Ambrose didn’t answer, and Gennady sat up. “You found something. On Mars.”
“No that’s ridiculous,” said Ambrose. “That’s not it at all.”
“Huh.” Gennady lay down again. “Still, I think I’d enjoy it. Even if it wasn’t in real-time … driving on Mars. That would be cool.”
“That sucked too.”
“Really? I would have thought it would be fun, seeing all those places emerge from low-res satellite into full hi- res three-d.”
But Ambrose shook his head. “That’s not how it worked. That’s the point. I couldn’t believe my luck when I won the contest, you know? I thought it’d be like being the first man on Mars, only I wouldn’t have to leave my living room. But the whole point of the rover was to go into terrain that hadn’t been photographed from the ground before. And with the time-delay on signals to Mars, I wasn’t steering it in real time. I’d drive in fast-forward mode over low-res pink hills that looked worse than a forty-year-old video game, then upload the drive sequence and log off. The rover’d get the commands twenty minutes later and drive overnight, then download the results. By that time it was the next day and I had to enter the next path. Rarely had time to even look at where we’d actually gone the day before.”
Gennady considered. “A bit disappointing. But still more than most people ever get.”
“More than anyone else will ever get.” Ambrose scowled. “That’s what was so awful about it. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh?” Gennady arched an eyebrow. “If you grow up in the Soviet Union, you know a little about disappointment.”
Ambrose looked mightily uncomfortable. “I grew up in Washington. Capital of the world! But my dad went from job to job, we were pretty poor. So every day I could see what you
“Important?”
He shrugged. “Something like that. NASA used to tell us they were just about to go to Mars, any day now, and I wanted that. I dreamed about homesteading on Mars.” He looked defensive; but Gennady understood the romance of it. He just nodded.
“Then, when I was twelve, the Pakistani-Indian war happened and they blew up each other’s satellites. All that debris from the explosions is going to be up there for centuries! You can’t get a manned spacecraft through that cloud, it’s like shrapnel. Hell, they haven’t even cleared low Earth orbit to restart the orbital tourist industry. I’ll never get to
Gennady scowled at the ceiling. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“Welcome to the life of the last man to drive on Mars.” Ambrose dragged the tufted covers back from the bed. “Instead of space, I get a hotel in Kazakhstan. Now let me sleep. It’s about a billion o’clock in the morning, my time.”
He was soon snoring, but Gennady’s alarm over the prospect of a metastable bomb had him fully awake. He put on his AR glasses and reviewed the terrain around SNOPB, but much of the satellite footage was old and probably out of date. Ambrose was right: nobody was putting up satellites these days if they could help it.
Little had probably changed at the old factory, though, and it was a simple enough place. Planning where to park and learning where Building 242
Russia’s cosmonauts had still been romantic idols when he was growing up. In photos they had stood with their heads high, minds afire with plans to stride over the hills of the moon and Mars. Gennady pictured them in the years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, when they still had jobs, but no budget or destination any more. Where had their dreams taken them?
The Baikonur spaceport was south of here. In the end, they’d also had to settle for a hard bed in Kazakhstan.
In the morning they drove out to the old anthrax site in a rented Tata sedan. The fields around Stepnogorsk looked like they’d been glared at by God, except where bright blue dew-catcher fencing ran in rank after rank across the stubble. “What’re those?” asked Ambrose, pointing; this was practically the first thing he’d said since breakfast.
In the rubble-strewn field that had once been SNOPB, several small windmills were twirling atop temporary masts. Below them were some shipping-container sized boxes with big grills in their sides. The site looked healthier than the surrounding prairie; there were actual green trees in the distance. Of course, this area had been wetlands and there’d been a creek running behind SNOPB; maybe it was still here, which was a hopeful sign.
“Headquarters told me that some kind of climate research group is using the site,” he told Ambrose as he pulled up and stopped the car. “But it’s still public land.”
“They built an anthrax factory less than five minutes outside of town?” Ambrose shook his head, whether in wonder or disgust, Gennady couldn’t tell. They got out of the car, and Ambrose looked around in obvious disappointment. “Wow, it’s gone.” He seemed stunned by the vastness of the landscape. Only a few foundation walls now stuck up out of the cracked lots where the anthrax factory had once stood, except for where the big box machines sat whirring and humming. They were near where the bunkers had been and, with a frown of curiosity, Gennady strolled in that direction. Ambrose followed, muttering to himself, “… Last update must have been ten years ago.” He had his glasses on, so he was probably comparing the current view to what he could see online.
According to Gennady’s notes, the bunkers had been grass-covered buildings with two-meter thick walls, designed to withstand a nuclear blast. In the 1960s and 70s they’d contained ranks of cement vats where the anthrax was grown. Those had been cracked and filled in, and the heavy doors removed; but it would have been too much work to fill the bunkers in entirely. He poked his nose into the first in line—Building 241—and saw a flat stretch of water leading into darkness. “Excellent. This job just gets worse. We may be wading.”
“But what are you looking for?”
“I—oh.” As he rounded the mound of Building 242, a small clutch of hummers and trucks came into view. They’d been invisible from the road. There was still no sign of anybody, so he headed for Building 242. As he was walking down the crumbled ramp to the massive doors, he heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle-bolt being slipped. “Better not go in there,” somebody said in Russian.
He looked carefully up and to his left. A young woman had come over the top of the mound. She was holding the rifle, and she had it aimed directly at Gennady.
“What are you doing here?” she said. She had a local accent.
“Exploring, is all,” said Gennady. “We’d heard of the old anthrax factory, and thought we’d take a look at it. This
She swore, and Gennady heard footsteps behind him. Ambrose looked deeply frightened as two large men also carrying rifles, emerged from behind a plastic membrane that had been stretched across the bunker’s doorway. Both men wore bright yellow fireman’s masks, and had air tanks on their backs.
“When are your masters going to believe that we’re doing what we say?” said the woman. “Come on.” She gestured with her rifle for Gennady and Ambrose to walk down the ramp.
“We’re dead, we’re dead,” whimpered Ambrose shivering.
“If you really must have your proof, then put these on.” She nodded to the two men, who stripped off their masks and tanks and handed them to Gennady and Ambrose. They pushed past the plastic membrane and into the bunker.
The place was full of light: a crimson, blood-red radiance that made what was inside all the more bizarre.
“Oh shit,” muttered Ambrose. “It’s a grow-op.”
The long, low space was filled from floor to ceiling with plants. Surrounding them on tall stands were hundreds
