Mars (25 page)

“Life has spread itself all across the Earth,” Ilona replied. “Down in the deepest ocean trenches there is life. The air teems with microorganisms, even up in the stratosphere there are yeast molds floating about. Even in the most barren Antarctic deserts there are rocks that hold colonies of lichens just below their surfaces.”

“And Mars looks barren.”

“Mars
is
barren. The probes have found nothing in the air. There is no liquid water. The soil is so loaded with super-oxides it’s like an intense bleach; no living organism could survive in it.”

“Some of the rocks bear organic chemicals,” Jamie reminded her.

“But if life existed on Mars it would not be confined to one place!” Ilona’s husky voice was almost pleading now. “If there were a Martian equivalent of Gaia we would see life everywhere we looked, just as we do on Earth.”

Stubbornly Jamie shook his head. “But Earth is warmer,
Earth has liquid water everywhere you look, it’s
easy
for life to grow and spread on Earth. Mars isn’t that rich. Life would have a tougher time there.”

Ilona shook her head too. “No, I don’t believe that’s the reason why Mars looks so bleak. The planet is truly barren. There is no life there and there probably never was. I have wasted the past three years of my life. Sending anyone involved in biology was a mistake.”

She stood there framed by the oblong window, the slowly circling stars behind her. Ilona no longer looked haughty or regal. She looked depressed, disheartened.

Jamie shrugged and muttered, “I don’t think you can give up before you’ve even started. No matter what you believe you can’t really say anything definite until you’ve gotten there and looked for yourself. Mars probably has a few surprises in store for you. For all of us.”

“Perhaps.” Ilona sighed again. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “It’s always so cold in here! I should have worn my thermal underwear.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have a sweater or jacket …”

“It’s my own fault,” she said. “I acted on impulse, coming here in just these coveralls.”

Jamie grinned at her. “That’s against the rules. How many times has Vosnesensky drilled it into us: think ten times before you do anything.”

“Vosnesensky.” She growled the name, like a lioness snarling.

“What’s wrong with Mikhail?” Jamie asked. “He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy to me.”

“He is a Russian.”

“So what?”

“Half my family was murdered by Russians in nineteen fifty-six. My grandmother barely escaped the country. My grandfather was hanged. As if he were a criminal, the Russians hanged him.”

“That wasn’t Vosnesensky’s fault. Russia’s changed a lot since then. So has Hungary. It all happened half a century ago.”

“It’s easy for you Americans to forgive and forget. Not so easy for me and my people.”

Jamie did not know what to say. There’s nothing I can say, he realized. For several moments they stood facing each
other while the stars arced around them and the background buzz of electrical equipment hummed its faint note like a distant chorus of Tibetan lamas droning a mantra.

Ilona shuddered. “It is cold up here.” She moved closer to Jamie, pressed against him.

“We could go back,” Jamie said. Yet he slid one arm around her waist. It seemed the right thing to do.

“No, not yet. I have been worried about you,” said Ilona. Her voice was low, sensuous. Her face so close to Jamie’s that he could smell the faint perfume in her honey-blonde hair.

“Worried about me?”

“You seem … withdrawn. Lonely.”

He made half a shrug. “We’re a long way from home.”

“You avoid us.”

“Avoid you?” Jamie felt stupid repeating her words, but she was catching him unprepared.

“Joanna and me. Katrin. You avoid us. Didn’t you realize that?”

“We’re not supposed to get emotionally involved with one another.”

“Another rule, I know. But does that mean you can’t sit next to us at meals? I’ve been watching you very carefully. You deliberately stay as far from us as you can.”

A hundred thoughts raced through Jamie’s mind. He muttered, “Lead us not into temptation.”

“Are you in love with Joanna?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Of course not,” Ilona mimicked, smiling at him. “The rules forbid us to fail in love, don’t they.”

“Not just the rules,” Jamie replied.

“You don’t want to get involved emotionally, is that it?”

He nodded, thinking of Edith back in Houston, wondering suddenly where she was, who she was with now.

Ilona wrapped her arms around Jamie’s neck. “When is the last time you made love?”

“What? I don’t think …”

“I’ll wager you haven’t made love since the last time you went home to California, have you?”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Certainly not since we arrived at the assembly station. Not since then.”

Jamie’s mind was telling him to disengage from her and get away but his arms were clasping Ilona close to him, holding her tightly against his body. Their lips were almost touching.

“I want to make love with you, Jamie. Right here and now. I want to make love with my strong silent friend here among the stars. I want your strength, your warmth.”

She kissed him fiercely, then whispered, “The rules say nothing against fucking, Jamie. Fuck me, red man, fuck me.”

Slowly, languidly, almost like a man hypnotized, Jamie pulled open the front of Ilona’s coveralls; the Velcro seam split with the same noise as ripping fabric. As if in a dream he watched himself slide the garment over her shoulders and down her long arms. She wore nothing at all beneath the coveralls. The skin of her bare shoulders and slight breasts looked milky white in the starlight. All the long months of denial exploded in a sudden frenzy as Jamie pulled Ilona to the hard metal flooring, impervious to the cold, uncaring about Mars or Gaia or anything else except this eager tigress. The stars wheeled impassively about them.

The next morning at breakfast Jamie felt terribly embarrassed. He could not face Joanna at all, and found that it was difficult for him even to look into Ilona’s face. She smiled at him, though, from across the narrow wardroom table as he sat down with his tray between Tony Reed and Tadeusz Sliwa, the golden-haired Polish backup biochemist.

Jamie hurried through his breakfast and headed quickly up toward the communications console, where he intended to contact the growing library at Houston and bury himself in reading more details about the odd, oxygen-rich chemistry of the soil of Mars.

“You seem to be in a hurry.”

It was Tony Reed, striding up the narrow passageway behind him.

“I’ve got some reading to do,” Jamie said.

“Afraid I have to conduct some official business with you, my friend.”

Jamie stopped and turned around to face Reed. “Official business?”

“As the ship’s resident physician, yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Please come with me to my office,” said Reed, smiling crookedly.

The ship’s infirmary was situated just behind the exercise room. It was a cubicle no larger than any of the individual quarters for the personnel, cramped and crowded even with only two people in it.

Reed slid the accordion-fold door shut and carefully latched it in place. Jamie could hear the groaning squeal of the weight machine from the other side of the partition and the puffing grunts of whoever was working out with it.

“We missed you yesterday afternoon,” Tony said, a sly grin on his face.

“I needed some privacy,” he said.

“So did Ilona, apparently.”

Reed squeezed past Jamie and sat on the edge of the built-in desk, folding his arms across his chest. He nodded toward the stool resting beside the locked medicine cabinet.

Jamie remained standing. He wondered who might be in the exercise room next door and how much he could hear through the thin partition wall.

Reed was practically leering. “You seemed to disappear right after she did. And then you both returned to us at about the same time.”

“Hoffman’s had a nervous breakdown,” Jamie said. “I was pretty upset by the news.”

“So you consoled yourself by taking your turn with our in-house sexual therapist.”

“My turn …?” Jamie’s insides went hollow, as if he had suddenly become weightless.

The grin on Tony’s face was positively evil. “Didn’t you know? Ilona’s decided to have her fun with each of the males aboard. Except for Vosnesensky and Ivshenko, of course. She hates the Russkies. I think she’s doing what she’s doing merely to drive our poor Russian leader and his backup insane with jealousy. It might work, too.”

Jamie felt as if he were gasping for air.

“Now then.” Reed cleared his throat and put on a more serious, professional face? “There’s the matter of your sexual Conduct.”

Jamie frowned. “
My
sexual conduct?”

“I am required to give you standard lecture number double-ought one: sexual responsibility and its consequences.” The grin had come back to Reed’s face.

“Do you give this lecture to Ilona, too?”

“Yes, of course.” He was smirking. “With some variations, of course.”

“Every time?”

“Every time I can.”

Jamie glowered at the Englishman.

“Seriously, James, I must warn you that if your sexual conduct threatens to create a problem aboard ship, it is my duty to report to Dr. Li—and to take certain steps.”

“Make me take saltpeter?”

“Oh, we have much better stuff than saltpeter,” Reed said. “Pharmacology has come a long way. The only trouble is, whatever suppressant we dose you with will shrink your gonads.”

“Shrink …!”

“Can’t be helped. They’ll grow back to normal once the medication is stopped, of course. We won’t castrate you, not even chemically.”

Jamie asked, “What if I won’t take the medication—assuming I’m going to be such a lecher that you’ll want to dose me.”

“Oh, you’ll take it, one way or the other. I can always doctor your meals, you know. Or spike the drinking water. Just as I would do if you refused to take your vitamin supplements. It wouldn’t be difficult.”

Jamie heard himself mutter, “Son of a bitch.”

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to prevent, actually,” said Reed. Then he laughed out loud at his own little joke.

“I wish these bunks were just a bit wider.”

“You don’t like being so close?”

“My arm’s fallen asleep.”

“As long as nothing else on you has gone asleep.”

“So what did you think of our wild Indian?”

“He was quite wild, once he got started.”

“As good as I?”

She laughed softly. “As a famous film star once said, ‘Goodness had nothing to do with it.’”

“That completes the roster, doesn’t it? Except for the Russkies.”

“I will not let them touch me!”

“Pity. Poor Mikhail Andreivitch looks as if he’ll explode any day now.”

“Let him. I don’t care.”

“And Ivshenko seems like a jolly chap. Perhaps if I accompanied you we could make a threesome out of it.”

“You’re already complaining about the bunks being too narrow.”

“Um, yes, there is that.”

“I will not approach the Russians. Let them stew in their own juices.”

“But otherwise …”

“Waterman was the last holdout.”

“And now he’s fallen.”

“What about you? How successful have you been?”

“Actually, Katrin and I had a little workout in the gymnasium again.”

“But what about Joanna?”

A long silence.

“Well?”

“One has to be very circumspect with Joanna, you know. I believe she’s still a virgin.”

“Only three women on the ship and you’ve failed with one of them.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I’ve succeeded with every one of the men now.”

“Except the Russians.”

“Pah!
You
fuck the Russians if you’re so worried about them.”

“Hardly! It’s little Joanna I want.”

“Then you’re going to have to try harder, aren’t you?”

“You mean this isn’t hard enough to suit you?”

“Hmm … well … I suppose it will do for now.”

Hours later, alone and still sleepless, Tony Reed told himself that it was all a game, a pleasant way to pass the boring weeks while they were all packed together inside the spacecraft. We’re harming no one. Except perhaps the Russians, but that’s not my doing. Perhaps Katrin is accommodating them, a little Russo-German friendship pact.

He turned in the bunk, trying to find a more comfortable position. It’s only a game, a delightful game. Yet a deeper voice in his mind reminded him that soldiers on their way to battle play a similar game. Fear is the spur, the voice said to Tony. You go through the motions of creating life because you are so terrified of impending death.

Nonsense, Tony replied to his inner voice. We’re perfectly safe inside this spacecraft. We’re protected by the work of the best minds in the world. There is a certain element of risk, of course. That’s what makes it all so interesting.

The voice was not placated. Death is waiting a mere few centimeters from you, on the other side of this spacecraft’s thin metal skin. Play your game, try to get the fear out of your mind or expiate it with bursts of lovemaking. But death is waiting for us all, and we are flying toward it.

Strangely, Jamie felt more relaxed and free cooped up in the cramped rover with Vosnesensky than he had at their base camp’s dome.

The rover was a segmented trio of aluminum cylindrical canisters, each of them mounted on spindly, springy wheels that trundled across the sandy, rock-strewn surface of Mars. One of the cylindrical segments held a fuel tank big enough to allow the rover to remain out in the field for a week or more. The middle segment held equipment and supplies. Up front, the largest of the three cylindrical canisters was pressurized like a spacecraft so that humans could live inside it in shirtsleeves. There was a bulbous plastiglass cockpit at its front end and an airlock at its rear, where it linked with the second segment.

The rover was designed to carry four comfortably, and could squeeze in twice that many in an emergency. Jamie had expected to feel tense, alone with Vosnesensky; two men from very different backgrounds, almost entirely different worlds. Yet their first day in the rover went smoothly enough, even though they hardly spoke to one another.