Climbing Olympus. Kevin J. Anderson

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      As she worked her way up, she learned all phases of the project, supervising specialists who took care of the specific details in each area—artificial lungs, mechanical secondary diaphragm muscles, long-chain polymer skin insulation, genetically modified hemoglobin molecules to process precious oxygen more efficiently. She studied autopsies on the failures to improve the process for next time.

      In the cold isolation of Siberia, under the gray skies of incessant winter, she had fallen into a brief affair with one of the other doctors. But the intensity of Rachel’s personality, her single-mindedness, had driven off close relationships all her life; the doctor had requested a transfer shortly afterward.

      Throughout her career, Rachel marched straight ahead in a lockstep that allowed for no distraction, no deviation. Now she felt as if she had taken three steps beyond a precipice before realizing that the bridge was out. The adins and the dvas were her life: her substitute for what she had left behind along the way.

      Rachel remembered the eleven months of intensive interviews with hardened prisoners who grasped at any sort of straw that might mitigate their sentences. She and her assistants searched for volunteers, conducted endless physiological and psychological tests, preliminary surgical inspections.

      The sheer numbers of people were a blur, and she often forgot that they were people—not specimens. But she gave them hope, and they gave her a chance to make an impact for the Sovereign Republics, which sorely needed something to regain their lost prestige in the international community.

      Many types of government had been tried since the fall of communism, and now the loose federation had many different flags, currencies, and languages. But the Sovereign Republics had been weaker many times before. The people viewed the seventy-five years of Communist control as a part of their history, a stumble in the progress of time, much the same as the Mongol invasions, the Polish invasions, the oppression of the Teutonic knights.

      The “united Earth” terraforming project had been an enormous drain on the world’s treasury, siphoning off resources that—some said—might better be spent at home. Fifty years had passed, and still no humans smiled under the olive sky or romped through the rust-colored sands, as UNSA propaganda had promised. People were tired of waiting; the work seemed an unending quest, led by fools. With its own severe economic problems, the Sovereign Republics had declined to take an active role in making Mars fit for human inhabitants.

      Officially, that is. …

      In her quarters, Rachel cracked open her gray eyes and searched for the chronometer on the wall. Tomorrow morning Keefer’s lander would be down, bringing another dozen workers for Lowell Base. Twelve hours from now, she would be shaking the hand of her replacement, welcoming him to Mars. She would make the transition in a politically smooth way, helping him to take over his new duties, helping him to take duties away from her. Rachel didn’t know how she could manage to be cordial. But she would, somehow.

      She looked on the wall, at the yellowed hardcopy news clipping she had sandwiched between layers of transparent polymer.

       ‘FRANKENSTEIN’ DOCTOR EXONERATED OF CHARGES BY UN PANEL: SECOND PHASE TO CONTINUE

      The gray-eyed Rachel in the photograph, looking exhausted but ecstatic, seemed no younger than she looked now. Perhaps the Martian environment had stopped her aging, or perhaps she had done all her aging at once during the hearings. Her cinnamon-brown hair had become streaked with metallic gray. Her nose was a bit too large for her face, her lips too full. Her eyebrows traced dark arches highlighting a flinty gaze. She had never managed to be photogenic.

      “FRANKENSTEIN DOCTOR” the newsnets had called her. Vivid memories lurched to the front of her mind, like screams from the depths of a nightmare.

RACHEL DYCEK

      THE UN HEARING CHAMBER in the new Geneva facility was huge. The walls echoed with every footstep, every door slam, every mumbled comment. With muttering whispers and general stirs the audience sounded like a gently snoring beast.

      Newsnet camera lights shone like baking suns onto the victims on display, the witnesses about to be dissected. In the midst of it Rachel Dycek felt small and alone; her convictions had hidden from her, leaving only a rigid outside shell. Her attention spiraled down into two points: the livid expression on the Japanese delegate’s face and the translator microphone speaking stiff and formal Russian in her ear.

      “You have dodged these questions … for days, Dr. Dycek.” The unintelligible words carried truckloads of strident anger; by contrast, the interpreter’s voice sounded smooth and relaxed.

      With the buzz of other conversations around the vast room, the asynchronous chatter of foreign languages, and the panicking voices in her head, Rachel had to squeeze her eyes shut just to pay attention to what the delegate was saying. The earphones made her breath thunder in her head.

       Calm, calm, calm. Pay attention. Gather your thoughts. They want you to slip, so they can lunge in for the kill. Do not give them the opportunity.

      “We ask again, in front of the whole world. You must answer us this time, Dr. Dycek. How can you … justify creating such distortions—no, such perversions of the human body? I am reminded of the English novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Have you read it? Did you neglect … er, did you forget that these are people to whom you have done such a horrible thing?”

      Rachel opened her eyes and sat up straighter, feeling anger come to her aid, like a staff propping her up. The man’s line of questioning offended her, and she made that quite plain through her tone of voice. She flashed her granite eyes at him until he flinched.

      With carefully chosen words she answered in English, not Russian; the legal counsel had told her that speaking English would gain points among the largest portion of the viewing audience, make her seem less of a foreigner, less alien.

      “Yes, they are indeed people, Mr. Ambassador. People who now live and breathe and work on the surface of Mars. Perhaps you are the one who has forgotten the entire”—a buzz in her ear reminded her to slow down and allow the translator time to catch up—“the entire mission of the UN Mars Project. We have spent half a century throwing money at an inhospitable planet, to prepare it for just this event. For the day when human beings can survive on the surface of another world. And now the Sovereign Republics have succeeded in this—for the entire human race I might add, not just our own commonwealth—I expected celebrations instead of an inquisition.”

      Rachel took her seat, then watched the weather patterns of expression on the interrogating delegate’s face as her answer to his question was translated from English to Japanese. Defiantly, Rachel took a long drink of ice water, avoiding any eye contact with the row of international interrogators crouching like old ravens at the front of the room. At the table beside her sat a Thermos pot of Swiss coffee and an empty mug, but despite the thick rich smell, she avoided pouring herself a cup. These hearings offered little in the way of piss breaks, and she needed to concentrate on the accusations being shot at her, without being distracted by a swollen bladder.

      Sitting silently in plush chairs along the table on both sides of her, her army of legal counsel watched with keen eyes and blank expressions. They had put a safe distance between her and themselves, in case she had to take a fall.

      A few of her colleagues waited in isolation rooms for their own turns in the interrogation chair, but at the moment everything depended on her. Rachel Dycek СКАЧАТЬ