CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THIRTEEN FILES
Camp One, during final passenger preparations, early 1981
The passenger files reached Mars before the passengers.
Shaw read summaries in her office.
She did not read them for entertainment.
She read them because thirteen civilians were about to enter a settlement where personality could become infrastructure.
A pilot.
A lawyer.
Valdés entered while she was reading.
“Homework?”
“Passengers.”
He glanced at the files.
“A musician,” Shaw read.
“A driver.”
Valdés raised his eyebrows. “Do we need a driver for the musician? We don’t even have a limousine.”
Shaw turned back to the first file. “Serena Thunder. Music is one part of it. Her assignment here is to make the administration work.”
“We have an administration.”
“We have agreements written on Earth.” Shaw tapped the page. “She’ll have to turn them into procedures we can use here. Work assignments, supply requests, permissions. When a rule holds up a job that needs doing, she’ll have to find out whether the job is wrong or the rule is.”
Valdés drew a chair closer. “And persuade whoever signed it?”
“That too. The assessment suggests she won’t be shy about asking.” Shaw opened the next file. “Burton Trouble. The full title is logistics and long-haul specialist.”
“Freight?”
“Loading, vehicle maintenance, transport schedules. Getting a load where it needs to be with the equipment available. The mining roads are getting longer. So are the supply lists.”
Valdés looked at the two files again. “All right. We can find work for both of them.”
Shaw continued down the list. “An architect.” and even two?
People with technical backgrounds and people whose usefulness could not be reduced to a tool inventory.
The selection committee had argued deliberately for that mix.
Mars already had engineers.
A colony needed society.
Valdés waited until she put down the last summary. “Any trouble?”
“They’re human.”
“So yes.”
She closed the folder.
“One of them will hate it here.”
“Probably.”
“One will want to leave.”
“Probably.”
“One will break a rule.”
“Definitely.”
“One may become more important to this place than either of us.”
Valdés looked through the window toward the central spine.
“That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
Shaw nodded.
“Yes.”
For the first time, the transfer of authority she had accepted on Earth felt close enough to acquire faces. Somewhere in these files might be a person who would help write the rules under which she herself would work.
She found the thought comforting.
Valdés noticed that she had kept one page apart from the rest.
“Your appointment?”
“The civil transition clause.”
“Are they replacing you?”
“Eventually the people here will need a government. That is not the same as replacing a faulty pump.”
“And you?”
She considered the pressure corridor beyond the window.
“I may still be useful. But useful is not a claim to command.”
She returned the clause to its folder. There were room assignments to settle, supplies to allocate and an arrival plan to approve. Preparing the settlement to govern itself began with getting those things right.