The Mountain Cage (18 page)

“Council on Competitiveness, and, uh, the space thing, too—you’re our man there,” the President was saying now. Marilyn had guessed that the President might be toying with the idea of a space spectacular, and Big John, whatever his lacks in the political arena, was one of the few advisors who could understand the scientific ins and outs. It made sense, what with that big breakthrough in developing an engine for space travel. Dan didn’t know exactly how it worked, but it could get a ship to the Moon almost overnight—if there was an “overnight” in space.

“Mars,” the President said. “About time.”

“Mars?” Dan sat up. That was an even better idea than going to the Moon.

“We’re sending out feelers.” The former Chief of Staff adjusted his glasses, looking as if this project was his idea. Maybe it was; maybe that was how he had gotten back into the President’s good graces. “The Japanese have hinted they might foot most of the bill if one of their people is among the astronauts. The Saudis’ll pick up the rest if we get one of their men on board. The Russians would do almost anything to take their people’s minds off the mess over there, and we can use one of those long-term habitat modules they’ve developed for the crew’s quarters. Putting a cosmonaut on the crew in return for that would be a hell of a lot cheaper than sending more aid down that rathole.”

“Impressive,” the President said. “Won’t cost us.”

“We can get this going before the mid-term elections,” Big John muttered. “America’s reaching for the stars again—that should play pretty goddamned well, and you can use the brotherhood angle, too.” He shifted his stocky body in his chair. “A crash program for building the ship will create jobs. The crew can be trained, and the ship ready to go, by the summer of ninty-five. Two weeks or less to Mars, depending on where it is in relation to Earth’s orbit, and back in plenty of time for the Presidential primaries.”

“With the new nuclear fission-to-fusion pulse engine,” Dan said, “that’s possible.” He’d picked up a few things during his meetings with the Space Council. He was a little annoyed that no one had even hinted at the possibility of a Mars trip, but then he was usually the last guy to find anything out. “With that kind of engine, we could cross from, say, Mercury to Jupiter in less than a hundred days.” He had heard one of the NASA boys say that. Or had it been less than thirty days? Not that it made that much difference, at least to him.

The former Chief of Staff lifted his brows in surprise. Sununu had a habit of looking at him like that sometimes, the way Dan’s high-school teachers and college professors had looked at him when he actually managed to come up with a correct answer.

“But you know,” the Vice-President continued, “you could take longer to train the crew, and have this whole Mars deal going on during the primary season. That might actually help me more, having it happen right while I’m running.”

“Two terms,” the President said, sounding a lot more like John Wayne than Mr. Rogers this time. “Straight line from nineteen-eighty. I want a Republican in the White House in two-thousand-and-one. Maybe the Navy band could play that music at the inauguration, you know, the piece in that movie—”

“Also Sprach Zarathustra,”
the former Chief of Staff said, then turned toward the Vice-President. “The theme from
2001”
He had that funny smile on his face, the one that made his eyes seem even colder.

“What I was thinking, though,” Dan said, “is that people have short memories.” That was a piece of political wisdom he had picked up, partly because his own memory wasn’t so great. “So it might make more sense to have a ship on Mars right in the middle of the primaries. It’d sure be a help to be able to make speeches about that, and—”

“Unless something goes wrong. That could really fuck up the campaign, a big space disaster.” Big John folded his arms over his broad chest. “But we’ll just have to see that doesn’t happen. Besides, that sucker has to be back before the primaries.” His smile faded. “See, the thing is—”

“On the crew, Dan,” the President interrupted. “Still young, and you’re in good shape—think it’ll work.”

The Vice-President set down his fork. “What would work?”

The former Chief of Staff unfolded his arms. “The President is saying that he’d like you to go to Mars.”

Dan was too stunned to speak.

“If you’ll volunteer, that is,” the President said.

The Vice-President steadied himself, hoping his eyes had not widened into his Bambi-caught-in-the-headlights look. Big John might be willing to shove him aboard a ship heading for Mars just to get back in the good graces of the White House, but the President, for a guy without a whole lot of principles, was a gentleman. A man who never forgot to write thank-you notes wasn’t the kind of person to force his Veep on a risky space mission.

“Well.” Dan frowned. “Do I really have to do this?”

Big John said, “It may be the only way we can get you elected. It sure as hell would give you an edge, and you’re going to need one. The President was getting it from the right, but you’re going to be getting it from the moderate Republicans.” He sneered. “We’re only talking a two or three week trip, hardly more than a space shuttle flight. Come back from Mars, and you wouldn’t just be the Vice-President—you’d be a hero.” He said the words as if he didn’t quite believe them.

“Hard to run against a hero,” the President said. He pressed his hands together, then flung them out to his sides. “Moderates—trouble. But it’s up to you, Dan. Think you can handle this Mars thing—make sure there’s good people on the crew with you—but you gotta decide.”

The Vice-President swallowed, trying for his Robert Stack look once more. He was about to say he would have to talk it over with Marilyn, but Big John would give him one of his funny looks if he said that.

“I’ll consider it very seriously,” he said. If Marilyn thought this was a good idea, he might have to go along with it.

“You do that,” the former Chief of Staff said quietly.

He explained it all to his wife after dinner. There would be the months of training, but a house would be provided for him, and the family could visit him in Houston. They could even move there temporarily, but Dan wasn’t about to insist on that. His son Tucker was in college, so it wouldn’t much matter to him where they lived, but the move might be disruptive for Corinne and Ben.

“I can see it, in a way,” he said. “If I do this, I might be unbeatable. On the other hand, it didn’t work for John Glenn.”

“But this is
Mars,
honey,” Marilyn said. “John Glenn didn’t go to Mars.” She brushed back a lock of brown hair, then frowned. Dan had the sinking feeling that this whole business had already been decided. Whatever his fears about the journey, he was more afraid of facing the President and telling him he had decided not to volunteer. Besides, this space stuff might finally put an end to all the mockery. Maybe there wouldn’t be any more jokes about his lousy grades and his golf trips and being on beer duty during his stint in the National Guard. Maybe that bastard Garry Trudeau would finally stop depicting him as a feather in his
Doonesbury
comic strip.

“I’d miss you a lot,” Marilyn said.

“I’d miss you, too.” He slipped an arm over her shoulders. “But it isn’t like it’s going to be one of those three-year-round-trip deals. If that’s what it was, I would have said no right on the spot. They said it would be safe.”

She rested her head against his chest. “Nobody could top this, you know. I doubt you’d have any challengers in the primaries afterwards, and the Democrats won’t have the easy time they expected against you. Even then—”

He owed it to Marilyn. He wouldn’t have gotten this far without her; in a way, it was too bad she couldn’t go to Mars with him. She’d had to give up her law practice in Indiana when he was first elected to Congress, and later, her hopes of finding a job when he was running for Vice-President. She had wised him up after his election to the Senate, after the story about his colleague Tom Evans and that Parkinson babe broke; if he had listened to Marilyn in the first place, he wouldn’t have been in Palm Beach with them that weekend. She had given him good advice and sacrificed plenty for him. The least he could do was make her First Lady.

“What should I do?” he asked.

Marilyn drew away from him and sat up. “There’s only one thing to do,” she murmured. “This is too big for us to decide by ourselves, so we have to put it in God’s hands. He’ll show us what’s right.”

He folded his hands, bowed his head, and tried to summon up a prayer. He definitely needed the Lord’s help on this one, but had the feeling that God was likely to agree with the President.

When Dan agreed to become an astronaut, it seemed that a great weight was lifted from his shoulders. The announcement brought the expected press and television coverage, along with varying reactions from stunned commentators, but the conventional wisdom was that he could probably handle his Vice-Presidential duties as well in Houston or on Mars as he could anywhere else.

There was a press conference to endure with his four fellow crew members, and the interviews, but he got through them all without any major gaffes, except for calling the moons of Mars Photos and Zenith. That snotty nerd George Will had tried to get him on some old remarks he had made about the Red Planet having canals, but Dan had muddied the waters with a bunch of memorized statistics he had mastered in the years since, along with a comment about having been under the spell of some Ray Bradbury stories. It was smart of his staff to feed him that stuff about Bradbury’s
Martian Chronicles
along with the other information. Dan had not only made Will look like a bully, but had also given viewers the impression that the Vice-President actually read books.

In Houston, at least, he would not have to do many interviews, on the grounds that they might interfere with his training. This did not keep some reporters from trying to get leaked information about his progress.

There was little for them to discover. Surprisingly, the training was not nearly as rigorous as he had expected. The other American on the crew, Ashana Washington, was both a physicist and an experienced pilot; she would technically be in command of the expedition. Prince Ahmed was also a pilot, although the ship itself would be piloted automatically during the voyage. Sergei Vavilov and Kiichi Taranaga each had a string of degrees in various subjects requiring big brains, and since they, like Prince Ahmed, spoke fluent English, the Vice-President, to his great relief, would not have to try to learn a foreign language.

Basically, Dan knew, he would be little more than a passenger. Learning about the Mars vessel and its capacities was more interesting than Cabinet meetings, and messing around with the NASA computers was a little like those video games he had sometimes played with Tucker and Ben. The crew had to be in good shape, but he had always jogged and played a fair amount of tennis. He often missed Marilyn and the kids, but they had been apart for extended periods during political campaigns in the past, and their weekends together more than made up for it. He didn’t have to talk to reporters, although occasionally he didn’t mind posing for photographers in his NASA garb with a Robert Redford grin on his face. Once a week, some of his staffers and the President’s would fly down to brief him on various matters, but Washington often seemed far away.

He had wondered if his fellow astronauts would take to him, since they would have to spend at least a couple of weeks in isolation with him—longer if NASA decided they should remain in a Martian base camp for a while, which they might have to do if they found anything really interesting. Within three weeks after his arrival in Houston, however, he was golfing twice a week with Kiichi, jogging in the mornings with Prince Ahmed after the Saudi’s morning prayers, and playing tennis with Sergei, who, despite his small size, had one hell of a backhand.

Only Ashana had intimidated him just a little. The tall, good-looking black woman was too damned brainy and formal for him to regard her as a real babe—not that he, as a married man and a future Presidential candidate, was inclined to dwell on her apparent babe qualities anyway. Maybe Ashana thought that she was commanding this expedition for the same reason Clarence Thomas was on the Supreme Court. That was another reason to keep his distance. It wouldn’t help his chances for the White House if Ashana turned into another Anita Hill.

He might have gone on being distantly polite to her if, a month and a half into his training, he hadn’t been drawn into a pick-up basketball game with a few of the NASA staffers. Ashana came by, and before he knew it, she was giving him some good advice on how to improve his jump shots.

Basketball was the glue that sealed their friendship, but Dan had nearly blown it when Ashana had come to his house one weekend to meet his family and watch a game. “I should have known,” he said as he settled into his chair, “that you’d be a hoop fan.”

Ashana’s face suddenly got very stiff. Next to her on the sofa, Marilyn was rolling her eyes and giving him her I-don’t-believe-you-just-said-that look.

“Exactly why should you have known?” Ashana asked in a small but kind of scary voice.

“In your official biography—I mean, you grew up in Indiana, didn’t you? Everybody’s a fan there.”

Ashana relaxed, but he didn’t quite understand why she had laughed so hard afterwards.