Moving Mars (8 page)

You disagree with me.

Maybe, I said. But I want to hear what you have to say.

Charless misery became obvious in the set of his jaw, drawn in defensively toward his neck, and the way he clenched his hands. All right, he said. I could sense him giving up, assuming I was out of his reach, and that added to my irritation. Such presumption!

What kind of leader would Sean be?

A tyrant, Charles said softly. Not a very good one. I dont think he has what it takes. Not enough charm at the right time, and he cant keep his feelings under control.

My anger evaporated. It was the strangest feeling; I agreed with Charles. That was the monstrousness I was trying to understand.

Youre a better judge of human nature than you think, I said with a sigh. I leaned back on the bed.

He shrugged sadly. But Ive fapped up, he said.

How?

I want to know you better. I feel something really special when I see you.

Intrigued, I was about to continue with my infernal questioningHow? What do you mean?when Charles stood up. But its useless. You havent liked me from the start.

I gaped at him.

You think Im awkward, Im not in the least like Sean, and that was who youd set your sights on And now I seem to be putting him down.

Sean doesnt appeal to me, I said, eyes downcast in what I hoped was demure honesty. Certainly not after what he said.

Im sorry, Charles said.

Why are you always apologizing? Sit down, please.

Neither of us had touched our mineral water.

Charles sat. He lifted his glass. You know, this water has been sitting for a billion years, locked in limestone Old life. Thats what Id really like to be doing. Besides getting the physics grants and starting research, I mean. Going Up and exploring the old sea beds. Not talking politics. I need someone to come with me and keep me company. I thought maybe youd like to do that. Charles looked up, then rushed his proposal out breathlessly. Klein BM has an old vineyard about twenty kilometers from here. I could borrow a tractor, show you the

A winery? I asked, startled.

Failed. Converted to a water station. Not much more than a trench dome, but there are good fossil beds. Maybe the old discarded vintage has mellowed by now and we could try to gag it down.

Are you asking? I felt a sudden warmth so immediate and unexpected that it brought moisture to my eyes. Charles, you surprise me. I surprised myself. Then, eyes downcast again, What are you expecting?

You might like me better away from this place. I dont fit into Shinktown, and I dont know why I came here. Im glad I did, of course, because youre here, but

An old winery. And going Up again?

In proper pressure suits. Ive done it often enough. Im pretty safe to be with. He pointed his finger Up. Im no LitVid idol, Casseia. I cant sweep you off your feet.

I pretended not to hear that. Ive never gone fossiling, I said. Its a lovely idea.

Charles swallowed and quickly decided to press on. We could leave now. Spend a few days. Wouldnt cost much my BM isnt rich, but wed borrow equipment nobodys using now. No problem with the oxygen budget. We can bring hydrogen back for a net gain. I can call and tell the station to warm up for us.

This was something slightly wicked and hugely unexpected and quite lovely. Charles would never pressure me to go one step farther than I wanted. It was perfect.

Ill try not to bore you with physics, he said.

I can take it, I said. What makes you think I was ever interested in Sean, romantically? ,

Wisely, he didnt answer, and immediately set about making late-night preparations.

Martians saw the surface of their world most often through the windows of a train. Perhaps nine or ten times in a life, a Martian would go Up and walk the surface in a pressure suitusually in crowds and under close supervision, tourists on their own planet.

Call it fear, call it reason, most Martians preferred tunnels, and dubbed themselves rabbits, quite comfortably; red rabbits, to distinguish from the gray rabbits on Earths moon.

I think I was more nervous sitting in the tractor beside Charles than I had been in my skinseal months earlier. I trusted Charles not to lose us in the ravines and ancient glacier tongues; he radiated self-confidence. What unnerved me was the proximity to emotions I had safely kept locked away behind philosophy.

I will not explain my turnaround. I was becoming attracted to Charles, but the process was slow. As he drove, I sneaked looks at him and studied his lean features, his long, straight nose, slow-blinking eyes large and brown and observant, upper lip delicately sensuous, lower lip a trifle weak, chin prominent, neck corded and scrawnya heady mix of features I found attractive and features I wasnt sure I approved of. Unaesthetic, not perfection. Long fingers with square nails, broad bony shoulders, chest slightly sunken

I knit my brows and turned my attention to the landscape. I was not inclined to physical science, but no Martian can escape the past; we are told tales in our infant beds.

Mars was dead; once, it had been alive. On the lowland plains, beneath the ubiquitous flopsands and viscous smear lay a thick layer of calcareous rock, limestone, the death litter of unaccounted tiny living things on the floor of an ancient sea that had once covered this entire region and, indeed, sixty percent of northern Mars.

The seas, half a billion Martian years before, had fallen victim to Marss aging and cooling. The interior flows of Mars slowed and stabilized just as Mars began to develop and push asideits continents, thus cutting short the migration of its four young crustal plates, ending the lives of chains of gas-belching volcanoes. The atmosphere began its long flight into space. Within six hundred million Martian years, life itself retreated, evolving to more hardy forms, leaving behind fossil sea beds and karsts and, last of all, the Mother Ecos and the magnificent aqueduct bridges. (Ecos is singular; ecoi plural.)

All around us, ridges of yellow-white limestone poked from the red-ochre flopsand. Rusted, broken boulders scattered from impact craters topped this mix like chocolate sprinkles on rhubarb sauce over vanilla ice cream. Against the pink sky, the effect was severe and heart-achingly beautiful, a chastening reminder that even planets are mortal.

Like it? Charles asked. We hadnt talked much since leaving Durrey in the borrowed Klein tractor.

Its magnificent, I said.

Wait till we get to the open karstslike prairie dog holes. Sure signs of aquifers, but it takes an expert to know how deep, and whether theyre whited. Whited aquifers carried high concentrations of arsenic, which made the water a little more expensive to mine. Whited seas had entirely different life forms. Thats probably where the mothers came from.

I knew little about the mother cysts single-organism repositories of the post-Tharsis Omega Ecos, a worlds life in a patient nutshell, parents of the aqueduct bridges. Their fossils had been discovered only in the past few years, and I hadnt paid much attention to news about them. Have you ever seen a mother? Charles asked.

Only in pictures.

Theyre magnificent. Bigger than a tractor, heavy shells a foot thick buried in the sands, waiting for one of the ancient wet cycles to come around again The last of their kind. His eyes shone and his mouth curved up in an awed half-smile. His enthusiasm distanced me for a moment. Some might have lasted tens of millions of years. But eventually the wets never came. He shook his head and his lips turned down sadly, as if he were talking about family tragedy. Some hunters think well find a live one someday. The holy grail of fossil hunters.

Is that possible?

I dont think so.

Are there any fossil mothers where were going?

He shook his head. Theyre very rare. And theyre not found in karsts. Most have been found in the sulci.

Oh.

But we can look. He smiled a lovely little boys smile, open and trusting.

The Klein BM winery, a noble experiment that hadnt panned out, lay buried in the lee of a desiccated frost-heave plateau twenty kilometers west of Durrey Station. Now it was maintained by arbeiters, and fitfully at that, judging from the buildup of static flopsands on the exposed entrance. A gate carried a bright green sign, TrHaut Mc. Charles urged the tractor beneath the sign. The garage opened slowly and balkily, gears jammed with dust, and Charles parked the tractor in its dark enclosure.

We sealed our suits and climbed down from the cabin. Charles palmed the lock port and turned to face me. I havent been here since the codes were changed. Hope Ive been logged on the old general Klein net.

You didnt check? I asked, alarmed.

Joking, he said. The lock opened, and we stepped in.

Over the years, the arbeiters had repaired themselves into ugly lumps. They reminded me of dutiful little hunchbacks, moving obsequiously out of our way as we explored the narrow tunnels leading to the main living quarters. Ive never seen arbeiters this old, I said.

Waste not, want not. Kleins a thrifty family. They took the best machines with them and left a skeleton crew, just enough to tend the water.

Poor things, I said dubiously.

Voila, Charles announced, opening the door to the main quarters. Beyond lay a madmans idea of order, air mattresses piled into a kind of shelter in one corner, sheets covering a table as if it were a bed, decayed equipment lovingly stacked in the middle of the floor for human attention, smelling of iodine. The machines had been bored. A large arbeiter, about a meter tall and half as wide, a big barrel of a machine with prominent arms, stood proudly in the middle of its domain. Welcome, it greeted in a scratchy voice. There have been no guests at this estate for four years. How may we serve you?

Charles laughed.

Dont, I said. Youll hurt its feelings.

The arbeiter hummed constantly, a sign of imminent collapse. This unit will require replacements, if any are available, it told us after a moment of introspective quiet.

Youll have to make do, Charles said. What we need is a place fit for habitation, by two humans separate quarters, as soon as possible.

This is not adequate? the arbeiter asked with mechanical dismay.

Close, but it needs a little rearrangement.

We couldnt help giggling.

The arbeiter considered us with that peculiar way older machines have of seeming balky and sentient when in fact they are merely slow. Arrangements will be made. I beg your pardon, but this unit will require replacement parts and nano recharge, if that is possible.

Four hours later, with the living quarters in reasonable shape and our provisions for several days stored and logged in with the arbeiters, Charles and I stopped our rushing about and faced each other. Charles glanced away first, pretending to critically examine the interior furnishings. Looks like a bunkhouse, he said.

Its fine, I said.

Well, its not luxury.

I didnt expect it to be.

I came here once when I was ten, with my dad, Charles said, rubbing his hands nervously on his pants. A kind of getaway for a couple of days while traveling from Amnesia to Jefferson, through Durrey Klein holdings intrude into the old Erskine BM lands here. I dont know how that happened.

Another moment of uneasy silence. Clearly, Charles did not know how to begin, nor what was expected; neither did I, but as the female in this pairing, it was not my responsibility to initiate, and I did not want to try.

Shall we see the winery? he inquired suddenly, holding out his hand.

I took the hand and we began our formal tour of TrHaut Mc.

Charles was disarmingly nervous. Disarming, because I had to say little and do nothing but follow him; he gave a gentle, constant commentary on things Martian, most of which I knew. His voice was soothing even as he ran through technical details. In time, I listened more to the tone than the content, enjoying the masculine music of fact laid upon fact, an architecture to shield us for the moment against being alone together.

Ninety percent or more of any Martian station lay underground. Pressurization requirements and protection against radiation flux through the thin atmosphere made this the most economical method of construction. Some attempts had been made in the first ten years to push high-rises and multi-story uplooks through the dirt, but Mars had been settled on a shoestring. Buried or bermed construction was much cheaper. Heat exchangers, sensors, pokeups, entrances and exits, a few low buildings, broke the surface, but even now we remained, by and large, troglodytes.

Half of the aquifers on Mars were solidmineral aquifersand half liquid. Solid aquifers came in many varieties. Some were permafrosts and heaves, which produced hummocky terrain. Some ice domes on Mars were ten kilometers across, but nearly all heaves had long since lost the water that produced them. The evaporated water either re-condensed at the poles, or was lost across the ages to space. The thin atmosphere was nearly moisture-free.

TrHaut Mc sat half a kilometer above a liquid flow, probably the same flow that supplied Durrey. Water seeped through the limestone and pooled in deeper fissures and caves extending as much as ten kilometers below the karst.

Our first stop was the pumping station. The pump, a massive cluster of steel-blue cylinders and spheres melded together like an abstract sculpture, had been working steadily for fifteen Martian years. It extracted its own fuel, deuterium, from the water it pulled out of the ground.

We hooked this up to the Durrey pipes about nineteen years ago, Earth years, Charles explained, walking around the pump. Just after the winery shut down and the station was automated and evacuated. A source of revenue to offset our failure. Our footsteps echoed hollow on the frosted stone floor. Air whispered through wall-mounted vents, cool and tangy-musty. Its the stations only reason to exist now. Durrey wants it, pays for it, so we keep the pump going. While Im here, Ill justify our visit by filing a report

And get some replacement arbeiters, I suggested.

Maybe. The folks who set up the winery were a California family Or were they Australian? I forget now.