"But you are not white."
"No, not entirely." The rover jounced over a little rill, bouncing Jamie in his seat. "In the States we have people from every part of the world — all the nationalities of Europe, Asians, Africans…"
"I have heard about the problems of your blacks. We learned in school how they are hold down by your racist system."
Jamie felt himself bristling. "Then why is the only black man on Mars an American? Why haven’t the African nations joined in this expedition?"
"Because they are poor," the Russian answered, deftly maneuvering the rover around a new-looking crater about the size of a swimming pool. "They cannot afford luxuries such as space exploration. They can barely feed their people."
"Is this really a luxury, Mikhail? Do you think that reaching out into space is a waste of money?"
"No." Vosnesensky’s answer was immediate and firm beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Thinking of the run-down pueblos and crumbling old adobe homes in New Mexico, Jamie mused, "I wonder. Sometimes I think the money could have been better used to help poor people."
The Russian shot him a quick glance, then returned to his driving. For long moments he said nothing and Jamie watched the dusty red land pass by, rocks, tired worn gullies, craters, little wind-stirred dunes. Off toward the horizon he saw a dust swirl, as red as a devil, spiraling into the pink morning sky.
"What we do helps the poor," Vosnesensky said. "We are not taking bread from their mouths. We are enlarging the habitat of the human species. History has shown that every expansion of the human habitat has brought about an increase in wealth and a rise in living standards. That is objective fact."
"But the poor are still with us," Jamie said.
A slight note of exasperation crept into the Russian’s voice. "The Soviet Federation alone has spent thousands of billions on aid to poor nations. The United States even more. This expedition to Mars has not hurt the poor. What we spend here is a pittance compared to what they have already received. And what good does it do for them? They go out and produce more babies, make a new generation of poor. A larger generation. It is endless."
"So they’re not going hungry because we’re here on Mars."
"Definitely not. They lack discipline, that is their problem. In the Soviet Federation we pulled ourselves up from a backward agricultural society to a powerful industrial nation in a single generation."
Yes, Jamie replied silently, with Stalin in the driver’s seat. He didn’t care how many millions starved while he built his factories and power plants.
"But tell me, what was it like when you were growing up in New Mexico? It is near Texas?"
"Yes," Jamie said. "Between Arizona and Texas."
"I have been there. Houston."
"New Mexico is nothing like Houston." Jamie laughed. Then, "Actually, I did most of my growing up in California. Berkeley. That’s where my parents taught, at the university. I was a kid when we moved there. But I spent a lot of my summers in Santa Fe, with my grandfather."
It had been a trying day. Jamie was almost seventeen, finishing high school, a vast disappointment to his parents because he had no clear idea of what he wanted to study in college.
His parents had flown with him to Santa Fe, where he was to spend the summer. His grandfather had just announced that he had secured a full scholarship for Jamie at the university in Albuquerque — if Jamie wanted it.
They were sitting in the dining room of Al’s house, up in the hills north of Santa Fe, the evening meal long finished as they sat and talked across the big oak table littered with the remains of roasted goat.
The dining room was large and cool, with a slanted beamed ceiling high above the floor of gleaming ochre tiles. Through its broad window Jamie could see adobe-style town houses dotting the slopes that ran down to the city. Al owned most of them; rental condos for the skiers in the winter and the tourists who wanted to buy genuine Indian artifacts all year long. The sun was going down toward the darkening mountains. Soon there would be another spectacular New Mexico sunset painting the sky.
Jamie had gobbled every scrap of the cabrito, enjoying the spices that Al’s cook had used so generously. His mother, who would eat lapin and even frogs’ legs without a qualm, had barely touched her dinner. Jamie’s father had eaten his portion easily enough, but now he unconsciously rubbed his chest, as if the spices had been too much for him.
"I’m sure you meant well, Al," Lucille was saying, with her sweetest, most persuasive little-girl smile, "but we had just assumed that Jamie would stay at home and attend Berkeley."
"Do the boy good to get a different slant on things," Al said, pulling a pack of slim dark cigarillos from his shirt pocket. "That’s what schoolin’s supposed to be all about, isn’t it: gettin’ an education? That moans more than books and class work, don’t it?"
Lucille frowned as her father-in-law lit up and blew a cloud of thin gray smoke toward the beamed ceiling. She cast a sharp glance at her husband.
With a slight cough, Jerome Waterman said, "Dad, the boy hasn’t even made up his mind about what he wants to study yet, let alone about where he wants to go to school."
They’re talking as if I get to make the decisions, Jamie thought. But they’re not even asking me what I think.
His father was going on, "Considering his grades and the results of his aptitude tests…"
"Aw, bullshit on all that crap!" Al blurted. Then he turned his most flattering smile on his daughter-in-law. "Sorry for the language, Lucille. But I don’t think those psychologists could find a skunk in their own clothes closet, let alone help a seventeen-year-old boy figure out where he wants to head in life."
"I will not have Jamie turned into an Indian," Lucille said firmly.
Al guffawed, a reaction Jamie had seen him use often in his store when he needed a moment to frame his thoughts before replying to a tough question.
"What do you think, Lucy? You think I want him workin’ in a store, waitin’ on tourists from Beverly Hills or New York? You think I want him wastin’ away his life in some dumb-ass pueblo raisin’ sheep and drinkin’ beer the rest of his life?"
"He’s shown an aptitude for science," Jerry said.
"Then let him study science! They got fine scientists at Albuquerque. All kinds of geologists and whatnot."
Geology. Jamie had spent long hours collecting rocks in the arid hills and arroyos. Al had taken him up to Colorado to see the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, and out to Arizona for the Grand Canyon and the big meteor crater.
"Some of the finest scientists in the world are at Berkeley," Lucille was saying stiffly. "In the physics department alone…"
Al interrupted her. "Hell, here we are talkin’ about the boy’s future as if he wasn’t even here. Jamie! What do you think about all this? What’ve you got to say?"
Jamie remembered the Grand Canyon. That vast chasm carved into the Earth. The colors of the different layers of rock, layer after layer. The whole history of the world was painted on those rocks, a history that went incredibly farther back than the span of time human beings had existed.
"I like geology," he said. "I’d like to study geology, I think."
More than an hour had passed since they had started off. Jamie was fingering the bear fetish in his coverall pocket as the rover climbed the slope of a ridge, laboring up a steepening grade that was strewn with smallish rocks and pebbles. The red soil seemed sandy, crumbly. Jamie could hear the electric motors that drove each individual wheel whining, struggling.