Ben Bova - Mars Life

The floor was radiant-heated but still it felt cold to Carleton’s bare feet. Not as cold as outside, he thought. A glance at the weather readout on the digital clock by his bedside showed the outside temperature hadn’t quite reached ninety below zero yet.

Morning on Mars. Carter Carleton still felt thoroughly out of place among the scientists and technicians who made up the personnel of the Tithonium Chasma base. He was older than any of them, gray-haired and getting pudgy despite his daily toil at the dig. The only anthropologist at the base. The only anthropologist on Mars. The only anthropologist within some hundred million kilometers, for that matter.

Another day, he said to himself, grabbing his towel and toiletries. No, another sol, he corrected. Here on Mars they’re called sols, not days.

“Whatever,” he muttered as he trudged barefoot across his cubicle to the door of the common lavatory.

In his condo in Albuquerque, Jamie Waterman dreamed also. He knew it was a dream, yet the Navaho side of him also knew that dreams reveal truths hidden during the waking day.

The village stood before him, sturdy dried-brick dwellings three and even four stories high. The street was unpaved, of course: nothing more than hard-packed dirt. The sunlight felt warm and good on his shoulders, and Jamie realized that he was wearing nothing more than an old checkered shirt, faded denims, and his well-scuffed boots. No space suit.

The villagers looked strange, very different from Jamie. Why not? he asked himself. After all, they’re Martians.

Jamie walked among the Martian villagers unnoticed, unseen. They paid no attention to him as they scurried on their daily tasks. I’m just a ghost to them, he realized. I’m invisible. Unseen.

Then he recognized his grandfather Al striding along the bare dusty street toward him, wearing his best black leather vest and his broad-brimmed hat with the silver band circling its crown.

“Ya’aa’tey!” Grandfather Al called out the old Navaho greeting. “Grandfather!” Jamie called to him, astonished. “But you’re dead!”

Al grinned widely at him. “Naw, that was a mistake. I been right here, waitin’ for you.”

Jamie laid a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. He was as solid as the stone bear fetish Al had given his grandson so many years ago. Jamie still carried it with him wherever he went.

“You’re really here?” Jamie felt tears welling in his eyes.

“Long as you want me to be,” said Al. “And this village? This is the way it was?”

“Naw,” Al said. “This is the way it’s gonna be.” Then he added, “Go with beauty, grandson.”

By the time Carter Carleton had dressed and come out into the open central area of the base’s main dome, bright sunlight was streaming through the dome’s curving walls. Overnight, a polarizing electric current turned the plastic walls opaque, to keep the base’s interior heat from escaping into the frigid Martian night. By day, the current was turned off and the walls became transparent to allow warming sunshine in.

Sunshine always made Carleton feel better. That’s one advantage that Mars has, he said to himself as he headed for the cafeteria, off on the far side of the open area. There hasn’t been a cloudy day here in millions of years. Except for the dust storms.

The cafeteria was completely self-service. If you wanted eggs for breakfast you cracked open a plastic package of powdered eggs and fried them yourself on one of the hand-sized skillets hanging over the grill. Staff members took turns cleaning up after each meal. It was perfectly ordinary to see a tenured professor of microbiology loading the dishwasher or sponging down the tables.

This early in the morning the scrubbing robots were still scouring the tile floor. One of the squat, round little turtles was buzzing down the edge of the cafeteria counter; it stopped ten centimeters before Carleton’s loafer-clad feet. It beeped impatiently.

“Go around me, stupid,” Carleton muttered.

The robot dutifully maneuvered around his feet and resumed its route along the counter’s edge.

The grill still bore the same CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE sign that had been there the day before. This place is going to seed,Carleton grumbled to himself. The bakery odor of fresh toast tempted him, but instead he chose a bowl of cold cereal and poured reconstituted milk into it. As he was reaching for the fresh raspberries, grown in the greenhouse in the adjoining dome, he heard:

“Dr. Carleton?”

Turning, he saw it was one of the junior technicians. The name tag on her shirt read MCMANUS. She was the base’s only nanotechnician.

“Doreen,” he replied, smiling the way he used to in his classrooms.

She had lovely, thickly curled auburn hair, but it was cropped close in a strictly utilitarian style. Her face was oval, with the large shy eyes of a waif. She was almost Carleton’s height, but so thin and bony that Carleton wondered if she were bulimic. Instead of standard-issue coveralls she wore a mannish long-sleeved shirt and creaseless slacks of pearl gray.

“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked, unsmiling. Her voice was low but sweet; Carleton imagined she was probably a good singer. Mezzo-soprano, most likely. He saw that she was carrying a tray that held only a mug of fruit juice and a slice of toast. Nothing more. The toast looked burnt, at that.

“I’d be glad of the company.”

It was still early enough that only a few of the tables were occupied. Voices murmured; the intercom speakers purred soft rock music. Carleton picked an empty table and put his bowl of cereal down.

Once she was settled in the chair on his right, Doreen McManus asked, “Are you going outside again today?”

Carleton groused, “Are you going to twist my arm again?”

Her expression grew even more serious. “Dr. Carleton, you simply—”

“Call me Carter, please. When you call me ‘Dr. Carleton’ it makes me feel a hundred and fifty years old.”

“Carter, then,” she said, with the beginning of a smile.

“And you are going to twist my arm again, aren’t you?”

“That hard-shell suit of yours is awfully old.”

“It works fine. No complaints.”

“But the nanofabric suits are so much easier to work in.”

He picked up his spoon, hesitated, then put it down on the table again with a tiny clink.

“Everybody else uses the nanosuits,” she said earnestly.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t trust them.”

“But—”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t trust you, Doreen. I just feel safer inside an old, reliable hard-shell suit.”

She looked at him with her big puppy eyes for a long, silent moment. Carleton realized her eyes were an exotic grayish green color. It reminded him of a jewelry stone. What was it called? Tourmaline, he remembered. With an effort, he looked down and started spooning up his cereal.

“Would you mind if I went with you this morning?” she asked.

“In a nanosuit?”

“Yes, that’s what I’d be wearing.”

He grinned at her. “Trying to shame the old man?”

“You’re not old.”

“Old enough,” he said, with a practiced sigh.

“Would it be all right?”

“To come out this morning? Sure. The work’s pretty boring, though. Except for the explosions.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Okay, then.”

“Doreen, good morning!” Carleton looked up to see a dark-haired, thickset younger man approaching them. With a glance at Carleton, he plunked his tray on the table as he asked, “All right to sit here, Dr. Carleton?”

Kalman Torok, Carleton saw: one of the biologists. There were only two hundred and some people at Tithonium Base and Carleton—with his long years of memorizing students’ names—knew most of them on a first-name basis. Name tags helped, of course.