by Jack Dann
“So they went underground three billion years ago with the technology to duplicate what sounds like a high-altitude Earth environment. And stayed that way for three billion years.” She shook her head. “It’s not likely. And I still want to know where the fossils are. Maybe they dug them all up and destroyed them, just to confuse us?”
“But it’s not like we’ve looked everywhere. Paul says it may be that life wasn’t distributed uniformly, and we just haven’t found any of the islands where things lived. The dinosaurs or whatever.”
“Well, you know it didn’t work that way on Earth. Fossils everywhere, from the bottom of the sea to the top of the Himalayas. Crocodile fossils in Antarctica.”
“Okay. That’s Earth.”
“It’s all we have. Coffee?” I said no and she poured herself half a cup. “You’re right that it’s weak to generalize from one example. Paul could very well be right, too; there’s no evidence one way or the other.
“But look. We know all about one form of life on Mars: you and me and the others. We have to live in an artificial bubble that contains an alien environment, maintained by high technology, because we are the aliens here. So you stumble on eight-legged potato people who also live in a bubble that contains an alien environment, evidently maintained by high technology. The simplest explanation is that they’re aliens, too. Alien to Mars.”
“Yeah, I don’t disagree. I know about Occam’s Razor.”
She smiled at that. “What’s fascinating to me, one of many things, is that you spent hours in that environment and felt no ill effects. Their planet’s very earthlike.”
“What if it was Earth?”
That stopped her. “Wouldn’t we have noticed?”
“I mean a long time ago. What if they lived only on mountain tops, and developed high technology thousands and thousands of years ago. Then they all left.”
“It’s an idea,” she said. “But it’s hard to believe that every one of them would be willing and able to leave—and that there would be no trace of their civilization, ten or even a hundred thousand years later. And where are their genetic precursors? The eight-legged equivalent of apes?”
“You don’t really believe me.”
“Well, I do; I do,” she said seriously. “I just don’t think there’s an easy explanation.”
“Like Dargo Solingen’s? The Figment of Imagination Theory?”
“Especially that. People don’t have complex consistent hallucinations; they’re called hallucinations because they’re fantastic, dreamlike.
“Besides, I saw the dog; you couldn’t have put that dent in it with a lead-lined baseball bat. And she can’t explain the damage to your Mars suit, either, without positing that you leaped off the side of a cliff just to give yourself an alibi.” She was getting worked up. “And I’m your mother, even if I’m not a model one. I would goddamn remember if you had ever broken your ankle! That healed hairline fracture is enough proof for-me—and for Dr. Jefferson and Dr. Milius and anybody else in this goddamned hole who didn’t convict you before you opened your mouth.”
“You’ve been a good mother,” I said..
She suddenly sat up and hugged me across the table. “Not so good. Or you wouldn’t have done this.”
She sat down and rubbed my hand. “But if you hadn’t done it—” She laughed. “—how long would it have been before we stumbled on these aliens? They’re watching us, but don’t seem eager to have us see them.”
The window on the wall was a greenboard of differential equations. She clicked on her clipboard and it became a real-time window. The storm was still blowing, but it had thinned out enough so I could see a vague outline of Telegraph Hill.
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll be able to go out and take a look. If Paul’s free, he’d probably like to come along; nobody knows the local real estate better than him.”
I stood up. “I can hardly wait. But I will wait, promise.”
“Good. Once is enough.” She smiled up at me. “Get some rest. Probably a long day tomorrow.”
Actually, I was up past midnight catching up on schoolwork, or not quite catching up. My brain wouldn’t settle down enough to worry about Kant and his Categorical Imperative. Not with aliens out there waiting to be contacted.
8. BAD COUGH
Paul was free until 1400, so right after breakfast we suited up and equipped a dog with extra oxygen and climbing gear. He’d done a lot of climbing and caving on both Earth and Mars. If we found the hole—when we found the hole—he was going to approach it roped up, so if he broke through the way I did, he wouldn’t fall far or fast.
I’d awakened early with a slight cough, but felt okay. I got some cough suppressant pills from the first-aid locker, chewed one and put two in my helmet’s tongue-operated pill cache.
We went through the airlock and weren’t surprised to see that the storm had covered all my tracks, and everyone else’s— including Red’s; I was hoping that his sawhorse thing might have gouged out a distinctive mark when it stopped.
We still had a good chance of finding the hole, thanks to the MPS built into the suit and its inertial compass. I’d started counting steps, going west, when I set out from Telegraph Hill, and was close to five thousand when I fell through. That’s about four kilometers, maybe an hour’s walk in the daytime.
“So we’re probably being watched,” Mother said, and waved to the invisible camera. “Hey there, Mr. Red! Hello, Dr. Green! We’re bringing back your patient with the insurance forms.”
I waved, too, both arms. Paul put up both his hands palm out, showing he wasn’t armed. Though what it would mean to a four-armed creature, I wasn’t sure.
No welcoming party appeared, so we went to the right of Telegraph Hill and started walking and counting. A lot of the terrain looked familiar. Several times I had us move to the left or right when I was sure I had been closer to a given formation.
We walked a half-kilometer or so past Paul’s wrecked dumbo. I hadn’t seen it in the dark.
Suddenly I noticed something. “Wait! Paul! I think it’s just ahead of you.” I hadn’t realized it, walking in the dark, but what seemed to be a simple rise in the ground was actually rounded, like an overturned shallow bowl.
“Like a little lava dome, maybe,” he said. “That’s where you fell through.” He pointed at something I couldn’t quite see from my angle and height. “Big enough for you and the dog, anyhow. ”
He unloaded his mountaineering stuff from the dog, then took a hammer and pounded into the ground a long piton, which is like a spearpoint with a hole for the rope. Then he did another one about a foot away. He passed an end of the rope through both of them and tied it off.
He pulled on the rope with all his weight. “Carmen, Laura, help me test this.” We did and it still held. He looped most of the rope over his shoulder and took a couple of turns under his arms, and then clamped it through a metal thing he called a crab. It’s supposed to keep you from falling too fast, even if you let go.
“This probably isn’t all necessary,” he said, “since I’m just taking a look down. But better safe than dead.” He backed up the slight incline, checking over his shoulder, and then got on his knees to approach the hole.
I held my breath as he took out a big flashlight and leaned over the edge. I didn’t hear mother breathing, either.
“Okay!” he said. “There’s the side reflector that broke off your dog. I’ve got a good picture.”
“Good,” I tried to say, but it came out as a cough. Then another cough, and then several, harder and harder. I felt faint and sat down and tried to stay calm. Eyes closed, shallow breathing.
When I opened my eyes, I saw specks of blood on the inside of my helmet. I could taste it inside my mouth and on my lips. “Mother, I’m sick.”
She saw the blood and kneeled down next to me. “Breathe. Can you breathe?”
“Yes. I don’t think it’s the suit.” She was checking the oxygen fitting and meter on the back.
“Ho
w long have you felt sick?”
“Not long . . . well, now I do. I had a little cough this morning-”
“And didn’t tell anybody.”
“No, I took a pill and it was all right.”
“I can see how all right it was. Do you think you can stand?”
I nodded and got to my feet, wobbling a little. She held on to my arm. Then Paul came up and held the other.
“I can just see the antenna on Telegraph Hill,” he said. “I’ll call for the jeep.”
“No, don’t,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to give the Dragon the satisfaction.”
Mother gave a nervous laugh. “This is way beyond that, sweetheart. Blood in your lungs? What if I let you walk back and you dropped dead?”
“I’m not going to die.” But saying that gave me a horrible chill. Then I coughed a bright red string onto my faceplate. Mother eased me back down, and awkwardly sat with my helmet in her lap while Paul shouted “Mayday!” over the radio.
“Where did they come up with that word?” I asked Mother.
“Easy to understand on a radio, I guess. ‘Mo’ dough’ would work just as well.” I heard the click as her glove touched my helmet. Trying to smooth my hair.
I didn’t cry. Embarrassing to admit, but I guess I felt kind of important, dying and all. Dargo Solingen would feel like shit for doubting me. Though the cause-and-effect link there wasn’t too clear.
I lay there trying not to cough for maybe twenty minutes before the jeep pulled up, driven by Dad. One big happy family. He and mother lifted me into the back and Paul took over the driving, leaving the dog and his climbing stuff behind.
It was a fast and rough ride back. I got into another coughing spasm and spattered more blood and goop on the faceplate.
Mother and Dad carried me into the airlock like a sack of grain or something, and then were all over each other trying to get me out of the Mars suit. At least they left the skinsuit on while they hurried me through the corridor and mess area to Dr. Jefferson’s aid station.
He asked my parents to step outside, set me on the examination table, and stripped off the top of the skinsuit, to listen to my breathing with a stethoscope. He shook his head.
“Carmen, it sure sounds as if you’ve got something in your lungs. But when I heard you were coming in with this, I looked at the whole-body MRI we took yesterday, and there’s nothing there.” He clicked on his clipboard and asked the window for my MRI, and there I was in all my transparent glory.
“Better take another one.” He pulled the top up over my shoulders. “You don’t have to take anything off; just lie down here.” The act of lying down made me cough sharply, but I caught it in my palm.
He took a tissue and gently wiped my hand, and looked at the blood. “Damn,” he said quietly. “You aren’t a smoker. I mean on Earth.”
“Just twice. Once tobacco and once pot. Just one time each.”
He nodded. “Now take a really deep breath and try to hold it.” He took the MRI wand and passed it back and forth over my upper body. “Okay. You can breathe now.
“New picture,” he said to the window. Then he was quiet for too long.
“Oh my. What. . . what could that be?”
I looked, and there were black shapes in both of my lungs, about the size of golf balls. “What is . . . what are they?”
He shook his head. “Not cancer, not an infection, this fast. Bronchitis wouldn’t show up black, anyhow. Better call Earth.” He looked at me with concern and something else, maybe puzzlement. “Let’s get you into bed in the next room, and I’ll give you a sedative. Stop the coughing. And then maybe I’ll take a look inside.”
“Inside?”
“Brachioscopy, put a little camera down there. You won’t feel anything.”
In fact, I didn’t feel anything until I woke up several hours later. Mother was sitting by the bed, her hand on my forehead.
“My nose ... the inside of my nose feels funny.”
“That’s where the tube went in. The brachioscope.”
“Oh, yuck. Did he find anything?”
She hesitated. “It’s . . . not from Earth. They snipped off some of it and took it to the lab. It’s not... it doesn’t have DNA.”
“I’ve got a Martian disease?”
“Mars, or wherever your potato people are from. Not Earth, anyhow; everything alive on Earth has DNA. ”
I prodded where it ached, under my ribs. “It’s not organic?”
“Well, it is. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. Nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur—it has amino acids and proteins and even something like RNA. But that’s as far as it goes.”
That sounded bad enough. “So they’re going to have to operate? On both of my lungs?”
She made a little noise and I looked up and saw her wiping her eyes. “What is it? Mother?”
“It’s not that simple. The little piece they snipped off, it had to go straight into the glove box, the environmental isolation unit. That’s the procedure we have for any Martian life we discover, because we don’t know what effect it might have on human life. In your case ...”
“In my case, it’s already attacked a human.”
“That’s right. And they can’t operate on you in the glove box.”
“So they’re just going to leave it there?”
“No. But Dr. Jefferson can’t operate until he can work in a place that’s environmentally isolated from the rest of the base. They’re working on it now, turning the far end of Unit B into a little self-contained hospital. You’ll move in there tomorrow or the next day, and he’ll take out the stuff. Two operations.”
“Two?”
“The first lung has to be working before he opens the second. On Earth, he could put you on a heart/lung machine, I guess, and work on both. But not here.”
I felt suddenly cold and clammy and I must have turned pale. “It’s not that bad,” Mother said quickly. “He doesn’t have to open you up; he’ll be working through a small hole in your side. It’s called thorascopy. Like when I had my knee operated on, and I was just in and out. And he’ll have the best surgeons on Earth looking over his shoulder, advising him. ”
With a half-hour delay, I thought. What if their advice was “No—don’t do that” Oops.
I thought of an old bad joke: Politicians cover their mistakes with money; cooks cover their mistakes with mayonnaise; doctors cover theirs with dirt. I could be the first person ever buried on Mars, what an honor.
“Wait,” I said. “Maybe they could help.”
“The Earth doctors? Sure—”
“No! I mean the aliens.” '
“Honey, they couldn’t—”
“They fixed my ankle just like that, didn’t they?”
“Well, evidently they did. But that’s sort of a mechanical thing. They wouldn’t have to know any internal medicine ...”
“But it wasn’t medicine at all, not like we know it. Those big lenses, the smoking herbs. It was kind of mumbo-jumbo, but it worked!”
There was one loud rap on the door, and Dr. Jefferson opened it and stepped inside, looking agitated. “Laura, Carmen—things have gone from bad to worse. The Parienza kids started coughing blood; they’ve got it. So I put my boy through the MRI, and he’s got a mass in one of his lungs, too.
“Look, I have to operate on the Parienzas first; they’re young and this is hitting them harder ...”
“That’s okay,” I said. By all means, get some practice on someone else first.
“Laura, I want you to assist me in the surgery along with Selene.” Dr. Milius. “So far, this is only infecting the children. If it gets into the general population, if I get it—”
“Alf! I’m not a surgeon—I’m not even a doctor!”
“If Selene and I get this and die, you are a doctor. You are the doctor. You at least know how to use a scalpel.”
“Cutting up animals that are already dead!”
“Just. . . calm down. The machine’s not that complicated. It’s a st
andard waldo interface, and you have real-time MRI to show you where you’re going.”
“Can you hear yourself talking, Alphonzo? I’m just a biologist.”
There was a long moment of silence while he looked at her. “Just come and pay attention. You might have to do Carmen.”
“All right,” Mother said. She looked grim. “Now?”
He nodded. “Selene’s preparing them. I’m going to operate on Murray while she watches and assists; then she’ll do Roberta while I observe. Maybe an hour and a half each.”
“What can I do?” I said.
“Just stay put and try to rest,” he said. “We’ll get to you in three or four hours. Don’t worry . . . you won’t feel anything.” Then he and mother were gone.
Won’t feel anything? I was already feeling pretty crappy. I get pissed off and go for a walk and bring back the Plague from Outer Space?
I touched the window and said “Window outside.” It was almost completely dark, just a faint line of red showing the horizon. The dust storm was over.
The whole plan crystallized then. I guess I’d been thinking of parts of it since I knew I’d be alone for a while.
I just zipped up my skinsuit and walked. The main corridor was almost deserted, people running along on urgent errands. Nobody was thinking of going outside—no one but me.
If the aliens had had a picture of me leaving the base at two in the morning, before, then they probably were watching us all the time. I could signal them. Send a message to Red.
I searched around for pencil to disable the airlock buzzer. Even while I was doing it, I wondered whether I was acting sanely. Was I just trying to escape being operated on? Mother used to say “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to do other than sit around and watch things go from bad to worse.
If the aliens were watching, I could make Red understand how serious it was. Whether he and Green could do anything, I didn’t know. But what else was there? Things were happening too fast.