Semper Mars(119)
1833 HOURS GMT
Mars Prime
Candor Chasma
1625 hours MMT
David Alexander was on his way to the base communications center when someone called to him from behind. “Hey! David! Wait up!”
He stopped and turned. It was Craig Kettering.
“Hello, Craig.”
“I’ve been looking for a chance to talk to you! Welcome back to civilization!”
“It’s good to be back.” He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking off memories of thirst, crowding, and discomfort. Most of all, there’d been the never-ending, grinding fear that something else was going to go wrong, that they weren’t going to make it. He opened them again. “How long have you been here?”
“Oh, they came by and picked us up a couple of days after you left. The grunts really had them ticked, too. They had all of the shuttles fitted out as lobbers, taking short, suborbital hops back and forth looking for you. Anyway, we’re glad you made it.”
“So am I.” He turned away.
“Hey, hey! Wait! Where you going!”
“Comm shack. I’ve got something to send to Earth.”
Kettering’s face darkened. “Not…ah…”
“I’m sending a report on what we found at Cydonia.”
The other man looked thunderstruck. “David! You can’t—”
“I’ve already published, Craig. Last week, on Usenet.”
“Damn you!” Kettering exploded. “How could you?”
Alexander folded his arms. “The UN is trying to suppress the find, Craig. I’m letting the world know about it.”
“How irresponsible can you be? You’ve ruined it for all of us!”
Alexander was fascinated by Kettering’s anger. Obviously, the man had a personal stake in this. “You’ve been talking to Joubert, haven’t you?”
“Mireille is a professional, a responsible scientist,” Kettering replied. “You should have listened to her.”
“They’re trying, she’s trying, to stop us from publishing the truth!”
Kettering reached out, placing one hand on Alexander’s arm. “David, look. I know you were upset. I know you thought the UN Scientific Authority was trying to usurp your work. I think you have a legitimate complaint, something to take up with them when we get back. But, damn it, David, don’t you see that they have a point? A good point? This information should be classified, should be kept classified, so that it can be studied by responsible experts.”
“You keep using the word ‘responsible,’ Craig, and I’m getting a little sick of it. It’s irresponsible of these so-called experts to withhold the truth from people. What happened here half a million years ago is important! It may have shaped us, who we are, how we think!”
“And what is the truth? Sorry. I sound like Pilate, I know, but what have we got? Some bits and pieces, some fragments. You know as well as I do that archeology is like trying to assemble a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, when all we can find in the box is a couple of hundred random pieces. The picture we come up with is subject to interpretation, to judgment. We see a little bit here, a flash there—”
“So what’s your point?”
“My point, David, is that the people you keep calling on don’t know what to do with the information we uncover. All you have to do is look at the record! Archeology gave to modern civilization the story of the Incas, of the Mayas, of Angkor Wat, of Sumer, of Xian’s buried warriors. And what do the people believe in? Von Daniken’s chariot-spaceships. Pyramidiots with their numerological interpretations of Giza. Little men from Mars who raised the heads on Easter Island, built the Great Pyramid, and shot John F. Kennedy for good measure. They believe in astrology, for God’s sake. In the Biblical Flood. In crop circles, flying saucers, and gods from outer space! Can’t you understand that what we’ve found here is just going to fuel all that nonsense? Every nation on Earth is being torn apart right now by conflicting cults, churches, and crackpot theories, and they’ve all been started or made crazier by the discovery of that damned Face. Hell, half the people on Earth think the Cydonia complex was built by gods who also created humans. The rest think they were demons, out to destroy God’s Word.”
“What does all of that have to do with how we do our job? There are always crackpots and fringe elements, Craig. You know that. Our job is to learn about Man’s past, to dig up the dinner leavings and the garbage and the art that’ll let future generations of archeologists put together a few more of those jigsaw pieces. It’s not to worry about how what we learn is misused.”