Mars (16 page)

“Mutiny,” Brumado echoed, feeling dull, stupid, as if his brain could not grasp the meaning of Li’s words.

“We cannot announce the final selections for the mission, we cannot begin transporting the scientific staff to the assembly station in orbit, if they refuse to go.” Li’s voice was high and strained, nearly cracking.

Brumado had never seen Li like this, close to panic.

“What can we do?” Li asked, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We cannot tell Professor Hoffman that he has been removed from flight status because a cabal of his fellow scientists don’t like him! What can we do?”

Brumado took in a deep breath, unconsciously trying to calm Li by calming himself. “I think the first thing I should do is speak to my daughter.”

“Yes,” Li said. “Certainly.”

He sprang up from the chair, all six and a half feet of him,
and nearly sprinted to the desk where the phone was. Brumado wormed out of his jacket and tossed it onto an other chair. He was rolling up his shirtsleeves when Joanna stepped into the office. She too was wearing a softly comfortable running suit, butter yellow and muted orange. Brumado wondered idly what the Russians thought about this craze for American fashion.

“I will leave the two of you alone,” said Li softly, nearly whispering. He scurried from the room like a wisp of smoke wafted away on a strong breeze.

Joanna came over to her father, bussed him on both cheeks, and sat in the chair that Li had used earlier.

Brumado studied her face. She looked serious, but not upset. More determined than fearful.

“Dr. Li tells me you are leading a mutiny among the scientists.” Brumado found himself smiling at her as he said it. Not only did he find it difficult to believe such an outrageous story, but even if it were true he could not be angry with his lovely daughter.

“We took a vote last night,” Joanna said in their native Brazilian Portuguese. “Out of the sixteen scientists scheduled to fly the mission, eleven will not go if Hoffman is included.”

Brumado brushed his upper lip with a fingertip, a throwback to his youth when he had sported a luxuriant moustache.

“The sixteen includes Hoffman himself. Did he vote?”

Joanna laughed. “No. Of course not. We did not ask him.”

“Why?” her father asked. “What is the reason for this?”

She made a small sigh. “None of us really likes Hoffman. He is a very difficult personality. We feel that it will be impossible to work with him under the very close conditions of the mission.”

“But why wait until now? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“We thought that Father DiNardo could keep Hoffman under control. Hoffman admired DiNardo, looked up to him. But the thought of having Hoffman without Father DiNardo—having him as the prime geologist for the mission—we realized we could not stand that. He would be insufferable. Unbearable.”

Brumado said nothing, thinking: I’m not going into space with them. I’m not going to be cooped up inside a spacecraft for nearly two years with someone I can’t stand.

“Besides,” his daughter went on, “Hoffman was chosen mainly for political reasons. You know that.”

“He is an excellent geologist,” Brumado replied absently, thinking now about the difficulties he was asking his daughter to face. Two years in space. The stresses. The dangers.

“There are other geologists who have gone through training with us,” Joanna said, leaning slightly closer to her father.

“O’Hara is from Australia. He can move up. And there is that Navaho
mestizo
, Waterman.”

Brumado’s attention suddenly focused on his daughter’s eyes. “The man who stayed-on at McMurdo to help your group through your Antarctic training.”

“And the following groups. Yes, him.”

“And O’Hara.”

“Waterman has done extensive work on meteor impacts. He even found a Martian meteorite in Antarctica, although Hoffman took the credit for it.”

“Is he the man you want?”

She pulled back again. “I think he is the best-qualified person, isn’t he? And everyone seemed to get along with him very well.”

“But he’s an American,” Brumado muttered. “The politicians don’t want more Americans than Russians. Or vice versa.”

“He’s an American
Indian
, Papa. It’s not really the same thing. And O’Hara will make the Australians happy.”

“The politicians wanted Hoffman to help represent Europe.”

“We already have a Greek, a Pole, and a German to represent Europe. As well as an Englishman. If Hoffman goes on the mission there will be trouble,” Joanna said firmly. “His psychological profile is awful! We have tried to work with him, Papa. He is simply unbearable!”

“So you took a vote.”

“Yes. We have decided. If Hoffman is chosen there are at least eleven of us who will resign from the program immediately.”

Again Brumado fell silent. He did not know what to say, how to handle this situation.

“Ask Antony Reed,” Joanna suggested. “He has had more training in psychology than any of the others selected for the mission. It was his idea to take the vote.”

“Was it?”

“Yes! I didn’t do all this by myself, Papa. Most of the others cannot stand Hoffman.”

Brumado got up slowly and went to the desk. Picking up the telephone, he asked the man who answered to find Dr. Reed. The Englishman opened the office door before Brumado could return to the conference table. My god, he thought, they must all be sitting in the outer office. I wonder if Hoffman is there too.

Reed seemed faintly amused by it all.

“None of us can get along with Hoffman,” he said, smiling slightly as he sat relaxed in a chair across the table from Brumado and his daughter. “Frankly, I think bringing him along to Mars would be a disaster. Always have.”

“But he passed all the psychological tests.”

Reed arched an eyebrow. “So would a properly motivated chimpanzee. But you wouldn’t want to live in the same cage with him, would you?”

“You’ve all been filling out cross-evaluation reports for the past two years!” Brumado heard his own voice rising with more than a hint of anger in it. He forced it down. “I admit that the reports written about Professor Hoffman have not been glowing, but there has been no hint that he was so disliked.”

“I can tell you about those evaluation reports,” Reed said, almost smirking. “No one ever expressed their true feelings in the reports. Not in writing. There is enormous psychological pressure to put a good face on everything. Every one of us realized straight from the outset that those reports would be a reflection on the person who wrote them as much as on the person they were writing about.”

Brumado thought, We should have realized that from the beginning. These are very bright men and women, bright enough to see all the possibilities.

Reed continued, “To borrow a phrase from Scotland Yard, we understood that anything we wrote in those evaluation forms might be taken down in evidence and used against us.”

With a shake of his head, Brumado said, “I still can’t
understand why you waited until this very last moment to bring your opposition out into the open.”

“Two reasons, actually,” said Reed. “First, we all expected that DiNardo could keep Hoffman under control. Our good priest seemed to have a calming effect on the Austrian, rather like old Hindenburg had on Hitler.”

Joanna barely suppressed a giggle.

“Second, I suppose that none of us actually faced up to the awful possibility of spending nearly two years living cheek-by-jowl with Hoffman until this very weekend. With the final decisions made and DiNardo packing off to hospital — well, I suppose it suddenly dawned on us that Hoffman simply wouldn’t do.”

“How do I tell this to Professor Hoffman?” Brumado asked softly.

“Oh, I’d be willing to tackle that chore,” Reed said at once. “I’d be almost happy to do it.”

Brumado shook his head sadly. “No. It is not your responsibility.”

He dismissed Reed and asked Dr. Li to come back into the office.

With Joanna still sitting beside him, Brumado said wearily, “I suppose there is no way around it. Professor Hoffman will have to be told.”

Li seemed to have calmed down considerably. His mask of impassivity was in place once more.

“It is my duty to inform him,” Li said.

“If you like, I will explain it to him,” said Brumado.

With a quick glance at Joanna, Li murmured, “As you wish.”

Hoffman looked as tense as a stalking leopard when he entered the office. He stood a moment at the door, eyeing Li, Brumado, and Joanna with unconcealed suspicion. Short, round-shouldered, his round pie face pale with tension. He was wearing a powder-blue cardigan sweater buttoned neatly over a shirt and tie striped yellow and red. His slacks were dark blue, almost black.

“Please,” called Brumado from the conference table, “come in and sit down.”

Li was standing at the end of the table, as far from the door as possible. Joanna still sat next to her father, turned toward Hoffman so that Brumado could not see her face.

As if stepping through a minefield Hoffman walked across the carpeted floor and pulled out the chair at the head of the table. He sat down.

“We have run into a difficulty,” said Brumado, trying to smile disarmingly and not quite making it.

“They are all against me. I know that.”

Brumado felt his eyebrows rise. “We must think of the good of the mission. That is our paramount duty.”

Hoffman’s face twisted. “I was chosen by the selection board. I demand that their choice be upheld!”

“If we uphold that decision the mission will be wrecked. More than half your fellow scientists have refused to go, I am sorry to say.”

“More than half!”

Brumado nodded.

“This is an affront to the entire nation of Austria!”

“No,” said Dr. Li, from the other end of the table. “It is entirely a personal matter. There are no politics involved here. It is all personalities.”

“Yes, I see.” Hoffman jabbed a finger toward Joanna. “
She
wants that American Indian by her side, so
I
am to be thrown off.”

Brumado felt his jaw drop open.

“What are you saying?” Joanna demanded.

“I know very well how you and the Apache or Navaho or whatever he is … the two of you, at McMurdo …”

“Nothing happened between us,” Joanna said. Turning to her father, “He’s lying. There was nothing …”

Brumado raised his hand and she fell silent. To Hoffman he said, “I can see that there are stresses here and strained relationships that could cause a disaster for the mission to Mars.”

Hoffman glared, his face reddening.

“I know it is an enormous sacrifice, but I must ask you to resign from the mission,” Brumado said.

“Never!” Hoffman snapped. “And if you try to force me out I will tell the world’s media that you have thrown me out in favor of your daughter’s lover!”

Joanna looked stunned, stricken, speechless.

One of Alberto Brumado’s traits was that the angrier he became, the more icy calm. Anger that would drive another
man to tantrums or violence merely made him colder, keener, more deliberate.

“Professor Hoffman,” he said, clasping his hands prayerfully on the tabletop, “if you ask me to choose between your claim and my daughter’s denial, do you think for an instant that I would believe you?”

“They were lovers, I am certain of it.”

“You have proven, merely in these few minutes, that it would be disastrous to include you on the Mars team.”

“I will appeal to the board of selection! And to the media!”

As patiently as a physician detailing the risks of surgery, Brumado said, “The board of selection cannot and will not override the wishes of the exploration team. And if you go to the media we will be forced to reveal that most of the scientists on the team dislike you so much that they have refused to go on the mission if you are included.”

Hoffman’s nostrils flared. His eyes glittered with rage.

“Whatever happens, what do you think the effect on your reputation will be? How will your university react to such notoriety? Do you know what it’s like to have the media hounding you night and day?”

The Austrian looked away from Brumado, glanced at Li, then turned his gaze toward the ceiling.

“I urge you,” Brumado said, reasonably, placatingly, remorselessly, “to tender your resignation. For the good of your career. For the sake of your wife. For the sake of this mission. Please,
please
, do not allow pride or anger to ruin the human race’s first attempt to explore the planet Mars. I beg of you.”

Li said, “We can see to it that your university gets first priority in analyzing the soil samples and rocks returned from the mission.”

“Or, if you wish,” Brumado added, “we can help you to get an appointment at the university of your choice, and you can analyze the samples there.”

“You are offering me a bribe,” Hoffman growled.

“Yes,” said Brumado. “Quite frankly, I would offer anything I could to save this mission.”

“It is in your hands,” Li said in a near whisper.

Brumado saw that the shock on his daughter’s face had been replaced by something deeper than anger. Hatred, he
realized. He put a calming hand on her shoulder and felt the tension that coiled within her.

Hoffman muttered, “My wife never wanted me to go to Mars.”

“You can have a very prestigious position;” Dr. Li coaxed. “Leader of the scientific analysis of the Mars samples.”

“No announcements have been made about the final team choices,” Brumado reminded him. “There will be no embarrassment for you.”

Suddenly tears sprang from Hoffman’s eyes. “What can I do? You are all against me. Even my wife!”

His head drooped to the tabletop, cradled in his arms, and he began to sob uncontrollably. Brumado turned toward Li, feeling like a torturer, a murderer.

“I will take care of him,” Li said softly. “Please go now, both of you. And send in Dr. Reed, if he is still outside. Otherwise, ask the secretary to summon a physician.”

Brumado pushed his chair back and slowly rose to his feet. His daughter still showed nothing but contempt for the sobbing man huddled at the head of the table. The mission is saved, Brumado found himself thinking. That is the important thing. The mission will go on despite this poor, wretched man.