Old Mars

HE HAD EXPECTED HIS FATHER TO MEET HIM AT THE MERIDIani spaceport. But when he disembarked after the monthlong flight from Earth, duffel bag over his shoulder, the only people waiting for the passengers were strangers. After two Martian years away, with a brand-new Ph.D. in archaeology under his belt, Dave Miller had thought that the man who had scrimped and saved to ensure that his son got the best graduate-school education in the solar system would be there to welcome him home.

The other passengers, whom he had gotten to know on the journey, collected their luggage and their local contacts—family, friends, hosts—and dispersed. Some were Marsmen like him, some were new settlers, still filled with enthusiasm for the open land that had been so effectively advertised to them, and a few were wealthy tourists. Dave had made sure the latter had his contact information: “Tour the ruins of the lost Martian civilization with the men who discovered them,” said his card. It was not quite a lie in his own case because, as a teenager, he had found a cluster of foundations and a few lengths of sand-scoured wall no higher than his knee near one of the lesser canals that splayed out from Niliacus Lacus, and Rekari, his father’s Martian business partner, had pronounced them seven or eight thousand Martian years abandoned. His father, the famous Dr. Benjamin Miller, to whom the card really referred, had decided they were not worth adding to the tourist round. But that hadn’t made them any less a discovery.

When there seemed no point in waiting any longer, Dave went into the terminal and found a phone. He’d bought a personal communicator back on Earth, but on Mars, where dust storms so often interfered with wireless communications, landlines were more reliable. The terminal clerk told him the local phone would probably work—it had yesterday—but when he tried his father’s number, there was no answer, not even with a recording.

He chewed on his lip for a few seconds, then gave in and tapped his sister’s number. He hoped her husband didn’t answer; his sister had always been hard enough to deal with.

The child’s voice on the other end did not know who Uncle Dave was, but was finally persuaded to pass the call to his or her mother.

“David.” It wasn’t a friendly voice, but it was his sister’s. In two years, she had not answered one of his letters.

“Yes, I’m back,” he said. “How have you been? How’s the family?” He didn’t even know how many kids she had now.

“Don’t pretend you care, David,” she said. “What do you want?”

“It’s been two years, Bev. That’s not much of a welcome.”

He could hear the snort at her end. “I honestly didn’t think you’d come back. Was Earth that big a disappointment?”

“Earth was fine,” he said, “but staying there was never the plan.”

“Oh yes,” said his sister. “You were always going to come back here and help Dad dig more things up. Maybe find one of those lost cities he was always looking for. He hasn’t come home in months, you know.”

“Months?” said Dave. “How many months?” His father had always spent long stretches of time in the field, but … months?

“I don’t know. Four? Five? It’s not like I see him very often when he’s not out there.”

“Have you talked to Rekari?”

There was a pause at her end. “I never understood what Dad saw in that piece of Martian scum.”

“But have you …?”

“No, I haven’t talked to him. And he hasn’t talked to me, either.”

“Beverly—”

“Dad always liked him better than his own family. And you did, too. Don’t try to tell me anything different.”

Dave didn’t answer that. Rekari had always been a good companion for a growing boy. “Did he go out with Dad?”

“How should I know?”

“He didn’t answer the phone.”

“Does he even know how to use a phone?”

Dave took a deep breath. On Earth, he had learned not to respond to people who said nasty things about Martians and the humans who lived on Mars, though it had taken more than a few fistfights to make those lessons stick. “I’ll be at Dad’s if you want me,” he said.

“Fine,” she said, and she broke the connection.

It was the longest conversation they’d had in a decade, and it made Dave worry. Months? He let the phone go and walked back to the clerk to arrange for transport to Charlestown. There was none, of course, but the clerk was willing to sell his own scooter to a fellow Marsman. And he was happy enough to take Earth creds, which usually came from tourists and the people who dealt with them; Dave had acquired a pretty decent supply from part-time jobs during school. He slung his duffel on the back, checked the charge gauge, and closed the canopy to head north. The scooter had a mapper, but he didn’t need it; he had a good sense of direction, it wasn’t all that far, and you couldn’t get lost following the Hiddekel canal. The sky was dark when he started out, but the scooter’s headlight was bright and the road was in good shape, well cleared of the water-seeking nettles that perpetually encroached on the canal. He made it to Charlestown by dawn.