The Martians(12)

Thus when the time came to make his report to the selection committees, Michel advised against the project as designed. “No group can stay functional under such conditions indefinitely,” he wrote. In the meetings he made his case point by point. The long list of double binds was especially impressive.

This was in Houston. The heat and humidity were saunalike; Antarctica was already a nightmare memory, slipping quickly away.

“But this is just social life,” Charles York pointed out, bemused. “All social existence is a set of double binds.”

“No no,” Michel said. “Social life is a set of contradictory demands. That's normal, agreed. But what we're talking about here are requirements to be two opposite things at once. Classic double binds. And they are already causing a lot of the classic responses. Hidden lives. Multiple personalities. Bad faith. Repression, then the return of the repressed. A close look at the results of the tests given down there will show it is not a viable project. I would advise starting with small scientific stations, with rotating crews. As Antarctica itself is operated now.”

This caused a lot of discussion, even controversy. Charles remained for sending up a permanent colony, as proposed; but he had grown close to Mary. Georgia and Pauline tended to agree with Michel; though they too had had personal difficulties at Vanda.

Charles dropped by to see Michel in his borrowed office, shaking his head. He looked at Michel, serious but somehow still uninvolved, distanced. Professional. “Look, Michel,” he said. “They want to go. They're capable of adapting. A lot of them did very well with that, so well that you couldn't pick them out of a crowd in any kind of blind test. And they want to go, it's clear. That's how we should choose who to send. We should give them their chance to do what they want. It's not really our business to decide for them.”

“But it won't work. We saw that.”

“I didn't see that. They didn't see that. What you saw is your concern, but they have the right to make their try at it. Anything could happen there, Michel. Anything. And this world is not so well arranged that we should deny people who want to take their chance to try something different. It could be good for us all.” He stood abruptly to leave the office. “Think about it.”

Michel thought about it. Charles was a sensible man, a wise man. What he had said had the ring of truth to it. And a sudden gust of fear blew through Michel, as cold as any katabatic downdraft in Wright Valley: he might, out of his own fear, be stopping something with greatness in it.

He changed his recommendation, describing all the reasons why. He explained his vote for the project to continue; he gave the committees his list of the best hundred candidates. But Georgia and Pauline continued to advise against the project as designed. And so an outside panel was convened to make an evaluation, a recommendation, a judgment. Near the end of the process Michel even found himself in his office with the American president, who sat down with him and told him he had probably been right the first time around, first impressions were usually that way, second-guessing was of little use. Michel could only nod. Later he sat in a meeting attended by both the American and Russian presidents; the stakes were that high. They both wanted a Martian base, for their own political purposes, Michel saw that clearly. But they also wanted a success, a project that worked. In that sense, the hundred permanent colonists as originally conceived was clearly the riskier of the options they had before them now. And neither president was a risk taker. Rotating crews were intrinsically less interesting, but if the crews were large enough, and the base large enough, then the political impact (the publicity) would be almost the same; the science would be the same; and everything would be that much safer, radiologically as well as psychologically.

So they canceled the project.





Exploring Fossil Canyon

Two hours before sunset their guide, Roger Clayborne, declared it was time to set camp, and the eight members of the tour trooped down from the ridges or up out of the side canyons they had been exploring that day as the group slowly progressed west, toward Olympus Mons. Eileen Monday, who had had her intercom switched off all day (the guide could override her deafness) turned to the common band and heard the voices of her companions, chattering. Dr. Mitsumu and Cheryl Martinez had pulled the equipment wagon all day, down a particularly narrow canyon bottom, and their vociferous complaints were making Mrs. Mitsumu laugh. John Nobleton was suggesting, as usual, that they camp farther down the ancient water-formed arroyo they were following; Eileen could not be sure which of the dusty-suited figures was him, but she guessed it was the one enthusiastically bounding up the wash, kicking up sand with every jump, and floating like an impala. Their guide, on the other hand, was unmistakable: tall even when sitting against a tall boulder, high on the spine flanking one side of the deep canyon. When the others spotted him, they groaned. The equipment wagon weighed less than seven hundred kilograms in Mars's gravity, but still it would take several of them to pull it up the slope to the spot Clayborne had in mind.