Champion of Mars (11 page)

“How’s it going?” said Maguire, leaning in from behind. “You feel at home yet?”

“You know something, Dave? I actually do,” he said. Errant thoughts of a naked Suzanne aside, he was enjoying himself. “I’m enjoying myself,” he said, “for the first time in quite a while, I have to say.”

“I told you, so I did. This is a good family we have up here.”

“Seems to be, it’s a big relief after the reception I got at Canyon City.”

“Ah, all bureaucrats and dead-eyed pioneer types there, most times. Would you believe there was an actual knifing there the other week? The fun’s out in the bases and plants. The city’s well up itself. Calls itself a city, for a start. And it’s not just us out here. There are a number of other research teams out around here, nearly all Marsform.”

“Except for the Chinese,” said Kick.

“Except for the Chinese. And the Indians, but now they’re a blast. They come round once a month to raid our veggie patch. Great curry night, it is.”

“What’s his story?” Holland nodded down the table to where Ito sat eating his dinner methodically, a book open in front of him, the only one not involved in conversation.

“Ito? Ah, don’t mind him, he likes to keep himself to himself. We’ll bring him out slowly, don’t you worry.”

“It is hard on them, the Japanese,” said Suzanne. “It’s hard to know what to say to someone whose entire country has suffered something like that. I suppose that’s why he came. We leave him alone. He works sometimes with me in the greenhouse; he was a gardener in his spare time in Japan before...” She smiled briskly. “And so he is here. He can be quite charming.”

“I’ll bet,” said Kick. His wife hit his arm, only half playfully. For once, he said something sensible. “He’s here because of that. I’ve worked with a lot of them, the Japanese, off world. They’re all on the run from the ruins.”

“There’s the Titan colony,” said Holland. “I hear they’re regrouping up there. Making a fresh start.”

“Aye,” said Maguire doubtfully. “Maybe. I hear something strange is going on there. I hear they’re building a shi –”

“I have been to Titan!” declared Stulynow, who had apparently been to every place in the Solar System you could find human boot prints. “If you think it is cold here, my friends, think again.”

“Why did
you
come, John?” asked Kick.

People caught on to his question. This must be
the
question on the base, for conversation stilled down the table.

“Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t want to be talking about that,” said Maguire.

“I don’t know.” Holland poked at his potato. There was no meat. They had chickens here, he’d heard, for the fertiliser, and the eggs, but eating them was strictly forbidden. “No, I really don’t. A fresh start, I suppose, is the most honest answer I have. I got divorced, it took it out of me. And when I was thinking about what I should do next, I thought... I thought that I didn’t like Earth very much any more. Too much VR, too much AI. I wanted to go somewhere where there’d be no bloody machine telling me what to do. And the mess we made...” He shrugged. “Fresh start for me, fresh start for Mars.”

“There aren’t many AI, here,” said Maguire. “Our Cybele is it, in these parts. Oh, there are a few, but they’re mostly near-I or dumb ones; aides, not overseers. Personally, I think they’re frightened. No Grid, y’see, so much of what they are is drawn off the Cloud. Up here, no Grid, so they’re just themselves. Like us, and they don’t like that much.”

“And Marsform! They do not like them,” said Stulynow.

“The company is run by AIs,” said Vance.

“Now let’s not discuss company policy like that tonight,” said Orson.

Stulynow ploughed on. “True, but many of us do not trust them, and this includes the board. They and NASA bought six of the Class Fives. Four went crazy with the rest. And they were lucky they got two of the sane ones. The mad ones nearly downed an orbital habitat. The mistrust of AI after the Five Crisis is endemic to this agency, even if the two remaining Fives run the show now. Call it a management issue,” said Stulynow, who had also apparently worked for every major organisation kicking humanity off its blue-ball home into space.

“It’s a man’s job – a human’s job – to make his home,” said Orson. “Gotta get it right from the start.”

“And what right do we have to change this world? Look how we fucked the Earth over,” said Dr Vance.

“So what to do? Leave it to the snottites? Don’t be ridiculous,” said Orson, in a manner that made Holland think this was a regular fight. “Earth’s taken a real beating, things are getting better down there now, but if there’s one thing the eco crisis told us, it’s that we can’t afford to be confined to one world. There are too many people on Earth to be supported properly. Why not make Mars like home? It’s halfway there already. It’s a shame for the snotties, sure, but what’s the loss of one tiny ecosystem when this place could be alive with dozens of biomes? Unique too, I’m not talking about just plain Earth copies; the Mars bugs will contribute, they’ll live on inside the DNA of our new world, it’s the only way to do it.”

“But it’s not our world. It’s their fucking world, Jimmy.”

“Why did you ever come to work for us, Edith?” said Orson.

“You know why,” said Vance. “I signed up before the TF programme was signed off.”

“You had your chance to air your objections, you did, and you lost. USNA is still a democracy. I’m sorry it didn’t go your way, but that’s that,” said Orson.

“Ignore them,” said Maguire, “it’s the same every night we all get together.”

“‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried,’” the android –
Cybele,
Holland thought – said as she came into the room. “Winston Churchill. Shall I clear away now?”

Orson dropped his napkin onto his plate. “Okay, who’s got my four million dollar AI clearing
plates
?”

“I may have cost USNA that initially,” said the android. “But it is my choice to help you. I am allowed that much leeway. I have no other tasks that require my full attention and you, unlike I, can tire. I am simply being helpful,” she said, “and thanks to Dr Zhang Qifang, soon I will be free to do so.”

Is that an edge to its voice?
thought Holland. AI could get uppity about their emancipated status.

“Shang Who-fang?” said Maguire.

“Zhang Qifang,” said Holland. “There’s been a big hoo-ha about him back on Earth. He’s a digital ecologist-turned-AI specialist and rights activist. He addressed the UN a few weeks back, calling for AI emancipation. There have been protests. Have you not heard?”

Maguire smiled apologetically. “The major protests we follow up here are the ones about us cooking the planet.”

The android spoke. “The Neukind movement is gathering much support, is it not, Dr Holland?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“It is,” insisted the android. “I follow this news closely. It is of interest to me. May I clear the table now?”

The others nodded assent, Stulynow shoving down the last few forkfuls on his plate. The machine cleared the table quickly. It was nimble. Holland leaned back, perhaps a touch too quickly, as it took his plate from in front of him.

“How do you feel, Holland? We see a lot of people on the news, on the Grid,” said Vance. “Protesters.”

“Now hold on a minute,” said the eugene. “Just because a bunch of...”

“What about that amazing biology you spoke of?” said Vance, ignoring the commander. “You going to be happy to see it all swept away?”

“I’m not sure it will,” said Holland. “It’s one of the reasons I am here – to assess the xenoforms for adaptation to Terran norms. It’s not just about plundering them for useful genes. Besides, most of the extreme environments they live in currently will be replicated on the finished new Mars; maybe elsewhere, but there’ll be a place for them.”

“They’ll be dead by then,” said Vance hotly.

“They won’t. I’m here to see it doesn’t happen,” said Holland. He tried to guide the conversation on to less contentious issues. “I’ve always wanted to study the life up here at first hand. Mars has always fascinated me. Unlike Titan or Europa, this place is close to Earth, so close. The biology here is like a mirror to Earth’s...”

“And you wanted to see it before we fuck it dead, right? Am I right?” said Vance, carried away by her own passion.

“Yeah. That’s pretty much it. Since we found the life out here – on the moons too – it’s pretty obvious the universe is full of life. It makes me feel, well, comforted. That it’s not just us, you know? More so than ever, I think. I’ve had a rough few years.”

“Aha! And now, the other reason!” said Stulynow.

“I...”

“Stuly,” warned Maguire.

“No, no you must tell us, no secrets here! We all have reasons to be here, an alpha reason, a lost chance, a wife who left,” said Stulynow, who was by now drunk. “But who on Earth has those? Everyone. All of us here also have a beta reason. This is my hypothesis, and it has proved correct so far.”

“Stuly,” said Vance, “drop it.”

“No!” He slapped the table. “I am a philosopher as well as a scientist, and I will not be silent! Numbers, numbers, numbers. All we talk up here. Very good for all this...” He waved his hand around. “But not this.” He tapped his head. “There is always beta reason, the real reason we came all this way.” His eyes twinkled, a jollity the others did not share. They looked at him nervously. Vance tried to shut him up again, putting her hand on his arm, but he threw it off. “No, come on! Share.”

Holland looked at the faces around the table. The ones that could meet his eyes were full of apology and sympathy. And pity. Damn it, half of them
knew
. He’d come to get away from all of this. The mood broke like thin ice under a skate.

“I...”

“John...” said Maguire. “You don’t...”

“It’s all right. It’s better that it’s out in the open.” He put his fork down, and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. They all knew, fuck them. Annoyance prickled at his skin, but he remained cool. “I was finishing my PhD at the Harvard campus when the Class Five there went down with the Crisis virus. Look, it was years ago.”
Three years,
he thought.
Not long at all. Not nearly long enough.

“Oh, my god,” breathed Suzanne, and gripped her husband’s hand. No one was eating now. “The exobiology lab? I remember, on the news.”

Kick shrugged. “There were a lot of things on the news then. It was a bad time.”

“But this was so close to us, it could have been us. It was a
lab
,” said Suzanne. “You do not forget that kind of thing.”

They were all looking at him. His face felt tight. He spoke. “It trapped the others in the exobiology lab. It turned on the purification system, convinced itself there was a fault in the isolation system and alien pathogens were leaking out. I think it knew it wasn’t really the case, but they were good, the insane ones, at doublethink. It just wanted to see what would happen. It locked the building down. There were nine of us.” He looked around the table. Just like there are here, he thought. “It.... I tried...” He tapped his fork nervously on his plate. The sound was like scientific instruments hammering on a five-centimetre thick diamond weave window, unable to crack it.
I could have tried harder
, he thought. Screaming faces pressed themselves against the glass of the door in his memory, the door that would remain forever shut. He’d give anything to be able to open that door. “It killed them all,” he said in a rush. “I was the only survivor.”

“Oh,” said Stulynow. “Oh, fuck. Sorry, man, I... Shit, I thought...” He lapsed into slurred Russian, embarrassed and scolding himself.

“Please, don’t be sorry. Everybody I have met has been sorry ever since it happened. My wife was so sorry she left.” Holland gave a weak smile, and more damned sympathy answered it. “Now, I am sorry, but I am still very tired after my journey here. Thank you very much for the meal, and for your welcome.” He was determined to leave. He did not want their pity, he couldn’t stomach any more of it.

He didn’t deserve it.

Stulynow opened his mouth, but Maguire shushed him.

“Well, I think it’s time for dessert,” said Suzanne Van Houdt brittly. “Please don’t go. I made a cake to welcome you here. Stay for that, at least. I saved the eggs for a week.” The table burst into activity, everyone picking up plates, helping the android tidy away, faces down. “Don’t mind Leo, please, he’s, well...”

“I am Russian! I am sorry, we cannot help it, although my...”

“Mother was a Buryat,” said practically everyone else in the room. There was laughter. The tension in the atmosphere quivered. They all looked to Holland, some openly, others from the corners of their eyes. Holland hesitated, relaxed.

“Like I said, it’s not a problem.” The tension broke.

“She was, she was a Buryat!” said Stulynow. “Listen, my new friend Dr Holland, please do not take offence. I am so sorry. I would like to say I would not ask had I known but... I prefer to be honest.”

Faces smiled at him. Holland wondered what hid behind them.

“We all come here for fresh start. Please, please. I know you are tired, but it is custom. We break bread, share salt, and we drink together. Take a vodka with me. Please, just one. Do not offend my hospitality.”

The Siberian looked to Orson, and the commander looked heavenward. “Okay, Stuly, but just the one bottle.”

Stulynow leapt up and almost danced across the room to a cupboard in the kitchen area.

Maguire gave him a concerned smile.
Fucking hell,
thought Holland. “Cut it out, Dave,” he said at last, with slightly more force than he wanted. “The last thing I need is sympathy from you.” He grasped the back of his chair. “Why not, fuck it. Why not? Get me a glass.”

Maguire’s smile became broader. “That’s the spirit.”

“No!” said Stulynow, returning with a bottle. “
This
is the spirit.”

Suzanne Van Houdt brought him a tumbler. “I am sure you will fit right in here,” she said brightly. Stulynow sloshed altogether too much vodka into it.

“There,” he said, “batch seven, made from one hundred per cent Mars-grown potato.”