Joe Haldeman - Marsbound

by Marsbound (v1. 0) [lit]

  I mentioned that jokingly to Paul in my morning e-mail, and he responded with unexpected force: I should definitely do it while I had the chance; he never expected me to be a nun for five years, or seven or ten or forever. He even quoted Herrick to me, the romantic old areologist. Okay, I would gather my rosebud.

  Men are not very mysterious when it comes to sex. A touch, a raised eyebrow, and there we were, wrestling in his cabin.

  He was actually better at it than Paul, but that was just technique and maybe size. But I suppose it's better to have a clumsy man you love than an expert acquaintance. Or maybe I felt a little guilt in spite of Paul having giving permission. I didn't mention it in my letters until Franz was safely gone.

  I was only getting half my rosebud's pollen, anyhow. Jag was kind enough to share.

  I did talk about it with Red, who straightaway asked whether I was having sex with the new male. Was it that obvious, even to a centenarian potato-head? He pointed out that he'd seen thousands of movies and cubes, and the young girl falling for the dark stranger passing through town was a pretty common pattern.

  Trying to be objective, I explained the difference between this and my relationship with Paul, and of course that was familiar to him as well, sometimes in the same movies and cubes.

  He admitted to being jealous of humans for having that level of complexity in their daily lives. He had been fertile four times and successfully budded in three of them, but there were dozens of other individuals involved in the buddings, and no one of them had a relationship like lover or father of the bud. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” was an obscure joke to him.

  Their reproduction did involve a combination of genetic materials, but it was sort of like a shower, or a fish swimming through milt. Six or more of them would engage in something that looked kind of like four-armed arm wrestling, and after all of them were exhausted, the one who had tested out strongest would become nominally female, and the others would sort of roll around with her, covering her with sweat-like secretions that contained genetic code. The female would grow up to four buds, all but one of which would die and be resorbed.

  It was weird enough. In terran terms, Red was definitely an alpha male, a big strong natural leader—which meant that he was often pregnant.

  * * * *

  Terry and Joan were a lot of fun to talk with. I was used to the company of the colony's scientists and engineers, so it was a novelty to exchange ideas with an architect and an archeologist. They picked my brains for everything I could recall about the Martian city—their research had been exhaustive, but we were the first people they'd met who had actually been there.

  They'd been together fifteen years. Joan, the famous architect, was forty five and Terry was thirty five, so they'd been about the same age as Paul and me when they'd started out. It was Terry who'd had the lifelong interest in xenology and Mars; when we “discovered” the Martians, they'd both bent their considerable energies toward qualifying for a ticket.

  When I sent Dad a picture of them he said they were a real “Mutt and Jeff” couple, I guess from some old movie about homosexuals. Joan was short and dark; Terry was taller than me and blond. They bickered all the time, but it was obviously affectionate.

  Selfishly, I was glad to have some rich and famous people on our side of the quarantine. That much more pressure to lower it when we came to the five-year or ten-year mark.

  The three of us talked with Red a few times. Terry was fascinated and frustrated by their lack of actual history.

  "There've been preliterate societies who didn't have a sense of history going back very far,” she said after one such meeting. “People might memorize their genealogies, and they might have traditions about which tribes were friend or foe, but without writing, after a few generations memory merges into myth and legend. Like the Martians. But according to Red, they've been reading and writing for thousands of ares."

  "No conflict, no history,” Joan said. “Nobody owns anything or anybody. One generation is just like the previous one, so why bother keeping track of anything? At least until our radios started talking to them."

  "They do record some things,” I said. “Fly-in-Amber knew exactly when a meteorite had hit, over four thousand ares ago. But I asked him how many had died, and he just said new ones were born."

  "If they were human, I'd say they were in a culture-wide state of denial about death,” Terry said. “They obviously have individual personalities, individual identity, but they act as if there's no difference between existing and not existing. Even Red."

  "But they know how we feel about death. Red could have left me to die when I had that accident. And they didn't have to volunteer to help our young people with the lung cysts."

  We were talking in the galley. Dargo had come in to get a drink and listened silently for a minute.

  "You're too anthropomorphic with them,” she said. “I wouldn't be quick to assign them human motivation."

  "You do have to wonder,” Joan said. “Where would their altruism come from? In humans and some animals there's survival value in regarding the safety of the group over the individual's—but they don't have any natural enemies to band together against."

  "Maybe they did have, in their prehistory,” Terry said. “Their home planet might be full of predators."

  "For which they would be ill prepared,” said Dargo. “No natural armor, delicate hands with no claws."

  "Unimpressive teeth, too,” I said. “Something like humans.” Dargo gave me a weary look.

  "Both Red and Green are adamant, insisting they didn't evolve,” Joan said. “That the Others created them ab initio."

  "A lot of Americans still believe that of the human race,” I said. “With only one Other, a lot more recent than the Martians’ master race."

  It was interesting that otherwise the Martians didn't have anything like religion. Some of them studied human religions with intense curiosity, but so far none had expressed a desire to convert.

  From my own skepticism I could see why religion would face an uphill battle trying to win converts among Martians. They were a race with no other races to fear, no concept of wealth or even ownership, no real family, and sex as impersonal as a trip down to the gene shop. Which of the Ten Commandments could they break?

  And yet they seemed so weirdly human in so many ways. That was partly our seeing them through a human-colored filter, interpreting their actions and statements in anthropomorphic ways—give the devil her due—a fallacy long familiar to students of anthropology and animal behavior.

  But we actually had changed them profoundly, if indirectly, in a human direction, over the past couple of hundred years. Red didn't think there were any Martians left alive who could remember life before the radio machines started talking. And although at first they couldn't understand the noises coming from them, individuals like Fly-in-Amber recorded them all. The noises were obviously important, and resembled speech.

  There wasn't a single Rosetta Stone for understanding human language, but two things combined to make it possible. One was television, which allowed them to connect words with objects, and the other was SETI, the twentieth-century Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, where scientists tried to communicate with aliens via binary-coded radio signals that started with simple arithmetic and moved up through mathematics, physics, and astronomy, and finally into biology, and human affairs.

  The translation was easier for the Martians than it would be for someone farther away—they not only got the messages, but they could watch TV programs explaining about the messages in English.

  We talked with Red about that. Maybe the Others had been listening to us, too, but if they were far away they'd be years behind the Martians in understanding us. He didn't think so, and gave a reasonable relativistic argument—if they were light-years away, traveling close to the speed of light, then as they approached the solar system, the information would pile up in an increasingly concentrated way, and of course by the time they got
here, they'd be totally caught up. Assuming they were infinitely smart.

  It turned out otherwise.

  * * * *

  3. Speaking in tongues

  When Jagrudi took my rosebud Franz off to Mars, along with Terry and Joan and another twenty-three, she was also carrying a cargo of special interest to Paul, an experimental drug called Primo-L. If it worked, it could revolutionize space travel, as well as other aspects of modern life: it was an antidote to radiation poisoning, at least from the low-dose, long-term kind of exposure that grounded space pilots and killed people who lived too close to places like the ruins of Kolkata.

  They wouldn't let him just take it, since there would be years of human trials before it could be approved. He volunteered to be one of the “lab rats,” but they turned him down, since he wouldn't be taking it under clinically controlled conditions. They'd only sent it along in case an emergency arose that required him to drive the shuttle, if the other two pilots were unavailable.

  It happened. A few months later, in November, Jagrudi was out on the surface, working on the Tsiolkovski prior to launch, and a piece flew off a power tool and ripped open her helmet. They got an emergency patch on it and had her down in the clinic in a few minutes, but she had pulmonary embolisms and both her eyes were damaged. She might be all right in a couple of months, but that was way past the launch window. The third pilot was in the Schiaparelli, four months out, so Paul got the job.

  It was a course of ten shots over two weeks, and he admitted they caused a little nausea and dizziness, but said it went away after the tenth, so he took off with his payload of three Martians and a bunch of stuff from their city.

  Scientists couldn't wait to get their hands on the Martian hovercraft and the communication sphere that had connected them to Earth. But those engineering marvels paled in significance compared to something the Martians didn't even know they were bringing.

  * * * *

  The engineering team came up three weeks before rendezvous, two of them joining us on the Mars side—a married couple who would eventually emigrate to Mars—and seven who joined the permanent party on Earth side.

  Our couple, Elias and Fiona Goldstein, were practically bouncing off the walls with infectious enthusiasm. Only a little older than me, they both had fresh doctorates in mechanical engineering and systems theory, tailored for this mysterious job—analyzing self-repairing machines that had worked for centuries or millennia with no obvious source of power. Would they even work this far from Mars? If they didn't, Elias and Fiona were prepared to continue their investigations in the field, which is to say the Martians’ city.

  They'd brought miniature tennis rackets and rubber balls with them, and we improvised a kind of anarchic racketball game up in Exercise A, scheduling it while no one was on the machines. It was great to work up a sweat doing something, rather than sitting there in VR, pedaling or rowing.

  Of course, my own favorite way of working up a sweat was only weeks away and never far from my thoughts.

  Planning for our reunion was fun. I had seven months and quite a bit of money, with a good salary and no living expenses.

  Shipping nonessential goods on the Space Elevator came to about two hundred dollars per kilogram, and I tried to spend it wisely. I ordered fine sheets and pillows from Egypt, caviar from the Persian coalition, and wine from France. I could have bought it directly from the Hilton, but found that I could have more and better wine if I managed it myself. I wound up buying a mixed case of vintage Bordeaux, of which I took half, the other six bottles going to Oz and Joan, who in turn sold two to Meryl and Moonboy.

  As the Tsiolkovski approached, there of course was less and less time delay, messaging, and Paul and I were able to converse almost in real time. We coordinated our schedules and made half-hour “dates” every day, just chatting, catching up on each other's lives over the past two years. I have to admit that his obvious eagerness to talk was a relief. A lot could happen during two years, but a lot more could happen to him—one of the few single young men on the planet.

  He had admitted to a fling with Jag, which was about as surprising as gravity. But it didn't really work, partly because she was having reservations about living on Mars, which was rather less exciting than her native Seattle. If the quarantine was lifted before radiation kept her out of space, she probably would exercise her option to go back to the ground, the next time she returned to Earth orbit.

  Paul was committed to Mars; it had been his planet since he signed up eight years ago. To him, the place where I lived was a suburb of Mars, though it happened to orbit another planet. That was my own attitude, though in my case it was more resignation than affirmation.

  * * * *

  I knew I wouldn't be able to just drag him off the ship and down to my room—but the look he gave me when he stepped out of the airlock said that was on his mind, too. But he had to supervise the unloading and disposition of his cargo, which took two hours, with Dargo breathing down his neck. Then say hello to Red and Green and get Fly-in-Amber and Sunrise established in the Martian quarters, and meet the new members of the Mars-side human team.

  Dargo offered to introduce him to the people on Earth side, but he pled fatigue and let me guide him by the elbow on a tour of Mars side, which got as far as my room.

  He didn't show any sign of fatigue over the next half hour, though at first he sweetly suppressed his own urgency to attend to mine. I did have the impression that it had been all carefully rehearsed in his mind, but what else was he going to do for seven months, locked up with a couple of Martians?

  It was much better for me, for whatever reasons, than aboard the John Carter or in his shared room in the colony. My own territory, I guess, with my own lock on the door. Egyptian sheets and pillowcases didn't hurt.

  The wine bottles had corks made of actual cork, which I should have foreseen. I quickly dressed and slipped down to the galley unobserved—almost everybody being over in the Martian environment with the new arrivals—and got a thin-bladed knife that served the purpose.

  We had time for a half a glass of wine each and a shared cracker heaped with caviar. Sitting on the bed just looking at one another with goofy expressions, and the phone squawked.

  It was the loud, penetrating emergency signal. I got it untangled from my pile of clothes and punched NO VISION.

  Dargo's face, pale. “One of the new Martians is having some kind of seizure, in Mars side B. You'd better get over here. Bring Collins ... if you can find him,” she added with no inflection.

  We dressed hurriedly. “Were either of them sick on the way over?"

  He shook his head. “Who's ever seen one sick? How could you tell?"

  Mars side B was a conference room with Martian-city normal temperature and humidity, a little cold and dry for comfort. The wall was a three-dimensional representation of the Martians’ city from above, as seen from the curving ramp that led to the surface. The floor was a soft incongruous gray Astroturf, chosen by Red.

  Four humans and two Martians were bunched around Fly-in-Amber, who was lying on the floor, twitching. It was an unnatural sight, even for people used to seeing Martians, since they didn't lie down to rest. I remembered seeing a picture of a cow that some pranksters had tipped over on its side; he looked as odd as that.

  "How did he get like that?” I asked Red.

  "I've never seen it before, except as a joke.” He was sort of kneeling, bending one of Fly-in-Amber's legs. “It looked as if his two legs suddenly collapsed, and the other pair, at the same time, pushed hard, as if jumping.” He said something in Martian, loudly, but Fly-in-Amber didn't respond.

  "It isn't some kind of odd joke?” Oz asked. “A practical joke?"

  "I don't think so. It's childish. Fly-in-Amber is too stiff for that. Dignified.” Red faced Paul. “Did he act strangely during the crossing?"

  "Forgive me, Red,” Paul said, “but to me you all act strange, all the time."

  He made his little buzz sound. “You should t
alk, Two-legs. I mean, did his behavior or conversation suddenly change?"

  "He talked a lot more during the last couple of days, approaching Earth. But we were all excited, ready to get off the ship."

  "Of course. You were eager to mate with Carmen. Did that happen yet?"

  I had to smile. “It was fine, Red."

  "That's good. Green has gone to Mars C, to send a message to the other healers at home. She'd never seen this either."

  "Nor have I,” said Sunrise, who was the same saffron color as Fly-in-Amber. “And I don't forget."

  Red swiveled to regard him. “This is not something I would forget, either."

  "Should we pull him back upright?” I asked.

  "Not yet,” Red and Sunrise said at the same time. “Wait until we hear from—"

  Fly-in-Amber started talking, a quiet uninflected warble. Sunrise moved close to listen.

  "Is this being recorded?” Paul said.

  "Of course,” Dargo Solingen snapped.

  Red gestured at Sunrise. “Not really necessary. He'll have it all."

  "What is he saying?” I asked.

  "It sounds like nonsense to me.” Red shook his head, ponderously, a gesture that he'd learned to copy from us. “Perhaps code? I've never heard anything like it."

  "I have,” Sunrise said. “Not me directly, but one of the first rememberers."

  "Do you know—did he know what it was?” Oz said.

  "No. Or if he did, that part is lost. It was a long time ago."

  "Before the meteorite?” I asked. “Before 4,000 ares ago?"

  "Oh, long before. Long, long. One of the first."

  "Can you make any sense of it?"

  "No, not yet. But it doesn't seem ... it isn't random. He is saying something."

  Fly-in-Amber stopped with a noise like a sneeze. Then a long monotone, like a sung sigh. Sunrise said something in Martian, and after a pause Fly-in-Amber answered a couple of halting syllables.

  He started to rise but hesitated. Red and Sunrise helped him to his feet, Red chattering away. He answered, obviously faltering. Red made an odd fluting sound I didn't think I'd heard before. “Can you tell them in English?"