Finches of Mars

He went to one of the telescopes. Stroy followed.

  They looked not through the telescope but rather at a screen below, where the incoming image was being stored.

  A brownish image glowed, speckled with miniature bodies, some smoothly round, most of them irregularly shaped. And something grander: a globe as if lit from its interior. Its otherwise barren surface was seemingly stained here and there.

  ‘That, my dear, is 2003 UB313. The jewel-like UB313.’

  Ficht had spoken of his life in steady tones. Now his voice trembled with emotion. His somewhat immobile expression had broken into an involuntary smile of delight. ‘See? The wonderful unknown. Unknowable.’

  He cleared his throat.

  Without thinking what she was doing, Stroy put a compassionate arm about him. She felt his slight start; otherwise he gave no indication that she had touched him.

  ‘UB313 … It’s known as Eris, once called Xena. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘It’s in the Kuiper Belt, isn’t it?’

  He straightened up. Making a circular gesture with one hand, he said, ‘You realise that our whole insignificant little solar system is enclosed within a so-called Oort Cloud containing billions of bodies, comets and such like, incoherent matter. Most people do not know or care about the Oort Cloud. Their psychology of life is therefore warped and their understanding incomplete.’

  She did not comprehend this latter statement. Nor did she scoff at it. She was aware there was much she did not understand.

  ‘Perhaps our lives are too small and harried to …’ He put one of his frail hands out as if to have it clutched. ‘I feel your intelligence, Stroy. And indeed your modesty. How I wish you and I could be closer and I could teach you like a daughter.’ He added, ‘But always I have to withdraw.’ He paused, looking away from her to add, ‘From any human contact …’

  Again he cleared his throat.

  She detected a conflict in the wish Ficht expressed and sensed a veiled eroticism. She moved away from him, and possibly from her own ambiguity. An inner prompting told her she did not like Ficht.

  ‘You should take some exercise for your health’s sake. You could have a short walk with me, just round the tower, say? If you wish.’

  ‘I haven’t left this room once in the past year. I’m content, I suppose.’ Possibly he sensed her condescension.

  ‘You might enjoy it outside.’

  Even as she spoke, urging him, a new compound word came to her: selbsthilfloszwang. Oh yes, she thought, helpless self-compulsion. She had often experienced it. Indeed, with that absurd compound word, she had forced herself to apply for the Mars trip—in the main to escape her ponderous Bavarian parents, particularly her step-father. It was a Tharsis word, maybe.

  She forced it from consciousness to escort Ficht into the elevator.

  When they reached the outer door, the gatekeeper, Phipp, was having a violent row with a smaller man, an Exwo, calling him vile names and shouting him down whenever he tried to explain something.

  Phipp’s elder son, Squirrel, was nearby. ‘I bet you did it!’ he shouted. ‘Exwos were always going to be trouble.’

  Red-faced, Phipp shouted, ‘You see, even the kid knows! Clear off! I’ll beat you up if I set eyes on you again!’

  The man slunk off, with Squirrel following at a distance. Phipp’s demeanour changed immediately, as he turned to Stroy and Ficht.

  ‘Excuse me. Sorry to keep you waiting. Please come through here.’

  ‘You seemed a good deal upset,’ said Stroy, unable to resist the jibe.

  ‘I got much to be upset about,’ said Phipp. ‘I’m down here on duty, my partness is up the top, so this sneak gets at her, the bastick. He has her. Sticks it up her … Now she’s given birth—like she’s sending me a message—and you can see what that means.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ said Ficht to Stroy, as they passed into the open. In the air, the dusk, the low oxygen levels. Earth not to be seen.

  They had hardly taken a dozen steps when Ficht clasped Stroy’s hand and stood still. He muttered half to himself. ‘Violent man! Vile man! Yes, vile and violent … How could he be so sure the other fellow had impregnated his wife? Partness, I mean.’

  ‘The son thought so too.’ She saw that the incident had somehow excited the astronomer.

  ‘Maybe they enjoyed imagining such a thing happening …’

  Faint sunlight filtered in long horizontal strokes between the two nearer towers, the Sud-Am and Chinese. Stroy considered it a beautiful scene, silent, resembling a stage set in a play she had watched in her youth on Earth. A line of an old poem drifted into her thoughts … a violet in the dewy prime of nature not—what exactly?—not permanent or lasting?

  Well, it had been long ago and she was never likely to see a violet again.

  Ficht was unmoved. He stood staring down at the trodden regolith. He muttered something about agoraphobia. Then, ‘Starlight seduction, the suction …’

  ‘Come on, Ficht! You are used to staring across light years. How can this little strip of land upset you?’ Stroy took a firm hold on his stick-like upper arm to move him along.

  ‘No, no, I need to return, Stroy. You don’t understand. I’m just nothing—non-participant. Why should you … order me about?’

  She thought how like a child he was.

  ‘Please take me back in. I want to show you something.’

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud …’ Selbsthilfloszwang.

  Trying not to lose patience, she guided Ficht back through the gate. Daze was playing there by her father, Phipp. She ran up and inspected the pair closely, looking intently at Ficht.

  ‘Doesn’t he like it on Mars?’ she asked.

  Glancing at her watch, Stroy saw it was time she was back on duty. But first she was determined to get Ficht to the hospital. She maneuvered him into the special ward elevator.

  He stared fixedly at her. ‘I would like to copulate with you, Stroy. Even at my late age, I have never yet copulated in my whole life. Not once. I try to imagine what it would be like. Do you enjoy it, may I ask?’

  She was taken aback, both amused and angered. ‘Is that supposed to be some kind of a proposal? You must see what they have to say about it in the ward. If they believe you, maybe they’d fix you up with a dutiful nurse.’

  ‘No, no, you don’t understand. It’s my lebensangst …’

  Oh, hurry up and get there, she thought, knowing that this lift, often carrying wounded, was geared to a slow ascent.

  ‘You see I have never in my life managed to achieve an erection.’ He spoke reflectively, fixing his gaze on Stroy’s face. He cleared his throat. ‘Don’t you find that curious? All I possess is a long flaccid pipe of flesh for the passage of urine. My regret is that I can never copulate with an adorable creature such as you. Shall I show you it?’

  ‘Sorry, we’re here now, Ficht.’ The elevator stopped and the door slid open.

  She handed Ficht over to the charge nurse. He must have realised this was by way of a final parting with Stroy. He said nothing. Tears fell like drops of mercury from his eyes as he was led away.

  Stroy went behind a screen, sat down on a chair and cried considerably.

  The matron in charge of the overall running of the hospital day-by-day, Herrit, was comparatively new on Tharsis. She had arrived by the most recent manned ship. Even with the lighter Martian gravity, she needed support at first, since the journey had weakened her heart; it pumped more slowly, leaving her faint and gasping. Only under the carefully graded routine exercises, supervised by a cardiologist, was her health returning. She took charge of Ficht. Now she was in the position of being able to nurse others more seriously damaged than she had been.

  Herrit saw Stroy crying. She did not interfere. There was weeping enough in the hospital beds.

  The general cleaner was making his rounds.
He arrived at the hospital with his ride-on vacuum-scourer, and greeted Herrit with a smile. ‘How’s that heart of yours today, Herrit? Feeling any better?’

  ‘All the better for seeing you, Rasir, dear.’

  Rasir’s skin shone like ebony. He was lightly built. His head was shaved. He had a sullen expression except when he smiled, but he generally smiled, as now, since he had taken a particular liking to Herrit.

  She asked, in a teasing way, ‘Are you still sleeping up in the Astronomy?’

  ‘Well, I like to be close to the stars. And I don’t snore. So they put up with me.’ The brilliant smile flashed on.

  Herrit tried not to imagine what it might be like to be in bed with him. ‘Have you found any dragon-flies up there?’

  Rasir shook his head. ‘We seem to be on the wrong part of Mars for dragon-flies.’

  Mention of dragon-flies was a grim joke, they had between them.

  Back on Earth, in Africa—this was the story Rasir had told Herrit when she had first arrived on Tharsis and was feeling low—he lived with his family in a village on the banks of the river Kasai, only three days’ walk to Kinshasa. There were a lot of problems and some elements of the family had become separated. They called themselves Freedom Fighters and had been given a gun of sorts and a meal now and then.

  ‘How can you have Freedom if you become a Fighter? It is a deception. Freedom comes only with peace.’ So said Rasir’s wise old dad, whose brother had joined this bad army. He said it every morning when he got up and went to piss in the river. Of course Rasir was not called Rasir in those days, nor had he any aspirations, though he did regard his father as holy.

  One day, he was told by his mother to go to Kinshasa to get some medicine for his father’s throat, which was hurting him.

  On the way, Rasir was walking through what was left of the forest when he encountered some Freedom Fighters. And there, to his delight, he saw his uncle, now calling himself Binja La Shithole (pronounced Shi-Toley). Rasir ran towards him, arms wide, calling him by the family name.

  Binja also advanced.

  When Rasir was up close, his uncle landed a savage blow on the boy’s face.

  Rasir fell unconscious. He lay sprawling in the dust. When he awoke, there was no one to be seen. But on his arm outstretched in the dirt a dragon-fly had settled. Its body was of a diaphanous blue, finer, purer, than any gown woman ever wore. Its wings held the thinnest veins of gold, which fluttered gently all the while. Its eyes were little green balls which peered ahead.

  Many such insects had Rasir seen before, but never so close or so available for study. At Rasir’s slight movement, the dragon-fly took to its wings. It circled above his head and then was away, making for the river. He watched until he could see it no longer.

  What he told Herrit was that this beautiful creature had been a spirit messenger. It had awakened him to the fact that somewhere there was a place where poverty and ignorance did not exist and members of a family did not attack one another.

  He got up to make for Kinshasa. And work. And study. His nose was still bleeding.

  Food rations were getting smaller, but they had no worries about water shortages; or rather, they had not thought to worry about its running out: soundings had shown that the cavern containing the subterranean water was vast.

  No complaints then until the water became a little cloudy. Anxieties were aroused that possibly they had drained an underground river, now drying up. After some discussion, it was agreed that a volunteer should go down into the great subterranean cave and report on the state of affairs.

  Thirn, the woman who had run a shop by the sea, volunteered to investigate. She had frequently, in her more youthful days, swum in the sea at night.

  ‘No, I should go,’ Squirrel said quietly to Thirn. ‘Everyone thinks I’m bad—I want to show them I am not bad.’

  She regarded him coldly. ‘But you had sex with your mother, didn’t you? Don’t deny it—she told me. I’ll keep it confidential—but for her, not for you.’

  ‘She needed it as much as me.’

  Unmoved, she said, ‘Sorry, Squirrel, I got my needs too, so shut it.’

  26

  Life on Mars! The Capture of Things

  The pale daylight lit a number of people coming from the West tower.

  A hole had been excavated in rough and broken territory some distance from the tower. Two guards stood by it. Thirn came and stood shivering beside them.

  ‘Don’t worry, old pet,’ said one guard reassuringly. ‘There’s nothing to harm you down there.’

  ‘I’ll see about that,’ she replied. ‘Fool that I am for volunteering.’

  A crowd had gathered to see Thirn being lowered down into the depths. They were uneasy, but anything happening on a dead world ranked as an Event. Some people clapped as Thirn was lowered into the hole. A silence fell. Almost immediately there came from this intrepid woman a cry like a reverberating belch, magnified by the hollow chamber. It was followed by a shriek to be hauled up. As soon as her head emerged above ground, a head seemingly bodiless, Thirn cried out—not from cowardice but out of need for a net.

  ‘Things!’ she cried. ‘A net! Quick! There’s something big down here!’

  Such was the urgency of her tone it compelled people to start running about in that high-kneed Martian way. Until as if by magic—magic prohibited on Mars—a net was produced.

  Thirn grabbed the net and commanded to be lowered again into the depths. Her head disappeared from the watchers’ sight.

  Everyone waited. What for? For life? The crowd fell into an anxious silence, the lonelinesses of the planet seemed to close in about them.

  Shrieks and splashes magnified by the hollow of the cavern were as sounds issuing from a great throat. Then a perfectly clear cry of triumph, ‘Got you, you bastick!’

  ‘Are you okay?’ shouted those clasping the rope above ground.

  ‘Haul up! Haul like mad …’ came the bellow.

  They hauled. What appeared first was a largish lizard-like thing, struggling furiously in the net. Or was it two lizard-like things?

  Yes, two of them—and followed by Thirn, heaving herself from the hole, gasping, shaking herself like an old dog. A towel was thrown round her. A guard gave her a breathing mask. She shook the towel about her ample shoulders, growling about the cold.

  Attention switched immediately to the two struggling things. Little scientific curiosity here—not in the face of something to eat. The creatures were dragged back into the tower—straight to the kitchen. Pushing her way through the excited mob of people came Noel, cucumber-cool.

  ‘I forbid you to kill these creatures. Science must come first. Get out of the way!’

  ‘But they are real food,’ Stroy protested.

  Noel looked as if she was about to attack Stroy. ‘Food! You must be mad. Can’t you understand? Get a grip of yourself. We have found life on Mars! Life on Mars! Not just micro-organisms. Bodily life on Mars! This is our saving, do you realise?’

  The crowd fell back before her.

  ‘I found them, don’t forget, Noel,’ said Thirn, still wrapped in her towel.

  ‘Correct, madam,’ said Nivec, addressing Noel. ‘Thank you. Life on Mars! This discovery will justify UU in the eyes of the world. We just need to find what category of beasts we have here. Nothing very pleasant, by the looks of them.’

  ‘Yes, not “it”—but so much better—“them”! Stroy, shut these creatures into a container and take them immediately to the science rooms.’

  So said Noel, and her order was obeyed. She clutched Nivec’s arm. ‘Wonderful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Wonderful—And you too, Thirn, you’re wonderful.’

  ‘I’d say we’re all wonderful,’ said Nivec. ‘Or will be when Earth gets our news …’

  Thirn, now dressed in her usual overalls, sat on a chair in the corner of the
lab. She wore a circle of stiff paper on which she had written ‘I DISCOVERED LIFE ON MARS’. Because of her new status, she was allowed into the science rooms.

  The creatures she had captured lay on the bench in transparent water-filled plastic tanks. They were unmoving until they would suddenly rise up and scratch in a fruitless endeavour to escape from their prison. They possessed long bony heads. Their eyes were large and milky—‘Like poached eggs,’ Cood muttered. Their four legs were flat and fin-like, held close to the scaly body. They measured not more than two feet long.

  Their bodies tapered into a stumpy tail. At their maximum, these bodies were not more than four inches wide and six deep. They were covered with something resembling scales, shiny and black, showing green in certain lights. When one of these creatures was turned over, its belly showed smooth and hard and of a pale white.

  When they snarled, sharp curved front teeth showed. Behind these fangs lay only two pointed teeth on either side of a grey mouth.

  ‘They are quiet and seem to be breathing easily in air,’ said Cood. ‘But I suspect that it’s been just a few generations since they were only fish, do you agree?’

  Nivec asked Thirn if she had caught them swimming.

  ‘There were others of these same critters attacking them, or chasing all round, till I appeared,’ said Thirn. ‘A ridge of rock comes above water level down there. These two brutes were resting on top of the rock, out of the water.’

  ‘So, a different species from the ones you saw in the water?’

  ‘I can’t say about that. It was dark and they were gone quickly. There’s a tunnel leading from the main chamber and they were off down it in a flash.

  ‘These two I caught, I thought they were a bit tired. Breathing air—there’s oxygen underground, to some extent.’

  ‘Thank you. Your account was very clear, Thirn,’ said Nivec.

  ‘Of course it was clear. I’m not a fool.’

  Thirn’s discovery had evidently banished her former shyness.

  Cood said, ‘We’ve got hold of a bit of history. History? Prehistory, I should say. Radiometric dating determines the end of the Permian Age as about 252 million years ago. We’re talking Earth times here, of course.