Saving Mars (11 page)

“It’s beautiful,” murmured Jess, after they’d sat in silence for several minutes.

“I find the outlook to have a balancing effect upon my autonomic nervous system,” replied Ethan.

Jess laughed quietly. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I meant.”

“You will pardon me,” said Ethan, “But I do not believe that is what you meant. Jessamyn finds
beauty
where others are not able to appreciate it. I do not believe that it is the
beauty
of what I observe that calms me. It is simply that when I view the vastness before us, I do not feel as uncomfortable as when I am confined to … other parts of the ship.”

The two sat in silence before the canvas of ink-black, spattered with the bright dust of a thousand worlds. Jess felt a tugging grief, a Lobster-shaped space inside her that was now empty.

“I can’t believe I’m not going to see him again,” Jess said.

“Him?” asked her brother.

“Lobster. All of them. You’ll miss Wu, won’t you?”

“Wu was a formidable opponent in Monopoly,” said Ethan. “I will think of him often, and when I think of him, yes, Jessamyn, I will regret his absence.”

Jess felt a flash of hot anger against Earth and the cruel satellites. “Promise me one thing, Eth. Promise you’ll take control of that laser array.”

“That is what I am meant to do.”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” whispered Jess. “It’s wrong. As wrong as …” Jessamyn broke off, unable to think of anything that was comparably unwarranted.

Her brother sat beside her, not speaking, not demanding that she complete her thought. She found his presence deeply comforting.

At last, pointing to the heavens, she spoke again. “We’re traveling fifty-five million kilometers and the stars don’t change. They should be different, don’t you think?”

“What other stars would they be?”

“I don’t know. It seems like, if we journey so far, shouldn’t the stars be different?”

“Fifty-five million kilometers is a very short distance, Jessamyn. We are not leaving our solar system.”

“I know. It just feels like … I don’t know how to explain it, Eth.”

“We are small creatures, Jessamyn, and the universe is infinite.”

Jess followed the arch of the treated observation window from one side to the other across the field of stars. “Yeah, guess we all got a good dose of our insignificance today.”

“We are small, but we are also infinitely great, Jessamyn. Infinitely important.”

“You figure?”

“Our companions are gone, but their importance reaches outward and onward. For each of us. For everyone on Mars. Their importance is boundless. Like the universe.”

The pair sat in silent contemplation of the heavens. At last Jess spoke again.

“Do you believe that, Eth? That the universe simply goes and goes and goes?”

“Of course it does.”

“I know it’s
infinite
.” Jess said, repeating her brother’s word. “But do you actually
believe
in it? In infinity? In something that has neither beginning nor end?”

“I believe,” said Ethan.

“Hmm,” sighed Jessamyn.

Between Mars and Earth, while clocks kept time with the stars, the Red Galleon and her crew advanced toward hope.

Chapter Nine

ANOMALOUS READING

Prior to the inception of the Terran Re-body Initiative, Earth faced several grave problems. Overpopulation had led to hunger and war on an unprecedented scale. Local governments attempted to eliminate these problems, but none had anything like the success of those who recompensed desired behaviors using a variant of a re-bodying program. Such plans offered a reward, in the form of placement inside a new younger body, gifted to those citizens engaging in behaviors that combated their nation’s worst problems. Put simply, the Terran obsession with youth provided an incentive to work toward peace and plenty. But where to find healthy young bodies in numbers sufficient for those who had earned them? A program in Belarus gained precedence and became the model for the worldwide Terran Re-body Initiative.

Predicated upon the idea that youth was wasted on the young, eighteen-year-olds “swapped” places with fifty-four-year-olds using a method of consciousness transfer. The eighteen-year-old, now said to be in “twobody,” spent the next eighteen years in the
aging
fifty-four-year-old body whilst apprenticing for the work that would be his or her life’s contribution. At the end of the apprenticeship years, another body transfer was made into “threebody.” (Most Terrans agreed that the switching from a seventy-two-year-old body into a thirty-six-year-old body was the single most satisfying transfer.)
Threebodies
thus had a body age that matched their chronological age. And when they completed their eighteen years of useful contribution and good behaviors (their “working years”), they retired, at the age of fifty-four, into svelte, young, eighteen-year-old bodies for the last quarter of their lives.

A beautiful solution, agreed most Terrans, providing severe checks against anti-social behaviors at eighteen year intervals. The one fly in the ointment was that, in order to provide a steady stream of correctly-aged bodies at correct intervals, life spans had to be limited to seventy-two years. No one was allowed to reach a seventy-third birthday, in
any
body. It was a price most Terrans were content to pay. They had peace, they had food, they had a lovely retirement plan for eighteen truly golden years. And besides, prior to the peace brought by the Terran Re-body Initiative, life spans of seventy-two years, though possible on Mars, had become rare on Earth.

Earth’s problems prior to the Terran re-bodying solution had been the same issues that created funding cuts for the Mars Project. However, when it was discovered that tellurium allowed for better success rates in consciousness transfer, Terrans demanded more of the precious metal from Mars, coming up with large bills for “advertising” the Mars Project on Earth.

Marsians laughed. They shook their heads at both the advertising bills
and
the bizarre practice of re-bodying. Their refusal to pay for “advertising” on Earth, when combined with Earth’s refusal to send food and supplies Mars had pre-paid, led to a breakdown in relations between the two worlds that culminated in war, a cease-fire, and finally, the No Contact Accords.

What this meant for Jessamyn and her fellow crew members was that the two cultures had grown to have completely different attitudes towards aging and life expectancy, among other things. Yet Jess’s crew, as the Marsians disabling the satellites, would be called upon to act as Terran twobodies or fourbodies whose chronological age didn’t match their body age.

Jessamyn found re-bodying all rather confusing. It was silly, as well, from her point of view. Who didn’t want to age? On Mars, growing old was a sign you were clever, resilient, and a survivor. She had tolerated role-playing as a “fourbody” during her MCC training because she couldn’t pilot to Earth without agreeing to it. But she had dreaded assuming the fake role upon Earth, and during training, she frequently lamented not being a part of the team whose mission it was to simply retrieve ration bars. However, the loss of the Red Dawn changed everything. Whereas there had been two teams, now there was only one. This meant extra days planet-side on Earth, and she would almost certainly have to pretend to be an aged person in a young body at some point.

18:00 hours meant the end of Jessamyn’s twelve hour “day” shift which had begun with morning rations at 06:00. 18:00 also meant evening rations. With neither sunrise nor sunset, the distinction of day or night could hardly remain important. The crew operated on a Terran twenty-four hour clock with some overlap in their waking hours, and it was during these overlaps that morning and evening rations were shared among the crew.

Jessamyn didn’t miss the extra minutes from Mars’s slightly longer twenty-four hour and thirty-eight minute day. On Mars the extra time was allotted to mid-day contemplation or napping. But aboard ship, Jess had more than enough time to spend in thought or sleep.

As the crew gathered once more for a meal, Jessamyn suspected they would hear news of a revised mission. She was not disappointed.

The Captain expressed her confidence in the new plan to take on both missions. Jess noted with a mixture of relief and slight disappointment that she would spend her entire time on Earth waiting with Crusty alongside the Red Galleon so that they could return rations to Mars in the event the satellite-hacking mission should not proceed according to plan.

Crusty, who rarely spoke more than two words together, shocked everyone by breaking the silence after the Captain’s new plan was announced. “Glad to hear we’ll be killing two birds with one stone. We owe that much to the memory of the good folks lost on the Red Dawn.”

At the conclusion of that lengthy speech, Crusty stood and went to check the health of an algae he kept in the rations room. After grunting at what he saw, he left with the Captain to begin the “night” shift.

Jess sighed, looking over her assigned role as a “fourbody” while on Earth. “Why can’t Terrans stay in one body like regular people,” she muttered, standing.

“
Regular
is different on Earth,” said Ethan. “Their system has worked for centuries, and, assuredly, they feel that it is normal.” He followed his sister, who trailed Harpreet out of the rations room and into the central corridor.

“There’s nothing normal about swapping in and out of bodies every eighteen years,” said Jess.

“The desire to practice consciousness transfer is difficult for us to understand,” agreed Harpreet.

“Their lives are not so different from our own,” said her brother. “The divisions of their lives are like ours: early schooling, apprenticeship for an occupation, serving in that occupation, and retirement.”

“And mandatory death at seventy-two. Oh wait,” said Jess in a voice dripping sarcasm, “We don’t do that part. Besides, it’s not like you have to swap bodies to do those other things.”

“You do not,” he agreed.

“Sleep well, Ethan,” said Harpreet as she and Jessamyn arrived at their quarters.

Ethan turned back to his room and Jess entered hers, crawling up to her top bunk.

“I don’t know how I’m going to impersonate an elderly person, if it comes down to it,” said Jess.

“Being old is not so difficult, child. I would not know my own age if I never looked in the mirror,” said Harpreet.

Tired, Jessamyn smiled. She didn’t have it in her to continue the conversation. She’d found it impossible to sleep last night, so her body felt exhausted now. She brought a hand to her mouth to cover a huge yawn. Looking at her fingers, she wondered who she would be in the body of another person.
Not Jess
, she thought. How could she possibly separate the part of herself that knew flying in her bones from the part of her that understood it in her head? Crazy. That’s what Terrans were. She yawned once more and fell asleep.

~ ~ ~

Life aboard the ship settled into a simple and somewhat dull routine. Earth began to appear brighter, and Jessamyn sometimes thought she could see a blue tint. Her brother continued visiting the observation deck four times a day, Jess joining him each morning before and each evening after their duty shift. The systematic visits, especially those made with his sister, provided incalculable relief for Ethan. He admitted that he often felt an unpleasant sensation that the walls were pressing in on him, but when Jess questioned him about it, he insisted he would survive. His sister worked hard at believing him, ever watchful for telltale signs that all was not well. Ethan certainly performed his tasks with efficiency, running systems checks several times a day that would have made his sister cross-eyed with boredom.

“Ship still holding together?” Jess asked her brother one morning as he completed a report.

“I believe so,” said Ethan. “Although I have detected an anomalous reading in the observation deck.”

Jess snorted. “The window’s tired of you, Eth. This is its way of saying, give it a rest already.” She grinned at her brother. Privately, she was proud of him for finding a way to manage his claustrophobia.

Ethan didn’t reply but stared intently at a series of readings. His fingers flew across the screen and he frowned. “The observation deck appears to be drawing oxygen from other parts of the ship.”

The smile faded off Jessamyn’s face. “You serious?” She left her post at navigation and stood behind her brother as he scrolled through a series of numbers.

“There,” she said, pointing to a reading.

“Yes,” said her brother. “I believe this may indicate a small leak.”

“Small leaks don’t stay small out here, Eth. How long has this been going on?”

He retrieved a set of readings from the prior day. “Nothing yesterday.”

“It could still be nothing, today, too, I suppose,” said Jess.

Ethan, shaking his head as if uncertain, checked his chrono-tattoo.

“You thinking what I’m thinking? Wake up Crusty?” asked his sister.

“The payload specialist will have entered REM sleep at this hour.”

Jess rolled her eyes. “Crusty would want to be woken, trust me. And don’t do that. Don’t go all Kipper on me with the names.”

“Payload specialist is his designation.”

Jessamyn groaned, then tapped the screen. “Refresh those readings on the ob-deck.”

Ethan startled visibly at what he saw.

“
Holy Ares
,” murmured Jessamyn. “Is it me or did those numbers just take a big jump in the wrong direction?”

“I believe we must interrupt the payload specialist’s sleep cycle,” said Ethan.

But Jessamyn was already on the ship’s comm, hollering for Crusty to wake up
now
.

They met him in the hall that connected Crusty and Ethan’s shared quarters with the rest of the ship. Crusty was already pulling up readings on a screen beside the ob-deck.

“That ain’t good,” said Crusty, shaking his head.

“Can you fix it?” asked Jess.

“Fixing things is what Crusty does,” said Ethan when the payload specialist didn’t answer.

The gruff mechanic strode back down to his quarters, grabbed his diagnostic wafer, returned, and hit the seal door opening to the ob-deck.