wormed his way through the gang at the entrance. “A meteor strike? Where? How far? How big?”
Chang pointed to the monitor screen in front of him. “Repeat it,” he said to the technician.
The satellite imagery flared with a sudden burst of light that blanked out the screen. Christ! Jamie thought. If that had hit here, even if it only hit the greenhouse—we’d all be dead.
“It overpowered the camera’s sensitivity,” Rosenberg muttered.
“Must have been a big one,” Jamie repeated.
Sal Hasdrubal’s voice called out, “Let’s go out and see it!” Turning, Jamie saw the tall man looming over the heads and shoulders of the crowd jammed at the entrance to the cubicle.
“It’s night,” someone objected.
“The rock hit up on the plain,” someone else observed.
Undeterred, Hasdrubal said, “We can ride up on the cables; they go to the top.”
“And what do you do then, walk a hundred kilometers?”
“In the dark?”
“There’s two campers in the old dome up there,” Hasdrubal said impatiently. “Power ‘em up and let’s go!”
“No,” said Chang. He said it quietly but with the firmness of the Rock of Gibraltar. All the other voices stilled. “We send a rover, not people. Monitor the rover from here.”
“But it would take half a day to program a rover,” Rosenberg objected.
“And somebody’d have to carry it up the cliff to the plain,” Hasdrubal added.
Jamie said, “Dr. Chang, I think sending a small team would be faster and more effective.”
“Mission protocol does not allow excursions at night,” Chang said, scowling. Jamie knew that he was right, almost. Camper missions had gone out for days, even weeks at a time. They weren’t supposed to drive at night, but Jamie remembered Dex and Possum Craig and others who had bent that rule out of shape.
Rosenberg jabbed a finger at the mission director. “Dr. Chang, that strike was big enough to blast out a new crater! It must’ve heated the ground considerably, melted the permafrost! We’ve got to get to it before the area freezes over again!”
Chang remained unmoved. “No excursions at night. Besides, the campers stationed at the old dome cannot run at night. The batteries are flat and need sunlight to recharge.”
“But we could get to the dome tonight,” Jamie heard himself say, “and have the campers ready to run by sunrise.”
Chang glared at Jamie, then seemed to relax. His shoulders slumped slightly. His expression lost a bit of its rigidity.
With the merest of bows, Chang said, “If the scientific director recommends such a procedure, I will ask for volunteers to assist him.”
Jamie realized he’d just been appointed head of the excursion. Fingering the bear fetish in the pocket of his coveralls, he said to himself, All right. That’s the path I’ll have to take.
* * * *
“Now we’ll see how well the nanosuits protect against the cold,” Jamie said to Vijay, trying to sound unruffled and fearless.
They were back in the cafeteria, pulling together enough food to take care of the three men who had been picked for the excursion: Rosenberg, Hasdrubal and himself.
“I’ll monitor your life-support sensors,” Vijay said as she shoved shrink-wrapped sandwiches into the insulated case Jamie was carrying.
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