With the slightest dip of his pudgy chin, Chang said, “Yes. I want to offer a toast.”
Doreen, standing at Carleton’s side, picked up an empty cup and poured a splash of the nearest fruit juice into it, then wordlessly handed it to the mission director.
Chang raised his cup and proclaimed, “To Dr. Carleton. May your discovery be the first of many. May we uncover a village of ancient Martians and learn much about them.”
Somebody shouted, “Hear! Hear!” But Chang impatiently waved them all to silence.
“I am not finished,” he said.
Turning to Yvonne Lorenz, Chang went on, “To you who have been forced to abandon your work at Hellas site I offer my thanks for your toil and my regret that your effort has been terminated. I have added my highest recommendations to each of your personnel files.”
They murmured thanks.
Chang half-turned and gestured to Dr. Lorenz. She was a short, slim Provencal with dark hair that was streaked with gray, a lean face that ended in a pointy chin, and eyes the color of a polar sea. Like almost everyone else, she wore coveralls, but hers were carefully tailored to her petite figure.
In a low but firm voice she said, “I believe we should all thank Dr. Chang for his generous recommendation. I realize most of you are disappointed to be sent home. I know that I myself am.”
“I won’t miss living in that damned camper,” said one of the astronauts. No one laughed.
Lorenz said, “I must admit that our living accommodations were… eh, what is the word?”
“Rugged.”
“Crowded.”
“Piss poor—especially when the toilets broke down.”
That brought a chuckle. But Lorenz said, “No, the word I wanted is ‘Spartan.’ Our living conditions were Spartan.”
“You can say that again.”
“She already did.”
“Please,” Lorenz said, making a silencing motion with both her tiny hands. “Hear me out. Dr. Carleton has asked for five volunteers to help him excavate the village. Five of us may remain here if we are willing to assist Dr. Carleton.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then one of the men asked, “What kind of work would this be?”
“Manual labor,” Carleton answered, raising his voice so that they could all hear him clearly. “For the most part it’ll be digging and hauling a lot of dirt and rock. Not glamorous. Hard physical labor.”
They looked at one another. Carleton knew exactly what was on their minds: How will this look on my resume?
He added, “Of course, we’ll also be sifting through the digging to look for fossils. Even artifacts, eventually.”
No one said another word. They shifted uneasily on their feet, thinking, weighing, pondering.
“If any of you wants to talk to me individually,” Carleton said, “I’ll be happy to go into as much detail as you like.”
Lorenz said, “Five of you will be able to stay on Mars. Your work will not be the same as you have been doing, but you may have an opportunity to help uncover great discoveries.”
Chang added, “You have five days to make your decisions. In five days rocket from Earth will take up orbit above us. By then you must decide if you wish to remain to assist Dr. Carleton or return home.”
“Can we get credits in anthropology out of this?” one of the younger men asked.
Carleton smiled at him. “If you like I’ll give colloquia on anthropology.”
Doreen piped up, “I might be able to arrange for Selene University to give course credits for working on the dig.”
“Very good,” said Chang. “Five days to make a decision.” He put his cup down on the corner of the nearest table and glanced at his wristwatch. “It is late. Past ten o’clock. We all have much work to do tomorrow.”
With that, the mission director turned and walked back through the crowd, heading for his private quarters.
“He is right,” said Yvonne Lorenz. “We shall have to unload the plane and prepare for departure in five days.”
The crowd started to break up and drift toward their individual cubicles. Doreen stood uncertainly beside Carleton. He could see the doubt in her eyes.
Drawing in a breath, he said, “I’m sorry about my boorish behavior. I just didn’t like the way that kid was looking at you.”
She smiled a little. “You were awfully gruff with him.”
“Maybe,” he acknowledged.
“Possessive.”
“The word you’re looking for is dominant.”
She didn’t reply, but she allowed Carleton to lead her across the floor of the dome to the flimsy accordion-fold door of his compartment. All the others were entering their own spaces, most singly, although there were several couples. Doreen scanned the area for Graycloud but didn’t see him. The others pointedly ignored Carleton and Doreen McManus as he stood in front of his door, gazing steadily into her wide, gray green eyes.
“They’re all going to know about this,” he said to her, almost solemnly.
She made a little shrug. “Everybody knows about everybody here. It’s okay.”
“I’m an accused rapist, back Earthside.”
“That’s a hundred million kilometers away,” Doreen said.
He said, “Eighty-three million, two hundred thousand klicks, as of this morning. I checked.”
Doreen smiled up at him. “You want to, don’t you?”
He smiled at her. “When love speaks,” he quoted, “the voice of all the Gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.”
Holding her arm gently, he slid open the door of his cubicle with his other hand, glad that he had put clean sheets on his bunk that morning.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
The day after Jamie returned from Washington the terrorist attack struck the campus.
He was in his office, on the phone with Dex Trumball, trying to make arrangements for his flight to Mars.
“You want to go back?” Dex asked, his image on the wall screen showing the disapproval that he tried to keep out of his voice.
“I have to,” said Jamie.
“Why? To preside over the funeral?”
“To try to keep the program alive. There isn’t going to be any funeral, not if I can help it.”
Dex shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Jamie. There’s nothing you can do there that you can’t do here.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Don’t get mystical on me. And don’t—”
Three explosions rocked the building, so close together they sounded like the beats of an enormous ceremonial drum. The window of Jamie’s office cracked, the room shook as if struck by a sudden earthquake. Books slid off the shelves.
“What the hell was that?” Dex hollered.
Jamie saw black smoke billowing above the campus buildings outside his window, then heard the wail of sirens. Footsteps pounded by in the corridor outside his door.
“Jamie, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Jamie answered shakily, staring at the rising smoke. “I’ll call you back, Dex.”
He rushed to his door and yanked it open. The corridor was empty now. Hurrying downstairs, Jamie saw that the lobby of his building was a blackened, smoking ruin, windows shattered, doors punched in, ceiling tiles dangling precariously. In a few minutes, firefighters and campus police officers were hauling bodies outside, where ambulances were pulling up. People were screaming, crying, bleeding.
Jamie helped lift the bloodied, mangled bodies of students and staff people out into the sunshine. A crowd was growing outside the yellow tapes the campus police were stringing across the parking lot. City police were arriving. A SWAT team van squealed to a stop.
“Goddamn towel-heads,” one of the campus cops muttered as they tenderly laid the dead body of a young female student on the concrete. Her legs had been blown off. Jamie fought down the urge to throw up.