Mars (52 page)

Now that congresswoman was Vice-President of the United States and Harvey Todd was her aide for science and technology. He was already spending most of his time preparing for next year’s primaries.

He seemed at ease sitting across the small table from Alberto Brumado. The luncheon crowd at the Jefferson Hotel was quiet, subdued, as if each table full of people had its own secrets to whisper, huddling in the deep plush banquettes so that it was almost impossible to see who was sitting with whom.

Brumado sipped from his tulip-shaped glass of Portuguese
vinho verde.
He barely noticed its taste, so intent was he on what Todd was saying.

“I brought a copy of the speech.” The Vice-President’s aide pulled a tiny computer disk from his inside jacket pocket and placed it on the damask tablecloth. “I think you’ll be pleased with it.”

“She accepts the necessity of further missions to Mars?” Brumado asked, hunching forward slightly.

“Unequivocally.”

“Wonderful.” Brumado reached his hand toward the disk.

Todd covered it with his own hand. “Has the Indian written his statement supporting the Vice-President?”

“Not yet. He’s been quite busy.”

Sliding the disk back toward himself, “Well, when you can show me his written statement I can show you her speech.”

“I see.”

“I’ve scheduled it for the NASA anniversary, as you suggested. Your Indian doesn’t have much time to get his statement to us.”

“He will. As soon as he comes back from this traverse to Tithonium Chasma.”

“Where?”

“The Grand Canyon of Mars.”

“Oh, right, of course. The scientific jargon always throws me for a loop.”

Brumado made an understanding smile.

Todd’s boyish face held the searching, probing eyes of an opportunist. “You realize, of course, that if there’s some calamity between now and the date of the speech, all bets are off. I can’t have her backing a dead horse.”

“I understand,” Brumado replied slowly, “that no politician wants to be identified with a failure.”

“On the other hand, if the mission should be a terrific success … if they find something alive up there, that would guarantee support all up and down the line.”

“They are searching for life right now.”

“It’d be a good idea if they found something. Even just a hint, let them send back word that they found something that makes it look like life existed there once. That might be even better than finding real live Martians.”

“They will find what they find,” said Brumado.

Todd grinned at him. “That’s right. They’re scientists, aren’t they? They never slant their reports, do they?”

Brumado did not like the implication, nor the sly expression on the young man’s face.

Leaning closer to the Brazilian and lowering his voice, Todd went on, “You know, if they do find something spectacular, like an ancient city or something, your Indian could write his own ticket.”

“The Vice-President’s support for further missions is what he wants.”

With an impatient gesture Todd said, “I don’t mean that. I mean he could work with me. He could even run for office.”

“I’m sure that is the furthest thing from his mind.”

Todd leaned back in his chair again and turned his gaze toward the ceiling. “You know, the Vice-President isn’t going to get the party’s nomination automatically. She’s going to face some stiff opposition from Masterson and his coalition.”

“I am not very familiar with American politics,” Brumado murmured.

The young man said almost dreamily, “You tell your Indian that if he finds something really good up there he can write his own ticket when he gets back. He could hold the balance of power at the national convention, you know that?”

Brumado was not certain that he was hearing correctly. “Are you saying that you would abandon the Vice-President if it seemed expedient?”

“Oh no, of course not!” Todd smiled like a cobra. “But after all, the most important thing is for the party to nominate the man—I mean, the candidate—who can win the election in November. Isn’t it?”

Brumado was not staying at the Jefferson Hotel. That was far too expensive for him. During these weeks in Washington he lived in the Georgetown home of a friend who was away in South Africa on State Department business. The house was a pleasant old red-brick Colonial, beautifully furnished and staffed by a cook and butler.

Edith Elgin lived there, too. Almost.

As soon as Edith had shown up in Washington Brumado’s internal warning system began sounding alarms.

“Dr. Waterman replied to your message, did he not?” he had asked Edith.

She had tracked him down at a congressional committee hearing and walked with him out of the Capitol and along Maryland Avenue toward the NASA headquarters building. The trees were still green and in full leaf, the sunshine warm, the sky bright blue. Yet the breeze had a tang in it, the first snap of autumn’s coming chill.

“Oh yes, he surely did. It was a kind of impersonal message,
though.” She laughed lightly. “More like a scientific report than a message from a friend.”

Brumado looked at her closely as they walked along. “You were more than friends, I take it.”

She returned his steady gaze. “Yes, we were. But we both knew it would end when he left for Mars.”

“I see.”

They strolled along slowly. To passersby they looked almost like father and daughter, although pedestrians in the Capitol Hill area were accustomed to seeing older men With good-looking young women. Brumado wore a conservative gray pinstriped double-breasted suit, Edith a midthigh dark skirt, off-white blouse, and cardinal red blazer.

“I was wondering,” Edith said, “if I might interview you—about some of the things Jamie told me.”

“For your network?” Brumado asked.

“It would help me to nail down a permanent job.”

They stopped at a corner traffic light. Brumado had seen Jamie’s message to her. There were no private transmissions from Mars; project officials screened everything.

“You want to make a big story out of Waterman’s desire to change the mission plan and make a traverse out to the Grand Canyon,” he said.

She admitted it easily. “I can use Jamie’s tape by itself if I have to. But I’d rather have you and maybe some of the project administrators telling your side of the story.”

The light changed. Brumado gripped Edith’s arm as they hurried across the street. He was thinking furiously. This woman could destroy everything. She could set the Vice-President back on the warpath.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said when they had safely reached the other side of the intersection.

“A proposition?” Edith smiled at him.

“I propose a deal,” Brumado said. “You can stay with me and get all the information about the expedition that you want—if you promise not to release anything until the team is safely back on Earth.”

Edith frowned with puzzlement. “I’m not sure I understand …”

“You can become the unofficial biographer of the Mars mission. Go where I go. No doors will be closed to you. You will see everything and meet everyone.”

“But I can’t put any of it on the air until the mission’s finished. Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

Brumado realized he was still holding her arm. He did not let go.

Thinking about Howard Francis back in New York, Edith said slowly, “I don’t know if the network will go for a deal like that.”

Smiling his warmest, Brumado coaxed, “They have dozens of reporters covering the mission. But they are all on the outside looking in. If you agree to work with me, you will be on the inside—no other reporter has been allowed such a privilege.”

“But I wouldn’t be able to file any reports …”

“Not until the mission is completed. Then you will be able to tell the entire story, from the inside. You will have information and interviews that no other reporter could possibly obtain.”

She looked thoughtful. “I’ll ask New York about it.”

New York had leaped at the deal, of course. Howard Francis immediately saw visions of news specials that none of the other networks could duplicate. “And if we have to,” he had told Edith, “we can always screw them and go on the air with something really big before the other correspondents even know what’s happening!”

So for weeks now Brumado had practically lived with Edith Elgin, introducing her wherever they went as the project’s unofficial biographer. The other networks complained; the print media howled. But Edith stayed with Brumado. They traveled together, ate together, spent every day together.

Except for his lunch with Harvey Todd. The Vice-President’s aide had insisted that it be completely private.

Riding alone in the taxi back to Georgetown, Brumado wondered how long he could keep Edith silent. The deal between them had been simple enough when he had first proposed it. But now the situation was getting more complicated. One of the complications was the Vice-President. Another was Harvey Todd and his ambition to back the winning candidate, despite his ostensible loyalties. The most pressing complication was Edith herself. She was young, quite lovely, very desirable. Yet Brumado could not reach a decision
about her. Would she go to bed with him or reject him? If he attempted to make love to her would that bind her to him more closely or drive her away?

He smiled to himself as the taxi threaded narrow, traffic-clogged Wisconsin Avenue. Perhaps if I do
not
try to seduce her she will go away. Perhaps she expects me to make love to her.

He shook his head. No. She is more intelligent than that. And more dangerous.

The taxi pulled up in front of the red-brick Georgetown house. Edith had a room at the nearby Four Seasons Hotel and a sumptuous expense account. She actually paid for most of their meals and all of her own travel.

Brumado chuckled to himself as he climbed the steps and fished in his pockets for the house key. Why not sleep with her? Everyone already thinks that I am. I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

It was scary going down the slope.

“Easy does it,” Connors muttered, his hands tightly gripping the rover’s steering wheel, his booted feet playing the accelerator and brake as deftly as a concert pianist working the pedals of his instrument. A comm set was clamped over his head, one earphone with a pin mike crooked before the astronaut’s lips on a slim curved arm.

Jamie felt as if he were driving too, sitting tensely in the right-hand seat, staring out at the steep incline of the landslide. It looked as if they were pointed almost straight down.

“Like landing the old space shuttle,” Connors joked. “Drop a ninety-nine-ton brick from hypersonic to a soft touchdown in ten minutes. Nothing to it.”

His insides pitching and reeling with every lurch of the rover, Jamie glanced back over his shoulder at the two women. They were strapped into the jumpseats that folded out from the bulkhead just behind the cockpit. Joanna was pale and sweating visibly. Ilona looked equally tense, but managed a tight smile.

All four were in shirtsleeves, wearing their regulation tan coveralls, although Ilona had wrapped a colorful scarf around her waist. There was no need for the hard suits until they were safely on the canyon floor and ready to venture outside the rover.

Jamie felt rivulets trickling down his ribs and beads of perspiration dotting his forehead and upper lip. His insides felt jumpy, twitchy.

The middle module of the rover had been reconfigured for this traverse. Instead of being merely a housing for instruments and equipment, it now was set up as a miniature
laboratory where the three scientists could examine the rocks and soil samples they were to gather and make preliminary analyses. They could step from the forward module to the makeshift lab through the airlock. The logistics module was filled with methane fuel for the electronic generator and fuel cells, plus their other consumables: emergency oxygen, extra water, and food.

Connors seemed utterly cool, despite his deathgrip on the steering wheel. He slowly maneuvered around a crater looming ahead like a hole punched out by an artillery shell, working the rover between its raised rim and the dangerously close edge of the landslide. In the back of his mind Jamie noted that the slide was old enough to have been hit time and again by sizable meteoroids.

“Where’s these mists you saw?” Connors asked. “Everything looks clear as a bell now. ”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll come up later.”

“Funny thing about haze. From one angle everything can look clear, but if you’re coming in from a different angle, with the sun in a different position, the haze can cover up everything, look like a smoke screen.”

But there was no haze at all now. Jamie felt a tendril of fear worming through his mind. Maybe the haze Mikhail and I saw was a rare phenomenon, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Maybe I’ve dragged us out here to chase a ghost that doesn’t exist.

The slope was strewn with rocks and pebbles, though nothing as big as the boulders they had encountered up on the surface. Jamie could not see any accumulations of dust piled against the bigger rocks. Either the wind doesn’t blow down here, he reasoned, or it blows hard enough to carry away any dust that’s accumulated.

The rover’s cleated metal wheels each had its own independent electric motor driving it, which gave the vehicle the best possible traction. Even so, now and again Jamie felt the ground sliding out from under them, heard a wheel motor whine suddenly before adjusting to the loose gravel beneath it.

Connors was muttering continuously under his breath, so low that even as close as he was Jamie could not tell if the astronaut was cursing or praying. Maybe some of both, he thought.

They passed the one geological probe that had landed on the slide. Its stubby white body stood out against the reddish ground and rocks like a garish advertising sign in the middle of the Sahara. Sure enough, the ground around the probe was firm and easy to drive across, its slope considerably flatter than the area they had just come through.

“Looks easier up ahead,” Connors said.

Jamie saw that the ground was flatter and smoother. No craters in sight.