Vosnesensky steered between a boulder the size of a small house and a shallow circular depression that looked to Jamie like the weathered fossil of an ancient meteor crater. The Russian had small, almost delicate hands, Jamie noticed. He maneuvered the tiny steering wheel with nothing more than a fingertip’s pressure.
"We should reach the canyons today," he said, "if we do not have to make more stops."
Jamie took the hint. "We’ll stop only to fill in the net of beacons. Of course, if there’s some important change in the landforms…"
Vosnesensky smiled slightly without turning his eyes away from his driving. "Of course."
Jamie tried to settle back and get comfortable, but the hard shell of the pressure suit was not meant to sit in. The damned armpit was still chafing despite the padding he had packed into it. He watched the landscape unrolling as they drove slowly toward the strangely close horizon. It bothered him, seeing the horizon so near. Almost frightened him down at the subliminal level where nightmares take root. Jamie felt as if they were driving toward the edge of a cliff.
"The horizon looks awfully close, doesn’t it?" he said to Vosnesensky.
The Russian bobbed his head once. "The smaller the planet the shorter the horizon. It is even closer on the moon."
"I’ve never been to the moon."
"Much closer than here. And much more barren."
DiNardo had been on the moon, Jamie knew. I was called in so suddenly I never got farther off the Earth than the space stations until we started out for Mars.
He forced his attention away from the too-close horizon and concentrated on the land they were driving through. To anyone but a geologist the scenery would have looked dull, monotonous, barren. But Jamie’s mind was leaping from rock to fault crack, crater to sand dune, trying to puzzle out the forces that had shaped this land, sculpted it into its present form.
"I have flown over New Mexico," Vosnesensky said, almost as if to himself. "In the Mir 3 space station, while training for this mission."
"Then you saw how much it looks like Mars."
"I did not realize it at the time. I did not pay sufficient attention."
Jamie studied the Russian’s face. He was dead serious, as always. Somber. Grim.
"Did you always want to be a cosmonaut?" Jamie asked suddenly. "Ever since you were a little child?"
Vosnesensky swiveled his head toward Jamie for an instant, then immediately turned back to look ahead. The expression on his face, fleetingly, was almost angry.
I shouldn’t have asked, Jamie thought. He resents my prying into his personal history.
But the Russian muttered, "When I was very little, before starting school even, I wanted to be a cosmonaut. To me it meant everything. Gagarin was my hero; I wanted to be like him."
"The first man in space."
Vosnesensky nodded again, another single curt bob of his head.
"Gagarin was first in orbit. Armstrong was first on the moon. I told myself I would be first on Mars."
"And you were."
"Yes."
"You must feel very proud about it."
The cosmonaut glanced at Jamie again. "Proud, yes. Maybe even happy. But that moment has passed. Now I feel the responsibility. I am in charge. I am responsible for all your lives."
"I see."
"Do you? You are a scientist. You are happy to be here, to explore. You have a new world to play with. I am the man of authority. I am the one who must say no to you when you want to go too far, when you might endanger yourself or the others."
"We all understand that," Jamie said. "We accept it."
"Yes? Does Dr. Malater accept it? She hates me. She goes out of her way to annoy me every chance she gets."
"Ilona isn’t…" Jamie’s voice trailed off. He realized he had no defense for her.
"She is a Jewish bitch who hates all Russians. I know that. She has made it very clear to me."
"Her grandparents fled Hungary."
"So? Was that my fault? Am I to be blamed for things that happened in our grandparents’ day? She risks the success of this mission because of a grudge that is two generations old?"
Jamie laughed softly. "Mikhail, I know people who have kept grudges going for two centuries, not just two generations."
The Russian said nothing.
"There are American Indians who’re still fighting battles from colonial times."
"The Yankee imperialists took your land from you," Vosnesensky said. "They engaged in genocide against your people. We learned this in school."
"That happened a long time ago, Mikhail," said Jamie. "Should I spend my life hating all the whites? Should I hate my mother because she’s descended from people who killed my ancestors? Should Pete Connors hate Paul Abell because his ancestors were slaves and Paul’s were slave owners?"
"You feel no bitterness at all?"
The question stopped Jamie. He did not truly know what he felt. He had hardly ever considered the matter in such a light. Was Grandfather Al bitter? No, he seemed to accept the world as he found it.
"Use what’s at hand, Jamie," Al would say. "When they hand you a lemon, make lemonade. Use what’s at hand and make the best of what you find."
At length Jamie answered, "Mikhail, my parents are both university professors. I was born in New Mexico and went back there to spend summer vacations when I was a kid, but I grew up in Berkeley, California."
"A hotbed of radicalism." Vosnesensky said it flatly, as if reciting a memorized line. Jamie could not tell if the Russian were joking or serious.
"My father has spent most of his life trying not to be an Indian, although he’d never admit it. Probably doesn’t even realize it. He earned a scholarship to Harvard University. He married a woman who’s descended from the original Mayflower colonists. Neither one of them wanted me to be an Indian. They always told me to be a success, instead."
"They deny your father’s heritage."
"They try to. Dad’s scholarship came through a program designed especially to help minority groups — such as Native Americans. And the history texts he’s written have sold to universities all around the U.S. mainly because they present American history from the minority viewpoint."
"Hmp."
"They were never active in Indian affairs and neither was I. If it weren’t for my grandfather I’d be more white than you are. He taught me to understand my heritage, to accept it without hating anybody."
"But Malater, she hates me."
"Not you, Mikhail. She hates the idea of Russians. She doesn’t see you as an individual. In her eyes you’re part of an inhuman system that hanged her grandfather and forced her grandmother to run away from her native land."
Vosnesensky muttered, "That is not much help."
"Just like people who don’t see individuals among the Indians, or even tribes," Jamie went on. "There’s a lot of whites who still see ‘the Indian’ instead of individual men and women. They don’t understand that some people want to live in their own way and don’t want to become white."
"And you? How do you want to live?"
Jamie no longer had to think it over. "I’m the descendant of Indians. My skin is darker than yours. But if you take our brains out of our skulls, Mikhail, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. That’s where we really live. In our minds. We were born on opposite sides of the world and yet here we are together on a totally other planet. That’s what’s important. Not what our ancestors did to one another. What we’re doing now. That’s the important thing."
Vosnesensky nodded somberly. "Now you must give that little speech to Malater."