“I’m sorry, Jamie,” Vijay repeated. “You must think…” She glanced at Quintana, who was leaning back in her desk chair with a knowing grin on her lean face.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I just wondered where you were.”
“Nari and I got to talking,” Vijay said, speaking faster than usual, embarrassed or upset or—what? Jamie wondered.
Quintana made a show of looking at her wristwatch. “It’s almost the dinner hour. You two go off and get something to eat. I have a lot of paperwork to do here.” She made a show of pecking at her keyboard and peering at her computer screen.
Arm in arm, Jamie and Vijay headed for the cafeteria. Jamie noticed that Carleton’s people were coming through the airlock. It’ll be sundown in a few minutes, he realized. The cafeteria was almost empty; dinner hour was just starting. He realized he was famished.
“How’d it go?” Vijay asked as they loaded their trays.
“Not good,” said Jamie. “Hasdrubal’s bugs have either died off or gone into a spore state.”
“I mean with Dex.”
“Even worse,” Jamie said. They walked through the mostly unoccupied tables, found a small one near the dome’s curving wall. As they pulled out their chairs the wall turned opaque for the night; suddenly there was nothing to see outside.
“The only way Dex can get any reasonable funding is to bring his big-spending friends here and turn this base into a tourist center.” He plopped down in his chair, his appetite suddenly gone.
Vijay started to reply, hesitated, then went ahead. “You’ll have to let him do it, then, won’t you?”
“No,” Jamie snapped.
She leaned toward him, placed her dark hand on his coppery one. “Jamie, if you want to stay here, if you want to keep on with the work you’re doing here, you’re going to have to make a compromise.”
He said nothing.
Vijay went on, “There must be some way to allow a few tourists here without ruining everything.”
“They’ll want to put up a huge dome to cover the whole area and fill it with air at Earth-normal pressure,” he said grimly. “That’ll kill the lichen. God knows what the oxygen will do to the ruins of the village, the bodies in the graves.”
It was Vijay’s turn to go silent.
Bitterly, Jamie said, “Those buildings in the cliff have stood there for sixty million years and more. How long do you think they’d last in a terrestrial atmosphere? With tourists chipping pieces off them? Writing graffiti on the walls?”
“Oh, come on, now, Jamie. It won’t be like that and you know it.”
He tried to frown at her, found he couldn’t. “Well,” he said softly, “maybe I’m exaggerating. A little.”
He saw Vijay look up and, turning, there was Billy Graycloud standing at his elbow.
“Uh, I’m sorry to interrupt, Dr. W, but if you have a couple-minutes after you’re finished eating could you come over to the comm center? I’ve got something I want to show you.”
A little irritated at the interruption, Jamie nodded. “Sure, Billy. After dinner.”
“Thanks!” The young man beamed a grateful smile and then quickly walked away.
Jamie noticed Carter Carleton and several others pushing two tables together. Carleton sat at the head, with several young women sitting at the places closest to him.
Vijay smiled. “Carter’s taking my advice.”
“Advice?”
“We had dinner last night.” Before Jamie could say anything she went on, “I told him there were plenty of young women here who’d be glad to be with him.”
“In bed,” said Jamie.
Vijay nodded.
“You had dinner with him. Did he come on to you?”
“Nothing serious. Nothing that I couldn’t handle,” she said. But she looked down at her plate of soymeat.
Jamie half-joked, “Should I go over there and punch him out?”
Vijay looked up. Totally serious, she replied, “No need for that, Jamie. His reputation is much worse than he really is. I can handle him, no worries.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Jamie looked into her midnight eyes and decided to let the subject drop. I can trust Vijay. She’s the one person in the world I can rely on. The one person in two worlds. No, make it three, if we count Selene.
“The wheels in your head are turning,” Vijay said, with a smile that was almost impish.
He shook his head. “They’re spinning, but I’m not getting anywhere.”
“You will, love,” said Vijay. “You will.”
But when they were leaving the cafeteria, Jamie saw Sal Hasdrubal morosely pushing a half-filled dinner tray along the counter.
“What did the microscope show, Sal?” he asked.
The lanky biologist gave Jamie a somber stare. “They’re all gone. Just a few weeks out in the open killed them all.”
“They’re all dead?”
“Every last one of the cells. Dead.”
And so are we, Jamie said to himself. So are we.
Tithonium Base: Midnight
Midnight. Jamie stared at the numerals on the digital clock beside the bed. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t remember being so tied up, so tense. Never in his life. Not even when he was pouring every milligram of sweat and determination in him to get picked for the First Expedition. It had never been like this. Not all this pain. All this anguish.
He turned and looked at his wife, breathing softly beside him. In the shadows of the darkened room he could just make out the curve of her shoulder against the sheets. He’d been too wired even to try to make love with Vijay. Everything is falling apart, Jamie told himself. Everything I’ve ever wanted, ever worked for. It’s all falling apart.
It’s such a mess, Jamie thought. I can’t ask her to stay here when there’ll only be fifteen of us on Mars. That’s not enough people; it’ll be too risky for her. But she won’t want to leave if I stay.
He realized he’d said if I stay. For the first time he’d used that deadly little word. If. And he remembered his conversation after dinner with Dex. Maybe his last conversation with Dex, ever.
After dinner, as he and Vijay were walking back to their quarters, he had seen Dex leaving Chang’s office.
“I’ve got to talk to him,” he’d said. Vijay had nodded her understanding and continued walking to their quarters.
“Dex,” Jamie called, hurrying toward him. “Wait up a minute, will you?”
Trumball stopped and eyed Jamie, a quizzical expression on his face. “The final arm-twisting session?” he asked.
Jamie tried to smile, failed. “You’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Right. And so will you, buddy, sooner or later.”
He gripped Dex’s arm and led him aimlessly across the big dome, steering him unconsciously away from the busy cafeteria, toward the empty labs on the other side.
“Chang’s making preparations for the evacuation flight,” Dex said, his voice low, tight. “Looks like just about everybody’s going to leave in a couple of months.”
“Dex, isn’t there any way—”
“There is, Chief, but you won’t allow it. You’d rather sit here with a couple of dozen people and twiddle your thumbs until even Selene’s funding runs out and you have to abandon this place altogether.”
Jamie felt a hot iron smoldering in his guts. “And then you move in. With your tourists.”
“Damned right. Better than leaving Mars abandoned altogether.”
“Turn this place into a Disney World.”
Dex pulled his arm free of Jamie’s grip. “You just don’t get it, do you, Jamie? You’re just as fanatical as those suicide bombers who hit your campus. You’d rather die than bend a little.”
“Maybe,” Jamie said tensely.