They’re dying, Reed knew. They’re all dying and they’re looking to me to save them. And I don’t know what to do! He scrolled through the data from the latest medical checks. Nothing new. Nothing he could see that offered the slightest clue as to what might be infecting them.
Tony shook his head as he stared at the screen. He himself felt fine: a bit tired, eyes burning from overwork, but otherwise fine. None of the symptoms the others had. How can that be? he asked himself. We all eat the same foods, breathe the same air. Yet they’re all sick, every one of them, in the rover and here in the dome. And I’m not.
Leaning back in his spindly plastic chair, Reed half closed his eyes and steepled his long fingers on his chest. Think, man, he snarled to himself. Use the brain up there inside your skull and think.
Proposition one: Both the team in the rover and the crew here in the dome have come down with it, whatever it is. Therefore it cannot be an infection from the life forms that the rover team has found.
Yes, true. But can it be an infectious organism in the air? Even though theory says Martian parasites could not possibly attack visitors from another planet, might there be some sort of highly adaptable virus in the air? We know that there is life on Mars. What if there are organisms floating in the air?
Reed shook his head, trying to dismiss the idea. We’ve sampled the air. Monique has tested it with every piece of equipment she has. Vosnesensky has checked the air purifiers. They’ve found nothing. And the air in here is Earth-normal, not Martian. Any Martian organisms would be killed by the high levels of oxygen.
And yet-we don’t have an electron microscope. A virus could slip past Monique’s tests, especially since we don’t know exactly what to look for. Maybe they like oxygen. And we aren’t consistent; we’re very careful not to contaminate Martian soil or air samples with our bugs, aren’t we? If the bigwigs actually believed their theory, why would they worry that we might possibly infect Mars?
It just doesn’t make any sense, Reed told himself. If it’s a native Martian organism infecting us, why haven’t I been infected? Why am I healthy while all the others are dying?
For the first time he could remember, Tony Reed felt guilty. And inadequate.
He also felt terribly afraid. But that was an emotion he had experienced all his life.
Dr. Yang Meilin slept, but not well. She was troubled by a dream. A nightmare. She was an intern once again in her native city of Wuxi. The great famine had the entire province in its grip. The streets were so littered with the dead that people wore perfumed gauze masks to keep the stench of decaying flesh from their nostrils.
Dr. Yang was at the hospital, in a ward jammed with squalling babies. Emaciated limbs and bloated bellies. Yet even though the babies were being fed with the supplies sent by the International Red Cross, they were still dying.
She was making love with the handsome doctor from Beijing, but she could not give herself to him totally because she could hear the painful crying of the babies through the thin curtains they had pulled around the bed. The doctor returned to Beijing the next morning without even bidding her farewell. And the babies continued to whimper and shriek. And die.
They are not dying of malnutrition, Dr. Yang knew. And even as she said that to herself her dream changed, shifted, mutated: the babies were astronauts, the hospital ward was the dome on the red surface of Mars.
She felt totally helpless. Why are they dying? It is my responsibility to save them, to help them, to keep them alive and return them to health. It is my responsibility to remember. Remember.
She sat bolt upright in her bunk aboard the Mars 2 spacecraft, instantly awake.
But she could not remember what the dream was trying to tell her.
EARTH
WASHINGTON: Staring out her hotel room window, Edith held the phone tightly against her ear.