Olympus Mons (12 page)

Red rage over what they'd been hearing gradually receded, taking its own sweet time to slacken further into a concerted unhappy growl. It was plain to see how badly shaken the Marsrats were; for some reason, they also seemed furious at my partner for telling it like it was. The morose, grossly upset Marsrats were ready and eager to kill the messenger who'd brought them bad news, yet I sensed that they'd accepted what he'd told them as the straight skinny, and hadn't shaded the truth, grim as it was, about how desperate our situation really was. The deathly, sullen silence persisted, hanging in the air of the meeting area like a poisonous fog.

I watched Jesperson watch the audience, watched the wheels turn in his ponytailed head as he analyzed the crowd's reaction, gauged its overall mood. When the first angry mutterings began building toward what was sure to be a first-class hollerfest, he hit them with it, and hit them hard, giving ‘em both barrels right between the eyes, a classic Jespersonian performance.

“Mr. Director!” he shouted, making himself heard above the rising clamor. “In your inaugural address you described Burroughs as a self-sustaining bastion of humanity. It is the action committee's fervent and enduring belief that we simply
must
prove our ability to sustain ourselves. It's the only future Burroughs can possibly have.”

All the response he got was a blank, owl-eyed stare from the director.

“Fellow victims of impending disaster!”
My partner's lung-busting yell halfway quieted the Marsrats. “The action committee is convinced that our salvation depends entirely upon whether we will be able to successfully equip a manned expedition to climb the lower to intermediate slopes of Olympus Mons, repair the aqueduct and restore it to usefulness.”

Pandemonium!

It's one of very few big words I didn't learn from Jesperson, a stray I hardly ever dredge up from down in the cellar of my so-so vocabulary. I used it here because it's the only term that fits what came down then and there in the meeting area. Despairing catcalls mixed with outraged hoots and a not a few bloodthirsty screams and threats more or less sums up the Marsrats' reaction to Jesperson's stern pronouncement.

My main man's head swiveled and he cut a withering glare at Black-like-me. Overjoyed by the silent call to action stations, the sergeant-at-arms came up out of his folding chair, rearing treetop tall, and scowled at the enraged Marsrats and their ladies. My ornery glassblower pal ought to patent his scowl; it would curl wallpaper. Even so, the audience refused to simmer down even after Black-like-me used up all the scowls and threatening gestures in his inventory.

What ensued was more, even louder pandemonium.

 

The veins at his temple standing out like curlicue soda straws, Scheiermann banged his gavel like he wanted to break it, and bellowed, “Order, order!” I don't think he could hear his own bellow, let alone expect the audience to take heed and simmer down. Black-like-me did a walkabout, exerting himself in every way short of mayhem to squelch the uproar, and soon gave up. He stomped back to the dais and plopped down next to Doc Yokomizo, clenching and unclenching his gorilla fists, scowling at the audience as only he can scowl.

By hitting the Marsrats with his unvarnished assessment of the thirsty end in sight for all of us, Jesperson had triply assured the Marsrats there was nowhere to turn for help, which left his crazy notion to stage a repair climb of his pet volcano as the only solution in the book. Call it a gut shot below the belt, causing Burroughs' denizens to instantly sort themselves into two opposing camps. Still it was what my partner had
not
said that'd driven Scheiermann into a king-sized, froth-at-the-mouth snit. Jesperson had dared to imply that if our all-powerful council did not act now, now, now! each and every Marsrat would go tits-up in four or five E-months, period.  While he's never been a finalist, nor will he ever survive the first cut in a popularity contest, it was Jesperson's “we climb the volcano and fix the aqueduct or prep for doomsday” scenario that made him the target of derision, indecision, and raw, plain-vanilla fury.

The director's gavel smacked the table harder and harder
—
a useless waste of energy. Ninety-nine point-nine percent of the deeply upset Marsrats were one thousand percent disinterested in parliamentary procedure, or any other brand of formality. Mixing cuss words and insults, they yelled all sorts of nastiness at Jesperson for insulting their intelligence by daring to
mention,
let alone suggest, a damfool notion like climbing a seventeen-mile-high volcano that covers an area close to the square-kilometers of Arizona.

Yet here and there I could pick out a few more thoughtful attendees who'd stayed rocked back in their chairs looking as if they might be revolving the stark options Jess had laid out in his calm, cool, super-angrifying way. It was plain to see that even Black-like-me might be straddling the fence, by no means sure how much of Jesperson's lesson could be believed. My main reason for thinking so was that the glassblower's scowl had slipped way below it's normal, fly-killing intensity. He lumbered down from the dais and again took to moseying around the meeting area, urging folks to settle down. Sensitive Clive, Cleve or Clyde is not, but it took hardly any smarts to note how Jesperson's message had rocked him every bit as hard as it had jarred everyone else.

The hooraw quieted down a little more, dropping from a fast boil to a hearty simmer. Still grumbling and super-resentful over the way my partner had hit them with his ditzy notion to do an on the spot fix of the aqueduct, the Marsrats began looking every which way for a better target, ready and eager to lay the blame on the head of whoever else was handiest. After a few more spotty hoots and catcalls, Black-like-me got the audience settled down to a point where you could almost hear yourself think.

Doc Franklin had been on his feet all through both pandemonium stages, shouting to be recognized by the Chair. I caught a whiff of what was on his mind and it tweaked me; incitement to riot by an overeducated stuffed-shirt like Franklin wasn't what the handfuls of undecided Marsrats needed to hear, especially when a few of what I judged the smartest, most open-minded bo's looked like they'd paid attention to the gist of Jesperson's spiel, and not folded their minds into anger over the shocking snapper that had perked most everyone else to emotional fever pitch. If the areographer loved anything it was the sound of his own voice. Knowing his mouthy style, I realized that once turned on there was damn small chance of turning him off.

Sure enough, the self-declared expert on Planet Mars finally got a nod from the director and stepped up on the podium. He hemmed and hawed and gathered the audience in his piercing gaze, then proceeded to set fire to the oil on troubled waters . . . Sorry, make it the oil on a
lack
of waters, though troubled they sure as hell were.

“Friends and neighbors,” he began in that juicy, extra-sincere way of his, “the excellent ad hoc action committee chaired by Mr. Jesperson has not, repeat
not,
overstressed the dire nature of the emergency confronting our enclave. However, among the suggestions and alternatives tendered by the, er . . . committee, only one is worthy of serious consideration.

“What I fail to understand,” he continued, his fruity baritone salted with overtones of warning, “is how and for what reason the accomplished chairman could bring himself to advocate a mountaineering assault on the incredibly formidable shield volcano responsible for supplying us water as the one and only possible alternative to other, much more logical and reasonable courses of corrective action. Even under optimum conditions, most of which unfortunately do not obtain, scaling Olympus Mons would amount to so much,
much
more than a staggering, monumentally hazardous venture. What the committee suggests is in fact an overt impossibility. Proposing a feat of that outrageous nature is patently ludicrous, so much so that it defies logic, and deserves not so much as passing consideration.”

I'll say this for Doc Franklin: he didn't beat around the bush before driving a stake through the heart of Jesperson's proposal, each super-earnest word he delivered making him sound more like a carny pitchman than an areographer. He told the audience panic was the enclave's worst enemy, insisting that hysterical judgments and unbelievable decisions were to be avoided at all cost. He went so far as to say it deeply dismayed him to throw cold water
—
a lousy choice of words to begin with
—
on my partner's suggestion.

“Furthermore,” Franklin went on to say, “even if such a fantastic feat were possible there would be no way to mitigate the rigors and hazards involved in staying out in the open through the desperately frigid nights, when constant exposure could not help but accelerate a very real probability of battery failure.” He went on to explain the necessity of an uphill trek of possibly hundreds of kilometers over terrain so hazardous that it constituted a final, crushing impossibility, dooming the venture, and concluded
—
finally starting to wear down
—
by stating an unsupportable logistics problem the supposed climbers would be unable to solve: the portage of food, water, life support and other equipments, including materials needed to repair or replace the devastated portion or portions of pipeline.

“No, my friends and neighbors,” he summed up, “for the action committee to dare suggest a manned assault on the volcano is unconscionable. Baldly stated, such a feat could never be accomplished, not even in desperation as a last resort.”

***

As a guess, I'd say roughly sixty percent of the adult Marsrats living inside pressure lack anything more than a high school education. Yet whether grossly undereducated, or highly schooled professionals burdened with advanced degrees, each and every Marsrat rates himself or herself a survivor type. The nitwits and dunderheads who came to Mars and are still vertical and breathing can be toted on the digits of one hand.

Doc Franklin finished his say, preened himself, exchanging knowing glances with Scheiermann, and graciously accepted the director's visual pat on the back. He stepped down from the podium, fully expecting Jesperson to wax loud and indignant over the rough tactics he'd used to shoot down my partner's proposal in flames. Never happened. Keeping his cool, Jess had not so much as twitched during the areographer's put-down. Slouched in a folding chair, he'd stayed totally out of it, arms crossed over his chest, legs akimbo, dimpled amusement tickling the corners of his mouth. The director had made a point of ignoring the gist of Jesperson's doomsday scenario, and I suspect most Marsrats who come in contact with my partner think of him in pretty much the same way: either a bo you have to accept the way he is, or steer clear of, period.

What did surprise me was that instead of silently congratulating Franklin for his no-can-do tirade, Doc Yokomizo had been shooting little inquiring glances at my partner ever since Franklin wore down and shut up. “Mr. Jesperson,” Yokie said loudly enough to be heard over the ongoing murmurs, “does the action committee wish to rebut Dr. Franklin's statements and conclusions?”

“No, not at all, Doctor. It would be pointless. I could find no fault whatever with the excellent Dr. Franklin's summation of the difficulties. He was entirely accurate on all counts.”

“In that case . . .” Yokie broke off, his high forehead furrowed. “Does the action committee then wish to withdraw its recommendation, have it stricken from the record?”

“Oh, absolutely not! I stand by my . . . Pardon me, by the committee proposal as recorded. I also wish to move that select Burroughs personnel be enlisted and trained as members of an emergency expedition, its objective to mount an assault on Olympus Mons and effect aqueduct repairs.”

Pandemonium reborn, except this time it grew even louder.

The motion was never seconded by me or anyone else. Full-throated roars of protest flooded the meeting area, not to mention new choruses of hoots and catcalls. Scheiermann tried to break his gavel again, rapping it like a blacksmith hammering rivets.

Black-like-me stood up and raked the Marsrats with his patented glare, but it was useless, and also easy to see his heart wasn't in it.

“Mr. Jesperson,” said Yokomizo after the Marsrats cooled down a tad, “I confess to total bewilderment. Your committee has stressed the point that such an undertaking is the only solution to our water problem, yet in the next breath instead of refuting Dr. Franklin's contention of the difficulties involved you concede that the proposed venture is an overtly impossibility, and then turn about head to tail and
—
”

“Doctor,” interrupted Jesperson, “I concede nothing of the kind. Nuances of meaning can be attributed to the term ‘impossible.' As of this moment, under the circumstances present right now, Dr. Franklin's summation is essentially accurate in every respect. The dedication and willingness to endure severe hardships, not to mention the backbreaking toil needed to carry out a successful repair expedition are entirely lacking. Deficiencies of that magnitude place the proposed venture beyond the realm of possibility, yet only as of this instant, right
now.”

“Then why,” Yokie wanted to know, “does the committee insist on holding fast to what it has just agreed is a proposed endeavor ‘impossible' to fulfill?”

“Because, Doctor, it not only is, but will be the only chance to survive we will
ever
have. A viable fallback to the committee's proposal simply does not
exist
. An assault on Olympus Mons with a view of repairing the aqueduct is the one and only
viable
solution to our problem. The committee considers it the single, admittedly slim chance there is to save ourselves.”