The Martians(43)

“Cousins,” Mike declared.

The DNA resembled certain Terran organisms like the Columbia Basement Archaea Methanospirillum jacobii, thus possibly they were the descendant of a common ancestor.

“Cousins!”

Very possibly mitochondrial DNA analysis would reveal when the split had happened. “Separated at birth,” one of the Johnson scientists offered, to laughter. They were just like the JPL scientists in their on-screen performances. Spontaneous generation versus panspermia, frequent transpermia between Earth and Mars; all these concepts poured out in a half-digested rush, and people would still be calling for the nuclear destruction of Houston and Utah in order to save the world from alien infection, from andromeda strains, from fictional infections—infictions, as Mike said with a grin.

The Johnson scientists nattered on solemnly, happy still to be in the limelight; it had been an oddity of NASA policy to place the Mars effort so entirely at JPL, in effect concentrating one of the major endeavors of human history into one small university lab, with many competing labs out there like baby birds in the federal nest, ready to peck JPL's eyes out if given the chance. Now the exobiology teams at Johnson and AMES were finally involved, and it was no longer just JPL's show, although they were still headquarters and had engineered the sample-return operation just as they had all the previous Martian landers. The diffusion of the project was a relief of course, but could also be seen as a disappointment—the end of an era. But not watching the TV, Bill could tell that wasn't what was bothering him either.

Mike returned with Bill and Nassim to their offices, and they continued to watch the Johnson press conference on a desk TV. Apparently the sample contained more than one species, perhaps as many as five, maybe more. They just didn't know yet. They thought they could keep them all alive in Mars jars, but weren't sure. They were sure that they had the organisms contained, and that there was no danger.

Someone asked about ramifications for the human exploration of Mars, and the answers were scattered. “Very severely problematized,” someone said; it would be a matter for discussion at the very highest levels, NASA of course but also NSF, the National Academy of Sciences, the International Astronomical union  , various UN bodies—in short, the scientific government of the world.

Mike laughed. “The human mission people must be freaking out.”

Nassim nodded. “The Ad Martem Club has already declared that these things are only bacteria, like bathroom scum, we kill billions of them every day, they're no impediment to us conquering Mars.”

“They can't be serious.”

“They are serious, but crazy. We won't be setting foot there for a very long time. If ever.”

Suddenly Bill understood. “That would be sad,” he said. “I'm a humans-to-Mars guy myself.”

Mike grinned and shook his head. “You better not be in too much of a hurry.”


Bill went back into his office. He cleaned up a little, then called Eleanor's office, wanting to talk to her, wanting to say, We did it, the mission is a success and the dream has therefore been shattered, but she wasn't in. He left a message that he would be home around the usual time, then concentrated on his TO DO list, no longer adding things to the bottom faster than he took them off at the top, trying to occupy his mind but failing. The realization was sinking in that he had always thought that their work was about going to Mars, about making a better world there; this was how he had justified everything about his life, the killing hours of the job, the looks on his family's faces, Eleanor's fully sympathetic but disappointed, frustrated that it had turned out this way, the two of them caught despite their best efforts in a kind of 1950s marriage, the husband gone all day every day—except of course that Eleanor worked long hours too, so that their kids had always been daycare and after-school care kids, all day every weekday. Once Bill had dropped Joe, their younger one, off at daycare on a Monday morning, and looking back in through the window he had seen an expression on the boy's face of abandonment and stoic solitude, of facing another ten hours at the same old place, to be gotten through somehow like everyone else, a look which on the face of a three-year-old had pierced Bill to the heart. And all that, all that he had done, all the time he had put in, all those days and years, had been so that one day humans would inhabit Mars and make a decent civilization at last; his whole life burned in a cubicle because the start of this great project was so tenuous, because so few people believed or understood, so that it was down to them, one little lab trying its best to execute the “faster better cheaper” plan which contained within it (as they often pointed out) a contradiction of the second law of thermodynamics among other problems, a plan that they knew could only really achieve two out of the three qualities in any real-world combination, but making the attempt anyway, finding that the only true “cheaper” involved was the cost of their own labor and the quality of their own lives, rocket scientists running like squirrels in cages to make the inhabitation of Mars a reality—a project which only the future Martians of some distant century would truly appreciate and honor. Except now there weren't going to be any future Martians.