No Way

15

[Transcript of private phone call between Diego Ferrar (XO Legal, NYC) and Bruno Tiller 2/18/2049 0951MT]

“Spot for me, Lance.”

Frank stopped on his way through the yard. Jim—James the geologist—was climbing off the exercise bike and wiping down the seat with a microfiber towel. An actual towel, not a torn-up sheet made from parachute canopy.

The weights, a metal bar with a set of semi-rigid water-filled drums, paired into different sizes, were a part of the NASA-specific gear that hadn’t been available to the cons. It meant that Frank, even though he’d assembled all the gym equipment himself, had a strange disregard for everything in the yard. On the one hand, he felt it wasn’t for the likes of him, and he wasn’t good enough to use it. On the other, it only reminded him of both prison and the physical tests XO had put him through at Gold Hill. He’d never used a gym in the free world. His work had kept him mostly fit.

“I got stuff to do,” he said. “A schedule to keep.”

Spotting was a social thing as well as a safety thing. Certainly in prison: it was another way of establishing mutual bonds and determining power structures.

“You’re always running from one thing to another. It’s OK to slack off, kick it into park for five minutes, then pull out into the fast lane again. C’mon. We don’t have to talk.”

Frank tucked his nut runner into his belt. Maybe this would be OK. “Five minutes then.”

Jim selected the weights he wanted. The largest pair were huge. On Earth, the most dedicated muscle-guy would have struggled with more than a couple of reps. On Mars, where they weighed a third less? The numbers were moot. Two forties went on the bar, secured by a couple of twist-lock cuffs.

Frank assumed the position at the head-end of the bench, and Jim laid himself down on the bench. Frank hefted the bar, back straight and knees bent—he knew what he was doing—and placed it on the hanger. It wasn’t that heavy. He’d certainly pressed more in his time, in bags of cement, in scaffolding and tools.

But Jim seemed to think it was a big deal. He gripped the bar, his face a model of concentration. When he took the strain, Frank instinctively reached out with his builder’s hands.

“You OK with that?”

Jim nodded. “I’m fine.”

“Because it seems like a lot.”

Jim straightened his arms, holding the bar over his chest. He lowered it, and slowly pushed it back up again.

“It’s my regular weight,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

He lowered it and raised it again, smoothly. The muscles on his forearms were well defined, almost sharp. There was no fat on the man. He was lean, marionette thin, yet there was clearly strength in his frame. There was nothing about the man’s demeanor that resembled Brack, but they both had that same sparse sculpting.

Was that what this was about? Had Jim sensed Frank’s wariness around him, and was trying to do something normal, non-threatening with him?

Jim did another rep.

“How’re you finding it, Lance?”

“Finding it?”

“Us invading your space.”

“It’s OK.”

“Just OK, or are you being diplomatic?”

“It’s OK,” repeated Frank. “I thought we weren’t talking.”

Jim lowered the weight almost to his chest, then pushed it up again, locking his elbows. They trembled slightly. “Eight months is a long time to get used to being on your own. I hope we’re not crowding you.”

“You’ve been very respectful.”

“But you’d rather we weren’t here.”

Frank would rather they took him straight home. He was done with Mars. But he couldn’t tell anyone why because he had secrets to keep.

So instead he said: “You’re why I’m here.”

“Do you resent that?”

What was this? Was he trying to get a rise out of him?

“No,” said Frank. “It’s different. That’s all.”

Jim did another couple of reps, and said, “OK.”

Frank took the bar from him and deposited it on the hanger. He felt his own muscles flex, but it wasn’t a strain.

“Could you manage that, Lance?”

“Sure.”

“But you’ve got nothing to prove, right?”

“I’ve got my chores. They keep me moving.” Definitely trying to get a rise. “If I need to lift, I’ll swap out the buggy wheels.”

“Don’t you want to see how high you can go? Fan’s got a league table. Balanced for power-to-weight ratio.”

“You want me to join your league, is that it? You could have just asked me straight.”

“Just trying to see how competitive you are, Lance. You not interested in how you measure up against us?”

“I don’t do pissing contests,” said Frank.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Neither did I.” Frank lifted the bar out of the hanger and lowered it to the floor. “Your group have been together for a year with nothing much to do but play off against each other. Me? I’ve been frozen, shipped, defrosted and put to work. I guess I was about ready for you, though there was probably more I could have done. I had to concentrate on building the base, keeping it running and, I guess, not dying. Games? League tables? Maybe one day, but right now I don’t have time for that.”

Jim sat up on the bench and swung his leg over to sit sideways on it. “Well, I poked a hornet’s nest there. Most you’ve said to me since we got here.”

It was getting too close to personal, and Frank wasn’t going there. “Unless you need me to spot for you again, I got work to do.”

“Lance, I didn’t mean anything by this. It was just talk, shooting the breeze.”

Frank looked at the man, tried to read his expression. “Sure.”

“I’ve offended you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not offended. Just,” and Frank shrugged, “confused. I don’t understand what it is you want from me.”

“I’m just trying to get to know you. I know I’m not Leland, but there’s no harm in trying to work out what makes you tick.” Jim gave a half-grin. “Unless that’s commercially sensitive information.”

“Do you find my personal details funny?”

“It’s kind of funny,” said Jim. “It’s kind of frustrating. It’s what we’re saying to each other when we want to tell them to butt out of our business.”

“Do you ever take the hint?”

“I’ve already apologized, Lance.”

“That’s OK. Accepted.” Should Frank just go now? Was this painful, difficult conversation finally over? He didn’t know. Just how far did he need to go to accommodate the NASA crew, given that he wasn’t actually Lance Brack?

“As to whether I can take a hint? Not as often as I should. When they picked us as a team, they made sure that we could all work together. And we’re all very different people, so that took some juggling of rosters. We’ve got some brilliant astronauts kicking their heels Earthside because they get pissed too easily.”

“You’re saying that’s me?” Frank suddenly became aware that he had an audience, and that Jim hadn’t noticed his commander leaning on the wall at the far end of the yard, down by the cross-hab connector.

“I’m explaining this all wrong,” said Jim. “You were selected because you were resilient, because you could cope with being on your own for an extended period, that you didn’t need other people. What qualifies you for that part of the mission is exactly why you think I’m a jerk now.”

“We all think you’re a jerk, Jim.” Lucy levered herself upright and wandered casually through the gym equipment. “Leastways, we all do sometimes. Lance doesn’t have to take part in any crew activities, he doesn’t have to answer any non-mission-related questions, he doesn’t even answer to me on non-mission-critical activities. So you poking him like a hornet’s nest—I was here for that, yes—is off-limits. I’m just hoping Lance isn’t reconsidering his generous offer to teach us how to build a module up on the summit of Ceraunius, which will benefit you most of all, and which I’m just coming to tell him we kindly accept.”

“You’re right,” said Jim. He threw his hands into the air. “I am a jerk. I’m going to make myself scarce, have a shower, and do some planning.”

He gathered up his towel, gave the bench seat a perfunctory wipe-down, and headed in the direction of the cans.

Frank watched him go, and shook his head. “That was…”

“Weird?” offered Lucy. “I need to explain. When they were balancing out the crews, human factors decided what we really needed was a social disruptor. Someone who’s not just smart in their own field and dedicated to the overall success of the mission—we’re all that—but a joker in the pack. The grit in the oyster. Whichever metaphor you want to choose. It means that Jim can be a monumental pain in the ass, but we actually do need him to behave like that to function normally as a community. Yes, he has a point about how someone who’s able to work in almost total isolation for eight months is not necessarily going to easily integrate into a team, but we all knew that and wanted you to move at your own pace, what you felt comfortable with. You’re a loner. We get that.”

Frank had a sudden urge to start screaming the truth to her. To yell at her, “That’s not how it was!” He had had a team, and XO had killed them all. So strong was the feeling that he had to close his eyes and swallow hard and breathe slowly.

“You want the extra hab up on the volcano?” he said eventually.

“Yes. Please.”

“When do you want it by?”

“How long will it take for you to train us?”

Frank had a bunch of cons doing it competently within a couple of sessions. “How quick are your crew?”

She laughed. Not unkindly, just surprised by the question. “I guess they’re OK.”

“If you want to schedule a couple of hours tomorrow, I can walk you all through it, see how you are at the end of it. Then we can head up the Santa Clara whenever you like. Three hours to build it, then it needs inflating and fitting out. It doesn’t have to be done in a day: once it’s up, you can take your time.”

“You put in a lot of suit time, Lance.”

“It’s how things get done.”

“So you don’t think about how dangerous it is?”

Of course he didn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t put himself in the position where the only thing between him and certain, almost instant, death was the thickness of a faceplate.

“I’ve got other things to think about.”

She approved of that answer. She was, after all, the pilot that landed the ship when it looked certain it was going to crash.

“I’ll schedule two hours of dirtside training from ten hundred tomorrow. If you think we’re ready to go after that, then I’ll clear a day later in the week. Otherwise, I’ll put us in for more training. You’re OK with ordering us around?”

“If you do what I tell you, sure.”

“We will. You have my guarantee.”

Lucy reminded him a little of Alice: competent, direct, emotionless, honest. Just a lot less murdery. He could certainly work with her. He turned to leave, then turned back. Something had been bothering him for a while. He’d caught the tail-ends of conversations and veiled references, but he’d never got the full story. And he’d worried about its implications ever since.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Just how close were you all to crashing?”

She hesitated, and that told Frank all he needed to know.

“You’re OK. You don’t have to answer.” The corner of his mouth twisted briefly upwards. “Commercially sensitive, right?”

Lucy pressed her hands together until her joints went white. “You can, technically, control the MAV from Mission Control. It’s not like they don’t know the position of the Prairie Rose—that’s our transit ship—at any given moment, and though it might take a few more orbits for them to coordinate the docking procedure due to the time delay on the telemetry, they’re good at what they do. They’d have got you home.”

“Even if you’d all died?”

“There’s another crew in training, due to launch mid 2049, arrive nine months later. You’d be over two years alone by that point. You’d be practically a Martian by then.”

“The King of Mars,” he said.

“You’ve thought about all of this before. Of course you have.” She sprung her hands wide. “Not much else to think about but what can go wrong. The facts are, the training kicked in, I did manage to land the ship, we didn’t die. Give me one of a hundred different scenarios and I’d still have landed the ship. Because I’d trained for them all. All I’ve done for five years is train for those seven minutes. They’ll let me fly the MAV, but as previously explained, they don’t need me to fly the MAV.”

“OK.”

“This isn’t false modesty. There’d be no point in me being here, being on this crew, if I couldn’t get the Hawthorn down. And if you ask me when we leave Mars whether or not it was worth hauling my ass across the solar system for those seven minutes, I’m going to point to all the science we’ve done, and all the discoveries we’ve made. I’ve been a pilot since I was fifteen, and I’ve never been lucky once. All I did was my job.”

“So you don’t take compliments?”

“That has been noted before.” She gave a rueful smile. “What’s more important? That I did a good job, or that someone noticed I did a good job?”

“You wouldn’t be here if no one had noticed.”

“Same for you.”

It was Frank’s turn to semi-grimace. “Our routes here were… different.”

“But you’re on Mars. The best of the best. And if you don’t mind me saying, older than I anticipated. You must have beaten a whole bunch of people younger than you to get here.”

That wasn’t a lie. The Supermax had to be full of cons who’d flunked out of the program, for one reason or another. And then there were seven bodies on their way to the sun, with only Alice being older than him when she died.

“Something like that.”

“You can’t talk about XO’s selection process, and I’m not going there,” she said. “But none of us are here because we’re making up the numbers. Including you. Including me. Including even Jim.”

“I get it.” Compared with his own team of farm horses ready for the glue factory, these guys were all pure-blood thoroughbreds, highly strung and valuable. The difference was stark, and Frank was only just beginning to appreciate what it meant. “Thanks for your time.”

“Thank you for yours. You asked, and I wanted to explain. I didn’t do anything special, and I don’t want anyone to feel grateful.”

“You can’t stop them, though, can you?”

“No. I suppose I can’t.” She nodded down at his waistband. “What do you call those?”

Frank, puzzled, looked down at the items on his belt. He finally held up the nut runner. “This?”

“Yes, that. The electric torque wrench,” she said, giving it its proper name.

“A nut runner.”

“And that’s not the only one.”

“I got eight.”

“Why’ve you got eight?”

What would be a good answer here? Why indeed, if he was the only person on Mars, would he have eight of anything?

“For times like this,” he said, and thinking, damn, that’s not bad.

Lucy seemed to accept that. Why shouldn’t she? It made perfect sense, and she seemed more embarrassed at not coming to that conclusion herself than she’d ever shown when stating baldly how brilliant a pilot she was.

“Of course. Evening meal at nineteen thirty, if you want to join us and you’re always welcome to. Otherwise, ten hundred hours tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.” But it wasn’t like he could be anywhere else.