“No.” Art took a deep breath. No summer flowery perfume now, but the clean, cool smell of pine. “I’m doing all right. Where do we go from here?”
“We need a boat,” Seth said. “Any sort of boat to carry us downriver. If we can get as far as Washington, I’ll find us a power craft.”
“How?”
“Don’t know yet. We eat a bit, then we head for the houses close to the river. There’s a good chance somebody with riverfront property has some sort of canoe or rowboat.” Seth stared up at the sky. “I figure we got four hours, maybe five, to sunset. Unless you want to sleep in the storm drains, by then we need to be afloat and cruisin’ downriver to Maryland Point.”
18
From the secret diary of Oliver Guest.
The lead prosecutor told the jury at my trial that I was “a sick parasite, preying on society.”
Parasite on society; this, mind you, from a lawyer.
It was, furthermore, inaccurate. Biology admits three forms of interdependence in living organisms. First there is symbiosis or mutualism, in which each of the participants benefits from and may indeed be dependent for survival upon the presence of the other. The mitochondria that serve as energy centers in each of our cells are a good example. We need each other. Then there is commensalism, where two organisms coexist but provide neither harm nor obvious benefit. Into this category I would place many of the protozoa in our alimentary canals. And finally there is true parasitism, where one organism does nothing but damage to the other. The Ichneumonidae, those wasps that both fascinated and repulsed Charles Darwin and led him toward atheism, are a fine example. The wasps lay their eggs in the living but paralyzed bodies of caterpillars and cicadas. It is difficult to discern any possible benefits for the reluctant hosts.
The prosecutor’s accusation was also unfair. I am not, and was not, a parasite, even stretching the meaning to accommodate popular usage.
I do not particularly blame the man. It is one of the unfortunate aspects of the legal profession that excess carries no penalty. There is never, for a lawyer, such a thing as too much. Consider the oxymoron, a “legal brief.” The prosecutor must have known that the evidence against me was overwhelming, regardless of questions of character. Had he made a speech testifying to my unhappy childhood, noble nature, and kindness to animals, it would not have affected the verdict. He could have served as a de facto defense attorney, and made no difference to the outcome.
Actually, I might have preferred his worst accusations to the efforts of the defense counsel appointed by the state. She, with the best will in the world, decided that I had no chance if my plea for clemency depended on the physical evidence alone. Instead, she would prove that I was an asset to society rather than a parasite. Because of the value of my work, I ought not to be placed into long-term judicial sleep. She referred to my groundbreaking researches on telomod therapy, which she said was “even now being applied to a group of human experimental subjects.” The jury stared at me. “Human experimental subjects” has a certain ring to it. Their eyes said, “Next stop, the gas chambers.”
She then told them I was a world’s leading authority on cloning, a subject that happens to be regarded by the general public with strong suspicion. Finally she emphasized what a genius I was, and showed how my career had been marked since early childhood by an outstanding brilliance.
You could see the wheels working inside jury heads.
Question: “Who do you want out on the streets even less than an insane mass murderer of teenagers?”
Answer: “An outstandingly brilliant and cunning insane mass murderer of teenagers.”
I knew at that point what my defense attorney apparently did not: my fate, in spite of or because of her best efforts, was sealed.
19
The lesson had been driven home every day for a thousand days, from pre-mission selection to Earth orbit departure: the first Mars expedition faces more unknowns than anyone can guess. There will be injuries, there may be fatalities. No matter what happens you must regroup and assess your remaining resources; and you must continue.
Continue until you reach Mars; continue to descend to and explore Mars; continue until you return to Earth from Mars.
Celine raised her head and stared around the control room of the Schiaparelli. They had held together and worked together. They had overcome every obstacle. They had come so close to success, so agonizingly close; and they had failed.
The other three were ignoring each other, locked into private worlds of grief or guilt. Reza Armani had moved to one of the control chairs. He was working through the command telemetry as it had been received from Lewis until the final seconds of radio silence. With its help he was reconstructing every action that Zoe Nash had made, mimicking her exact sequence of movements at the ship’s controls. He was muttering to himself, and his features twitched constantly. When the Lewis became a cloud of hot gas he appeared to lose touch with reality.
Wilmer Oldfield was also staring blank-eyed at nothing and apparently doing nothing. He had vanished inside his head, to a place beyond Celine’s access or imagining. That didn’t worry her. Wilmer did that all the time.
She turned to Jenny Kopal. She could understand what Jenny was doing, and sympathize with it. Somehow, the transfer of chips and library programs from the Schiaparelli to the Lewis had been botched. Since that responsibility was Jenny’s, she felt she had killed Zoe, Ludwig, and Alta as directly as if she had driven knives into their hearts. She was poring, white-faced, over displays and transfer protocols.
And Celine’s own failure? She knew it now, when it was too late. Zoe had made the decision to return to Earth two days after their arrival at ISS-2. She did so before they knew the extent of the work before them, before the orbiters were fully inspected, before Zoe or anyone else had a rational basis for setting a schedule.
Celine had been deeply worried by the impulsiveness of Zoe’s action. But what had she done? Had she pointed out her reservations, knowing that her warning would be listened to and taken seriously — that this Cassandra was never ignored?
No. She had done nothing, overwhelmed by Zoe’s personality and confidence and strength of purpose. Or — place the blame where it belonged — overwhelmed by Celine’s own desperate longing to be home again on Earth.
She glanced around the cabin again, and found everyone’s eyes on her.
What now?
“We saw what happened to the Lewis.” Celine found herself speaking, in a voice surprisingly level and controlled. “We probably all have our own ideas as to what caused the disaster. At some point we will have to decide what to do about our own return to Earth. But not yet. Right now it is time for a group discussion.”
That’s right. Speak of the fate of the Lewis, rather than of Zoe, Ludwig, and Alta. Keep the discussion as impersonal and unemotional as possible. Don’t allow anyone to indulge in breast-beating.
But at the same time a voice inside her was asking other questions: Why am I doing this? Isn’t this a job for someone like Zoe, a natural leader? Why me?