She started past him toward the door, smiling briefly at him. He blocked her way with his arm, pushing her against the wall more roughly than he intended. He was surprised that she made no protest. "Do you just collect men?" When he had rehearsed the question over and over again in his mind, he had never used the word "just."
She closed her eyes and brushed her black hair away from her collar, breathing out a long sigh, almost as if he were not there. "I collect friends. I love Philippe because he loves everything. I love you because ... you're serious. You're like a well that is very deep, but it's all below ground, and I can't see where it ends." Her eyes were still closed. She might as well have been somewhere else, alone, thinking out loud.
He kissed her briefly, and she opened her lips to him. It was a kiss there was no time for.
Annie noticed that the cargo shuttle smelled of dust and oil. Most of the cocoon seats had been removed and replaced with cubic cartons, snap-locked together three deep and strapped into place. Their three cocoon-like seats were one in front of another, on one side. Annie was in the middle with Carter behind her.
As she clambered into her cocoon in her bulky suit, she had a strange thought that the dust could have no odor until it was brought inside a human habitation. Odor, like sound, could hardly be conveyed through the thin Martian air. Like sound, it needed a richer environment than the Martian surface to come into being. Once liberated in the air and humidity of a shuttle or a bus or one of the bases the varieties of Martian soil took on their own personalities. In the lava regions of Mars, the dust that came inside seemed to take on a pleasant odor like very old wood. Like her grandmother's house overlooking the giant ruins of the deserted Kawasaka theme park in sprawling Kamuela.
Professionally, the last two weeks were the peak of her life. In personal terms, she had made a mess. And her great reconciliation speech had been barely adequate. She still felt the psychic pressure, as though the three of them were silent atomic piles, about to explode if they came too close. At least they were still together. And still on a path toward a solution to the puzzle.
The silence in the shuttle grew more oppressive. Would they never blast off? She glanced back at Carter, who gave her a grim smile. She could see his mind churning. Would he ever just ... accept her? Would there ever be any sort of equilibrium between them? She could see him trying to formulate some sort of plan. And there was a touch of independence, as if their kiss had liberated him from his sense of loss. She could read it all in his serious, square face. She would have to give both of them this gift of independence before this was all done. This would not be hard for Philippe; but for Carter...
She could see that Carter was about to propose something or other when the pilot came on the intercom in a preoccupied sort of voice. "Stay webbed in," the pilot said over the intercom, "it's only a half hour till we're on the pad at the Polar Station." The pilot was above them, in his own pressurized cabin, a sort of bay window protruding from the side of the shuttle. "Okay, let's go," he continued, and the engines cut in, kicking them in the seats of their chairs as if a giant piston had hit the bottom of the ship.
She looked quickly out the window. She had expected to sense more dust spraying out from under the ship, but the concrete landing pad had been swept clean by the comings and goings of countless shuttles. Hellas Base dropped away below them, like a set of tin cans and towers buried in banked soil. Annie caught a glimpse of the tangled cobwebs of tire tracks spreading out from the base itself, and then the whole complex slid out of view behind them. The landscape itself dropped away and she could see the hills along the rim of Hellas, and the cratered desert beyond, where Stafford had disappeared. The ship seemed to rise faster than on the Phobos run. Presently they crossed the Hellas Rim and arced out across the highlands of eroded, empty craters.
Philippe started sketching out the window with his pen. "Always a pen," he had told Annie once. "Then you can't waste time erasing, trying to correct your mistakes. You have to capitalize on your mistakes. Once you have done it, you have learned a lesson. If you correct it, you learn nothing." Interesting philosophy. But now the jolt of acceleration made his tracings erratic. Philippe stared out the window grimly, as if trying to memorize the look of the landscape dropping away.
The raw thunder of the ascent engines was nerve-wracking. Poor Carter, Annie thought, always planning; and now he could say nothing until the engines cut off. She could feel her hair pulling down and straight, due to the heavy acceleration. With great effort she turned to give Carter a look and a smile. He started to say something, gave up in the noise, and touched her shoulder for a moment. The gesture pleased her, and she placed her gloved hand on his. The weight of takeoff pressed their hands together, and then, suddenly, there was only the whir of fans and pumps, and their hands jerked upward as they floated sickeningly upward against their seat belts.
They passed through the tenuous blue layer, and the blackening of the sky settled down on them from above, like Death's dark shadow reaching to take them away. The blue layer contracted into a thin band at, the horizon. They coasted on their way to the polar ice fields.
Carter recovered immediately; Annie had still not lost the instinct to fight against weightlessness. Philippe fished for his pen, which had flown out of his hand when the engine cut off, and was drifting and bouncing under the seats.
"We've got to agree how we're going to handle things," Carter began. He was always funneling his strength into a plan. She had him pegged. "Lean your heads in here," he said, "I don't want that pilot listening to us on the intercom."
Philippe pulled his nose up from between the seats and leaned his lanky frame toward them. "Say on, mon capitaine. This is when—as you say in your charming phrase—the shit hits the fan."
Annie watched Carter with a mixture of warmth and sad pity, wondering if he were talking partly to fill in the space. Did he have to make an effort, talking so coolly? Perhaps not. Plans always saturated his mind. At least he had captured their attention and kept them from starting another roundtable of mutual sexual politics. "We've got twenty minutes to talk," he was saying. "We should agree on how we're going to handle this.
"They know we're coming, of course, ever since I requisitioned the shuttle yesterday. How they're going to react, we don't know. So I propose two phases. Sort of a good cop-bad cop routine.
"Phase one: we go in there all sweetness and sincerity and concern. Tell them how puzzled we are that the evidence we've turned up suggests the possibility of Stafford being picked up by a hopper, possibly from the Polar Station. We don't know how that could be, but we're checking it out. Want to interview hopper pilots, check the logs, that sort of thing. We don't accuse anybody of anything."
Annie interrupted, "Oh, come on, Carter. If it's a cover-up, we won't find anything."
"Of course. But we're playing for time. Get them off guard. Snoop around. Besides, how do you know some shuttle pilot didn't have a private deal with Stafford? Snuck out in the dead of night and brought him in and hid him away somewhere for some secret project? Who knows what kind of weird deals Stafford might have made down there? Maybe Lena and the rest really don't know anything. So we come in all innocent, like we're assuming nobody knows nuttin'. Act like we're on her side, you know? Let her make the first move. Let's just see how they react. Then, if we're not getting anywhere..."
"Phase two," Philippe said. "Lure them outside and cut their air hoses. We make them shit in their suits."
"Well, we turn up the heat. Start asking pointed questions. Annie, that's when you get aggressive. You could be cool in phase one, like you're just tagging along. But phase two, you turn investigative, come out swinging with embarrassing questions. We point out that you've agreed to hold the story while you're working with us on the investigation. But the more we emphasize this, the more we show our strong suit: You're the press, and you're free to start publicizing everything. Bring the networks down on them. In fact, we could even project that we're on their side and
you are embarrassing us with our friends.
"While you turn up the heat, Philippe and I watch them squirm. Philippe sleuths around, pretending to sketch or something, but really figuring out what's happening behind the scenes." Carter smiled. "Well, what do you think?"
"You are a devious bastard," Philippe said, applauding. "Very good."
"Considering it's the last minute, not bad," Annie added. "Here I am, Annie Pohaku, your innocent reporter."
"Oh, yeah," Philippe said.
Carter seemed to be warming to his own plan. "We could have a phase three in our hip pockets as a last ploy, where all three of us come down hard on them. I point out that I've got to say something in my final report. If they don't play ball, I tell them I'll turn over all my unresolved questions to Mars Council, with the finger pointing at them. And Annie will be raising the same questions in public. My guess is, we won't have to be too blatant about it. They'd rather come up with some answers than have the Council drag it out of them."
Everyone agreed.
"One more thing. When we get there and we start in with them, let me do the talking, okay?"
"Right."
"Right."
Carter looked relieved.
During the rest of the flight, Annie tried to concentrate on how she would cover this story. Part of her said it would be a simple unfolding of events and she would report it. Another part of her guessed it was not that simple, and smiled inwardly about the ace she had up her sleeve; if things get messy, she said to herself, I can show Carter I'm not just tagging along stealing journalistic scraps from his table.
A hissing sound broke her reverie. Descent. Pumps churning; fluids flowing out of valves. The machine, preparing itself.
She craned to look out the little window. Below them, the polar fog was visible. The craters and stratified cliffs, and the endless polar dune fields, were misty behind a white haze that seemed to hug the ground.
In front of her, Philippe was glued to his window. She turned back toward Carter, with her knees out to one side and her chin on her shoulder. The mission they were on, and the coming confrontation, excited her. She was glad for the friendship of both of these men, but it was Carter who fascinated her, now.
He was looking at her, earnestly. He leaned forward. "Do you want something to exist between us?" he asked.
"Yes." She touched him. Too late to turn back.
"Then try not to hurt Philippe."
"Don't worry about Philippe," she said.
"How can you say that?" he asked.
How could she say that? Instinct. Something about having been close to him.
"I know."
Carter turned to the window. She turned and looked. Below, white flecks on the landscape. Patches of snow, on the south sides of hills and crater walls. White crescents. Snow made Mars look more forbidding, Annie thought. She remembered being afraid of snow as a child, when her parents took her to the top of Mauna Kea for the first time. All that bitterly cold material, burying soil that should be warm and fertile.
Below them, the landscape passed in silence. White patches spread to more contiguous deposits. The landscape was turning creamy white, the color of Martian snow tinged with dust.
Annie was surprised Philippe had said nothing about the snow. She studied him again. He was hunched against the window, the pink radiance making his face glow. He seemed lost, as if in a dream.
Ahead, along the distant horizon, slowly spread the amazing blackness, like a shadow spreading across the polar cap. It was the first time Annie had seen it. The Clarke Project's film of carbon deposits. The black soot that was shot down weekly from Phobos by the planetary engineers in bombs that colored the polar ice black, made it absorb the wan sunlight, changed it to gas, added it to the Martian air. The blackness that made Mars more livable. For better or worse, we're creating the future, she thought.
"Stand by." The pilot's voice on the monitor. "We're comin' in."
"I think that when we get there..." Carter started.
"Wait," she whispered. She felt a hundred different feelings twisting and shifting like a mass of kelp in the sea. Some of the strands were hers and some were not hers. She took off her thick suit glove. Of course the pilot wouldn't approve. She slid her arm behind the back of her chair, reaching toward him. "Here."
He took her hand.
"No. Like you did before. My wrist."
He held her wrist, tightly at first, then loosely, circling it and stroking it. She turned her arm back and forth in his grip, breathing heavily. He gripped her arm tightly, against the back of her seat. Insidious warmth spread through her. She threw her head back, closed her eyes, and then pulled her arm away. Maybe she was unbalanced, she thought. She leaned closer to him. "You drive me crazy, you know." Then she returned to the window.
The snow below them was streaked with gray and black, where the wind had carried outlying deposits of carbon. All of the horizon was black now.
Carter was leaning toward her ear. "Annie..."
She wanted to give him something more. "I want everything to work out," she said.
"The evil goddess cares about her friends?" he whispered in her ear.
She moved her hand back against his leg. To her own amazement, she seemed perfectly comfortable, cool and warm at the same time. She took her hand away again and put on her glove.
Striped cliffs curved below them, like a model contour map made out of sheets of thick cardboard. The polar sediment deposits. The contours were striped and defined by bands of orange and white, where layers of ice alternated with layers of soil. A billion years of Martian history, neatly ordered by seasonal and orbital cycles. At the base of the cliffs was a broad disturbed area, building modules mounded with dirt, roads leading off across the lowlands, parallel to the cliff faces. The South Polar Station looked lonely.
She cried out and then laughed when the shuttle engines roared to life, punching them down into their seats. The light in the cabin flickered as the shuttle descended through a bright, white fog layer. Below, they could now see a cluster of building modules partly obscured by ground fog and partly buried by fresh dirt. Beyond the buildings, the north-facing cliffs rose out of the haze and glowed rosily in the light of the low sun.
The shuttle balanced on its burning bush of flame for only an instant, and then dropped onto the scorched concrete pad with a heavy jolt, as if their pilot had done it too many times to care about the niceties of a soft touchdown.
Below her window, beyond the scorch zone of the landing pad, Annie could see snow on the ground, glittering in the low polar sun. The odd, slanting light outside was not so much white as glowing with the color of her own flesh. The fog was rising, and the stratified cliffs of ocher soil and pinkish ice were now hidden behind the mist, but the sunlight reflecting from them suffused the whole fog bank with a weird, peach-colored glow. Even the buildings were almost hidden. In the midst of the colored haze, the prefab buildings, protruding from their russet soil berms, were silver-gray cardboard outlines. Heavy construction vehicles were parked at random in the fog. The whole place looked crude compared to Mars City or even Hellas Base.
Movement in the fog. Emerging from the luminous mist in front of the buildings, shadowy at first, then taking gray-blue shape, suited figures moved toward them.
Annie could not identify the figures. No, wait, that had to be Elena's white helmet, marked by its black stripe. Elena and two others, walking out to meet them.
By the time Annie and the others climbed out of the shuttle, an enormous crane already towered overhead and a ground crew was already unclamping pallets of cargo. Annie looked around. She could make out the sun's tiny disk, hanging in the bright sky to the north.
"Hi, Lena." Carter's voice. He was waving.
"Welcome, welcome," Lena's voice said over the intercom. "Are you all tuned in?"
They all gave a high sign. Annie could recognize Braddock's dour face behind the plastic.
"Braddock's here," Elena continued,
gesturing. "And this is Doug Sturgis, on our staff." Sturgis also looked grim, from what Annie could see of him.
"What's this?" Carter sounded cheerful. "No brass band? No bus to the airlock? We have to walk? What kind of cheap place is this?"
"Pretty cheap." Elena forced a laugh. "You want the expenses charged to your department?"
In a moment they were walking across the hoarfrost deposit. Annie was startled by the crunch of the ice crystals underfoot, audible through her suit. The crystals sparkled in spite of the diffuse light.
"The ground frost is really early this year." Elena's voice. "Usually it doesn't start forming for a few more weeks. We thought it would be forming later each year, on average, if the Clarke Project is working." She laughed. "There are people around here, they'll tell you the thing is back-firing."
"We were surprised to discover you were all heading down here." Braddock's voice.
"Well, we've got a problem." Carter.
"Let's talk when we get inside." Elena.
23
MARCH 3, CONTINUED
Carter let Lena lead the way from the shuttle toward the base.
Let her have her way at first, he thought.
Sturgis was new to him. A wild card? Sturgis, Sturgis; had he heard that name before?
As they headed away from the shuttle, he watched Annie maneuver into place in front of him, beside Lena. In her puffed suit, out here in the cold, open air, away from the shuttle's forced intimacy, she was inscrutable again. Well, he'd be watching her, too, one way or the other.
His mind raced with conspiracy theories. Now that he was here it was hard to believe in some sort of polar cabal. He glanced ahead at the Lilliputian base, tiny and vulnerable against the frozen wasteland. Oh, sure, a polar cabal.
He studied Annie's puffy figure, in front of him. Did she suddenly look different? A different shade of blue? A different shape?
And Lena. Another puzzle. He realized he'd been wanting to see her.
MARS UNDERGROUND Page 27
