Work Text:
AN ARCHAEOLOGIST ON MARS
The museum director called my name and I stepped up onto the stage. There were only 500 people in the audience, still the modest assemblage represented well over half of the local population. The museum was too small to hold even this crowd or the new exhibit. Fortunately a converted warehouse worked fine for the few days it would be here.
There was heartfelt applause and whistles where I was more used to the polite smattering of applause that might accompany a paper at a symposium. It was actually a tad intimidating and I felt a bit of stage fright. Fortunately I’d been asked to keep my comments quite brief, ideally just a minute or two.
“Thank you. It was a great privilege to lead the archaeological team on the Ares III landing site. And as an archaeologist I’m cognizant that this ‘dig’ barely qualifies for my discipline. It’s quite new. My grandparents were on the Ares III mission. That’s where they fell in love. And their first child, my mother, was born just one day before the next mission of Ares V left for Mars. So I wasn’t so much an archaeologist here as the person who cleaned up the campsite a bit and hauled away a few boxes with odds and ends.” I was pleased there were a few chuckles.
“I wish we could have collected the team’s second rover to be here. Of course Mark Watney took it over 3,000 kilometers to the Ares IV launch site. And it’s quite large. But I know you, and tens or hundreds of thousands of others, will be thrilled at what we do have.”
“We have Watney’s wall where he ticked off the days, I mean Sols. There are 461 of them. We have his original space helmet which was shattered, with him in it, when the habitat decompressed. We even found a potato buried in the sand that was sucked out at that time and he missed. And an amazing find was a video log he kept recording after he was marooned. He’d never told anyone about it. The first entry is looped on that screen behind you. It really highlights his calm and bravery in the face of adversity as well as his sense of humor. When you watch it I think you’ll be… surprised.”
“Pathfinder, which he retrieved from Ares Vallis and used to re-establish contact with Earth, and its little wheeled friend Sojourner were deemed artifacts to leave behind on Mars. Exhibit replicas are currently being constructed and my apologies you can’t see them here today.”
“My grandparents always said their Mars encampment would be buried and forgotten, like Pompeii. Nana Beth said it might be excavated after a thousand years. So they would have been amazed it took just 100 years, almost to the day. Earth days.” Again a little laugh. I added a thank you and that I hoped they enjoyed the exhibit. Leaving the tiny stage I thought my little speech went just about right and expected less applause walking off than stepping on and I’d predicted correctly.
I delighted in watching people wander the exhibit. I stood off in a corner and let people come over to me if they had questions. Most were simple and I had developed stock answers that were brief, which the questioner doubtless appreciated, and humorous which meant they walked away with a smile.
*****
The next morning I was up before dawn. I’d wanted to enjoy the views this small town had to offer and was told sunrise over the foothills was an especially fine sight. My room at the small hotel didn’t offer that exposure. Grabbing my bag I found a window that did. Then I headed toward where my ride would be waiting. After that it would be a short jaunt to the city where I could catch my flight home.
My route took me right past the warehouse and I still had access inside. I stepped in again for a last quick look. The reception hadn’t been cleaned up yet. The exhibit would be here a week and then move on, ultimately to its permanent home in Houston.
I stepped over a rope and bent down, breaking a great many rules as archaeologists secretly do as we are only human, and patted Sojourner lightly. “It was good to meet you, little robot. Uncle Mark told me more than once how he considered you a good friend and enjoyed your company. But when this all ships out you’ll have to stay here. You are, after all, the official mascot for the colonists.”
Exiting, I strolled another two hundred meters to the flyer’s loading tube. The woman who ushered me in was pregnant. With a little prenatal help from the local doctors her child would need a lot less protection outside the domes. And that child’s child might need none at all. Future colonists might be just like the experimental plot of dark green, wide-bladed, grass I could see through my window as I took my seat. The next experiments would include potatoes. Five kilometers beyond the grass I could just make out the ruined Rover One and the walls of the Ares III habitat in the distance. I silently bid the ashes of Nana Beth and Grandpa Chris, which I had discreetly scattered there, farewell. Then we rose away from the small community of Watney Station and headed toward Schiaparelli City, and the spaceport that would transport me home on a voyage lasting only five days.