“Two weeks?” she bleated.
“Five days out, three days on Mars, five days back,” Dex replied. “Thirteen days, total. I’ll be back in time for election day.”
“And what am I supposed to do while you’re gone? Have you thought about that?”
Dex recognized the slightly veiled threat. He made himself grin at her. “Read our prenup,” he suggested.
“You’re rotten!”
“I know. I’m sorry. I told you you could come with me.”
“To Mars?” Her china blue eyes went wide.
“Sure. I’ve been there. It’s fascinating. It’d be fun to have you there with me.”
She shook her blond head. “Not me! I’ll stay home and wait for you, like those wives of whaling sailors in the old days.”
“Maybe I should build a widow’s walk up on the roof,” Dex muttered as he zipped up the travel bag.
“You’re really leaving?” she said, her voice going small, almost frightened.
“I’ll be back.”
“You’re risking your neck because of your Apache friend.”
“Navaho.”
“Whatever. I hate him.”
Dex looked squarely at her. She was really upset. “Look, honey, it’s no more dangerous than flying to London. Really.”
“But why do you have to go to frigging Mars just to tell him you’re sending everybody home?”
With a sadness that he’d kept under control until this moment, Dex said, “I can’t tell him any other way. It’s got to be face-to-face, man-to-man.”
“Stupid macho bullshit,” she muttered.
Dex shrugged. “When you have to kill a man,” he quoted Churchill, “it costs nothing to be polite about it.”
His wife dabbed at her eyes as he brushed past her and headed for the limousine waiting to take him to the aerospaceport.
It was the first time in more than two months that the president had invited Francisco Delgado to the Oval Office, and she wished she hadn’t.
The president of the United States sat behind her broad dark mahogany desk, smiling at Archbishop Overmire, who seemed perfectly at ease in the cushioned leather chair next to Delgado’s. Behind the president, through the long windows that looked out on the Rose Garden, the science advisor could see that last night’s rainstorm had stripped the last leaves from the trees. The Weather Service predicts a colder-than-normal winter, Delgado thought idly; maybe even a little snow up in New England.
“I’m very pleased that you could find the time to attend this meeting,” the president was saying to Archbishop Overmire. Her smile seemed genuine enough; much warmer than she had ever vouchsafed to her science advisor.
Overmire smiled back graciously. “Madam President, your slightest wish is my command.”
Three of Overmire’s aides sat back on the sofa by the unused fireplace, dressed, like the archbishop, in black clerical suits. Delgado thought they looked like clones: each of them ascetically thin and pale. Overmire himself glowed with pink-cheeked health and happy good cheer. On the facing sofa sat the president’s chief of staff and her chief counsel.
Delgado had wanted to bring a couple of his assistants to this meeting, especially the young geologist who monitored the work on Mars and the head of the Georgetown University anthropology department, a Jesuit who was closely following Carleton’s excavation of the Martian fossils. But the president’s assistants had said no: this was a small, informal meeting. No staff people.
Except for the archbishop’s three clones and the president’s two staff members. What they meant was that Delgado was not allowed to bring his own people with him.
After a few minutes of meaningless pleasantries, the president said to Overmire, “I take it you’ve seen the images from the Martian graves.”
“I have indeed,” said the archbishop. “They look more like the skeletons of dogs or pigs than people.”
“They’re Martians,” Delgado said. “We shouldn’t expect them to look like human beings.”
Overmire smiled tolerantly. “I’m not a scientist, of course, but it looks to me as if your people on Mars have uncovered a pet cemetery, not a graveyard where people are buried.”
Delgado felt his cheeks flame, but he immediately clamped down on his anger. The man’s trying to bait me, he told himself. Turning to the president, he said, “Whether the skeletons uncovered so far are the remains of the people who built the village or their pets, the fact remains that intelligent creatures lived on Mars, built their homes on Mars, and even believed in some form of afterlife.”
“They worshipped God,” the president breathed.
Overmire corrected, “They worshipped false gods, of course. They had no knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
“How can you know that?” Delgado demanded. “What evidence do you have—”
“Gentlemen,” said the president, “we’re not here to discuss religion. Or archeology, for that matter.”
“Of course,” said Overmire, smiling again.
Just what are we here to discuss? Delgado wondered silently.
As if to answer his unvoiced question, the president explained, “My secretary of education is making a fuss about these Martian fossils. She wants to encourage schools around the country to study what the scientists are discovering.”
Ahh, thought Delgado. Education’s doing her job and that’s got the president worried.
Overmire’s smile disappeared. “Use federal tax dollars to popularize godless humanism?” he said, his voice low and tight. “It’s bad enough that secular university scientists are giving seminars and holding conferences about these alleged Martians—”
“Alleged?” Delgado snapped.
“There’s no proof that the Martians were intelligent.”
“No proof?” Delgado’s temper snapped. “They built that village! They buried their dead! With funeral adornments! They built those structures up in the cliff! They carved writing into the walls!”
“One wall,” said Overmire. “And, quite frankly, it’s just as easy to believe that this Navaho scientist put up all these so-called structures just to wheedle more money out of us.”
Delgado sputtered, “That’s… that’s… it’s a goddamned lie and you know it!”
Unruffled, Overmire lifted one hand and replied, “You scientists have a saying about Ockham’s razor, don’t you? If you have more than one possible explanation for something, then the simplest one is the right one? Well, which is simpler, assuming that there was a race of intelligent people on Mars sixty million years ago, or assuming that some fanatical scientists have faked the evidence for them?”
It took all of Delgado’s willpower to keep from leaping at the archbishop’s throat and throttling him.
The president, behind her massive desk, made a curt gesture. “Now, listen,” she said. “My education secretary is priming herself for a run for the presidency in two years. I can’t let her use Mars as ammunition against me.”
Overmire’s smile turned crafty. He eased back in his chair and said, “Madam President, your administration has not been as fully cooperative with the Lord’s work as it might be.”
“I admit that,” said the president. “And I’m taking steps to change it.”
The archbishop beamed. “In that case, be assured that you will have the full backing of the New Morality—and every right-thinking, God-fearing voter in the land.”
The president smiled back at him.
“That is, if,” Overmire continued, “you ask for the resignation of your secretary of education and replace her with someone we can both work with.”
The president’s smile started to look forced, but she nodded.