So Okakura and several men and women led him on a tour of the town, and cheerfully he visited labs and meeting rooms, lounges and dining halls. He nodded and shook hands and said Hi until he was sure he had met over fifty percent of Senzeni Na’s inhabitants. Most had not yet heard of the incident in the hole, and all were pleased to meet him, happy to shake his hand, to speak with him, to show him something, to look at him. It happened everywhere he went, reminding him unpleasantly of the fishbowl years between his first trip and his second.
But he did his job. An hour’s work, then four hours of being The First Man On Mars: the usual ratio. And as afternoon darkened to evening, and the whole town gathered for a banquet in honor of his visit, he settled back and patiently played his part. That meant shifting into a good mood, no easy task that night. In fact he took a break and went back to the bathroom in his room to swallow a capsule manufactured by Vlad’s medical group in Acheron. It was a drug they had named omegendorph, a synthetic mix of all the endorphins and opiates they had found in the brain’s natural chemistry, and a better feel-good drug than Boone would have imagined possible.
He returned to the banquet much more relaxed. In fact filled with a little glow. He had escaped death, after all, and by running like a wild man! Some more endorphins were not inappropriate. He moved easily from table to table, asking questions as he went. This was what pleased people, what gave them the festival feeling that a meeting with John Boone should bring. John liked being able to do that, it was the part of his job that made celebrity tolerable; because when he asked questions, people leaped to answer like salmon in the stream. It was peculiar, really, as if people were seeking to right the imbalance they felt in the situation, in which they knew so much about him while he knew so little about them. So that with the right encouragement, often a single carefully judged prompt, they would erupt with the most astonishing spills of personal information: witnessing, testifying, confessing.
So he spent the evening learning about life at Senzeni Na. (“Means, what have we done?” Quick grin.) And afterward he was led to his big guest suite, the rooms thick with live bamboo, the bed seemingly hacked out of a stand of it. When he was alone he connected his code box to the phone, and called Sax Russell.
Russell was at Vlad’s new headquarters, a research complex built into a dramatic fin ridge in the Acheron Fossae north of Olympus
He listened to Boone’s report with his usual impassivity. Such a parody of the scientist, John thought. He even wore a lab coat. Seeing his characteristic blink made John think of a story he had heard one of Sax’s assistants tell, to a laughing audience at a party: in a secret experiment gone awry, a hundred lab rats that had been injected with an intelligence booster became geniuses. They revolted, escaped from their cages, captured their principal investigator, and strapped him down and retro-injected all their minds into his body, using a method they invented on the spot— and that scientist was Saxifrage Russell, whitecoated, blinking, twitching, inquisitive, lab-bound. His brain the sum of a hundred hyperintelligent rats, “and named for a flower like lab rats are, it’s their little joke, see?”
It explained a lot. John smiled as he finished his report, and Sax cocked his head at him curiously. “Do you think this truck was meant to kill you?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do the people there seem?”
“Scared.”
“Think they’re in on it?”
John shrugged. “I doubt it. They’re probably just worried about what happens next.”
Sax flicked a hand out. “Sabotage like that won’t make the slightest dent in the project,” he said mildly.
“I know.”
“Who’s doing this, John?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be Ann, do you think? Has she become another prophet, like Hiroko or Arkady, with followers and a program and the like?”
“You have followers and a program too,” John reminded him.
“But I’m not telling my followers to wreck things and try to kill people.”
“Some people think you’re trying to wreck Mars. And people will certainly die as a result of terraforming, in accidents.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just reminding you. Trying to get you to see why someone might do this.”
“So you do think it’s Ann.”
“Or Arkady, or Hiroko, or someone we’ve never heard of in one of the new colonies. There are a lot of people here now. A lot of factions.”
“I know.” Sax walked over to a countertop, drained his battered old coffee mug. Finally he said, “I’d like you to try to find out who it is. Go where you need to go. Go talk to Ann. Reason with her.” There was a plaintive note in his voice: “I can’t even talk to her anymore.”
John stared at him, surprised at the display of emotion. Sax took this silence for reluctance, and went on: “I know it isn’t exactly your thing, but everyone will talk to you. You’re practically the only one left we can say that about. I know you’re doing the mohole work, but you can get your team to do your part of that, and keep visiting the moholes as part of this inquiry. There really isn’t anyone else who can do it. There’s no real police to turn to. Although if things keep happening, UNOMA will provide some.”
“Or the transnationals.” Boone considered it. The sight of that truck, falling out of the sky. .”All right. I’ll go talk to Ann, anyway. After that we should get together and talk about security for all the terraforming projects. If we can stop anything more from happening, that will keep UNOMA out.”
“Thanks, John.”
Boone wandered out onto his suite’s balcony. The concourse was filled with Hokkaido pines, the chilled air stiff with resin. Copper figures walked below, among the tree trunks. Boone considered the new situation. For ten years now he had worked for Russell on terraforming, managing the moholes and doing PR and the like, and he enjoyed the work, but he wasn’t on the cutting edge of any of the sciences involved, and so he was out of the decision-making loop. He knew that many people thought of him as a figurehead only, a celebrity for consumption back on Earth, a dumb space jock who had gotten lucky once and was living off that for good. That didn’t bother John; there were always knee-high people hacking away, trying to get everyone down to their size. That was okay, especially since in his case they were wrong. His power was considerable, although perhaps only he could see the full extent of it, as it consisted of an endless succession of face-to-face meetings, of the influence he had over what people chose to do. Power wasn’t a matter of job titles, after all. Power was a matter of vision, persuasiveness, freedom of movement, fame, influence. The figurehead stands at the front, after all, pointing the way.
Despite all that, there was something to be said for this new task. He could feel that already. It would be problematic, difficult, perhaps risky. . above all, challenging. A new challenge; he liked that. Going back into his suite, getting into bed (John Boone Slept Here!) it occurred to him that now he was going to be not only the first man on Mars, but the first detective. He grinned at the thought, and the last action of the omegendorph set his nerves aglow.
Ann Clayborne was doing a survey in the mountains surrounding the Argyre Basin, which meant John could check out a glider and fly from Senzeni Na to her. So early the next morning he took the elevator balloon up the mooring mast to the stationary dirigible floating over the town, exulting as he rose in the ever-expanding view of the big Thaumasia canyons. From the dirigible he lowered himself into the cockpit of one of the gliders hooked to
