In a broader sense, it was reinforced by his observation as he grew older that humans have always been at odds with nature. Separated from it, one step removed from nature’s delicate balance, but also from the harsh and unyielding fight for dominance. Humanity had won that fight and remains unassailable at the top of the food chain.
But here on Mars, according to Holtz, that chain doesn’t exist. More than that, he suspects that in this world it has never existed. Holtz is not one step removed from her natural surroundings: she’s a part of them. She sees him thinking. No doubt sees the thoughts themselves. There is a sparkle in her eyes that he takes to be empathy. She says, “Let me ask you this, Frank Borman: if NASA chose to use women as astronauts, would you approve?”
“You’re asking the wrong question. NASA chooses astronauts from among Air Force test pilots and jet pilots. There aren’t any women flying jets in the US Air Force.”
“Why not?”
“I guess the Air Force has always thought it’s a man’s job.”
“A policy you have never sought to challenge,” she suggests.
“It’s not for me to say.”
“Yet you do have an opinion on the matter.”
Borman bristles. “Then I guess you know it already.”
Holtz says, “My point is this: Martian rule of law is unbending and beyond question. It is decided upon by unanimous consent and is therefore it is above debate.”
“What the heck is unanimous consent? Sounds a whole lot like totalitarianism.”
She smiles. “On this, Frank Borman, you may be surprised to learn we agree. It is why I am here — to exercise the right of dissent. We believe in truth, you and I, though I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a belief that can be easy to set aside.”
He immediately thinks of Susan. Holtz sees it in his eyes. She says, “Half-truths are easy when you tell yourself it’s for the greater good. Yet the person you lie most to is yourself, I think.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Not as well as I would like, it is true.”
He turns away from her. He feels like he’s standing in front of her naked. If a woman on Earth said that to him, he’d have no doubts about what she had on her mind. He knows Holtz has no sexual interest in him, nor he in her, but her words make him uneasy just the same. This, he suspects, is her intention.
She takes a step toward him, then stops like she’s being careful not to push him too far. “At times,” she says, “I am called upon to express my opinion to the Martian people. I give it freely and unencumbered by the views of others. There are others like me. They do so as well. Soon you will meet some of them. We serve the greater good… as voices in the wilderness.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“I am left to live in what you might call exile. Though now I ponder it, perhaps seclusion is a more accurate way to describe it. At the beginning, this was a temporary arrangement. I came to like it. For me, there is no going back.”
“Don’t you miss contact with your people?”
“I have as much contact as I could ever want. Close your eyes.”
He frowns, but complies.
“What do you see?”
“The back of my eyelids. Why, what do you see?”
She pauses to consider her response. “Something else… I see an eye. Looking back at me.”
Borman frowns. “Who’s eye?”
“No one’s. Everyone’s. It doesn’t matter. Every time is different. But it tells me I’m never alone.”
“You mean someone’s always watching you.”
She turns sharply to face him. “Not in the way you think. It is not spying. It is not an invasion of privacy — it is connection. Communion.”
Borman reckons they’ll be watching him too.
15
Borman looks out at the afternoon shadows, moving like ghosts across the treetops. The river roars incessantly below. The view from her broad terrace is majestic. He feels like he could stare at it forever, marveling at the similarities and all the tiny variations compared with a similar vista on Earth. He stands at the edge. There is no railing. One wrong step could send him off the edge and into the rock pool below. The danger of it is exhilarating.
She has brought him a cornucopia of fruit on a broad open platter, sculpted roughly from some sort of resin. Perhaps the plate itself is edible. He chooses a small red bulb that looks like a grape. It’s delicious; sweet and sour at the same time. Emboldened, he tries a bright green fruit like a fig. It falls open on his tongue like a sugar-filled wafer that melts in his mouth. Sweet, but not sickly. Its seeds are almost salty. It reminds him he’s incredibly hungry and he begins to devour everything on the tray. Each new piece of fruit tastes better than the last.
Holtz looks pleased her guest is enjoying the food, but doesn’t partake. She silently observes the forest. Two birds circle the treetops. It’s the first animal life he’s seen since his arrival. He points at the trees. “Do you have many different sorts of birds?”
“Many birds,” she says. Like she’s not listening. To his surprise, he sees a look of concern on her face. He picks up a bunch of grapes and takes them to her. She shakes her head at his offering.
He asks, “Is something wrong?”
“The method of your arrival. It troubles us.”
Us? “Why?”
“Because of its imperfection.”
“Ohh heck, I wouldn’t get too worried about that. Less than ten years ago, we were hard-pressed getting a capsule back to Earth inside a ten-mile radius. I think it’s remarkable you predicted the one place on the planet I’d land. I could just as easily have come down half a world away.”
“Prediction has nothing to do with it. Have I not already explained this to you? It was not supposed to happen this way. We live in a metaphorical universe. There will be consequences.”
He grabs her by the arm. “I don’t know what that means. But I’m telling you from my perspective — from orbital re-entry to touch down, I pretty much hit the bullseye. There’s no fine tuning in that landing procedure. Once those drogue parachutes open, I go where they take me.”
She nods condescendingly again, like she thinks him naive.
“I orbited six or seven times up there, trying to decide where best to come down. But you’re saying I was somehow always destined to land right there, out of everywhere else on your planet? I don’t know how that’s possible. In my world, things like that don’t happen. Folks just can’t make those sorts of predictions with any kind of certainty.”
“The knowing is not so hard. Sometimes destination is inevitable.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me again.”
“There are bigger questions for you to consider. Such as the gateway on our moon. You call it Phobos? To us, it is the Monument. It was placed in orbit more than 20,000 years ago as an open invitation to the people of Earth. We knew somebody would come. But we are no longer certain that person is you.”
20,000 years? He turns away from her, battling with the magnitude of it.
She says, “These are all parts of the same question, Frank. Are you brave enough to accept the answer? I thought I knew, but perhaps the question remains unanswerable.”
A slight breeze lifts off the forest below. It is fresh and alive, but it only further confounds his logic. Nothing makes sense. Is that because he doesn’t want it to? He says, “I don’t know what to believe.”