Boundary: Chapter Eight

    "I'm not?" A.J. pulled an exaggerated sad face.

    "No, you're not," stated Jackie firmly, as she slid into the booth seat opposite A.J. and Joe. "And stop pouting. You look cuter when you smile."

    The sensor specialist brightened. "I'm cute!"

    Joe shook his head. "She said you're cut-er. All that means is that you're less annoying when you smile than when you sulk. She's the precisionist type, don't forget."

    "So," Jackie said, ignoring their byplay. "Obviously everyone knows what I'm celebrating. What about you guys?"

    After A.J. filled her in on the latest news, Jackie jumped up and hugged him, nearly spilling water all over Joe. "Congratulations! That's wonderful news!"

    "Dammit, Jackie, watch out." Joe blotted up the spill with a handful of napkins. "Or you'll get in trouble for consorting with the enemy."

    She resumed her seat. "Yeah, right. Like they don't already believe I'm consorting. Do you know how often I have to repeat the fact that A.J. and I are not dating?"

    Jackie studied the menu and her eyes widened. "Holy sheep, as my dad used to say. Celebrations shouldn't leave people broke!"

    "Don't worry, I'm paying." A.J. spoke before Joe could even respond.

    "Oh, A.J., you don't have to—"

    "It's no biggie, guys. Seriously."

    Joe raised an eyebrow. "Paying for Jackie, I can understand, but I doubt I'm that good to look at."

    "No, you're ugly. I'm paying for you out of pity."

    "You are funny, A.J. That is why I kill you last."

    There was a break in the banter as the trio considered the many options on the menu. The ordering process was delayed as Joe interrogated the waiter sternly on the precise methods of cooking employed, the spices, and a number of other issues. Jackie saw A.J. roll his eyes. A moment later, she did the same, even more histrionically than he had.

    Joe was a gourmet; and, quite possibly, the most ungodly picky eater either of them knew. Apparently, however, the waiter's answers satisfied him, because he finally leaned back and selected stuffed portobello mushrooms with lobster and king crab for an appetizer, with grilled swordfish marinated in red wine sauce for his main course.

    A.J. had taken all of three seconds to make his choice of calamari followed by a broiled lobster. Jackie wasn't quite that fast, but she'd still managed to order her grilled vegetables with dipping sauce and surf-and-turf combo in far less time than Joe took.

    "I can see why you said you don't go out to eat with Joe very often."

    Joe gave a tolerant smile. "Oh, you complain now, Jackie, but that's because you aren't in Ares."

    She looked quizzically at A.J. "Just what does Joe's mania for cuisine have to do with the Project?"

    "Well, everyone in the Project has to wear more than one hat. It so happens that Joe is in charge of the consumable supplies aboard the ships."

    "Ah. Light dawns."

    "Which," A.J. added, "is one of the reasons I pay for his meals. He's going to be picking mine when we go."

    "So you're actually going?" Jackie couldn't keep her voice from rising on the last part, nor exclude the envy.

    "About 95% chance. I'm in training already."

    "Not that he really needs much," Joe said. "A.J.'s always been in good shape. I'm the one who has to really work."

    "Don't tell me you're going, too!"

    "Not all that likely. But possible. I'm a candidate, but nowhere near the front of the pack like A.J." Joe shook his head. "Basically, for me to go up, some of the others have to either get disqualified or quit. Or else something new has to turn up that gives me some special qualifications that other people don't."

    He eyed Jackie sympathetically. "What about you? The Nike is going to be big. We've heard it'll have a crew as large as ten people. Maybe even more."

    Jackie knew she didn't look very optimistic. She didn't feel optimistic, either.

    "Maybe. There's hellish competition. I'm going to be starting training next week, but I don't think they'll want more than one drive systems engineer aboard, and Dr. Gupta isn't about to step down. If the crew size was maybe half again larger—leaving enough room for an assistant drive engineer—then I'd have a real chance."

    "You're a good electrical and MEMS engineer, too."

    "Thanks, but they've got qualified specialists for that. Again, the problem is the crew size. I'm everybody's favorite second banana, but with a crew of only ten there's just no room for any second bananas. If the Nike were twice the size…" She shrugged. "But it isn't. So all I can do is hope."

    "Well," said A.J. brightly, "if both of you stay back, you can at least keep busy cheering me on."

    It was Joe's turn to roll his eyes. "A.J., sometimes you are really a..."

    "Self-centered jerk?"

    "I wasn't going to say it," Joe muttered, still staring at the ceiling.

    "I was," Jackie hissed.

    Joe brought his eyes back down and changed the subject. "So, Jackie, today's test—any hitches at all?

    "Not a one, so far. We may—wonder of wonders—actually finish a project ahead of time."

    "Isn't that, like, completely against government regulations?"

    "Normally, sure. But as we are currently under what amounts to order to kick your sorry civilian asses, we've actually got permission to do things at real speed."

    "The ass-kicking is going to happen in the other direction," A.J. jeered.

    Jackie just smiled. "Possibly. But we've got a big fat government butt to absorb the punishment, where all you've got is skin and bones. Besides, if we can actually get close enough to launch this mission, I don't think it will matter. Especially if we can get everything done we've got projected."

    "Well, I'll do my best to make it easy," A.J. said. "I'm really looking forward to doing this one. I'll actually get to play in both sandboxes at once. I stay on Ares' payroll and get to design all their cool stuff, but when the Faeries actually get down to business, since that data's going to belong to NASA, I'll be working in Mission Control with the big boys. Does it get any better than this?"

    Joe laughed. "Probably not. I suppose I'm a little jealous, but hell, if it's adding that much to the department budget I can't really complain." He looked back at Jackie. "So how's the Nike design going?"

    "Mostly hush-hush, but I can tell you she's going to be really big. More than one main engine to shove this lady along."

    "I'll admit NASA did one thing right," said A.J. "At least they gave her the right name for the job."

    He raised his glass over the arriving appetizers. "It may be disloyal, but here's to the winged Goddess of Victory, Nike!"

    The others clinked their glasses with his, Jackie managing to control her irritation. Jackie had plenty of criticisms of NASA herself, but as time went on, she found A.J.'s incessant jibes were getting more and more annoying. As she'd often found with hardcore libertarians like A.J., if not with someone like Joe, the man could be insufferably smug—and amazingly blind to the contradictions in his own attitudes.

    In this instance, she'd admit, Jackie happened to agree with A.J. She wasn't sure who, in the vast bureaucracy of NASA, had first come up with the name, but it was appropriate in so many ways. The Greek/Roman pantheon had, of course, been the source of the planetary names, and Mars—Ares to the Greeks—was the God of War. However, the Greek pantheon had another deity of war: Athena, goddess of Wisdom and Warfare. Athena was symbolic of the necessity of war waged with rationality and control, while Mars/Ares was the symbol of its destructive savagery. NASA's first goal, however, was Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars, named after Ares' companions Phobos and Deimos: Fear and Terror. But Athena had her own companion, Nike. Thus the ship was named, and the motto of the Phobos Expedition was born.

    She raised her glass and repeated it. "'Conquer Fear.'"

    They drank again. When she lowered her glass, Jackie found that she was still irritated enough to do a little needling of her own.

    "A.J., explain to me again exactly how you guys are proposing to finance your junket—besides begging money from NASA? I've never been able to figure out how the abracadabra works."

    "Oh, you mean instead of mugging the taxpayers and blowing their dough on expensive boondoggles?" A.J. grinned. "Well, you know about the prizes."

    "Right. That's some money, and I suppose if you guys manage to have everything work right, that'd finance a good chunk of things."

    "So far it's done real well for us. But it only pays for you being first, don't forget. If you have a reason to do things more than once—and we have a number of reasons we have to do multiple launches and landings—you'll start burning through whatever small profit you might make on the prize money after development. So as you imply, we need other sources.

    "So first we got people who believed in it enough to be willing to donate money to the cause, work for cheap, and so on, to keep costs down. Then we started looking for angels—investors who wanted to be 'in' on private space ventures."

    A.J. leaned back, stretched, and then attacked his calamari for a moment. "Of course, the problem there is that even though a few ventures like Rutan's managed to make space before, they never got a chance to do much with it except some touristy stuff, so there weren't too many angels left. That meant we had to actually promise something."

    "You started selling Mars, right? But you don't own the planet, so how can you sell it? That's what I don't get."

    Joe held up an admonishing finger. "My dear girl," he said in a pompous tone, "we aren't selling Mars. We are selling the option to own property on Mars on the speculation that we can arrive there first and, therefore, claim that property by virtue of our arrival."

    "Isn't that the same thing? And isn't it against international law to begin with?"

    "Not exactly," A.J. said defensively. "If you look at it cold-bloodedly, what we're really doing is essentially a legal form of gambling. There's a reason they call the financial section the 'Harriman Division' at Ares. This is land speculation based on the potential opening of a new frontier—something Heinlein mentioned in his story 'The Man Who Sold the Moon.'"

    "In other words, it's a hustle." Jackie made no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

    "The fact is," she said forcefully, dropping her innocent pose, "that your scheme is against international law—going back at least to the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. The principles of which, I remind you, were re-affirmed in the treaty regarding use of the moon in 1967. Not to mention about a jillion UN resolutions that the United States is signatory to. What you're gambling on—more precisely, trying to get other people to gamble on—is that if you can land on Mars first, you can get at least some of those treaty provisions lifted."

    A.J. and Joe were both looking defensive now—and the term "defensive," in the case of A.J. Baker, was a very difficult one to separate from "belligerent."

    Joe, however, responded first. "Yes, Jackie, we're gambling—or asking others to, if you prefer. But what we're gambling on is not whether it will be done, but how quickly it will be done."

    "What makes you think it will ever happen at all?"

    "Because, to put it bluntly, Mars will eventually be habitable. The engineering to make it livable is already known to be possible, and relatively quickly—unlike the ten-thousand-year job it would be to terraform Venus. Antarctica really isn't, and there's a biosphere already on Earth that you can't risk disrupting in order to make it habitable. The moon is a useless rock. Basically, those treaties hold because no one wants the areas involved badly enough to kick about it, and because there's no real motivation for lots of people to go there."

    He took a bite, savored the flavor. "Mmmm... Now, if you want people to live somewhere else, you have to offer them something. And if what you want is for the place to be self-sustaining, you're talking about getting everything from farmers to miners to management people there. History has shown that, especially in frontier locations—and Mars will most definitely be a frontier—one of the big driving forces is the ability to get your own place relatively cheap, or potentially even 'free.' I put little verbal quotes around that because, of course, you'll be working your tail off to live on your land. You'll not be getting the best immigrants if what you do is force a lease or rental agreement on everyone. They will want to own the land, and I think the governments of the world will recognize that a separate habitable planet is an entirely different kettle of fish from some deserted, airless rockball like the Moon."

    Jackie nodded. "Okay, it's not quite a con. You're right, it's a gamble. You're betting that the potential of a frontier will cause political pressure, on the one hand; and the thought of the potential profits from owning and exploiting an entire planet, on the other hand, will cause pressure from major industrial and financial interests. And all of it happening fast enough to make a difference in the laws to your benefit."

    "Profit motive and a need for freedom are strong incentives. I think it's worth betting on, and so, apparently, do our investors."

    "Fine. And let me tell you what else is true. Oh, Mr. Sudden-Expert-in-History. Your parallel between the American frontier of the nineteenth century and the Martian frontier of the twenty-first conveniently overlooks the fact that a lot has changed in two centuries. It's not going to be Ye Plucky Pioneer racing his Conestoga in a land rush, it's going to be Ye Megacorporation gouging the hell out of everybody to allow them to go to Mars—on Megacorp's terms. Or do you think every would-be pioneer can build his own version of the Nike? If you ask me, your scheme—even if it works—isn't anything more than a fancy recipe for bringing back indentured servitude. In the name of 'freedom,' no less. And that's true even for American or European or East Asian would-be emigrants, much less—"

    She broke off suddenly and took a deep breath. Then, decided she wasn't really in the mood for a full-bore argument. "Ah, never mind," she said, digging into her own food.

    Fortunately, A.J. and Joe were just as willing to let it drop.

    It was an old argument, anyway, and one which in all its permutations the three of them had been bickering over for years. A.J. and Joe were both libertarians in their political leanings—A.J., flamboyantly so; Joe, moderately so—and Jackie wasn't at all. As far as she was concerned, the splendid-sounding word "libertarianism," when you scratched the surface, all too often just meant "Me-me-me-me-me."

    On the subject of who really owned Mars—or ought to—Jackie tended to agree with her boss, Dr. Gupta.

    I see, he'd said to her mildly once, after she explained the Ares Project's scheme. Finance Mars exploration by selling Martian land to wealthy speculators. Well, that will certainly be to the benefit of a billion of my former countrymen. Most of whom can't afford to own an automobile. Or a bicycle, often enough.

    It was easy to deride government agencies for being bureaucratic. Jackie had done so herself, many times—and had to deal with NASA's often amazingly stupid decisions and procedures far more directly than A.J. ever did. But, in the end, she didn't really think that handing the world—the whole damn solar system!—over to people with the single-minded and ultimately self-centered focus of A.J. Baker would be any improvement. At all.

    The problem wasn't even with people like A.J., anyway, much less Joe. The problem was that the kind of people they'd get to provide them with the sort of financial backing they needed usually did not look at the world the way they did. A.J. might be self-centered in terms of his interests and his personal focus, but he wasn't a damn bean-counter. Money, as such, ranked so far down on his list of priorities that it barely made the list at all—and then, only as an afterthought. Allowing for his more practical nature, the same was true of Joe.

    Jackie doubted that the Ares Project's fund-raising scheme would really work, in any event. She knew Ares had picked up enough financial backing over and above the prize money to keep their operations running—albeit always on a shoestring budget. But she thought their assessment that a successful landing on Mars would start unraveling almost three-quarters of a century's worth of international treaties forbidding the private exploitation of Antarctica and extra-terrestrial bodies was...

    The proverbial pie in the sky. If anything, she thought it was more likely that the treaties would be strengthened. Nor could she really envision any government—certainly not ones as strong as the United States or China or the European confederation—allowing any private enterprise to build spacecraft which, push comes to shove, could serve as platforms for weapons of mass destruction.

    But, she reminded herself again, there was no reason to turn the subject into a loud argument over this particular meal. And who knew? When the dust all settled, they might wind up with an immensely complicated mixture of public and private methods. It had happened before, plenty of times. The kind of compromise that satisfied nobody, but didn't create enough resentment for anybody to really want to pick a fight over.

    A.J. still seemed to be a bit sullen. But Joe apparently shared Jackie's sentiment.

    "Enough of that," he said, pushing away his plate but obviously referring back to the earlier dispute. "Come one, Jackie, let's get to the good stuff. Tell us what it was like to test a NERVA rocket!"