Klicks and I scrambled up the crater wall. It had been a heck of a lot easier getting down than it was going back up, even in the lighter gravity. I practically filled my boots with soft dirt in the process.
Once we were alone inside the cramped confines of the
I hated the man’s infinite calmness. He had to be as excited as I was. Why didn’t he show it? Why did I have to show it so transparently? “This is incredible,” I said, and instantly regretted my hyperbole.
“Incredible,” said Klicks, savoring the word, or, more precisely, savoring my use of it. “Yes, that it is. This changes everything, of course.”
“How do you mean?”
He gave me one of
I felt anger growing within me.
“Oh, yes indeed,” said Klicks, unlacing his fingers. “We have to bring the Hets forward in time, of course.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “
“Think about it, man. By our time, Mars is dead. Completely abiologic. Every probe since Viking has confirmed that.”
“So?”
“So something wipes out the Hets between now and then. We’ve got the opportunity to jump the ones that are here forward, past whatever event kills them. We can repopulate Mars.”
“We can’t do that,” I said. My head was pounding.
“Sure we can. You saw how small those Het slimeballs are. We could take back hundreds of them. It’s just a question of balance. Once we empty our water tank, we’ll have plenty of room and a big mass deficit that we’ll have to fill with something before the Huang Effect switches states. It might as well be the Hets.”
“We were going to bring forward some biological specimens. Maybe even a small dinosaur. They’ve got a habitat all set at the Calgary Zoo—”
“We can do that, too. They’re not mutually exclusive propositions.”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly, trying to buy time to think. This was all happening much too quickly. “Maybe it’s not our place to do something like that. I mean, we’d be playing God—”
Klicks rolled his eyes as though I’d said something incalculably stupid. “Jesus, man, what do you think bringing home a baby
“But this is intelligent life. It just seems—”
“Seems that we should ignore it? Brandy, how would you feel if the shoe was on the other—the other pseudopod? Some natural disaster wipes out all of good old
He mispronounced it, saying it as three distinct syllables. “That’s
“What the hell difference does that make? I’m talking about a bold, sweeping move and you’re going all picayune on me.”
“Details matter. Besides, we don’t have to decide this thing ourselves; we’re just the test mission. When they send the big multinational mission next year, they can haul the Hets forward, if it seems the right thing to do.”
“Point-five-oh,” said Klicks.
This time I failed his little test. I looked at him blankly. “What?”
“The Huang Effect has a 50 percent uncertainty, thanks to the parts of the Throwback calculations that are quantum mechanical. The chances of the big timeship hitting even this same century are minuscule.” Klicks shook his head. “No, my friend. No one else can make the decision. This is it, the one and only opportunity to save the Hets from extinction.”
My throat felt dry. “But doubtless eventually another mission will hit this particular time. Maybe not one from the twenty-first century, or even the twenty-second. But eventually.”
Klicks scowled, his one continuous eyebrow bunching like a knotted shoelace. “Haven’t you been reading the papers? Ever since Derzhavin was assassinated by those resurgent hardliners, things have gotten a lot worse between the Americans and the Russians. And even if they do work their differences out, if the global warming trend continues, we’re not going to have enough food to feed ourselves. I wouldn’t count on there being anyone left by the twenty-second century.”
“Oh, things aren’t that bad,” I said weakly.
“Perhaps not. But it’s unfair to the Hets for us to assume that humanity will eventually get around to dealing with their plight sometime in the distant future. We’ve got to help them right now, while we’re sure we can.”
“It’s a moral decision,” I said, shaking my head.
Klicks frowned. “And you hate making moral decisions.”
“ ‘Hate’ is a strong word—”
“You don’t have a stand on abortion or capital punishment. Hell, you haven’t voted in, what, twenty years?”
I despised the sound of his voice. I’d never had any trouble refuting Klicks’s claims in print, taking hours to mold letters of response for the journals, but face-to-face he could always run circles around me. “But this isn’t a decision we’re competent to make.”
“I feel up to it.” Klicks grinned broadly, but it quickly slipped into a patronizing smile. “Brandy, failing to act is a decision in and of itself.”
Dr. Schroeder had said that to me when I talked to him about my father.
“It’s not a decision I’m comfortable making,” I said at last, my head swimming.
Klicks shrugged, then settled back into the contours of his crash couch. “Life isn’t always comfortable.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I’m sorry, Brandy, but the great moral decision is up to you and me.”
“But—”
“No buts, my friend. It’s up to us.”
I was about to object again, when suddenly, 65 million years before the invention of Jehovah’s Witnesses, of Avon Ladies, of nosy neighbors, there was a knock at the door.
Countdown: 14
We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases.
Klicks got up off his crash couch and made his way across the semicircular floor of the
