Return to Mars (44 page)

A tourist attraction. The greatest discovery in the history of the world, of two worlds, and all he can think of is a goddamned tourist attraction!

Jamie wanted to leap to his feet and scream. I’ll be working for him! he realized. If the cliff dwellings are real, I’ll be leading him to them so he can build a fucking Disneyland around them! I’ll be a Judas goat! A traitor to everything and everybody.

He sank his head in his hands. He wanted to cry, but knew that he couldn’t.

The sun was already up at Ares Vallis, and Dex was driving the rover while Craig ate breakfast. They had decided to eat in shifts now, rather than stop the rover for meals.

The comm screen flickered, then Jamie’s dark, somber face formed on it. With just a glance, Dex saw that Jamie looked terrible, as if he’d been up all night, red-eyed and wrinkled.

“I assume I didn’t wake you,” Jamie began, his voice tight, almost hoarse.

“No, we’ve been percolating along for nearly an hour,” Dex chirped happily.

Without further preamble, Jamie said, “I’ve just told your father I’m willing to step down as mission director. I recommended Stacy take over the job.”

Dex felt a clutch of surprise, then heard himself ask, “What’d my father say?”

“He said it’s okay with him as long as the rest of you agree.”

Son of a bitch, Dex thought. Dear old Dad wouldn’t recommend me for the job, not him. He doesn’t think I could handle it.

He said to Jamie, “What’s everybody back there think about this?”

“They don’t know about it yet. It’s too early for them to be up.”

Craig came up to the cockpit, chewing on a piece of precooked omelet, and slipped into the right-hand seat.

“They won’t have any objections to Stacy,” Dex said, trying to keep his seething anger from showing.

“Do you?” Jamie asked.

“She’s not a scientist,” Craig said.

Jamie nodded solemnly. “But she knows what she’s doing and she understands what we’re doing. I think she’s the best one for the job.”

“Obviously,” Dex snapped.

Craig said, “I got no gripes with her. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“I’d like this to be unanimous, Dex,” Jamie said.

“Sure. Why not?”

“You agree?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Okay, okay. Thanks.”

“For nothing.”

Once Jamie’s image winked out, Craig leaned over and grabbed Dex’s shoulder. “You think the job shoulda gone to you?”

Dex grinned at his shaggy-bearded partner. “To tell the truth, Wiley, I think Stacy’s better for the job than I’d be.”

“Sure you do.”

“I do, honest! But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be the boss.”

“You’re pissed at Jamie for not namin’ you?” Craig probed.

“No,” Dex said, shaking his head. And he found that it was the truth. He felt no anger at Jamie. The redskin was only doing what he thought was best for the mission.

But dear old Dad, Dex thought, his insides raging. The old sonofabitch wouldn’t lift a finger on my behalf. He doesn’t think I could handle it. He doesn’t trust me with any responsibility at all.

Dex leaned on the accelerator harder. I’ll show him. I’ll show them all.

How, he did not know. But Dex felt a steel-sharp determination hardening inside him. It doesn’t matter if Jamie’s in charge or Stacy or the friggin’ Man in the Moon. I’m going to be the head of this expedition, one way or the other.

Jamie saw the strange, almost feral look on Dex’s bearded face before he cut the comm link to the rover. He’s angry; pissed as hell. He wanted to be the director and he’s furious that he’s not getting the job.

He got up from his little desk and stretched, letting tendons crack and vertebrae pop.

I’m free of it now, Jamie thought. Now I can concentrate on getting back to Tithonium and seeing just what that cliff structure really is.

Stacy’s going to have a tough time of it, he knew. Dex will be running up her hack the minute he gets here.

He shook his head. That’s not your problem anymore. Now you’re free to do what you came here for. Just one more task, and then you’re a free man. All you’ve got to do now is tell Stacy the joyous news. And the others. They’ll all agree that Stacy’s right for the job. It’ll be unanimous, no sweat.

All you’ve got to do is tell them about it.

And tell Vijay.

“YOU CAN’T GO ALONE,” SAID STACY DEZHUROVA.

“Why not?” Jamie asked.

“It is out of the question, Jamie.”

“But there’s nobody else who can come with me now that Tomas is hurt.”

He and Stacy were in her quarters, which Dezhurova had turned into something of an office since being named mission director. She did most of her work there, summoning people in to see her rather than going out to them, as Jamie had.

He sat on the little wheeled typist’s chair that Dezhurova had commandeered for her cubicle, while Stacy sat rigidly in the desk chair facing him.

The responsibility of command has changed her over the past month, Jamie thought, looking over the tight lines around her mouth and eyes. She’s doing a good job, but it’s taking a lot out of her.

The cubicle was pathologically neat: bunk made up precisely, desktop clear, papers and clothes put away in their proper places. Yet she had stopped wearing the standard-issue coveralls. Instead she had pulled on a heavy khaki loose-fitting shirt with military-style epaulets and a pair of faded jeans from her personal locker. And Stacy had chopped her sandy brown pageboy down to a military buzz cut; Jamie was surprised to see streaks of gray in it.

On the other hand, Jamie felt more relaxed and free than he had ever been. His responsibilities were almost totally gone. He could devote himself completely to planning his trip back to the Grand Canyon and the niche in the cliff face where he had seen the—building. Jamie was certain of that. What he had seen in that cleft in the rock was one or more buildings. Buildings constructed by intelligent Martians.

He was certain of it. But was he right? I’ll find out in another few days, he told himself. Once I get past this problem of a partner to go with me.

“Look, Stacy, I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” he said, “but I just don’t see who you can spare to go on this excursion with me.”

“Then you are not going,” she answered flatly.

“Now come on …”

Dezhurova shook her head stubbornly. “Jamie, you know the safety regulations as well as I do. Nobody is allowed beyond walk-back range alone.”

“But Tomas won’t be fit for that kind of work for weeks.”

“Then either you wait, or we pick somebody else to go with you.”

Rodriguez had come close to killing himself in an accident with the solar-heated kiln that made the glass bricks for the greenhouse they were building around the garden dome. He had burned his hand badly, right through the glove of his hard suit. Luckily, Trudy Hall had been working with him. She sealed the pressure cuff at his wrist and helped him back inside the dome, while he groaned with pain.

So now the astronaut’s duties were confined to sitting at the comm console and serving as a one-handed mission communicator.

“I can make it by myself,” Jamie insisted. “We can bend the rules a little, Stacy.”

She gave him a look that was unnervingly like the one his eighth-grade English teacher used to do when he was late with an essay.

“Jamie, you handed me this responsibility, remember?” she said slowly. “I can’t let you go out there by yourself. If you get killed, I would never forgive myself.”

“But there’s nobody else available,” Jamie repeated. “You’re needed here. Trudy and Mitsuo have their hands full with the bio work. It wouldn’t be fair to ask either one of them to stop what they’re doing.”

“Tarawa would not agree to that, in any case.”

“Right.”

“There is Wiley,” Dezhurova said.

“He and Dex are up to their armpits dating all the samples we’ve brought in,” Jamie said. “Besides, he’s put in enough time in the rover.”

Stacy shrugged and unconsciously scratched her shoulder. The khaki shirt must itch, Jamie thought.

“There isn’t anybody else,” he said. “Dex is too busy, same as Wiley.”

“Vijay?” Dezhurova asked.

She had not slept with Jamie since he had told her he would resign his director’s position. She was coolly pleasant, but in a brittle, painful way. To the best of Jamie’s knowledge, she was not sleeping with Dex, either. He felt glad of that, but it was scant consolation.

“The medic ought to stay here, where most of the team is,” Jamie said. “Besides, she’s still looking after Tomas’ hand.”

“She is not qualified for driving the rover, anyway,” said Dezhurova. She sighed, almost as if she were in pain. “You will have to wait until Tom can work again.”

“I don’t want to wait,” Jamie said firmly. “I’m ready to go now.

I’ve got no other responsibilities. The extra rover’s ready to go and so am I.”

Dezhurova started to say no. Jamie could see her lips forming the word. But she hesitated, took a breath, and said instead, “Let me think about it, Jamie. Let me see if there is something I can work out.”

Jamie understood what she was doing: saying no without using the word.

He got up from the little wheeled chair, making it skitter across the plastic flooring a few inches.

“Stacy, tomorrow is the one hundredth day since we landed. I’m taking the rover out tomorrow, whether you like it or not.”

He turned and left her quarters before she could answer.

As he strode toward his own cubicle he thought, Yeah, go out and take the rover. How can she stop me? Get Dex and the rest of the guys to overpower me?

By the time he had slid shut the door to his quarters and looked at his own messed-up bunk, though, he was saying to himself, Right, steal the rover and leave Stacy looking like an impotent boob. That’d be a great thing to do. Just wonderful. What a fine upstanding example of a jerk you’d be.

But the alternative was to wait a couple of weeks, maybe more. A couple of eternities. Who knew what problems would crop up in a couple of weeks? Something’s always getting in the way. We’ve been here a hundred days tomorrow and I’m no closer to that village than I was the day we landed.

It took three calls for Stacy to locate Vijay. She was not in the infirmary and not in the bio lab. When Dezhurova tried the geology lab, Dex’s voice answered brightly, “Yeah, she’s right here.”

Ninety seconds later Vijay tapped once on the door to Dezhurova’s quarters and slid it back partway.

“Dex said you want to see me.”

Stacy nodded and gestured to the seat that Jamie had been on. Vijay sat down, knees together, hands on thighs. Her coveralls looked slightly faded, but she had tied a bright scarf around her waist and had a smaller one knotted loosely at her throat. Brilliant colors of India, Stacy thought. She makes the rest of us look drab.

“I am having a problem with Jamie,” said Dezhurova.

For just an instant Vijay’s eyes widened slightly. “What about Jamie?”

“You are the resident psychologist,” Dezhurova said, then, with a slight smile curving her lips, “and you know Jamie better than anyone here …”

‘ ‘If this is about our personal relationship—”

“It is not. It is about the work of this expedition. And it is about Jamie and you … and Dex.”

“Dex?”

“Listen,” Stacy said. Then she began to explain.

Vijay listened. Then gave her opinion. Dezhurova thanked her and asked her to send Wiley Craig in. She spoke to Craig for nearly an hour.

When all eight of them were gathered around the dinner table that evening, Dezhurova asked:

“Jamie, what if Dex went with you on your excursion?”

Everyone stopped eating. Plastic forks hung in midair. Drink cups were put back down on the table. Even the chewing stopped.

Startled by the idea, Jamie glanced across the table at Dex and saw that he was just as surprised.

“Wiley says he can handle the geology analyses for a week or so—”

Craig interrupted, “Long as the mapmaker program don’t glitch again.”

“So Dex can be relieved of his regular duty,” Dezhurova finished. “And he is certainly qualified to drive the rover.”

“I can make it alone,” Jamie said tightly.

“That is out of the question, I told you that,” said Dezhurova.

“For what it’s worth,” Dex said, with his usual impudent grin, “I wouldn’t mind going out again. And I can keep on working on the rock dating, as long as Wiley feeds me the data and Jamie doesn’t mind doing the driving.”

Jamie’s mind was racing. I don’t want Dex on this trip. He’ll spoil it. Ruin it. Somehow he’ll make a mess of it.

But he heard his grandfather’s voice whisper, Take him with you. That’s the only path open to you. Don’t fight it. Accept it.

He turned his gaze from Dex’s cocky, grinning face to Vijay’s. She looked tense, big dark eyes fixed on him as if she were waiting for an explosion. Jamie realized, If Dex comes with me, he won’t be here with her while I’m away.