Mars Life (7 page)

As he rode the jet airliner back toward Albuquerque Jamie desperately tried to think of some way, some method of raising support for the Mars program. I’ll have to see New Mexico’s senators, he told himself. Maybe get the people running the spaceport down in Alamogordo to put pressure on the politicians.

I can go to the media, he added. Get Dex to put together a TV special out of all the virtual reality tours we’ve done on Mars. Do a VR show on the fossil Carleton’s discovered! That ought to bring in public support. Maybe we can start a public drive for funds, get ordinary people to contribute to keeping the Mars program going.

He leaned his head against the seat back, planning, thinking, hoping. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the land sliding past, endless miles of dry brittle brown where once there had been green fields of grain as far as the eye could see. The greenhouse warming had cruelly brought both drought and flooding to America’s heartland. The nation’s breadbasket was withering away.

Jamie closed his eyes, feeling overwhelmed by what was happening to the world, to two worlds, to him and everything he cared about. He closed his eyes and immediately found himself on Mars.

In his mind he stood at the edge of the tranquil sea, beneath a clear sky of perfect turquoise blue, while the Sun’s warmth baked into his bare shoulders. The gentle waves lapped at his feet and the water stretched to the horizon and far beyond. Strangely, Jamie felt no misgivings at seeing so much water on Mars. It’s not very deep, he told himself; nowhere near as deep as the ocean basins on the blue world. Then it struck him: Mars was once a blue world, too!

Turning, he looked back across the land. It was not a frigid red desert. The land was golden with grain that waved gracefully in the gentle breeze. Far in the distance mountains rose dramatically, bluish green almost up to their bare granite summits.

Water means life, Jamie knew. Mars is young and alive. He looked up into the cloudless sky, squinting against the Sun’s brightness. But Coyote will send monsters to destroy all this, he knew. This will end. Soon.

“This is First Officer De La Hoya speaking,” a woman’s voice came through the cabin speakers. “We’re approaching the Albuquerque area.”

Jamie blinked and rubbed his eyes, his vision of ancient Mars fading away. Outside the airliner’s window he saw a familiar yet strange landscape sliding by. Rugged mesas and tortuous arroyos—covered with green. The abrupt climate change had bizarrely brought plentiful rain to the stark scrublands of the desert Southwest. The Gulf of California was invading the Colorado River basin. Yuma was already flooded and there were dark jokes about Albuquerque itself becoming a seaside resort town. The lands of the Navahos and other Native Americans farther north were green and burgeoning.

The Navaho side of Jamie’s mind remembered grimly that the Anglos were already making inroads on reservation land. Refugees driven from the flooded coastal cities formed a pressure bloc that was trying to drive The People from their own territory.

“To our left in just about a minute you’ll be able to see a Clippership launch from the New Mexico spaceport near Alamogordo,” the plane’s first officer continued.

Passengers on the right side of the cabin got up from their seats and crowded over the shoulders of those in the left-hand seats for a view of the rocket’s liftoff. Jamie, on an aisle seat, leaned forward and peered through the plane’s oval window.

“There it is!” somebody shouted.

Jamie saw a pillar of white smoke rising fast beyond the distant mountains, up, up into the crystalline blue sky. He knew that the Clippership was a squat cone of gleaming composite plastic carrying up to a hundred passengers across the Pacific in half an hour. Or maybe this flight was going to one of the space stations in orbit around the Earth. He remembered the thunder of the rocket engines on his flights, the bone-rattling vibration of all that power, the press of three times normal gravity squeezing you down into your acceleration couch. And then it all cut off, all at once, and you were weightless, held down on your couch only by the restraining straps, your stomach dropping away inside you.

If you’ve got to fly, he thought with an inward smile, that’s the way to do it.

The jet airliner circled around the Sandia Mountains as the Clippership’s distant exhaust trail slowly dissolved and disappeared. By the time the plane landed there was no trace of it in the sky.

Jamie was surprised to see Vijay waiting for him in the baggage claim area, dressed in slacks that hugged her round hips deliciously and a bright orange blouse with a vivid red scarf knotted around her waist in place of a belt. She stood out in the crowd like a Technicolor goddess in the midst of drab black-and-white mortals.

She ran to him, all smiles, and kissed him as though they hadn’t seen each other in months. Jamie dropped his travel bag and clung to her. Other passengers stared and grinned at them. Somebody whistled appreciatively.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked, once they came up for air.

“Thought I’d surprise you.”

He laughed. “I’m surprised, all right.”

“Want to take me to dinner and tell me about your trip?”

That brought Jamie back to bleak reality. Bending down to pick up his travel bag, he said, “It looks pretty bad.”

Vijay nodded. “I thought as much. Dex was rather evasive.”

As he started toward the luggage carousel to pick up his roll-on, Jamie asked, “You talked with Dex?”

“I phoned when I got your message that you were going to Washington. I was trying to get you but you were already on the plane, I guess.”

Jamie hadn’t had the heart to phone his wife after his meeting with Delgado. On the flight back to Albuquerque he’d spent most of his time wrestling with the decisions he would have to make. He knew what he was going to do, what he had to do, but he didn’t know how to tell her.

Once he’d retrieved his roll-on, they walked past the rumbling carousels and the car rental desks, out into the warm air of early evening. The Sun had set and a cool breeze was sweeping down from the mountains, silhouetted in flaming red against the darkening twilight sky. Jamie saw that they were getting glances from other people. Still the same old prejudices, he thought. Even in a sports jacket and a short haircut they see me as a Navaho. Then he thought that maybe they were looking at Vijay’s dark, beautiful face, her long black hair, her stunning figure. With her voluptuous shape, even in the casual blouse and slacks she was wearing she could stop traffic.

“We’ll take my car,” Vijay said. “I sent yours back home.”

Jamie’s Nissan was equipped with an autopilot and global positioning system that could guide the car without a human driver. He had programmed it to find its way back to his assigned parking slot at the condominium’s parking lot, but he didn’t fully trust the electronics.

“I hope it’s there when we get home,” he muttered. “In one piece.”

Vijay giggled at him. “For a bloke who’s been to Mars several times you have no faith in modern technology.”

“Maybe not,” he admitted soberly.

The top was down on her convertible. Jamie carefully deposited his bags in the trunk while Vijay started the engine. As he got into the seat beside her, she said, “How’s P.F. Chang’s sound to you? They’re celebrating their fiftieth anniversary or something.”

He nodded absently. “Fine.”

As they drove out onto the interstate, Vijay asked, “So how bad is it?”

Jamie watched the traffic zooming past as he tried to think of what to say, how to tell her. Vijay was a good driver, he knew, but she paid no attention to speed limits. Too aggressive, he thought.

“Really bad,” he said at last, almost shouting over the rush of the wind. “We might have to shut down everything and bring everybody back home.”

Vijay glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “But you won’t let them do that, will you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

She pulled smoothly off the highway and wound around the confusing roadways of the huge shopping mall in which the restaurant was located. In silence. No more questions, not for a while. Jamie studied her face as Vijay maneuvered the convertible into a parking space and turned off its engine.

How can I tell her that I’m going back? Jamie asked himself. That I’ve got to go back?

He looked up at the darkening sky. Through the glare of the shopping mall’s garish lights it was hard to see more than a few of the brightest stars. One big bright one hung low over the mountains to the west. Venus, he guessed. He turned in his seat and searched, but he couldn’t find Mars.

Vijay opened her door and started to get out of the car.

“Going to leave the top down?” he asked.

“No rain in the forecast, love. Monsoon season’s finished, they claim.”

“Still . . .”

With a laugh, she swung her legs back into the car, closed the door, and pressed the button that started the fabric top rising. The electric motor whined until the top locked itself in place with a pair of firm clicks.

“Feel better?” Vijay asked.

“Yep.”

She started to open the car door again but he reached for her.

“Vijay. . .”

She melted into his arms, leaning over the transmission stick in the console between them.

“You’re really wonderful,” he said.

“I’m glad you noticed.”

“Are you trying to cheer me up?”

She shook her head. “Why would I have to do that?”

“Then how come . . . ?”

“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you, Jamie? You’re going back.”

There it was, out in the open.

“I didn’t know myself until halfway back to Albuquerque. But you knew before I did, didn’t you?”

“Once Dex told me how bad things are I knew what your reaction would be.”

In the shadows of the car’s interior he could still see the anticipation on her face, the glow in her eyes.

“Jamie, you’ve been moping around for more’n two years now,” Vijay said softly, “blaming yourself for what happened to Jimmy. Now they’ve hit you with this and—”

“And I’ve got to go back to Mars. I can’t let them close down the program.”

“Do you think your being on Mars will make any difference?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve got to go.”

“Of course,” she said. “And you do want me to go with you, don’t you?”

“You’re willing to go?”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “Hey, mate, we lived all alone on Mars for four months, di’n’t we? Time for a second honeymoon, don’t you think?”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as taxes, love.”

For a long moment he couldn’t say a word. Then, “Do you think we can put Jimmy’s death behind us?”

“No,” she replied, her voice dropping lower. “We’ll never put Jimmy out of our minds. But we’ll move on, Jamie. We’ll move on.”

“To Mars.”

“To Mars,” she agreed.

In the shadows of the car he tried to look into those fathomless jet black eyes of hers; he felt all the wonder that always astonished him whenever he realized that this incredible woman actually loved him as much as he loved her.

“Okay,” he said. “On to Mars.”

“Fine,” said Vijay. “But right now let’s get to the restaurant. I’m starved.”

They held an impromptu celebration—of sorts—the night that the personnel from Hellas Base returned to Tithonium. No one planned it, no one was really in a celebratory mood. It took three trips in one of the broad-winged rocketplanes to bring all twenty-three of the men and women with their personal effects back to Tithonium. They were downcast, subdued, dejected at the realization that they had to abruptly leave their work, cut short the studies they’d been undertaking at the vast impact crater of Hellas.