The Pedestal (21 page)

Nevertheless, I spill the beans, every last one. When I’ve finished, my face is shiny with sweat and unashamed tears. Hollister glances about the group, betraying nothing of his opinion on my narrative—at least, not that I can discern. Yet, almost in unison, they clear their throats and leave me to stew in my own fear.

An hour passes, and then another. My mind crowds with disorganized thought; my NanoPrint can do nothing to channel them, and they bounce around like rubber balls with infinite momentum. Without warning, the door opens again, and Hollister enters bearing unexpected gifts: another bottle of water and a meal-supplement pill, both of which must be of considerable value in space. His face is unbearably impassive. I can’t stand not knowing what’s in store for me—surely the not knowing is even worse than the fate itself.

“Please,” I whisper. “Tell me what’s happening.”

Hollister scrutinizes me with a tired sigh, scrunching his eyebrows indecisively. “Here’s the thing, Wilson: more than one of our group suspects you’re either a terrorist or spy.”

“What?” I gesticulate. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

Hollister laughs dryly and shows me his palms. “You don’t have to convince me on that point; I know who you are.”

My face must look thoroughly confused, because he motions toward my wrist, where my NanoPrint continues to whir but makes no progress in reaching the nexus. “I scanned your implant while you were out cold.”

“Then you know I’m not a spy!”

“No, I don’t believe you are. Truth be told, I think you’re simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Thank goodness
. “Hollister, if you believe me, you’ve got to help me.”

“I wish it was that simple, believe me. But if any part of what you’ve told us is true, we’re no better off than if you were a terrorist. Surely you’ve considered what will happen if it gets out that you’ve been here?”

“I won’t say a word, I swear it!”

“You don’t have to, don’t you see? If you don’t think someone with the resources of Palmer Gunn can reach you here, you’re sadly mistaken. And he’ll burn right through the rest of us to get to you.” I don’t dispute this point, though I don’t really grasp it.

“We’re all bachelors here,” Hollister elaborates, “with the exception of Dr. Wan—though he would sooner die in space than spend a day on Earth with his wife. Nevertheless, we all have loved ones of one form or another back home. If Palmer Gunn has any reason to believe you’ve survived your journey here, he’ll have just as much reason to believe you’ve infiltrated our ranks and won an advocate among us.” He pauses to scratch the back of his head, a fleeting shadow of shame scampering across a pair of wiry eyebrows. “I don’t wish you any harm, Wilson—really, I don’t—but I won’t put my family at risk for your sake. None of us will.”

My body grows numb with dull resignation. I’m about to die, and now that I know it for sure, I begin to wonder about things I’ve taken great pains to keep under the rug.

What do I have to be proud of in my life?

What if there really is a God? What if we’ve all talked ourselves out of the truth?

Before I can give these questions much attention, Hollister gives me an ounce of hope. “You do have one option, however.”

A maniacal guffaw escapes me, fresh tears glazing my vision with a blur of uncertainty. “I’m not a picky man, Hollister.”

He chuckles sympathetically, a dry hack like corn stalks rubbing in the wind. “Somehow, I thought you’d say that.”

He raps sharply on the door with the back of his knuckles. Moments later, another man pops his head into the room. Hollister acknowledges him with a curt nod, and the stranger shuffles inside.

“Kurt Grogan,” he says, approaching me with an outstretched hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

I shake his hand, though I’m thoroughly confused—and just as suspicious.

Hollister notes my wariness and coughs out a brittle laugh. “Mr. Grogan here’s in the market for some help, Wilson.”

I glance at him, raising an eyebrow.

Grogan takes over, nodding appreciatively to Hollister. “I run a research lab, and it just so happens that I need a lab technician.”

My incredulity is rewarded with a crooked grin. “I know—you’re not a certified technician. But the truth is the work isn’t as technical as the title implies. Just follow instructions, and leave the science to the researchers. Pay’s pretty good.”

I smile cautiously, thinking this sounds a little too good to be true. “Okay. So, what’s the catch?”

Grogan shrugs and puts his hands into his pockets. “No catch.” Then, as if it’s only just now occurred to him, he adds: “Of course, the lab’s on Mars.”

I blanch. “Did you say Mars?”

“I did.”

“I can’t go to Mars!” I exclaim, eyes bouncing from Grogan to Hollister and back again.

Grogan cackles. “Sure you can—the way I hear it, you don’t have much choice.”

We leave around dawn. Hollister sees me off with a limp handshake and a tired smile. His colleagues are undoubtedly fast asleep at this hour, but I’m sure they send their best wishes. Sunrise out here is a bit like a flashlight creeping from behind a brick wall—not at all the beautiful terrestrial display I’ve grown up with. The turning of the day is so unfamiliar—and unexpectedly bland—that it seems a little moot. My usual good-morning stretching of limbs and coffee-induced leap into the day certainly isn’t triggered, anyway.

Then again, the lackluster sunrise is truly the least of my concerns; I have to assume I’m fixating on it because I need the distraction. I’m doing the best I can to stave off tears, but it’s hard. My whole body has begun to shake and no amount of effort is enough to control it. I absolutely can’t believe this is happening. I’m not a brave person; I’m afraid of a lot of things, many of which would only embarrass me to confess, yet this is more frightening—and equally exciting, if I’m being honest—than any fate I’ve ever imagined.

Grogan’s ship begins to accelerate with maddening sluggishness, which conflicts with my heightened state of anxiety. I watch the Unified Space Station shrink until it’s a faint twinkle against the Earth’s atmosphere. This alone takes half an hour; at this rate, I’ll need a denture fitting by the time we finally reach Mars; hope they serve dinner at four p.m., too.

“How long will it take?” I ask Grogan. My voice wavers, and though I’d rather not air my terror for all to see, I don’t know this guy well enough to care what he thinks of me.

“Four days. It’ll take a couple of days to reach light speed, and a couple more to decelerate again.”

“Huh.” Nowhere near as long as I feared, yet still a surprisingly lengthy trip. “Why does it take so long?”

“Well, it’s not the ship, if that’s what you mean—this baby can go from zero to light speed and back again in about four hours, but you’d be a quivering pile of gore within the first fifteen minutes. Biological masses can’t handle the g-force, so we have to taper out the acceleration and deceleration over a few days.”

It has never occurred to me that g-force exists in space; I guess I’ve always attributed it to planetary gravity—shows you how little I know about physics. Once upon a time, I flaunted this ignorance like a badge of honor because it struck me as evidence that I wasn’t a complete nerd.

Our velocity might be a little underzealous this early in the trip, but I’m already feeling pretty queasy. Maybe it has less to do with our speed than the realization that I’m headed into an immense blackness as deep as infinity, and that I’ll never see my home again.

Either way, I’ve felt better.

“So tell me more about this job,” I say, perhaps more out of need for distraction than genuine curiosity. Grogan sighs and rubs at a sore spot at the back of his neck.

“Not much to tell, actually. A lot of mindless busywork. We’re employed by an R&D company out of China. PRMC—that stands for Planetary Research and Mining Company—set up shop on Mars a few years ago to develop a proprietary species of medicinal plant. Sounds illogical, I know; but it turns out Mars is an ideal setting for our research.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, for one, the plant has some chemical properties that make it desirable as a toxicant.”

“So you can’t legally grow it on Earth,” I infer.

“Yup. We initially suppressed those qualities in the genome, but they turned out to be necessary for the more desirable medicinal properties to maintain the intensity we’re after.”

“So why Mars? Seems a little out of the way; why not the Unified Space Station, or even the moon?”

“Good question. It would certainly be more convenient, wouldn’t it? Thing is, PRMC already had a base in progress on Mars. About a decade ago, the company was contracted by the Unified Government to gauge the potential for harvesting iron from Mars. Only, halfway through construction of the research facility, the price of iron dropped in half back on Earth, and the government suddenly pulled out.”

“Leaving your company holding the bag?”

“Exactly. A blessing in disguise, if you asked me. Mars’s iron content is limited to its surface, anyway, so it was a short-lived venture at best. A few years, and the whole planet would’ve been stripped.”

“Why only the surface?”

“Well, unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have an iron core.”

Just like everything else I’ve heard today, this is news to me. I hope I’m not accentuating my ignorance with questions that any ninth-grader can undoubtedly answer, because they’re coming either way. “Okay, so where’d the surface iron come from?”

Grogan takes a deep breath. “Asteroids,” he replies. His expression is patient, though an undertone of irritation is beginning to leak from the seams. For the moment, he’s taking it all in stride, but I figure it won’t be long before he blows a gasket. “The generally accepted theory is that enough of them have blasted Mars over time that the surface has become impregnated with bits of iron shrapnel. The planet’s atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, but there are traces of ice in the soil. They’re apparently enough to allow oxidation, hence the red surface.”

“Huh,” I mutter in comment, feeling more intellectually outclassed than I have in days. “So that venture failed before it could even take off, and PRMC figured, why waste a half-built facility?”

“That about sums it up. It sounds dramatic, I know, but that kind of stuff happens every day in the industrial sector. You gotta roll with the punches to stay afloat, and that means making tough decisions and finding creative ways to make money with what you’ve got.”

I have a million more questions, now that my interest is engaged, but I figure they’ll only draw more attention to my stupidity. I suspect most will resolve themselves soon enough, if I just give them a chance. One, on the other hand, has wormed its way to my tongue, and I’d be remiss to let it die there, unspoken. I clear my throat, aware that I’m about to broach what is likely to be a sensitive subject.

“So, uh, who am I replacing?”

Grogan blinks, the corners of his mouth bending into a suspicious frown. His eyes narrow a tinge, and I know my hunch was dead on. “What makes you think you’re replacing anyone?”

“Just an educated guess; I figure if you were recruiting under any other circumstances, you’d need to be a lot pickier about your prospects.”

Grogan smiles, cheeks flushing like I’ve just taken his queen with my knight.

“His name was Lawrence Montague; most of us just called him Monty. He was a good guy.” He looks away.

“What happened to him?”

For a moment, Grogan doesn’t respond. Shaking his head, he allows his gaze drop to the floor, where it lingers for an uncomfortable five count. When he looks at me again, his eyes are hard, distant. “Mars isn’t an easy place to live, Wilson. I hope I haven’t oversold the place; it’s cold, dirty, and completely unforgiving. You let your guard down for a second, and you’re dead.”

“Is that what happened to Montague? He let his guard down and was killed?”

“I’ve really said all I can about him, Wilson. I’m really not permitted to discuss it. Suffice to say that ours is a dangerous job. If you’re careful, you’ll be fine. If not, you’ll be putting your life—and the lives of your coworkers—in jeopardy.”