New Earth

Tithonium Base

Tithonium Chasma is a part of the great Martian rift valley, which stretches nearly four thousand kilometers across the frozen rust-red desert of Mars. The rugged multihued cliffs of its south face rise some two kilometers above the valley’s dusty floor. The cliffs of the north face are not visible from where Tithonium Base stands; the valley is so broad that they are beyond the short horizon.

Wearing a transparent nanofabric pressure suit, Jamie Waterman stood before the flat inscribed stone that marked his wife’s grave. Not that Vijay’s remains were there. On Mars you couldn’t bury a person: her decaying remains would contaminate the Martian ecology. No, Vijay had been cremated, as she had wished, and her ashes carried into space and jettisoned there by one of the rockets returning to Earth. Her spirit became a cloud of ashes, drifting eternally in space.

Looking back at Tithonium Base, Jamie saw that the structures looked timeworn, weary. Just as he felt. Old. Tired. The Navaho part of his soul felt that death was coming. Looking up into the clear, butterscotch sky of Mars, he felt that soon his spirit would be a cloud wafting up there, looking down upon a long, arduous lifetime’s work.

Jamie had spent his life striving to keep human explorers working on Mars, uncovering the buried villages of the long-extinct Martians, translating their prayer tablets, helping the struggling Martian lichen to survive the pitiless harsh environment.

And working to keep the million-year experiment going.

Now it was all in danger again. Funding from Earth was drying up, evaporating like a puddle of water in the thin Martian atmosphere.

His son, Ravi, walked out to meet him, full of youthful energy. He was almost half a meter taller than his stocky father, his skin darker than Jamie’s copper hue. But he had his father’s easy smile, his father’s clear brown eyes, his father’s broad cheekbones and unbending perseverance.

“Y’aa’tey,” Ravi said. The old Navaho greeting. It is good. “I figured you’d be here.”

“Y’aa’tey,” Jamie replied, his voice reedy and rasping, like the thin Martian wind.

“The L/AV lifts off in half an hour,” said Ravi.

Jamie nodded. “I know. I’ll be there to see you off, don’t worry.”

Ravi grinned at his father. “I got that shitload of messages you want me to deliver: Dex, Dr. Ionescu, all the others.”

“In person. I’ve been talking to them from here, but you’ve got the chance to see them face-to-face.”

“I don’t know about President Newton,” Ravi said slowly. “He might not want to see me.”

“You’ve got to get to him.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will, son.”

Almost mischievously, Ravi said, “I’m surprised you didn’t put Chairman Chiang on the list.”

Jamie shook his head inside the bubble helmet of his nanosuit. “Chiang’s an old hothead. We’ve got to work around him, get all the others to agree to continue our funding. Then he’ll come around. Not before.”

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Jamie turned his back on the stone marker and started walking slowly back toward the base and the rocket vehicle that would take his son to the ship waiting in orbit.

At last Ravi asked, “Dad, what if I fail? What if they absolutely refuse to continue funding us?”

Jamie didn’t hesitate an eyeblink. “Then we’ll go down to a shoestring operation. Most of the people will go back home, but a handful of us will remain. We’ll keep the work going.”

“But—”

“We’re just about self-sufficient. We’ll get along. We’ve been through lean periods before and survived.”

Ravi didn’t say what he was thinking: Mom didn’t survive. She didn’t make it through the last time you had to live on a shoestring.

“The important thing,” Jamie went on, leaning a hand on his son’s shoulder, “is to keep the experiment going.”

Ravi knew what his father meant. The million-year experiment. They had excavated several pits deep enough to expose the Martian extremophiles that lived under the permafrost layer. They had domed over the excavations and kept them warm despite overnight temperatures that plummeted to a hundred degrees below zero or lower.

The hardy bacteria were surviving, thriving, in fact. At one of the pits they had even begun to clump together in cooperative aggregations—the first step toward evolving true multicellular organisms.

It was an experiment to see if Mars could be returned to life, its own indigenous Martian life, an experiment that would take millennia to complete. Biologists were stunned by its boldness. Religious fanatics worried that it might prove that evolution is more than a theory.

Father and son walked side by side through the base’s scattered buildings and out to the concrete slab where the spindly, spraddle-legged landing/ascent rocket was being loaded.

Ravi turned to his father and said, “I won’t let you down, Dad.”

“I know you won’t.”

“But if … if those flatlanders don’t come through with more funding, I’ll come back here anyway.”

“Now wait,” Jamie said, suddenly alarmed. “Just because I’ll stay here doesn’t mean you have to. You’ve got to find your own path, Ravi.”

“I know where my path leads, Dad: back to Mars.”

Jamie tried to reply, but his throat was suddenly choked with tears.

One of the crew loading the rocket called, “Hey Ravi, you coming or not?”

Ravi waved to him, then said to his father, “I’ve got to go, Dad.”

“Go with beauty, son.”

“But I’ll be back. One way or the other. I’ll be back.”

“Go with beauty,” Jamie repeated.