“But what if someone was seriously injured, or came down with an illness you’re not equipped to deal with on Mars. What would happen, with the nearest hospital a hundred million miles away?”
Jamie smiled gently. “We’d send a fusion torch ship to take the patient back to Earth. It’s not like the old days, when it took months to travel to Mars. Fusion torch ships can make the trip in less than a week.”
Sharply, she asked, “Why aren’t you on Mars, then?”
Jamie cursed himself for not expecting that one. He lifted his chin a notch and replied, “Personal reasons. Family reasons.”
“Your son’s death.”
Nodding, he said, “He died on Earth, not Mars.”
Shifting slightly in her chair, Samuels asked, “How old are the members of the exploration team? What’s their average age?”
She must think I keep all the personnel files in my head, Jamie said to himself. Aloud, he replied “Mostly pretty young. Postdocs in their late twenties, thirties, for the most part. I guess the oldest person on the team right now is Carter Carleton.”
Her eyes widened. “Carter Carleton? The maverick anthropologist? He’s on Mars?”
“He has been for nearly a year,” Jamie said. “And he’s no more of a maverick than you are.”
Samuels hesitated for the barest fraction of a second, then turned to face straight into the camera. “We’ll be back in a moment. But first this.”
The overhead lights dimmed slightly and the muted monitor screen suddenly showed a housewife staring into a sink full of dirty dishes.
From the larger flat panel that linked to Los Angeles Rhonda Samuels said to Jamie, “You’re doing fine.” A younger woman rushed to her side with a brush in one hand and a spray can in the other.
“I just want you to understand,” Jamie replied slowly, “that we’ll never knowingly endanger our people on Mars.”
She nodded while her assistant fussed with her perfect hair. Jamie thought of Edie Elgin, the TV newswoman he’d lived with when he was in Houston training for the First Expedition. Beautiful, bright, gutsy Edith. She was married now and living in Selene, the underground city on the Moon. Married to Douglas Stavenger, no less, Selene’s founder and de facto leader.
“One thing, though, Dr. Waterman. Call me Rhonda. Not Ms. Samuels. Got it?”
“Got it,” Jamie said, nodding.
“In one!” called the floor director, a hand on the intercom plug tucked into his ear.
Jamie sat up a little straighter and tried to clear his mind as the hairdresser scampered out of view.
The floor director pointed at Jamie and the interviewer turned on her brittle smile again. “Dr. Waterman, let me ask you a different question.”
“Fine, Rhonda,” said Jamie.
“What are we getting out of the exploration of Mars? What have you discovered that’s worth the billions of dollars that have been spent on your program?”
Jamie felt his cheeks flare with sudden anger and hoped the cameras didn’t pick it up. Forcing himself to take a calming breath before speaking, he answered, “That’s sort of like asking how high is up.”
“What have you found?” Samuels insisted. “After all, you’ve spent billions—”
“Life,” Jamie said sharply. “We’ve found the most important thing that’s ever been discovered, Rhonda. We’ve found that ours is not the only world on which life exists. More than that, we’ve found intelligent life. Intelligence arose on Mars, just as it has on Earth.”
“But it’s gone extinct.”
“That’s not the important point,” Jamie said. “The important point is that intelligence is not rare in the universe. We’ve explored two planets—Earth and Mars—and found intelligence on both of them. Two for two. There’s probably all sorts of intelligent species on other worlds.”
“Really?” Rhonda Samuels’s carefully painted face looked almost fearful.
“Really,” said Jamie.
She hesitated, cocked her head slightly to one side. Getting instructions through her earplug from her director, Jamie guessed.
At last she said, “Dr. Waterman, you’ve made the point that you would never knowingly endanger the men and women now on Mars.”
“That’s right.”
“But how can you be sure of that? Aren’t they in danger every day they’re on Mars, every moment?”
Jamie rocked back slightly. “I don’t think they’re in such terrible danger.”
“You don’t? Aren’t you being naive about that? After all, they can’t breathe the air, can’t walk in the open without wearing spacesuits. Do you have adequate medical facilities on Mars? Can you evacuate someone if a medical emergency comes up?”
“We’ve never had that kind of a problem.”
“The people have a right to know just how much danger your team on Mars is in.”
“We know how to deal with the conditions on Mars. We do it every day.”
“Every day,” Samuels repeated, as if it was an accusation.
Then she turned from Jamie to look squarely into the camera again. “I think we owe it to the courage of those fine men and women struggling to survive on Mars to bring them home, now that the budget for exploring Mars has been cut to a dangerously low level.”
Jamie sat there with his mouth hanging open while the floor director shouted, “Okay! We’re out!”
Albuquerque: Duran Condominiums
It was dark by the time Jamie parked his Nissan hybrid in his assigned space next to Vijay’s convertible. It was late summer, monsoon season: his wife hadn’t put the top down on her car in weeks.
There were puddles on the parking lot and lightning flickering beyond the Sandia Mountains, flashing against the clouds in the dark brooding sky. That’s something we never have to worry about on Mars, Jamie told himself. Hasn’t rained there in sixty million years, at least.
When he opened the door to his home Vijay was sitting on the deep leather sofa watching the television news.
“You’re a popular bloke today,” she said, smiling as she got to her feet. Born of Hindu parents in Melbourne, she had never overcome her Aussie accent.
Jamie kissed her lightly. “The White House’s gift to me.”
“It’s a shame, what they did,” Vijay said. “A crime.”
“Yeah.”
“You look tired.”
“I’ve been on the grill all day, just about.” She picked up the remote from the coffee table and clicked off the TV.
“How about you?” he asked. “How do you feel?” Her bright smile lit up her dark face. “Fine. Worried about you, though.”
“You want to go out for dinner? Roberto’s maybe. Or that new sushi place?”
“I don’t really feel up to it, Jamie. I’m sure you’d rather kick off your boots and stay home, wouldn’t you?”
He shrugged.
“There’s hot dogs in the fridge. And I think we still have a few bottles of beer.”
Jamie slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close, her rich voluptuous body pressing against his. “Fine,” he said. “Hot dogs and beer. Typical American meal.”
She laughed. It was an old joke between them: typical Americans, he a half-Navaho and she a Hindu from Australia.
Dex Trumball was not laughing, He had flown to New York to discuss a tax audit of the Trumball Trust with the director of the Internal Revenue Service’s northeastern regional office. After that grim afternoon he went with his latest trophy wife to sit through a long and boring dinner at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan, and then endured an even longer and more boring speech by an architect who showed digital images of the new city she was building in the mountains of Colorado. With millions of people driven from their homes by the greenhouse flooding, the federal government was spending hundreds of billions on erecting new cities.