Tithonium Base: Evening
Jamie’s gone daft, Vijay said to herself as she watched her husband, Dex and Hasdrubal striding from Carleton’s excavation out toward the buckyball cables that ran up the seamed sheer face of the cliff to the plain up at the top. It was almost sunset, and the shadows of the three men stretched out across the uneven, rock-covered ground like fingers straining for a prize they could not reach.
The three of them had stopped briefly at the excavation; at the edge of the pit Jamie pointed here and there while the other two stood beside him. Then they moved on. Jamie wants to get to the cable lifts before it gets dark, Vijay told herself.
But Dex is only here for two more days and Jamie’s spending more’n half that time trotting him out to that crater, Vijay thought. Why’s he doing that? With a shake of her head, she kept staring through the transparent wall of the dome, watching the three nanosuited figures walking away. Like three little boys going out on an adventure, she realized. Jamie’s turning his back on his responsibilities. Dex is, too. They ought to know better.
With a helpless sigh, Vijay commanded herself, Go back to your room. Wash your face. Get ready for dinner. Alone.
Yet she stood there and watched the three men moving away from her.
“He’s really a fanatic, isn’t he?”
Turning, she saw Carter Carleton standing beside her, his usual self-assured smile totally gone. He looked angry.
“No, Jamie’s not a fanatic,” she said. “He’s dedicated.”
“He’s supposed to be showing Trumball the work we’re doing here. Look at them. They hardly glanced at my excavation.”
“I know,” Vijay said. “I really don’t understand what Jamie’s up to.”
“Whatever it is, he doesn’t think my work is very important, does he?”
“It’s not that. There’s something going on inside his head but I don’t know what it is.” Vijay kept staring at the dwindling figures as she spoke. “I wonder if Jamie himself knows what it is.”
“A fanatic,” Carleton muttered. She could hear the resentment in his voice.
“Dedicated,” she repeated.
Carleton fairly glared at her. But then he made a tentative smile and said, “I see. I am dedicated. You are a fanatic.”
Vijay shook her head. “A fanatic is someone who doubles his efforts after he’s forgotten his aim. Jamie hasn’t forgotten his aim.”
“ ‘For if I should despair, I should grow mad,’ ” Carleton quoted.
“Jamie hasn’t despaired.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.”
He touched her back lightly, with just the tips of his fingers, and gestured toward the cafeteria with his free hand. “May I invite you to dinner?”
Vijay thought about it a moment, glanced again at the dwindling figures of the three men, then back at Carleton’s handsome face. The anger was still in his eyes, but he was making himself smile at her.
“I don’t like to eat alone,” he said, almost gently.
“Neither do I,” said Vijay. “Let me wash up first.”
“Certainly.” His smile broadened. “Meet you in the cafeteria in half an hour?”
“Fine.”
All through dinner Vijay tried to get a reading on Carleton. She knew his dossier by heart, knew how he’d been ruined by a charge of rape that he strenuously denied. He had been stripped of his professorship and tenure, his wife had left him, his fellow anthropologists treated him as a pariah. His career, his life, were ruined. So he came to Mars and made the biggest discovery since somebody stumbled over the bones of Neanderthal Man. The irony was cosmic.
“Something’s amusing you?” Carleton asked from across the table. Their dinners were long finished. Even the fruit pies they had taken for dessert were nothing more than crumbs now.
“Just thinking about the weird turns that fate takes,” she said. “You had to come all the way out here to Mars to find vindication.”
He steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Vindication? That’s a strange word to use.”
Vijay said, “I mean, if the fundamentalists believe in divine guidance, then they’ve got to admit that your discovery of the village here must be God’s way of showing that the accusations against you were false.”
Still half-hiding his face, Carleton replied in a low, strained voice, “No, they’d never admit that they were wrong. That they got that woman to perjure herself. Never.”
“But—”
“They’re the fanatics, Vijay. Real fanatics. They’d do anything to further their cause. Give them enough power and they’ll start burning people at the stake again.”
There was real fury in his tone now. Hatred. Good, she thought. Don’t repress it. Let it out.
“You’ll be cock of the walk when you return to Earth. You can wave your discovery under their noses.”
“If I return to Earth.”
“If?” Vijay felt startled.
“I decided when I came here to Mars that I wasn’t going to look backward, I wasn’t going to let them turn me into a bitter old man. Now—well, why should I go back? What’s back there for me except pain and sorrow?”
He feels sorry for himself! Vijay realized. Can’t say I blame him.
She said, “But you can go back in triumph. You can have your pick of university posts.”
He thought a moment. “I wonder. The New Morality controls most of the academic establishment these days.”
“But you—”
“Don’t you know that the Mars Foundation can’t even get the news nets to carry a documentary about my village? They’re blocking us out.”
“Jamie mentioned something about that,” she murmured.
“No, I think I’ll stay right here,” Carleton said. “I can do some really important work here, no matter how they ignore me back home. I can have some respect here, despite clowns like Larkin.”
Better to reign in hell, Vijay thought, than to serve in heaven.
But she asked, “What if Jamie has to close down the whole operation?”
With a shrug, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Vijay couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “I don’t think that’s a very healthy attitude. You’ve got to prepare for problems before they hit you.”
He turned on his smile, but there was sadness in it. “Don’t worry about my attitude. I’m a healthy enough man, Vijay.”
She thought she detected just the slightest emphasis on the word man.
They picked up their dirty dishes and deposited them in the slowly revolving drum that fed the microwave cleaning unit.
As they started out of the cafeteria, toward the living units on the other side of the dome, Carleton asked, “My place or yours?”
Vijay looked sharply at him. He was smiling again, but it looked just a bit forced to her. You’d better stop this right here and now, she told herself. Don’t let him get any ideas about you. A different voice in her mind countered, Not that he doesn’t have ideas already.
“You go to your place and I’ll go to mine,” she said firmly.
Keeping pace beside her, Carleton said, “I thought we might have a nightcap. I still have some of that single malt I told you about.”
“No thanks, Carter.”
“Scared?”
She hesitated a heartbeat, then admitted, “Yes. A little.”
Strangely, he chuckled. I’ve stroked his machismo, Vijay thought. But that’s as far as this goes.
As they approached the living quarters, he gripped her arm and asked again, “Just a little scotch?”
“You are a persistent one, aren’t you?”