Welcome Aboard Air Marineris

It took me a while to pull Dini from her statistics. She was starting to get into usable numbers with her surgeries, and she was seeing some differences in the way wounds healed that concerned her. We evolved on Earth under one gee, and Mars’ forty percent made for different forces on wounds that made some healing faster, and some slower. She was thinking that the traditional positioning of patients would need to be changed. That’s how she explained it to me, but I really didn’t understand, and, to tell the truth, I wasn’t interested just then. I love her dearly, but she just looked bedraggled then. No better than Klara had looked. I probably didn’t look much better, but, at least, I was up and around and energized by movement. Once I sat down, it would be different.

I finally pulled Dini free of her entanglements and took her upstairs. She insisted on leaving her screen on to make sure she didn’t lose her place. I was doing a lot of pulling people around, and I was getting physically tired doing it. Somehow, though, I got Dini up the pegpole to the sixth floor and into our apartment. I pulled down the bed and laid her on top of it. She wouldn’t even let me pull down the blankets. So, I folded my side onto her and got a jumper from the closet to put over myself for a make-do blanket.

It didn’t seem like two hours of sleep. It seemed like a minute since I had put my head down. I did wake up more refreshed, though. Just a bit. Notwithstanding our late-night hours, everyone else required us up during the day. We woke up at seven and had cold showers to get us going. Dini had planned a big day despite her late night. She takes exhaustion in stride as a doctor used to long shifts at the hospital. She didn’t change her plans. For me, the sleeplessness was a big issue. I just didn’t think that I could put in a full and detail intensive day. I thought something conceptual was a better investment of the time I had available before I collapsed. What I talked about with Klara wouldn’t be detail oriented at this stage, and I could handle that.

So, I went to have breakfast alone. Dini went right to work. She said she would pick up something in the cafeteria. I had coffee and some banana bread. Since I was alone, I sat facing the Valles. For a dead planet, it was remarkably active if you were in the mood to look for details. There was always something subtle happening. This was a late winter morning, and usually, without the energy the Sun imparts to heated air, it was still. Some mornings, though, the combination of unusually clear air and the extra heat on Lowell’s outer wall conjures dust devils along the base of the cliff. Wispy and ephemeral, but they still kick up dust all the same.

Then it occurred to me that the ghastly premonition that I had missed something very important in my plans for our airline was true. There was another factor I had completely avoided in my earlier construction by thoughtless ignorance. Before I had set the date for my Borealis line, I had talked to ‘Jimmy’ Zhuang, our meteorologist on Mars. He gave me advice for our start date in Mars’ late fall. I took his advice and didn’t give it another thought. We had no problem with dust storms in all the nine months it took us to build the line. I remembered why when I thought of it. It wasn’t chance. It was because sandstorms require energy. You don’t have that in the Winter. If we had started in the Summer, we might well have had problems. We might have had a big blow that prevented our work if we had been unlucky. It wasn’t luck, though. It was Dr. Zhuang’s knowledge.

That was what I had forgotten. On a multi-year project, our chance of avoiding expensive delays due to dust storms was nil. And every five and a half years, on average, we got a big one that lasted months into years. We wouldn’t suffer material damage, of course, the atmosphere was too diffuse, and the wind’s force was too weak. But the sand would be pervasive and cause many problems just as serious. I had to talk to Klara about that. Maybe it needed provision in the estimates, but certainly it needed to be included in the planning.

I turned around in my chair. Klara’s office was open. No blinds or curtains for her. She prided herself on being transparent and accessible. Added to open honesty, it would work for me. She was a good administrator. She must have been expecting my call after the previous night’s interrupted meeting.

I walked the few steps to her office. The door was still open. She was behind her desk again. She had changed and washed. She looked a lot better than I did. And I was ten years younger than her. Clean living, I guess. I spoke at her from her doorway.

“How do you feel? I just want to get through this day and get back to my apartment. You put me on that couch. Maybe I couldn’t cooperate with anything more, but my neck is killing me. I pushed that pillow aside in my sleep. Thanks for leaving the food. Cold coffee is the best. Why did we stay up, now?”

“You know why, Klara. Because I hate useless paperwork. You doing it, is one thing. Me doing it, is insufferable. I won’t be able to do anything else but report on what I’m not doing. It may turn out to be a good thing that I had that feeling. I’m sitting here, lazing in the sun, resenting them, and I just remember what I forgot. You recall that I told you I had a bad feeling I had missed something. Well, I’ve remembered it.”

“When have I ever had privacy from you, Mo? Come.”

She motioned me in.

“I forgot about the sand, Klara. The Marineris line will take years. I could avoid the storm season with my little line done in a few months, but we will never be able to do that this time. And we are late for a planet-wide storm. They can last a month or more. It’s inevitable that we will be hit. We would have machinery problems from the static charged dust. It would cover solar cells and obscure vision. It would contaminate the materials we are using to plant our pylons. It wouldn’t stop us, but it would make it harder. Better to plan for it.”

“Do you have any ideas? Stopping construction for several months is not an option. Way too expensive. They’ll howl on Earth about the waste.”

“Our principal problem, of course, will be the constructors. They depend on remote cameras that see differently than us. Eyes automatically make allowances that cameras don’t. It might be a problem. We don’t need to wait for a storm. We can create an artificial one. Maybe we can still see well enough. Or maybe we can rig up an alternate imaging system that uses extended radiation. There’s no practical way of avoiding the dust. Fields to ward it off electrostatically will just cause alternate problems. We’ll just sit with that, and tolerate the additional wear, as we have done with our existing conventional railways. I’ll ask Linh about the imaging. We’ll need to do something about that. She usually has a few ideas. When I talk to her, maybe we can work out a budget. If we don’t need to stop, we’ll save money every time we have a storm. But that’s a technical problem to be solved. What about the reports, can’t we stage them?

“I wish I could, Mo. You know, of course, it is not the desire for timely information from two hundred million miles away that drives this. It is the same for me. I need to supply reports as well. They have made it very clear that they have a standby Director appointed and training on Earth to replace me “seamlessly and without expensive interruptions.” That’s if I should “become unable to fulfill the functions of my job.” He is a perfectly nice gentleman. I have had a few conversations with him. He tells me they have a phrase for it. They call it “creative dissonance.” The general idea is that if they make you uncomfortable enough in your job, you will do it better. I admit to you that I find that philosophy questionable. It may be that they just want to make sure us uppity fems know that we are instantly replaceable by more reliable men. We have talked about this before, and it’s coming up with you this time. It’s a problem we have down there.

“I was the last choice for this job. It’s a very difficult one and it’s far, far away from head office. Once they set you down here, it’s a hard road to a top job back there. They chose me because I was highly qualified and well experienced as an administrator at the European Union. But I knew when I came here, they were cutting me loose. I came here because I’ve always wanted to do this kind of thing. You’ve told me your story more than once. We’re the same in that. When they have a job that needs the best but is totally unrewarding politically, they always choose a fem. They can count on our sense of duty. I knew I was being used when I came here. I didn’t care. I don’t think you do either. So, ignore their clumsy threats, and just give them a report monthly, like I do. They don’t like it, but what can they do? They’re not going to fire me for that. And I’m not looking for another job, even if they would give me one.

“They’re not going to fire you either. You are perfect for this work. You’ve proven yourself. They don’t have anyone better. They may wish they did. They don’t like women administrators. We’re too sympathetic. We don’t often have the powerful personal ambition they like to hook into. Now that we’re on the downhill slope, they may have plenty of people to swoop in and take the bows. They need to come here to do it, though. They didn’t insist on daily reports or have stand-ins when they dumped me at the Junction with orders to build a railroad to the Lowell site with no materials. We didn’t make it fancy. The cars are clunky square because that’s the best we could do with the iron we could fabricate on the site. It was damn good considering what they gave us. Iron works just fine here, and the low pressure makes streamlining unnecessary anyway.

“And they didn’t ask for reports when we were running around trying to catch Alex and prevent him from killing more people, did they? They didn’t have a stand-in then. They wanted as little to do with that fiasco as possible. He threatened their precious investment and they had let him through. The only thing they would do to help was send a disgraced legal officer from the Moon to be my chief investigator. Thank god that was Boris. With the help of a lot of people here we solved that mystery and eliminated the killers in two weeks. The truth only got out after we had cleared the whole situation. And it was us who did that. They didn’t want any minders then.

“They give us the most difficult jobs they have. They make it close to impossible to do them. When we succeed, they threaten to replace us. So, take it easy, Mo. Bide your time. Soon, these idiots will be gone, and we will run this place for the benefit of the people who live here. The way it should be. Do your job as well as you have already, and we will have another brilliant achievement. It’s harder to fight success than failure. Let’s hope they have enough sense to leave well enough alone. I got a request from Chantelle for budget for communications. I like the idea of the fanpage. You need to toot your own horn. The more independent presence we have, the better. And don’t forget to give yours truly a few kudos. I can use them too. Give your staff a lead on that.

“After you talk with Linh, give me an update on what likelihood you see in solving the problem. If we need to stop work every time we have a dust storm, it is going to be a constant irritant not only for us, but for our masters off planet. You will work out a solution. You are both very smart people. No denigration of your abilities, Mo, but Linh is close to the genius category. I think they will regret hiring her. She is too good. You wouldn’t want her working against you. She’s got quite a story. Maybe she will tell it to you. You two are a lot alike. I will advise her that you will be calling, and I will allocate a budget to start any procurement you might need to equip yourselves to handle the dust storms.”

“If you don’t mind, Klara, I’d like to get it going right away. Better to have as much lead time as we can get. That’s in case it’s a difficult problem that needs new equipment. Also, everyone stayed up late last night, and I, for one, don’t see myself doing detailed, critical calculations today. I would just mess them up. So, if Linh is available, I’d rather discuss concepts with her like I am doing with you.”

I got up to leave. She was relieved. She was probably bushed too, even though she couldn’t admit it. I guess if you’re pale to start with, your skin can’t get much paler. She still had the dark circles under her eyes, though. And those blues certainly weren’t sparkling. They looked kind of rheumy. She might think she had recovered enough, but from my vantage, she hadn’t. No point in saying it though.

“Ok, Mo. I’ll call her right now and allocate some budget to her from my contingencies fund. But you’ll need to give it back if you figure a cheap way to handle it.”

“Thanks, Klara. If she’s ready, I’ll see her asap. If not, I need a nap. I’m not superhuman like you two.”

I went back to the cafeteria and ordered another cup, and some of Bee’s oatmeal, with raisins this time. Something tame for my stomach, just like I fed him. You can’t have fire all the time. I finished the oatmeal and then I sat with my coffee, looking at the dust devils still dancing. They were in my mind this time. I had only been with Klara for fifteen minutes.

As I looked out on the Valles, I thought of my mother again. Her spirit seemed to be evoked by those mountains. She had lived in the mountains all her life. Her eyes would be soothed by the view as mine were. I had struggled to be free of her, and then, as now, she was always with me.

Linh cleared her throat to announce her arrival. She had a way of moving that was silent. She had walked across the concrete floor and sat down in the chair without alerting me at all. She must have swiveled her slim frame into it without needing to pull it back from the table.

“I prefer plain croissants just with butter and jam. Don’t tell me butter is overkill. I know. Are you all right with that, Mo? I don’t like greasy sugar on them. Somehow it’s better if it’s butter and jam.”

I looked around, surprised when she spoke, even though I was expecting her. I nodded, and she rose soundlessly as she had approached and walked over to the autochef to order our croissants. As she rose, I saw she didn’t even need to push the chair back. She was so slim that she just bent around it. I have always been a big person, and I envied that. I need to make way when I move around. She came back to sit and talk while the machine prepared the pastry. Considering how much work it takes to prepare croissants, that’s a more impressive robotic operation than all the stews and salads that you can imagine.

I know it’s done in the automated kitchen behind the panel, but I remember how much work it was for my mom to make empanadas with whatever we had. Sometimes she didn’t have anything to put in them but potatoes. We had those. Lots of starch, but it was something to put in our stomachs. Then, she used to yell at me so I would be mad at her and not think of my stomach. She knew me. She tried her best for us, however little we had. She couldn’t show me directly how much she loved me, but she could do that.

I was not always smart enough to see through it. I listened to what she said rather than watch for what she did. We had problems when I was young, and I was one of them. It was not the first time I regretted not being able to listen to her tough love. But I lived it. Through her eyes, I knew. Pragmatic and unsentimental as she was. Neither of us were victims. We were used, but we used others in return. Witness my guardian nun and my exit to school. It put me into a contemplative mood for Linh.

“You look like you’re somewhere else, Monica. What’s up?”

“I was thinking of my mom and old Peru, Linh. I’ve been an orphan for a long time. I still miss her. It only heightened the loss when I came here and found a family. I wish I could share her with you all. For most of my life I’ve been alone. I was thinking of what she would have thought of all this. I often think of her and what she would say to me.”

“Me too, Monica. I think of my mom and dad all the time. I lost my family in one of those residual tsunamis. It wiped out the coast decades after the Impact. I happened to be in a building over the six-hundred-foot level visiting a government office. I survived. When the water subsided, I couldn’t go south. I had to go north into the interior of China. Their coast was hit as badly as ours, but they had more interior than Vietnam did. I found a spot there. No family or connections, of course, but there was food. Not so many people to eat it by that time.

“Families in East Asia are fiercely close. When the chips are down, society can’t cope and doesn’t care. If you want help, you turn to family. So, family controls you. You are not free. You are always a parent or a child, or perhaps a cousin. Obligations you can’t shake.

“But me, I am an orphan. I have no responsibility, no controls in my behavior. I did, and do, what I want. What I wanted was something a girl shouldn’t do. It was a long shot. I did it, though, and I was good at it. There was no one pulling at my shoulder. I don’t owe anyone. Sure, things were more difficult for me. Like you, I think, I wish it were different. I, too, wish I could ask my mother what to do, and listen to her wise words. She was a very smart woman. And she was tough. Now I am here, though, and I am my own woman. It costs. I have been watching you, Monica. It’s the same for you, yeah? It’s ironic, isn’t it? They chose us because we were alienated already and would come here, and now we’re here, they have reason to be afraid because we have no ties.”

“What are you hearing, Linh? There’s no word out on that.”

“I control the communications, Mo. Don’t you think I notice when they ask me to set up reporting links and database functions to facilitate that? Who did Boris’ surveillance program? Do you think he would need that if he weren’t in some danger? It wasn’t installed to remind him to blow his nose. We are doing something that requires caution.

“We are inside a cache, Mo. I am the connection. Physics prevents them from doing that remotely. They need to give me detailed instructions. I know that every important official here is shadowed and must report frequently. And I know they are not doing it faithfully. Everybody is doing the minimum. You will do that too, won’t you Mo? I may be discrete, but I’m not blind. I see where it’s heading. You need to be ignorant of history to be unaware of what is going to happen next. They aren’t going to like it, but what can they really do? They are businesspeople. If we stick together and play dumb, we are golden.

“That’s what you brought me here to discuss, wasn’t it? No need for that. I am in, Mo. The world needs to be changed too. We are the people to change it. Everybody will benefit. We will all be good little boys and girls in the meantime. Now that we are through the history, what do you want me to do?”

“That’s important, but I didn’t get you here to discuss that. I’m not that far-sighted. Too early, maybe. I am building an airline, Linh. This planet poses more than a few problems. I can cope with most of them. One problem has stymied me, though. The sandstorms. I need to build the line as fast as I can. That’s the cheapest way. I can’t afford to have expensive resources sitting idle for months. That’s what will happen if we aren’t prepared. I am going to build it with the constructors. In the middle of a sandstorm, though, they won’t be able to get the detailed, close-in video they need to work at maximum efficiency. I can’t afford expensive mistakes, Linh. Is there some way I could keep them working through a sandstorm? I’m not worried about wind pressure. It’s too low to blow enough to harm anything or cause any stability problems. But visual acuity is another thing.”

“I have not considered this, Mo, but I am pretty sure there is a solution. Other people have had problems looking through dust. Astronomers solved this problem long ago when they needed to see through interstellar clouds. We can do the same, easily. The cams we have are broad spectrum sensors. They work from low infrared all the way to the highest ultraviolet. They are so good that we need to design wave traps into the display programs to filter radio and x-rays at the limits of the spectrum. The display programs just show visible light, but we could change them to include infrared, transform them to visible light seamlessly, and keep color fidelity. You could see through the dust and wouldn’t even be aware of it. To keep the picture as sharp as possible, we could change the translation depending on the thickness of the dust.”

“That seems to be exactly what I want. Could you start with the feasibility tests asap and see how it works? We could pick some dust up outside and put a fan in a tank to give you a dust storm. There might be some more tech problems coming up, and I might ask for your help again. Thanks, Linh. I have learned to depend on you.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mo. Your little projects break the monotony. I like them.”

“Since you know everything already, Linh, I’m going to ask some more favors. You’re probably right. Maybe it is time. They are going to be curious about Boris’ trip, and they will ask questions. You are the perfect mediator. You can fudge the answers and cover it over.”

“I know what you need, Mo. When I was in China, I worked a few contracts for the PLA. Yeah, they are still around. Intelligence agencies don’t die. They just morph and spy for the people they used to spy on. As a Viet, I wasn’t political, but when they ask you to work for them, you’d better have a very good excuse if you don’t want to. I didn’t. I worked for them for two years until Starward hired me for here. I know what they do.

“I’m still supposed to be working for them. But what can they do to me up here? I just don’t complete their transmissions. They don’t get through my cache. Too bad, huh? If they ask later, I will just say I didn’t get them. They can’t really call me. They can’t make inquiries about me. I changed my mail link on their database before I left. One letter is wrong. And I just can’t hear them. They’re not too persistent, though. They know already they can’t threaten to do something to my family. And they are big investors in Starward. They don’t want to mess up their investment.

“I’ll keep an eye out for you. I should tell you that internal communications are not monitored. External ones are. Several years ago, I convinced Starward, at Klara’s suggestion, that there was no advantage in monitoring intra-settlement communications. Business people are very predictable. I just had to show them that I could reduce the costs of my department if I were able to filter out local communications at no cost to their ability to contact us. In fact, the reduction in storage and transmission from eliminating local traffic increased our effective capability.

“It wasn’t my job to mention that they had an intangible interest in keeping track of the local wildcats. That’s the beauty of dealing with a large corporation. I do admit it would have been strategically advantageous for them to be able to keep direct track of community trends as they do on Earth. They would be able to listen to you and me over the audio of the cams that are situated in every public place. But they are not doing that now, to my knowledge, even though they still have the capability, and they can’t go back now, can they? They still must use my communications.”

“What can you do about Boris, Linh? His surveillance is protected, isn’t it?”

“Well, after a fashion it is. There’s no point in deterrence if the other side can’t know about the threat you may pose. What I did do was make it impossible for them to shut him off from Earth. I didn’t advertise it because it was obvious to me we weren’t publicizing what Boris was doing. But if they find out and develop destructive intentions like they did before, I want them to know that we have his back, and they can’t do anything to him that wouldn’t boomerang on them. You don’t want to threaten someone if you don’t need to, but you don’t want it to be secret if you need to utter your threat. They won’t know until they are already suspicious of him. If they don’t twig to it, they will never know. Boris will be back here eating his greasy Danish before you know it.

“As for the communication to and from Boris, I can’t do a thing. If I encrypt it, they will smell a rat immediately. Just let Boris be his harmless self, and you guys keep it light if you can. After all, this is a legitimate mission, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry Linh. You’re right. That sounds good. I don’t mean to make you feel badly for losing your family but having people you love makes a coward of you. I never understood why my mother wasn’t behind me one hundred percent. She was my mother! She used to criticize me for being gay. I knew she loved me. Now I know she was afraid for me. Love makes you a hostage. You worry for people.”

“Don’t think I don’t worry too, Mo. I consider Boris a dear friend. Maybe I don’t rank as sister, but I like him too. I won’t let anything happen to him on my watch. Don’t worry. It will work out.