My Interview with Teddy

"When I was a kid I used to look up at Mars in the night sky and wonder if we were ever going to get there." The old man's voice wavered a little, fluttered. Then he whispered, with a little laugh, "Seems like I got my question answered."

I just let him have his little joke. I had been pressing him a little forcefully, so I just sat back in the plush chair hoping that he would continue on his own. I had to wait a while, but he obliged. All I had to do is check and see if there was enough space on the recorder.

"We tried," he finally said. "We had tried so many times, but it seemed as if there was a -- well, it seemed like we had reached our limit."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Limit?"

"I grew up in a time when everything was possible. I don't mean that we were idealists -- although some of us were -- I mean that there was no such thing as impossible. If we failed at something, we just thought that we did something wrong -- if something failed it was a technical glitch, not because the thing couldn't be done."

"Did you think that coming here couldn't be done?" I asked, a bit incredulously.

"Was starting to feel that way. That's what I am trying to say. Before -- when I was much younger, we thought that if we could find the right technical solution -- whether it was better guidance or a faster computer or what have you -- we thought that everything was possible. And the only reason we failed was because we did something wrong."

"So you did think that you could land here?" I asked.

"No, dammit. Let me explain."

"I am just trying to understand," I said.

"Then let me finish a damn thought, for the love of God."

"Ok, I'm sorry."

"You kids are so impatient. Like you can't stand a single minute without some sort of… of... stimulus."

"Again, I am sorry, my friend," I pleaded. "Please continue."

"See, what I am getting at is that for the first time -- maybe in the history of mankind -- we started to think that we had set an impossible goal. We actually started to think that getting a person onto the surface of this rock -- alive -- was physically not possible."

"Really?"

"Yes really! That's a big deal."

"Deal?"

"Important," he said, losing his patience again. "See, we had had some pretty spectacular disasters, and there was this feeling among the scientists -- well, across pretty much the whole team -- that we had bitten off more than we could chew. But my wife, she just wouldn't let us quit."

"Madrid?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"Your wife's name was Madrid," I said.

"Yes."

I waited, but he was gone again. The whole interview was like that: moments of perfect clarity, and then he would suddenly drop into his own head. He would disappear. We had been in that room together for over an hour, and I felt like he was getting pretty tired -- I was getting tired myself and I wasn't nearly as old as he was.

To tell the truth, I just wanted to leave. I really disliked Mars. It seemed civilized enough, but I think something about the place disagreed with me. Every time I went there I got a little sick -- not sick enough to keep me from my work, but just sick enough to make my stay a little more miserable. This particular story, however, was very important to my editor, and I thought that if I wrote something that she really liked, I could choose the location for my next assignment. Besides, even if the old man was rude and incoherent at times, he was at least a little more entertaining than my last assignment at a zoo.

I sat for several minutes, but the old man was lost in his own world. He just stared at his feet, blinked and breathed heavily through his nose. He didn't seem all that special to me, despite what the history books said. He certainly didn't seem like a genius. They had told me to be careful; that he was clever and smart. My editor had warned me that was fond of entrapping interviewers. But to me, he just seemed like an old man with a failing mind.

"Madrid," he said suddenly, making me jump in my chair a little.

"Your wife?" I asked. I wasn't sure if he was lucid again so I waited for an answer.

"She had two doctorates in physics," he said. "She was extremely smart. A real brainiac."

"She died?"

"On the way out here," he said, looking up. "You didn't ever meet her?"

"I never had the privilege," I said.

"No, I suppose you are too young," he said. Then he put a shaky hand up to his mouth and said, "She was damned good looking."

I had seen pictures of his wife and had read a few articles about the couple when I had done the background for this interview. Madrid was the old man's life companion. They worked, ate and slept together. They were a perfect team for the Mars program: she a physicist and he an engineer. There were no children. She died when there was a fire aboard the Alistair-Six spacecraft in route to Mars. The captain had vented the atmosphere from the living quarters where the fire had originated. The old man's wife had been in that section of the ship, and he'd watched while she was hurled into space right along with the fire.

"We had waited years and years to get the assignment -- there were many times when I thought that we had gotten too old or something. I think we were passed over, maybe, seven times. But it was a good thing -- providence -- because each one of those seven was a spectacular disaster." After a moment he said, "She was on my team, you know."

"Yes," I said, "I know she was. So, tell me, what was the problem?"

"There was a fire."

"No. I know there was a fire, but I was talking about the Mars program. What was the problem that kept your team from landing on Mars?"

"The atmo in the Alistair had a high oxygen content. Burns fast. She had no chance and -- You know, I don't blame the captain. Lots of people said that I did, but I don't. It had to be done to save us all. Besides, he was being kind -- it was better that she died seeing stars. Hell, I'd have done the same thing had it been his wife."

"He was never married."

"Who?"

"The captain. Captain Severant. He was never married."

"I don't know. No. Anyway, I'm just saying."

I was confused. So I tried to bring us back. "So what was the one thing that kept you from landing on Mars -- a technical thing?"

"Technical. Well, technically we were stupid," he said, and chuckled at his own joke. "Look, we had learned a lot from the landers -- the robotic ones -- the landers we sent. But see, they all came down pretty fast -- bounced and so on. But you can't put a human in there. They would get pulverized. So, even though getting there was hard -- like trying to stick a dart into the sharpened end of a pencil from a thousand miles away --"

"Yes, I can see that."

"-- Landing was harder. See, we just couldn't get it into our heads that Mars was nothing like Earth. We kept trying to adapt landing technology intended for the moon --"

"Like parachutes."

"Rockets. Parachutes don't work in zero atmosphere."

"There's an atmosphere on Mars," I said.

"There is none on the moon."

"But we are talking about Mars," I said, getting confused again.

"You stupid? We are talking about Mars -- but see we couldn't see past the things we had learned from going to the moon. We were idiots. We couldn't see what was obvious. We would test the thing, and then it wouldn't work when we got it to Mars. A lot of people gave up their lives for the mission" He became distant again. So I hurriedly asked him a question in the hope to keep him present.

"So what was different? What happened?" I said, knowing the answer.

The old man looked straight at me, his reddening eyes drilled into me. He said, "You happened. That's what happened. You found us."

"Are you saying that you would have never reached Mars had it not been for the intervention of our people?"

"No, that's not what I am saying – Well yes, I guess it is, but not in that way. You were like the big brother showing up just in time to help the little brother do his homework."

It was an interesting comparison. I had never thought of our species as a big brother, although as soon as he said the words, it rang true for me.

"So you think of us as a big brother? That's kind of flattering," I said.

"The hell you say!" the old man snarled.

"What?" I asked. "You don't think of us as brothers? But you just said --"

"I know what I said," the old man barked.

"I don't understand," I said, at the same time I had the thought that I would never understand the human people.

"Look here," the man said. "If I would have known --"

"What? If you would have known what?" I asked.

"I don't think -- well -- I don't want to make you angry," the man said.

"Just tell me," I said. Then I lost him again. He drew his eyes upward, staring at the clear dome roof of his small apartment, but I could tell that he didn't see anything. The whole thing was very frustrating for me, not to mention that I was going to need to produce a story about this old man. His 127th birthday was coming up, and they were going to highlight him: the oldest human.

I didn't stand a chance of getting anything from him. I was frustrated and began thinking that it had been a waste of time to even come out here. Besides, by the time I got back I would have to rewrite the thing as an obituary. That's when I decided to leave. I stood up and started packing my recording equipment and he suddenly became right again.

"When I was a young boy," he said, his eyes still searching out past his dome into the Martian night sky. "When I was a boy I used to look up at Mars and wonder if we would ever get there. Now, I have been here for ninety years. I can see now. I see it all clearly now."

"What do you see," I asked, clicking on my recorder again.

"I see. What I did was wrong. So very wrong," he said achingly.

"What did you do?"

"I said yes. A small word. Funny. And after that, you came in your giant ships with your giant guns -- friendly at first, huh? But had I known that asking you for help -- saying yes to your offer would have cost so much."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean that you and your kind gave us Mars, it is true," the man said, getting more and more agitated. "You gave us Mars but what did you take? What did you take from us?"

"Nothing. We took nothing," I said defensively.

"You took our way of life. You gave us technology that could land us safely on Mars, but I opened the door, didn't I? It was me, wasn't it?" he said almost yelling. "If I would have said no thanks, you would have gone away, perhaps. You would have left us alone."

"Why? We were here already. The technology had nothing to do with it."

"Tech Exchange," the man screamed, his voice sounding weary but full of bitterness. "You remember Tech Exchange?"

"It was before my time," I said, but I knew what it was. Everybody knew what it was.

"Little trades here and there. This for that. Bit for byte," the man said. "We were so far behind you, there was nothing to exchange. So you slipped your tentacles into our government and into our way of life and now we are a conquered people."

"What are you ranting about," I said, losing my objectivity. "All we did is make things better for you. Stopped the wars. Stopped you from blowing each other into extinction."

"Bah!" the man said, turning away. "All you did was take away our culture. You took what made us human."

"War! That's what makes you human, war?"

"No. Well, yes, sometimes. Fighting is part of us, though I am ashamed to admit it," He looked up at me and I could tell he was sincere. "See," he said more calmly, "we never had it in our mind to live out our lives here, on Mars."

"That's not my fault."

"It is your fault. Your father's fault and your mother's fault -- or rather the thing that hatched you or grew you or however you do it -- what I mean is that your people needed the salt from our sea and so you came to Earth. Certainly humans can't live there anymore."

"You are free to go anywhere you like. You can go back to Earth. Anytime you want. I'll even get you a ticket."

"Really? Where would I go, supposing for a moment that I could travel?" he asked piously.

"Anywhere."

"How about San Francisco?"

"You know that was destroyed. Be reasonable," I said.

"Ok. How about Detroit or Leningrad or London or Helsinki or Mexico City?" he growled, counting on his fingers.

"Those human cities are gone, you know that. There was a war, sir. A war --"

"And we lost!"

"You lost nothing," I argued. "We have paid and paid for those losses. We have educated you and given you new cities -- a whole new planet, in fact."

The old man just looked at me and mumbled something in the old human language that I didn't understand. So I asked him to translate it for me.

"I don't think I want to translate," he said.

"Please. It's not fair."

"Fair!" he said and started to laugh. "It's not fair that I speak in English. That's perfect. That's exactly it! By taking our language you thought you could take away our ideas."

"We just want you to be happy. Everyone who is human -- we want them all to be happy."

"You want to know what I said just then? Do you? I said, ' It's your good intentions that are keeping us enslaved.' "

That was when I lost him for the last time. His eyes drifted up to the ceiling again and his breathing became heavy and regular.

The article that I wrote started like this:

The human is a proud species, with a tenacious and resilient culture. Ninety years ago, the human society was at an apex: their ideas had exceeded their ability to achieve them. Their culture was in decline, and they were beginning to believe that they had reached the end of their civilization. Had the Rdonclains not come at that moment in human history, humans would be nearly extinct today.

That is a claim for which this writer will certainly be rebuked, but a claim that can also not be denied. The resettlement of Mars after the war was not the cruel displacement of an indigenous people, as so many would argue. It was their destiny, the next step in the advancement of their culture. Had we not intervened the human society would have eventually been reduced to bands of roaming bipeds, scavenging the carcass of a collapsed society.

I recently had an occasion to travel to Mars to interview Theodore "Teddy" Smalls. Smalls is officially the oldest living human and the last surviving veteran of the human space program. At 127 years old Smalls is still feisty, irreverent, intelligent and insightful. His opinion was very surprising. Mars Reservationists have been hostile toward our people in the past, but his attitude was quite refreshing.

In that interview he told me, "[The Rdonclains] were like the big brother showing up just in time to help the little brother do his homework." He believed that prior to our arrival humans had begun to lose hope -- they had started to think that the possible was actually impossible. But when our people began to exchange technology with the humans, it opened new doors for them.

Smalls did not know what or who started the war between our peoples: historians can hash that out. But for the oldest living human that discussion was moot. For him it was clear that the settlement of Mars was part of human destiny in the same way we believe that finding Earth, with her saltwater seas, was our destiny. Our stories, then, are of symbiotic providence. Without each other our cultures and societies would have passed into obscurity: they without the challenge of settling the Mars reservation, and the Rdonclains without the salt from the seas of Earth.