“He’s fighting to keep them from closing down our work here,” Vijay said.
“Good for him,” said Carleton. “But I suppose that doesn’t leave him enough time for you.”
Vijay marveled at the man’s self-centeredness. I was right, she thought: he’s a complete narcissist.
Misreading her silence, Carleton said, “I shouldn’t be poking into your personal life, I suppose.”
Vijay picked up her fork and surveyed the slices of soybeef on her plate. “We all live in each other’s pockets here, don’t we?”
“I suppose we do.”
They ate in silence for a few moments. Then Carleton said, “God, what I wouldn’t give for a decent glass of wine!”
“It’s a sacrifice we make for working here,” she said.
“I suppose so. But still…”
Is he angling to see if I’ve got some booze stashed? Vijay wondered.
As if in answer, Carleton said, “I brought six bottles of single malt with me, but they’re almost all gone now.”
“Alcoholic beverages are forbidden by mission regulations.”
He grinned at her. “Everybody brings something in their personal belongings. The bio boys cook up some interesting pharmaceuticals in their labs, you know. I’ll bet even Chang has some rice wine stashed away somewhere.”
Vijay chewed on the underdone soymeat, then asked, “You don’t like Dr. Chang much, do you?”
With a shrug, Carleton replied, “As long as he doesn’t get in my way he doesn’t bother me.”
“Does he get in your way?”
“He tries to, now and then. It doesn’t do him any good.”
She speared a leaf of lettuce from her salad. “He is the mission director, after all.”
Carleton hmmphed. “He’s a bureaucrat, not a scientist. He’d make a perfect mandarin bureaucrat for some Chinese emperor.”
“Dr. Chang’s a world-class geologist.”
“Was. He hasn’t done any geology in years. Decades.”
Vijay fell silent, digesting Carleton’s assessment. Sooner or later I’ll have to get Chang’s reading on Carleton, she told herself. That should be illuminating.
Next to them, Jamie and DiNardo were discussing the video broadcast they wanted to make from the cliff dwellings.
“If people could see the structures,” Jamie was saying earnestly, “understand that they’re real, that living, thinking creatures made them while dinosaurs were living on Earth, then…” His voice trailed off.
“Then you think that they would give more support to our work here,” DiNardo finished for him.
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
Gently, DiNardo shook his head. “I hope so, too. But I do not expect it.”
“You don’t? Why?”
“Mars is not important to them. It is that simple.”
“Not important?”
“As horrible as that may seem to you, I believe it to be the truth. Most of the people on Earth simply do not care about Mars. Their concerns are much closer to home.”
“The greenhouse warming,” said Jamie.
“And even more personal problems. Crime. War. Half the people of Earth don’t have enough to eat. Food is a very real worry for them.”
“I suppose so,” Jamie admitted.
“It is an old, old problem,” DiNardo said. “Galileo had trouble finding money to support his work. Leonardo da Vinci wrote job application letters to the rich and powerful.”
Jamie made himself smile at the priest. “Today we write grant applications.”
“But the problem is still serious. In democracies such as the U.S.A. the people are the ultimate decision makers. And I am afraid that the people think Mars is a luxury that only a small elite band of scientists cares about.”
“But don’t you find,” Jamie asked, “that there’s a concerted effort to downplay what we’re doing? An organized campaign to belittle our work, to keep it out of the public’s eye?”
“An organized campaign against us?”
“By the New Morality and other fundamentalist groups. Even some ultraconservatives in the Catholic Church.”
Jamie feared he had gone too far, but DiNardo looked thoughtful for a moment, then replied, “There are ultraconservatives in the Curia, this I know. I have to deal with them.”
“That’s why you’re so important,” Jamie said, some urgency returning to his voice. “You can show the people that there’s no basic conflict between religion and science. Show them that we’re not a bunch of atheist monsters trying to destroy their religious faith.”
DiNardo glanced down at his half-finished meal before replying, “I am not so certain of that, I’m afraid.”
Jamie blinked at him.
“Mars is testing my faith,” said DiNardo, looking suddenly bleak. “Testing it severely.”
Slowly, patiently, Vijay swung their conversation to Carleton’s relationship with Doreen McManus.
“I’m overwhelmed with what a rumor mill this place is,” she said as they worked on their desserts: a fruit cup for her, a lemon tart for him.
Carleton said, “It’s like a university campus, only worse. We’re smaller. As you said, we’re all living in each other’s pockets.”
“Or pants,” she said, grinning to show she meant it to be humorous.
“There is that,” Carleton agreed, smiling back at her.
“It’s a pressure cooker in here, all right.”
Carleton nodded.
Vijay plunged, “Doreen McManus went back to Selene, di’n’t she.”
Carleton’s face went taut for an instant, but he quickly regained his composure. “Good for her.”
“The word is that you two were a couple.”
“She’s just a kid. She got too emotional to stay here.”
“Too bad.”
Vijay waited for Carleton to say more, but he concentrated on mopping up his lemon tart.
She decided to push a bit. “Do you miss her?”
Carleton looked up and made a crooked little smile. “It was fun while it lasted. At least she didn’t accuse me of rape.”
Vijay asked, “Can I ask you—”
“No,” he snapped. “I’ve talked enough about that. It’s over and done with.”
“I suppose so,” she said weakly.
“A moment ago you called this place a pressure cooker,” Carleton said, almost accusingly. “But it’s worse than that. It’s Coventry.”
“Coventry?”
“A place of exile. A place where they send troublemakers to get rid of them.”
She blinked with surprise. “That’s how you think of Mars?”
“That’s what this is. You, me, all of us here—we’re exiles, outcasts. We don’t belong here. We can’t survive here without this dome. We can’t even breathe the air outside or walk out in the open without spacesuits. We’re aliens. Exiles.”
“Most of the people here worked their bums off to get here,” Vijay protested.
“And now that they’re here,” Carleton retorted darkly, “they all wish they were home.”
“No!”
“Yes. They may not admit it, but there isn’t anyone here who wouldn’t prefer to be back on Earth.”
“You, too?”
He folded his hands in front of his face, half hiding his expression. At last he admitted, “Me, too. But I can’t go back. I’m really exiled.”
Vijay thought it over swiftly. “I can think of one person who prefers it here.”
“Your husband.”
“Yes. Jamie wants to be on Mars. He’s at home here.”
“He’s a madman, then,” said Carleton.
Vijay started an angry reply, thought better of it, and said nothing. Carleton returned his attention to the remains of his dessert. A tense silence stretched between them.