A dry wash: but not always dry, and that made all the difference in the world to the organisms here. Glancing around, Mark noted mesquites and acacias on the wash banks, the serrated blades of agave, also several small grasses. lizard and rabbit tracks crisscrossed the rippled sand floor. Plants grew in the wash with its occasional water. Animals lived and foraged here on account of the water, the plants and the shade. This dry wash was a lifeline in the desert.
Go to a new world. No jungles yet, no prairies, no forests. Just empty seas and hot, dry continents, infrequent rains that flash away in floodwaters unchecked by vegetated ground. Find a watercourse. Introduce living things like these. The ecology might creep down the watercourse, and from the watercourse, the green blush of life might spread out into the barren land. With luck and work, terraforming might succeed.
For the first time, Mark felt hope. Halfway across the wash, Mark picked up a stone, water-worn smooth, a pleasing dull green color. On impulse, he put it into his pocket for a talisman, a last touch of Earth. A negligible, maybe-fifteen-gram addition to his personal effects.
Mark enjoyed using his leg muscles on the way up and out of the arroyo, and moved fast. Behind him, Ev commented, “I can tell you’re feeling more like yourself now.”
Mark always felt like himself when he had the chance to walk somewhere. A woman professor—Samantha Berry? No, Anna, of course, in that strident Dutch-accented tone of hers—had once joked that Mark would walk to Mars if there were a way. He now found himself walking to the stars.
Mark had seen pictures of the Star Gate before. Pictures had not prepared him for the reality of the foreboding arch in the immense tower.
Graffiti marred the stone-sheathed wall of Star Gate, including, ABANDON ALL EARTH YE WHO ENTER HERE. “Charming,” said Ev. His collar was open. And he looked wilted.
Inside the tower were crowds of people, a din of activity, jarring after the quiet of the desert. Ev made sense of it before Mark did. Ev muttered, “Looks like Mexican customs gets to screen what’s going through their country to the stars.”
Hundreds of would-be star travelers had arrived by air, land, and sea only to find themselves in the bottleneck of customs. The travelers were angry and agitated.
Mexican Customs was unsure why it was necessary to confiscate and embargo biota, or just how to define “biota,” but had definitely decided to seize live animal carriers and containers labeled as animals or plants. An alarming pile of such containers occupied the back corner of the screening area, living things wanted—needed—by the starship.
Some men and women in plain clothes stood behind the customs checkpoints. Anglo-Saxons or blacks, they wore a uniform air of grim efficiency, and seemed to have a dangerously good idea of what they were supposed to look for and why.
Ev let his breath out between his front teeth in a hiss of dismay. “There’s no velvet glove on the iron fist today. No consideration for the illusion of Mexican sovereignty. Those are the president s men—Federal Marshals. Whatever happens, remember—the marshals’ authority has limits, at least until martial law is declared, which it hasn’t been yet. They can’t arrest us because we haven’t broken any laws.”
Ev shouldered his way to the front of the line like an eel, towing Mark behind him. Mark stepped on toes and bumped into elbows. Ev showed the harassed Mexican Customs agents his mice and the patent documents to prove the mice belonged to him. He offhandedly identified the grass and sunflower seeds as premium mouse chow. Cheerfully he turned his tailored pockets inside out to demonstrate their emptiness. Customs waved him through, mice and all.
But the customs agents checked Mark’s identity license with interest, discussed and doublechecked it. One of the ominous suits, the marshals, gravitated over for a look at the license and at Mark. The marshal gruffly told customs to take Mark aside.
Mark’s stomach knotted. Directed to the back corner of the customs area, he had to wait while the crowd filtered through customs and dwindled. He seethed, but felt no more free to run away than were the confiscated small animals in their cages around him. Then he was escorted to a small featureless room. Oddly, it was not the marshal who interviewed him; the marshal guarded the exit, silent and intimidating. A customs agent directed Mark to empty his pockets onto a table. The agent examined his belongings. “What is this?”
“My notebook computer,” Mark answered, voice choked with tension. The marshal’s eyes bored into his back.
“And this?” The agent picked up the green stone. “An egg?”
“No.” Mark could not keep disgust out of his voice. The customs agent met his eyes with a mild glance that slid over Mark’s shoulder to the marshal.
Despite what Ev had said, Mark expected the marshal to arrest him, to handcuff him. Yet the marshal said nothing.
Mark never wore a watch. He relied on excellent time sense instead. A clock on the wall was conspicuously placed. It was also wrong, at least half an hour slow. Mark suddenly realized that the marshals might have decided that certain kinds of scientists were worth the effort of delaying until they missed the ship. With no legitimate authority to detain him, the president’s men had resorted to trickery.
Mark turned to confront the marshal. The big, hard-featured man glared at Mark. “Your clock’s slow,” Mark announced. “I’m leaving now. You can’t legally keep me here.” His voice shook. “You can keep the things I had in my pockets. Except for this.” He picked up the green pebble on the table. “Which is just a stone. There’s not even any moss on it.”
The marshal scowled. Mark’s insides clenched, but he shoved past the marshal anyway. The marshal shoved back, sent him bumping hard into the doorjamb. Mark ricocheted out into the deserted corridor, and the marshal did not pursue him. Mark hurried toward the heart of the tower.
At the far end of the corridor, Ev paced. Behind him was a large portal. Jerking his thumb into the doorway, Ev yelled, “It’s about to leave! ”
Mark sprinted. The two of them scrambled inside just before the doors closed. Ev turned around and flung an arm around Mark’s shoulders. “Touch-down!”
Buoyantly Ev led the way up an escalator to a spacious room, appointed like a hotel lobby and laid out around a huge column with twelve blank sides. Twelve outer walls echoed the central column . Each wall had a large window.
“Welcome to the televator. This is the observation deck,” Ev explained. “You don’t have to look out if you don’t want to.” Presently there was nothing to observe beyond the widows, just the walls of the tower. Avid to see the sights of the trip up, Ev made a beeline for a soft, deep armchair beside one of the picture windows. He offered Mark the chair. “You’ll be better off sitting down for the ride.”
Mark sat. Once again the mouse box rested importantly in Mark’s lap. Scratching noises came out of it, and Mark peered into the box. “All three are eating.”
“I did a good job with them. They function normally”
It wasn’t that hard to genetically engineer mice that had one or several altered traits, but otherwise were normal. Ev always said mice were easy. “They’re not just patented fancy mice, are they?”
“No.” Ev spoke in an undertone, still secretive, conscious of the increasing crowd of people in the observation deck. “Their chromosomes are artificial, containing a complete set of mouse genes, plus a great deal of surplus DNA and, of course, genes which specify that the surplus remain unexpressed. The unexpressed DNA happens to be that of other species from the company’s gene banks”
“You mean you stole genes?”
Arms crossed, Ev radiated self-satisfaction. “It’s amazing how much DNA can fit into the chromosomes of a mouse’s cell. I filched the genetic code for several hundred assorted species.”