Finches of Mars

She did not move. She dripped.

Katie was simply an icy pinnacle. A rocky spike adorned with a garment of multiple frosts. A thing to be hated rather than loved.

‘Oh, don’t do this,’ Simpson begged.

He looked round in despair. The world was empty. High above, a tiny distant spark moved.

‘You must be Swift … Named by Jonathan Deimos.’ He spoke in a whisper. He had enlisted for this venture to escape his loneliness after his wife’s death. But here it was echoing with loneliness: a whole planet full of it …

He found himself looking about, eyes half closed, dreading to see something, nothing. His wife would never visit Mars. This was a place of which God had never heard. So it had remained vacant and unwanted. Up For Sale. He fell to his knees.

It was impossible to say how greatly his way of life had changed since Kate had died.

He lay in a kind of paralysis. Absurd to say he did not care about Kate; absurd not to say how much more … interesting … life had become.

Suppose it had been Katie just now and he who was dying. Dying in the snow …

Prestwick was leaning over him. He asked, ‘You all right, mate?’

Simpson returned to consciousness as if from the depths of an ocean. ‘What a dream! What a hellish place Mars is! Why should anyone want to come and live here? It’s like a fucking cemetery.’

Prestwick remarked on the noise Simpson had been making, and advised him to take another sleeping pill, before changing the subject. ‘Do you remember when astronomers thought there was a major planet out beyond Pluto? Then they said it didn’t exist, but instead there was a planet they called Eris. They’ll be trying to get to Eris next. It’s beyond the Kuiper Belt.’

Simpson made nothing of this, his mind being still filled with the sludge of his dream. ‘Jesus, I could do with a drink. The bastards might have granted us a bottle of rum.’

‘Ah, but rum costs. The bastards didn’t send us here to drink.’

‘Sodding teetotallers, that’s what …’

Silence fell between them until Prestwick pressed a button on the robotruck. ‘Get us two coffees, will you?’

‘Coming up.’

When Prestwick spoke again, he sounded rather tentative. ‘They are certainly paying us well enough for this job. I’m still paying off putting my two boys through college. But there have always been aspects of this job I hate.

‘For instance, if this UU project goes through, religion on the planet will be banned. Anyone getting here will have to be atheists.’

‘They can give the place to the devil for all I care.’

Prestwick hunched himself up in his bunk. ‘No, look, I want to talk seriously. We’ve got on okay. Now I’m a bit older, I start to try to think more deeply. Needs, regrets, desires … The way the impression section of your brain works. As a youngster, I was always too busy getting laid. Remember when we first met in Chile? I picked up – or I was picked up by – a woman who called herself Carmen. It was intended to be a one-night stand, but somehow we got a liking for each other. It was odd. Suddenly from impersonal to personal. She had a nice laugh.’ He was thinking, No one as yet has ever laughed on Mars …

‘Carmen! I’d do anything for a laugh in those days. I caught a rickety old coach out to her place. She held my hand with her rough hand. My hand so smooth – two worlds meeting – I felt a bit ashamed. Anything foreign excited me. I always had a hard on.

‘Carmen lived in a little village outside Santiago. She’d come into the city pro tem because she heard there were foreigners visiting and she thought that a bit of whoring could raise some necessary cash. So it did. But her place … She was dog poor, poor darling. She lived in one room and next door was a sort of lean to – a stall with a corrugated iron roof where she kept a little cart and a donkey on a tether.’

‘You and your memories!’ Simpson scoffed. ‘At least it’s better than you moaning about the constipation, and your sodding painful testicles!’

‘I can’t tell you how excited I was to be there with her. This was the real world – even to the extent that I got a mild dose of the clap off her. We slept on cushions. She had had a bloke, but he had left her directly the baby was born. Her ma looked after the kiddie when Carmen was away. And she fed the donkey. Her old mum knew what bastards men could be.

‘Carmen took it all in her stride. Massive good nature. Heavy but neat little tits with stretch marks. She expected men to be shits who would leave their women to make out and bring up the kids. She worked hard as a carrier with her little donkey cart … Oh, sorry, Henry, I’ve got carried away, going on like this. It was just such a – oh, a rich experience.’

‘I wonder what percentage of women live more or less as Carmen did. There are plenty worse places than Santiago,’ said Simpson.

‘The way she looked at you when you woke in the morning. Eyes like a lioness … Christ, I should stop this. I’m going on for sixty – not a kid any more. But some women you never forget.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Simpson, yawning. ‘I had rather a posh hotel tart when we were in Santiago. Delicious in bed, but she meant nothing to me. Warm enough inside but cold outside.’

The coffee arrived in two small sealed plastic cups.

‘The point I’m getting at,’ said Prestwick, as he sipped the flavourless liquid, ‘is that Carmen knew nothing. She knew nothing of all this vast heap of cleverness we know all too well. The whole urban thing. Yet she knew so much we don’t know. When there would be an hour’s electricity, where the river water ran pure, how the old donkey was feeling today, how you mended an axle, how to shit and piss without giving offence, how to have a little fire without burning the fucking place down, how to bake … oh, a thousand things. All to do with survival. How to keep in with the priest. A priest whom I met, by the way. Priests are always ill-spoken of, but this priest was a real holy man. He’d help if Carmen had a spot of trouble with the donkey’s hooves, for instance.

‘If Carmen or her ma complained, he’d say, “Never mind, Jesus got himself crucified for less …”

‘I had a chance to talk with this priest. His name was Festa, or so I seem to remember. You see, I still recall it after all these years. He said that men were fools. They did not respect women, the givers of life. He said there were some women who had special qualities. He named Carmen as an example. He said, there was a comfort – that was his word – a comfort when you thought about her. Not sexual attraction, because as a priest he should not experience sexual attraction. But even when she was away, still that feeling of comfort.

‘Comfort. We were drinking the local wine. He said, this priest said, without thinking, that sometimes he woke in the night and burned with desire for Carmen. I was sleeping with her. I knew well what the poor fellow meant …’

Prestwick paused.

‘But after all, so many women …’ He let the sentence trail away into the godless night. ‘I felt we’d got it wrong – the West. I mean, got it wrong.’ He lapsed into silence.

‘I make it sound as if I lived in that village for years. I was only there for two days. I didn’t like the rats. We’ve gotten so squeamish. But somehow Carmen – really the whole place, I guess – it started working on my mind.’

Simpson said, simply, ‘I envy you.’

‘Carmen …’ Silence fell between them, except for the sipping noises.

‘I see what you mean,’ said Simpson eventually. ‘Yes. The place sounds like a film set. The Simple Life. But what if you get ill? Or your kids? And her ex – miserable slob. Did she get the clap attended to?’

‘I couldn’t live there. Nor could you, I imagine. I got my dose cleared up back home.’

Simpson was reluctant to enter into further conversation. ‘Let’s switch the recorder off, shall we?’ he suggested, but hesitated as Prestwick continued, undeterred.

‘I couldn’t – we couldn’t live in Chile. Ghastly place, ghastly politics, to be honest. We owe a whole heap to the Magna Carta. But just think of the world we do live in. We’re inculcated, if that’s the word I want. Inculpated? Our minds – well, look, as far as we know our brains were jerry-built over the ages from brains of – crikey! – brains of sea monsters – sea monsters and then, later, a form of ape. And for all endeavours–’

Simpson groaned. ‘Stop it right there, Bob. I’m sick of being told we’ve all come down from the trees. We are no longer apes and there’s the difference. Did you ever meet an ape who was a hydrologist? A president of a bank, okay, but not a hydrologist.’

‘No, no, I wasn’t off on that tack, mate. I was going to say that, thanks to Charles Darwin and others, we have been released from the Old Testament. I rejoice in that. We came from simple villagers, believing Earth was the centre of the universe. The prospects of evolution are far more thrilling than almost any other theory ever dreamed up …

‘But … we seem still to need faith. A faith. Any faith. And I suspect our brains – urh! the brains of modern man – are stacked full of an erroneous faith. Office bumf … Faith in information. Information about everything, anything. Its birthday may have been the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, way back when.

‘Since about then, we have craved to know … quantum theory, mass, energy, time, space, neurons, protons, DNA, cosmology, geology, the credit card, the simple screamer. All bits of information sprawling about our desks. These constitute our faith. God the Father, God the Son, etc., have been banished in favour of – what, exactly? Well, the Economy, the godless, thankless Economy …

‘And like the faithful anywhere, any time, we don’t realise how much it all costs to the human spirit.

‘Carmen – a Catholic, she was paying with the clap. So are we, mental clap, exile on Mars …’

‘You’re ranting,’ Simpson wanted to say, but refrained.

Henry Simpson was unaccustomed to discussions of this kind. It was true that after the death of his wife he had gone less frequently to the golf club and more often to an art club, where all kinds of matters were discussed, but he was still reluctant to enter into argument with Prestwick. He said, in a way that seemed feeble even to himself, ‘But we have so many advantages. I was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s, but it was cured. We’ve put the past behind us for present advantages, surely …’

‘You don’t like talking about the past, just as you don’t like the thought of being descended from apes?’

Simpson was beginning to feel strained. He spoke with some anger. ‘I read novels of the present day. I doubt if I’d read a novel of the Tenth Century, even if there was such a thing.’

Prestwick produced a paperback of an old-fashioned kind and pressed his light to burn brighter.

‘Henry, would you mind if I read you a bit of something? It’s a life of a woman of the Twelfth Century, written later, after her death. I brought it with me although I’ve read it a coupla times before. It fascinates me because the lives it depicts are so different from ours of today, and yet both different and similar. It’s the life of a woman who became known as Christina of Markyate.’

‘I may fall asleep,’ Simpson warned.

‘Don’t worry. I shall kick you if you do. This young lady who became known as Christina lived her life as a virgin. Different from today, different from my Carmen. Anyhow, that’s what she did, what she was determined to do. She became a “Bride of Christ”. Not that he ever seemed to take a blind bit of notice of her.

‘She was a bright girl, her parents were as difficult as could be, in quite a modern way. So this modest and deeply religious girl became betrothed to one Beorhtred. She had been tricked and openly swore she would not be defiled by Beorhtred’s carnal embraces. Not likely today!

‘Her father drags her before the Prior, who asks, “Why should you bring this dishonour to your parents?”’

Simpson looked out into the Martian darkness, where stars burned, and kept silent.

‘Christina’s answers are splendid; she says to the Prior, “You who are supposed to excel in the knowledge of scripture, must judge how wicked a thing this would be, should my parents enter me into a marriage I never wanted, and make me unfaithful to Christ, He who knows of the vow I had made in my childhood.”’

Stifling a yawn, Simpson said, ‘She may speak well, as you say, but those were lives lived on false premises. All very well for the Twelfth Century, not now.’

‘What I’m trying to argue is that, yes, the premises were false, but no less false are the premises of today. Shall I continue?’ Prestwick tweaked a page.

‘Her parents, as the book says, “did not know how to see beyond worldly possessions”. That has a contemporary ring about it, wouldn’t you say? But at every instant, despite the cruelty of her parents, she remained, as she always said a “Bride of Christ”. A virgin, in fact.’

‘Nowadays, she would have treatment for frigidity,’ said Simpson, with a grin. ‘Jesus, it’s uncomfortable here. You can’t even scratch your arse on this bunk.’

‘Yes, and these days her parents would be judged guilty of violence against their daughter. But the daughter would nevertheless be harmed. We read of such cases in the screamers every day.’

‘Well, cut it short. What happened then?’

‘Bad bishops have never been a novelty. With the assistance of one of them, Beorhtred gained power over her. He jeered at Christina in his hour of triumph. She asked him a question. “Tell me, Beorhtred, and may God have mercy on you, if another were to come and take me away from you and marry me, what would you do?” To which he replied in brutish fashion, “I wouldn’t put up with it for a moment as long as I lived. I would kill him with my own hands if there were no other way of keeping you.”

‘So she replies – I love this – she replies, “Beware then of wanting to take to yourself a Bride of Christ, lest in His anger He slay you.”’

Simpson gave a laugh. ‘She was quick-witted at least. But “Bride of Christ” …? Who’d believe that today?’

Prestwick answered sadly, ‘No one would. Today most teenage girls in the West have lost their virginity by the age of fifteen and think well of themselves for having done so.’

‘So I suppose your Christina went to live in a nunnery …’

‘Where else would she have gone for safety in those days? Or now?’

Silence fell between the two men. Then Simpson said. ‘At least we treat women better now.’

He felt he had scored a point there.

Operation Horizon delivered a positive report to the executive council of the United Universities. Subterranean channels had been charted, and a reservoir containing plentiful H2O of unknown quality. A map of the area on the Tharsis Shield accompanied their report, with waterways depicted like blue veins.

It was the verdict of the two hydrologists making the report that this area would be a suitable site for the settlement to be established, at least as far as water supply was concerned.

This report provided the necessary impetus for the development of this great and unprecedented enterprise – the colonisation of Mars.

A surveyor by name Moses Barrin was immediately hired to draw up sites for proposed Martian settlements known as towers. His instructions were to demarcate a site where six small habitations could be established. He used maps created from data from both Operation Horizon and even the now ancient NASA vehicle Curiosity. Barrin was to be among the first humans sent to colonize Mars.

The Message, newspaper of the Vatican, warned of the moral dangers of venturing onto a planet where Jesus Christ had never trod.

Several screamers showed cartoons of Jesus wandering alone, asking, ‘Where’s someone to save?’

4

Final Journey

The report of Martian water running underground did much to excite public interest in the project, and to stir the involvement of the universities. There was less talk of trips to Mars being ‘madness’. In Chinese cities new factories were manufacturing ‘space planes’.

The United Universities, from the original three, had expanded to thirty-one signatories, consisting mainly of universities or departments of universities situated in the United States of America, Britain, Europe and China. Other universities were drawn in as by a magnet, tempted in the main by the two hydrologists’ positive report on Tharsis.

Soon there existed a world-wide body of growing strength and ubiquity which stood in defiance of what the British Foreign Minister had described as ‘the New Dark Ages of Technofrolic’. After renewed Beijing scrutiny, the charter was revised with fresh restrictions: In addition to the ban on any proposed traveller to Mars with a known religious background, there were to be no travellers above forty-five years old (with certain rare exceptions). Signing members guaranteed to supply regular six-monthly contributions to a central fund. In exchange, signatories were entitled to receive directly any fresh scientific discoveries from Mars.

The news of the hydrologists’ discovery had travelled faster than their ship. The names of Simpson and Prestwick were already forgotten by the media by the time the automatic call sign on their tiny returning ship sounded at Luna Lookout. Luna signalled the vessel to come in.

No reply was received.

An emergency ship was sent up. This space plane had been manufactured in nine days in the city of Chenggong, an urban development of forty-nine million people.

The Aquabatic, with its freight of the two hydrologists, was gaining speed, heading towards the Sun. The rescuers locked on to its hull, sending a sequence of calls to those within. They went unanswered.

A request for instruction was sent to Lookout. Lookout signalled Chicago-Emergency. Chicago advised immediate entry of ship by men in emergency equipment.

A hole was cut in the Aquabatic’s hull and a man by the name of Will Donovan, suitably masked, forced his way in. There he found the bodies of the two hydrologists lying in the cramped living quarters, Prestwick on his bunk, Simpson sprawled face-down on the floor. Both men had been dead for several weeks.

A discolouring heliotrope showed on their skins and faces. An argument was conducted between ship and ground station; the bodies ought to be left where they were, to make their final journey into the Sun undisturbed – the public must not be alarmed by these unanticipated deaths. Alternatively, the bodies should be encapsulated and brought to Hospital Luna under conditions of secrecy, for research purposes.

This was the view that won the day. The corpses were transferred to the rescue ship. Remaining behind to be forever lost were recordings of their vellicative memories. The Aquabatic was left to drift on its course towards the Sun.

The mystery illness that had stricken the hydrologists served as a warning that it was not simply from the void that dangers could strike. Humanity carried with it many metabolic organisms that eluded interrogation.

At least the disaster led to more cautious preparation for large vessels attempting the gulfs of space. Any person going aboard was subjected to rigorous medical examination which included a period of quarantine.

A rocket named Zubrin was the second piece of UU hardware to cross the approximately 50 million miles to Mars. All launches, including this one, were scheduled to take advantage of the best possible mutual orbits. More advanced than the hydrologists’ ship, it carried on board no living thing, only an android robot of some size and strength. The android survived both the flight and the landing, whereupon it proceeded to unload building materials, emergency food rations, and some tanks of oxygen, in preparation for future settlers.

‘For my next trick …’ as the android would have said, had it the wit, Zubrin turned itself into a drill and began to drill down through the regolith in the expectation of hitting subterranean water.

All this in preparation for the arrival of human beings, poor frail biological constructs who would need water – and much else besides. Later, later … Politics thrives on delays.

First of all, the UU, still developing and having now signed up Moscow University, pursued the programme known as D&D (standing for Distance and Danger). The distance problem was regarded as a ten-month ordeal, sometimes less. It had to be endured between Earth and Mars. New faster space planes were cutting journey times. Humans back in the Paleolithic age had accustomed themselves to dealing with distances, when hunter-gathering enforced ceaseless movement of groups and tribes. The challenge of distances in space was met by the development of a plasma drive, instead of a chemical drive, which made journeys faster and a good deal safer.

There still remained among the dangers exposure to radiation during the journey. Three forms of radiation were known, protons emanating from the Sun, heavy ions from cosmic rays, and the newly discovered normon, radiating from the Oort Cloud. (At this time, the normon was regarded as benevolent, indeed as a helpful propagator of microscopic life on early Earth.)

If shielding were added to the space vehicle it would slow its progress, prolonging time of exposure. Cataracts and cancers would still occur. For at least another century, the visit to Mars was generally regarded as a one-way trip. Only Barrin was to make it both ways.

Still, there were those, and not the most foolhardy either, who spoke out to say it was necessary to leave Earth, an Earth by now riddled, like death watch beetles in old timber, with threats including random procreation (now recognised as another contribution to global warming), new super-bugs, missile systems, and hostile and distraught dictatorial states. Supposing the pioneers were to die on Mars: they were already on what Hamlet had termed ‘a place from whose bourn no traveller returns!’ Corpses would be wrapped in polythene and left to mummify by an outer wall.

The first arrivals, sponsored and supported by UU, found themselves suffering from many lesser maladies which light Martian gravity did little to heal. Brave hearts had had less reason to pump strongly in the weightlessness of the journey. Bones and muscles had been weakened, despite rigorous exercise-routines compulsory on the trip.

Broken bones were frequent – but lo! The miracle! There one stood on the planet Mars – even if only with a crutch! Space anaemics, deficient in red blood cells, vied with the crippled for beds in temporary Martian hospital wards. Even injured, they set machines to building permanent bases, the towers – all under the watchful eye of Barrin.

Six towers now stood on the Tharsis bulge. Some towers were taller than others, some more substantial, depending on UU contributions. There were connections between all of these outposts of humanity and also, inevitably, some mistrust, the dregs of old hostilities. In the settlement, West and Chinese were closest and in friendly communication.

For stay-at-homes, photographs of the half-dozen buildings standing in defiance on the Tharsis Shield were as popular as studies of Earth seen from Moon had once been, or kittens wearing ribbons still were.

5

The Shape of the UU

Mangalian had had a say in the positioning of this, the settlement, and even the universal sale of its photographs. Under his guidance, the UU’s Mars enterprise progressed rapidly.

He showed undoubted flair. NASA/Beijing had a stable organisation with a patient professional ability to plan projects which would not come to fruition until years later. The UU formed a union with NASA, and benefitted from this planning. The UU/NASA union instigated a raft of interviews and examinations, dedicated to continuous selection of those of either sex prepared to prove themselves good citizens of a distant planet. Only the educated and adventurous need apply. ‘The wise and the wild,’ as news shriekers had it.