Authors: Ben Bova

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fantasy

Mars Life (5 page)

BOOK: Mars Life

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INTERVIEW

So how can you possibly keep your team on Mars now that the government has canceled its funding for the program?”

Jamie stared at the interviewer. He had spent most of the day answering questions from reporters. He had appeared on four different network news shows, skipping lunch to sit before their cameras and answer the same questions over and over again.

Normally Jamie enjoyed interviews. He got a kick out of the cut-and-thrust, where the interviewer was trying to dig out something sensational and he was doing his best to get across the points he wanted to make despite the interviewer’s loaded questions. But now, after this long day of interrogation, Jamie felt tired and irritable.

They’re ready to bury us, he realized. Half of them don’t even know that most of our funding comes from private sources, and has for nearly twenty years. Washington pulls out and they think we’re dead.

This interview in the studio of a local Albuquerque affiliate of a major network was being aired live across the nation. Jamie had postponed his dinner to appear in the studio. He had phoned Vijay at home twice to tell her he’d be late and twice gotten the answering machine’s bland response. Has she heard the news? he wondered.

His interviewer of the moment was in Los Angeles, speaking with Jamie over a closed video circuit. Rhonda Samuels was a crafty middle-aged woman with a practiced smile and a cobra’s eyes. Her ash blond hair was so carefully coiffed that Jamie thought it could have been a helmet. Her beige suit fit her trim figure without the slightest wrinkle. Jamie felt distinctly grungy in the shirt and jeans he’d been in since early morning. He was glad he’d worn the onyx bolo.

How can we keep exploring Mars without money from Washington? Jamie fingered the bear fetish in his pocket as he framed his answer.

He remembered how his grandfather Al would sit in silence for long moments while he was dickering with one of the artisans who produced the jewelry and hand-painted pottery that Al sold in his shop on the Plaza in Santa Fe. Al was never in a hurry when he spoke to his fellow Native Americans. “Take some time, Jamie,” he would advise his grandson. “Size up the person you’re talkin’ to. Get the feel of the situation before you open your mouth.”

But this was television, where five seconds is an eternity.

Rhonda Samuels interrupted his silence.

“I mean,” she said, her voice low but hard-edged, “without government funding you won’t be able to keep the exploration team on Mars, will you?”

“Actually, Ms. Samuels,” Jamie said, trying to make it bright despite his inner weariness, “the government was only contributing about a tenth of our total funding. Most of our support comes from private sources.”

Her brows shot up. “Private sources?”

“The Mars Foundation, which is based here in New Mexico,” Jamie explained. “One of our major backers is the Trumball Trust, in Boston. Then there’s — “

“But without the government’s contribution, can you afford to keep those men and women on Mars?”

“I think so. We’re doing the math. And we’re looking for additional donors.”

“Additional donors?” she asked.

“People or institutions that want to help us carry on the exploration of Mars.”

“But in the meantime, if your budget is strained by Washington’s decision, won’t that have repercussions for your exploration team?”

“Repercussions?”

“On their safety,” Rhonda Samuels said. “If you have to cut your budget, won’t that affect the safety of the explorers on Mars?”

Jamie forced a strained smile. “Safety is always uppermost in our minds.”

“Ahead of everything else?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Were you thinking safety first when you were on Mars and you pushed your superiors to allow you to make the first excursion into the Grand Canyon?”

“Nobody died,” Jamie said tightly.

“But there certainly were dangers involved.”

“There are dangers involved in all exploration. You learn to deal with them. We have an excellent safety record.”

“But what if someone was seriously injured, or came down with an illness you’re not equipped to deal with on Mars. What would happen, with the nearest hospital a hundred million miles away?”

Jamie smiled gently. “We’d send a fusion torch ship to take the patient back to Earth. It’s not like the old days, when it took months to travel to Mars. Fusion torch ships can make the trip in less than a week.”

Sharply, she asked, “Why aren’t you on Mars, then?”

Jamie cursed himself for not expecting that one. He lifted his chin a notch and replied, “Personal reasons. Family reasons.”

“Your son’s death.”

Nodding, he said, “He died on Earth, not Mars.”

Shifting slightly in her chair, Samuels asked, “How old are the members of the exploration team? What’s their average age?”

She must think I keep all the personnel files in my head, Jamie said to himself. Aloud, he replied “Mostly pretty young. Postdocs in their late twenties, thirties, for the most part. I guess the oldest person on the team right now is Carter Carleton.”

Her eyes widened. “Carter Carleton? The maverick anthropologist? He’s on Mars?”

“He has been for nearly a year,” Jamie said. “And he’s no more of a maverick than you are.”

Samuels hesitated for the barest fraction of a second, then turned to face straight into the camera. “We’ll be back in a moment. But first this.”

The overhead lights dimmed slightly and the muted monitor screen suddenly showed a housewife staring into a sink full of dirty dishes.

From the larger flat panel that linked to Los Angeles Rhonda Samuels said to Jamie, “You’re doing fine.” A younger woman rushed to her side with a brush in one hand and a spray can in the other.

“I just want you to understand,” Jamie replied slowly, “that we’ll never knowingly endanger our people on Mars.”

She nodded while her assistant fussed with her perfect hair. Jamie thought of Edie Elgin, the TV newswoman he’d lived with when he was in Houston training for the First Expedition. Beautiful, bright, gutsy Edith. She was married now and living in Selene, the underground city on the Moon. Married to Douglas Stavenger, no less, Selene’s founder and de facto leader.

“One thing, though, Dr. Waterman. Call me Rhonda. Not Ms. Samuels. Got it?”

“Got it,” Jamie said, nodding.

“In one!” called the floor director, a hand on the intercom plug tucked into his ear.

Jamie sat up a little straighter and tried to clear his mind as the hairdresser scampered out of view.

The floor director pointed at Jamie and the interviewer turned on her brittle smile again. “Dr. Waterman, let me ask you a different question.”

“Fine, Rhonda,” said Jamie.

“What are we getting out of the exploration of Mars? What have you discovered that’s worth the billions of dollars that have been spent on your program?”

Jamie felt his cheeks flare with sudden anger and hoped the cameras didn’t pick it up. Forcing himself to take a calming breath before speaking, he answered, “That’s sort of like asking how high is up.”

“What have you found?” Samuels insisted. “After all, you’ve spent billions —”

“Life,” Jamie said sharply. “We’ve found the most important thing that’s ever been discovered, Rhonda. We’ve found that ours is not the only world on which life exists. More than that, we’ve found
intelligent
life. Intelligence arose on Mars, just as it has on Earth.”

“But it’s gone extinct.”

“That’s not the important point,” Jamie said. “The important point is that intelligence is not rare in the universe. We’ve explored two planets —Earth and Mars —and found intelligence on both of them. Two for two. There’s probably all sorts of intelligent species on other worlds.”

“Really?” Rhonda Samuels’s carefully painted face looked almost fearful.

“Really,” said Jamie.

She hesitated, cocked her head slightly to one side. Getting instructions through her earplug from her director, Jamie guessed.

At last she said, “Dr. Waterman, you’ve made the point that you would never knowingly endanger the men and women now on Mars.”

“That’s right.”

“But how can you be sure of that? Aren’t they in danger every day they’re on Mars, every moment?”

Jamie rocked back slightly. “I don’t think they’re in such terrible danger.”

“You don’t? Aren’t you being naive about that? After all, they can’t breathe the air, can’t walk in the open without wearing spacesuits. Do you have adequate medical facilities on Mars? Can you evacuate someone if a medical emergency comes up?”

“We’ve never had that kind of a problem.”

“The people have a right to know just how much danger your team on Mars is in.”

“We know how to deal with the conditions on Mars. We do it every day.”

“Every day,” Samuels repeated, as if it was an accusation.

Then she turned from Jamie to look squarely into the camera again. “I think we owe it to the courage of those fine men and women struggling to survive on Mars to bring them home, now that the budget for exploring Mars has been cut to a dangerously low level.”

Jamie sat there with his mouth hanging open while the floor director shouted, “Okay! We’re out!”

ALBUQUERQUE: DURAN CONDOMINIUMS

It was dark by the time Jamie parked his Nissan hybrid in his assigned space next to Vijay’s convertible. It was late summer, monsoon season: his wife hadn’t put the top down on her car in weeks.

There were puddles on the parking lot and lightning flickering beyond the Sandia Mountains, flashing against the clouds in the dark brooding sky. That’s something we never have to worry about on Mars, Jamie told himself. Hasn’t rained there in sixty million years, at least.

When he opened the door to his home Vijay was sitting on the deep leather sofa watching the television news.

“You’re a popular bloke today,” she said, smiling as she got to her feet. Born of Hindu parents in Melbourne, she had never overcome her Aussie accent.

Jamie kissed her lightly. “The White House’s gift to me.”

“It’s a shame, what they did,” Vijay said. “A crime.”

“Yeah.”

“You look tired.”

“I’ve been on the grill all day, just about.” She picked up the remote from the coffee table and clicked off the TV.

“How about you?” he asked. “How do you feel?” Her bright smile lit up her dark face. “Fine. Worried about you, though.”

“You want to go out for dinner? Roberto’s maybe. Or that new sushi place?”

“I don’t really feel up to it, Jamie. I’m sure you’d rather kick off your boots and stay home, wouldn’t you?”

He shrugged.

“There’s hot dogs in the fridge. And I think we still have a few bottles of beer.”

Jamie slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close, her rich voluptuous body pressing against his. “Fine,” he said. “Hot dogs and beer. Typical American meal.”

She laughed. It was an old joke between them: typical Americans, he a half-Navaho and she a Hindu from Australia.

* * * *

Dex Trumball was not laughing, He had flown to New York to discuss a tax audit of the Trumball Trust with the director of the Internal Revenue Service’s northeastern regional office. After that grim afternoon he went with his latest trophy wife to sit through a long and boring dinner at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan, and then endured an even longer and more boring speech by an architect who showed digital images of the new city she was building in the mountains of Colorado. With millions of people driven from their homes by the greenhouse flooding, the federal government was spending hundreds of billions on erecting new cities.

The speech had ended with a plea for donations, of course. The audience was wealthy: most of them were getting even wealthier on government contracts to build housing and roads and all the infrastructure that was needed to shelter the refugees and start them on new lives.

Now Dex sat in the plush quiet bar, nursing a scotch and water, listening to the architect drone on and on. His wife had excused herself and hurried off to their hotel. Thinking of her in bed watching TV as she waited for him, Dex wondered why he was going through the motions of being polite to this bore.

“We’ve learned quite a lot from the life-support systems they’ve developed on the Moon,” she was saying, emphasizing each word with the clicking tap of a manicured finger on the polished mahogany of the bar. She was rail thin and her voice had an irritating nasal twang to it. “We’ll be recycling the water and all the waste systems, turning garbage into electricity.”

Dex nodded absently, wondering how he could escape her determined enthusiasm without being boorish about it. The architect was swiveling slightly on the stool to one side of him; on the other was an old friend of his late father’s, a dimwitted old coot who thought that anyone under the age of eighty was a flighty kid who needed firm direction from his elders.

“You still involved in this Mars business?” the old man asked. Dex thought that a century ago he would have been a poster boy for communist propaganda about bloated capitalists: the man was bald and corpulent, several chins lapping over the black tie of his tuxedo. His eyes were narrow, squinting, piggish.

Nodding, Dex said, “The Trust funds the Mars Foundation.”

“Damn luxury we can’t afford anymore,” the old man said, his voice grating, harsh. “Cut your losses, Dexter, and turn your attention back here to Earth, where it’s needed.”

Dex bit back his first impulse to tell the old fart to go to hell. Instead, he replied mildly, “Mr. Younger, you could afford to fund the entire Mars operation out of your own pocket, you know that?”

“What? Me?”

“The team we’re supporting on Mars costs a lot less than one of the cities Ms. Battista here wants to build.”

“But people
need
my cities!” cried the architect.

“Sure they do,” Dex said. “And we need to continue exploring Mars, too.”

He wished he believed his own words.

* * * *

It wasn’t until he and Vijay were sitting together on the sofa and the dishwasher was chugging away in the kitchen that Jamie said, “Pressure’s building to shut down the program.”

“Close it? You mean bring everybody home?”

He nodded, tight-lipped. “We’ve already had to shut down the new base at Hellas.”

Varuna Jarita Shektar had been the physician on the Second Expedition. She and Jamie had met in training, traveled to Mars together, and slowly but irrevocably fallen in love. The two of them stayed alone on the red planet for four months after the rest of the team had left for Earth and before the replacement team had arrived, Adam and Eve in a barren, frigid new world that was to them a Garden of Eden.

“But they can’t shut down the entire operation,” Vijay said, her luminous dark eyes blazing with indignation. “They simply can’t. They mustn’t!”

Jamie wished he could work up such righteous wrath so easily. But he couldn’t. It was all bottled up inside him. Everything. Including Jimmy’s death. Especially Jimmy’s death.

“Vee . . .” he started to say. But the words caught in his throat.

She was still incensed. “How can they even
think
about shutting down the program? After all you’ve done, all you’ve discovered.”

“Vijay,” he said, grasping her by the shoulders. “If I hadn’t been on Mars. . . if I’d been here with you . . . and Jimmy . . .”

She stared at him, her eyes wide with sudden understanding. “Jamie, no.”

“If I’d been here, the way a father should’ve been, he wouldn’t have — “

“No!” she snapped. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it!”

“But-”

“It’s not going to bring him back.”

“I know. But still ... I feel responsible. It’s my fault.”

It had taken him nearly two years to say those words.

“It’s not your fault any more than it’s mine,” Vijay said.

“Yours? How could it be your fault?”