Olympus Mons (16 page)

 

Dr. Walther A. Scheiermann,

Director, Burroughs Enclave.

***

Jesperson's caustic snort said it all. “Mind your choice of words, Vic. Calling our director a half-assed dickhead was weak, and his ‘Mayday bombshell' makes your pejorative sound lame. Damn thing reads like a polite diplomatic missive, not a panicky scream of hurry up, for the love of God, or we're all dead! Sending the damn thing was a waste of energy.”

“Never occurred to me till now,” I said, “but the notion of look-sees and scans from orbit is real thoughty, specially with a ship due in soon.”

Jesperson chewed his underlip. “True,” he conceded. “A decent data set might help pin down the break's location, pinpoint the target. What it won't do is bite the bullet for us and do the fix.”

Vic had been silently evaluating our observations. He asked if two-thirds of the Dynamic Trio were interested in reading the official U.N. Response.

Jesperson's eyes narrowed. “Already?”

An affirmative nod. “Less than three hours after I sent the transmittal sunward,” he said. “Here, let me bring up the U.N.'s comeback.”

“When you turned Geneva's response over to Scheiermann,” Jesperson wanted to know, “what was his reaction?”

“Wasn't able to judge,” replied Vic. “He and Yokomizo shooed me out of the comm cubicle the instant I handed over the hardcopy. I doubt if you'll like the U.N. comeback any better than you liked the gobbledegook we sent.”

Jesperson said, “I doubt it, too . . . Uh-oh!” He watched the message form in the display. “Look at the originator.”

The first thing he'd noticed was that the U.N. bigwigs had paid damned little attention to the “EYES ONLY” address inspired by Aguilar.

***

UNETAFDEP Xmittal #11,381

 

TO: Dr. Walther A. Scheiermann, Director, Burroughs Enclave.

FROM: The office of Armin G. Korasek, Director, UNETAFDEP

Subject: Olympus Mons Aqueduct System, Irreparable Damage/Potential

Corrective Action(s) Pertaining Thereto.

 

Be advised Director Korasek & all U.N. personnel deeply concerned re: acute nature extremely serious water problem. Also be advised action-directive xmittal dispatched to Captain R. Kinsolving, master of whirligig vessel in transit Mars directing compliance w/urgent Burroughs request for hi-res photos/radar scan(s)/infrared image(s) southeasterly lower flank Olympus Mons.

Also be advised grave Burroughs situation taken under advisement by select U.N. Scientific/engineering staff + specialists/key government/academic/industrial consultants. Conclusions/recommendations to come will hopefully render viable resolution. Specific plans re: prospective corrective action(s) to be formulated ASAP w/aim of resolution to threat/untenable situation.

 

H. M. Carter, for Armin G. Korasek,

Director, UNETAFDEP.

***

“Chrissake!” Now hot under the collar my ownself, I said, “Korasek's
office
signed-off on the damn thing. We scream for help, and the U.N. honcho can't find time to put his chop on the reply. Vic, address your next message, ‘Dear Office' . . .”

Jesperson's paper-thin smile let me know he liked the quip. Sobering quicklike, he stroked his stubbled chin. “I doubt if that's how it came down. Armin's a shrewd old fox. He may be shy of acknowledging what a deep hole Burroughs is in, at least for homeworld public consumption, and sent us a simple ‘let ‘em down easy' note.”

“What sparked that notion, Bwana?”

“Not long ago,” he said, thinking out loud, “Papa Armin abdicated his virtual dictatorship at Vonex, and now wears a U.N. bonnet, but as a newcomer he's likely entangled in the political infighting common amongst U.N. Graybeards. If so, that has to be a major shock for an ex-autocrat accustomed to getting his own way with a finger snap. I suspect he'll dump our hot potato in the laps of subordinates until he can get both feet firmly planted, established.”

“By which time,” I pointed out, “we may be firmly planted
underground.”

“Does seem likely.”

Steamed to the gills over the phony U.N. reply, I did some speculating about which would come first, getting mashed between a Geneva rock and a Manhattan hard place, or a thirsty, unmourned version of Croatoan. “Our king-size problem,” I said bitterly, “gets ‘taken under advisement,' or so says this guy Carter's ‘office.' Helluva lot of good that'll do us.”

“The office's love note,” said Jesperson, pale fire in his deceptively innocent blue eyes, “makes perfect sense from the U.N. viewpoint. As I said, our hot potato's been sent to the ‘IN' baskets of assorted bureaucrats, scientists, professional paper-shufflers and hangers-on, where it will stay for a week, a month, or for us what might as well be forever. Our water problem will be studied from every conceivable angle, and every conceivable variety and type of opinion will be forwarded on how to save us, among which may be several half-baked, off-the-wall tentative solutions. When push comes to shove, however, the bureaucratic ‘position papers' will be sorted, collated, bound and distributed throughout the U.N. superstructure, infrastructure, only to end up gathering dust in a lower level sub-basement of the forgotten structure.”

“You sure paint a bright, cheery picture, Bwana. In it, I think I can dimly see a grove of redwoods with a goofy word scribbled across the bark of a tree.”

In a flare of vehemence, Jesperson gritted his teeth. “Scratch Croatoan!” he said so softly it scared me. “Nix it! I don't want to hear it again.”

“Easy, does it, Partner! Consider it eighty-sixed. So what's our move now?”

“Now,” he said confidently, “we need no longer fret about outside help. Other than making an intense study of the remote sensing data obtained by the inbound ship, we'll sharpen our pencils, firm up the climb scenario, refine it, and keep on revising and improving it until we're sure we've mapped out the best, most feasible assault on the volcano.

“On top of that, and while so doing,” he added, “we'll round up more recruits than necessary, whip them into shape, train them long and hard, prep them for the main event. Meanwhile, we'll hang tight and keep goosing the council until it comes to its collective senses.”

Vic had been listening, his expression querulous.
“Compadres,
the strange word you keep using
—
crow-something, the word Jesperson no longer wishes to hear. What is it, what does it mean?” Aguilar had no clue about the rotten “lost colony” tag.

Jesperson enlightened him by describing the violated photomural in the North Tunnel utility airlock “Smokers Lounge” alcove, and related a shortened version of the boogieman tale of long ago he'd spun for my benefit.

A confirmed Catholic, Aguilar closed his eyes and crossed himself.

 

Not long after Vic signed on as the third hand in Jesperson's less than popular volcano expedition task-force-in-training, the Burroughs Enclave settled back into a business as usual existence. It was no surprise; the Marsrats' anxiety had eased off in a modest relaxation partly due to the ongoing, high-octane con game being played unconsciously by our council, yet consciously by distant executives in the homeworld who should've had guilty consciences. The whopping mistake made by a majority of Marsrats was placing their confidence in some genuine confidence men in Geneva, New York and
—
much as I hate to say it
—
more than one in Burroughs.

Scheiermann convened another come one, come all snake-oil-and-moonbeam special council session. Using wordage larded with gobs of reassurance, he managed to convince the majority of Marsrats majority of the “truth,” hinting that everything was cool, that help was being prepared and all but on the way. Our director had the brass balls to tell us the water crunch was under control now that the U.N. had been made “acutely aware” of our desperate predicament, and had sprung into action with vim, vigor, zeal and unstoppable determination. He announced that U.N. teams of experts were working twenty-four-seven to devise practical, cost-effective ways and means of bailing us out.

Doc Yokomizo then assumed the podium and treated us to a soft-sell replay of the same looney tunes lecture, except his ditty was scored for the woodwinds, not the brass section, but the lyrics were much the same. The gospel according to our council was that the sky was not in immediate danger of falling, or so we'd been amply assured by the most recent transmittal from Armin Korasek's “office.”

When the meeting broke up, Vic drew Jesperson and me aside, chatted us up in private, and filled us in on the latest. The aged megatycoon now charged with masterminding our iffy future at a distance still hadn't bothered affixing his chop to any of the lasercomm transmittals coming our way. Deleting the fancy rhetoric, Vic relayed the latest version of the U.N. party line. It read something like this: The goal of a collaborative effort now underway by feverishly working scientific and engineering teams will be an in-depth study of alternative approaches to solving the problem posed by Burroughs' dysfunctional Olympus Mons Aqueduct System, the eventual goal to zero in on one or more tentative solutions, then evolve an optimal solution.

“Evolution takes place over generations, if not centuries,” was Jesperson's acid comment.

“Not an
immediate
solution,” chimed in Vic.
“Tentative
solutions, plural, leading to . . . and so forth.” He passed along a sidelight of the most recent transmittal that tweaked Jesperson's interest. The “in-depth U.N. study” had apparently not dismissed the “remote possibility,” or “prospective practicality,” of having us Marsrats devise a “potential solution” á la Jesperson's scheme to organize a manned assault on the volcano. Should such a derring-do mountaineering enterprise prove necessary
—
only as absolutely, ultimate last and final resort, of course
—
specific goals, dangers, logistic problems, and so forth were being enumerated, evaluated, cussed, discussed, and most likely, at least in our joint opinion, dismissed. We were nevertheless triply assured, reassured and re-reassured that wheels were furiously turning in the homeworld, that all factors under assessment, and that tentative timetables were on the verge of being tentatively established.

“What a relief,” was my partner's rejoinder. “Now we know we're almost out of the pan, on the verge of going into the flames.” He added a few choice words hardly ever used in polite company to describe reflexive dithering as not merely an invention of the United Nations Organization, but a skill practiced and honed to a state of absolute perfection. Squeezed one way in the vise jaw of a severe, deepening economic slump, and pressed by the other jaw to conduct a lunar “police action” against well-armed and equipped vacuum forces of the monolithic Chinese Peoples Republic, the U.N. mandarins could afford neither the time, money, nor energy needed to
—
hush, say it softly!
—
solve the life or death dilemma affecting handfuls of expendable Marsrats who were far out of sight, and no doubt shortly to be far, far out of mind.

On the other hand, neither could those selfsame mandarins, nor the political wonks they served, and who in turn served them, afford to slough off public opinion about the fate of a few pitiful ex-cons, do-gooders and starry-eyed volunteer colonials. Papa Korasek and his minions didn't dare simply write us off without showing the world at large a face of compassion, acute concern, deep understanding, overweening sympathy, empathy and every other imaginable sop to public opinion. Within the toils of Geneva's hallowed bureaucratic halls, or at one remove in Manhattan's paneled high-rise chambers, the U.N. potentates didn't relish the notion of letting it become known that they subscribed wholeheartedly to Jesperson's immortal credo: “When in panic, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” No, the mighty U.N. bigwigs would never willingly sit on their sympathetic, empathic, deeply concerned hands and studiously look the other way while Burroughs turned into a dehydrated morgue.

At the subsequent special council session, our well-meaning director did not bother with facts, opting instead for sleight-of-hand moves designed to distract the audience with meaningless verbal monkey motions akin to those of a carnival magician busy sawing in half a barely clothed tootsie in a trick wooden box. Scheiermann did his best to verbally saw our problem in half by staying away from the water topic. Instead, he delved into the upcoming indoctrination, apportionment of living quarters and prospective duties to be doled out to the sixteen newcomers slated to shortly land in our rust-colored garden spot. When he did get around to the subject of water, his spiel was a rehash of the same fanciful scenario we'd heard enough times to quote from memory: U.N. “experts” were busily investigating ways and means of solving our critical dilemma.

“Smoke and mirrors,” I whispered.

“Shh-h-hh! No time to attract attention,” advised Jesperson.

Typecast as demented lepers and pariahs, our gleeless threesome sat in the back row of the meeting hall, divorced as far as we could get from our friends and neighbors. Pretending to have missed my partner's advice about shutting up, I leaned left and whispered to Aguilar, “What a crock! Papa Korasek's ‘office' is sticking to the same tired propaganda line.”

Vic shot me a wary glance.
“Campesinos pobres
like us,” was his whispered response, “aren't supposed to know that. We're to do as told, don our rose-colored glasses, sit back and say nothing.”

“While pondering the rosy scene,” suggested Jesperson, joining the whispered confab, “we're also told to look not directly at the problem, but anywhere else on the theory that refusing to recognize a problem guarantees it's disappearance.”