Big enough to carry four persons in relative comfort, the campers were cylindrical in shape with big bug-eye windows up front. They rested on eight sets of springy wheels that always looked to Jamie as if they were too fragile to support the weight. But on Mars they were fine. Their once-gleaming aluminum skins were caked with red dust; it made them look rusty, hard used.
Glancing at his wristwatch, Jamie said, “Let’s check out the campers, then get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
“Dontcha think we should call base and let ’em know we’re here?” Hasdrubal suggested.
Jamie knew it was strictly routine. Their monitors back at the base watched them every step of the way. Still, he called back to Dr. Chang. I’ll call Vijay once I’m in one of the sleeping cubicles, he told himself.
Los Angeles: Campaign Headquarters
“I’m not going to kiss ass for those yahoos!”
Malcolm Fry wasn’t angry, but he was upset as he paced across the room they had set up to be his private office. As a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Fry spent precious little time at his campaign headquarters. He was on the road constantly, crisscrossing the state by plane, bus, and his personal hydrogen-fueled minivan.
Fry was “black enough” to entice the minority vote, but not so liberal that he frightened the conservatives. He had made his money the old-fashioned way, in construction and real estate, and now was spending a considerable portion of it in this exhausting campaign.
He was a big man, his hands still calloused from his early days as a construction worker. His smile had charmed voters—especially women voters—since he’d first gotten into politics, as a city councilman in Pasadena. He had climbed the greasy pole up to the point where the news media claimed he had an excellent chance to become California’s next senator. There were even whispers of him running for president later on. He was young enough for that.
But now he glowered at his campaign manager as he paced the spacious office, from its shuttered window to the big desk in the corner and back again.
His campaign manager, Howard McChesney, sat in a tense bundle of nerves in the armchair in front of the desk, his head swiveling back and forth, following his candidate’s pacing. McChesney was a wiry, edgy type, with a lantern-jawed face and cold blue eyes.
“They may be yahoos,” he said, his voice scratchy as fingernails on a chalk board, “but they can throw the election into your lap. Or into Gionfriddo’s.”
“The Mafia candidate,” Fry muttered bitterly.
“Mal, you’ve got to let them have their way with this,” McChesney insisted. “If you don’t, you lose the election. It’s that simple.”
Fry stopped his pacing and fixed McChesney with a look that had terrified labor gangs and corporate directors.
“Howie,” he said in a quietly intense voice, “they want me to withdraw my support for science courses in the public schools. I can’t do that! Hell, when I was on the school board I fought to keep science in the curriculum. They tried to slit my throat over that! Now you want me to buddy up to them?”
“If you want to be senator,” McChesney replied.
“I can’t do it.”
“You mean you won’t do it.”
“That’s right, I won’t.”
McChesney drew in a breath, then said, “Let me paint a picture for you, Malcolm.”
Fry sat on the edge of his desk and folded his arms across his chest. When McChesney called him “Malcolm,” he knew things were getting grim.
“So you stand up to the fundamentalists,” McChesney said, his head tilted back as if he were talking to the ceiling. “You insist on pushing for more funding for science courses in public schools.”
Fry nodded.
“The New Morality, the Catholic Church, and every Christian sect in this crazy state votes against you. You lose the election. Gionfriddo wins. What’s the first thing he does when he gets to Washington?”
Sullenly, Fry answered, “He votes to cut federal funding for science classes.”
McChesney spread his arms. “So there you are. What have you accomplished, except to lose the election?”
“I still don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. But there it is. It ain’t going to go away. Those yahoos, as you call ’em, will work night and day for years and years to get what they want. They’re patient, they’re organized, and they’re absolutely certain that they’re right and anybody who’s against them is wrong. They’re certain that God’s on their side.”
Fry seemed to sag in on himself. “So I either give in to them or lose the election. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“There’s got to be some other way! Got to be!”
McChesney said nothing for several moments while Fry stared at him, silently pleading.
“Well, maybe…”
“What?”
The campaign manager pressed his lips into a thin line, gazed up at the ceiling again, then finally said, “Maybe we could try to outflank ’em.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ultraconservatives are all worked up about this Mars business. They want to stop the program and bring all the scientists home.”
“Stop the Mars program,” Fry murmured. “Yeah, I’ve heard them bitching about how much it costs.”
McChesney said, “It’s more than the money. They don’t like the scientists talking about finding intelligent life on Mars.”
“It’s extinct, isn’t it?”
“Even so. They want to get everybody off Mars and forget the whole thing.”
Fry shook his head. “Damn yahoos.”
“Maybe so, but if you come out strong against Mars maybe you can finesse the science class issue.”
“Against Mars?”
Breaking into a wide smile, McChesney explained, “The beauty of it is that it doesn’t mean a thing. The government’s already cut all the Mars funding to zero. So you can make a big splash about bringing those people back from Mars without making any difference at all to what’s really happening.”
Fry was silent for several moments, thinking. At last he asked, “I just make some noise against Mars and sidestep the school issue.”
“Could work,” McChesney said hopefully.
Another few moments of silence. Then, “Okay, let’s do it.”
McChesney slapped his hands together. “Good. I’ll get Tilton and her people working on a statement for you to make. And I’ll schedule a meeting with the head of the New Morality’s California organization.”
Fry gritted his teeth, but said, “Okay. Do that.”
Tithoniae Fosse: The Crater
Jamie’s pocket phone was buzzing. He snapped awake and looked around, confused for a moment. Then he realized, I’m in the dome up on the plain. He sat up on his bunk and reached for the phone, buzzing away on the metal nightstand beside the bunk.
Vijay’s smiling face filled the tiny screen, brilliant teeth against shining dark skin, big luminous eyes. “G’day, mate,” she said brightly. “This is your six a.m. wake-up call.”
“Good morning,” Jamie said, yawning.
“How’d you sleep?” they asked simultaneously. Then laughed. As they chatted, Jamie heard coughing and snuffling from one of the other compartments, then water running.
“Time to get to work,” he told Vijay.
“Me, too. One of the geologists came down with a bit of the jitters after you left. He started thinking about the meteor hitting the dome here. I had to sedate him.”
“How’s Billy Graycloud doing?” Jamie asked, and wondered why.
“Graycloud? Solid as a rock, that one. Like you, a stoic Navaho.”