Finches of Mars. Brian Aldiss
‘I was wondering about our contentment,’ Aymee said. ‘If we weren’t under some odd compulsion to come here? Or if we’re not here and are experiencing some form of delusion? Reality can be rather tenuous up here.’
‘And not only here,’ said Rooy, chuckling.
Back on Earth, one of the screamers had run an opinion poll about the six towers in the Martian settlement. The towers were graded as follows:
CHINESE: MOST ELABORATE
WEST: MOST LEARNED
RUSS-EAST: MOST ARTISTIC
SINGA-THAI: MOST EXCLUSIVE
SCAND: MOST SPARTAN
SUD-AM: MOST EXOTIC
‘Maybe there’s something to be said for making it up as you go along,’ said Aymee. ‘How do “they” know what it feels like to be here?’
‘It’s nice to know we’re still in the news, however conjectural.’
‘Conjectural? More like a sideshow.’
‘I wake up every morning to marvel,’ said Rooy.
‘And sleep every evening to snore.’
‘Was it the twentieth century author, someone Burgess, who said, “Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you snore alone.”?’
‘Anthony, I believe. Anyhow, you’ve told me that one before.’
They fell silent. Something in the ambience of the prospect, engendered silence. Some found this ambience alarming, some a delight – if a delight of an uncertain kind.
It was Rooy who spoke next.
‘You know what I miss most?’ he said. ‘Rajasthan.’
‘Rajasthan!’ Aymee exclaimed. She had been born there of a high caste Hindu family. ‘Parts of Tharsis remind me of parts of Rajasthan.’
She thought only of the sandy reaches, where the odd goat might be found, and not of the fecund regions where deer ran and rutted among acacia trees.
The West tower loomed ahead of them. It did not stand alone. All told, the six towers had been built within sight of each other: not close enough to form an illusion of ‘togetherness’, yet still near enough to each other to make, as it might be, a statement of intent – that humanity had arrived at last, and was trying to form something more than a mere voice crying in the wilderness.
And those voices … The UU had created linguistic rather than political bases for each site.
A number of pipes led in from the wilds into the basement of the West’s building; the water they carried had been charted by Operation Horizon over a year previously. Methane plumes escaping from under the planetary crust were trapped to serve heating and cooking requirements. This development, as with the towers themselves, and the whole Mars enterprise, was funded by the UU. The settlement thus remained ever dependent on terrestrial liberality.
Liberality. Something else absorbed into the unceasing terrestrial power struggle: a tap easily turned off.
Confronting the grey tower, Rooy said, ‘Back to the subterranean life …’ He was a machinist and spent much of his life underground.
Once Aymee and Rooy were inside the confinement zone they could remove their masks and breathe shallowly. In a year or two – or maybe three – the modest area of contained atmosphere would have approached normal limits. The six towers stood in this zone under a large friction-stir welding dome; from this leaked an atmosphere consisting mainly of nitrogen, mixed with 21.15% oxygen. The circular zone guard retained most of the gas. Still, few people cared to stay unmasked outside the towers for long.
As Aymee punched in their code, she said, ‘Another new word needed there. “Subterranean” can’t be right.’
The gate was opened by the door guardian, a man called Phipp, who hustled the pair in. Guardianship was considered to be an important post. Blood, pulse and eyesight readings had to be taken by automatic machines within the martial confinement of the gatehouse before anyone from outside was allowed to move freely inside.
This entailed a delay of only 55 seconds, unless the automatics detected reasons for stoppage and possible treatment; nevertheless this precautionary delay was widely resented. Resented, although Mars imposed its own delay on the passage of time. Aymee and Rooy waited at the tower gate, hand in hand.
‘Sub specie aeternitatis – that’s us,’ said Noel, who had been elected more or less as Director of the West tower. ‘We have “aeternitatis” all round us in trumps. Our function is to occupy – what? – emptiness. And to discuss those abstract and vital questions that have vexed humanity since … well, since the first human-like babe fell out of a vague quaternary tree. Who would like to kick off?’
The woman to whom a terrestrial computer had allotted the name Sheea said, ‘Are we the elite or the rejects, Noel?’
Noel raised a delicate eyebrow. ‘I prefer to think of us as the elite.’
‘Here we are on Tharsis Shield, parked in six towers – we were so proud of being chosen for this extraordinary exile – is this indeed the honour we imagine it to be? Or do you think we have been dumped here so as not to interfere with the villainies brewing on Earth?’
‘Not a question you can usefully ask,’ said Noel. She spoke lightly, knowing Sheea faced the challenges of pregnancy.
The possibilities of a wise and peaceful terrestrial future had been destroyed by vicissitudes of fortune and the accidents of history. Only occasionally on the planet Earth do we find a nation at peace with itself and its neighbours. The quest for happiness – in itself not a particularly noble occupation – has in general been overcome by a lust for riot and slaughter. Violent and vengeful nations have arisen, seething with illiterates enslaved by ancient writings.
The more peevish the nation, the more primitive its preaching.
Occasionally one finds states where all seems quiet and without disturbance; these in the main prove to be police states, where disagreement is ruthlessly suppressed, and only the most powerful have freedom of movement to a limited degree.
On the planet Mars it is different.
But of course Mars is not over-populated.
The human settlement on Mars has its share of human woes. But here for once sagacity prevails, perhaps because the occupants of the various towers are so few, and have been so carefully selected.
Noel in her bed at night thinks always of the great Mangalian.
These chosen persons living on the Shield must succeed or die. They have signed a contract making it impossible for them to return to the planet from which, in either the name of advancement or adventure, they have voluntarily exiled themselves.
Many small restrictions apply here. Nothing may be wasted, not even human dung. No pets at all may be kept in the towers. Recreational drugs are not available, and may not be used if found.
The scarcity of oxygen and the increased distance from a volatile sun may contribute to the stability of the Martian venture. The mentality of these exiles, as we shall see, has been liberated by their freedom from belief in the dictates of an inscrutable god.
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