“He will undoubtedly want to meet you this evening, when he returns from his digging.”
“Good,” said Jamie.
But Vijay thought there was something beneath Chang’s bland words, something unspoken about Dr. Carter Carleton. She wondered what it might be.
Tithonium Base: Introductions
Carter Carleton was not at his excavation site. He was in bed with Doreen McManus, propping himself on one elbow as he gazed down at her lean naked body, glistening with perspiration. A line from an ancient motion picture popped into his mind: Not much meat on her, but what there is is choice. Doreen smiled up at him. “This is much more fun than digging in that pit.”
He grinned back. “We’ve got two professors of geology, a biochemist and an astronaut working the dig, if I remember the schedule correctly.”
She nodded. “They ought to be finishing their shift right about now.”
Carleton made an exaggerated sigh. “I guess I’ll have to get dressed and see them when they come in.”
“And Dr. Waterman is due to arrive this afternoon. I think he’s already here.”
“Really?” Carleton got up from the bed and picked up his paper-thin bathrobe.
“Didn’t you hear the applause a little while ago?”
“Applause? No.” With a grin, “I was busy.”
Doreen’s face grew serious. “You really didn’t hear it?”
“You did?”
“You mean you were so completely absorbed by lovemaking that you didn’t pay attention to anything else?”
He sat on the edge of the bed and began to stroke her hip. “This is the very ecstasy of love,” he quoted, “Whose violent property leads the will to desperate undertaking.”
“No more desperate undertakings,” Doreen said, putting a finger to his lips. “You’d better—”
The intercom phone buzzed. Carleton had the answering recording on. They heard his voice say, “I’m either not in or busy. Please leave your name and I’ll get back to you.” Doreen smiled at the word busy.
“Dr. Carleton,” said a man’s voice, “this is Jamie Waterman. I’ve just arrived at the base and I’d like to see you at your earliest convenience. Thanks.”
Carleton slowly got to his feet. “Duty calls.”
The living quarters at Tithonium Base were nothing more than single rooms shaped like wedges of a pie, in sets of ten built in a circle around a common lavatory. Carleton flung his robe over his bare shoulder and opened the lavatory door a crack. It was empty, so he stepped in.
Sitting up in bed, Doreen heard the door click shut. She sat there unmoving, thinking that the only time Carter ever mentioned the word “love” to her was in one of his silly quotations from Shakespeare. Still—it was better than nothing.
She got out of bed and padded to the lavatory. Carleton was in the shower stall, singing off-key in the billowing steam. He looked surprised when Doreen squeezed in. The stall was so narrow their bodies pressed together.
“That’s what I like about you,” Carleton said, grinning. “A dirty mind in a clean body.”
After several slithering moments, Doreen said, “I’d like to meet Dr. Waterman.”
“Sure,” he said absently, his soapy hands slithering along her buttocks.
“I think he’d be interested in using nanotechnology to enlarge—”
“No.”
She flinched at the sharpness of his rejection.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you making an ass of yourself in front of Waterman or anybody else.”
“But I can show him how to enlarge the base! We could turn the whole rift valley into a completely Earthlike environment! It’s called terraforming.”
Carleton scowled at her. “It’s called contamination. Mention that to Waterman and he’ll send you packing on the next flight out of here. He’s dead set against altering the native environment.”
“But the base, this dome, isn’t that altering the native environment?”
“We’ve got to do that. Waterman won’t stand for anything more than the bare minimum we need to survive here.”
“But Carter—”
“No,” he said again, even more firmly. “Not a word of it. That’s final.”
She bit back a reply, but to herself Doreen said, It’s not final, you chauvinist old fart.
Chang showed Jamie and Vijay to one of the larger cubicles and left them to unpack.
“This is bigger than what we had before,” Vijay said, looking around the spare little space. “Two bunks, even.”
“The dome’s much bigger,” said Jamie. “And stronger. Did you notice the ribs supporting it? Not like the pressurized plastic bubbles we used back when. This dome’s built to last.”
Tossing their bags onto the nearer of the two beds, Jamie said, “We’ll have to push them together.”
Vijay nodded as Jamie went to the phone and placed a call to Dr. Carleton. By the time they had hung their clothes in the slim closet and arranged their toiletries on the bureau nearest the lavatory door, Carleton had called back and invited Jamie to meet him at his laboratory.
“You go ahead,” Vijay told him. “I’ve got to talk with the medical staff, see where I can fit in.”
Carleton had appropriated one of the dome’s smaller laboratory spaces for himself and turned it into a combination workshop, office and conference room. Jamie rapped on the shaky accordion-fold door; after a couple of moments Carter Carleton slid the door open.
“Dr. Waterman,” Carleton said, smiling handsomely. “This is a pleasure.”
Taking Carleton’s proffered hand in his own, Jamie said, “Please call me Jamie.”
“And I’m Carter.”
Stepping into the laboratory, Jamie saw that it was crammed with a worktable along the far partition, a miniature desk with a swivel chair made of bungee cords, bookshelves that were mostly empty, two spindly-looking stools and a small chair of molded plastic. Blank roll-up smart screens were taped onto two of the room’s two-meter-high partitions.
“It’s not much,” Carleton said, still smiling as he gestured to the plastic chair, “but it’s home.”
Jamie saw the fossil sitting squarely in the middle of the otherwise empty desktop.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“That’s a cast,” said Carleton, crossing the room in three swift strides to pull a plastic container from the bookshelf. Popping its lid open, he held it out for Jamie. “This is the real thing.”
Jamie peered into the container. The fossil was gray, ridged; it looked hard and durable.
“Go ahead and take it out,” Carleton urged. “It’s okay.”
Jamie turned it over in his hands. “I don’t know much about anatomy, but it sure looks like a vertebra to me.”
“The best paleontologists Earthside agree. It’s a vertebra, all right. Probably of an animal that walked on four legs, not upright.”
“Then it’s not from one of the intelligent Martians.”
“Who knows?” Carleton said. “Maybe they scuttled around on four legs. Or six. Or a dozen!”
“Have you found anything else?” Jamie asked.
“Not yet. We’re digging by hand now, going much slower.”
“I understand.”
Carleton took the fossil back from Jamie and placed it lovingly in the plastic container. He put the container back on the bookshelf, then perched himself on a corner of his desk.
“The talk around here is that you’ve come to tell us we’re going to shut down,” he said.
Jamie shook his head. “Just the opposite. I’m here to find out how we can stretch what funding we have to allow us to stay as long as we can.”
“Good.”