Mars, The Bringer Of War

by George P. Saunders

  All he had to do was get through this flight; the weekend beckoned, and he had two days off. He could nurse himself back to health off of company time. He tried to remember the last time he had been ill. Nothing recent. Last time he felt even remotely sick was . . .

  . . . . when he got back from the moon.

  He didn’t want to go there now. Couldn’t. He had a jet to fly, no distractions. A flu he could handle; smoldering resentment and ferocious memories from the past he could not. At least, not tonight. He glanced at Camera Three, recognizing his head stewardess near the number one forward hatch.

  In the last part of First Class and the beginning of Business, Brenda Tolles, was greeting the last of the passengers the board. Standing next to her was the new stu on the block, Hilary Raymond, a stunning looking ebony woman who stood a whole head above Brenda.

  Running through the First Class hatch, onto the airplane and nearly sliding into Brenda and Hilary, stealing second, was Barry Richmond. He was seventeen years old, but had the hyper-kinetic energy of a six-year-old kid on caffeine.

  “Is it true that Captain John Mars is the pilot for this flight?”

  “Yes it is,” Brenda smiled back. She was used to the question -- Colonel John Mars and Neil Armstrong were the two most famous ex-astronauts alive.

  Ronald Newman stepped up from behind his son, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Mars. He was the head of that moon mission awhile back. The one where they all died, except for him, right?"

  Mars could barely make out the conversation, but he had heard his name mentioned. He was used to it by now -- the famous space guy who now flew airplanes for a living. His epitaph. Again, he shuddered, though this time he realized the shudder was due to wistful regret linked to events of one year ago...

  A voice boomed behind Newman. All heads. Mars frowned as he stared into the camera. The voice was familiar. Painful to hear, even.

  “Formerly, Colonel John T. Mars of NASA. Two times to the Moon and oldest astronaut in the fleet." A smile, then a wink: "Next to me, that is.”

  “You sound as if you know the captain, sir,” Brenda said with a smile.

  Chase Ravers smiled back enigmatically and cocked an eyebrow. “Hell, lady,” he said. “I trained him.”

  Ravers entered the plane, chuckling.

  Mars leaned back into his seat and continued frowning. Now what the hell was Chase Ravers doing on his airplane? A social call? Hello, has your life toileted in the past year as much as I think it has – a tumble and flush for which I was partially responsible?

  In the flight deck, Flight Engineer Bob Peoples turned from his panel to pilot and co-pilot.

  “We've got clear skies all the way to Japan,” he said.

  Mars kept his eyes peeled on the video monitor. He and Ravers hadn’t spoken since that last, dreadful time on the phone. When my best friend had basically told me to fuck off and stop disgracing the space program with talk of little green men.

  Brenda knocked, then entered into the cockpit.

  “John, I thought you might be interested. A man is flying with us today who says he knows you.”

  Mars stood up, and frowned. “Is that a fact.”

  Ravers looked out the window, then turned, as Mars approached his seat. Ravers smiled and held out his hand. Mars just stared. Ravers withdrew the offering. The coldness was still there, bolstered by the intractable accusatory expression that Mars wore so well. The You Screwed Me look reserved for one time best of friends. Ravers shrugged.

  “Japanese Space Commission and NASA are planning the Jupiter flyby next April. I’m the liaison,” he said. “Someone thinks I’ve got political savvy. Whatever the hell that is.”

  Mars ignored the polite tone in Ravers’ voice.

  “What are you doing on my airplane?”

  The line was drawn. No hello, no how are you. Ravers read the greeting clearly and did not back down.

  “I knew you were helming this flight. Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and see how my old buddy was doing.”

  Mars remained silent. Ravers glanced around himself and nodded appreciatively.

  “Looks like a cush job.”

  “They never got back to me on my ‘pending medical discharge,’” Mars said icily.

  Ravers came back immediately. “You were not immediately reachable. Mexico, I believe, right? I tried calling your condo once. Someone named Tawny answered. Said you were, like, you know –“ Ravers paused for emphasis, “-- drunk and still asleep.”

  Mars wouldn’t be slowed down by the subtle jab. “I’m curious -- what was the Board’s final determination on the Tragedy of Flight 020?”

  Ravers sighed and looked down. There was no point in doing the bullshit dance with John Mars. He wasn’t the type to suffer it gladly for long.

  “The official consensus was that something went wrong up there. Some kind of mechanical failure, obviously within the Rover's propulsion unit. It somehow exploded, your crew was killed -- “

  “And the shock of seeing my men die was too much for me. I had to fabricate some incredible story about aliens. Right?” Mars finished the official scenario.

  “John, you're alive,” Ravers said evenly. “You’re a hero to the American people. There are worse things to happen than becoming a rich, famous, civilian jet pilot.”

  “I know. One of those worse things killed four men. No one seems terribly worried why, where or how it happened -- and the only living witness -- me -- has been neatly liquidated.”

  “If we have a Close Encounter, John, I’ll call you,” Ravers said with an edge.

  Mars just shook his head, and turned to walk off. He didn’t have to put up with Ravers’ glib sanctimonious dismissals.

  “I’m sorry about you and Anna,” Ravers said softly. “You two were good for each other.”

  This stopped Mars mid-stride.

  “Did you know she’s running Freedom?” Ravers asked.

  “I read about it in Time Magazine,” Mars said softly, his back still to Ravers. "She has political savvy, too. Whatever that means," he said pointedly.

  Ravers squashed an impulse to jab back. He took the course of least resistance. “Guess you all don’t stay in touch.”

  Mars glanced back at Ravers. Was there sympathy in his voice, he wondered? Sincerity? Remnants of an old friend trying to mend a fence? He couldn’t tell. He was feeling shitty again, a cold sweat creeping up his body like a thousand soggy ants. There was always time to continue this conversation once they were at cruising altitude. He’d see how he felt then.

  “Enjoy the flight, Ravers,” Mars said. This time, he turned and walked off without glancing back.

  The huge 747 Jet that John Mars commanded finished final fueling. All baggage had been stowed and Jennifer, John’s co-pilot, was already priming all four of the giant Rolls Royce RB211 engines, reading them for take-off. Back in the flight deck, Mars watched Jennifer work, then glanced at the cargo bay door indicator light switch to Red. The hatches were now sealed. He reached for the inter-cabin phone.

  “Brenda, how close are we?”

  From the Coach section of the aircraft, the head stewardess replied momentarily. “Five minutes, Captain. We’re seating the last of them.”

  “Buzz me as soon as you're locked in,” Mars said.

  He hung up the phone. Jennifer looked at him and then her controls.

  “Fuel umbilical is clear.”

  He nodded and took a long breath. He was feeling better, less lightheaded. The feverish, cold sweats had passed. Replaced probably, by the bile that had filled his gorge on seeing Ravers board the airplane.

  Bastard, he thought to himself. You think you know someone for years, and then the impossible happens. Your best friend stabs you in the back.

  The treachery lingered in his mouth like bitter pill, chewed and sucked on without the benefit of anything to wash it down with. Ravers had been his superior officer in NASA since Mars had joined, separated only by a few years in age,
Ravers being the most senior flight officer in the program. The two men shared similar backgrounds; both had seen combat, both had elected to join the NASA ranks rather than continue moving upwards through the military community. At one time, they had been virtual brothers, supportive through innumerable missions together. Each man had his strength, which the other relied upon for backup within the NASA infrastructure. If Mars was the quintessential astronaut, possessed of both an incisive intelligence and an uncanny sense of drive, Ravers was the older, more thoughtful and politically adept party that could wheedle anything out of the bureaucracy for the greater good of the program. They functioned like a well-oiled machine together, in fact, had done so for years.

  Until a year ago, when Ravers had joined the rest of NASA and summarily washed Mars out of the space program forever.

  “Looks like we hit the number 8 spot on the runway, behind a United Transport and Alaska commuter,” Jennifer said.

  Mars nodded absently.

  Suddenly, Jennifer’s voice muted into silence. Mars' vision blurred for just a second. And then it blackened. He closed his eyes. A split second later, he was falling. It wasn’t possible, but he was falling through what appeared to be a tunnel of light. He was no longer in the cockpit of his airplane.

  Or was it that he seemed not to be there any longer?

  There was a feeling of detachment from body. As if he had just died. There was also the notable absence of fear. That feeling, unfortunately, changed dramatically a moment later as a vision materialized before him.

  He was now in space. Floating, suspended, hanging in a vacuum; he was still breathing . . . though technically, if he was in space, exposed, without the protection of an environment suit, he should be dead.

  Yet . . . here he was. A hundred miles above ground. A radiant being of light, floating, without a spacesuit, breathing normally, still physically intact.

  Directly ahead, Mars could see the space station Freedom. It rotated slowly, gracefully on its central axis, growing in size. He tried to move his hand, his arm; but nothing worked. When he looked down at his body . . . he realized suddenly that he had no body. There was a glow encircling what had to be his mind’s eyes -- as if he was merely some kind of holographic projection, an illusion, non-corporeal.

  Not real. Just a presence. Allowed to watch.

  Watch what? Why Freedom?

  His focus shifted. To the right, and slightly above. Even as an illusion, or whatever it was he’d become, he felt another shudder pass through his entire being.

  The Sel spacecraft was approaching, obliterating the circumference of the brilliant moon. It’s shape was indeterminate, bulky, filled with metallic protrusions and riggings, the like of which John couldn’t begin to guess the function thereof. It moved silently, inexorably toward Freedom.

  His mind reeled. Anna was on board Freedom. Anna . . . his Anna.

  Get out, were the words that screamed inside, but failed to be voice. Get out while you still have time.

  And then he was back. Back in the cockpit of his plane, drenched in sweat. He glanced over at Jennifer, who was cross-checking her own instrumentation. Behind her, Bob Peoples was involved with last minute checks of his own.

  Mars took a breath, closed his eyes. He tried to digest, to make some fundamental, rational assessment as to what he’d just experienced. Instead, rational thought flew out the window. He looked at his hand; it was shaking. Not from fever, or from a nervous tick. No, he, John Mars, the most courageous astronaut on the planet, was shaking out of fear.

  “I'll -- see what's holding up the works downstairs,” he mumbled as he rose unsteadily out of his seat, fairly fleeing the flight deck.

  Business Class was full. A few eyes darted his way; for the most part, everyone was strapping in, enjoying a pre-flight cocktail, courtesy of the airline that employed Mars. Chase Ravers was already on the phone, and was not looking his way. Thank god for small favors, Mars thought from someplace far away. Chase alone would know that something was immediately wrong, just by the look on his face . . .

  He slipped into the nearest lavatory, locked the door, and began to breathe deeply, almost to the point of hyperventilating. He then looked at himself in the mirror.

  What had happened to him? What did he experience?

  A vision?

  A revelation?

  Some kind of psychic event?

  John ticked off a list of immediate possibilities, along with the last, foreboding one: Am I cracking up? Have I become delusional? Had the events of a year past, finally caught up with him and caused his mind to snap? Had that post-traumatic paranoid – no, strike that – the very real psychotic episode the shrinks back at NASA warned of, finally flowered, here and now?

  An ugly possibility, but one he couldn’t honestly ignore.

  He checked his eyes. His pulse. All were normal. At last, he nodded, staring at his reflection. No, what he saw in space … well, it was no dream, no illusion. Something was happening.

  And somehow, he was a part of it.

  A big part.

  Barry was sitting in his seat in Economy, next to his mother and father. He was playing with his laptop computer. He turned to his mother, who looked mildly ill, even though the plane was still on the ground.

  “You okay, Mom?” he asked.

  Eve Newman looked uneasily from her flight information brochure to her energetic son. She was an attractive woman, with prematurely gray hair tied neatly in a bow behind her neck. She smiled distractedly. “Yes, dear. I just don't like to fly.”

  Barry was aware of his mother's distaste for airplanes. “The 747 is one of the safest planes ever built. And did you know that only 1,220 people died last year from fatal crashes? That's 216 less than the previous year.”

  Eve just looked at her son, her face pale. “Very comforting, dear. Read something, won’t you?”

  Barry smiled. Moms were occasionally fun to tease.

  Several rows down, Dr. Rupert Maynard was grumbling as he stowed his small suitcase in the overhead compartment. His daughter, Lisa, an attractive, athletic, and well-dressed young woman barely thirty years old, was strapping herself into her seat, one eye always on her father.

  “Once we're in the air, I want you to call Tokyo. You remember what happened last time,” Maynard said.

  Lisa sighed, accustomed to the pre-ritual to flying.

  “The Oshaya Heart Institute is a little different than Fresno Community Hospital, Dad. They're used to handling this kind of thing. Would you please relax?”

  Dr. Maynard snorted with clear diffidence.

  “The young. Always telling the old to relax. What arrogance!”

  Lisa felt suddenly charitable. “I'll call Tokyo.”

  “And I want status updates on both the donor and recipient,” Maynard stated flatly.

  Maynard continued to grumble, as he fussed with his carry-on and his seat. Almost seventy, he moved as if he were eighty, cautiously, and favoring one hip which had suffered through replacement surgery just four months earlier.

  Across the aisle, Wes Simpson had been watching the brief interchange between father and daughter. More specifically, he had been watching the daughter. Simpson was not quite fifty, but looked forty, strapping and healthy. He caught her eye, as she turned to look at him, and he smiled.

  “Wes Simpson. Amarillo, Texas,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Lisa Maynard. Union City, New Jersey.”

  Lisa took the hand offered, shook it quickly, then went back to the task of getting settled in.

  “Donors and recipients. Is he a doctor, or something?” Simpson asked her.

  “Or something. He's actually one of the top heart specialists in the world,” Lisa said.

  “He looks kind of old to still be practicing surgery,” Simpson whispered, sensitive to the old man’s proximity.

  “He runs the show. But he doesn't operate any more,” Lisa said with a smile. “That's my job.”

  Simpson gave this a thought
and he broke into a slow smile and tipped his hat.

  “Why, doctor, please forgive me. I’m a patronizing redneck fool.”

  Lisa laughed. “Hardly. And I’m glad I don’t look like a dried up old heart surgeon.”

  Simpson grinned. “Hardly.”

  It was the first time Lisa had flirted with a man in nearly a year. Her break up from Abraham last December had been traumatic and had lead to a brief bout with depression, and a more serious encounter with prescription pills. Work saved her in the end. There was simply too much to do with her father. The Maynards, as they were referred to in the medical community, a symbiotic father/daughter team of top heart and cardiac specialists, had twenty-four/seven work schedules that allowed little for persona trauma, such as divorce.

  She had graduated with honors from John Hopkins Medical four years earlier, a skillful surgeon who could have secured residency at any top hospital in the country. Lisa Maynard chose the to work with her father, once the top heart man in the world, bar none. Arthritis and a steadily failing constitution had taken Rupert Maynard out of surgery, but not out of the rarified game of radical heart transplantation. He could still travel, lecture, and oversee surgery – generally performed by his daughter, and always performed by her in the most complicated of cases. In the past three months, she had circumnavigated the globe and executed no less than a dozen transplants. She was exhausted, and looked it, but would never admit to her father (or anyone) that she needed a break. She was saving lives. That’s why she had wanted to become a doctor. She had sacrificed everything to that end, even her marriage. No wonder, she ruminated in private on more than one occasion, that Abraham had left her. A simple gastroenterologist who wanted a family one day, Abe maintained he understood Lisa, but in practice, failed to keep up with her schedule, or lifestyle. The marriage lasted a year, then dissolved quickly.

  It was the first real failure Lisa had ever known in her life. She excelled at everything else, including keeping up with her legendary father. She had published notable works in every medical journal on the planet, and she was breaking new ground in transplantation surgery. She had never lost a patient on the table, and not one procedure she performed ever reversed and deteriorated. Her record was letter perfect.