Mars Life (37 page)

Jamie’s gone daft, Vijay said to herself as she watched her husband, Dex and Hasdrubal striding from Carleton’s excavation out toward the buckyball cables that ran up the seamed sheer face of the cliff to the plain up at the top. It was almost sunset, and the shadows of the three men stretched out across the uneven, rock-covered ground like fingers straining for a prize they could not reach.

The three of them had stopped briefly at the excavation; at the edge of the pit Jamie pointed here and there while the other two stood beside him. Then they moved on. Jamie wants to get to the cable lifts before it gets dark, Vijay told herself.

But Dex is only here for two more days and Jamie’s spending more’n half that time trotting him out to that crater, Vijay thought. Why’s he doing that? With a shake of her head, she kept staring through the transparent wall of the dome, watching the three nanosuited figures walking away. Like three little boys going out on an adventure, she realized. Jamie’s turning his back on his responsibilities. Dex is, too. They ought to know better.

With a helpless sigh, Vijay commanded herself, Go back to your room. Wash your face. Get ready for dinner. Alone.

Yet she stood there and watched the three men moving away from her.

“He’s really a fanatic, isn’t he?”

Turning, she saw Carter Carleton standing beside her, his usual self-assured smile totally gone. He looked angry.

“No, Jamie’s not a fanatic,” she said. “He’s dedicated.”

“He’s supposed to be showing Trumball the work we’re doing here. Look at them. They hardly glanced at my excavation.”

“I know,” Vijay said. “I really don’t understand what Jamie’s up to.”

“Whatever it is, he doesn’t think my work is very important, does he?”

“It’s not that. There’s something going on inside his head but I don’t know what it is.” Vijay kept staring at the dwindling figures as she spoke. “I wonder if Jamie himself knows what it is.”

“A fanatic,” Carleton muttered. She could hear the resentment in his voice.

“Dedicated,” she repeated.

Carleton fairly glared at her. But then he made a tentative smile and said, “I see. I am dedicated. 
You 
are a fanatic.”

Vijay shook her head. “A fanatic is someone who doubles his efforts after he’s forgotten his aim. Jamie hasn’t forgotten his aim.”

“ ‘For if I should despair, I should grow mad,’” Carleton quoted.

“Jamie hasn’t despaired.”

“Not yet.”

“Not ever.”

He touched her back lightly, with just the tips of his fingers, and gestured toward the cafeteria with his free hand. “May I invite you to dinner?”

Vijay thought about it a moment, glanced again at the dwindling figures of the three men, then back at Carleton’s handsome face. The anger was still in his eyes, but he was making himself smile at her.

“I don’t like to eat alone,” he said, almost gently.

“Neither do I,” said Vijay. “Let me wash up first.”

“Certainly.” His smile broadened. “Meet you in the cafeteria in half an hour?”

“Fine.”

All through dinner Vijay tried to get a reading on Carleton. She knew his dossier by heart, knew how he’d been ruined by a charge of rape that he strenuously denied. He had been stripped of his professorship and tenure, his wife had left him, his fellow anthropologists treated him as a pariah. His career, his life, were ruined. So he came to Mars and made the biggest discovery since somebody stumbled over the bones of Neanderthal Man. The irony was cosmic.

“Something’s amusing you?” Carleton asked from across the table. Their dinners were long finished. Even the fruit pies they had taken for dessert were nothing more than crumbs now.

“Just thinking about the weird turns that fate takes,” she said. ‘You had to come all the way out here to Mars to find vindication.”

He steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Vindication? That’s a strange word to use.”

Vijay said, “I mean, if the fundamentalists believe in divine guidance, then they’ve got to admit that your discovery of the village here must be God’s way of showing that the accusations against you were false.”

Still half-hiding his face, Carleton replied in a low, strained voice, “No, they’d never admit that they were wrong. That they got that woman to perjure herself. Never.”

“But-”

“They’re the fanatics, Vijay. Real fanatics. They’d do anything to further their cause. Give them enough power and they’ll start burning people at the stake again.”

There was real fury in his tone now. Hatred. Good, she thought. Don’t repress it. Let it out.

“You’ll be cock of the walk when you return to Earth. You can wave your discovery under their noses.”

“If I return to Earth.”

“If?” Vijay felt startled.

“I decided when I came here to Mars that I wasn’t going to look backward, I wasn’t going to let them turn me into a bitter old man. Now—well, why should I go back? What’s back there for me except pain and sorrow?”

He feels sorry for himself! Vijay realized. Can’t say I blame him.

She said, “But you can go back in triumph. You can have your pick of university posts.”

He thought a moment. “I wonder. The New Morality controls most of the academic establishment these days.”

“But you—”

“Don’t you know that the Mars Foundation can’t even get the news nets to carry a documentary about my village? They’re blocking us out.”

“Jamie mentioned something about that,” she murmured.

“No, I think I’ll stay right here,” Carleton said. “I can do some really important work here, no matter how they ignore me back home. I can have some respect here, despite clowns like Larkin.”

Better to reign in hell, Vijay thought, than to serve in heaven.

But she asked, “What if Jamie has to close down the whole operation?”

With a shrug, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Vijay couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “I don’t think that’s a very healthy attitude. You’ve got to prepare for problems before they hit you.”

He turned on his smile, but there was sadness in it. “Don’t worry about my attitude. I’m a healthy enough man, Vijay.”

She thought she detected just the slightest emphasis on the word 
man.

They picked up their dirty dishes and deposited them in the slowly revolving drum that fed the microwave cleaning unit.

As they started out of the cafeteria, toward the living units on the other side of the dome, Carleton asked, “My place or yours?”

Vijay looked sharply at him. He was smiling again, but it looked just a bit forced to her. You’d better stop this right here and now, she told herself. Don’t let him get any ideas about you. A different voice in her mind countered, Not that he doesn’t have ideas already.

“You go to your place and I’ll go to mine,” she said firmly.

Keeping pace beside her, Carleton said, “I thought we might have a nightcap. I still have some of that single malt I told you about.”

“No thanks, Carter.”

“Scared?”

She hesitated a heartbeat, then admitted, “Yes. A little.”

Strangely, he chuckled. I’ve stroked his machismo, Vijay thought. But that’s as far as this goes.

As they approached the living quarters, he gripped her arm and asked again, “Just a little scotch?”

“You are a persistent one, aren’t you?”

“But not a fanatic.”

Still walking toward her quarters, Vijay said, “Carter, there are lots of women here who’d be happy to share your bed.”

“Maybe. But none as beautiful as you.”

“Lots of unmarried women.”

Carleton grunted softly. “He’s run off with his buddy and left you here to fend for yourself.”

“ ‘Kay. So now I’m fending.” Vijay tried to pry his fingers off her arm. He tightened his grip.

“I want you, Vijay.”

“No, Carter. Please let go of me.”

Vijay placed her back against the flimsy accordion-fold door of her quarters. Carleton took her other arm and pinned her against the door. She felt it shuddering behind her.

She could see the need in his eyes. Stand up to him, she told herself. Stay in control. If that doesn’t work, knee him in the groin.

“Come on, Vijay. Nobody’s going to get hurt.” He was pressing her against the sagging door, speaking faster now, his voice low and urgent. “Jamie won’t know. You’ve seen my medical dossier; you know I had a vasectomy more than twenty years ago.”

Vijay could see a few other people scattered across the dome. No one was looking their way, but a single shout would focus everybody’s attention on her.

Very firmly she said, “Carter, the answer is no. Now please let go of me.”

For a long moment he stood there frozen, leaning against her, staring down at her. Then he seemed to change. She saw the fire in his eyes tamp down. He released her arms and took a small step back from her.

“Thank you,” she whispered, rubbing her arms where his hands had clamped her.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I got carried away.”

“Good night, Carter,” she said.

He nodded. “I’m not a rapist, Vijay.”

“I never thought you were,” she half-lied.

He turned and walked away, toward his own quarters, moving with the exaggerated precision of a man who’s trying to show the world he isn’t drunk.

Vijay slid her door open and quickly stepped into the quarters she shared with Jamie. She pushed the door shut again and clicked its flimsy lock, knowing that it would never stop a determined man.

Before undressing for the night she searched both bed tables until she found the emergency flashlight. Hefting it in one hand, she told herself it would make a decent weapon, if push came to shove.

Then she picked up the phone and asked the communications tech to contact Jamie. He ought to be in the dome up on the plain by now, she thought. Vijay had no intention of telling her husband about Carleton. Nothing happened, really, she told herself.

But she picked up the flashlight again with her free hand as she waited for her call to go through.

Jamie woke early, blinked a few times, then sat up in the bunk and remembered last night. He and Dex and Hasdrubal had reached the dome just a few minutes after sundown. Jamie had kept Dex outside long enough to see the aurora; he made some oohs and aahs but Jamie got the firm impression that the Sky Dancers didn’t impress Dex all that much. Then the three of them had a bland meal microwaved from the dome’s supplies and had gone to bed. Vijay had called, as he’d expected. She sounded a little tense, but Jamie ascribed that to her being worried about him being away on this excursion.

The last excursion we’ll be able to make, Jamie realized as he got out of the bunk and padded toward the communal lavatory. Unless Dex can find some more money for us.

No. He shook his head at his reflection in the lavatory’s metal mirror. Don’t put it on Dex. You’ve got to make the decision. This is your responsibility.

Through their brief breakfast in the dome Dex eyed Jamie warily, like a man trapped in an office with an insurance salesman, Jamie thought. He’s waiting for me to put the pressure on him. I guess I look the same way, come to think of it, waiting for him to try to sell me on his tourist scheme. We’ve got to decide on the future of our work here. Life or death.

After checking out the camper they were going to use in strained silence, Jamie, Dex and Hasdrubal started out for Crater Chang. The sun was barely above the ragged horizon as they slowly drove out of the dome. Hasdrubal did the driving; Jamie sat in the right-hand seat beside him, and Dex stood behind them, hunched between the two seats so he could watch the landscape rolling by.

For more than an hour Jamie tried to open the conversation lie wanted to have with Dex. But the words just wouldn’t come out. He sat in the cockpit and inwardly struggled to find the right words while Dex hung over his shoulder, equally quiet. Hasdrubal drove the camper in silence, wrapped in his own thoughts.

“Hasn’t changed much,” Dex said at last. “Rocks, rocks and more rocks.”

“Like watching a golf tournament on video,” said Hasdrubal. “They all look the same.”

“Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.”

Hasdrubal glanced over his shoulder at Dex. “You did that long-range trek, didn’t you, back on the Second Expedition. You and what’s-his-name.”

“Craig. Possum Craig. That was more than twenty years ago,” Dex said. “But it still looks the same. Mars doesn’t change very quickly.”

“Well, you’re gonna see somethin’ new in half an hour or so,” said Hasdrubal.

“The new crater. Bet it looks like all the other craters around here.”

“You’re a geologist, right?” Hasdrubal asked.

“Was, back in the day. Haven’t picked up a rock in a long time.”

Jamie listened to them chatting back and forth. Dex is pretending to be bored, he said to himself. Maybe it’s not a pretense. He’s spent half his life working to support the exploration of Mars but it just doesn’t excite him the way it gets to me. It’s not in his guts, not in his soul. Or if it is, he hides it a lot better than I do.

Dex tapped his shoulder. “Don’t you have anything to say, Chief?”

Jamie grimaced. He hadn’t heard Dex use that half-derogatory term in more than twenty years. Okay, he told himself, time to face the music.

Pushing himself up from the seat, Jamie said to Dex, “I have a lot to say, Dex. And I guess you do, too.”

He gestured to the cots that faced each other like benches. The upper cots were folded back against the camper’s curving walls. Dex went back and sat on one of them, Jamie took the one opposite.

With a knowing grin, Dex said, “I figure you brought me out here so we could talk.”

With a glance at Hasdrubal, up in the cockpit concentrating on the driving, Jamie said, “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Jamie, I know you hate the idea of tourists coming here, but—”

“We can’t do our work with tourists tramping through the base,” Jamie said.

Raising a hand, Dex said, “Hear me out, Jamie. Let me give you the full picture.”

Jamie pressed his lips into a tight line. He saw the quiet intensity on his old friend’s face. He’s dropped his mask. I was wrong: this is hitting him just as hard as it’s hitting me, almost.

“So give me the full picture,” Jamie said, almost in a whisper.

“There just isn’t any money!” Dex said. “The government, the private donors, even the big foundations—none of them are willing to put up funding for Mars.”

“The greenhouse warming . . .” Jamie muttered.

“That’s just a bullshit excuse. What we need for Mars is small change compared to the trillions they’re spending on the greenhouse effects.”

“But then why are we being shut out?”

“They’re out to get us.”

“They?”

“The fundamentalists. The New Morality. They’re taking control of the government. They’re putting pressure on our donors, on the universities and the foundations. They’re even shutting us out of the news nets!”

Jamie said, “Selene’s willing to help. It’s not much, but we could keep a dozen or so people working here. Fifteen, tops.”

“Big fucking deal.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

Dex shook his head. “Jamie, that’s why this tourism deal is so important. It could save the whole operation! You could keep a couple hundred people on Mars.”

“If we let tourists come here.” Jamie felt a lead weight in his guts.”

“Only a handful,” Dex said, almost pleading. “Five at a time. Ten, tops.”

“And then twenty. And then — “

“No! Ten at a time, maximum. I swear it! No more than that, ever.”

“Dex, I know you mean that, but once people start paying that kind of money to come here, how are you going to control them? They’ll turn the place into another Disney World.”

“Not if-”

“You want to terraform the area,” Jamie said, almost hissing the words. “You want to change it so the tourists can walk around in their shirtsleeves.”

“Would that be so bad?”

“And what happens to the Martian organisms? The endolithic lichen. It’ll kill them.”

“Move the damned rocks outside the terraformed area,” Dex said.

“And the village? The cemetery? The cliff structures?”

“Let the tourists see them! They’ll pay enough so you can send out teams to find other villages. There must be more of them.”

“I’d rather cut my arm off.”

Dex took a deep breath. “Christ, you’ve got to be the stubbornest goddamned redskin in the world. Jamie, you’ve got to listen to reason!”

Jamie closed his eyes and pictured the base with only fifteen people working in it. What could they do, what could they accomplish? he wondered. We wouldn’t be able to do much useful work. Just help Carleton clear away more of the village. No excursions beyond the immediate area around the dome. No new discoveries.

As if he could read Jamie’s mind, Dex said, ‘You know you can’t accomplish diddly-squat with just fifteen people. They’ll be caretakers, nothing more.”

“At least they’ll be taking care of the place, not trampling it into the dust.”

“Aw, shit, Jamie,” Dex groused.

Leaning toward him, Jamie asked, “How many of your billionaire friends will come to Mars, Dex? At fifty million a pop, how many will come?”

Taken aback somewhat, Dex muttered, “A couple dozen or so, at least. Forty, fifty, maybe.”

“Okay, that’s two and a half billion dollars.”

“That’ll keep you going for years.”

“How many years?”

Dex did some swift mental arithmetic. “Three, four. Maybe five.”

“And then what?”

“Then what?”

“After the high rollers have come and gone. How do we fund the operation then?”

Dex hesitated.

Jamie said, “I’ll tell you how. You’ll lower the price, right? Get more customers to come. More tourists visiting Mars. Lower prices means more people. That’s what you’ll have to do to keep the money flowing in.”

“Okay, but by then you’ll probably be finished excavating the village. You can leave it for the tourists and move on.”

“No! Never! That village isn’t a tourist attraction. It was the home of living, breathing, intelligent people! We have to protect it, honor it.”

“For chrissake, Jamie, this isn’t some goddamned religious crusade!”

“The hell it isn’t!”

Dex’s voice turned cold and hard. “Okay. You turn down the tourist idea and you run out of funding. What then?”

“Selene will keep us alive.”

“Barely.”

Jamie nodded, admitting it. “We’ll manage. Somehow.”

“For how long? A year? Two? Selene’s not going to support you indefinitely, especially if you’re not producing new results. They’ll shut you down sooner or later.”

“Maybe,” Jamie conceded.

“And you know what’ll happen once you shut down the base and bring everybody home?”

This is home, Jamie replied silently.

“Once the Navaho presence on Mars ends,” Dex went on remorselessly, “the Navaho Nation loses its right to control the territory. Somebody else will come in.”

“Your friends with their tourist operation,” Jamie replied woodenly.

“Damned right. And they won’t be interested in scientific exploration at all. They’ll be your worst nightmare come true, Jamie.”

Sullen resentment burning inside him, Jamie muttered, “And you’ll help them.”

“Damned right I will,” said Dex, with some heat. “You know why? Because I don’t want to see this work abandoned. I want to keep the exploration of Mars going.”

“By selling out to tourists.”

“Right! You think you’re the only one who cares about what we’re doing here? You think you’ve got a monopoly on righteousness? I’ll make a deal with tourists, I’ll make a deal with anybody, the devil incarnate, if I have to. The important thing is to keep this operation going—even if your people have to put up with tourists.”

Jamie stared into his friend’s face. He 
does 
care, Jamie realized. He’s so damned dead wrong, but he cares.

Then he heard his grandfather’s voice in his mind. 
There’s always more’n one path to get where you want to go, Jamie. Finding the right path is important, but sometimes you’ve got to travel a path that’s tougher, more roundabout. The important thing is to get where you want to go.

Before he could make up his mind to say anything, Hasdrubal called from the cockpit, “We’re almost there. Another ten minutes.”

“Think about it,” Dex whispered to Jamie. “Don’t be so goddamned stubborn.”

Jamie nodded wordlessly, but in his heart he knew he could never allow Dex or anyone else to ruin his life’s work.