"We couldn't carry it far. The lab might roll close enough, we could get the strongest arbeiter up here ..."
I removed my slate and set it for visual record.
"Good thinking," Ilya said. He put a sample of the slime into a vial, capturing parts of the lacework as well.
"Do you think it's — " I began to ask.
"Don't even say it," he warned. "Whatever it is, it's a tricking wonder." He sounded like a little boy with a new toy.
I looked up at the curtains of gray, the sun dazzling through the clouds. This was as close as Mars could get to rain.
"It's just a fragment," Ilya said, trying to rock the piece of cyst in its cradle of pebbles and dust. "What can a fragment make? The whole ecos?"
He passed me the vial. As he took more samples, I stared at the lacework within the captured fluid. It measured no more than two centimeters across, as fine as gossamer. I had no idea what it was — a bit of cellular skeleton, a template for cytoplasm, a seed, an egg, a tiny little baby.
Perhaps a Martian.
Within two days of returning to Olympus Station, we were famous. Journals on LitVid and ex nets across the Triple lauded us for making an epochal discovery — the first viable, non-Terrestrial life discovered in our Solar System. That we had made the discovery on our honeymoon only threw petrol on the celebrity fires.
The discovery was more than a little embarrassing to the Martian science community. Ilya was a fossil hunter and areologist, a digger, hardly trained in biochemistry at all; there was considerable resentment, even skepticism, at first — that we should have been in the right place, at the right time, to witness a cyst bloom . . .
We spent much of the next two weeks accepting or dodging interviews. Messages flooded in: offers of vast fortunes for a whole cyst (Ilya did not personally own any of the cysts he had found — they belonged to Erzul, of course); requests for information from schoolchildren; offers to turn our story into LitVids and sims.
No one in the general public seemed to care that the plasm from the cyst died before we got it back to Olympus. The "Martian" degenerated in a few hours to simple proteins and monosaccharides, remarkable enough coming from clay and quartz and mineral-rich water, but hardly the stuff of romance.
We had demonstrated two things, however. The cysts might still be viable, and the genetic information for a Martian ecos was contained in the mineral formations within the cyst, locked in the minute intricacies of clay and quartz. There had probably never been extra organs to help ecos reproduction.
But cyst fragments could not reproduce even a portion of an ecos. Whole cysts were necessary.
Biologists could understand some of the process — but not all of it. The trick to reproduction was still elusive. Whole cysts simply did not respond to being doused in water. There was some combination of water, water-soluble minerals, and temperature that triggered the cysts, and the combination had existed in Cyane Sulci, but no attempt to duplicate those conditions in a lab worked.
Back in the sulci, the gray ice dust had long since broken down and soaked into the soil or evaporated; the snake-canyoned landscape offered no immediate clues. The moment had passed, and no cyst, buried or dug up, had germinated successfully.
Perhaps their time was over, after all.
I received a message from Charles.
Dear Casseia,
Congratulations on joining Big Science! How nice that you've stuck with fossils. I wish you and Ilya the best — I admire his work a lot. But this — !
Serendipity abounds.
My reply — brief and polite — went unanswered. I was frankly too busy to worry. My new life held many more satisfactions than my old, chief among them Ilya, who handled the brief nova of our celebrity with high wit. He was not self-impressed.
He answered mail to schoolchildren before he replied to scientists. I helped him frame the replies.
Miss Anne Canmie
Darwin Technical Pre-Form
Darwin, Australia GSHA-EF2-ER3-WZ16
Dear Anne,
I remember being very elated when we found the broken cyst, and saw that it was "coming alive." But both Casseia and I knew that there was so much more to be done, and frankly, we would not be the people to do it.
Your ambition to come to Mars and work on the cysts — what a lovely goal! Perhaps you will be the one to solve the problem — and it's a thorny problem indeed. Casseia and I have some hopes of reaching your part of the system some day. Perhaps we can meet and compare notes. (Attached: LitVid imprimatur, greetings to the students and faculty of Darwin Technical Pre-Form.)
The celebrity glow faded. We declined the sims and LitVid project offers, knowing few if any would have come to fruition, and we did not need the money. Erzul BM was doing well and I was being drawn back into management, and there would soon be little enough time for us to be together.
Being close to death had triggered something deep in me. It took me weeks to sort it out. I was subjected to a string of nightmares — dreams of choking, or ecstatic flight reduced to terror as I plunged into the red soil and smothered ... I sometimes woke beside Ilya, tangled in bedclothes, wondering if I would need some sort of therapy. But fear of our close call was not the cause of my nightmares.
I told myself I simply wanted to work at a job that kept me near Ilya and let me live the emotionally rich life of a lawbonded woman, and stay out of the LitVid glare wherever possible (something we had certainly failed at). Looking back, however, I see clearly that my surface wishes and my deep needs did not coincide. The lull after our crisis on Earth was just that — not a permanent state of affairs, but a respite, and no one could know how long it would last. If Mars was going to stand up against Mother Earth, no capable Martian could step aside and live a disengaged private life.
Ti Sandra kept hinting of larger plans.
I had learned on Earth that I had some small ability in politics; my nightmares were caused by the growing in me of a sense of responsibility. That new sense was certainly nurtured by Ti Sandra, but it was not planted by her.
Ilya would have been happy to have me share his trips and researches for the rest of our days, but I had already resisted . . .
Not that Ilya himself bored me. I loved him so much I was sometimes afraid. How would I live if I should lose him? I thought of my father after my mother's death, half his life drained, of his long quiet lapses into reverie when Stan and Stan's wife Jane and I visited, and his conversations always leading back to Mother . . .
There were hideous risks in love, but Ilya did not feel them. He focused so intently on his work that a long tractor ride through untraveled territory to reach a possible ancient aquifer (and, coincidentally, fossil site) caused him not a femto of personal worry. To be left alone, helping manage the Erzul businesses, while he went on such trips was more than I could stand. So more and more I distracted myself by taking consulting jobs away from Olympus Station, meeting with syndics and managers from other BMs, trading vague probes of intent with regard to the future shape of Martian economics and politics. Once again, members of the Council were trying to get the syndics to talk about unification. The air was rich with speculation.
Ilya did not worry about me when I was gone. When I accused him of not caring, he told me, "I enjoy your absences!" and when I pouted melodramatically, he said, "Because our reunions are so fierce."
And they were.
Legend surrounds many of these people now, but of all of them, Ti Sandra seemed most suited to be legendary, even then.
I saw her frequently in meetings held to vet the family business deals. We worked together well, and her husband Paul, Ilya, and I often dined together. Paul and Ilya could spend hours speculating about ancient Mars, Paul making wild and unfounded assertions — intelligent life, legends of buried pyramids, underground cities — and Ilya laughingly following a middle course.
Ti Sandra and I talked of a new Mars.
Ti Sandra promoted me to be her assistant — a move which made
me very nervous — and then appointed me as ambassador for Erzul to the five largest BMs.
"You're famous," she told me over strong jasmine tea in her office at Olympus Station. "You stand for something special about Mars, something our own that we all have in common. You're well connected, from Majumdar, with close relatives transferred to Cailetet." She was referring to Stan. "You have management and political skills. You've been to Earth — I never have."
"It was a disaster," I reminded her.
"It was a step in a long process," she rejoined. She spoke precisely, carefully considering her words, keeping direct eye contact. She had never been so serious before. "You seem happily married."
"Very," I said.
"And you seem to be able to spend some time apart from Ilya . . . working separately."
"I miss him," I said.
"I will be frank," Ti Sandra said. "Because of your fame, you can help me . . . and help Erzul. You might have noticed I am an ambitious woman."
I laughed. "You might have noticed I'm not," I said.
"You are very capable. And you do not always know yourself. There is a person inside you who wants out, and who wants to do things that are important. But the right occasion, the proper colleagues, have eluded you . . . have they not?"
I looked away, nervous at being so analyzed.
"I've read the reports from Majumdar about the trip to Earth. You did well. Bithras did not do so badly — but he had his weaknesses, and he stumbled, and that was all it took. If Earth had wanted to make an agreement with him, they would have regardless. So don't chastise yourself about what happened there."
"I stopped doing that a long time ago," I said.
Ti Sandra nodded. "Erzul is ready to do its job, as the circumstances seem right, and time will not wait for cowards to move. We are respected and conservative, Martian through and through. We are in a perfect position to act as catalyst; the district governors are in agreement on compromises with the BMs, we are all worried by overtures from Earth toward Cailetet and other BMs ..."
"You want to urge unification?"
She smiled broadly. "We can do it right this time. No back-office deals, advocates arguing only with each other. There should be a constitutional assembly, and all the people should participate . . . through delegates."
"Sounds very Earthly," I said. "BMs aren't used to airing family disputes."
"Then we should learn."
She described my duties. Most important, I would visit the syndics of the largest BMs on an informal basis and sound out their positions, build a base for a better designed and more widely acceptable constitution.
Erzul had nothing to lose by sponsoring a constitutional assembly — with all BMs invited, even those strongly connected to Earth. Earth, she was sure, would bide its time while we worked, exerting its pressures where it thought necessary to make the constitution acceptable . . .
"But we'll deal with those fingers when they poke," she said. She smiled broadly. "Two strong women, a stubborn and willful planet, and much impossible work between here and teatime. Are you with me?"
How could I not be? "We're crazy as sizzle," I said.
"Fickle as flop," she returned.
We laughed and shook hands firmly.
We would have been stupid to believe Erzul would be the only player in the game of arranging a constitutional assembly. Others had been working for some time. And, as always in human politics, some of these players were caught up in old theories, old ideals, old and pernicious doctrines. What political clothing Earth had outgrown was now being taken up by Martians and tried on for size.
The year we worked toward a constitutional assembly was a dangerous time. Elitists — some rehashing the politics of the Statists, others wrapping themselves in even more deeply stained robes of theory — believed fervently that the privileges of this faction or that, arrived at by historic and organic process — without plan — should be fixed in stone tablets, these tablets to be carried down from the mountain and announced to the people. Populists believed the people should dictate their needs to any individual who rose above the herd, and bring them low again — except of course for the leaders of whatever populist government took power, who, as political messiahs, would earn specific privileges themselves.
Religion raised its head, as Christians and Moslems and Hindu factions — long a polite undercurrent in Martian life, even within Majumdar BM — saw historic opportunity, and made a rush to the political high ground.
What we were working toward, of course, was the end of the business families as landholders and exploiters of natural wealth by squatter's rights. The imposition of the district governors and the weak Council had begun the process, decades before, but finishing it was horribly difficult. Institutions, like any organism, hate to die.
For six long and grueling months, Ti Sandra and I and half a dozen like-minded colleagues from a loose alliance of Erzul, Majumdar, and Yamaguchi, traveled across Mars, attending BM syndic meetings, trying to persuade, to deflect outrageous demands, to assuage wounded political and family pride, to assure that all would suffer equally and benefit hugely.
Some BMs, notably Cailetet, did more than just decline.
Cailetet had long been a peculiar rogue among Martian BMs. Originally a Lunar BM, it had extended a branch to Mars at the beginning of the twenty-second century, and that branch had kept strong ties with Moon and Earth. Cailetet grew faster than many Binding Multiples in those days, infused with cash from the Moon and Earth. Eventually, as the Moon was folded in Earth's arms, Cailetet became a speaker for Earth's concerns. For a time, a lot of money flowed from the Triple into Cailetet's reserves — money with a suspiciously Earthly smell.
Cailetet had absorbed and supported the Olympians, and had touted itself as a research BM, offering the finest facilities on Mars . . . But that had come to a sharp halt.
Now, it appeared that Earth wanted little more to do with Cailetet Mars. Money coming to the BM from Earth or Moon had slowed to a trickle; investment and development plans were canceled. Cailetet had served some purpose, and was cast aside. Understandably, the syndic and advocates of Cailetet Mars were bitter. They needed to re-establish their prominence, and Mars was the only economic and political territory where expansion was possible.
The syndic of Cailetet Mars died in 2180, just as Ti Sandra and I began our work, and was replaced by a man I knew only slightly, but loathed. He had returned from exile on Earth, had quickly established ties with Cailetet's most Earth-oriented advocates, and was nominated by them for the syndic's office a month after his predecessor's death. The voting had been close, but Cailetet's members responded to his overtures for the return of power and influence . . .
His name was Achmed Crown Niger. I had last seen him at the University of Mars Sinai, years before, dangling from the coattails of Governor Freechild Dauble. Dauble had put him in charge of the university during the uprising, actually superior to Chancellor Connor. With the collapse of the Statist movement, he had followed Connor and Dauble to Earth, redeemed himself with service to GEWA and GSHA, and returned to Mars married to a Lunar daughter of Cailetet. Crown Niger had finally, in a very short time, reached this pinnacle.
He was far more brilliant than any of the Statists, and unlike them, he had not a shred of idealism, not a molecule of sentiment.
I had dreaded the meeting for days, but it was unavoidable. Cailetet could be very useful in arranging a constitutional assembly.
When I visited his office at Kipini Station, in the badlands of southern Acidalia Planitia, he did not remember me, and there was no reason he should. I had been just one face among dozens of students arrested and detained at UMS.
Face pale, black hair cut in a bristle around his high forehead, Crown Niger met me at the door to his office, shook my hand, and smiled knowingly. I thought for a moment he recognized me, but as he offered me a seat and a cup of tea, his manner proved he did not.
"Erzul has become quite the center, hasn't
it?" he asked. His voice, smooth and slightly nasal, had acquired more of an Earth accent since I had last seen him. He appeared calm, with a cold sophistication and a relaxed, confident bearing. Nothing would disturb him or surprise him; he had seen it all. "Cailetet is interested in your progress. Tell me more."
I swallowed, smiled falsely, seated myself. I gave him as much of my direct gaze as was absolutely necessary, no more, and examined his office while I spoke. Well-ordered and spare, a bare steel desk, gray metabolic carpet and walls patterned with a close geometric print, the office said nothing about him, except that decoration and luxury meant little to Achmed Crown Niger.
I concluded my presentation with, "We have agreement from four of the five major Binding Multiples, and twelve smaller BMs, and we'd like to set a date now. Only Cailetet has declined."
"Cailetet is keeping its options open," Crown Niger said, tapping his index finger on the top of the desk. He offered more tea, and I accepted. "Frankly, the plan proposed by Persoff BM seems more attractive. A limited number of BMs participate, to eliminate organizational clutter ... A central financial authority, allocating district resources, working directly with Earth and the
Triple. Very attractive. Not very different from Majumdar's position before your visit to Earth."
He seemed curious as to how I might react to that. I smiled wryly and said, "That approach is thin on the rights of individuals once the BMs are dissolved. Some districts would have little say."
"There are drawbacks," Crown Niger said. "But then, there are drawbacks in your proposal."
"We're organizing a process, not yet making a specific proposal."
Crown Niger shook his head almost pityingly. "Come and go. Miss Majumdar, the bias toward a constitution modeled along the lines of old Terrestrial democracies . . . That's a kind of proposal."
"We hope to avoid the abuses of government without accountability."
"Very Federalist. I frankly trust the more powerful institutions on Mars," Crown Niger said. "They have no reason to lace up hobnailed boots and grind faces all day."