Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

by Marsbound (v1. 0) [lit]

  I wasn't sure how long it had taken Red to bring me from their habitat level to the cave where he was parked, and then on to here. Maybe two hours? I hadn't been tracking too well. Without a dust storm it might be faster. I pulled on the dog and headed toward the right of Telegraph Hill.

  The last thing I expected to happen was this: I hadn't walked twenty yards when Red came zooming up on his weird vehicle and stopped in a great spray of dust, which sparkled in the last light of dusk.

  Card broke radio silence with a justifiable "Holy shit!"

  Red helped me put the dog on one side and I got into the other and we were off. I looked back and waved at Card, and he waved back. The base shrank really fast and slipped under the horizon.

  I looked forward for a moment and then turned away. It was just a little too scary, screaming along a few inches over the ground, missing boulders by a hair. The steering must have been automatic. Or maybe Red had inhuman reflexes. Nothing else about him was all that human.

  Except the need to come back and help. He must have been waiting nearby.

  It seemed no more than ten or twelve minutes before the thing slowed down and drifted into the slanted cave I remembered. Maybe he had taken a roundabout way before, to hide the fact that they were so close.

  We got out the dog and I followed him back down the way we had come a couple of days before. I had to stop twice with coughing fits, and by the time we got to the place where he shed his Mars suit, there was a scary amount of blood.

  An odd thing to think, but I wondered whether he would take my body back if I died here. Why should I care?

  We went on down, and at the level where the lake was visible, Green was waiting, along with two small ones dressed in white. We went together down to the dark floor and followed blue lines back to what seemed to be the same hospital room where I'd first awakened after the accident.

  I slumped down on the pillow, feeling completely drained and about to barf. I unshipped my helmet and took a cautious breath. It smelled like a cold mushroom farm, exactly what I expected.

  Red handed me a glass of water and I took it gratefully. Then he picked up my helmet with his two large arms and did a curiously human thing with a small one: he wiped a bit of blood off the inside with one finger, and then lifted it to his mouth to taste it.

  "Wait!” I said. “That could be poison to you!"

  He set the helmet down. “How nice of you to be concerned,” he said, in a voice like a British cube actor.

  I just shook my head. After a few seconds I was able to squeak, “What?"

  "Many of us can speak English,” Green said, “or other's of your languages. We've been listening to your radio, television, and cube for two hundred years."

  "But ... before ... you..."

  "That was to protect ourselves,” Red said. “When we saw you had hurt yourself and I had to bring you here, it was decided that no one would speak a human language in your presence. We are not ready to make contact with humans. You are a dangerous violent race that tends to destroy what it doesn't understand."

  "Not all of us,” I said.

  "We know that. We were considering various courses of action when we found out you were ill."

  "We monitor your colony's communications with Earth,” one of the white ones said, “and saw immediately what was happening to you. We all have that breathing fungus soon after we're born. But with us it isn't serious. We have an herb that cures it permanently."

  "So ... you can fix it?"

  Red spread out all four hands. “We are so different from you, in chemistry and biology. The treatment might help you. It might kill you."

  "But this crap is sure to kill me if we don't do anything!"

  The other white-clad one spoke up. “We don't know. I am called Rezlan, and I am ... of a class that studies your people. A scientist, or philosopher.

  "The fungus would certainly kill you if it continued to grow. It would fill up your lungs and you couldn't breathe. But we don't know; it never happens to us. Your body may learn to adapt to it, and it would be ... illegal? Immoral, improper ... for us to experiment on you. If you were to die ... I don't know how to say it. Impossible."

  "The cure for your cheville? Your ... ankle was different,” Green said. “There was no risk to your life."

  I coughed and stared at the spatter of blood on my palm. “But if you don't treat me, and I die? Won't that be the same thing?"

  All four of them made a strange buzzing sound. Red patted my shoulder. “Carmen, that's a wonderful joke. ‘The same thing.'” He buzzed again, and so did the others.

  "Wait,” I said, “I'm going to die and it's funny?"

  "No, no, non," Green said. “Dying itself isn't funny.” Red put his large hands on his potato head and waggled it back and forth, and the others buzzed.

  Red tapped his head three times, which set them off again. A natural comedian. “If you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny."

  I started to cry, and he took my hand in his small scaly one and patted it. “We are so different. What is funny ... is how we here are caught. We don't have a choice. We have to treat you even though we don't know what the outcome will be.” He buzzed softly. “But that's not funny to you."

  "No!" I tried not to wail. “I can see this part. There's a paradox. You might kill me, trying to help me."

  "And that's not funny to you?"

  "No, not really. Not at all, really."

  "Would it be funny if it was somebody else?"

  "Funny? No!"

  "What if it was your worst enemy? Would that make you smile?"

  "No. I don't have any enemies that bad.” Maybe one.

  He said something that made the others buzz. I gritted my teeth and tried not to cry. My whole chest hurt, like both lungs held a burning ton of crud, and here I was trying not to barf in front of a bunch of potato-head aliens. “Red. Even if I don't get the joke. Could you do the treatment before I foogly die?"

  "Oh, Carmen. It's being prepared. This is ... it's a way of dealing with difficult things. We joke. You would say laughing instead of crying.” He turned around, evidently looking back the way we had come, though it's hard to tell which way a potato is looking. “It is taking too long, which is part of why we have to laugh. When we have children, it's all at one time, and so they all need the treatment at the same time, a few hundred days later, after they bud. We're trying to grow ... it's like trying to find a vegetable out of season? We have to make it grow when it doesn't want to. And make enough for the other younglings in your colony."

  "The adults don't get it?"

  He did a kind of shrug. “We don't. Or rather, we only get it once, as children. Do you know about whooping cough and measles?"

  "What-sels?"

  "Measles and whooping cough used to be diseases humans got as children. Before your parents’ parents were born. We heard about them on the radio, and they reminded us of this."

  A new green-clad small one came through the plastic sheets, holding a stone bowl. She and Red exchanged a few whistles and scrapes. “If you are like us when we are small,” he said, “this will make you excrete in every way. So you may want to undress."

  How wonderful. Here comes Carmen, the shitting, pissing, farting, burping, barfing human sideshow. Don't forget snot and earwax. I got out of the Mars suit and unzipped the skinsuit and stepped out of that. I was cold, and every orifice clenched up tight. “Okay. Let's go."

  Red held my right arm with his two large ones, and Green did the same on the left. Not a good sign. The new green one spit into the bowl and it started to smoke.

  She brought the smoking herb under my nose and I tried to get away, but Red and Green held me fast. It was the worst smelling crap you could ever imagine. I barfed through mouth and nose and then started retching and coughing explosively, horribly, like a cat with a hairball. It did bring up the two fungus things, like furry rotten fruit. I would've barfed again if there had been anything left in my stomach, but I decided to pass
out instead.

  * * * *

  5. Invasion from Earth

  I half woke up, I don't know how much later, with Red tugging gently on my arm. “Carmen,” he said, “do you live now? There is a problem."

  I grunted something that meant yes, I am alive, but no, I'm not sure I want to be. My throat felt like someone had pulled something scratchy and dead up through it. “Sleep,” I said, but he picked me up and started carrying me like a child.

  "There are humans from the colony here,” he said, speeding up to a run. “They do not understand. They're wrecking everything.” He blew through the plastic sheets into the dark hall.

  "Red ... it's hard to breathe here.” He didn't respond, just ran faster, a rippling horse gait. His own breath was coming hard, like sheets of paper being ripped. “Red. I need ... suit. Oxygen."

  "As we do.” We were suddenly in the middle of a crowd—hundreds of them in various sizes and colors—surging up the ramp toward the surface. He said three short words over and over, very loud, and the crowd stopped moving and parted to let us through.

  When we went through the next set of doors I could hear air whistling out. On the other side my ears popped with a painful crack and I felt cold, colder than I ever had been. “What's happening?"

  "Your ... humans ... have a ... thing.” He was wheezing before each word. “A tool ... that ... tears ... through."

  He set me down gently on the cold rock floor. I shuddered out of control, teeth chattering. No air. Lungs full of nothing but pain. The world was going white. I was starting to die, but instead of praying or something I just noticed that the hairs in my nose had frozen and were making a crinkly sound when I tried to breathe.

  Red was putting on the plastic layers that made up his Mars suit. He picked me up and I cried out in startled pain—the skin on my right forearm and breast and hip had frozen to the rock—and he held me close with three arms while the fourth did something to seal the plastic. Then he held me with all four arms and crooned something reassuring to weird creatures from another planet. He smelled like a mushroom you wouldn't eat, but I could breathe again.

  I was bleeding some from the ripped skin and my lungs and throat still didn't want to work, and I was being hugged to death by a nightmarish singing monster, so rather than put up with it all my body just passed out again.

  I woke up to my lover fighting with Red, with me in between. Red was trying to hold on to me with his small arms while Paul was going after him with some sort of pipe, and he was defending himself with the large arms. “No!” I screamed. “Paul! No!"

  Of course he couldn't hear anything in the vacuum, but I guess anyone can lip-read the word “no.” He stepped back with an expression on his face that I had never seen. Anguish, I suppose, or rage. Well, here was his lover, naked and bleeding, in the many arms of a gruesome alien, looking way too much like a movie poster from a century ago.

  Taka Wu and Mike Silverman were carrying a spalling laser. “Red,” I said, “watch out for the guys with the machine."

  "I know,” he said, “We've seen you use it underground. That's how they tore up the first set of doors. We can't let them use it again."

  It was an interesting standoff. Four big aliens in their plastic-wrap suits. Paul and my father and mother and nine other humans in Mars suits, armed with tomato stakes and shovels and one laser, the humans looking kind of pissed off and frightened. The Martians probably were, too. A good thing we hadn't brought any guns to this planet.

  Red whispered. “Can you make them leave the machine and follow us?"

  "I don't know ... they're scared.” I mouthed “Mother, Dad,” and pointed back the way we had come. “Fol-low us,” I said with slow exaggeration. Confined as I was, I couldn't make any sweeping gestures, but I jabbed one forefinger back the way we had come.

  Dad stepped forward slowly, his hands palm out. Mother started to follow him. Red shifted me around and held out his hand and my father took it and held his other one out for Mother. She took it and we went crabwise through the dark layers of the second airlock. Then the third and the fourth, and we were on the slope overlooking the lake.

  The crowd of aliens we'd left behind was still there, perhaps a daunting sight for Mother and Dad. But they held on, and the crowd parted to let us through.

  I noticed ice was forming on the edge of the lake. Were we going to kill them all?

  "Pardon,” Red muttered, and held me so hard I couldn't breathe, while he wiggled out of his suit and left it on the ground, then set me down gently.

  It was like walking on ice—on dry ice—and my breath came out in plumes. But he and I walked together along the blue line paths, followed by my parents, down to the sanctuary of the white room. Green was waiting there with my skinsuit. I gratefully pulled it on and zipped up. “Boots?"

  "Boots,” she said, and went back the way we'd come.

  "Are you all right?” Red asked.

  My father had his helmet off. “These things speak English?"

  Red sort of shrugged. “And Chinese, in my case. We've been eavesdropping on you since you discovered radio."

  My father fainted dead away.

  * * * *

  Green produced this thing that looked like a gray cabbage and held it by Dad's face. I had a vague memory of it being used on me, sort of like an oxygen source. He came around in a minute or so.

  "Are you actually Martians?” Mother said. “You can't be."

  Red nodded in a jerky way. “We are Martians only the same way you are. We live here. But we came from somewhere else."

  "Where?” Dad croaked.

  "No time for that. You have to talk to your people. We're losing air and heat and have to repair the door. Then we have to treat your children. Carmen was near death."

  Dad got to his knees and stood up, then stooped to pick up his helmet. “You know how to fix it? The laser damage."

  "It knows how to repair itself. But it's like a wound in the body. We have to use stitches or glue to close the hole. Then it grows back."

  "So you just need for us to not interfere."

  "And help, by showing where the damage is."

  He started to put his helmet on. “What about Carmen?"

  "Yeah. Where's my suit?"

  Red faced me. I realized you could tell that by the little black mouth slit. “You're very weak. You should stay here."

  "But—"

  "No time to argue. Stay here till we return.” All of them but Green went bustling through the airlock.

  "So,” I said to her. “I guess I'm a hostage."

  "My English is not good,” she said. "Parlez-vous francais?" I said no. "Nihongo de hanashimasu ka?"

  Probably Japanese, or maybe Martian. “No, sorry.” I sat down and waited for the air to run out.

  * * * *

  6. Zen for morons

  Green put a kind of black fibrous poultice on the places where my skin had burned off from the icy ground, and the pain stopped immediately. That raised a big question I couldn't ask, having neglected both French and Japanese in school. But help was on its way.

  While I was getting dressed after Green had finished her poulticing, another green one showed up.

  "Hello,” it said. “I was asked here because I know English. Some English."

  "I—I'm glad to meet you. I'm Carmen."

  "I know. And you want me to say my name. But you couldn't say it yourself. So give me a name."

  "Um ... Robin Hood?"

  "I am Robin Hood, then. I am pleased to meet you."

  I couldn't think of any pleasantries, so I dove right in: “How come your medicine works for us? My mother says we're unrelated at the most basic level, DNA."

  "Am I ‘DNA’ now? I thought I was Robin Hood."

  This was not going to be easy. “No. Yes. You're Robin Hood. Why does your medicine work on humans?"

  "I don't understand. Why shouldn't it? It's medicine."

  So much for the Enigmatic Superior Aliens theory. “Look. Yo
u know what a molecule is?"

  "I know the word. Very small. Too small to see.” He took his big head in two large-arm hands and wiggled it, the way Red did when he was agitated. “Forgive me. Science is not my ... there is no word. I can't know science. I don't think any of us can, really. But especially not me."

  I gestured at everything. “Then where did this all come from? It didn't just happen."

  "That's right. It didn't happen. It's always been this way."

  I needed a scientist and they sent me a philosopher. Not too bright, either. “Can you ask her?” I pointed to Green. “How can her medicine work, when we're chemically so different?"

  "She's not a ‘her.’ Sometimes she is, and sometimes she's a ‘he.’ Right now she's a ‘what.’”

  "Okay. Would you please ask it?"

  They exchanged a long series of wheedly-poot-rasp sounds.

  "It's something like this,” Robin Hood said. “Curing takes intelligence. With Earth humans, the intelligence comes along with the doctor, or scientists. With us, it's in the medicine.” He touched the stuff on my breast, which made me jump. “It knows you are different and works on you differently. It works on the very smallest level."

  "Nanotechnology,” I said.

  "Maybe smaller than that,” he said. “As small as chemistry. Intelligent molecules."

  "You do know about nanotechnology?"

  "Only from TV and the cube.” He spidered over to the bed. “Please sit. You make me nervous, balanced there on two legs."

  I obliged him. “This is how different we are, Carmen. You know when nanotechnology was discovered."

  "End of the twentieth century sometime."

  "There's no such knowledge for us. This medicine has always been. Like the living doors that keep the air in. Like the things that make the air, concentrate the oxygen. Somebody made them, but that was so long ago, it was before history. Before we came to Mars."

  "Where did you come from? When?"

  "We would call it Earth, though it's not your Earth, of course. Really far away, really long ago.” He paused. “More than ten thousand ares."