Geoffrey Landis - Mars Crossing

That would give them three layers of fail-safe against a recurrence of the failure. Nobody was happy about trusting their lives to a sensor that they knew could be faulty, but with the changes Ryan suggested, it should be as safe as anyone could make it. And he could see no alternative.

“What do we do now?” Tana asked.

“We continue north.” Commander Radkowski looked at her steadily. “We still have no other choice.”

Estrela and Trevor took the dirt-rovers ahead on pathfinder duty.

Ryan had worked most of the night on the problem, and Commander Radkowski assigned him to the first shift riding as passenger in the rock-hopper. Radkowski piloted the rockhopper himself, and Tana once again took up her position perched on top of the vehicle. The commander gave her a disapproving look. If he had been the pilot of the rockhopper on the previous day, he would have forbidden her to ride outside in the first place, but now that it was established, he didn’t bother to try to stop her. And, besides, it did make the rockhopper’s tiny cabin a little less crowded.

The morning sky was the color of adobe, streaked with feathery clouds, tiny crystals of carbon dioxide ice in the Martian stratosphere. The terrain was rockier, and Tana’s ride was quite a bit bumpier. Still, once she fit herself into the rhythm of it, it wasn’t a problem to keep her balance.

“Hey, Estrela, wait up!” Tana could hear everything that Trevor said over the communications link. “Hey, you’re going too fast! Slow up, okay? Wait for me!”

Estrela didn’t answer, but Tana could see that she was staying ahead much less than she had the previous day, probably in deference to Trevor’s inexperience.

One day, for no reason that Estrela could say, she realized what had been really quite obvious all along.

João had his crowd, and despite the fact that he had almost no money, he was every evening at bars. He spent the nights drinking in the company of boys dressed in elaborately casual attire, bright primary colors adorned with sporting logos like Nike and Polo. They seemed an odd crowd for the João she knew, a João who was moody and studious and intently focused. But he hid this side of him well when he was with his American friends, assuming a mask of frivolity. Estrela assumed that he was social climbing.

She was herself climbing as high and as fast as she could, erasing her past and inventing a new one, studying the dress and the mannerisms of the North American girls and imitating everything, or at least as much as she could copy without thousands of cruzados to spend on clothes. Her origins in the street were a secret she never talked about, and most of the other girls, who knew only that she was from Brazil and had her tuition and living expenses paid from the charity of the order, assumed that she must be the daughter of a maid or a shop worker, poor but unexceptional.

But one day she was waiting in João’s dingy apartment, and João came by with one of his impeccably high-class friends. The boy gave her a look that dismissed her utterly, as if she was of less interest than the furniture. And when he bid farewell to João, his fingers lingered a little too long on João’s arm, and his glance lingered a little too long on João’s eyes, and she thought, Why, he is looking at João just like a lover would. And then, never even having articulated it to herself until that moment, she thought, But of course, why shouldn’t he? He must be João’s lover.

Until then it had never struck her as odd that João had no girlfriends. He was handsome enough; he could have had any of Estrela’s friends if he had but once called their name in his gentle, commanding voice, but she had only thought that he was too good for them.

Why, João is a veador , she thought, and suddenly all that had been opaque to her became clear.

João, when she mentioned it, shrugged. “I can’t believe that you didn’t know,” he said.

“Aren’t you afraid of diseases?”

João looked at her.

“You know. The homosexual disease. The— you know !”

“Say it.”

“You know! AIDS!”

“I am far more cautious than you are, my little orchid,” João said. “You have, what, a dozen male friends who skewer you like a barbecued goat on a spit? Are you not yourself afraid?”

“I take precautions,” she said, indignantly tossing her hair.

“What precautions?”

“I make them all wear—” She made a gesture with her hand, like unrolling a tiny inner tube. “You know. The tiny shirt. Camisinhas .”

“Ah, so you do make your knights wear their rubber armor,” João said. “As well you should. I am glad to hear it. And so do I.” He lowered his eyes. “Am I afraid?” He raised his eyes and looked directly at her, his dark eyes penetrating through her like fire. “Yes, of course I am afraid. It is a horrible thing, when love is death and death is love. It is my worst fear, and each time I love, I think, is this it? Is this one to be my death? But what can I do? Can I change the stars in their course, or keep the ocean from surrounding the world? No more can I change the way I am. If it is fated that I must die, well, then, every man must die. And I will have lived a little, and have known the love of a few men. I am careful, my love, I am as careful as I can possibly be, but death comes for all men. And for women too, little orchid.”

Oddly, once she knew his secret, it brought her closer to João. He would now bring her out with his drinking buddies, and after a while they accepted her as just a rather odd friend of João’s. She saw them, at first, as shallow poseurs pretending at an assertive masculinity, unworthy of João’s affection; later as confused young men, uncertain of their sexuality or their identity; and finally she didn’t see them as anything at all, just friends of João’s: Andrew who got drunk and sang, Justin who liked to take her to ancient Hollywood musicals and then discuss the characters and the costumes all night long, Dieter who taught her to ride a dirt bike, Jean-Paul who wrote poetry.

When João broke up with the two others he had shared his apartment with, it was only natural that he took a new apartment with her. João was in a Ph.D. program at Cleveland State University by then, the rising star of the geology department; she had won an assistantship and would be starting the following autumn. Unlike João, who studied rocks with an intensity that sometimes almost frightened her, she had no particular passion for geology. It was as good a subject as any other, no better, no worse.

What does he see in those rocks? she sometimes thought. What does he see in those men?

But it was an excuse to avoid going back to Brazil.

Trevor drove to the theme music of the songs stomping through his head—

riding on that lonesome road, riding riding riding

He was being excruciatingly careful. Driving the dirt-rovers had been easy enough in the virtual reality simulation, but he was acutely aware that this was real reality, and smashing up a dirt-rover would mean that none of the crew would ever trust him again.

hauling down that heavy load, riding riding riding

He stayed well behind Estrela, following in her tracks, watching where she avoided obstacles. Estrela banked it over casually, sometimes weaving lazy S-curves for no reason he could see other than just for the hell of it. The rocky surface had little traction, though, and he was afraid to follow her. If he leaned the rockhopper over very far, he was afraid it would slide out from under him. So he slowly dropped further behind. It was okay. He was practicing being cautious, and there was no real way he could get lost; the dirt-rover had its own laser-gyro-based inertial navigation system that gave him a readout of his position to within a fraction of an inch. In the very worst case, if he lost track of both Estrela ahead of him and the rock-hopper behind him, he could radio and ask for a position.