Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) - Kim Stanley Robinson Page 0,89
him. “It’s not funny!” she protested. “We’re in big trouble!”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Definitely! And it’s all your fault! Some of those fool biologists in the trailer park took your anarchist rant seriously!”
“Well,” he said, “that at least is a point in their favor, the bastards. I mean—” he went back to the kitchen table to stare at the clump of blue stuff—“who exactly do you think we’re talking about, anyway? How many of our friends are in on this? And why in the world didn’t they tell me?”
This really rankled, she could tell. In fact the more he thought about it, the less amused he was, because the algae meant there was a subculture in their group that was acting outside UNOMA supervision but had not let Arkady in on it, even though he had been the first and most vocal advocate of such subversion. What did that mean? Were there people who were on his side but didn’t trust him? Were there dissidents with a competing program?
They had no way of telling. Eventually they pulled anchor, and sailed on over Amazonis. They passed a medium-sized crater named Pettit, and Arkady remarked that it would make a good site for a windmill, but Nadia only snarled. They flew by, talking the situation over. Certainly several people in the bioengineering labs had to be in on it; probably most of them; maybe all. And then Sax, the designer of the windmills, certainly had to be a part of it. And Hiroko had been an advocate of the windmills, but they had neither been sure why—it was impossible to judge whether she would approve of something like this or not, as she was simply too close with her opinions. But it was possible.
As they talked it over, they took the broken windmill completely apart. The heating plate doubled as a gate for the compartment containing the algae; when the gate opened, the algae would be released into an area that would be a bit warmer because of the hot plate itself. Each windmill thus functioned as a micro-oasis, and if the algae managed to survive with its help, and then grow beyond the small area warmed by the hot plate, then good. If not it was not going to do very well on Mars anyway. The hot plate served to give it a good sendoff, nothing more. Or so its designers must have thought. “We’ve been made into Johnny Appleseed,” Arkady said.
“Johnny what?”
“American folktale.” He told her about it.
“Yeah, right. And now Paul Bunyan is going to come kick our ass.”
“Ha. Never. Big Man is much bigger than Paul Bunyan, believe me.”
“Big Man?”
“You know, all those names for landscape features. Big Man’s Footprints, Big Man’s Bathtub, Big Man’s Golf Course, whatever.”
“Ah yeah.”
“Anyway, I don’t see why we should get in trouble. We didn’t know anything about it.”
“Now who’s going to believe that?”
“…. Good point. Those bastards, they really got me with this one.”
Clearly this was what bothered Arkady most. Not that they had contaminated Mars with alien biota, but that he had been kept out of a secret. Men were such egomaniacs when it came down to it. And Arkady, he had his own group of friends, perhaps more than that: people who agreed with him, followers of a sort. The whole Phobos crew, a lot of the programmers in Underhill. And if some of his own people were keeping things from him, that was bad; but if another group had secret plans of its own, that was worse, apparently, because they were at least interference, and perhaps competition.
Or so he seemed to think. He wouldn’t say much of this explicitly, but it became obvious in his mutterings, and his sudden sharp curses, which were genuine even though they alternated with bursts of hilarity. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether he was pleased or angry, and Nadia finally believed that he was both at once. That was Arkady; he felt things freely and to the full, and wasn’t much worried about consistency. But she wasn’t too sure she liked his reasons this time, for either his anger or his amusement, and she told him so with considerable irritation.
“Well, but come on!” he cried. “Why should they keep it a secret from me, when it was my idea to begin with?”
“Because they knew I might come along with you. If they told you, you would have had to tell me. And if you told me, I would have stopped it!”