Red Mars(30)
“You were,” Arkady said, and gave her a big hug.
At first no one volunteered to take over her job. Houston sent messages of concern, then reprimands, then veiled threats. Now that they were about to reach Mars, the expedition was getting a lot more TV time, and the situation was about to “go nova,” as Mission Control put it. They reminded the colonists that this burst of publicity would eventually reap the space program all kinds of benefits; the colonists had to film and broadcast what they were doing, to stimulate public support for the later Mars missions on which they were going to depend. It was their duty to transmit their stories!
Frank got on the screen and suggested that Mission Control could concoct their video reports out of footage from robot cameras. Hastings, head of Mission Control in Houston, was visibly infuriated by this response. But as Arkady said, with a grin that extended the realm of the question to everything: “What can they do?”
Maya shook her head. They were sending a bad signal, and revealing what the video reports had so far hidden, that the group was splintering into rival cliques. Which indicated Maya’s own lack of control over the Russian half of the expedition. She was about to ask Nadia to take over the reporting job as a favor to her when Phyllis and some of her friends in Torus B volunteered for the job. Maya, laughing at the expression on Arkady’s face, gave it to them. Arkady pretended not to care. Irritated, Maya said in Russian, “You know you’ve missed a chance! A chance to shape our reality, in effect!”
“Not our reality, Maya. Their reality. And I don’t care what they think.”
• • •
Maya and Frank began conferring about landfall assignments. To a certain extent these were predetermined by the crew members’ areas of expertise, but because of all the skill redundancies, there were still some choices to be made. And Arkady’s provocations had had this effect at least: Mission Control’s preflight plans were now generally regarded as provisional at best. In fact no one seemed all that inclined to acknowledge Maya or Frank’s authority either, which made things tense when it became known what they were working on.
Mission Control’s preflight plan called for the establishment of a base colony on the plains north of Ophir Chasma, the enormous northern arm of Valles Marineris. All the farm team was assigned to the base, and a majority of the engineers and medical people— altogether, around sixty of the hundred. The rest would be scattered on subsidiary missions, returning to the base camp from time to time. The largest subsidiary mission was to dock a part of the disassembled Ares on Phobos, and begin transforming that moon into a space station. Another smaller mission would leave the base camp and travel north to the polar cap, to build a mining system which would transport blocks of ice back to the base. A third mission was to make a series of geological surveys, traveling all over the planet— a glamour assignment for sure. All the smaller groups would become semi-autonomous for periods of up to a year, so selecting them was no trivial matter; they knew well, now, how long a year could be.
Arkady and a group of his friends— Alex, Roger, Samantha, Edvard, Janet, Tatiana, Elena— requested all the jobs on Phobos. When Phyllis and Mary heard about it, they came to Maya and Frank to protest. “They’re obviously trying to take over Phobos, and who knows what they’ll do with it!”
Maya nodded, and she could see Frank didn’t like it either. The problem was, no one else wanted to stay on Phobos. Even Phyllis and Mary weren’t clamoring to replace Arkady’s crew, so it wasn’t clear how to oppose him.
Louder arguments broke out when Ann Clayborne passed around her crew list for the geological survey. A lot of people wanted to join that one, and several of those left off her list said they were going on surveys whether Ann wanted them or not.
Arguments became frequent, and vehement. Almost everyone aboard declared themselves for one mission or another, positioning themselves for the final decisions. Maya felt that she was losing all control of the Russian contingent; she was getting furious at Arkady. In a general meeting she suggested sarcastically that they let the computer make the assignments. The idea was rejected with no regard for her authority. She threw up her hands. “Then what do we do?”
No one knew.
She and Frank conferred in private. “Let’s try giving them the illusion of making the decision,” he said to her with a brief smile; she realized that he was not displeased to have seen her fail in the general meeting. Their encounter was coming back to haunt her, and she cursed herself for a fool. Little politburos were dangerous. . . .