Mars Life Read Free Page A

of the dead, and slipped quietly out of bed. Vijay stirred slightly but didn’t wake up, her long dark hair tousled, her lustrous eyes softly closed. I’ll never leave you again, Jamie promised silently. Not for anything.

    He padded to the bathroom and shut the door as quietly as he could.

    Another day, Jamie thought as he looked into the shaving mirror. Just like yesterday and the day before. Just like tomorrow will be. Going through the motions. The excitement’s gone. Now we’re just trying to hold on, trying to keep them from shutting us down.

    Why bother? he asked himself. Why not let the bastards close down the program and bring everybody home? Why fight the inevitable?

    His unhappy face stared back at him: broad cheeks, coppery skin, dark brooding eyes. Strands of gray flecked his close-cropped jet black hair. His mouth turned downward unhappily. He saw his father’s Navaho face; his mother’s golden hair and pink skin were inside him, didn’t show.

    Jamie showered, then shaved even though he felt he didn’t really need to. When he slowly opened the door to the bedroom, Vijay hadn’t stirred in their bed.

    If the shower and the shaver didn’t wake her she must be really out. Good, he thought. She deserves her rest. Putting up with me isn’t easy.

    He dressed as quietly as he could in his newest jeans and a crisply starched white shirt. Rummaging carefully through his dresser drawer, he pulled out his best bolo, the silver and onyx one that he usually reserved for formal receptions at the university. Softly, softly he filled his pockets with change and keys and facial tissues. And the bear fetish with the wispy white eagle’s feather that Al had lovingly tied to it just before Jamie left for Mars the first time.

    The feather’s looking pretty shoddy, he thought. Worn down by the years. Just like me.

    Vijay slept on. Sleep is the best healer, Jamie said to himself. She says she’s okay; she smiles and acts normal and pretends she’s over it. For me. She puts on the good face for my sake. But Jimmy’s death still haunts us. We should’ve done what real Navahos do: we should’ve left this condo and moved someplace else, someplace far away from all these memories.

    With his boots in one hand he tiptoed to the edge of the bed. So beautiful, he thought as he gazed down at her. It shouldn’t have happened to her like this. She deserves better.

    Help her find her path through this, he prayed silently to gods he didn’t really believe in. With a grimace he added, And while you’re at it, I could use some help myself.

 

TITHONIUM CHASMA: THE RIFT VALLEY

    “It’s hard to think of this as a valley,” said Doreen.

    Carleton heard her in the earphones built into his suit’s glassteel helmet. “A rift valley,” he said.

    She made a little frown. “I’ve had some geology classes, Professor.”

    “Please call me Carter.”

    “Sure.”

    Her nanosuit was transparent. It looked to Carleton as if she were wearing nothing over her coveralls more than a plastic rain suit with an inflated bubble over her head. Even the life support pack on her back looked too small to do its job, flimsy. Yet she was standing out on the surface of Mars in the morning sunlight, snug and apparently perfectly safe.

    Carleton felt like a shambling Neanderthal beside her. His spacesuit was a heavy, cumbersome shell of cermet with flexible joints at the elbows, knees and waist. Semiflexible, he corrected himself. I’ll know what arthritis feels like when it hits me, trying to move around in this outfit. He pictured himself like Falstaff, clanking unwillingly into battle inside his heavy suit of armor.

    Doreen had volunteered to help him lug his equipment out to the digging site, so he had allowed her to carry the spades and tongs and brushes while he pushed the cart that was loaded with the explosives and detonators.

    She’s right, he thought as he looked past her at the cliffs looming over them. It doesn’t