The Martians(44)

Then it was after six, and he was out in the late summer haze with Mike and Nassim, carpooling home. They got on the 210 freeway and rolled along quite nicely until the carpool lane stalled with all the rest, because of the intersection of 210 and 110; and then they were into stop-and-go like everyone else, the long lines of cars brake-lighting forward in that accordion pattern of acceleration and deceleration so familiar to them all. The average speed on the L. A. freeway system was now eleven miles per hour, low enough to make them and many other Angelenos try the surface streets instead, but Nassim's computer modeling and their empirical trials had made it clear that for any drive over five miles long the clogged freeways were still faster than the clogged streets.

“Well, another red letter day,” Mike announced, and pulled a bottle of Scotch from his daypack. He snapped open the cap and took a swig, then passed the bottle to Bill and Nassim. This was something he did on ceremonial occasions, after all the great JPL successes or disasters, and though both Bill and Nassim found it alarming, they did not refuse quick pulls. Mike took another one before twisting the cap very tightly on the bottle and stuffing it back inside his daypack, actions which appeared to give him the feeling he had retuned the bottle to a legally sealed state. Bill and Nassim had mocked him for this belief before, and now Nassim said, “Why don't you just carry a little soldering iron with you so you can reseal it properly.”

“Ha ha.”

“Or adopt the NASA solution,” Bill said, “take your swigs and then throw the bottle overboard.”

“Ha ha, now don't be biting the hand that feeds you.”

“That's the hand people always bite.”

Mike stared at him. “You're not happy about this big discovery, are you, Bill.”

“No!” Bill said, sitting there with his foot on the brake. “No! I always thought we were the, the bringing of the inhabitation of Mars. I thought that people would go on to live there, and terraform the planet, you know, red green and blue—establish a whole world there, a second strand of history, and we would always be back at the start of it all. And now these damn bacteria are there already, and we may never land there at all. We'll stay here and leave Mars to the Martians, the bacterial Martians.”

“The little red natives.”

“And so we're at the start of nothing! We're the start of a dead end.”

“Balderdash,” Mike said. And Bill's spirits rose a bit; he felt a glow like the Scotch running through him; he may have slaved away in a cubicle burning ten years of his life on the start of a dead-end project, a project that would never be enacted, but at least he had been able to work on it with people like these, people like brothers to him now after all the years, brilliant weird guys who would use the word “balderdash” in conversation in all seriousness; Mike who read Victorian boys' literature for his entertainment, who was as funny as they got; who had not even in the slightest way appeared on TV while playing the Earnest Rocket Scientist, playing a stupid role created by the media's questions and expectations, all them playing their stupid roles in precisely the stupid soap opera that Bill had dreamed they were going to escape someday, What does life mean to you, Dr. Labcoat, what does this discovery mean, Well, it means we have burned up our lives on a dead-end project. “What do you mean balderdash!” Bill exclaimed. “They'll make Mars a nature preserve, a bacterial nature preserve, for God's sake! No one will risk even landing there, much less terraforming the place!”

“Sure they will,” Mike said. “People will go there. Eventually. They'll settle, they'll terraform—just like you've been dreaming. It might take longer than you were thinking, but you were never going to be one of the ones going anyway, so what's the rush? It'll happen.”

“I don't think so,” Bill said darkly.

“Sure it will. Whichever way it happens it'll happen.”

“Oh thank you! Thank you very much! Whichever way it happens it'll happen? That's so very helpful!”

“Not your most testable hypothesis,” Nassim noted.

Mike grinned. “You don't have to test it, it's that good.”

Bill laughed harshly. “Too bad you didn't tell the reporter that! Whatever happens will happen! This discovery means whatever it means!” and then they were all cackling, “This discovery means that there's life on Mars!” “This discovery means whatever you want it to mean!” “That's how meaning always means!”

Their mirth subsided. They were still stuck in stop-and-go traffic, in the rows of red blinks on the vast viaduct slashing through the city, under a sour-milk sky.