He shuddered beneath his two blankets.
Jamie heard the wind sighing, too. He lay next to Vijay, warm and sweaty after making love. She seemed to be drowsing now, but Jamie wasn’t ready for sleep yet. He listened to the wind and remembered his first night on Mars, when the soft wind seemed to he stroking the dome they had just erected, touching it with questioning fingers, wondering at this alien construct on the lonely plains of the red world.
Mars is a gentle world, he told himself, listening to the wind. It means us no harm. They’ll be all right buttoned up in their camper. There’s nothing to worry about, really.
Yet he thought of the two men more than a hundred kilometers from the safety of the base. And he heard Dr. Chang’s flat refusal ringing in his memory.
“No. I will not permit it,” Chang had said.
Jamie had rushed to the mission director’s office as soon as he’d heard of the hopper’s explosion and volunteered to drive a camper out to the excursion team.
Chang sat stubbornly behind his desk, his face set in a determined scowl.
“I could carry supplies to them,” Jamie had said, “so they could continue their excursion instead of coming back here.”
“No,” Chang repeated.
“But—”
Chang seemed to puff up, like a toad that feels threatened. “Dr. Waterman,” he said slowly, stiffly. “You are the scientific director of the program. I am the mission director. My authority rules over everyone on this base. You may remove me, send me back to China, but you cannot overrule my decisions here. Is that understood?”
Jamie replied softly, “I only wanted to be of help.”
“The excursion team does not need your help. Or anyone else’s. There are protocols in place, procedures to follow. They will return to the base tomorrow under their own power. They do not need to be rescued.”
Jamie started to answer back, thought better of it and merely nodded.
Holding up one stubby finger, Chang went on, “Your presence here creates some difficulties in lines of authority. Many personnel here look to you for leadership and not to me.”
That’s what this is all about, Jamie said to himself. I should have been sensitive to it.
Chang added, “Everyone is well aware how you took control of First Expedition from Dr. Li Chengdu when you were nothing more than a substitute geologist.”
“I’m not trying to take control of this operation from you, Dr. Chang,” Jamie said, with real conviction. “I’m only trying to help you.”
As if he hadn’t heard a word Jamie said, Chang closed his eyes and murmured, “If you desire to take command I will offer my resignation at once.”
“That’s not necessary. Not at all.”
Chang’s dark eyes slowly opened. Jamie saw that they were bloodshot. “Very well. Please do not interfere with my responsibilities.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, getting to his feet. “Please excuse me.”
Chang made a single, curt nod.
Now Jamie lay awake in his bed, wondering what he could do without setting off Chang’s sensitivities, how to tell him that DiNardo was coming to the base. The man’s planted a minefield around himself, Jamie realized. Sooner or later something’s going to explode.
Boston: Lahey Clinic
“Your priest’s in fine condition, Dex. No physical reason why he can’t make the flight to Mars.”
Dr. Paul Nickerson was walking with Dex Trumball along the crowded corridor that ran from the CAT scan laboratory back to the Lahey Clinic’s suites of offices for senior medical staff.
“He’s okay to go, then,” Dex said.
“Physically, there’s no problem,” said Nickerson. He was slightly shorter than Dex, lean and loose-limbed. Even in his white lab coat he coasted along like an ice skater. Nickerson’s face was thin and long-jawed, his walnut brown hair cropped so close to his scalp it looked like fuzz.
Dex was in his usual dark blue three-piece suit. “That’s the second time you said ‘physically,’ Paul. Is there a mental problem? Emotional, I mean.”
Nickerson didn’t reply for several paces. Patients shuffled past, many of them in the pathetic bile-green paper gowns that the staff made them wear. Just to humiliate them, Dex had always thought. A hefty black nurse hurried past, looking stern and determined.
“Well?” Dex prodded.
Nickerson opened a door and gestured. “Come on in here, Dex.”
It was a small conference room, Dex saw. Oval table, eight padded chairs, smart screens on the walls, all of them blank gray.
“So?” he asked as Nickerson shut the door and leaned against it.
Raising his brows, the physician replied, “This might be my prejudice more than anything else, but… well, haven’t you wondered why a man pushing sixty would want to travel out to Mars?”
Dex sat one hip on the edge of the mahogany table and relaxed, grinning. “He’s a geologist. He was selected for the First Expedition but had a gall bladder attack.”
“And he’s waited twenty-some years to get what he lost?”
“He wants to help us. He’s going to do a video documentary for us to counter all that New Morality crap about the Martians being a fake.”
Nickerson shook his head. “I think there’s an emotional problem here.”
“You’re wrong. He’s passed all the psych exams with no sweat.”
“Still…”
“Look, Paul, I’ve been to Mars. I wouldn’t want to go back but I know what’s going through DiNardo’s mind. He’s a scientist, for chrissake! Mars is like a golden carrot. He wants to get there before he dies.”
Nickerson aimed a finger at Dex like a pistol. “Ahah! Before he dies.”
Frowning, Dex said, “You want him to take more psych exams?”
“It wouldn’t hurt. We have some very good people here at the clinic. At the very least, they should have a few conversations with him.”
Dex grumbled, “You’re just trying to run up the bill.”
Monsignor DiNardo listened to Dex’s halting explanation in the examination room as he put on his street clothes.
“They want me to undergo a mental examination?” he asked, his voice soft as always, but with a hint of genuine displeasure behind it.
“He’s a flatlander,” Dex said, waggling one hand horizontally. “He thinks anybody who wants to go into space must be nuts.”
DiNardo chuckled appreciatively as he pulled on his trousers. “Sometimes I myself wonder.”
“He just wants you to talk to one of their staff psychiatrists.”
“You know,” the priest said, “one could make the case that all scientists are slightly insane. Monomaniacal.”
“Come on, now…”
“No. Really,” DiNardo said. “Most scientists could make much more money in other professions. But they are fixated on science, on learning, on discovering.” He shook his head in wonderment.
Dex asked impatiently, “Will you talk to the shrink? We’ve got to put this thing to bed.”
“Of course,” said DiNardo. He wormed his arms into his black jacket, then felt for the bottle of pills in the left pocket. Still there. No one had disturbed them. No one knew about them. The medication had not shown up in the blood tests the doctors had performed. Good.
Atlanta: New Morality, Inc. Headquarters
The executive committee of The New Morality, Inc. had just convened an emergency meeting. At the head of the long glossy conference table sat the newly ordained Archbishop Overmire, the signet ring on his right index finger symbolizing his accession to the leadership of the movement and presidency of the corporation.