The Best of Joe Haldeman (76 page)

I thought of an old bad joke: Politicians cover their mistakes with money; cooks cover their mistakes with mayonnaise; doctors cover theirs with dirt. I could be the first person ever buried on Mars, what an honor.

“Wait,” I said. “Maybe
they
could help.”

“The Earth doctors? Sure—”

“No! I mean the aliens.”

“Honey, they couldn’t—”

“They fixed my ankle just like that, didn’t they?”

“Well, evidently they did. But that’s sort of a mechanical thing. They wouldn’t have to know any internal medicine...”

“But it wasn’t medicine at all, not like we know it. Those big lenses, the smoking herbs. It was kind of mumbo-jumbo, but it worked!”

There was one loud rap on the door, and Dr. Jefferson opened it and stepped inside, looking agitated. “Laura, Carmen—things have gone from bad to worse. The Parienza kids started coughing blood; they’ve got it. So I put my boy through the MRI, and he’s got a mass in one of his lungs, too.

“Look, I have to operate on the Parienzas first; they’re young and this is hitting them harder...”

“That’s okay,” I said. By all means, get some practice on someone else first.

“Laura, I want you to assist me in the surgery along with Selene.” Dr. Milius. “So far, this is only infecting the children. If it gets into the general population, if
I
get it—”

“Alf! I’m not a surgeon—I’m not even a doctor!”

“If Selene and I get this and die, you are a doctor. You are
the
doctor. You at least know how to use a scalpel.”

“Cutting up animals that are already dead!”

“Just...calm down. The machine’s not that complicated. It’s a standard waldo interface, and you have real-time MRI to show you where you’re going.”

“Can you hear yourself talking, Alphonzo? I’m just a biologist.”

There was a long moment of silence while he looked at her. “Just come and pay attention. You might have to do Carmen.”

“All right,” Mother said. She looked grim. “Now?”

He nodded. “Selene’s preparing them. I’m going to operate on Murray while she watches and assists; then she’ll do Roberta while I observe. Maybe an hour and a half each.”

“What can I do?” I said.

“Just stay put and try to rest,” he said. “We’ll get to you in three or four hours. Don’t worry...you won’t feel anything.” Then he and mother were gone.

Won’t feel anything? I was already feeling pretty crappy. I get pissed off and go for a walk and bring back the Plague from Outer Space?

I touched the window and said “Window outside.” It was almost completely dark, just a faint line of red showing the horizon. The dust storm was over.

The whole plan crystallized then. I guess I’d been thinking of parts of it since I knew I’d be alone for a while.

I just zipped up my skinsuit and walked. The main corridor was almost deserted, people running along on urgent errands. Nobody was thinking of going outside—no one but me.

If the aliens had had a picture of me leaving the base at two in the morning, before, then they probably were watching us all the time. I could signal them. Send a message to Red.

I searched around for pencil to disable the airlock buzzer. Even while I was doing it, I wondered whether I was acting sanely. Was I just trying to escape being operated on? Mother used to say “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to do other than sit around and watch things go from bad to worse.

If the aliens were watching, I could make Red understand how serious it was. Whether he and Green could do anything, I didn’t know. But what else was there? Things were happening too fast.

I didn’t run into anyone until I was almost there. Then I nearly collided with Card as he stepped out of the Pod A bathroom.

“What you doing over here?” he said. “I thought you were supposed to be in sick bay.”

“No, I’m just—” Of course I started coughing. “Let me by, all right?”

“No! What are you up to?”

“Look, microbe. I don’t have time to explain.” I pushed by him. “Every second counts.”

“You’re going outside again! What are you, crazy?”

“Look, look, look—for once in your life, don’t be a…” I had a moment of desperate inspiration, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Card, listen. I need you. You have to trust me.”

“What, this is about your crazy Martian story?”

“I can prove it’s not crazy, but you have to come help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“Just suit up and step outside with me. I think they’ll come if I signal them, and they might be able to help us.”

He was hesitant. I knew he only half believed me—but at least he did half believe me. “What? What do you want me to do outside?”

“I just want you to stand in the door, so the airlock can’t close. That way no grown-up can come out and froog the deal.”

That did make him smile. “So what you want is for me to be in as deep shit as you are.”

“Exactly! Are you up for it?”

“You are so easy to see through, you know? You could be a window.”

“Yeah, yeah. Are you with me?”

He glanced toward the changing room, and then back down the hall. “Let’s go.”

We must have gotten me into my suit in ninety seconds flat. It took him an extra minute because he had to strip and wiggle into the skinsuit first. I kept my eye on the changing room door, but I didn’t have any idea what I would say if someone walked in. We’re playing doctor?

My faceplate was still spattered with dried blood, which was part of the vague plan: I assumed they would know that the blood meant trouble, and their bug camera, or whatever it was, would be on me as soon as I stepped outside. I had a powerful flashlight, and would turn that on my face, with no other lights. Then wave my arms, jump around, whatever.

We rushed through the safety check and I put two fresh oxygen bottles into the dog I’d bashed up. Disabled the buzzer, and we crowded into the airlock, closed it and cycled it.

We’d agreed not to use the radio. Card signaled for me to touch helmets. “How long?”

“An hour, anyhow.” I could walk past Telegraph Hill by then.

“Okay. Watch where you step, clumsy.” I hit his arm.

The door opened and I stepped out into the darkness. Card put one foot out on the sand and leaned back against the door. He pantomimed looking at his watch.

I closed my eyes and pointed the light at my face. Bright red through my eyelids; I knew I’d be dazzled blind for a while after I stopped. So after I’d given them a minute of the bloody faceplate I just stood in one place and shined the light out over the plain, waving it around in fast circles, which I hoped would mean “Help!”

I wasn’t sure how long it had taken Red to bring me from their habitat level to the cave where he was parked, and then on to here. Maybe two hours? I hadn’t been tracking too well. Without a dust storm it might be faster. I pulled on the dog and headed toward the right of Telegraph Hill.

The last thing I expected to happen was this: I hadn’t walked twenty yards when Red came zooming up on his weird vehicle and stopped in a great spray of dust.

Card broke radio silence with a justifiable
“Holy shit!”

Red helped me put the dog on one side and I got into the other and we were off. I looked back and waved at Card, and he waved back. The base shrank really fast and slipped under the horizon.

I looked forward for a moment and then turned away. It was just a little too scary, screaming along a few inches over the ground, missing boulders by a hair. The steering must have been automatic. Or maybe Red had inhuman reflexes. Nothing else about him was all that human.

Except the need to come back and help. He must have been waiting nearby.

It seemed no more than ten or twelve minutes before the thing slowed down and drifted into the slanted cave I remembered. Maybe he had taken a roundabout way before, to hide the fact that they were so close.

We got out the dog and I followed him back down the way we had come a couple of days before. I had to stop twice with coughing fits, and by the time we got to the place where he shed his Mars suit, there was a scary amount of blood.

An odd thing to think, but I wondered whether he would take my body back if I died here. Why should I care?

We went on down, and at the level where the lake was visible, Green was waiting, along with two small ones dressed in white. We went together down to the dark floor and followed blue lines back to what seemed to be the same hospital room where I’d first awakened after the accident.

I slumped down on the pillow, feeling completely drained and about to barf. I unshipped my helmet and took a cautious breath. It smelled like a cold mushroom farm, exactly what I expected.

Red handed me a glass of water and I took it gratefully. Then he picked up my helmet with his two large arms and did a curiously human thing with a small one: he wiped a bit of blood off the inside with one finger, and then lifted it to his mouth to taste it.

“Wait!” I said. “That could be poison to you!”

He set the helmet down. “How nice of you to be concerned,” he said, in a voice like a British cube actor.

I just shook my head. After a few seconds I was able to say “What?”

“Many of us can speak English,” Green said, “or other of your languages. We’ve been listening to your radio, television, and cube for two hundred years.”

“But...before...you...”

“That was to protect ourselves,” Red said. “When we saw you had hurt yourself and I had to bring you here, it was decided that no one would speak a human language in your presence. We are not ready to make contact with humans. You are a dangerous violent race that tends to destroy what it doesn’t understand.”

“Not all of us,” I said.

“We know that. We were considering various courses of action when we found out you were ill.”

“We monitor your colony’s communications with Earth,” one of the white ones said, “and saw immediately what was happening to you. We all have that breathing fungus soon after we’re born. But with us it isn’t serious. We have an herb that cures it permanently.”

“So...you can fix it?”

Red spread out all four hands. “We are so different from you, in chemistry and biology. The treatment might help you. It might kill you.”

“But this crap is sure to kill me if we don’t do anything!”

The other white-clad one spoke up. “We don’t know. I am called Rezlan, and I am...of a class that studies your people. A scientist, or philosopher.

“The fungus would certainly kill you if it continued to grow. It would fill up your lungs and you couldn’t breathe. But we don’t know; it never happens to us. Your body may learn to adapt to it, and it would be... illegal? Immoral, improper...for us to experiment on you. If you were to die...I don’t know how to say it. Impossible.”

“The cure for your ankle was different,” Green said. “There was no risk to your life.”

I coughed and stared at the spatter of blood on my palm. “But if you don’t treat me, and I die? Won’t that be the same thing?”

All four of them made a strange buzzing sound. Red patted my shoulder. “Carmen, that’s a wonderful joke. ‘The same thing.’” He buzzed again, and so did the others.

“Wait,” I said, “I’m going to
die
and it’s funny?”

“No no no,” Green said. “Dying itself isn’t funny.” Red put his large hands on his potato head and waggled it back and forth, and the others buzzed.

Red tapped his head three times, which set them off again. A natural comedian. “If you have to explain a joke, it isn’t funny.”

I started to cry, and he took my hand in his small scaly one and patted it. “We are so different. What is funny...is how we here are caught. We don’t have a choice. We have to treat you even though we don’t know what the outcome will be.” He buzzed softly. “But that’s not funny to you.”

“No!”
I tried not to wail. “I can see this part. There’s a paradox. You might kill me, trying to help me.”

“And that’s not funny to you?”

“No, not really. Not at all, really.”

“Would it be funny if it was somebody else?”

“Funny?
No!”

“What if it was your worst enemy. Would that make you smile?”

“No. I don’t have any enemies that bad.”

He said something that made the others buzz. I gritted my teeth and tried not to cry. My whole chest hurt, like both lungs held a burning ton of crud, and here I was trying not to barf in front of a bunch of potato-head aliens. “Red. Even if I don’t get the joke. Could you do the treatment before I foogly die?”

“Oh, Carmen. It’s being prepared. This is...it’s a way of dealing with difficult things. We joke. You would say laughing instead of crying.” He turned around, evidently looking back the way we had come, though it’s hard to tell which way a potato is looking. “It is taking too long, which is part of why we have to laugh. When we have children, it’s all at one time, and so they all need the treatment at the same time, a few hundred days later, after they bud. We’re trying to grow...it’s like trying to find a vegetable out of season? We have to make it grow when it doesn’t want to. And make enough for the other younglings in your colony.”