Paul J. McAuley by The Secret of Life

Author:The Secret of Life [Life, The Secret of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-05-29T18:13:18+00:00

She is tired and drawn. There are sores in her scalp and along her hairline which she scratches when she thinks no one is looking, and she has developed a dry cough that often wakes Mariella at night. She stubbornly refuses to report this to the medical team at Goddard Flight Control Center, self-medicating with a steroid salve and insisting that it is no real problem.

“This isn’t about the Chinese,” Penn Brown says. “As long as they see us drilling they know that we haven’t found what we’re looking for. In fact, it’s important that they know we’re looking. It’ll make them edgy.”

Anchee says stubbornly, “Except they’ve already found what we’re looking for. They already know everything about what we’re trying to find.”

“Not everything,” Mariella says. “If they knew everything, they wouldn’t have needed to come back. And if they’d shared what they found, if they hadn’t lied about it in the first place, then we wouldn’t have to follow in their footsteps. We could have solved this problem together. As it is, we can’t know what they know and what they don’t know. We might even find out what they want to know,” she says, “and not know it.”

“This isn’t about the Chinese,” Penn Brown says again. “This is about information control.”

“Yes,” Anchee says. “So that Cytex can be sure of its profits, while pretending to save the world.”

“NASA will get credit too.” Penn Brown turns his slate around. It displays a topographic map of the western half of the pole. “This is where we’re going tomorrow,” he says, tapping a spot close to the edge of crater Zw. “It will certainly give our friends something to think about.”

Anchee says, “Isn’t that too close to their latest camp? They could come right up the Chasma Boreale and be on us before we know it.”

“They could have done that already,” Penn Brown says. “But they haven’t.”

“Perhaps because they know we’re no threat as long as we stay on the icecap,” Anchee says. “I’ve been going over the radar pictures again, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re even fuzzier than we first thought. What might be a lens of water could just as easily be reflectance from a thicker-than-normal layer of dust. The bright dust layers are pretty reflective anyway, because they’re so iron-rich, and an unusually thick layer could give the same kind of signal as a water lens. I can show you the data—”

Penn Brown says, “Is there a way of distinguishing a real signal from a false signal?”

“Not with the data we have. A seismic survey might help, although the overlying ice is so thick it’s bound to attenuate signals. We shouldn’t expect much free liquid water anyway, because pressure will close up any cavity and force the water into the rocks.”

“Which doesn’t matter for microorganisms,” Mariella says. “Water-filled pores in rocks are just as good a habitat as open water or water bound in clathrates.”

“This is just speculation,” Penn Brown says. “We can’t know if there is water down there unless we look, and that’s what we’re doing.

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