Return to Mars (53 page)

“No,” Trumball heard himself say. “Not a politician.”

He actually smiled at the assistant’s eager young image. He knew exactly what he was going to do. And all the credit will come to me, he told himself.

Without disclosing his newly formed plan he clicked off the Picturephone and reached for the bourbon. Let her lecture, he said to himself. Let her whine and wheedle till she gets hoarse.

He laughed so loud that he startled his chauffeur, even through the bulletproof glass partition separating them.

JAMIE WALKED NAKED THROUGH THE VILLAGE ON THE FLOOR OF THE Canyon, the sun hot on his bare, bronzed shoulders. The villagers paid him no attention; they went about their daily business as if he weren’t there among them.

They were only shadows, though. Jamie thought he could see right through them, as if they were holograms or ghosts. He tried to speak to them, but no words would come out of his mouth. He tried to touch them, but his outstretched fingers never quite reached them.

“Grandfather,” he managed to say, “why won’t they talk to me?”

And he realized he was a child, walking alongside his grandfather. Al wore his best suit, the light blue one with the western-cut jacket. His hair was dark and tied in a long single braid that went halfway down his back.

“They can’t talk to you, Jamie,” said Al. “They’re all dead.”

“But I can see them.”

Al laughed pleasurably. “Sure you can. You can see me, too, and I’m dead.”

Jamie realized that his grandfather was right. But when he looked again, the villagers had changed. They were no longer men and women, like the People. They were different creatures. They looked almost like dogs, but they had six legs instead of only four. No, Jamie saw, not six legs. Four legs and a pair of arms that ended in something like hands.

Their eyes were large and sad as Jamie looked down at them. They moved slowly, as if they were very weary.

“They’ve come a long way to see you,” Al explained. “Millions of years.”

Six-year-old Jamie wanted to pet them, but his hand went through their shimmering, ethereal images.

“You’re all that they’ve got left, Jamie,” Al said, his voice sighing, dwindling into the faint whisper of the breeze. “You’re all that they’ve got left.”

And Jamie was in his spacesuit, on the barren empty floor of the Canyon while the meager breeze whispered past his helmet. The village was gone and high up on the face of the cliff he could make out the dark niche in the rock where the Martians had built their temple and gone to die.

“Don’t let them die again,” his grandfather’s voice came through his earphones. “Don’t let their spirits be dead forever.”

Jamie awoke slowly, fighting his way toward consciousness like a swimmer struggling to return to the surface after being down too deep, too long.

He opened his eyes at last and felt a sudden stab of confusion, almost fear. This isn’t the rover!

And then it came back to him. Dezhurova and Rodriguez had flown the backup L/AV to their site on the edge of the Canyon. They were sleeping in its habitation module now, just as they had on the flight from Earth. It was the compromise they had agreed to; the scientists could live in the L/AV much more comfortably than in one of the rovers, while the others stayed at the dome. The two astronauts could shuttle food and supplies to the Canyon site as needed.

Until the backup dome arrived. The ICU board had swiftly agreed to send it, and the Russians were mating it to a rocket booster at their launch center in Kazakhstan. It was scheduled to arrive at the Canyon site on Sol 325—if it was launched on schedule.

Funny, Jamie mused as he got out of his bunk. During the flight I thought this tin can was too small, too confining. Like a jail cell. Now, after weeks of living in the rovers, it feels like a suite at the Waldorf.

It was early, Jamie saw. The module was quiet, except for the inevitable hum of electrical equipment. Nobody else is up yet. He luxuriated in the shower for three full minutes, until the hot water automatically turned needle-cold. Then he shaved quickly, remembering the time in college when he had tried to raise a beard. It came in thin and straight and dark; he looked more like a menacing mandarin out of some old spy movie than a hunky campus stud.

Climbing up the ladder to the galley, Jamie was surprised to see Dex already sitting at the spindly-legged table, grasping a mug of fresh-brewed coffee in both hands.

“You’re up early,” Jamie said as he went to the freezer.

“Couldn’t sleep,” said Dex.

Jamie looked at him more closely. Dex’s breezy grin was gone. His eyes looked bleary.

“What’s the matter?”

“Guess who’s coming on the next expedition?”

“DiNardo?”

“I wish.”

“Who?”

“My old man.”

“Your father?” His voice ran almost a full octave above normal.

Dex nodded grimly.

“He’s coming here? To Mars?” Jamie slid the freezer door shut and pulled out the chair next to Dex’s.

“He’s been a busy little beaver. The third expedition is being set up to land here two weeks before we leave. The ICU is recruiting the science team now. Dad’s money people are ordering the spacecraft and equipment. Every archeologist and paleontologist on Earth is screaming to come aboard. They might auction off the seats, for chrissakes.”

“But he’s coming along?”

“You bet your sweet ass he is. He’ll come and I’ll go home. He’ll take personal command of the commercial operations here on Mars.”

Jamie felt his heart sink. “Commercial operations,” he muttered.

“Maybe he’ll run the hot dog concession,” Dex said humorlessly.

“Isn’t he too old? I mean, there are safety regulations and such …”

Dex shook his head. “He’s healthy as a frigging mule. Hell, they’ve got feeble old grandmothers traipsing off to the Moon now, with those Clipperships. If you can ride a commercial airliner you can ride into orbit. And if you can get into orbit, you can go to the Moon.”

“Or Mars.”

“Or Mars,” Dex agreed glumly. “He’ll be here in a little more than a year.”

Jamie looked at the younger man for a long, silent moment. Why is Dex so depressed? He wondered. He’s been pushing for tourism and commercial development, and now that his father is coming to move things faster along that line, Dex looks as miserable as I feel.

“Why does he have to come here in person?” Jamie asked. “Can’t he do whatever he wants done back on Earth?”

Dex made a sour face. “He wants to show that ordinary people can ride to Mars. He wants to open up the door to tourism. Commercial development. He’ll be building a hotel here. A whole tourist center. Disney land-on-Mars.”

“He can’t,” Jamie groaned.

“He will. He’s got to be Mr. Macho. Head man. Show the whole world that he can come to Mars and get the show rolling. Make your fortune on the red planet. Invest in Darryl C. Trumball Enterprises.”

Jamie said, “You don’t seem very happy about it.”

“Why the hell should I be? He’s coming here to take the glory, to be the important man, to push me aside, out of the spotlight. I’m just the little kid that did some science work, he’s the big important bullshit billionaire.”

“How on earth can we stop him?”

“We’re not on Earth.”

“You know what I mean, Dex. This has got to be stopped! Now, before he starts ruining this world. How do we stop him?”

“Put a bullet between his eyes.”

“I’m serious.”

Dex slammed a fist on the tabletop, sloshing coffee from his mug.

“There isn’t any way to stop him! He controls the money, dammit.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Jamie said, feeling desperate. “There’s got to be.”

Dex shook his head slowly. “It’s the golden rule, pal: he who has the gold makes the rules.”

Jamie pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “This has got to be stopped, Dex. I’ll talk to DiNardo. Li Chengdu. The ICU board.”

“Go right ahead. You’ve got as much of a chance as the Sioux nation did against the U.S. Army.”

“They beat Custer,” Jamie snapped.

“And got wiped out afterward.”

Trudy Hall’s head popped up through the floor hatch, dark brown hah” bobbing slightly as she climbed the ladder.

“I thought I’d be the early bird this morning,” she said, surprised that she was not.

Jamie saw she was in her sweat-stained running suit. She’s going to go back to her jogging every morning, he realized. Remembering the noise of her padding around the lab module’s outer perimeter, Jamie said to himself, we won’t need any alarm clocks.

“No, the worms are all gone, Trudy,” said Dex, with a bitter grin.

“Just as well, actually. We have a lot of work to do this morning. DiNardo’s people want another set of photomicrographs of all the wall writings.”

“Another set? What about the images we sent them last week?” Dex asked.

“Not good enough, I suppose.” Trudy went to the freezer, blissfully unaware of the problems that were burning in Jamie’s gut.

Now I’ve got to go out there and do the scientific work I came here to do, Jamie thought. Forget about Trumball and concentrate on the work. That’s what’s important. Get the work done … while you can.

“NO TROUBLES?” VIJAY ASKED.

Trudy Hall’s image on the comm screen looked slightly puzzled by the question. She shook her head. “No, no problem at all.”

“That’s good,” said Vijay.

“It’s rather like being the baby sister with three grownup brothers,” Hall went on. “Mostly, I’m treated with a certain amount of tolerance, actually.”

Vijay was sitting at the tiny desk in her personal quarters. She was recording their conversation, of course; part of her ongoing psychology files.

“And none of them have made any sexual approaches?”

“Not a one.” Hall almost pouted. “Perhaps I should be disappointed?” Then she quickly added, “Don’t let Tommy know I said that!”

With a laugh, Vijay assured her these psych sessions were strictly private. “Unless you have a complaint to make, naturally.”

Hall shook her head again. “Actually, Dex and Jamie are moping around as if the weight of the world is on their shoulders. And Mitsuo … well, Mitsuo’s always given me the feeling he thinks I’m not entirely human.”

A subtle form of racism, Vijay thought. Lord knows you’ve seen enough of it from the WASPs.

But she kept her thoughts to herself. She ended her session with Hall and signed off, then spent half an hour dictating her own thoughts and impressions for the mission record.

These reports will add up to a series of papers in the psych journals when we get back home, she thought as she dictated. My career will be made; I’ll be able to take my pick of tenure-track positions at the best universities on Earth.

Sexual attitudes and behaviors in an isolated environment over an eighteen-month period. That could he the title of the key paper. Might even make a racy book of it: Sex on Mars. A bestseller, without a doubt.

But even as she formed the ideas in her mind, she wondered about Jamie. And Dex. And herself. What a mess I’ve made of everything. What a stupid forlorn mess.

Vijay had spent whole evenings searching through the scientific literature about human relationships on other expeditions, especially the scientific teams that wintered over at Antarctic stations. There had been plenty of information about interpersonal stress and the effects of loneliness and boredom mixed with physical danger, but almost nothing that helped her. Men had attempted murder at Antarctic stations. Men had gone berserk in nuclear submarines during months-long patrols underwater.

But the reports said little about the way relationships between men and women could form and mutate. Nothing about how sex twists everything into different perspectives.

The dome seemed empty with only Craig and the two astronauts in it with her. Sitting in her little cubicle, staring into the now-blank screen of her laptop, Vijay wondered for the thousandth time if she should accompany Rodriguez on his next run out to the Canyon and spend a day or two with the four scientists there.

With Jamie, you mean. Or Dex. Is it Jamie you want? She asked herself. Despite everything, despite his bloody selflessness, is Jamie really the one you care for? You’ll have to settle for second-best with him; he’s really in love with Mars.

What about Dex? He’s … powerful. Dynamic. Vijay shook her head. She didn’t want to think about Dex. He was a complication. Too upsetting.

She jumped up from her chair and walked swiftly out of her compartment. Get the blood circulating, she told herself, striding hard enough across the plastic flooring to send the staccato of her footsteps echoing across the dome.

Stacy was outside with Rodriguez, loading one of the rovers for the next run to the Canyon. Craig was on duty in the comm center. Glancing at her wristwatch, Vijay saw that it was almost time for her to relieve Craig and let him get back to his geology work.

I could go on the rover with them, Vijay said to herself. They don’t need me here; Tommy’s hand is healed up nicely and there aren’t any medical emergencies to worry about. She realized that her medical work on Mars had been almost entirely pharmaceutical. I’ve been pushing pills, handing out vitamins and nutritional supplements—and compiling psych profiles.

More psychology than medicine, she told herself. But when it comes to your own emotional problems, you’re a hopeless muddle. Physician, heal thyself!

Three of the twelve rooms in the dwelling had writing on their walls: one room on each level. Jamie thought about that as he stared at the latest appraisal of the stone samples they had sent back to the dome. Wiley Craig had worked up a very nice spectrographic analysis of the chips and flakes he and Dex had scraped off the stone walls of the building.