“Why not get the Pope?” someone grumbled.
Ventura brightened. “That’s not a bad idea.”
The bureau chief scowled down the table at him.
“No, I don’t mean the Pope himself,” Ventura explained. “But there’s that priest at the Vatican, the one that was supposed to go on the First Expedition but got sick and had to be replaced.”
“Yeah, I remember. He got appendicitis, didn’t he?”
“Gall bladder.”
“Anyway, why not him?” Ventura asked. “He’s a scientist and a priest, for god’s sake. He advises the Pope about scientific matters, if I remember right.”
“What’s his name?”
“Di something-or-other.”
“DiNardo,” said Ventura.
The consultant looked less than pleased. “He’s a geologist, isn’t he? A scientist.”
“But he’s a priest, as well.”
“But he’s a scientist.”
The argument went around the table for more than half an hour. In the end, while the bureau chief swallowed a handful of pills without water, they decided that the panel would consist of a British paleontologist who was spending a year at Yale; an evangelist minister whose TV shows always pulled in a huge audience; an actress who was starring in a docudrama series about the Salem witch trials; an author who’d written several books debunking the notion that intelligent life had ever existed on Mars; and two university students, one majoring in planetary sciences and the other in theology. Plus the Rev. Dr. Fulvio A. DiNardo, S.J.
Ventura nodded, satisfied that he had gotten what he needed for an exciting, informative show. And no goddamned cohost.
Tithonium Base: The Dig
Jamie and Vijay were finishing their breakfasts in the nearly empty cafeteria.
“They start early here,” Vijay said, between sips of tea.
Jamie started to reply, but saw a lanky young man walking slowly toward their table. Like almost everyone else at the base, he wore plain grayish blue coveralls, unadorned except for the nametag pinned above the left breast pocket.
“Dr. Waterman?” the youngster asked, in a voice so soft Jamie had to strain to hear it. “I’m supposed to guide you around the dig this morning.”
The young man stopped a respectful two meters from Jamie’s chair. As he got to his feet, Jamie saw that he was quite tall, well over six feet, but youthfully slim, not yet grown into his adult weight. He wore his jet black hair in a long ponytail, and his face was lean, with high cheekbones and the coppery skin of a fellow Native American.
“You’re Billy Graycloud?” Jamie asked, putting out his hand.
“Yessir. The resident Navaho. Until you arrived, of course.” He smiled shyly.
“Have a seat. We were just finishing. This is my wife, Vijay.”
The kid dipped his chin. “Billy Graycloud,” he said to Vijay as he sat down.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Billy,” she said, with a smile.
Jamie said, “Dr. Chang tells me you’re a computer analyst.”
Graycloud looked down at his boots. “I will be, I guess, once I get my doctorate.”
“From UNM?”
“Uh, nosir. Arizona. In Tucson.”
Jamie knew that Graycloud had been picked to maintain the Navaho presence on Mars. No nation was allowed to claim Mars or any other body in the solar system as its sovereign territory. But corporations or other legally recognized “entities” could claim exclusive use of an asteroid or part of a planet, as long as they maintained a physical presence on-site. By international agreement, the Navaho Nation had been granted control of the utilization of the red planet—as long as at least one Navaho actually resided on Mars. The Navaho Council regarded this grant as a sacred trust and, under Jamie Waterman’s direction, kept Mars off limits to everyone except the scientists who were exploring Mars and their support staff.
As Vijay gently teased out Graycloud’s life history from the awkward, insecure student, Jamie realized with a jolt of surprise that if they had to abandon their work on Mars and return everyone home, the planet would be wide open to any other group that wanted to exploit it. Just like the whites did to the red men in America, he thought. The fact that his mother was a descendant of the Mayflower pilgrims didn’t alleviate Jamie’s fears one whit.
“Well, anyway,” Graycloud was saying to Vijay, “Dr. Chang told me to escort you out to the dig… Not that you need escorting, I know. You’ve been on Mars a lot more’n I have.”
Jamie smiled at him. “I’m glad of your help, Mr. Graycloud.”
“Uh, Billy. Call me Billy, sir.”
“Okay, Billy. And you’ll have to call me Jamie.”
Graycloud blinked at Jamie. “I… I don’t know if I can do that, sir.
“You’ll have to. When you call me sir it makes me feel a thousand years old.”
Graycloud smiled uneasily.
The three of them got up from the table and left the cafeteria. Vijay gave Jamie a peck on the cheek and headed off for the infirmary. Graycloud led Jamie to the main airlock area.
“You ever use a nanosuit before, si… uh, Dr. Waterman?”
Jamie shook his head. He saw a row of transparent suits hanging limply along a partition. They looked like plastic raincoats, almost.
“They’re a lot better than the old hard-shells,” Graycloud said. “Easier to put on. Quicker, too.”
Picking up the drooping arm of the nearest suit, Jamie asked, “Do they give you as much protection against radiation?”
“Supposed to. We’ve got a nanotech expert from Selene here at the base and she checks radiation dosages all the time. No problems so far.”
“So far,” Jamie echoed.
Graycloud’s brows knit. “If you’d feel more comfortable in a hard-shell—”
“No,” Jamie said gently. “I’ll go with your recommendation, Billy.”
Graycloud swallowed visibly, then nodded. “Okay, let’s find you a size medium.”
Jamie felt slightly nervous as he and Graycloud stepped through the main airlock’s outer hatch and onto the ruddy sand of Mars. The nanosuit seemed terribly flimsy; it was like wearing nothing more than a plastic slicker.
Then it struck him. I’m on the surface of Mars! Not inside one of those stiff old hard suits, clomping around like a two-legged turtle. I’m practically in my shirtsleeves!
The reddish ground was littered with rocks, some as small as pebbles, many as large as a man’s head. Jamie looked up, and through the transparent bubble that enclosed his head he saw the cables running up the seamed, rugged cliff face to the niche in the rocks where the Martian buildings were.
“You okay, Dr. W?” Graycloud’s voice sounded concerned in the headphone Jamie had clipped to his ear.
“I’m fine, Billy.”
“No problems with the suit?”
“None.” Jamie almost laughed. “I was thinking about the first time Dex Trumball and I rappelled down the cliff face from up top on the plateau. The first time we walked into the buildings and actually touched them.”
“Must’ve been a helluva moment,” Graycloud said.
“It sure was.”
“Uh, if you want to see the dig, it’s over this way.”
Jamie followed the student across the rock-strewn floor of the canyon. He noticed several areas along the cliffs base that were taped off, like a crime scene. The endolithic lichen, he realized. The biologists don’t want anybody near them.
They walked toward a small group of people who were clustered around a hole in the ground. Most of them wore nanosuits, although a couple were in the bulkier hard-shells.
“Which one is Dr. Carleton?” he asked Graycloud.