Instead, “You can go ahead now, Dr. Brumado. No one else is on this frequency.”
Then the minutes ticked by. It took more than ten minutes now for a transmission to span the widening gulf between the two planets; twenty-some minutes of lag in each two-way conversation. Jamie watched Brumado carefully; the man merely sat there looking into the screen, waiting with the patience of a true Indian. Maybe he’s using his screen to display other data while he’s waiting for my transmission to reach him, Jamie thought. But Brumado’s eyes did not scan back and forth as they would if he were reading.
Jamie got up from the bunk, found the earphone attachment in his desk drawer and plugged it into the laptop. At least nobody could eavesdrop on Brumado’s end of their conversation, he thought as he settled back on the bunk again.
I ought to answer Edith’s message, he remembered. And send something to Mom and Dad. He had not expected his parents to try to contact him; they would expect him to call them, he knew. It always worked that way. Why should Mars be any different? And Al. What can I say to him that will mean anything? Having a wonderful time, wish you were here? Jamie grinned to himself. Al would play the tape in his store; the only shop on the plaza that gets messages from Mars.
At last Brumado came to life with a slow smile. “Thank you, Jamie. You don’t mind if I call you Jamie, do you? Joanna told me that is the name you prefer.”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
Again the wait. Jamie put Brumado’s image into a small window in one corner of the little computer’s screen and called up the mission schedule. He spent the time studying the schedule, looking for tasks that might be delayed or deleted altogether to make room for another traverse to the Grand Canyon.
“I must speak to you about politics,” Brumado said at last. “Because of the long transmission lag, please bear with me and hear what I have to say. When I am finished you can tell me how my proposal strikes you.”
Jamie nodded and muttered, “Okay,” even though Brumado did not wait for a reply.
“I have spoken directly with your Vice-President,” Brumado went on, “and several times more with her senior aides. She is willing to make a major commitment to the continued exploration of Mars- if you will make a statement supporting her candidacy for the White House in next year’s election,”
Jamie felt his eyebrows crawling toward his scalp. Me? Make a statement supporting her? Why me? Why do they think anything I have to say would be important?
“What she wants is a written statement from you,” Brumado went on, “which she will hold until your expedition returns to Earth. At that time, when you are safely back home, she will expect you to make your statement public. In the meantime she will go on record as supporting further expeditions to Mars. I have suggested that she make a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the first American satellite launch. I believe she will agree to that.”
Jamie felt confused. All this because of the Navaho words I spoke when we landed? How in hell could this kind of maneuvering come out of three words?
Brumado had stopped talking. He was watching the screen expectantly.
Jamie took a deep breath. “I don’t understand what’s going on, or how things got to be this way. I sure want to see further expeditions come to Mars, but I don’t see what my political support has to do with it.”
In the two weeks they had been on Mars Jamie had been asked to submit to only the one media interview, on the second day after their landing. All the others in the landing party had been interviewed at least twice already. Jamie thought that national politics had been at the root of it: with two American astronauts on the surface of Mars, the project administrators did not want to upset the Russians by having a third American in the limelight.
Now he wondered if his reasoning had been naive.