He turned the dirt-rover over to Radkowski, who would take the next shift on forward scouting, and Radkowski in turn gave him command of the rockhopper and wobbled away slowly on the dirt-rover for a test drive.
“How is it out there?” Tana asked.
“Wild and desolate,” he said. “But in its own way, beautiful.” Through his visor, she could see him shaking his head. “No place to raise children, though.”
That was an odd thing to say, she thought. Ryan had never expressed any interest in children. He was widely known as a confirmed bachelor. The girls had privately tagged him the heartbreaker of Houston; he was interested enough in the opposite sex, sure, but just for the night. He just didn’t seem to have intentions of settling down with one woman.
Tana was scheduled to take over from Estrela on the second dirt-rover, but Estrela was nowhere around. Ryan said that she had called in, saying that she was twenty kilometers ahead and didn’t see any point in backtracking to meet them; she would wait for them, and they could change drivers when they caught up.
So she would have to get back in the rockhopper. Fine. That was just like Estrela, thoughtless and self-centered. But she didn’t have to get in just yet.
“I’m going to look around,” she told Ryan.
“Fine, as long as you don’t go far away from the rover,” he said. “It’s a fifteen-minute stop, no more.”
“Got it, boss,” she said.
They weren’t far from the ridge. Although it was covered with loose rocks, it looked like it would be easy enough to climb, but she knew she wouldn’t have time. It was basic basin-and-range territory; she knew that from the geology field trips in Nevada and Texas that had prepared them for what they would see on Mars. Not a good place to look for signs of fossil life. Still, she examined three rocks that looked like they had signs of carbonate globules, and cracked one open to inspect the cross section. The call to return to the cabin came all too soon.
She looked at the tiny pressurized cabin. Shit. She couldn’t go back in there. It was just too crowded. Now that she had stretched, she just couldn’t force herself to go back inside.
She climbed up on the rockhopper and continued up, until she found a place to sit on the very top, her legs straddling around the crew cabin, one leg on either side. There was even a tie-down eyelet that could be used as a handhold.
“Ryan? I’m staying out here.”
“Negative. We’re ready to go.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Where are you?”
She could see him standing below her, looking around in all directions. “Look up,” she said.
“What?” He looked up at the mountain range, his back to her, rotating his whole body from side to side to scan the slope.
“No, here,” she called. “Up here on the rockhopper.”
He swiveled around to look at the rockhopper. “You can’t ride up there!”
She smiled. “Want to bet I can’t? Think you can get me down? And, anyway, I’m just riding with you for fifteen more miles. If I ride up here, I can just hop off and switch with Estrela; you don’t even have open the hatch. Well, except to let her in.”
Trevor was already inside, waiting. Ryan stared up at her in silence for a few moments, started to say something, and then stopped. “Well, don’t think we’re going to stop to pick you up if you fall off,” he said at last, and swung around and up into the hatch to the pressurized cabin.
She knew that he would, in fact, stop for her if he had to; Ryan was not about to lose one of the crew. But she had no intention of falling off. She had won. “Got it, commandant,” she said. “Falling off not allowed.”
“Damn kids gonna want to ride up there next, I know it,” he muttered.
As the rockhopper started up, it lurched, and then swayed from one side to the other. “Yikes!” she said.
The rockhopper stopped abruptly, and she had to grab suddenly to stay seated.
“You okay up there?”
“No problem,” she said. “I’m fine. Go ahead.” She kept a solid grip on the handhold this time. Once she got used to the side-to-side swaying and found her balance, it really wasn’t bad. No worse than balancing on skis or a skateboard, and far easier than the time she had tried riding on a camel.
Now, this is more like it, she thought. Riding across Mars in style. Plenty of room, and the greatest view on the planet. Best seat on the bus.
“Yahoo!” she shouted. She had made sure to turn her voice-activated microphone off before she shouted, and there was no reply, not even an echo. There should have been an echo, it would have completed the effect.
“Yahoo!”
8
Father Tomé
Nobody had told Estrela where she was being taken or tried to explain what was happening, nor did she ask any questions. Estrela already knew that her comfort, health, or opinions were of no interest to those who had her in their custody. She kept alert for a chance to dart away, to disappear into the shadows of the city. But she had been handcuffed—although she’d not been accused of a crime—and there were no clear opportunities. After the brief reprieve, she thought, she would be taken farther away and shot.
Instead, they put her on an ancient bus, and without explanation she was driven what had seemed like hundreds of kilometers inland. She had huddled in the corner, hissing and baring her teeth when anybody got near her. She had never been inside a motor vehicle before; the experience made her queasy, and if she had not been fairly faint with hunger, she thought that she would certainly have thrown up.
The School of the Beneficent Jesus of the South was a rude collection of tin-roofed cinder block huts and dirt pathways. She didn’t have any clear image in her mind of what a Father Tomé would look like, but the bald, smiling, roly-poly Anglo man in a faded Ipanema Beach Club T-shirt did not fit any of her expectations.
“Oh, my,” he said. He looked at the driver, shook his head, and then looked pointedly at the plastic handcuffs.
The driver’s hands were unexpectedly gentle as he cut the handcuff away from her. “She’s all yours now,” the man said, and went back to his bus.
She was ready to bolt now, but the wide-open spaces and the mountains disoriented her. She had no idea where the city was, if it was near or far. She had no idea of what was safe, or where she could hide, or what she could eat, or who she could trust.
Father Tomé smiled at her and held out his hand. In it was something, a little fur-covered purple object that, after she’d stared at it for a minute, she recognized as some sort of an animal, a stuffed animal. A lizard, no, a dinosaur. A purple stuffed dinosaur.
“Here, my frightened little avocado, this is for you,” he said. “Take it. It’s yours.”
It looked forlorn in his huge hand.
She wanted it. She snatched it out of his hand, hugged it to her breast and began to cry.
“Poor little avocado,” he said. “Welcome to Jesus do Sul. You are safe here.”
She was turned over to the ministrations of three laughing girls, who were not really much older than she was, although in their self-confidence they seemed to be much older and more experienced. “I am Maria Bonita,” the first one told her. “I am Maria da Glória,” the second girl said. “I am Maria Araujo,” the third one said. “The Father calls us the three Marias,” they said, all three together, and they exchanged glances and nodded solemnly at each other, secure in their identities.
They stripped her—she fought—and plunged her into hot water—she shrieked and flailed. Then they held her and scrubbed her firmly with huge wooden brushes, and she fought again. Finally they soaked her hair with kerosene. She screwed her eyes shut and held her breath, terrified, waiting for the flare of a match, and when they rubbed the kerosene briskly into her scalp, it felt as if her head was on fire, but a cold fire, chilling and burning at the same time. But the fire did not spread, and all they did was to wash it away again, covering the sharp odor with some bubbly soap that smelled like exotic flowers. Finally they dried her with huge fluffy towels. They gave her back the little stuffed dinosaur, which she clutched to her chest, and then dressed her in pajamas that were two sizes too large. It was the cleanest clothing she’d ever worn.