by Ben Bova
A flash of searing heat disrupted his fantasy. His eyes flashed wide. The Sahara was fiery red. Storms roiled, sending aloft great spirals of sand that buffeted the station like giant handfuls of gravel. A huge figure of a bearded man with long hair and a flowing robe loomed out of the clouds. He beckoned to Cramer with outstretched hands.
The heat was unbearable. Cramer tore at the collar of his shirt, ripped at the drawstring of his pants. His nightmare had come true. They were falling. The station was plummeting through the atmosphere. The entire sky glowed with the heat of their descent. The bearded man beckoned.
Cramer clamped his teeth over his wrist. He pushed his free hand against the dome. Molten plastic burned his fingers. The cries of his fellow Martians resounded through the station. The bearded man drew back his lips in a Satanic grin.
Cramer screamed.
Dan Tighe and Freddy Aviles were reviewing the progress of the computer reconfiguration project when a voice burst over the command module’s loudspeaker.
“Emergency! Mars module! Emergency!”
Dan and Freddy locked eyes. A second later they were in the connecting tunnel, propelling themselves hand over hand toward a knot of people gathered at the Mars module’s entry hatch. Shrieks echoed within.
Dan peeled bodies away and dove inside. At the far end of the internal tunnel, the door to the observation blister floated free of its broken hinges. Torn plastic seals bobbed in the doorway like the waving arms of an octopus.
“We’re falling, we’re falling!” someone was screaming.
Dan turned to the entry hatch and yelled at the circle of faces. “Find Dr. Renoir. Tell her to bring sedatives. Fast! Freddy, get something to restrain him.”
Tighe dove headfirst through the nearest access door and found himself beside Kurt Jaeckle. The professor’s normally olive skin was ghostly white, his deep-set eyes wide in fear and confusion.
Near the aft end of the module, three Martians cowered in cubbyholes formed by different workstations. A fourth drifted like a broken rag doll, his face bloodied and his shirt tattered. Smashed lab equipment and glassware hung in the air. In the middle of it all Russell Cramer whirled like a dervish, buck-naked.
“We’re falling! The station is crashing! Don’t you feel it?” His voice was guttural as if coming from deep within his chest. He grabbed the unconscious Martian by the remains of his shirt and slapped his face. “We’re burning up! Do something!”
The Martian’s head waggled. In disgust, Cramer flung him toward the rear of the module.
“I don’t know what happened,” Jaeckle whispered, his words coming in a rush. “He was in the blister for about half an hour. He started screaming, broke down the door, and attacked people.”
Dan listened without taking his eyes off Cramer. The Martian tumbled around the module, punching equipment with fists that streamed ribbons of blood and terrorizing his fellow Martians with threats of death.
Freddy settled next to Dan. Draped between his hands was a nylon net he had taken from a storage compartment in the command module. Dan shot a glance at the access door. Lorraine Renoir displayed a syringe.
“Stay off my left flank,” Dan told Freddy. “I’ll try to draw him in. When he goes for me, net him.” He turned to Lorraine. “Wait until we have him under control.”
Cramer acted as if blind to everything in the module. He twisted his limbs and babbled a steady stream of nonsense. Balls of white saliva spewed from his mouth and gathered in tiny clouds around his head.
Dan and Freddy edged forward. Twenty feet, fifteen feet, twelve feet. At ten feet, they stopped. Cramer sensed they were close.
“Aye, Commander Tiger, come to see the fire, huh?” Cramer slowly turned his head toward them. His eyes rolled back in their sockets.
Dan tensed his grip on a handhold. He wanted to be able to fly backwards when Cramer lunged forward. But Cramer retreated toward the unconscious Martian, who bobbed against a workstation.
“Tiger sees the fire, the fire wants Tiger.”
Cramer grabbed the unconscious man by the shirt and flung him like a missile toward Dan and Freddy. They tried to stop the Martian, but he barrelled through their arms. Jaeckle prevented him from crashing into the wall. Two other Martians pulled him into the tunnel.
“Tiger sees the fire, the fire wants Tiger.”
Dan and Freddy resumed their careful approach. Cramer’s eyes were unfocused, but he knew they were coming. His doggerel sounded more urgent with each repetition.
“Tiger sees the fire, the fire wants Tiger!”
Cramer suddenly gathered himself into a cannonball and shot forward. Dan pulled back and Freddy threw the net. It snared Cramer, but his fist shot free before Dan could react and caught him squarely in the jaw. Dan’s vision blurred. When it cleared, Freddy’s powerful arms had Cramer locked in a bear hug.
“Feet! Feet!” Freddy yelled.
Cramer kicked wildly, sending them into a tumble that smashed Freddy’s back against a metal cabinet. Dan tackled Cramer and managed to pin both feet against his shoulder. He looped his other arm around a handhold to stop Cramer from moving. Lorraine Renoir swept overhead. Cramer yelped as she jammed the hypodermic into his buttock. A moment later, he went limp.
“Get some duct tape,” Dan said to Freddy.
“Are you all right, Dan?” Lorraine asked, breathless, wide-eyed.
“I’m goddamn lucky it wasn’t my nose,” Dan said as he rubbed his bruised chin.
Dan summoned Muncie and Stanley to transfer the sedated Cramer into the rumpus room. Meanwhile, he ordered the Mars module cleared of all personnel to allow an inventory of the damage.
“I can’t permit that,” protested Jaeckle. “Six of my people aren’t to interact with anyone. It would ruin the entire project.”
Dan shook his head. Jaeckle hadn’t been long in shedding his fear and resuming his contrary personality.
“Then lock them in their compartments,” barked Dan. “My people have their own duties to perform.”
Freddy volunteered to inspect the blister. The dome, normally so clear as to be invisible, was smeared with Cramer’s handprints. A crimson shirt and flight pants wafted in currents of air. As Freddy gathered the clothes he felt something small and hard in the sleeve pocket of Cramer’s shirt. He unzipped the pocket and scooped out the brown bottle. Two tiny rocks floated inside. Freddy stuffed the bottle into his own pocket and gathered the clothes into a bundle.
They were in the rumpus room. Cramer, still sedated, was bound hand and foot with duct tape and secured with bungee cords to the rear bulkhead not far from Dan’s bonsai menagerie. A plastic helmet was tightly strapped under his chin to prevent him from injuring his head. Lorraine, Jaeckle, and Dan gathered in a circle near the centrifuge.
“You were treating him for what?” Dan asked.
Lorraine and Jaeckle looked at each other like game-show contestants deciding on the correct answer.
“Overwork,” said Jaeckle.
“Sleep disorder,” said Lorraine at the same time.
“Well, which is it?” Dan snapped.
Lorraine and Jaeckle each took a deep breath.
“He came to me several weeks ago complaining of bad dreams and an inability to sleep,” said Lorraine. “I told him he should cease exercising at least three hours before sleep time. The complaints seemed to disappear. Two weeks ago, he returned and demanded that I prescribe sleeping pills. I gave him a placebo and ordered him to report to me on a daily basis. He never did. When I confronted him, his reaction was testy.”
“Someone on the station was acting in this manner and you kept that information to yourself?”
“I didn’t,” said Lorraine. “I reported my observations to Professor Jaeckle as Cramer’s immediate superior.”
“That’s right, Dan,” said Jaeckle. “Dr. Renoir and I conferred at great length. I reviewed my records and discovered that Cramer had not been spending the required amount of R and R time in the observation blist
er. Instead, he had been working too hard on analyzing Martian soil samples. I relieved him of his research duties until he brought his blister time current. He was on his second two-hour stint in the blister when this happened.”
“How did he behave during the first?” asked Dan.
Jaeckle looked at Lorraine and shrugged. “Fine.”
Dan sensed something conspiratorial passing between Jaeckle and Lorraine.
“I don’t like the way this was handled,” he said.
“We complied with the regulations,” said Jaeckle.
“Technically, but I expect more than a technical reading of the regs. From both of you.” Dan looked at Lorraine, but she refused to meet his eyes. “I want full written reports from each of you by oh-eight-hundred hours tomorrow.”
“What do you intend to do with Cramer?” asked Jaeckle.
“A Trikon bigwig is coming up here by aerospace plane in a few days,” said Dan. “Cramer will be on the return flight.”
“You can’t do that! He’s vital to the project!”
“The hell I can’t,” said Dan. “Cramer trashed your module, trashed himself, and damn near killed one of your personnel. And all because he couldn’t take a little R and R. Not on my station, Professor Jaeckle. Not on your life.”
Stu Roberts peeled open the accordion door of Chakra Ramsanjawi’s office in ELM and dove inside. He fought for breath with long rasping heaves as his trembling hands pawed at the retracted door.
Ramsanjawi was bellied up to his computer console. His kurta billowed out from his back and the ceiling lights glittered on the greasy sheen of his black hair.
“Close the door, please,” he said without taking his eyes off the computer display.
Roberts, still panting, finally worked his fingers around the handle and slid the door shut.
“Cramer. Did you hear? Crazy. He—”
“Just one moment, please.” Ramsanjawi’s singsong voice matched the rhythm of his stubby fingers as they worked the computer keyboard. He typed unperturbed for several minutes, saved his work, then removed one foot from a loop so that he could turn his rotund body in Roberts’s direction. Roberts was calmer now, but his eyes still had the terrified look of a hunted animal.
“As you were saying,” said Ramsanjawi.
“Cramer went crazy in the observation blister,” said Roberts. “He beat up a couple of Martians and had to be restrained by the crew. He’s tied up in the rumpus room.”
“I detected a disturbance in the tunnel,” said Ramsanjawi. “That would explain it.”
“He went crazy, man. He freaked out.”
“That is truly unfortunate.”
“You don’t suppose—” Roberts’s eyes locked as an idea slowly fit together in his head. “You don’t suppose that the Ecstacy did it?”
Ramsanjawi said nothing. He smoothed the front of his kurta along the outline of his generous stomach. The loose garment was so much more comfortable than the ridiculous flight suit that had been issued to him.
“I mean, he didn’t act like someone on Ecstasy,” said Roberts, making a poor attempt at constricting his nasal passages as he spoke. “Did he?”
“I was not present to witness his behavior.”
“He didn’t,” said Roberts, more to himself than to Ramsanjawi. “I mean, the stuff I gave him looked more rocky than Ecstasy because there weren’t any gelatin capsules. But it was Ecstasy, wasn’t it?”
Ramsanjawi shrugged.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“I’m afraid Mr. Cramer is a rather unbalanced personality,” said Ramsanjawi. “I am mystified why NASA and ESA named him to the Mars Project.”
“That’s a lie! Russ Cramer is just as sane as anybody.”
“I beg to differ, Mr. Roberts. Russell Cramer has a modicum of scientific intelligence that is hampered by a willingness to believe the unbelievable.”
A Cheshire grin slowly spread across Ramsanjawi’s dark face.
Roberts grasped its meaning. “You didn’t? Did you? You planted the microorganisms in that soil sample? You couldn’t have!”
“My actions with respect to that soil sample or to Russell Cramer are no concern of yours,” said Ramsanjawi. “But what I choose to dispense to you is very much your concern.”
“You wouldn’t. You…” Roberts’s voice trailed off and his eyes glazed over in fear as he remembered the time Ramsanjawi had given him a specially treated dosage of fentanyl that mimicked the symptoms of heroin withdrawal. For an entire night, Roberts writhed in his sleep compartment, his body racked by alternating currents of chills and sweats, cramps and nausea. And all because he had failed to deliver a sample from one of David Nutt’s test tubes on time.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Ramsanjawi’s voice wove through the thick curtain of the memory. “You haven’t held up your end of our latest bargain.”
“I can’t get close to him,” said Roberts.
“That is absurd. You are his technician.”
“But he works completely alone. He ignores Skillen’s procedures and protocol. I haven’t seen the inside of his lab since the day we moved in his equipment. Honest!”
“These are all routine hurdles,” Ramsanjawi said. “My patience is wearing thin.”
“A little more time,” whined Roberts. “I promise. I’ll get into his lab. I’ll bring you samples of his work.”
“Forget about his work. I have other plans for that when the time comes. Meanwhile, concentrate on his movements. I want a detailed log on everything he does, even something as innocuous as a sneeze.”
“Okay. Yeah. I can do that. That’ll be no sweat. No sweat.”
“Enough simpering,” said Ramsanjawi. With a flick of his hand, he sent a tiny brown bottle tumbling in Roberts’s direction.
Roberts caught the bottle and fumbled with its cap.
“Don’t take that here,” Ramsanjawi said with disgust.
But Roberts did not listen. He pulled off the cap and hungrily devoured the white pill inside.
After Roberts left, Ramsanjawi reached for a bunch of grapes clipped to the wall. He pulled off a single grape and mashed it between his teeth, enjoying the sensation of the juice squirting inside his mouth. Most people are like grapes, he thought. They resist you at first, but once you break through their skin you find only the soft pulp of human weakness.
Ramsanjawi was skilled at identifying the weaknesses in people, and at conjuring ways of exploiting them. He knew that Roberts, with his absurd dreams of composing rock music, would see drugs as a necessary aid to the inspiration he so completely lacked; risky, perhaps, but controllable. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Ramsanjawi chuckled to himself. Roberts believed his pitiful understanding of chemistry could protect him against becoming addicted. Foolish boy.
Ramsanjawi knew that Cramer’s obsession with finding life in the Martian soil made him receptive to the new avenues of thought drugs allegedly produced. Now, with the judicious use of synthetic drugs that he manufactured while his underlings slaved over genetically engineered microbes, he had reduced both men to his only true allies: fear and confusion. Roberts was too scared of withdrawal from his fentanyl dependency not to puncture Hugh O’Donnell’s mysterious veneer; the rest of the station was confused about Cramer’s sudden psychosis.
Ramsanjawi thrived on chaos. It reminded him of his birthplace—Jaipur in the northwest Indian state of Rajasthan. His father, a rug merchant, had been murdered in a dispute with a Pakistani trader. His mother, herself an orphan, was unable to arrange a new marriage that would have allowed her to support her five children. Chakra, the oldest, took to living in the streets of Jaipur. He was not alone. Depressed economic conditions, drought, and lack of arable land in Rajasthan drove people to Jaipur by the thousands. The broad avenues and colonnaded walkways, once the pride of northwestern India, disappeared beneath the huts of squatters and the ramshackle booths of sidewalk vendors. A bowl of rice or a piece of bread became luxuries.
But family
ties are strong. Chakra’s aunt worked as a cleaning woman for an agency that provided servants for tourists and business visitors. One English couple required a guide for their travels through the region. His aunt told his mother, and his mother bathed scrawny young Chakra and dressed him in the best western clothes she could borrow. He was presented to the English couple as their guide: old enough to know the area, young enough to be a tenth the price of a regular guide.
The man was Sir Walter Brock, the woman was Lady Elizabeth Smythe. They were quite wealthy and, Chakra could see, given to occasional bleedings of the heart. As they toured the countryside, he regaled them with the knowledge he had squirreled away during his last year of schooling—science, art, the history of this corner of the Commonwealth.
It was Lady Elizabeth who suggested that they bring this marvelous, forlorn boy back to England. Sir Walter wondered whether that was proper; they had their son Derek’s feelings to consider. Nonsense, said Lady Elizabeth, Derek and Chakra would get along swimmingly.
Ramsanjawi pulled the empty sac of the grape skin from his mouth. How sweet, how naive Lady Elizabeth, his English mumsy, had been.
27 AUGUST 1998
NEW YORK
What attracted me was the ritual of the drug, not the drug itself. I’d buy half a gram, planning that it would last me the weekend doing a blow here and a blow there. On Friday night, after my shower, I would flip on the ballgame, take a picture frame off the wall, tap a small pile onto the glass, and chop it extra fine with a single-edge razor. I’d shape the lines, long thin ones that curved like the branches of willow trees. And each time a different batter stepped into the box, I’d trail my straw down another line.