"Course, I don't really care what you do. You can really go out in the field if you want, long as people back in Mars City think you're doing your, um, duty. Comprende? I've got a cover letter from Elena, authorizing your presence on the field trip.
"What I want from each of you, now, is some sort of personal message we can send from you back to your people, telling them to be cool. 'Stafford not here. Unable to confirm story about hopper from Polar Base, but am following leads. Have signed onto polar field trip to get more info on seismic activity. Will report when I get back. Hello to everybody. Wish you were here.' That sort of thing. If they call in, we'll tell them you're out there. We'll stall 'em, make up some communications glitch if we have to. Like I've been telling you, if you'll work with us on this, then everyone will come out ahead: the Mars research facilities, Ms. Pohaku and her network, the public, everyone. In a couple short weeks, everything's over with. You can all go home. We announce our discovery. Stafford returns from the dead. Everybody has a smile over our successful security operation. Annie Pohaku writes her story and wins a Pulitzer prize. Jahns submits his report, wraps up all the little formalities. Everybody's happy."
Sturgis placed reusable pads in front of Carter and Annie. "So, if you'd just write out what to send and where to send it, and let me look at it... Oh, and, Ms. Pohaku, if you could just indicate that there is nothing new on the Stafford story, just to downplay it while you work on it."
He looked mildly surprised when they started writing without protest. "No cross-table talking, please. Just write. A few lines should be enough. By the way, my people know enough to detect whether you are playing straight with us. So don't try to get cute."
"Hands on your desk. Eyes on your paper," Annie mimicked.
Carter began writing inanities about his own reporting, how he was still gathering info on Stafford, how a report was being prepared regarding effects of the earthquakes. He wondered what Annie was writing. Annie's message was the critical one. Annie, working across from him, face glowing with concentration.
When they had each written for a minute, Sturgis stopped them. "Okay. One more thing." He picked up their half-finished pads. "I wanted to take a quick look at what you're saying." He read each half-finished letter carefully.
Carter glanced at Annie. Her face was grim. She was watching Sturgis intently. Sturgis seemed still to be enjoying himself.
"Well, they look okay, but what do I know? Right? Shall I just finish them off and send them?" Annie glanced at Carter. "I'm sure—with your journalistic scruples, you would feel that censorship was rearing its ugly head. Government censorship. No, we wouldn't want even a hint of that." He smiled, as if sharing his joke with them. "It should be your own writing. You each know the other's style better than I do, the way I figure it. So why don't you just take each other's pad"—he put the pads down in front of them—"and rephrase them for me. Go ahead. Change the words and finish them off."
Carter stared at the pad in front of him. Annie's printing was bold.
ARRIVED AT SOUTH POLAR RESEARCH STATION. GOOD LUCK: EXPERIENCED THE SEISMIC TREMOR HERE. EXCLUSIVE STORY SENT EARLIER; I WILL STAY ON IT. CONDITION OF STATION REMAINS SATISFACTORY BUT WITH NO DAMAGE REPORT. SITUATION REGARDING STAFFORD DISAPPEARANCE UNRESOLVED. I PLAN STAY AT POLAR STATION FOR TWO MORE WEEKS TO PARTICIPATE IN FIELD TRIP AND WORK ON BOTH STORIES. SUGGEST YOU HOLD FURTHER REPORTING OF STAFFORD INCIDENT UNTIL I CAN GET MORE INFO. I'M WORKING ON A SERIES OF
He started rewriting her message.
I AM CONTINUING WORK AT THE SOUTH POLAR RESEARCH STATION. IT WAS GOOD LUCK TO BE HERE DURING SEISMIC TREMOR AND GET EXCLUSIVE STORY, SENT EARLIER.
Carter paused. His mind was whirling. His legs began to have the heavy molasses feeling that he had felt when they left the artifact. Some deeper voice, beyond rational thought, was talking to him. Intuition, he thought, the buried summation of everything you've experienced, piled haphazardly into some deep chambers of the brain, telling you things you didn't know you knew. If you had enough time, you might assemble them in some logical order, and be able to tell someone why you acted as you did. But sometimes you did not have enough time ... He felt he could not get up from the table if he tried, and he could feel the sweat in his armpits. Sturgis was pacing up and down. Carter looked up at Annie. She was watching him. Her face was somehow both expressionless and pleading. "Come on," Sturgis said, from the other end of the room. Carter continued printing.
A SERIES OF MINOR TREMORS HAS CONTINUED. NO DAMAGE REPORTED TO POLAR STATION. ON STAFFORD SITUATION, NO FIRM NEWS, BUT WILL DO INTERVIEWS AND TRY TO GET SOMETHING. HOLD FURTHER REPORTS ON STAFFORD UNTIL I COMPLETE SATISFACTORY STORY. I WILL REMAIN HERE FOR TWO MORE WEEKS AND WILL PARTICIPATE IN FIELD TRIP TO GATHER MORE INFO ON SEISMIC NET STORY AND ON THE RESULTS OF THE EXTENSIVE POLAR STRATA EXCAVATIONS. WILL BE IN TOUCH.
ANNIE
"How's that?" Carter said in an offhand way as Sturgis picked up their papers.
Sturgis perused Annie's paper first, then read what Carter had written. "Cute, Carter. Nice try." He struck out the phrase about the excavations. "We don't need that little bit about digging. Otherwise, they're perfect. I congratulate you." He handed the papers to the aide at the head of the table. "Okay. Run the semantic tests and then send them. Send them."
"Somebody told me once," Carter whispered later in Annie's ear, "when you're writing a report for a bureaucrat, you put in something so stupid even the bureaucrat can spot it. He takes it out. Then it becomes his report. I figured it would work for Sturgis. When he took that line out about excavations, he'd love the rest and feel he had done his bit for truth, justice, and the American way."
Sturgis was outraged when IPN broke the story late that afternoon. Sturgis denied everything, but IPN had opened Annie's file of notes. The News-net headline ran STAFFORD DISAPPEARANCE ON MARS: NEW CLUES POINT TO SOUTH POLAR RESEARCH STATION. The story cited rumors from highly placed sources suggesting Stafford might have been picked up by a hopper from the Polar Station. Then the calls came in from all four of the major global nets. None of them knew about the artifact; they did not know what questions to ask, but they wanted answers.
Sturgis drafted evasive replies, in a doomed effort to preserve the secret. The nets replied that their people were already on the way.
29
2031 , MARCH 8, SUNDAY
Carter, Annie, and Philippe were feeling a heady glow of victory as they headed the next morning toward the "tower," a room atop the South Polar Station, surmounted by a clear dome that gave a commanding view of the sky and the bleak polar hills, swept by bone-colored snow.
Sturgis and his crew were bustling around when they came in. Stafford, silent in the background, nodded to them.
When they arrived, Carter recognized the odd mixture of exhilaration and apprehension he felt in these domes: being under the sky without a suit. The pink light filtered everywhere. High clouds scudded overhead. He wondered if such clouds had existed in the initial years, before the pressure went up.
The story was out and the networks' reporter-stringers were on the way. The die had been cast and the world would never be the same. Make that two worlds, he thought—both Mars and Earth. He could not identify a specific moment when he had decided to accept Annie's plan. He felt as if it had been something growing inside him, not a decision he had arrived at consciously. When the opportunity caught him by surprise, he had acted by instinct.
Last night, when Annie curled indivisibly against him, she had whispered, "You will go down in history, you know. You figured out where Stafford was, and you wrote the words that broke this thing wide open. I'll write it that way, because it's true." True? How many heroes, described in the books as clear-eyed visionaries, had really thought anything out? How many had merely reacted to some spur-of-the-moment poll of conflicting inner voices?
"So I rate a page in your book?"
She nudged against him. "I'd say you definitely rate a page in my book."
Carter noted with gu
ilty satisfaction that Sturgis was livid; he looked like a man harassed on all sides. Within an hour of the messages going out, yesterday afternoon, Sturgis had been besieged by questions from the nets and headlines about strange doings at the pole. This morning, the message had come that stringers from IPN and the other nets had chartered a shuttle flight from Phobos direct to the Polar Station. It was due in minutes.
"So," Annie said impudently to Sturgis as they came into the dome. "Your role here is over?"
Sturgis turned on them angrily. "What's she doing here? Out! I want her out. We don't have the press here during an operation. And the artist, too. This is no sideshow, Get them the hell out of here. Jahns, you stay. You're supposed to report on this to Mars Council. Just be damn sure you get it right."
Annie and Philippe were gripped by their elbows and hustled out by Sturgis's men. Philippe called out to them with a grin as he was being herded down the hall. "What do you call security agents at the south polar ice cap? Martian Polar Cops."
Carter winked at Annie as she disappeared. He felt confident; everything was only a matter of time now.
Sturgis scowled. He had turned to an open intercom with the seismic lab. "Sir," a voice was saying from the intercom, "something's happening with the seismic activity, under the machine. It's still getting closer to the surface."
"Any danger?"
"Not that anybody knows. None of the science staff seems to know what to make of it."
"Just make sure they keep monitoring it. Get a record of what's happening. And evacuate the cave at the excavation site, just in case something happens."
"Yes, sir."
Wild-eyed, scanning the sky, Sturgis contacted the pilot of the incoming ship. "This is Douglas Sturgis. I'm an authorized representative of the U.S. Security Agency. A temporary classified operation is under way here. We also have a seismic emergency. Be advised that we refuse you permission to land here."
Carter finally saw it, the ship materializing as a moving point of light in the bright sky.
"That's all very well, sir," the voice came back, "but I'm ballistic. There's only fuel for braking. I'm coming in. Sir."
In the sky above the dome, the ship curved beautifully out of the sky and landed on the pad outside the station, raising thin clouds of dust.
Sturgis was still on the mike. "I know you're ballistic, but you have no permission to enter the station. You will refuel and depart." Sturgis turned to his staff. "How long to refuel? Minimum."
"With both Sabatier pumps ... three hours. It's a drain on the batteries, but..."
Into the mike, he barked, "You have three hours on the ground."
The shuttle sat on the pad, looking self-satisfied, as the dust clouds dissipated.
"Acknowledge. Do you understand?"
The voice returned. "I've got reporters here who say they are coming out to look around. They want access to the station."
"Denied."
"Uh ... they say you can't do that. They say ... hold on ... they're talking about freedom of the press and they say they'll camp outside your door until their air runs out."
"Access denied. We're posting armed guards at the airlocks. You copy?"
"Armed guards?" Carter cried out. Sturgis ignored him.
The voice from the shuttle continued. "Right. Access denied. Um, they say they're coming out anyway."
"Well, stop them."
"Um, there're more of them than there are of me. Sir."
Sturgis turned to one of his omnipresent aides. "Break out the rifles. They aren't coming in here. We'll go out and meet them. Set up a security line outside the airlock."
"Rifles?" Carter confronted Sturgis. "You have rifles on Mars?"
"Out of the way, Jahns."
Carter noticed Stafford slipping out, as if avoiding the confrontation. He wished he had Stafford's moral support. He plowed ahead with the argument.
"There aren't supposed to be weapons here. This falls under my jurisdiction, Sturgis. You can't..."
"As long as you didn't know about them, that's how we could be there protecting you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Get this guy out of my way."
"They won't work anyway, outside. Will they?"
"Don't worry. These will. Don't worry, Jahns. The orders are just to arrest anyone who tries to cross the line."
"You can't..." Sturgis's aides were moving toward him. "Sturgis! Damn it." But Sturgis had turned to the radio and Carter found himself grasped on both sides, being hustled down the hall. The goons acted like it was part of a normal day's work. Jeez, Carter thought to himself, maybe for these guys it is a normal day's work.
Moments later, Carter found himself deposited by Sturgis's aides in the cafeteria with Annie and Philippe.
"What's happened?" Annie exclaimed.
Carter still felt in a state of shock. "We've got to find Stafford," he told them. "I've already called him on the 'corder," Annie said.
As if on cue, Stafford showed up in the cafeteria a moment later.
Carter was explaining Sturgis's plan. Stafford sat quietly as the others' reactions swirled around them. "They can't do this." "Guns...?" "Sturgis must be crazy." The white mustache and twinkling eyes gave away no secrets. Stafford must have been a hell of a poker player.
Stafford glanced around the cafeteria cautiously. "Let's get out of here," he said, as if answering the questions.
Stafford led them to his lab.
Stafford gestured at the door as they entered the instrument-jammed room. "They wouldn't let me put 'Exobiology' on it. Story of my life. We can talk here." Annie took a position in front of the shelves arranged with rows of drill core samples. She put her 'corder on the table. "For God's sake, Stafford," she said. "What's going on here?"
"First, I want to tell you guys," Stafford continued, "I have to admire the way you handled this. Of course, you turned our little project into a helluva big mess. Still, I was kind of proud of you for that. You know, I told them it was a stupid idea, faking my disappearance. But Sturgis and his people thought anything was worth it to gain a few more weeks. Anyway, you did a good job."
"You heard him, Alwyn!" Carter exclaimed. "Sturgis is refusing entry to a ship of reporters. He has guns."
Philippe: "He must be crazy. How do you know he is stable? He could kill us all."
Stafford: "He won't kill us all. People like him are always stable. Their problem is that they are too stable. They follow whatever set of rules they've gotten locked into. That makes them predictable. I've been doing some thinking about this. I think it's getting out of hand."
Carter: "Out of hand? It's a damn crisis!"
Stafford: "Calm down. There won't be guns used on Mars, not on my watch."
Carter: "How do you know?"
Stafford smiled inscrutably. "It's interesting to watch him in action," Stafford said. "He wants to believe he is saving the world. Crisis isn't a bad word with him, it's his element."
"You give him too much credit," Annie snarled. "As Carter says, he just gets off on wielding power."
"What are you going to do to stop him?" Carter said.
"Me?" Stafford waved his arm around the room, with a guilty shrug. "Do my work. Of course, to do that, I have to get along with him. No choice. He needs me, too. Comes around and asks me if I'm okay. A technocrat's version of sensitivity. You can see he congratulates himself for being so aware of feelings...."
"But what does that have to do with...?"
"He's always willing to raise the ante to get what he wants. But he doesn't want violence. He just wants to come out the hero. And he does have a certain legal authority. We just have to prevent him from getting himself in a situation where things get out of control."
"What can we do?"
Stafford frowned at Annie's 'corder. "Annie, turn that damn thing off."
She turned it off.
"Look, you've got to understand, officially I'm not involved. Right? That gives me a certain freedom of a
ction. I haven't said anything about subverting Sturgis's authority. I've said nothing, and you've understood everything. Right? Now, you've got to clear out. There's something I have to do and I've only got a few minutes...."
An hour later Sturgis's men, Stafford, and Elena Trevina were suiting up at the airlock when Annie, Carter, and Philippe joined them.
Outside, the hatch had opened on the shuttle, which still sat quietly on the pad. Figures had come forth, like animals from the arc. They were armed with cameras and holeo units.
Sturgis caught sight of Annie and Philippe, and repeated the scene in the tower. "You're not going out there. See they're confined to the base."
"You don't have any police powers."
"The hell I don't."
"Oh, come on, Sturgis." It was Stafford. "Let them come. They can't hurt anything. Let Annie cover her story for God's sake. You know your people back home won't want to face questions about freedom of the press. You've got her where you want her."
Sturgis shrugged. "Bring Jahns out with us. He represents the Council. Let the rest of them watch from the tower." Suddenly Sturgis paused, looking at the reflections glinting off his white helmet, as if surveying some panorama of history, invisible to anyone else. "You know," he said, as if giving his troops a pep talk, "I finally figured it out. People like our guests here are always talking about the so-called judgment of history. They're concerned with whether 'history' "—he pronounced it sarcastically—"will write down in its golden book that they did the right thing. They think the right thing is to challenge authority. Well, today, the authorities are going to make sure that the laws get upheld." He put on his helmet.
Outside, in the frozen stillness, the reporters from Phobos had assembled with their equipment, and two groups squared off, the reporters in front of the shuttle and Sturgis's crew in front of the airlock door. The reporters, Carter could see, were not seasoned video crews. They were part-time stringers. Earth-based nets, dedicated to the proposition that the people must be entertained, had decided years ago that nothing exciting happened among scientists in sterile labs on Mars; but they had enlisted part-time stringers on Phobos, just in case. Now the stringers saw their chance for glory. Tripods had sprouted. Cameras were up and running, and dishes pointed toward distant comsats. Whatever happened, the scene was going out live to their nets. Still, Carter noticed, they seemed nervous and amateurish compared to Annie, who outranked them in terms of experience and clout.
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