Finches of Mars (7 page)

11

A Belated Announcement

At 6:30 was the daily Brightener, the meeting of experts, informal, information being passed on. Speculation. Jokes, even.

‘Why are Martians so light-hearted?'

‘Because on Earth they have weightier matters.'

‘Why are Martian men not so light-hearted?'

‘Because as Martian dwellers they have lighter members.'

General chat spread round the table. Aymee was first to call for general attention.

‘It's really not my field, if we can claim to have fields on Tharsis, but I was thinking about the used supply rockets, just lying around. Wasted! Since we are stretched for finances, why can't we launch them back empty into a Lunar orbit, to be overhauled and used again?'

‘We don't have any launchers this end, Aymee.' So said Troed, the deep-voiced chief engineer.

‘Can't we build one with assistance from the other settlements?'

‘You might have something there, Aymee,' said Daark. Aymee fluttered her eyelids at him, expressing gratitude for his support. ‘After initial costs—' He was punching his watputer.—‘Building a launcher and so forth … yes, UU could reclaim the supply rockets lying idle for reuse. Save over 7.5 million per flight …'

‘So then we'd maybe get better quality food stocks.' So said Daark, without the need for further computation. Aymee smiled with delight at her cleverness.

That comment sent smiles all around the table, until the dark-haired slender Noel, immaculate as usual—often known behind her back as ‘Know-All'—raised her hand to speak. Noel was cousin to Barrin­ now a guest of the UU on Earth. She hadn't shared her knowledge­ that, from the medical reports, it was likely that Barrin was dying even as she spoke.

She said she wished to engage the group in a discussion of the childbirth crisis on Tharsis.

Immediate silence fell. Everyone knew that this was a serious subject, more pressing, more distressing, than the used rocket cases.

‘You will all know someone who has carried a child, only to have it die at or just before birth. We're all busy here, occupied with so many things. Perhaps you have not registered the fact that no living child has yet been born in our tower. Not to live, without full life-support, for more than a few minutes …'

She repeated her phrase. ‘No living child,' tapping the table with her forefinger for emphasis.

‘This is the most tragic matter we could possibly face.

‘All children have either been stillborn or have been on their last gasp as they emerge from the womb, dying within four minutes, or in one exceptional case fifteen minutes. The life of Sheea's baby was prolonged artificially. It was no more healthy than the others. Eighty-six of our progeny have died.'

‘Don't you think we'll adapt? We've adapted in other ways already—breathing is far easier than when I first arrived.' Daark looked concerned as he spoke, as if not believing his expressed optimism.

‘You think we should just hang around and everything will be okay? Women may be too old to conceive by then …'

Something like a united groan went round the table.

‘Surely you've got the numbers wrong, Noel?'

‘That can't be right? What does the midwife say?'

‘Is it the doctor's fault?'

‘The midwife's?'

‘The father's?'

‘Or the mother's?'

‘It
must
be something the mother's done wrong …'

‘I don't believe it,' said one of the astronomers in a hushed tone that indicated he did not want to believe it.

A woman took him up sharply. ‘Whatever you care to think, I'll tell you different. My little boy died only a week before he was due. It's a terrible grief, almost unbearable …'

Comments rattled round the room. Everyone was dismayed. The knowledge of so many stillbirths had been suppressed, even within the local wards. The images of Mars as a pure place, as a great desert not too far from holiness, had now been corrupted by a vision of desiccating corpses scattered like dead snail shells.

Lock and Ooma were on their way to the dormitory, agreeing that they must cooperate more closely with the other towers, when they came across Thirn, weeping childlike in a corner.

‘What is it?' Ooma asked. ‘Are you pregnant?'

‘No man here will have me. I'm too—I'm too shy for casual sex.' Thirn set up a wail. ‘I wish I were back on Earth …'

‘Nonsense, lass,' said Lock, who had been born in Estonia. ‘You're safe here. War on Earth is continuous. It rumbles from one area to another, like a thunderstorm.'

‘I hadn't thought of it like that,' said Thirn, sniffing. ‘So, what?'

‘Have you ever thought of anything?' The pair of them moved on.

12

Mulling Over Required

Months passed, with little change. Stocks of food, supplies of many medicaments, were getting low. But the report from Astronomy Local was that the great ship
Confu
was now just about ready for launch from its lunar orbit. Ready and waiting for its next journey to the Red Planet.

If that was a reason for hope, it was also a reason for anxiety.

The irrational had begun to pop up at the morning Brighteners. A woman known as Vooky suggested that since there was such a high preponderance of women on Tharsis, a language should be introduced used solely by women. And if literature would be needed, she would herself be prepared to translate Samuel Johnson's great novel,
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
.

A hubbub of agreement and dissent broke out. It was killed by a woman rising to say there had been such a language, called Nushu, flourishing mainly in the Chinese province of Hunan. It had been used for centuries but had died out. Nushu had come into being because of the oppression of women.

A woman known as Iggog said from the floor, ‘“Nushu”? Totally irrelevant! A fragment from a different umwelt! Here we are, endeavouring to live in a new umwelt trying to deal with a dire foetal disaster. If we fail, this entire enterprise also becomes stillborn.'

Ooma agreed. ‘Is the jinx with the foetus, or with the mother? Do we know that yet? Does the journey to Mars seriously and permanently affect our circulation and heart action? We don't even know that much.' A gloomy silence fell.

Iggog was a small woman of uncertain age. She had a curt manner and was prone to malicious gossip, but was unexpectedly gentle with the women who came anxiously to ask about that ever-discussed question of stillbirths.

‘There may be no cure, darlings. Remember what complex creatures you are. Somewhere along the rocky road of evolution, humans collected friendly bacteria which have become symbiotic with us, and live in our, pardon me, guts. Even those of you more diminutive than I'—she permitted herself a twinkle—‘are fully equipped with them. But they may prove to be slow to change, thus upsetting our entire reproductive systems.'

‘How long will that take?' one woman asked.

‘There are trillions of bifidobacteria—though I've never counted them—in the prettiest female gut. They keep us going, but where they will go themselves we can't tell. Nor can they. I'm sure it's just that the long voyage here has upset them.'

If you include bacteria, more genetic information is stored in the gut, male or female, than in the human genome. The importance of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is another question discussed among worried females. This long molecular strand could well have been an instruction hastily scribbled down on a human cell by some demi-god or other (although there is no holy scripture which happens to have mentioned it), but the inscription seems to have worked fairly well and is copied and transmitted from generation to generation.

Here again come those enchanting, enchaining questions. Supposing the DNA had been a little different? Why is it what it is?

We assume it is essential for the continuity of life. Yet among all the debris flying about in space, we find traces of an amino acid known as glycine, scattering like a light shower of rain on the planets of the solar system.

Glycine is a basic component of proteins without which our kinds of life could not exist.

Supposing the glycine shower falls everywhere … then the distant galaxies might well be thronging with life. Perhaps the camp fires burn more brightly in Andromeda, individual existences are longer, calmer, intellects sharper. A slant on eugenics of which we are never likely to have confirmation.

‘Message in last night. The Russos from Greenland have occupied Newfoundland.'

‘Really? What on Earth for? Is it important?'

‘I suppose it would be if you were a Newfoundlander.'

The human brain has its limitations. A resolution of the great eugenic mystery may not be possible. Questions lie in wait for answers. The trap is baited. There was a hope that some approach to some answers might be found on the arid shores of the planet Mars.

Meanwhile, humanity must mull over the discovery of our binary sun, with its orbit about the old sun of 1.5 light years. Many suns are binary; it is not understood why. Humanity has lived happily—or indeed miserably—for centuries without knowing it lived in a binary system. Do similar large revelations await?

It was because the brain has its limitations that there was no one entirely in command of the West tower. Indecision triumphing, Noel—to use her compname—was officially known as Director and Advisor. The compoutat had ears in every chamber in the tower, as well as its range of shriekers and squealers. Such was the pressure on housing that Noel had her bunk moved into the compoutat room. She was frequently the one who heard the news first, which naturally gave her a stronger say in things.

As it happened, Noel was an uncommunicative woman. She had grown up in a home for orphaned girls. She had always felt herself alone in an over-crowded world. While still immature, she allied herself with a man she had just met. She had not loved him, but was prepared to be an attentive partness. She found him violent and sexually overpowering—a brute who used his fists. She began working for Mangalian, who was gentle and liked to please women. She had won Mangalian's attention, and under his influence had become dedicated to the UU project. She studied hard and finally passed all the requisite tests for Martian exile, escaping from her unpleasant alliance.

On Mars she had the company of others, many of whom, like her, had suffered isolation in early youth, and in consequence had adapted to the chills of solitude. She was enthralled by Mars—or rather, more accurately, enthralled by the fact that she was living on this mysterious planet. Her guarded nature responded to the isolation of the Tharsis bulge.

Currently, she had to cope with a spread of depression in the West tower, brought about by the failure of children, emerging from the womb, to live. Dying. Flawed fatally, bringers only of grief.

These gynaecological fatalities had been the one great disaster no one had foreseen.

13

Some False Dispositions

The compoutat had just whispered in its lower mode of many people reduced to doing little but sit about and grieve for the deaths of so many babies. ‘I observe in particular the earth-born youth named Squirrel. He seeks out isolated corners. My reading is that he is in an extreme of sorrow or possibly guilt, and may be contemplating suicide. I would advise that someone should contact him. He is at present on your floor beside Closet Six.'

‘Thanks, Comp.' Noel decided to go to Squirrel herself. Before she could reach the door, someone buzzed from outside. She opened the door.

There stood a youth brimming with excitement, smacking left palm with right fist. She recognised it was Squirrel, although not from Comp's gloomy description. She exclaimed in surprise.

‘I want to speak to the compoutat; can I? I've just this moment had a brill idea.'

‘You know we can't have pets, Squirrel. Laws against them. Not enough to feed them on.'

‘No, it's not pets. Something heaps more slick than that.'

Of course Noel gave him access. He started off at once, declaring that what was needed was a kind of centrifuge or roundabout. Pregnant women could be whirled round in it for, say, two hours every day. Artificial gravity would be created, enough to set the foetus to building a stronger heart and bones.

‘Two hours, Squirrel! Wouldn't that make one terribly sick?'

‘You'd do an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon.'

‘Well. Let's go down and discuss your idea with the chief engineer. We'll see what he says.'

Troed, chief engineer, listened to Squirrel, lips pursed, not saying a word. Finally, he declared that the centrifuge might be a workable proposition. ‘We'll simulate it in the compoutat and see what it figures. Don't be too hopeful, lad.'

He called Squirrel two hours later. ‘We can make a prototype, okay. Problem is it will gobble up a lot of our electricity reserves. Take my advice, don't boast about this idea. Don't even talk about it, lad. If it gobbles up too much juice, the whole thing's off.'

A day's schedule began with the Brightener. All those not on urgent duty gathered for a morning's discussion of how things were going. The Brightener was intended to chase away any feelings of loneliness or despair. Defying the dire news of continual baby deaths, the objective was to be cheerful and positive, and to talk about future options; tales about how hard life had been on Earth were also welcome.

Those who had some current troubles preferably stowed them away and showed the brighter side of their personalities. A false disposition, it was found, could be zipped on like an overall; some women never took it off. And yet the problem of depression often worked its way into the talk, serpent-like, unobserved until it struck.

They could take their turn on Gerint's next expedition. Gerint was the man in charge of arranging monthly explorations of Martian territory. He was currently organising the next one; yet there were still some who feared the airless emptiness of the outside world.

People clung to their offices in preference to the barrens comprising the Tharsis bulge and beyond.

A middle-aged woman called Thirn, who ran a small stall on the ground floor in which UU tokens could be exchanged, spoke up. ‘Back when I was young, I used to have a stall on the sea front. I sold everything—spades, buckets, sticks of rock. Everything. It was fun. My brother helped. The holiday-makers could scarcely drag their kiddies away …

‘I was a shy little thing then. Still am.' She giggled. ‘I had a boyfriend once. He was called Terry Willington. I let him make love to me once at the back of the shop … It was over so quickly. I don't think he loved me.'

Weekly UU councils were held on Earth, and in some respects there were similar to the Brightener on Mars. One of the topics on this particular day began with a medical discussion. Bringing up what felt like almost irrelevant history, the unexpected deaths from dermatomyositis of Simpson and Prestwick, over a decade before, were discussed. No fully satisfactory explanation had ever been reached. The illness had attacked heart and lungs and destroyed the men on the trip back from Mars. The earlier hypothesis was that they had been carrying the virus of the disease with them on the expedition. In hindsight, it was almost certainly just the cumulative stress of the journey.

Although the lives of Simpson and Prestwick were well over, their presence lingered as part of history. Their old truck stood unrusting on the shield as their memorial.