Mars (70 page)

He kept plodding along, one foot after the other. One step at a time. I can outwalk any mule deer in these mountains. I can walk all the way around Mars if I have to. Show me how, Grandfather. Lead me.

Jamie remembered the fetish, stuck in his coverall pocket. He wished he could worm his arm free and reach into the pocket for it. He knew its power would warm him, bring him strength.

The cable suddenly pulled taut, yanking Jamie off his feet. He toppled over backward and hit the ground with a thud.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

“What?”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Vosnesensky in one ear, Joanna in the other.

“Cable’s stuck,” Jamie said. He struggled up to his knees, tugged on the cable. “Christ, it feels as if …” he had to take a gulping breath “… as if the winch motor’s frozen.”

“That should not happen,” Vosnesensky snapped.

“Right. Tell me.” Jamie pulled on the cable again, leaning his full weight against it. It gave a little, stuck momentarily, then suddenly freed up. He staggered backward ludicrously, arms flailing to regain his balance, a string of obscenities he had not used since undergraduate days flowing from him.

“Jamie!” Joanna’s voice was pitched high with anxiety, almost a scream.

“Okay … I’m okay …,” he gasped. “It worked loose again.”

“The motor of the winch is self-heating,” Vosnesensky said, as if to prove that what had happened had not happened.

“Right,” said Jamie. He looked down at the ground to get his bearings, then started out again, keeping the sand a dozen paces to his right.

Sure, the motor’s self-heating. Down to what temperature? Fifty below? A hundred below? A hundred fifty? Jamie did not want to look at his thermometer again. The numbers would be meaningless. It was cold. He could feel his life warmth seeping out into the thin keening night air. Numbers. Numb. Cold and freezing and numb.

His feet felt as if they no longer belonged to him. Cold and numb. He kept plodding forward; at least his legs obeyed the dogged commands of his brain. He leaned into the harness, dragging the cable behind him. If the winch motor goes I’m really stuck. Damned cable weighs too much for me to drag all the way without a motor helping me.

He heard a humming sound in his earphones, almost rhythmic, droning.

“What’s … that?”

“‘The Song of the Volga Boatmen,’” Vosnesensky’s voice answered solemnly out of the darkness. “It has been used for ages by men pulling barges up the Volga river. I thought it would help you.”

“Sounds like … a funeral dirge.”

Vosnesensky stopped his humming. “If you do not appreciate my music, then let me hear you speak. I want to hear you.”

“No breath for talking.”

“Make breath! I want to know that you are conscious and making progress.”

“You can hear my gasping, can’t you?”

“Yes, but I—wait! I can see your light! Jamie, you are getting close enough for me to see the light from your helmet lamp! Where are those binoculars? Yes! It is your helmet lamp! You are getting closer!”

Vosnesensky was being ridiculous. What other light could he possibly see out on this frozen empty slope?

“Keep moving, Jamie.” Tony Reed’s voice. “Don’t stop now.”

“Don’t stop now,” repeated Vosnesensky, with even more fervor in his voice.

“What’re you … going to do … if I stop? Come out … after me?”

“If both my legs worked,” Ivshenko said, “I would gladly come out to greet you.”

Jamie shook his head, knowing that they could not see his gesture even if they were standing beside him in the full warm light of noon. Ivshenko can’t walk and Mikhail can’t even stand up, from what he had heard.

“Jamie,” Joanna called, “talk to me, please. Tell me about your home in New Mexico. I have never been there.”

“Not my home. I don’t have … any home. Not in New Mexico … not anywhere. Except here. Maybe here. Mars is my home.”

“Tell me what we will do once we return to Earth, then,” she said.

“I’ll tell you about Coyote.”

“Coyote?”

“The trickster. Always causing trouble.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Tell me.”

“You know … the patterns of the stars? The constellations?”

No answer. Jamie kept plodding forward, panting, until he heard Joanna in his earphones. “Go on.”

“First Man and First Woman … put the stars in their places,” he said. “They had … all the stars … in a blanket. Wanted to put them … in the right places … in the sky. Harmony is beauty. Order and … harmony.”

The cable was sticking again; it was harder to pull it along. Jamie leaned all his weight into the harness.

“What happened then?” Joanna asked.

“Old Coyote came by … saw what they were doing. He grabbed … the blanket … swung it around and around … then he hurled the whole blanket … full of stars … into the sky. That’s … what made … the Milky Way.”

“Oh!” said Joanna.

“Coyote ruined … the harmony of the sky. He’s always … messing things up.”

“A cosmological myth,” Vosnesensky said.

“Kind of.” Jamie wondered how Coyote had tricked Man
Maker into making Mars so cold. So utterly damnably cold. Then he realized that Coyote had tricked him, had tricked all of them, into coming to this dead world. This world of death.

But it’s not dead, a voice in his mind said. You found life here.

Jamie blinked sweat from his eyes. Strange to find life on a world where we’re all going to die, he thought. Strange to be sweating while you’re freezing to death.

He staggered forward another few steps, then sank to his knees. His legs refused to move any farther. His arms felt as if encased in ice. Far in the distance he could see the tiny running lights of Vosnesensky’s rover. Close enough to see. Close enough to reach.

Jamie tried to push himself to his feet, but he hadn’t the strength to do it. Cold freezing numb. He crawled on his hands and knees, hearing the voice of his first mission instructor warning, “Even the smallest tear in your gloves, the tiniest leak in a seal or a joint, will kill you within minutes out on the surface of Mars.”

Totally spent, he sprawled on the hard rocky ground. With a last supreme effort he managed to turn himself on his side and tried to struggle up into a sitting position.

He failed.

Lying on his side, half propped up by the bulky backpack and harness, Jamie looked up at the cold solemn stars glittering in the darkness. He thought he saw Coyote up there, laughing next to the Hunter.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t go … any farther. I’m done …”

“Jamie!” Joanna shrieked. “You must go on! You
must
! For me! For all of us! Please!”

“I tried …” The pain was ebbing away. His entire body was becoming numb, floating in nothingness like the Buddhist nirvana.

He heard Joanna sobbing and the muttering of voices in his earphones.

“Listen …,” he said, his voice sounding weak, far away, even to himself. “Tell them … it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter … that I died. That all of us die. Everyone dies. Not important. We’ve learned so much … and there’s so much more … to find out.”

“You must not die, Jamie! You must not!”

He felt no pain. A profound sense of acceptance spread over him, as if he had always been meant to be at this place. He remembered his grandfather telling him of Chief Seattle, who had said long ago that the Earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the Earth. We belong to Mars, too, Jamie realized. Now we do. Now we do. And to the sun and all the worlds, all the stars. That’s why we want to see it all, explore it all. It’s our heritage. Our birthright. It’s worth dying for.

I understand, he said silently, marveling at the clarity of his vision. Finally I understand who I am.

The whole universe of stars hung up in the darkly glittering night sky and gazed down at the small frail figure of a man lying helpless and alone on the frozen windswept slope of an ancient avalanche on Mars.

From far, far away he heard voices, but they meant nothing to him. They faded into the silence of eternity.

He understood now that Man Maker and Life Taker are one and the same, just two different aspects of the single creator. I’m ready, Jamie said silently. I’ve done the best I could. Now I’m ready for you. He heard Coyote laughing in the crystal darkness of the frozen night.

Something was droning faintly in his ears. It was all dark, he could see nothing. His body felt numb, encased in ice. But there was that soft humming sound coming from somewhere.

His eyes were gummy. Too tired even to try raising his head or moving his arms, Jamie used every atom of his willpower to force his eyes open. A blurred confusion of grays swam before him. He blinked several times. It was the curved ceiling of the rover. The hum was the steady background throb of electrical power. He was lying on his back on one of the bunks. A bottom bunk, he saw, still blinking, focusing. The top bunk was pulled up and locked into its stowed position.

Vosnesensky appeared over him, his beefy face strangely gentle, tender. His wrinkled green coveralls looked too big for him, as if he had lost weight.

Jamie tried to say something but his throat was too dry. All that came out was a cracked groan.

“Rest, my friend,” Vosnesensky whispered. “Do not try to exert yourself. Here …”

The Russian lifted Jamie’s head and brought a steaming mug to his lips. “Easy … just a sip.”

It felt scalding hot on Jamie’s tongue. And good. Hot tea, heavily laced with lemon concentrate. He took several sips. It felt warm all the way down.

Vosnesensky laid Jamie’s head back down softly on the bunk, then looked at him silently with dark solemn eyes. Jamie realized the Russian was sitting on the opposite bunk, not standing. From up in the cockpit he heard Ivshenko’s voice speaking in English: reporting to the dome, or maybe straight to Dr. Li.

“You went out,” Jamie croaked. “You went out and got me.”

The Russian shook his head. “Reed went out.”

“Tony? Tony brought me in?”

Vosnesensky nodded.

Jamie lay there, realizing that they had pulled him out of his hard suit. He wormed a hand into the pocket where the bear fetish was; it felt solid, warm, comforting. Tony went out and got me, he said to himself. Tony’s not trained for EVA, but he went outside in the dark and dragged me in.

He heard the clumping thumps of boots and then Reed came into his vision, still encased in his yellow hard suit, except for the helmet. He looked like a man at an amusement arcade posing behind a cardboard cutout figure.

“You’re very lucky, James,” the Englishman said softly. “No frostbite. We got you in time.”

“You saved my life.”

Reed’s face flushed slightly. “Couldn’t let you freeze out there, could we?”

“Our physician has become a hero,” Vosnesensky said. But he did not smile.

“It took a lot of guts to go out into the night,” said Jamie. “Mars has given you courage.”

Reed glanced at Vosnesensky. “No heroics. Mikhail Andreivitch would have strangled me if I hadn’t gone out,” he said. “I was saving my own life, actually.”

“I don’t believe that. It took a lot of courage. A coward would have stayed in here no matter how Mikhail threatened.”

“You were practically here,” Reed said. “You collapsed less than a couple of hundred meters from the rover. We couldn’t sit here and let you die. That would have killed the other three in your group, as well, wouldn’t it?”

“But still …”

Vosnesensky scowled down at Jamie. “After what you did, in your condition, our physician’s little journey is insignificant.”

Jamie smiled back at him. “Except for one small detail—without that little journey everything I did would have meant nothing at all.”

Reed suddenly looked terribly uncomfortable. Vosnesensky
shrugged and slowly pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the metal supports of the upper bunk.

“You should try to sleep,” Vosnesensky said.

“Yes,” Reed agreed swiftly. “Rest. You’ve earned it.”

“Dmitri is in contact with Connors and the women. Once the sun comes up I will ride the cable to their vehicle and help them into their suits. Then we will winch them across to us.”

Jamie nodded, his eyes already closing.

“Good,” he said. “Good.”

His last conscious thought was that Reed seemed a reluctant hero. God knows what Mikhail threatened him with. But Tony came through. That’s the important thing. Tony came through when it counted.

The chief controller sat behind his desk, alone in his Kaliningrad office except for the head of the British contingent. Outside the room’s one window a cold, dreary rain was spattering, the first taste of autumn and grim winter.

The display screen built into the paneled wall had just turned off. For the past fifteen minutes the two men had watched and listened to the tape of the latest report from Dr. Li. The expedition commander had read from a prepared script and kept his face an immobile mask that revealed no emotion whatever.

Now the screen had gone blank. Li’s tape was finished. The snow outside blanketed the usual noises from the street. The office was absolutely silent.

The chief controller tugged absently at his ragged Vandyke. “Well,” he said in English, “what do you think?”

The head of the British team for the Mars Project was a Scottish engineer who had risen through the technical ranks to become an administrator. He was a slightly built man with graying dark hair and a crafty look in his eyes even when he was relaxing socially.

“It’s a serious blow,” he said. “The physician should have caught the symptoms earlier and taken steps to avert the problem.”

“He found the answer, finally,” said the chief controller.

“Aye, but he came close to killing them all.”

The chief controller muttered, “How can we keep the media from finding out about this?”

“You cannot,” the Scot said flatly. “Not with Brumado talking to all those reporters in Houston.”

“Then we will have to keep this information from Brumado.”

“Are you prepared to keep the entire team incommunicado for the rest of the mission? Be reasonable, man. It cannot be done.”