Champion of Mars (6 page)

“I am Dr Frode Jensen. I am station safety officer and the head of the engineering department.”

“We all wear two or more hats around here,” said Maguire. “He’s the gatekeeper to the underworld, a real Cerberus. You want to watch him.”

Jensen gave Maguire an unamused look. Holland thought Maguire might be right about his sense of humour. “Welcome to Deep Two, Dr Holland.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, where’s Deep One?” Holland said.

Jensen and Maguire looked at each other. Maguire clasped his elbows. He grinned sheepishly. “Deep Two, because Deep One... Well, that was here originally, but caught fire. We got methane seepage, through faulting in the rock. Bad mix, that and oxygen. A wee bit volatile, shall we say. They don’t put that on the file.”

Jensen regarded Maguire sternly. “This is why I am a pedant.” He thrust his tablet into Maguire’s hands.

“A good job you are too, my friend,” said Maguire.

“Now, if we may, I must take you through the safety protocols,” said Jensen. And he did, at great length. There were no more than Holland had feared, standard for a hazardous environment, but Jensen wished to impress them upon him. That and his rigorous system of equipment assignment, sample cataloguing and so forth.

“Bless them, but Marsform save their bigger bucks for the terraforming operation,” said Maguire, by way of an excuse for Jensen insisting each hammer was correctly signed out. “We do important work here, but we’re a sideshow to the main event.”

“If I may,” said Holland diplomatically – the Swede practically winced whenever Maguire opened his mouth, he’d rather not elicit the same reaction – “is there not an automated system for all this?”

“Yes,” said Jensen. “All equipment has a dotchip with an individual gridsig, but we still require manual scanning of all boxcodes on removal. There are few AI here to keep tabs on us, hardly any near-I even,” said Jensen. “And although our computer systems have not yet failed, if they did, we would be forced to rely entirely on ourselves, and with limited supplies.”

“Better to be prepared, as the scouts used to say,” misquoted Maguire. “All this has been designed with the input of human and AI head shrinkers, supposed to give us an edge.”

“It makes sense. If we’re inured to doing everything ourselves, it won’t be a shock relying on ourselves,” said Holland, who was not above trying to ingratiate himself with new people. He loathed himself for it, as useful a trait as it was. He worried it made him appear weak.

“Yes,” said Jensen. “Correct.”

Deep Two was a complex of small rooms, half prefab, half cut from the rock. Besides the entry-cum-store office, there was a small canteen with barely enough room for the six chairs and table in it, a kitchen with a microwave and fridge, a cramped bedroom with two bunks, a toilet with limited washing facilites, and a number of store cupboards full of dried food, rock samples, and a tiny workshop cluttered with equipment in various states of repair. All of it was meticulously stowed and catalogued.

Jensen showed them into the observation suite, and Holland paid a little more attention.

“Here we monitor all expeditions into the cavern system,” explained Jensen.

This was the largest room in the station, one wall taken up by a large window – shuttered, much to Holland’s disappointment. The light was dim, most of it coming from gelscreens. There were four work stations. Only one was currently occupied, by a woman with flat, sad-looking hair.
Edith Vance
, thought Holland.
Disappointingly dowdy. She looked better in her file photo.

She looked up when they came in. She had protruding eyes that made her appear surprised to see them, but she smiled and nodded in a way that suggested she wasn’t.

“We’ve at least three of us on duty here when there’s a team in the cave,” said Jensen. “One of those is often the AI, if she’s not on constant watch below. Vance is our medical officer. Like the AI, if she’s not down there herself, then she is in here with me.” He flicked on a screen, pointing out biomonitors, inactive now, and displays that displayed the suits’ integrity readouts. “The environment is such down there that monitoring is necessary. The smallest sign of a problem, and we will give the order to pull back to base camp.”

“You’re not going down today,” said Maguire.

“There is no question of it,” said Jensen. “I will not clear Dr Holland for activity in the caves until he has passed his emergency drill and suit operation tests and a further medical from Dr Vance.”

“I passed all those already,” said Holland.

“I make everyone do them again here, under Martian conditions. You passed these tests on Earth.”

“Well yes, I did them again here, the medical twice...”

“Then you must undergo them here under my supervision. Please understand, Dr Holland, that the caves are exceptionally dangerous. There is no environment like them on Earth. Acid rains down from the organisms in the cave roofs periodically, and even at those times of the year when the methanogens are the least active, the atmosphere is poisonous, and explosive. We have problems with corrosive fog, and there are issues with rockfalls.”

“The area’s geologically stable, isn’t it?” said Holland.

“Strictly speaking, yes. Mars is very nearly geologically inert. But the ground here is a little shaky, partly because of the troglobite remnant activity – they’ve eaten the place hollow – and the Chinese...” began Maguire.

“They are blasting on the far side of the mountain,” said Jensen. “I co-ordinate with their safety officer. They are reasonable, scientists like us, but they have their orders as we have ours, and no matter what they say the People’s Dynasty Government is attempting to interfere with the TF project, however tangentially. They don’t agree with the UN charter. Their ‘seismic tests’ are sabotage. It can and does lead to rockfall.” He checked a screen. “But that really is the least of your worries.”

“Jensen...” Maguire jerked his head toward the window.

“What are you... oh. Yes. Seeing as you are not going into the caves for a while, you can at least have a look... Dr Vance?”

The woman looked up, eyes still surprised. She stroked a gelscreen and the shield over the window retracted, letting in a wide slot of white light to mix with the blue.

They stood in silence as the shutter clacked up into its housing.

“Dr Holland,” said Jensen. “I give you the caves of Mars.”

Holland walked to the window. He was looking into a large cavern, roughly spherical. Eaten out of the rock by the actions of millions of years of acid-producing organisms, it breached the lava tube, its walls and floors fractally pocked with further spheres that gave the rock surface the appearance of bad foamcrete. The lava tube past the airlock veered right and carried off into the dark, but the path turned left, through the tube’s broken wall, down a set of metal steps and on to the floor of the cavern. A string of lights on poles and power cables followed it.

Maguire joined him.

“Incredible,” said Holland.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it? And this is just the uppermost cavern; they get bigger as they go down. This one is practically dead now, just a few organisms up here, a remnant of the remnant if you like. It’s too cold here for the range of life we see lower down.” Maguire pointed out a number of small stalactites. “Ossified snottites. I don’t think there were ever many, and certainly none of the more complex forms. And fairy castles, not very old, which is a bit of mystery to be honest, what with everything else being so ancient. You can tell from the size of the mineral deposits they leave behind. But you’re here for that, aren’t you now?”

“Silicon shells, deposited like coral,” said Holland. He’d only ever seen pictures before. There were little stacks of them all over the cavern, half a metre tall and cupped at the top, sparkling in the light from the path. Each one built up by the actions of microbes over untold aeons. Whole orders of life had risen and died on the evolutionarily volatile Earth, while on cold Mars life had patiently built tiny castles, crystal by crystal.

“This is the highest point at which they’re found. They struggle up here, nothing compared with the richness you’ll find down there, like magic grottoes, they are. I’ll bet you can’t wait to get down there and see it, eh? Eh?” Maguire gave Holland a push on the shoulder.

“Wow,” he said. He felt his sense of disconnection return. The experience was unreal.

“Don’t use up your ‘wows’ now, you hear? You’re going to need them when you go into the lower caverns.”

“If I may,” said Jensen. He held forefinger and middle finger up together and indicated the lines and cables running alongside the path. “I will point out some of the safety features in the caverns. Power is delivered to EM relay points around the caverns by those cables. Microwave power transmission is too dangerous, but you will always be able to recharge your equipment remotely, barring a catastrophe. Lines” – he indicated spun carbon cables hanging slackly from the walls – “to clip yourself to. They are steel where there are large concentrations of carbon-hungry methanogens. The stairs are safe, but there are many sheer drops in the caverns. While descending, it is mandatory to attach yourself to the line. Detachment from the line is permitted only after confirmation from the observation team. You will work in pairs within each expedition. It is absolutely imperative you do not lose sight of your party while you are in the chamber. Radio contact is at a short range in the cavern system; relay points, however, allow you to communicate with Deep Two and Ascraeus Base, and so to the larger Martian Grid, which allows us to send remote units down also, including the AI. You will be expected to leave your augmentation active while within the caverns at all times. Dr Vance?” Jensen called behind him. “If you please.”

Lights flickered on, along with the whine of machinery coming online. “The centre is now at mission active status.”

“Dr Jensen?” A voice. The AI. Holland felt his good humour crumple in on itself. “Are Panther Team proceeding ahead of schedule?”

“No, no, I am merely demonstrating the station at full operation.” He tilted his face upwards, speaking to an indeterminate space on the ceiling, as people often did when conversing with AIs. “The advantage of having an AI here,” he said to Holland, “is that it can remotely operate the android shell and maintain a sensing presence within the observation suite. We send the carriage down with all the expeditions. She has proved quite indispensible. I am sorry, Cybele, you may go if you wish.”

It has a name?
thought Holland. First Stulynow, now Jensen, talking to the damn thing as if it were a real person.

“Dr Holland? Cybele is asking you a question.”

“What?”

“I am sorry,” said the machine’s voice, too smooth, too perfect. “I wished to know if you are of Dutch extraction.”

“No. Why on Earth would you think so?” This was too much.

“Your nationality is stated as dual EU/ USNA, but your name is Holland.”

“Up here, our Grid is limited,” said Jensen. “It takes an AI sixteen minutes to retrieve, from Earth, the kind of information that is instantaneously available back home. There’s a curiosity in all AI you only really see in remote outposts like this, because they have to ask questions of us rather than looking it up on the Grid. It makes them charmingly naïve. You will grow used to it.”

Holland doubted that very much.

“You also realise how little they actually
know,
” said Maguire,
sotto voce,
to Holland. “Lots of people are called Holland,” explained Maguire to the AI. “Maybe one of his ancestors came from there.”

“I see. I apologise,” said Cybele.

“We have a Dutch couple on staff,” said Maguire. “I’ll bet that’s where that came from.”

“The Van Houdts,” said Holland, who’d read the personnel files along with everything else about the base.

“Are you sure I am not required?” asked the AI.

“No, no, Cybele, you can go,” said Jensen. The machine did not speak again,
Although of course it hasn’t really gone anywhere,
thought Holland.
It is still there, recording everything, ready to appear like a bloody genie at the mention of its name.
Even thinking about it would probably be enough to have it pop up.
He regretted the implant.

“Each expedition contains two commanders, a leader on the team, and an overall commander here. I am responsible for overseeing the function of your equipment. Dr Vance or, if she is on the mission, Maguire or Mrs Van Houdt, will monitor your biosigns. Any one of us has the authority to call you back.”

“We have a lot of safeguards,” said Maguire.

“And we need them. Just brushing against a snottite down there can lead to a suit breach if unnoticed.”

“Snottite,” repeated Jensen with distaste. “I always thought science should have more dignity to it.”

“It did, before the geeks stopped being eccentrics and allowed their own juvenile subculture to take over the world,” said Maguire. “Linnaeus would have had a fit.”

“Well, that’s all we have time for.” Jensen gestured to Vance, and the shutter came down, blocking off Holland’s first glimpse of the Martian remnant ecosystem. “If you’ll come with me, we should be able to take a quick look at the hard shells we use in the cavern system before Panther Team arrive to make their descent. There’s direct access from the suiting to the lava chamber, via the rolling door you saw outside.”

“‘Panther Team’?” mouthed Holland as they followed Jensen back through the station to the entrance store.

“Jaguar, Tiger, Panther, the three expedition designations. And why not?” said Maguire. “It’s less boring than Team One and Team Two, isn’t it now?”

CHAPTER FIVE

The Silver Locusts

2194 AD

T
HE OLD ROADS
up out from Canyon City were rough, and Jonah Van Houdt was flooded with adrenaline as he wrestled his quad up them. The highway that ran along the bottom of the Valles Marineris was paved, cut into the rock high off the flood plain. Trucks thundered along it, guided at ridiculous speeds by near-I. A few private groundcars swept along among the trucks: large-wheeled offroaders in the main, homesteaders coming into the city for supplies. The cars’ own systems slaved themselves to the lorries, making the most of the larger vehicles’ slipstreams. With no need to drive themselves on the road, their occupants were probably asleep; it was damn early.