Mars Crossing

by Geoffrey Landis

  "Now, I can't tell you how to behave," the psychologist said, "but I strongly suggest that is not a good idea."

  Estrela had been just twigging the psychologist, Tana had thought. She had been quite vocal in telling Tana that she was none too fond of shrinks, and liked to rattle their cages.

  Or so Tana had thought at the time. Now she wished that she wasn't wearing gloves. If she could, she would be biting her fingers.

  What did Estrela want with John in the rockhopper?

  And then the emergency band of the radio turned itself on. It was Ryan Martin's voice, and for a moment she couldn't figure out what he was saying. Then she suddenly realized.

  He was singing.

  12

  JOÃO

  Estrela sometimes swore by Santa Luzia. She said that her mother always swore by this.

  In actual fact, her mother had been a prostitute. While she was alive, she had used a strong and colorful language that liberally mixed blasphemy, obscenity, and scatology.

  João had, slowly and patiently, broken her of her language. It doesn't matter how sophisticated you look, he said, the moment you lose your temper and swear, everybody will know you were born in a gutter.

  It was João who had taught her to swear by Santa Luzia. "Everyone has to swear by something," he said. "Learn something that's not crude."

  It had been hard to practice. She had held out her hand, and closed her eyes, and when she relaxed and didn't expect it, João hit her on the hand with a broomstick. "Santa Luzia!" she was supposed to shout. "Santa Luzia!"

  "Yes, but as if you mean it," João would say, and suddenly hit her with the broomstick again.

  "Santa Luzia!"

  "If you could blush after you say it, that would be even better," he told her, but she could never manage that trick. For a long time she was hard pressed to avoid giggling when she said it—it was such a silly, harmless thing to swear by, who could possibly take it seriously?—but after a while it became second nature to her, so much that she now even said it without thinking when she was actually startled.

  When she was among Americans, she was silently amused by the poverty of what they thought was swearing. "Fuck!" the Americans would curse. "Fuck you!"—as if that were a curse. They were like children, pleased with a petty daring.

  João lived in an enormous ugly concrete building that was a kilometer or so away from the college. He shared a cramped apartment with two other hoys from the college; none of them ever bothered to clean, and the apartment was so cluttered that it was hard to find the floor.

  Estrela would come to João's apartment in the afternoon, after class, and they would talk. João would buy coffee—only little amounts, his teaching assistantship paid very little—and he would make two small cups on the single working burner of the tiny kitchen stove. João told her about his dreams and his plans for the future. None of their other classmates at the college could actually know what we lived through, he would tell her, only you. You are my only true friend, the only one who knows me for who I really am.

  He told her how he had decided to study geology. Even from the worst slums, he had stared from the city up at the mountains in the distance, the mountains that were ever changing and always the same. He had decided that people were untrue, but the mountains were a solid thing that he could always rely on, and if he ever understood them, really understood, that he would have something—he could never quite explain what, but something.

  Everyone needs something to hold on to, Estrela knew. A mountain was as good a choice as any.

  Estrela loved to hear João talk about his dreams and plans, but she secretly marveled that a ragged street boy could hold such elaborate dreams. She, herself, had far simpler hopes. Her dreams at night were broken by images of being alone, huddled against a terrible darkness, with the stench of fear and rifle smoke assaulting her nostrils, and the night punctuated by the beautiful and awful flares of rifle shots. Her hopes and her plans were the same. She had, by her luck and her dogged study, managed to leave Brazil. Her only plans were to never go back.

  João helped her learn geology. Her growing up on the streets meant that she had preternatural senses, he told her. You have situational awareness; you observe with a detail that verges on suspicion, detecting every small detail is second nature to you. Turn that to your study and make it work for you.

  She didn't try to hide from João the fact that she had boyfriends. She hoped that perhaps he would become jealous, but he never did. Sometimes he gave her advice. Stay away from this one; when you're not around he talks like you're a piece of shit. That one's violent when he's drunk.

  It is like he said when we met, she thought. I will never break his heart.

  And then she thought, he has armored his heart so I won't break it.

  And then she thought, if he has armored his heart, there must be a reason; he is afraid of me.

  Someday, I will capture his heart.

  13

  WALKING ON MARS

  In the Martian evening, in the little amount of free time they had after the bubble habitat was inflated and before the sun had yet set, Trevor went out walking. Ryan Martin followed along with him. Trevor was pretty sure that the commander had instructed Ryan to keep an eye on him. It annoyed him—he was not a child and shouldn't have needed a baby-sitter—but there was little point in complaining, so he made the best of it.

  Besides, Ryan was one of the nicer ones. Ryan usually treated him like an adult, like a full member of the team, and not like a spoiled rich kid.

  "Take a look at this," Ryan said. He was standing of the lip of a depression, looking down.

  Trevor walked over and looked down with him. It was an irregular pit, with a jumble of dark rocks, nearly black, inside it. "What is it?"

  "Collapsed lava cave, I think." Ryan bent over and picked up one of the pieces of rock. It was flat and curved like a shard of pottery. He looked at it, then handed it to Trevor. The outside was smooth, but the concave side was rough, almost sharp. "Doesn't look two billion years old to me," he said. "I'd bet there's been recent volcanism here."

  That was interesting. "Recent?" Trevor asked.

  "Less than a billion years ago, I'd say," Ryan said. "Maybe even within the last million years."

  "Oh," Trevor said.

  "What, you were thinking yesterday? Get real, kid."

  Ryan turned and wandered off. That was odd, Trevor thought, if he was watching me. But he took his freedom as a chance to climb on some of the rocks and look around.

  Desolate. This place was worse than Arizona; absolutely nothing green at all. If there were even one single cactus, or even a clump of grass—but there were only rocks and sand.

  Ryan was saying something that he couldn't catch, and he suddenly realized that Ryan was singing.

  "—had a hammer," he sang. "I'd hammer on Ma-ars—"

  Not real music, not stomp or even bubblerazz, but old stuff, some folk song from the previous century. It certainly was an odd thing to do.

  "And if I had a rock—" he sang.

  Trevor turned his receiver volume down.

  And then suddenly the singing stopped. Trevor waited for a moment, then cautiously toggled the volume back up.

  Ryan was just standing there, staring at the rock. Trevor walked over to see what he was looking at, but nothing was there, just a wall of rock.

  "What is it?"

  "Did you see that?"

  "What?"

  "It moved. That rock, did you see it? It flowed, just like water." Ryan knelt down to put his hand on the rock. "It's moving. I can feel it."

  "Where?" Trevor put his hand against the rock, but felt nothing.

  "Hey, feel the heartbeat? This rock is alive. It's not a rock at all, it's an animal. I can feel it. Here." He took Trevor's hand and pressed it against the rock. "Can you feel it?"

  It felt like rock. Rough, pitted, volcanic rock.

  Abruptly Ryan got up and walked away. He was swaying, unsteady on his feet.
Could he possibly be drunk? Now he was listing to one side as if he was about to fall over.

  The rocks couldn't possibly be alive. Trevor pressed his hand against the boulder again, and closed his eyes and held his breath to better feel the surface. When he concentrated he could feel his own pulse in the tips of his fingers, but the rock was still just a rock.

  "Maybe a dinosaur," Ryan said. "It's sleeping, though. Say, kid, you know something? I've figured it out. We're not on Mars. It's all a hoax. We're somewhere in Nevada, not on Mars. Look, I bet that's Vegas right there over the horizon." He put his hand up to his visor to shield his eyes from the sun.

  "Stupid suit. Why the hell do we have to wear these things, anyway?" He put his hand up to the helmet ring-fitting, but then dropped it. "Kid, they tricked us. It's a training mission. Look, take a look at the gravity." He picked up a rock and dropped it. It fell, taking a second or so to hit the ground. "Look, was that slow, or not? Was that Mars gravity? I couldn't tell." He picked up another rock and dropped it. "Maybe it is. How do they fake that, I wonder?" He picked up another rock, but then seemed to forget what do with it.

  "Hey, this rock is carved," he said. "Carved, I tell you." He dropped it and tried to pick up another. "Look, it's a bowling ball." He tried to pick it up, and couldn't.

  Trevor was seriously frightened now. Was Ryan psychotic? Was he going to go off on a killing spree, like a psycho killer in the movies? He looked around, but they were out of sight of the rest of the party. In fact, he wasn't quite sure exactly where they were in relationship to the habitat.

  Ryan sat down with a thump that Trevor thought he could hear even through the thin atmosphere, and picked up a handful of dust. "If I had a bowling ball," he sang, "I'd go bowling—"

  Trevor walked up to him. Just under Ryan's collar, in the control section of his suit, was the switch that turned on the emergency broadcast frequency. Trevor reached over, flipped up the protective cover, and tapped it. When it didn't light, he hit it again, this time hard.

  "Hey, what are you doing?"

  "Brushing off some dirt."

  "Yeah?" Ryan looked down at his suit. "Say, the suit is dusty, isn't it. You think I should take it off?"

  "Uh, no, I don't think that's a good idea."

  "Okay." Ryan went back to his singing, changing tunes. "I was lost, and now I'm found—"

  From over the ridge across from them, a figure in a bright purple spacesuit came racing up the hill toward them.

  Ryan looked up. "Tana! Hey, Tana, join the party! Where's the beer?" He started to get up.

  "Stay right there!" Tana commanded. "Shit! Kid, how long has he been like this?"

  Ryan staggered to his feet, but seemed to have trouble staying upright. His voice was puzzled. "I think I'm drunk. That's funny, I haven't had any beer yet."

  "Hold still, hold still, damn it!" She had a cylinder of compressed oxygen out, and was fumbling with the pressure fitting on Ryan's backpack. "Trevor, hold him steady."

  Trevor held onto Ryan with both hands. He had never been so glad to see anybody.

  "Say, Tana," said Ryan conversationally, "have I ever told you how cute you are? I'd really like to—" He cut himself off. "But you don't want to. No, you'd probably die."

  "Hold still. You'll be okay. Hold still, I've gotta purge you."

  "Of course," Ryan continued, "you'll probably die anyway. Did I tell you that only three of us can fit on the ship? Little teeny ship. Those Brazilians were little teeny guys, too. Maybe just two."

  Then the oxygen purge got into his life support system, and his voice trailed off. "Kid," he said. "Kid, I've been really really dumb."

  "You said it," Tana replied.

  14

  HOBBIT HAB

  During the training exercises, Ryan had tagged the bubble habitat the "hobbit habit," since it was so small that ordinary humans had to hunch over when standing inside. "Damn thing is built for hobbits, not humans," he'd said. From the outside, the bubble habitat looked like three golden brown biscuits baked together into a single mass, with a smaller biscuit, an airlock, stuck to one side. The yellow was the natural color of Kapton, a puncture-resistant polyimide, reinforced with invisible strands of high-strength carbon superfiber. The walls were just translucent enough that, from the outside, the hobbit habit shone with a deep, almost incandescent glow.

  All five of them were inside now. Tana had seated Ryan on one of the supply cases and had strapped an oxygen mask on him. She drew a sample of his blood to analyze later. "Who's president?" She hit him on one knee and watched his reflexes critically.

  "Yamaguchi." From under the oxygen mask, it sounded something like "Yohmoosh." "Unless he's been impeached. Or better yet, hanged."

  "Dream on." Yamaguchi was not well liked among the Mars crew. As a senator, he had sponsored the legislation that killed the NASA Mars program after the Agamemnon disaster; as president, he had tried—unsuccessfully—to stop the Quijote expedition by demanding a billion-dollar payment as usage fee for the government equipment.

  She tapped his other knee and watched the reflex. "What's your mother's maiden name?"

  "Sagan, just like the astronomer. No relation."

  "Stick your hand out straight and hold it steady." She watched it critically, looking for tremors. "Good. Touch your nose with your index finger, please. Good, now again with your left index finger. Excellent. Tell me, where are we right now?"

  "Inside a teeny little hobbit room that smells like plastic and"—he sniffed—"something else, maybe peroxide."

  "And where is that?"

  He grinned. "On Mars."

  "Good," Tana said. She peeled one eyelid up and shone a flashlight in his eye, watching the pupil contract, then did the same in the other. "I'd say that you're oriented times three. You had a bad case of anoxia there, and I'm not real happy about it, but it looks like there's no permanent damage. You can take the oxygen mask off now if you want. Do you have a headache?"

  Ryan pulled the mask off. "I'm okay."

  "Roll it up neatly and put it away. Any idea what happened?"

  Ryan shook his head, wincing slightly as he did so. Tana thought that he probably did have a headache. She would have liked to do a full PET scan workup to make sure she hadn't missed anything, but without equipment, that was obviously impossible. "I'd say that something went wrong with the zirconia cell, but I don't know what," he said. "It wasn't feeding me oxygen. I'll take it apart tomorrow."

  "Do it tonight. None of us are going anywhere until we know what's happened and can be sure it won't happen again."

  Ryan winced slightly again, but nodded his head. "You're right. Okay, tonight."

  Tana called through the opening, "I'm done here. Come on in."

  Commander Radkowski came into the bubble-segment, then Trevor, and finally Estrela, Estrela managing to be graceful even when she was hunched over like a caveman. With five in the segment, it was extremely crowded.

  Now Ryan was the center of attention, and he fidgeted.

  "Something you said," Tana remarked casually. "Right at the end. Do you remember it?"

  "It's kind of hazy," Ryan said, but when Tana gave him a sharp glance, he added, "Yes, I think so."

  Tana looked over to Commander Radkowski, hoping he would help, but he didn't seem ready to take over the questioning. "Only three of us can fit on the ship, was that what you said?"

  Ryan nodded, and when everybody was silent, looking at him, he cleared his throat. "Well, it's a small ship." Nobody said anything. "I did tell the commander."

  Tana turned and looked at Commander Radkowski. "You knew this, and you kept it from us?"

  "I—well, it seemed a good idea at the time."

  "You're saying, if we do make it all the way to the pole, only three of us can go home? And you didn't tell us?" She turned to Estrela. "And you?"

  Estrela looked away. "It is our ship. I know the specifications."

  Tana looked at Trevor. He shook his head mutely. "So, the only ones who di
dn't know that two of us have to die were the nigger and the kid, is that right?"

  She'd used the word hoping for some shock value, and it seemed to work. Radkowski spread his hands out, and turned them palms up. "It's not like that—"

  "Really." She crossed her arms. "Okay, explain it to me."

  "All I was thinking was, we get to the ship, anything can happen. We need to work as a team. We can't have everybody worrying. And, besides, who knows? It's a tough trek anyway, I can't be sure everybody is going to make it. If two of us die—"

  Tana widened her eyes dramatically. "You're saying that you were actually planning for two of us to die on the road?"

  "No! Not that at all! I just meant—" Radkowski lowered his head. "I just thought that if we went, at least three of us could be saved."

  "Or maybe we could fix the ship so it could launch four," Ryan added. "I don't know for sure that it can't."

  "Okay," Tana said, and looked back at Commander Radkowski. "Now, tell me another thing. What were you and Estrela doing in the rockhopper an hour ago?"

  Tana didn't think that Radkowski could blush, but he did. He looked down at his feet. "Nothing."

  "Nothing?" She looked at Estrela as she said it. Estrela looked back imperturbably, her head cocked slightly to the side. "You must have been doing something."

  "She wanted to talk to me."

  "Really? In private? About what?" She was still looking at Estrela, and Estrela's slight hint of a smile told her more than she wanted to know.

  Radkowski said, almost mumbling, "I should have realized she would know how big the ship was." He looked up at her. "Nothing happened. She just wanted to talk to me."

  When Trevor's broadcast had gone out, it had taken almost ten minutes for Radkowski to get to Ryan. It shouldn't have taken him two.

  They must have been doing something. Tana had a very good guess as to what.