Dangerous Games

by Jack Dann

  But after their brief Overland, they’d bounced up to the scene of a disaster. Their transpo pod had smashed on a huge boulder. Its smooth shape was now twisted into something that more resembled a crushed basketball.

  It was supposed to hit and roll, Mike thought. A terrible design, something from last-century NASA that didn’t work then, even with all the redundancy the government could throw at it. Now the Wheel and Kite inside were probably…

  “Junk,” he said softly, as Sam and Juelie began pulling out bundles of bent and sheared struts and shreds of fabric.

  “Are you going to help?” Juelie asked.

  Like a robot, Mike went and helped them pull out the contents of the pod. He noticed that the big Timberland and Kia and Cessna logos emblazoned on the outside of the pod had survived intact, and he had to suppress the urge to laugh. Some of the last pieces had been wedged into the rock and wouldn’t come out-including the engine that powered the Wheel and Kite.

  “Where’s the rest of it?” Sam yelled.

  “Stuck.”

  Sam glared at him and crawled inside. When Sam crawled out again, sweat was running down his cheeks and there was a strange, faraway look in his eyes. Mike looked around at the twisted pieces strewn around them and shook his head. Sam saw it and grabbed him.

  “What?” he said. “What are you shaking your head for?”

  “We’re dead,” Mike said. “It’s over.”

  “No! We can make something! We can do some hybrid thing, like a wheel.” He began rooting through the wreckage, frantic.

  “Powered by what?” Mike said softly.

  “We can power it! Or we can make skis! Or we can…”

  Juelie went over to Sam and laid a hand on his shoulder. As soon as he felt her touch, he stopped. He stayed still on his hands and knees, looking down at the rocks and dust, panting.

  “Mike’s right,” Juelie said. “I saw the engine.”

  Sam stood up. The pale sun reflected off his shiny bronze face. He looked from the wreckage to the horizon and back again. “I don’t want to give up!” he said.

  “Why?” Juelie said. “We can’t win.”

  Sam looked at her for long moments, as if trying to decipher a strange phrase in an unknown language. Then he slumped. All the tension left him. He sat on a boulder and hugged his knees. Something like a wail escaped him. Under the cloudless alien sky, amidst a red desert unrelieved by water or leaf or lichen, it was a chilling sound.

  “What do we do?” he said finally. “How do we get to the Returns?”

  “We don’t,” Mike said, standing carefully away.

  Sam just looked up at him.

  “Walk overland,” Juelie said. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes.”

  “There’s not enough food and water,” Mike said.

  “We’ll eat less!”

  “We can’t cross the Valles Marineris.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mile-high vertical walls.”

  Juelie was silent for a while. “They’ll have to come rescue us,” she said finally.

  “No,” Mike said.

  “We’ve lost,” Sam said.

  “Wait,” Julie said. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “They can’t just come down and get us,” Mike told her. “Other than our drops and the return modules, there’s no way to get down here and back again.”

  Julie looked confused.

  “They can’t rescue us,” Mike said. “They don’t have the capability.”

  “Then what do we do?” Sam said. “Sit here and die?”

  Mike looked away. Even he knew better than to answer that. Juelie walked over and offered Sam her hand. After a moment, he took it, head hanging low. Mike edged away from the two, not wanting to be part of any coming outburst. Sam had been driven by a single purpose since the start: to win his share of the thirty million dollars. That’s what he wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. He hadn’t disguised it, hadn’t hid it. But now that was taken away. And more.

  We knew the risks when we signed, Mike thought, walking farther away. Or at least I did. I don’t know if Sam and Juelie were smart enough to really read through the eighty-page contract. It made them into a grey undefined thing that the legal system could wrangle about for years if the deaths and lawsuits came.

  But I didn’t care. All I ever wanted to do was to see another planet. Earth was a dead-end. People pursuing dead-end dreams, interested in nothing more than making money and amusing themselves. Nobody explored. Nobody took chances.

  Except for my dreams, I was as bad as everyone else. Too scared to give up my job, to let go of my condo, my ’Actives, my things. Endlessly yearning, but no ability to commit.

  And so, this great leap. Finally.

  And so, now you die.

  Mike tried to make himself feel something, but he couldn’t. It was too far away, too remote. They had maybe five days worth of food and water in their packs. Five days, and then a couple of days for the recycling to stop working, or some other suit malfunction.

  It’s too bad they didn’t give the science pack to me, Mike thought. I would have infinite time to do the experiments. Or at least many days. But it had gone to the other geek on the Thorens team.

  He had wandered a hundred feet or so away from the couple when the voice from the Can blatted in his ear.

  “We’re aware of your situation,” they said.

  “So?” he heard Sam ask.

  “We’re asking the Paul team to divert and rescue,” they said. “We think he can carry you in his Wheel. Is your fuel bladder undamaged?”

  “Yes!” Juelie said, hope rising in her voice.

  “Good. We’re transmitting the request to him now.”

  “Great!” Juelie said. Sam’s head still hung, though. “Sam, did you hear that? We’re going to be rescued.”

  “It’s a request,” Sam said. “Re-quest. Do you think Paul is going to give up his thirty million?”

  “Thirty?” she asked

  “Yeah. He’s the single guy. The nut.”

  Mike could see Juelie looking up at him for a moment, then down at Sam.

  “He might,” she said. “He still might.”

  Sam’s laughter echoed in the dying Martian day.

  LIES

  “Promise them more flights,” Evan McMaster said.

  “We don’t have any,” Jere Gutierrez said. The Russians had looked at their plans, conferred gravely, and named a price that was ten times what their highest projections were. Now they were back in their shabby Moscow hotel, drinking Stoli in a decaying bar that looked like it was last decorated back in the 90s.

  “They’re bluffing,” Evan said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They do tourist crap. You don’t think they really know how to put together a Mars mission? They never even landed a man on the moon!”

  “Yes they did…”

  “What do they teach you with in school these days? A VCR and a chocolate cake? No Commies on the moon. Just us. 1969.”

  “The Russians did it, too!” Jere said.

  “Nope. Never. Once we did it, they dropped their program and did unmanned probes. Said that sending people was a showboating capitalist move.”

  “Shit, man, don’t scare me.”

  “You just need to know what we’re dealing with,” Evan said. “It’s a poker game. And they’re bluffing.”

  “If you don’t think they can get to Mars, why are we here?”

  “I think they can make it to Mars. But it won’t be easy. It’ll be hard. And they know it.”

  “So what do we do?” Jere said.

  “Bluff right back. Tell them we’re going to do this every year. Every three months. Every shittin’ week if that’s what it takes.”

  “You’re going to lie to the Russian mafia?”

  Evan smiled. “No. You are.”

  “No,” Jere said, shivering, remembering too many stories from Dad, the first days of the internet, the way some com
panies got financed.

  “I thought Neteno was the big maverick studio, willing to take any chance.”

  “We are.”

  “Then act like it, or I’ll take it to Fox.”

  Jere opened his mouth. Closed it. The rumor had already been spilled. Every network knew about it. And they would probably be interested, if they saw Evan’s data.

  Evan had him by the nuts.

  “How do I do this?” Jere asked. “And live?”

  “They’re gonna have their setbacks, too, stuff we can put them over a barrel for. Once we’ve primed the audience, they have to meet our schedule. Or all the advertising for RusSpace goes out the door.”

  And you think you’ll draw them into your web, too, Jere thought. “I wish I had your confidence.”

  “It’s my life, too,” Evan said.

  Yes, Jere thought. And you’re more visible than I am. I will make sure it is your life. First, you fuck. First.

  “Okay,” he said. “We bluff. Now, what’s this the lawyers have come up with for the contract?”

  “Aha,” Evan said. He pulled out a Palm and scrolled through a long document. “Eighty pages of gibberish. They want real signatures in real pen.”

  “What does it say?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Evan said, eyes still on the screen.

  “Give me the gist.”

  “Has them renounce their US citizenship, become wards of Neteno, hold us harmless, things like that. If they make it back, they may have to live at airports.”

  “There are always volunteers.”

  “The lawyers had one other suggestion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Start in the prisons. If they die, public reaction will be less.”

  “But they’ll have less buy-in,” Evan said, frowning.

  “Yeah, that’s a problem. Do you think we can spin it?”

  “I’d be happier if most of them were just genpop.”

  “Maybe a mix,” Evan said.

  Jere nodded and sipped his drink. There was silence for a time. The sound of an argument deep in the hotel, maybe from the kitchen. Jere let the silence stretch out.

  “Why?” Jere said, finally.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this? Just the money?”

  Evan sighed and looked away, to the cute blonde bar-tender. For a while, Jere thought he wouldn’t answer.

  Then Evan looked down at the table and said, “After a while, you get used to it. Not the money. The other shit. Having dinner with George Bush, ’cause you have your hand on the throat of the public. Fucking Mary-Kate Olsen, since you pay more attention to her at one premiere than her husband does all month. Picking up your office phone and asking for anything and getting it, ’cause you’re on top, you’re on fire. Why else?”

  Because you don’t want your dad to look at you with that look, that are-you-fucking-stupid look, ever again, Jere thought.

  But he just nodded, and they went back to serious drinking. Later, there would be women. Later still would be more negotiation. Endless rounds. Bluff and dare. The real product of Hollywood.

  OFFER

  The only thing that kept Keith Paul from swatting the tiny cam that dangled in front of him was that he knew that would lose him the thirty million dollars. Contract breach, the asswipe PA would say, in that breathy feminine voice of his. All camera, all the time. We can tap in whenever we want.

  Yeah, and I hope you get a shot of me taking a great huge shit, Keith thought. Broadcast that to your eight hundred million viewers. Here is Keith Paul, taking a dump on your ratings.

  He would be sure to say that when he won. When they pointed the camera at his face, he would tell them exactly what he thought of them. His crowning words, his first major televised fuck-you-all.

  And he would win. No doubt about that. Teams were for pussies. He’d been able to skin the Wheel and string the Kite faster than any team back when they were training. He didn’t have arguments with himself, or forget where something went.

  No, everything was great. He allowed himself to look up at the light blue sky. Really not that different from Earth. There was only one creepy thing. Nothing moved. It felt old and ancient and unnatural, and the sun looked small and dim. He kept wiping at his header’s visor to clear it, but it wasn’t cloudy or tinted. That was just the way Mars looked. Because it was farther away from the sun.

  “We need to make a request,” said the voice of the Can. Not the breathy one, but the cute little girl that the breathy asshole was sleeping with.

  “What?” They always had requests. Look at this, do that, scratch your ass.

  “The Ruiz team’s transpo pod had a landing, um, malfunction. They have no transport.”

  “So?” Tough shit.

  “We’d like you to divert your Wheel and collect them.”

  “I haven’t even reached my transpo yet.”

  “After you get there.”

  “And you’re going to give me extra time for this?”

  A pause. “No.”

  “Then how the hell am I supposed to win?”

  Another pause. “They’ll die if you don’t pick them up.”

  “So?”

  Finally, a new voice, deep and resonant. Frank Sellers, that John Glenn fuck that had rode them out here.

  “Keith, we’d really like you to consider this. Even if you don’t win the prize money-and you still might-the act of rescue will create its own reward.”

  “Like, they’ll pay me more than thirty million bucks for it?”

  “I’m sure our sponsors will be very generous.”

  “More than thirty million generous?”

  Another pause. For a while, Keith thought they’d given up on him. But Frank started in as he caught the first glimpse of his transpo pod, glittering in the distance.

  “Keith, we’ve got buy-in from several of the sponsors. We can get you a million. Plus other things. Cars…”

  “No.”

  “They’ll die. That will be on your conscience.”

  “They can’t prosecute me for it.” It would be just like them, to dredge up the fact that he was the only former felon, even though he was pardoned, even though it was just a simple carjacking thing, nothing much.

  Long pause. “No.”

  “I think I’ll ignore you now.”

  “Keith…”

  Keith looked up at the thin sky, as if to try and see the Can spinning overhead. “A million is not thirty. A million and promises is not thirty. Sorry, no can do.”

  “You may not win.”

  “I will.”

  Another pause. This one longer. “We can go two million.”

  “Did you fail math? Two million is not greater than thirty. Give me an offer more than thirty, and they’re saved.”

  “We… probably can’t do that.”

  “I… probably can’t save them,” Keith said, mocking his tone.

  Silence. Blissful silence. Long yards passed and the transpo pod swelled in his view. As he reached its smooth, unmarred surface, Frank’s voice crackled to life again.

  “Even if you win,” he said. “People will hate you.”

  “That’s all right,” Keith said. “I love myself enough for all of them.”

  SCIENCE

  “I thought they found life on Mars,” Jere said.

  Evan rolled his eyes heavenward. It was 4:11 AM, and they were screaming down the 5 at triple-digit speeds in Jere’s Porsche. The scrub brush at the side of the road whipped by, ghostly grey streamers disappearing into taillight-red twilight. They were in that no-mans-land between Stockton and Santa Clarita, where the land falls away and you could believe you were the only person in California, at least for a time.

  Jere frowned, seeing the look out of the corner of his eye. “What? They didn’t? Talk, you fucking know-it-all.”

  “They still don’t know. They’re still arguing about it.”

  “Funny thinking of Mars as a science thing.” />
  Evan shook his head, and then said, “It’s too bad we can’t do it this year. Do the whole fortieth-anniversary shindig.”

  “Fortieth anniversary of what?”

  “Viking. 1976.”

  We put shit on Mars way back then? Jere thought. “We’re still on for ’18?”

  “So far.”

  Silence for a long time. In front of them there was nothing but darkness and stars and the dim outline of mountains. Jere pushed the car to 120, 130, 140. The blur became a haze of motion, almost surreal.

  “So what do you think about Berkeley?” Jere said.

  “It’s crap.”

  “Why?”

  “Like, duh. Berkeley probably can’t even design the right experiments package. They’re a liberal arts school.”

  “So we get another school.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “Industry,” Evan said. “That’s where the money really is. We go to industry.”

  “Who?”

  “Siemens. Or IBM. Someone big, with deep pockets.”

  Jere nodded. Berkeley had offered them quite a bit of money. With IBM in on a bidding war, how high could the stakes get? This idea was looking better and better all the time.

  EXPERIMENTS

  Being paired with two beautiful women was, well, distracting, Geoff Smith thought. Their squeezesuits left almost nothing to the imagination, and every time he looked up, his thoughts were shattered by the simple beauty of the feminine form.

  And what thoughts they were! Here he was, Geoff Smith, on an alien planet! And he was going to prove there was life on it! He would do what a million scientists back on earth wanted to do! Him, with nothing more than a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, would do what all the PhDs told him he couldn’t do. He would put Martian life under a microscope for the first time! He would look at it with his own eyes! He would be famous!

  Because the big problem was that nobody had ever really looked. They’d tried the Carbon-14 tagging trick on Viking, they’d tried spectrographic analysis, but they’d never just taken a sample of dirt, put it on a microscope slide, and looked at it.