But modern civilization needs satellites. Most communication and entertainment goes by optical fiber, with the satellites a backup except in primitive countries. But GPS devices are in the heart of every car and plane. Big-city traffic, dependent on computer control, froze solid. Nonessential flights were grounded. Computers died.
Of course, we get some fallout from that. Even among the sophisticated government and news workers who are our daily companions, there is the undercurrent of blame, and it’s not undeserved, if someone does have to be blamed. We were the only people who could have done something, out where the Others live, and all we did was deliver the message, the lie, that precipitated this disaster.
The plain fact that we could have been the aggressors—the kamikaze option—is generally known and widely discussed. From one very understandable point of view, we should not have considered any other course of action.
It’s interesting that among our crew, only the Martians thought the kamikaze option was a reasonable idea, but to them death is an unremarkable event. It’s not as if we humans couldn’t do the math and apply the logic. What if we had all been Shinto or fundamentalist Moslem or Christian extremists? We might have just as universally discarded the idea of negotiation and blasted full speed ahead toward the enemy planet.
That might be alien to our culture, but it’s not alien to human nature. In the twentieth and twenty- first centuries, suicide attacks have often been used as a practical response to an imbalance in technology. There were uneven results—the handful of suicide pilots in America’s 9/11 had a stupendous kill ratio, but the five thousand Japanese kamikazes only sank thirty-six ships. In both cases, though, it was an understandable military sacrifice, when the enemy’s technological base made them unbeatable by conventional methods.
And their situations were nothing compared to the technological imbalance between the human race and the Others. Should we feel guilty for not making the ultimate sacrifice? Do we deserve to be condemned as cowards? Having been there at the time, I’d say no. Those with the benefit of hindsight may feel differently.
There have been threats on our lives. Our public appearances have two cadres of bodyguards, I found out—armed soldiers in uniform surrounding us, but twice as many in civilian clothes circulating in the audience.
So I was relieved when the celebrations were abruptly canceled after two days. We didn’t get to return on Air Force One—would never see the president again—but took a spartan private jet back to California, where we’d left Snowbird.
She was more or less hidden for the time being. As unpopular as the six of us were with the angry populace, we could only imagine how they would react to a Martian. Alien tools of the Others.
She would eventually be moved to a sanctuary in Siberia, where conditions were more Mars-like. A foundation had been set up there when the quarantine was lifted, and now it would support as well as study the five or six Martians marooned on Earth. She would find edible Martian food growing there, and the company of her own kind. But she wanted to say good-bye to us first, and take a swim in the ocean.
She would get that, but not much more.
20
THE LONGEST JOURNEY BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP
The last person I talked to on Mars was my good old mentor Oz, who said he was not quite 64 years old now—that’s in Martian years, though, which comes to about 120 on Earth. He didn’t look a day over a hundred, though. Wizened and wrinkled, but still with a wry intelligent look and a sparkle in his eye.
We were in the space communications room at Armstrong Space Force Base, where we’d landed from orbit. It was a bright clean room that felt old, too many coats of paint. Paul exchanged pleasantries with Oz, then left after the twelve-minute lag.
“How bad is it, Oz? Can the colony survive without support from Earth?”
Following the same protocol as we’d used fifty years before, Oz’s image froze on the screen when he hit the SEND button. I’d brought the Washington Post to read while the signals crawled back and forth.
The only story about us was on page 14, and it wasn’t complimentary.
Oz came back smiling. “We’re completely self-sufficient, Carmen; have been for more than twenty years. Human population’s over three thousand, a third of them native-born. Our living and farming space is probably twenty times what it was when you left.
“The big debate over here is whether we should stay out of space; whether the Others meant to include us in their warning. There were no Martian ships in the fleet.
“A majority says stay home. We have a Space Elevator, and they didn’t blow it down, but its only real function was as a terminal for the shuttle to and from Earth.
“Personally, I think that Earth can go to hell in its own way. My big regret is that now you and Paul can’t come home. You could have a natural baby or two now; they solved the lung problem and recycled the mother machine for scrap.
“And you’re still young enough. In-fucking-credible.
“Look, I have to go off to the old folks’ dinner. Can you call me again tomorrow”—he looked offscreen—“about 1600 your time?”
“Definitely at 1600,” I said. “If you have new art, bring some to show me.”
It wasn’t going to happen.
I heard Paul in the next room, one loud bad word. Went through the door and found him staring at a flatscreen monitor.
“Shit,” he said. “Would you look at this?” It was a picture of a human newsie, male and handsome, standing in front of a familiar background: here. The Armstrong Space Force Base.
“We on the news?”
“Not really.” He picked up the chaser and ran it back a minute or two. There was an obviously simulated picture of a lander like ours taking off tail first, the way they did spaceflight before the Elevator.
“Back to old-fashioned ways,” the newsie said. “Our Space Force is sending a rocket up into the cloud of rocks that now surrounds our planet, to get some close-up observations—and perhaps work its way through. Blasting the little obstacles with the powerful laser in its nose and maneuvering around the larger ones.
“The Space Force confirms that they don’t believe this first try will actually penetrate the millions of miles of debris, but it will be a good start. And no human pilot will be endangered; all the flight controlled by virtual-reality interfacing. Rumor has it that the VR pilot will be none other than Paul ‘Crash’ Collins, back on Earth, still young through the magic of general relativity!”
“Rumor has its head up its ass,” Paul said. “Nobody’s said anything to me.”
“Could you do it? Would you?”
“No, and no way in hell. I never trained for that kind of launch off Earth; only from Mars, where it’s a lot simpler. But more, it’s… it’s thumbing our nose at the Others. Are they insane?”
Maybe they all are, I thought; the culture. “Maybe they have a more complicated plan. Looks like propaganda, doesn’t it?”
He calmed down a little. “Might be. Shoot up an empty rocket that they know won’t make it through. Just to show that they’re doing something. But I won’t be in on it with them.”
“Best we all stay out of it. Those crowds in Washington.” I leaned on a bookshelf and looked out the window at the dry brown hills. “Let’s get away, Paul. Just disappear from the public eye for a while. We have plenty of money.”
He nodded. “The government would be glad to see us go. Let’s talk it over with everybody tonight. Have to arrange for Snowbird to get to that Siberia place safely.”