Mars Life (8 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fantasy

BOOK: Mars Life

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ALBUQUERQUE: UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

The day after Jamie returned from Washington the terrorist attack struck the campus.

He was in his office, on the phone with Dex Trumball, trying to make arrangements for his flight to Mars.

“You want to go back?” Dex asked, his image on the wall screen showing the disapproval that he tried to keep out of his voice.

“I have to,” said Jamie.

“Why? To preside over the funeral?”

“To try to keep the program alive. There isn’t going to be any funeral, not if I can help it.”

Dex shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Jamie. There’s nothing you can do there that you can’t do here.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t get mystical on me. And don’t—”

Three explosions rocked the building, so close together they sounded like the beats of an enormous ceremonial drum. The window of Jamie’s office cracked, the room shook as if struck by a sudden earthquake. Books slid off the shelves.

“What the hell was that?” Dex hollered.

Jamie saw black smoke billowing above the campus buildings outside his window, then heard the wail of sirens. Footsteps pounded by in the corridor outside his door.

“Jamie, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jamie answered shakily, staring at the rising smoke. “I’ll call you back, Dex.”

He rushed to his door and yanked it open. The corridor was empty now. Hurrying downstairs, Jamie saw that the lobby of his building was a blackened, smoking ruin, windows shattered, doors punched in, ceiling tiles dangling precariously. In a few minutes, firefighters and campus police officers were hauling bodies outside, where ambulances were pulling up. People were screaming, crying, bleeding.

Jamie helped lift the bloodied, mangled bodies of students and staff people out into the sunshine. A crowd was growing outside the yellow tapes the campus police were stringing across the parking lot. City police were arriving. A SWAT team van squealed to a stop.

“Goddamn towel-heads,” one of the campus cops muttered as they tenderly laid the dead body of a young female student on the concrete. Her legs had been blown off. Jamie fought down the urge to throw up.

It seemed like hours, but Jamie’s wristwatch told him that hardly thirty minutes had passed since the explosions. Television vans were pulling up. Helicopters thuttered overhead. The lobby of the Planetary Sciences building was a twisted, shattered mess.

His pocket phone jangled. Straightening up, he fumbled in his jeans pocket for it, flipped it open.

“Are you all right?” Even in the phone’s minuscule screen he could see the wide-eyed fright on Vijay’s dark face.

“I’m fine, honey,” he said, wiping at his sweaty brow.

“You’re not hurt?”

“No. They bombed the lobby. I was in my office.”

“They said on TV that four people were killed.”

Jamie glanced at the bodies laid out in a row. “It’s more than that.”

“But you’re okay?”

Nodding, he replied, “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Your face looks bruised.”

He almost smiled at her. “Dirt, more likely. I’ve been helping get the bodies out of the lobby area.”

“Come home, Jamie. That’s where I’m heading, right now.”

“The police’ll probably want to ask me some questions. I’ll get home soon’s I can.”

“I love you, dear,” said Vijay.

“Same here, love.”

He clicked the phone shut, returned it to his pocket. And felt the bear fetish that Grandfather Al had given him all those years ago. It didn’t make him feel any better, any safer.

One of the paramedics came up to him, pulling off his latex gloves. “That’s the last of the bodies. Thanks for your help’”

He took the man’s proffered hand, then walked off a ways, feeling stunned, numb. Who would do this? he asked himself. Why?

A city policeman stopped him to take his name and phone number. “The investigators’ll wanna talk to you. You’re not plannin’ on leavin’ town, are you?”

Jamie couldn’t help a wry grin. “Only to Mars,” he murmured.

“Huh?”

“No,” he said, more distinctly. “I won’t be leaving town in the next couple of weeks.”

“Okay, good,” said the police officer.

“Any idea of who did this?”

The policeman shook his head. “Hasn’t been anything like this since the troubles in the Middle East, back when I was in the Army.”

“Was this the only building hit?”

“They got the astronomy building, too. Over on the other side of the campus. And one other. Three, altogether.”

And then Jamie realized who had set off the bombs. Oh my god, he repeated silently as he walked stiff-legged alone around the Planetary Sciences building to a side entrance. Oh my god. It wasn’t Islamic fundamentalists. We have our own fanatics right here at home.

He picked his way through the litter in the hallways and entered his own office. It was messier than usual, but otherwise undamaged except for the obvious crack that ran the length of his window. I’m on the far side of the building, Jamie told himself as he sank slowly into his swivel chair. The blast didn’t carry this far.

A knock on his door made him look up. The president of the university stepped in, looking grim.

Minor T. Halberson had been a star football player for the University of New Mexico’s Lobos. Now he was a bishop of the New Morality movement and president of the university. He was a big man, still trim and tanned despite the distinguished gray flecking his temples. He was handsome, in a rugged, athletic way. He knew how to raise money, which was the primary qualification for a university president.

“You’re not hurt?” Halberson asked, without any preliminaries.

“No, I’m okay,” said Jamie.

“You look kind of grimy, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

Jamie said, “I’ll wash up when I get home.”

“May I?” Halberson gestured toward the chair in front of Jamie’s desk.

“Sure.”

“This is terrible,” said Halberson as he eased his bulk onto the squeaking plastic chair. “I never thought I’d see the day when terrorists would strike here.”

“Neither did I.”

“Car bombs.” Halberson’s normally smiling face was grave, ashen.

“The police told me they hit the astronomy building, too.”

“And bio.”

“All science buildings.”

“Twenty-two killed, altogether.”

“In the name of god.”

Halberson looked sharply at Jamie. “You know I’m a Believer, Jamie, but this . . . this has nothing to do with God.”

“The people who set off the bombs think it does. They think they’re doing God’s work.”

“That’s a perversion of everything that Christianity stands for.”

“Tell them.”

Halberson drew in a deep breath. “I don’t blame you for being angry, Jamie. This has been . . . soul-shattering.”

Jamie nodded, tight-lipped. Don’t blame him for this, he warned himself. He’s just as shook up about it as you are.

“It seems clear,” Halberson said slowly, “that these attacks were aimed at the scientific work being done here on campus.”

“But why?” Jamie wondered. “Why are they so set against exploring Mars?”

“Because you threaten their faith,” Halberson answered.

“We found the remains of another intelligent race and that threatens their faith?”

“Their narrow definition of it, yes. I think this news about finding a fossil tipped them into violence.”

Jamie shook his head wearily. “I don’t get it. We’re uncovering facts on Mars. You can’t make facts go away. You can’t blast facts out of existence.”

“They think they can,” Halberson said. “Believe me, Jamie, I’ve had to deal with these fundamentalists in the church. They want everyone to forget that you’ve found intelligent life. They want to erase all traces of your discovery and return to where we were before you ever went to Mars.”

“That’s stupid! It’s impossible!”

“They don’t believe so. And they’re willing to die in order to destroy you and everything you’ve learned.”

Jamie fell speechless.

“It’s obvious that they want to pressure the university into dropping our Mars program.”

“Obvious,” Jamie agreed.

“You yourself might be a target, Jamie.”

Jamie felt a jolt of surprise. “Me?”

‘You’re the scientific leader of the program. If these terrorists want to stop the Mars program, what better way than to assassinate its chief?”

Or murder his wife, Jamie immediately thought.

“I’m ordering a security detail for you,” Bishop Halberson said.

“And for my wife, too?”

‘Yes, if you want it.”

“I do.”

“Is there anything else I can do? Just name it, Jamie. I know we don’t agree on religious faith, but I’m just as infuriated by this barbarism as you are.”

He’s sincere, Jamie realized. Looking into Halberson’s sorrowful eyes, Jamie believed that he could trust this man.

“It’s all right,” he said gently. “You won’t need to protect me for very long. I’m going back to Mars as soon as I can make the arrangements.”

“And your wife?”

“She’s going with me. It’s safer on Mars than it is here.”

DEPEW, FLORIDA: LONGSTREET MIDDLE SCHOOL

Thirteen-year-old Bucky Winters stared disconsolately at the tabletop model he had spent so many hours constructing.

“But. . . zero?” he asked. “No credit at all?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Zachary.

Andrew Zachary was not only Bucky’s art class teacher, he was head of the Longstreet Middle School’s Arts and Achievement Department. Known to the students as an easy marker, Zachary was in his midforties, his face round and pleasant, his dark brown hair just starting to recede from his forehead. The students liked him; he tried to come across as their friend while still teaching them how to value their self-respect through using their hands to create art works.

Bucky was small and skinny, his face all bones and big blue green eyes with dark rings beneath them from the allergies that racked his existence. Like all the students, he wore the school uniform: a white tee shirt bearing the school’s emblem of an extinct Florida panther, and a pair of shorts that sagged below his knees.

The teacher and his student were standing on opposite sides of the big display table in the middle of the arts room. On the table was a model of the Tithonium Base on Mars: three removable papier-mâché domes set on a large photo image of the Martian red, barren ground. Inside the domes Bucky had painstakingly drawn the outlines of the base’s laboratories, living quarters, offices, cafeteria and airlocks. He had even drawn in the beds and other furniture of the individual living units.

“But you said we could do anything we wanted to get special credit,” Bucky reminded his teacher.

Zachary sighed. “The Mars project is not on the school’s curriculum, Bucky. You don’t study Mars in your science class, do you?

“No. But I thought. . .” Bucky’s voice trailed off into a hurt silence.

Zachary came around the table to stand beside Bucky. He almost put a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder, but realized that such contact could be considered sexual harassment if his student reported it.

“It’s good work, Bucky. It really is. But it’s not in an area that we can consider for class credit.”

Bucky wanted to spit. He’d spent long hours at his computer at home to get all the details of the Mars base right. He’d thought he’d get an A-plus for his work.

“What’s wrong with Mars?” he asked, almost in desperation.

Zachary spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “The school board decided that Mars shouldn’t be part of the curriculum.”

“How come?”

“Well . . . the scientists on Mars claim they’ve discovered the remains of intelligent Martians who lived millions and millions of years ago.”

“So? That’s great, isn’t it?”

“Well, not really. You see, Bucky, there’s no real proof that there were actual living people on Mars. It’s just one of the scientists’ theories, really.”

“If they found buildings, isn’t that proof?”

Zachary wrung his hands unhappily. “The school board feels that if we start teaching about Mars, then we’ll have to get into Darwin and evolution and all that other controversial material. It’s much easier to skip the entire business and stick with the curriculum as the school board has approved it.”

“Darwin?” Bucky asked, puzzled. “What’s Darwin?”

CLIPPERSHIP ROBERT TRUAX

Jamie felt distinctly uncomfortable as he and Vijay stepped from the access tunnel into the passenger compartment of the Clippership. The thought of riding the squat, conical rocket craft into orbit didn’t bother him at all: it was the destination, not the journey, that made him jittery.

A young male attendant in a snappy royal blue and silver uniform showed them to their seats in the circular compartment. There were no windows in the curved bulkhead; thick insulation seemed to smother all sounds. It reminded Jamie of walking into a hushed planetarium chamber. He noted that fewer than half of the fifty seats were occupied.

“First class,” Vijay murmured as they clicked their shoulder harnesses into place.

“Dex paid for the tickets out of his personal pocket,” Jamie said. “He claims the Foundation can’t afford any luxuries.”

“That was nice of him.”

Jamie grinned at her. They both knew that Clipperships had two passenger decks but only one class of accommodations. Everybody rode first class. Someday, Jamie thought, when Clippership travel becomes more popular, they’ll start squeezing in more seats and cutting down on the services. Enjoy the first-class treatment while you can.

Each seat had its own foldout display screen that could show entertainment videos, educational documentaries, or real-time views from the cameras mounted on the ship’s exterior. Vijay opted for the outside view of the servicing trucks scurrying around the Clippership’s launch pad. Jamie leaned back in his plush reclinable chair and closed his eyes.

This is going to be tricky, he told himself for the thousandth lime.

Douglas Stavenger was the acknowledged leader of the lunar nation of Selene. He had the influence—if he chose to wield it—to convince Selene’s governing council to take over the task of providing the Mars explorers with the supplies they would need to keep going in spite of the cutoff of funding from the U.S. government.

Jamie had never met Stavenger. To get to him, Jamie had turned to Stavenger’s wife, Edith Elgin. Edith and Jamie had lived together in Houston nearly thirty years earlier, when Jamie was in training for the First Expedition. He had left for Mars and never saw her again; she had climbed up to a top position in the broadcast news industry, covered Selene’s brief war of independence, and stayed on the Moon to marry Stavenger.

Edith had agreed easily enough to setting up a meeting with her husband when Jamie had called her from Albuquerque. He didn’t know whether he should feel surprised, pleased, or alarmed. So instead he worried.

“This is your captain speaking.” The confident male voice coming through the intercom speakers startled Jamie out of his anxiety.

“We’re cleared for liftoff in ninety seconds. You’ll experience eight minutes of acceleration forces; two and a half gees. Then we’ll coast into orbit and rendezvous with Space Station
Wilson.
IAA regulations require that you remain in your seats at all times with your safety harness buckled. You can play around in zero gee once you’re inside the station. For now, please lower your seats back to the full reclining position. Thank you.”

“Too bad we won’t be spending an overnight at the station,” Vijay teased as they cranked their seats down.

Jamie knew she was referring to making love in zero gravity. There was even talk of building a “honeymoon hotel” in orbit.

“On the way back,” he told her. “I’ll change our tickets.”

“We’ll have to wait that long?” She put on a pout.

“Business before pleasure.”

“Five seconds,” the ship’s computer-synthesized voice called out. “Four . . . three . . .”

Jamie gripped Vijay’s hand. The rocket engines roared with the hot breath of a thousand dragons but inside the cabin their bellowing was muted, distant. The heavy hand of acceleration squeezed Jamie down into the cushions of his couch. He could see on Vijay’s display screen the ground hurtling away, then the view was obscured by the smoky exhaust of the rocket engines.

The compartment quivered, but it was nothing like the bone-rattling vibration he remembered from flights into orbit in the older-style rocket boosters. They’ve improved the ride, Jamie said to himself. Too bad there aren’t more paying passengers to enjoy it.

The noise dwindled and then the pressure cut off abruptly. Jamie’s arms floated up off the seatrests, as did Vijay’s. He heard passengers cooing and sighing with delight as all sensation of weight dropped away. They raised their seatbacks and looked around. Then somebody coughed and gagged. There’s always one, Jamie thought as he reached for the air blower control and dialed it to maximum. Sure enough, someone behind them was throwing up noisily. Hope she made it to the retch bag, he said to himself. One vomiting passenger started a chain reaction; soon several of them were heaving loudly and Jamie started to feel nauseous himself.

One of the uniformed flight attendants hurried down the aisle past them as Vijay patted Jamie’s hand and said, “Put in the earplugs. It’s better if you can’t hear ‘em.”

It’d be better if I couldn’t smell them, Jamie thought. He grabbed the plastic bag containing earplugs from the pocket built into the chair’s armrest while bile burned up into his throat.

* * * *

By the time the Clippership made its rendezvous with the space station fifty-four minutes later, the passengers had calmed down and the stench of vomit had been cleared from the cabin’s air. A female flight attendant ran a short video that advised the debarking passengers not to try any acrobatics in zero gee.

“You will feel a stuffiness in your sinuses as your body fluids adjust to the lack of gravity,” said the cheerful white-smocked woman on the screens. “This is perfectly normal. Your body is adapting to the microgravity environment.”

Vijay and Jamie didn’t see much of the space station. The terminal where the Clippership docked was designed to accommodate arrivals who were not accustomed to the nearly zero gravity of the orbiting station. Passageways were thickly carpeted and narrow enough for passengers to grip the handrails set on both sides of the bulkheads so that they could proceed cautiously, hand by hand, to the reception area.

Jamie’s head felt stuffy as he shuffled along in the slowly moving line. Vijay was just ahead of him, apparently handling the microgee with no trouble at all. A young man several places up the line, wearing the gray coveralls of a technician, laughingly allowed himself to float off the floor and rise until his crewcut hair bumped gently against the overhead.

Several of the older passengers groaned at the sight.

“Please don’t attempt any gymnastics in this confined space,” called the female attendant from the head of the line.

“Get down, Grabowski,” a rougher voice demanded. “Don’t start with your wiseass crap.”

Jamie laughed softly. The temptation to show off was irresistible in some men. Especially if they were young and there were young women present to show off for.

Moving carefully, Jamie and Vijay left the other arrivals and followed the illuminated arrows along the bulkheads that led them lo the docking port where the lunar shuttlecraft would depart for Selene. A pair of smiling attendants were at the port and guided I hem through the open hatch of the shuttlecraft.

The shuttlecraft’s passenger compartment was less than half the size of the Clippership’s, and much more utilitarian. Jamie and Vijay found their seats and strapped in.

“Whew!” Vijay gusted, her expression halfway between a grin and a grimace. “I’d forgotten how snarky zero gee can be when you’re not used to it.”

Keeping a straight face, Jamie replied, “You’re not reneging on our overnight stay on the way back, are you?”

She started to shake her head, but thought better of it. “I don’t know about you, love, but I’m out of training.”

Very seriously, Jamie said, “Might take a few nights to get our sea legs back.”

Vijay smiled impishly. “Well, if you’ve got the time…”

“We’ll see,” he said. “Depends on how things go with Stavenger.”