Return to Mars (57 page)

Jamie went through Connors to Dr. Li, and via Li to the chairman of the ICU board.

Walter Laurence’s normally imperturbable face looked troubled when he finally replied to Jamie’s pleading messages. Jamie waited until late at night to open Laurence’s message; the dome was quiet, lights turned down, most of the others already asleep.

JAMIE WOKE UP SLOWLY, THE REMNANTS OF A DISTURBING DREAM FADING from his consciousness like a mirage dissipating as he tried to reach it. Something about the Martians, he thought, although he vaguely remembered Fuchida in his dream, trying desperately to tell him something but unable to speak a word aloud.

A mini-nightmare, Jamie decided as he quickly showered and shaved. Got to keep up appearances, he told himself while he ran the electric razor across his chin. It’s buzzing sounded weak, lower in pitch than normal. The batteries need recharging. Which started him thinking about the nuclear generator buried a full kilometer from the dome. People still freaked out about nuclear power back home. Here we couldn’t get along without it.

This is home, Jamie, he heard his grandfather whisper. That other world isn’t for you. This one is.

“For a while, Grandfather,” Jamie answered in a barely vocal whisper. “Only until Trumball arrives to take it away from us.”

He pulled on his coveralls and sat dejectedly at his desk chair. We’re just going through the motions, Jamie told himself. The excitement has drained away. Now we’re just collecting data bits, like a bunch of graduate students following the drill that the professors back on Earth have set for us.

Nothing new had been discovered in months. The cliff building held its secrets tenaciously, empty and silent, revealing nothing. Except that it’s very existence told so much.

What do we know? Jamie asked himself for the thousandth time that week.

We know that Mars bears life: lichen in some surface rocks and bacteria deep underground.

We know that once intelligent Martians lived here and they built the structure in the cliff.

We know that they no longer exist.

We’re pretty certain they were wiped out by one or more meteor strikes about sixty-five million years ago.

And that’s it. They had developed writing. Maybe they even understood what was happening to them.

But we haven’t been able to find another building anywhere on the whole planet. We don’t understand their writing and probably never will.

So why are we going through the motions of searching the planet and poking around the niche where the building is sited? We don’t have the tools or the manpower to find anything more. We don’t have the fundamental understanding to figure who or what they were. They could have honeycombed this planet with their cities and farms, but after sixty-five million years they’re all lost, gone, covered over by dust or ground into dust themselves.

Jamie admitted to himself, we’re wasting our time here. Even the VR shows we beam to Earth have lost their appeal; the audience is down to schools and museums. We might as well pack up and go home.

Then he saw Trumball and his hotel builders and the tourists he wanted to bring to Mars. Bulldozers and buses and shopping malls where you could buy plastic Martian dolls.

Grimly he turned to his laptop and booted it up, ready to review the day’s schedule of tasks.

Instead, Pete Connors’ chocolate-brown face looked out at him from the display screen, grinning cheerily.

“Congratulations! Today marks the three hundredth and sixty-fifth day since your arrival on Mars. You’ve put in a full year on the planet’s surface. A real milestone, guys.”

Jamie blinked at Connors’ image. It’s only sol three fifty-eight, he saw from the data line at the bottom of the screen.

Then, despite his listless mood, he smiled tightly. Of course, he told himself. Three hundred sixty-five Earth days, not Martian. A full Earth year.

He didn’t feel like celebrating.

In the main dome, Vijay was also thinking about the calendar.

“It’s a real accomplishment,” she said to Stacy, “and we ought to do something to celebrate it.”

The two women were in Vijay’s phonebooth-sized infirmary. Dezhurova was stripped to her bra and panties, a blood-pressure cuff wrapped around her left arm, six medical sensor patches plastered to her sturdy chest and back.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked warily. As a cosmonaut she distrusted medics, especially doctors who doubled as psychiatrists. It was their job to find reasons to keep fliers on the ground, Dezhurova feared.

“I’m not sure,” Vijay replied, seemingly unaware of her patient’s latent hostility. “With the group split up like it is between the two domes, it’s difficult to bring everyone together for a blast.”

“No alcohol,” Dezhurova said flatly.

“I didn’t mean a booze party,” Vijay quickly amended, one eye on the monitor screens. Dezhurova seemed adequately healthy; blood pressure a bit lower than usual, but well within tolerable limits.

“Then what?”

Vijay shrugged and started unwrapping the cuff from the cosmonaut’s beefy upper arm. Dezhurova began peeling off the sensors with her free hand.

“We need something,” Vijay said. “Morale is sinking quite low. It’s been nothing but work, work, work the past several months. No excitement at all. That’s not good for our emotional outlook.”

“Trudy and Tom seem happy,” Dezhurova said as she got down from the examination table and reached for her coveralls.

“When they’re together, yes,” Vijay agreed. “But he tends to mope when they’re apart.”

Stacy shook her head. “I can’t adjust the work schedule to accommodate their romance.”

”No, of course not. And frankly, I think Trudy is grateful for some time away from Tommy.”

“You think she does not love Tom?”

“Love’s got very little to do with it,” Vijay said, her face growing quite serious. “Tommy may be bonkers over her, but she…” Vijay’s voice trailed off.

“Yes? What?”

“I’m not sure,” Vijay said, looking troubled. “Trudy likes Tom, of course. Very much. But I don’t think you could call it love, not for either one of them.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” Dezhurova asked, sealing the coveralls’ Velcro seam.

“Not quite.”

Stacy tapped Vijay on the shoulder with a heavy, blunt finger. “Is this what you psychologists call projection?”

“Projection?”

“You can’t make a commitment to Jamie, so you believe Trudy has the same problem.”

“I can’t make …?” Vijay’s dark eyes flashed wide, then she looked away from Dezhurova.

With a grim smile, Stacy said, “Dex and Jamie are both in the second dome. I think it’s good to keep you away from them. No party.”

And with that she walked out of the infirmary.

Instead of a party, Dezhurova linked all eight of the explorers electronically at dinner. She planted a Picturephone unit at one end of the galley table in Dome One and ordered Jamie to do the same at Dome Two.

“We mark this milestone with unity and comradeship,” she said, sitting at the head of her table and lifting a glass of grapefruit juice.

“Unity and comradeship,” Jamie repeated from the head of his table.

But as he glanced at the three others with him, Jamie knew that the toast was empty. Fuchida suspected that one of their comrades was an insane saboteur. Rodriguez was gloomy because he wanted to be with Trudy, and he knew that when he shuttled back to Dome One, Trudy would be coming here to Dome Two. Tomas probably thinks Stacy is keeping them apart on purpose.

Looking at Dex, Jamie thought that he had changed a good deal over the past year. Especially since we found the building, he told himself. But he’s torn up inside over his father. And deep down, where it counts, he still wants to turn Mars into a profit-making venture.