Mars Life (6 page)

Jamie, you can’t just barge into the Oval Office,” said Francisco Delgado, the president’s science advisor. “Hell, I haven’t seen her myself in three weeks.”

Delgado was a compactly built man with the physique of a former athlete who had gone soft. His brown-skinned face was starting to show jowls, although his hair was still dark and thick, as was his heavy brush of a moustache. He wore a dark gray business suit with a lighter gray sweater beneath its jacket. Jamie had known him since Delgado had been a biology professor from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a consultant to the crew selection committee for the Second Mars Expedition.

Dressed in stiffly new jeans and a pullover under an old, thin blue windbreaker, Jamie was walking with the science advisor along the Reflecting Pool between the phallic spire of the Washington Monument and the Athenian harmony of the Lincoln Memorial. When Jamie had phoned from Boston to ask to see him, Delgado had suggested a breakfast meeting. Jamie was surprised that breakfast turned out to be a sweet bun and a plastic cup of coffee purchased from a street vendor.

It was a chilly morning, gray, with a hint of rain in the humid air. Only a few tourists were meandering by this early in the day, many of them pushing baby carriages, looking cold and unhappy with the weather.

Delgado walked briskly, paper-wrapped bun in one hand, coffee cup in the other. Jamie kept pace with him and within a few minutes he no longer felt chilled: in fact, Jamie wished he had a hand free to unzip his windbreaker.

“I need to talk to her,” he said. “This new discovery changes everything.”

The science advisor shook his head as he munched on his breakfast bun. “It doesn’t really change a damned thing, Jamie. They’re already talking about reducing the budget for the National Science Foundation.”

“But that’s where most of the university grants come from!”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Cut off the NSF funds and the universities won’t be able to support their work on Mars.”

“Well, that’s where the battle line is now. That’s what I’m fighting to protect.”

Jamie looked into Delgado’s troubled eyes and realized this man was on his side, but struggling against tremendous forces.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“Not a hell of a lot, Jamie. They’re not interested in Mars.”

“Let me talk to the president,” Jamie begged. “Maybe I can make her see the situation more clearly. Maybe I—”

“She won’t see you,” Delgado snapped, his tone hardening. “She can’t afford to be seen with you.”

“Can’t afford . . . ?”

“Look: she was elected by a paper-thin majority and now she’s facing the off-year elections with everybody blaming her for the greenhouse floods and anything else that’s happened during her first two years. Those Bible-thumping New Morality zealots already control the House of Representatives. By November they’ll have the majority in the Senate!”

“So she can’t afford to antagonize them, is that it?” Jamie asked.

Delgado turned on his heel and strode away. Crumpling the empty wrapper in one hand while he gulped the last of his coffee, he walked up to a trash receptacle and dumped both. Jamie followed him and did the same.

Over his shoulder, Delgado said, “Come with me, Jamie. There’s something I want to show you. Something you need to see.”

Ignoring the line of taxicabs parked along Constitution Avenue, Delgado hurried up toward the Ellipse. At first Jamie thought they were going to the White House after all, but Delgado veered off at Seventeenth Street and marched Jamie into a glass-walled office building. There was no plaque on the entrance, no sign announcing what the building was or which government agency might be housed in it.

Puffing slightly from the pace the science advisor set, Jamie followed Delgado through the inevitable security checkpoint in the quiet, nearly empty lobby. After they went through the metal detector a sullen-looking overweight guard in a blue National Security Agency uniform handed them identification badges. Jamie eyed the heavy black pistol holstered on the guard’s hip as he clipped his badge onto the front of his windbreaker. Delgado led Jamie into a waiting elevator.

“What is this place?” Jamie asked as the elevator doors closed. To his surprise, it went down, not up.

“It’s a new climatology facility,” the science advisor answered.

“Why-”

“There’s something you’ve got to see. Something that just might put things into the proper perspective for you.”

The elevator went down four levels, then stopped with a lurch. The doors slid open.

There were more people in the corridor down at this level than there had been in the lobby. Still, the men and women seemed to Jamie to be moving at a leisurely pace. Government employees, Jamie thought.

The smooth cream-colored paneling of the corridor was set with a series of doors, all of them blank except for five-digit numbers stenciled on them. Mounted beside each door was a small keypad. Delgado walked Jamie to the end of the corridor and tapped out a security code on the pad next to its double doors. They slid open noiselessly.

Jamie followed the science advisor into a darkened room, lit only by the giant display screens that filled three of the walls. People sat at what looked to Jamie like electronics consoles. The place reminded him of a NASA mission control center, except that the usual crackle of tense excitement was missing.

The wall displays were electronic maps, Jamie saw. He recognized satellite views of the continental United States, Europe, Latin America.

Delgado walked him through the consoles to the display of the United States.

“Take a good look,” said the science advisor. “This is a real-time display, with the cloud cover removed.”

Jamie recognized the image, although as he stared at it he realized it looked slightly wrong, subtly different from the maps he was accustomed to.

Pointing with an outstretched arm, Delgado said, “We’re holding our own along the East Coast, pretty much, although the dams and flood control systems have cost us so much the federal budget’ll be in the red for generations to come.”

That’s why Washington isn’t under water, Jamie realized.

Delgado went on, “But take a look at the Gulf of Mexico. Look at Florida. See how the sea level is moving in.”

Jamie could see that the coastline he was familiar with was no longer there. The Gulf of Mexico was encroaching from Texas to the tip of Florida. He couldn’t find Galveston. Miami was an island, surrounded by the Atlantic.

“That’s the way it is today,” Delgado said, his voice grim. “Now see what happens in five years.”

The image shifted. Most of Florida disappeared under water. The Mississippi River swelled into a connected series of lakes that swallowed entire cities. The Gulf of Mexico grew noticeably larger and covered most of Louisiana.

“That’s what we’re up against, Jamie. And it’s not going to stop. The Arctic is melting down! So’s the Antarctic. Fresh water runoff from Greenland will interrupt the Gulf Stream in another couple of decades. Maybe sooner. When the Stream shuts down, Europe goes into the deep freeze.”

In the greenish light from the wall displays Delgado’s face looked splotched, ghastly. Jamie heard the bitterness in his voice, the anger.

“We’re facing major flooding of the country’s heartland. People in the Pentagon are talking about marching into Canada to take their wheat belt, for god’s sakes! And maybe a new Ice Age to top it all off!”

Jamie stared at him in silence.

“And you want to spend money on frigging Mars? You expect the president to give you a Christmas present, all wrapped up in a bow? Forget it!”

With a silent shake of his head Jamie turned away and started for the door. I won’t forget it, he said to himself. I can’t.

Chang Laodong looked distinctly uncomfortable as he sat behind his desk facing Carter Carleton. The mission director’s office was small but three of its four walls were covered with smart screens that displayed treasures of Chinese art: silk paintings of misty mountain scenes, statues of powerful arch-necked horses, the inevitable portraits of Buddha and Mao. Otherwise the office was strictly utilitarian, with only Chang’s desk, the chair before it, and a sofa and low table along one wall, flanked by two more small chairs.