Finches of Mars. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

       3

       Mangalian’s Remark

      To be on Mars …

      This almost evolutionary step owes its existence to a small group of learned and wise men and women. Working at the end of the previous century, and spurred on to begin with by the provocation of the great Herbert Amin Saud Mangalian, the universities of the cultivated world linked themselves together under a charter which in essence represented a great company of the wise, the UU (for United Universities). The despatch of the two hydrologists to our nearby planet was the first UU move.

      Mangalian spent a profligate youth on San Salvador, the island in the Bahamas, fathering several children with several women. The edict ‘Go forth and multiply’ was his inspiration. Only when he met and married Beth Gul – both taking delight in this antiquated ceremony – did he reform, encouraged by her loving but disputatious nature. For a while he and Beth severed their connections with others. They read and studied; they led a rapt hermit’s life.

      Together, the two of them wrote a book from which great consequences sprang. It was entitled The Unsteady State or, Starting Again from Scratch.¹ As was the fashion, this volume contained moving video and screamer shots married into the text. It argued that humanity on Earth was doomed, and that the only solution was to send our best away, where they could strive – on Mars and beyond – to achieve true civilization. It was sensationalist, but persuasive.

      The declaration alarmed many in the West and infuriated many more in the Middle-East, as is generally the way when truth is plainly stated. It brought Mangalian to public attention.

      He was an attractive young fellow, tall, sinewy, with a mop of jet black hair – and a certain gift of the gab.

      It was only after his remark, ‘Countless lungs, countless penises, all working away! We shall run out of oxygen before we run out of semen!’ that Mangalian’s name became much more widely known, and his book more attentively read. ‘Semen is always trendy,’ he told an interviewer, by way of explanation.

      ‘A handsome fellow,’ was how many people expressed in their various languages admiration and envy of Mangalian. Using his book as both inspiration and guide, several intellectuals made tentative efforts to link universities as the first step towards civilization elsewhere. There was no doubt that Mangalian was a vital advocate for a new association – the UU. While there were many who enthused over the idea of the UU, almost as many – in the main those living in slums, tents and sink estates – raged against its exclusivity.

      So Mangalian, a youth with no university degree, became head, figurehead, of the newly formed UU. He was aware that any sunshine of global attention had its rapid sunset. Invited to England, he attracted representatives from the three leading universities, to shower them with challenges to unite.

      ‘All know you to be a footballing nation, but Q.P.R. and Q.E.D.² should not be adversarial. A ball in the net is great – so is the netting of new facts.’ He was being facile, but his argument scored a goal. The first three universities raised the purple and blue flag of the UU.

      But a left wing politician remarked, ‘So, the words come from Oxford, but the cash comes from China …’ It was certainly true, although not widely admitted, that NASA projects were nowadays kept afloat on Beijing currency – it was unlikely to be little different with the UU.

      Under the goading of the young impresario Mangalian, many universities agreed to join the first three, to create a nation-like body of new learning, a corpus aloof from the weltering struggles of an underfed, under-educated and unreasoning range of random elements: the sick, the insane, the suicide-bombers and their like. Mangalian disliked this division. It was then he spoke for the colonisation of Mars. MARS, he said, stood for ‘MANKIND ACHIEVING (a) RENEWED SOCIETY.’ Some laughed, some jeered. But the movers at last moved.

      Even before all the various universities had finished signing on their various dotted United lines, an exploration duo was sent out to inspect Martian terrain. The terrain had been photographed previously, but trodden by a human’s boot – never.

      Operation Horizon consisted of two men and a robotruck. Modest though this expedition was, the future of an entire enterprise depended on it. If no watercourses were detected, then the great UU initiative was sunk as surely as the Titanic; if water was detected, and in sufficient quantities, then the project would proceed. Everything depended on two skilled hydrologists and a new-fangled robotruck, designed especially for the task.

      The truck could be spoken to by screamer from a kilometre’s distance. It was loaded with equipment. It also gave two men shelter in the chill sleep hours, and enabled them to refill their oxygen tanks.

      While electronics experts and eager young engineers worked on the truck, various hydrology experts were being interviewed. One of the men given the okay was the experienced Robert Prestwick, fifty-six years of age, and the other Henry Simpson, sixty-one years old, famous for his design of the dome over Luna. He wasn’t just a skilled hydrologist. Prestwick was a heavily built, blue jowled man. Simpson was of slighter build, and a head shorter than his friend. The robotruck was new, as stated.

      The hydrologists had known each other on and off for roughly thirty years, having first met at Paranal Observatory in Chile, which had been temporarily beset by flood problems. Now they joked, ‘So they send us to a planet believed to be without water …’

      It seemed to be that way at first. The two men had begun by surveying the great central feature of the Martian globe, the Valles Marinaris, a gash in the planet a mile deep, stretching for almost two thousand miles. Howling winds СКАЧАТЬ