Analog SFF, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Card and I had a separate room, so Mom and Dad could have one last night of privacy. I hoped they were taking precautions. Six months of zero-gravity morning sickness? I wondered what they would name the baby who caused that. “Clean up your room, Barf.” “No, you can't have the car, Spew.”

  (After all, they named Card Card and me Carmen, after an opera that I can't stand. “Tor-e-ador, don't spit on the floor. Use the cuspidor; that's what it is for.")

  We dumped our bags and went for a walk, Card one way and me the other. He went into town, so I headed for the beach. (The parentiosas might have assumed we were going to stay together, but they didn't give us any specific orders except to be back at the hotel by seven for dinner.)

  My last day on Earth. I should do something special.

  * * * *

  3. Captain, my captain

  The beach was less sand than rock, a jagged kind of black lava. The water swirled and splashed among the rocks and didn't look too great for wading, so I sat on a more or less smooth rock and enjoyed the sun and salt air. Real Earth air, breathe it while you can.

  There was a big, gray iguana on a rock, maybe ten yards away, who ignored me. He didn't look real.

  With the noise of the surf on the rocks I didn't hear the man come up behind me. “Carmen Dula?”

  I jerked around, startled. He was a strange-looking older guy, maybe thirty, his skin white as chalk. With a closer look I saw it wasn't his skin; it really was something chalky, some kind of absolute sunblock. He was dressed in white, too, long pants and long sleeves and a broad-brimmed hat. Kind of good-looking aside from the clothes.

  “Didn't mean to startle you.” He offered his hand, dry and strong under the chalk. “I'm Paul Collins, your pilot. Recognized you from the passenger roster.”

  “The climber has a pilot?”

  “No, just an attendant. What's to pilot?” He smiled, metal teeth. “I'm the pilot of the John Carter of Mars, this time out.”

  “Wow. You've done it before?”

  He nodded. “Twice as pilot, once as copilot, there and back.” He looked out over the ocean. “This'll be the last one. I'm staying on Mars.”

  “The whole five years?”

  He shook his head. “Staying.”

  “For ... forever?”

  “If I live forever.” He squatted down and picked up a flat stone and spun it out over the water. It skipped once. The iguana blinked at it. “I have to stay on either Earth or Mars. I'm sort of maxed out on radiation.”

  “God, I'd stay on Earth.” Was he crazy? “I mean, if I was worried about radiation.”

  “It's not so bad on Mars, underground,” he said, and tried another stone. It just sank. “Go up to the surface once a week. And those limits are for people who want to have children. I don't.”

  “Me neither,” I said, and he was tactful enough not to press for details. “That's why you're so protected? I mean the white stuff?”

  “No, more thinking about sunburn than hard radiation.” He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, what there was of it. It had obviously just been mowed, down to about a quarter inch except for a trim mohawk. “I haven't had a tan since I was ... just a little older than you?”

  “Nineteen,” I said, adding six weeks.

  “Yeah, twenty-one. That's when I joined the Space Force. They don't encourage tans.”

  That was interesting. “I didn't know the military was in on the Mars project.” Officially, anyhow.

  “They aren't.” He eased himself down, stiffly, to sit on the rocks. “I quit after five years. It was all air flying. One suborbital, big deal. My tour was up, and this sounded more interesting.”

  “But you only get to do it three or four times?”

  “There's that,” he admitted, and threw a pebble at the iguana, missing by a mile. “They're way too conservative. I'm trying to change their minds.”

  “You couldn't do that better here on Earth?” I sat down next to him.

  “Well, yes and no. Right now, if I stay there I'll be the only pilot on Mars, in case something goes wrong and they need one.” He threw another pebble at the lizard and missed by even more. “Can't throw worth a shit since I went to space.”

  I took aim and missed the creature only by inches. It glared at me for a long second and slid into the water.

  “Not bad for a girl.”

  I decided he was joking, but you couldn't tell from his expression. “I've heard that spaceflight can be hard on the muscles.”

  “It is. Even though you exercise every day, you get weaker. I'm weak as a kitten in all this gravity.”

  Inanely, I said, “I left my cat behind. In Florida.”

  “How old was it? Is it.”

  “Nine.” Half my age; I hadn't thought of that.

  He nodded. “Not too old.”

  “Yeah, but she won't be my cat when we get back.”

  “Might be. They're funny creatures.” He rubbed his fingers as if they hurt. “So you're out of school?”

  I shook my head no. “Going to start university by correspondence in September. Meryland.”

  “That'll be interesting. Odd.” He laughed. “I partied through my first year; almost flunked out. Guess you won't have to worry about that.”

  “There aren't any parties on Mars? I'm disappointed.”

  “Oh, you have people, you have parties. Not too wild. You can't exactly send out for pizza and tap a keg of beer.”

  I had a sudden empty feeling, not hunger for pizza. I tried to push it away. “What do you do for fun? Go out exploring?”

  “Yeah, I do that, go up and collect rocks. I'm a geologist by training, before I became a flyboy. Areologist now.”

  I knew about that; Ares is Greek for Mars. “Ever discover anything new?”

  “Sure, almost every time. But it's like being a kid in a candy store, or it would be if you could find a store where they kept bringing in new candy. It's not hard to find stuff that's never been classified. You into geology?”

  “No, more like English and history. I had to take Earth and Planet Science, but it wasn't my ... favorite.” My only C besides calculus, actually.

  “You might learn to like it, once you have a new planet to explore.” He wiggled a pebble out of the sand and looked at it, purple. Scratched it with his thumbnail. “Funny color for lava.” He tossed it away. “I could show you around if you like. Mars.”

  Good grief, I thought, is the pilot hitting on me? Over thirty? “I don't want to be a bother. Just go out by myself and wander around.”

  “Nobody goes out alone,” he said, suddenly serious. “Something goes wrong, you could be dead in a minute.” He shrugged. “No ‘could’ about it, really. Mars is more dangerous than space, outer space. The air's so thin it might as well be a vacuum, for breathing.”

  “Yeah.” It's not like I'd never seen a movie. “And then the sandstorms?”

  “Well, they don't exactly sneak up on you. The main danger is getting careless. You've got ground and sky and gravity. It feels safer than space. But it's not.” He looked at his watch and got up slowly. “Better get on with my exercise. See you tomorrow.” He plodded off, obviously feeling the gravity.

  I didn't ask whether he wanted company. Interesting guy, but we were going to be stuck in a room together for six months, and would see plenty of each other.

  I didn't really feel like company at all. Maybe I could put up with the iguana. I picked my way out to the farthest place I could stand without getting my feet too wet, and watched the swirling, crashing water.

  * * * *

  4. Last meal

  On the way back to the hotel, I ran into Paul again. He was sitting alone in the shade of a thatched-roof patio outside a shabby bar called the Yacht Club, drinking a draft beer that looked good. I sat down with him but asked for a Coke, out of a vague concern that Dad might come by. Drinking with a man, oh my. I didn't know the legal age, either; if I was carded he'd find out I wasn't really quite nineteen.


  It was a short date, anyhow. We'd just exchanged “where you from?” formalities when his cell pinged and he had to go off to the Elevator office. I did learn that he was from New Jersey but didn't have time to ask about Mafia connections or how to breathe carbon monoxide.

  It was not a pleasant place to sit alone and wonder what the hell I was doing. My friends back home were about evenly divided between being jealous and wondering whether I'd lost my mind, and I was leaning toward the latter group. The Coke tasted weird, too. Maybe it was drugged, and when I slumped unconscious they would drag me into the hold of a yacht and smuggle me off to Singapore for a rewarding career in white slavery. Or maybe it was made with sugar instead of corn syrup. I left it, just to be on the safe side, and went on to the hotel.

  Speaking of Coke, that's what we weren't having for dinner, no matter how much Card and I might have liked it. Or a pizza or hamburger or even a cold can of beans. Of course it was going to be fancy, the last real family meal for five years.

  “Fancy” in the Galapagos was not exactly Park Avenue fancy. They don't serve up the iguanas, fortunately, but there wasn't much you'd find on a normal menu.

  The hotel restaurant, La Casa Dolores, served mostly Ecuadorian food, which was not a surprise. I had picadillo, a Cuban dish that sounded like hamburger over rice, and pretty much was, although it tasted strange, like Mexican but with a lot of lemon juice and a touch of soap. Mother said that taste came from a parsley-like herb, cilantro. I trust they won't be growing it on Mars. Or maybe it's their only green vegetable.

  Dad, being Dad, ordered the most outrageous thing on the menu: tronquito, bull penis soup, along with goat stew. I refused to look at any of it, and propped a menu up between us so I wouldn't be able to see his plate. Mother got ceviche, raw fish, which came with popcorn. It actually looked pretty good (I like sushi all right) but, excuse me for being practical, I had visions of thirty-three people waiting in line for that one bathroom. I didn't want too much adventure on the first day.

  (Card ordered a sausage with beans, but only ate the beans. Maybe the sausage looked too much like Dad's soup. I didn't want to know.)

  Mother asked what we'd done all afternoon. Card had a detailed analysis of the island's game rooms. Why go to Mars when you can virtual yourself all over the universe, killing aliens and rescuing big-breasted babes? If we run into aliens on Mars we probably won't have a single ray gun.

  I told them I'd met the pilot. “You think he's only thirty?” Mother asked.

  “Well, I haven't done the math,” I said. “He was in the Space Force for five years? So he was at least twenty-three when he got out. He's been to Mars three times after that and probably spent some time on Earth in between. Got a geology degree somewhere.”

  “Maybe in space,” Dad said. “Passing the time. He looked thirtyish, though?”

  He was still eating, so I didn't look at him. “He looked zombie-ish, actually. I guess he could have been older than thirty.”

  I explained about the sunblock, but didn't mention his offer to take me rock hunting. Dad was being a little too protective of me, where males were concerned, and thirty-some probably didn't sound old to him.

  “It's pretty impressive,” Mother said evenly, “that he recognized you and remembered your name. I wonder if he knows all thirty-three of the passengers’ faces. Or just the pretty girls.”

  “Please.” I hate it when she makes me blush.

  “Ooh, my pretty,” Card said in his moron voice, and I kicked him under the table. He flinched but smiled.

  “None of us are going to look all that great with no make-up,” I said. Not allowed because of the air recycling. I wanted to get a lipstick tattoo when I heard about that, but neither parent would sign the under-eighteen permission form. It's not fair—Mother had a cheek tattoo done when she was not much older than me. It's way out of style now and she hates it, but that doesn't have anything to do with me. If you get tired of a lipstick tattoo, you can cover it with lipstick, brain.

  “Levels the playing field,” Dad said. “You'll be at an advantage with your beautiful skin.”

  “Daddy, don't.” Mention the word “skin” and all of the acne molecules in my bloodstream get excited and rush to the surface. “I won't exactly be husband-hunting. Not with only five or six guys to choose from.”

  “It won't be quite that bad,” Mother said.

  “No, worse! Because most of them plan to stay on Mars, and I'm already looking forward to coming back!” I stood up and laid my napkin down and walked out of the restaurant as fast as dignity would allow. Mother said “Say excuseme,” and I sort of did.

  I managed not to start crying until I was up in the room. I was angry at myself as much as anything. If I didn't want to do this, why did I let myself be talked into it?

  Part of it might have been the lack of boys where we were headed, but we'd talked that over. We'd also talked over the physical danger and the slight inconvenience of going to college a couple of hundred million miles off campus.

  I stepped out onto the balcony to get some non-air-conditioned air and was startled to see the Space Elevator, a ruler-straight line of red light that dwindled away to be swallowed by the darkness. Maybe the first two miles of fifty thousand. I hadn't seen it in the daylight.

  The stars and the Milky Way were brighter than we ever saw them at home. I could see two planets, but neither of them was Mars, which I knew didn't rise until morning. Dad had pointed it out to me on the way to the airport, which seemed like a long time ago. Mars was a lot dimmer than these two, and more yellow-orange than red. I guess “the Yellow Planet” didn't sound as dramatic as the red one.

  I went back down to the restaurant in time to get some ice cream along with a sticky sponge cake full of nuts and fruit. Nobody said anything about my absence. Card had probably been threatened.

  Dad treated me in his delicate girl-in-her-period way, which I definitely was not. I'd gotten a prescription for Delaze and wouldn't ovulate until after we got to Mars. The download for the Space Elevator had described the use of recyclable tampons in way too much detail. With luck, I'd never have to use them in zero-gee, on the John Carter. Vacuum sterilizes everything, I suppose, so it was silly to be squeamish about it. But you're allowed to be a little irrational about things that personal. I managed to push it out of my mind for long enough to finish dessert.

  Card and I tried TV after dinner, but everything was in Spanish except for CNN and an Australian all-news program. There was a Japanese Game Boy module, but he couldn't make it work, which didn't bother me and my book at all.

  The room had a little fridge with an interesting design. Every bottle and box was stuck in place with something like a magnet. If you plucked out a Coke or something, the price flashed in the upper right-hand corner of the TV screen, and a note said it had been added to your room bill.

  The fridge knew we were underage, and wouldn't let go of the liquor bottles. But we were evidently old enough for beer—a sign said the age was eighteen, but the fridge wasn't smart enough to tell whether it was serving me or my brother. So I had two beers, which helped me get to sleep, but Card stayed awake long enough to build a pyramid of six cans. I guess I could have been a responsible older sister and cut him off, but there wasn't going to be a lot of beer out on the Martian desert.

  * * * *

  5. Pizza hunt

  Our parents didn't say anything about the $52 added to our room bill for beer, but I suppose they took one look at Card and decided he had suffered enough. He'd told me he'd had beer “plenty of times” with his sag pals at school. Maybe it was the nonalcoholic variety. This was strong Dutch beer in big cans, and six had left a lasting effect. He was pale and quiet when we left the hotel and seemed to turn slightly green when we got aboard the boat, rocking in the choppy waves.

  They didn't put the Earth end of the Space Elevator on dry land, because it had to be moveable in any direction. Typhoons come through once or twice a century, and they need to get ou
t of the way. The platform it sits on can move more than two hundred miles in twenty-four hours, far enough to dodge the worst part of a storm. Or so they say; it's never been put to the test.

  The ribbon cable that the carrier rides also has to move around in order to avoid trouble at the other end—dodging human-made space debris and the larger meteors, the ones big enough to track. (Small meteor holes are patched automatically by a little robot climber.)

  The platform was about forty miles offshore, and the long, thin ribbon the elevator rides wasn't usually visible except for the bright strobe lights that warned fliers away. At just the right angle, the sun's reflection could blaze like a razor line drawn in fire; I saw that twice in the hour and a half it took us to cover the distance.

  Paul Collins, the pilot, looked more handsome without the white war paint. He introduced himself to Card and my parents, proving that he could recognize passengers who weren't girls.

  Before we got to the Space Elevator platform itself, we skirted around a much larger thing, the “light farm,” a huge raft of solar power cells. They didn't get power directly from the Sun, but rather from an orbiting power station that turned sunlight into microwaves and beamed them down. Then it gets beamed right back up, in a way. The carrier's electric motors are powered by a big laser sitting on the platform; the laser's powered by the light farm. There's another light farm in the Ecuadorian mountains that beams power at the carrier when it's higher up.

  The platform's like an old-fashioned floating oil rig, the size of an office building. The fragile-looking ribbon that the carrier rides spears straight up from the middle of it. The laser and the carrier take up most of the space, with a few huts and storage buildings here and there. It looked bigger from down on the water than the aerial pictures we'd seen.

  We took an elevator to the Elevator. There was a floating dock moored to the platform. It was all very nautical feeling, ropes creaking as it moved with the waves, seagulls squawking, salt tang in the air.

  Our boat rose and fell with the dock, but of course the open-air elevator didn't. It was a big metal cage that seemed to move up and down and sideways in a sort of menacing way as we bobbed with the waves. If you were sure-footed, you could time it right and just step from the dock onto the elevator. Like most people, I played it safe and jumped aboard as the floor fell away.