Mars

SOL 14: MORNING

There’s no such thing as a private communication here, Jamie thought as he sat at the comm console. Vosnesensky was at his side, Tony Reed, Patel, Naguib, and Monique Bonnet standing behind him.

On the display screen in the center of all the communications equipment was the neatly bearded face of Alberto Brumado, his hair slightly tousled as usual, his smile just a little desperate.

For most of the day they had reviewed the arguments for and against returning to Tithonium Chasma to investigate Jamie’s “village.” Like all the others, Brumado had been against it.

“All the available evidence,” he had said in his mild, fatherly way, “points toward its being a natural phenomenon. We cannot upset the mission schedule with another unplanned excursion.”

That word another rankled Jamie. If it hadn’t been for my insisting on going out to the canyon in the first place we would never have seen the village at all.

Then Brumado had surprised them all by saying, “I would like to speak with Dr. Waterman in private, if I may.”

Jamie felt the others stir behind him. He glanced at Vosnesensky, who pursed his lips, his face glowering with suspicion.

But he said, “Of course,” as if Brumado could hear him without waiting another dozen minutes. Turning to Jamie, the cosmonaut said, “You can speak with Dr. Brumado in your own quarters. I will see that no one else uses this frequency.”

“Thanks, Mikhail.” Jamie hurried back to his cubicle, thinking of how many hours of useful work had already been ruined in debate.

He pulled his laptop computer from the tiny desk and stretched out with it on his bunk. There was no way to scramble a conversation; if anyone wanted to eavesdrop all they had to do was turn on their own unit to the same frequency. But the other scientists were heading for their various duties, already behind schedule, and Vosnesensky would guard the main comm console with the single-minded fervor of a Cossack protecting his tsar.

So Jamie hoped.

Brumado’s face took form on the laptop’s small screen. For an instant Jamie felt almost ridiculous. Alone at last, he wanted to say.

Instead, “You can go ahead now, Dr. Brumado. No one else is on this frequency.”

Then the minutes ticked by. It took more than ten minutes now for a transmission to span the widening gulf between the two planets; twenty-some minutes of lag in each two-way conversation. Jamie watched Brumado carefully; the man merely sat there looking into the screen, waiting with the patience of a true Indian. Maybe he’s using his screen to display other data while he’s waiting for my transmission to reach him, Jamie thought. But Brumado’s eyes did not scan back and forth as they would if he were reading.

Jamie got up from the bunk, found the earphone attachment in his desk drawer and plugged it into the laptop. At least nobody could eavesdrop on Brumado’s end of their conversation, he thought as he settled back on the bunk again.

I ought to answer Edith’s message, he remembered. And send something to Mom and Dad. He had not expected his parents to try to contact him; they would expect him to call them, he knew. It always worked that way. Why should Mars be any different? And Al. What can I say to him that will mean anything? Having a wonderful time, wish you were here? Jamie grinned to himself. Al would play the tape in his store; the only shop on the plaza that gets messages from Mars.

At last Brumado came to life with a slow smile. “Thank you, Jamie. You don’t mind if I call you Jamie, do you? Joanna told me that is the name you prefer.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

Again the wait. Jamie put Brumado’s image into a small window in one corner of the little computer’s screen and called up the mission schedule. He spent the time studying the schedule, looking for tasks that might be delayed or deleted altogether to make room for another traverse to the Grand Canyon.

“I must speak to you about politics,” Brumado said at last. “Because of the long transmission lag, please bear with me and hear what I have to say. When I am finished you can tell me how my proposal strikes you.”

Jamie nodded and muttered, “Okay,” even though Brumado did not wait for a reply.

“I have spoken directly with your Vice-President,” Brumado went on, “and several times more with her senior aides. She is willing to make a major commitment to the continued exploration of Mars — if you will make a statement supporting her candidacy for the White House in next year’s election,”

Jamie felt his eyebrows crawling toward his scalp. Me? Make a statement supporting her? Why me? Why do they think anything I have to say would be important?

“What she wants is a written statement from you,” Brumado went on, “which she will hold until your expedition returns to Earth. At that time, when you are safely back home, she will expect you to make your statement public. In the meantime she will go on record as supporting further expeditions to Mars. I have suggested that she make a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the first American satellite launch. I believe she will agree to that.”

Jamie felt confused. All this because of the Navaho words I spoke when we landed? How in hell could this kind of maneuvering come out of three words?

Brumado had stopped talking. He was watching the screen expectantly.

Jamie took a deep breath. “I don’t understand what’s going on, or how things got to be this way. I sure want to see further expeditions come to Mars, but I don’t see what my political support has to do with it.”

In the two weeks they had been on Mars Jamie had been asked to submit to only the one media interview, on the second day after their landing. All the others in the landing party had been interviewed at least twice already. Jamie thought that national politics had been at the root of it: with two American astronauts on the surface of Mars, the project administrators did not want to upset the Russians by having a third American in the limelight.

Now he wondered if his reasoning had been naive.

Brumado began to look uncomfortable as Jamie’s questions registered on his face. He ran a hand across his neatly clipped graying beard before replying.

“I’m glad this conversation is not being overheard,” he said with a slow smile. “For the first few days after your landing the American media was in a furor about the fact that you were a Native American. A red man on the red planet: that was the mildest of their stories about you.”

Jamie realized that the mission controllers had practically blacked out all news transmissions from Earth. For the first time he understood that Kaliningrad — and Houston—were censoring the news from home.

“The Vice-President is very sensitive to political nuances,” Brumado was going on. “She thought that the radical branch of the ethnic activist groups in the States might use you as a weapon against her. She wanted you removed from the ground team.”

But Dr. Li wouldn’t let that happen, Jamie said to himself. The mission controllers wouldn’t stand for such blatant political interference.

“I have tried to convince her that you could become an asset to her campaign for the presidency—if she will support further Mars expeditions instead of opposing them.”

Jamie’s head was spinning. Even before Brumado stopped speaking he said, “So you worked out a deal for me to make a statement supporting her, and then she makes a statement supporting continued exploration.”

Brumado kept on talking about how difficult the Vice-President could make everything if she insisted on Jamie’s being removed from the ground team. It would even make Australia happy, he pointed out, to have O’Hara sent down to replace Jamie.

Then at last he heard Jamie’s words. He stopped short, muttered, “Wait…”

Jamie realized that Brumado had an instant-replay feature on his console, wherever on Earth he was. He watched Brumado’s face as the Brazilian listened to his words.

“Ah. Yes. That is the deal. You send me a statement supporting the Vice-President. I hold it until she makes a public announcement of her support for further Mars missions. Then I give her people your statement. When you return from Mars you announce your support of her candidacy. Everyone gets what they want. Everyone is happy.”

Not quite everyone, Jamie thought. Then he heard himself say, “There’s one thing more. I want the schedule rearranged so we can go back to Tithonium Chasma before we leave. Otherwise no deal.”

Alberto Brumado felt his jaw drop. He was accustomed to demands and counterdemands from the politicians, even from the academics who ruled universities. But to get one from this young pup of a scientist was something of a shock.

“Rearrange the mission schedule? But that would be impossible.”

He watched Waterman’s stolid broad-cheeked face as his words raced to Mars with the speed of light. It seemed to take forever.

Finally Waterman replied, “Either we go back to Tithonium Chasma and take a good look at that rock formation or there’s no deal. I know that she’ll demand that I be taken off the ground team and O’Hara brought down to replace me. Okay. If she does that I’ll yell my head off once we’ve returned to Earth. I’ll tell the media that I was removed from the ground team because I’m a Native American and she’s against full political rights for ethnic minorities.”

Brumado felt perspiration breaking out across his forehead. “You are putting me — the entire project administration — in a very difficult situation.”

Waterman’s reply, when it came, was, “That can’t be helped. This is important, much more important than who gets elected next year. We’ve got to go back to the canyon.”

“All right,” Brumado said reluctantly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He waited long, long minutes before he saw Jamie Waterman’s answering smile.

The deal was done. Now to get the project administrators to agree to it and then implement it with the Vice-President’s aides. And make certain that she has no way to back out of it.

Brumado ended his transmission to Mars and rose from his chair, weary, drained, more than a little fearful. Like an athlete who had given his last ounce of strength and now waited for the judge’s verdict. There must be a second expedition sent to Mars. There must be. At least that. At the very least.

Glancing down at the blank gray screen of the communications console he realized that Waterman was both an asset and a liability. It’s a mistake to get him involved in the politics of this thing. He does not think politically; all he is interested in is the science. He is aflame to make a great discovery on Mars. So much so that he could ruin everything.

Thank god we could speak in private, Brumado said to himself. With the time lag between us it was difficult enough to get anything agreed to. It would have been impossible if others had been listening in.

More than a hundred fifty million kilometers away, Tony Reed stared thoughtfully at the dead screen of his own laptop. He had gone from the dome’s communications center to his infirmary, slid the accordion-fold door shut, and immediately tuned in on Jamie’s conversation with Brumado.

As the team’s physician and psychologist I have every right to know exactly what is going on, he had told himself. Secrecy be damned! They have no right to keep secrets from me.

Now he removed the plug from his ear and yanked out the hair-thin wire that connected it to his computer. So Jamie’s forcing them to send him back to Tithonium Chasma. Good! It can’t be soon enough.