MARS UNDERGROUND

by William K. Hartmann

  "Tubin. Peter Tubin." A quiet female voice from the 'corder.

  Tubin, that was it. He'd said he and his crew were doing some kind of research out in the field; that he might be hard to find. Surely he'd show up sooner or later. Somebody would know how to contact him.

  If all went well, Takemitsu would also love the other interview she had already arranged in Mars City, with the current holder of the artist-in-residence grant, a European named Philippe Brach. Rumor had it, he had erected some big Stonehenge-like monument out in the desert. It was a crazy idea but there had to be some good visuals there.

  She glanced back at the east end of the Martian canyonlands passing by. Somewhere in those badlands the aliens from Earth had erected the soil-banked domes and tunnels of Mars City. Three thousand souls in the wildest maze of Mars, she thought to herself.

  All those scientists toiling away, hoping people back on Earth would not lose interest. She tried to pick out some sign of it but there was nothing. Three thousand people, tinier than ants, invisible, huddled in their domes and tubes and towers at 6° south latitude and 35° west longitude. For no good reason, the coordinates had stuck in her mind like magic numbers. They had managed to build Mars City at the east end of Shit Canyon. It'd make an interesting dateline.

  She had studied Mars City, gone through a dozen holeos.

  She rehearsed her lessons. The location had been chosen according to three factors. First, it had to be near the equator, under the orbit of Phobos's bustling port, to allow a minimum energy transfer orbit.

  Second, the scientists clamored to have it located where the rivers had run. They wanted to study the great mystery: Why the climate had changed and reduced Mars from a river-running, lake-dotted, pleasant planet to the kind of place that could elicit the line "my warmest day in Hellas was a cold day in Hell." It was the celebrated phrase of the wild-eyed, bearded poet, Deckard McKinnon, who had been artist-in-residence in '30, but who had left in disgust halfway through his term, disappeared into the pubs of London, and never written another word about Mars. She recorded a note to herself under "story ideas": see if Takemitsu's people could find McKinnon and put him on the show, two years later, reflecting back on his unhappy view of Mars. The disgruntled poet was gone; Mars was still here. What would he say to that?

  There was a third reason for the city's location: everyone wanted Mars City to be at low elevation. If the experiments to increase the air pressure continued to succeed—it amazed her to think about it—Mars might once again see summer lakes at the low-lying sites where air pressure is highest. The once-flooded basin near Mars City was one of the lowest spots near the equator, three thousand meters below the zero level. The extra three thousand meters gave Mars City 20 percent more air pressure than most of the planet. Already, people told her, it was enough to make a suit noticeably more comfortable outside Mars City than up in the highlands; and enough to make the dust fall differently.

  There was so much for her to set down about this place. She wanted to start recording striking word pictures from which she would assemble a marvelous story like a jigsaw puzzle, but it was always hard to get started.

  Hoping for inspiration, she gazed at the spot five hundred kilometers north of Mars City, where the now-dry river channels emptied into a tangled mass of gullies called Hydraotes Chaos.

  Coming into view were the low, broad lava plains of Chryse Planitia, from which the American lander—was it Vanguard I?—transmitted the first clear photos from the surface of Mars, back in 1976, when the mainland haoles were celebrating their two hundredth anniversary. After the era of water, the Chryse plains were covered by lava flows from Tharsis, which slithered across the desert, fuming and rumbling, 1.4 billion years ago. Today the lava was covered by windblown dust and tumble-down rocky debris, and the first lander was still sitting out there somewhere, alone, never seen by human eyes since it had come to Mars. She peered hard, as if concentration would enable her to find it.

  Far below, Carter and Philippe in their buggy had joined a convoy heading back to Mars City from the seismic base camp.

  "One thing I don't get about your Stonehenge. Why didn't you put it out in front of the city, by the landing pads, where everyone will see it?"

  "When I found out I could get to the equator, I knew that would be perfect. It gives a planetary scope, the equator. The work becomes part of the planet itself, turning in space, going through its cycles. The equator runs literally through the circle. That is what they tell me. They have triangulated it, the seismic crew."

  "Triangulated."

  "Something. Imagine. Someday the tourists, they will come up from Mars City just to see this. Take a day off for sightseeing outside. Stonehenge on Mars. It makes a continuity of culture, if I may say so. Of course, it is only my own little effort...."

  "Don't give me that false humility, Philippe. I'm onto it."

  Philippe brushed his long, sandy hair back from his forehead. "What a relief to get rid of the helmet. I tell you, someday people will drive the 360 klicks every June and December, just to witness sunrise over the Heel Stones. It will be an historic spot, Carter. I am very happy with it."

  "This calls for a celebration, Philippe. Tell you what. I'll buy you a red back at the Nix Olympica."

  "No time, my friend. Already my little project has had its greatest success."

  "And what would that be?"

  "Why do you think men build things and make artworks? It is to attract women. We have no tail feathers to spread, no big air sac on the throat to inflate like a frog..."

  "You should know."

  "Be quiet, please. So we have to build things. And it works. You won't believe it, but I am supposed to meet some woman who wants to come out here. A journalist. She came all the way from Earth to talk to me."

  Carter snorted.

  "Oh, I am sure of it." Philippe's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I am at liberty to tell you she is beautiful. Well, I assume she is beautiful because she has a beautiful voice. Sometimes it is enough, a beautiful voice. A beautiful voice in the dark."

  3

  2031, FEBRUARY 44, MONDAY

  Late afternoon already as Carter Jahns hurried down the hall toward his office in the old core of Mars City. For the hundredth time, he noticed that the new flooring in the hallway was not holding up as well as promised. It wasn't supposed to show wear for six years, they had said. The afternoon meeting with the architecture committee was over, thank God. He entered his cramped white office and glared at the do-screen on his desk.

  The screen glared back. Every day for a week it had grown more offensive. Now his URGENT list ran off the bottom of the screen. Intolerable.

  The time said 5:10. Good; after five, he wasn't obliged to sit down.

  One three-day weekend in the field with his friend Philippe, and already things were out of control. Even during the committee meeting, the screen had acquired three new flashing URGENT messages. The pulsating red letters were the only thing that marred the clean efficiency of his office.

  He had discovered after leaving school that adult lives were devoted to achieving clean screens. Once he had had a dream of coming into his office and finding the screen blank. The dream turned into a nightmare when he realized that this goal would never be reached until he died. He had awakened in a sweat, still half dreaming: a few weeks after he died, the messages, one by one, would wink out until the screen was empty and there would be no letters, no paper trail, and no longer any trace of him in the intercourse of the worlds.

  He paused ruefully by his open doorway, considering what to do. The door carried a discreet title on a blue plaque:

  ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

  A certain amount of jargon inflation in that, considering the number of hours of politics relative to the hours of actual engineering. He had arrived in Mars City in 2028 with a staff position, and had been quickly noticed for his diligence. His thick, dark hair was cut short. His Slavic square face, clear blue
eyes, and chunky athletic build fit what he was: a sample from the new American melting pot. He had risen suddenly to his present rank when his boss, Stefansdottir, had died of a heart attack eight months after he arrived. (In the heat of an argument, Philippe had said he could understand why she died soon after Carter joined her staff.) Philippe had also remarked that the memorial service for the former Assistant Director seemed tempered with relief that people were beginning to die on Mars of prosaic natural causes, rather than accidents. Carter was appointed to the post, youngest of four who had held the position.

  How had Stefansdottir put up with all the crap when she held the job? he wondered. Or had Mars been simpler then, only two years ago? Nowadays he spent half his time dealing with the latest staff arrivals and their new VR fetish, "personalizing," tripping that left personalities warped for hours. They'd show up for work, acting like strangers. He couldn't stand them like that. It took days to find the real person.

  Stefansdottir's death had been a loss for Mars. Those Icelanders—tough as the meteoritic iron Philippe had been using in his sculptures. Mars Council should have populated the whole planet with them. Probably wouldn't have needed spacesuits.

  Carter was still in the doorway; 5:15 and the three new URGENTs still flashed. One message he might have checked and answered but three ... He'd be there all night. Hell with it. Quitting time was quitting time. He had already shut off the 'corder on his wrist during the committee meeting, and he had left it off, in case someone tried to call him direct with some other damn URGENT message.

  He ran his square-tipped fingers through his dark hair. It was more a gesture of despair than anything else. Why couldn't every division do its own "paperwork" without demanding his input? Of course, if he ever verbalized that idea, he'd be out in a year. Not a team player, eh, Jahns?

  That was the trouble with Mars these days: the bureaucracy was expanding into some inflated realm where "urgent" meant "routine." It made him cling desperately to his private fiction that he was somehow outside the bureaucracy, a free player, a free thinker, taking bold initiatives. Building the new Mars and all that. The new module at the east end of town. The lab facilities at Hellas. South pole's incessant equipment needs for climatic research or whatever it was they were doing.

  Yes, definitely, the hell with it all. It was time for his traditional Monday night drink with Philippe at the Nix-O. All right. He admitted it. Nix-O was the real reason he wanted to get out of here.

  He snapped off the room light, and the red pulsations from the screen made weird reflections and shadows on the sculpture Philippe had given him. It sat atop the data file by the door. It was one thing in his office, he was proud of—a fractured, strangely textured sphere Philippe had cast from one of several meteoritic chunks found during the early days of the city's construction. Most of the original iron had gone into a larger sculpture Philippe had made for the Mars Council chambers. Since Carter's sculpture was made from the leftovers, it gave him a feeling that he had a secret link with the Council. It looked like a weird alien egg, or perhaps an undiscovered asteroid. It was the one completely irrational thing in the antiseptic office, and therefore the one he could care about.

  He gave the egg a pat, stepped out, and started to close the door.

  The desk phone pipped.

  Too late, pal. Nobody had any business expecting to find him here at 5:20. He paused at the door to listen for the message recorder to cut in. A soft female voice came on at the other end. "Mr. Jahns. This is Driscoll in the Security Office. I guess you've heard we've got an 03 situation at Hellas Base. We just got a special assignment for you, direct from the Council. They say you're the one for the job. Guess everybody knows you've got what it takes. (A snicker.) They say you can turn over the Architecture proposal to the Espositos for the rest of the week. You better call as soon as you get this message. We'll try your apartment and..."

  Angrily he locked the door. The voice rattled on inside as Carter stomped off down the hall, seething with indignation.

  God, another special assignment! Why didn't they just create a full-time emergency staff or police force and be done with it, instead of pulling people from one job to another every time something comes up. Mars City was getting too big to handle problems this way.

  And what was with Driscoll anyway? Every time she called with some problem she managed to make it sound like a come-on. And what the hell was an 03...? Missing equipment or something? He could never remember the code that security insisted on using. Why couldn't they just say what they meant? Hellas, eh? Why drag him into their problem? Probably wanted another outside review of procedures. Well, there'd be time enough tomorrow morning; maybe even later tonight if his conscience acted up.

  Those soft voices trying to control everyone's life from machine-space ... Soft voices throughout the solar system. Always polite, always informed, always bringing trouble.

  Carter strode down the hall looking forward to the evening. Philippe, ever cultivating his air of mystery, had called in the morning to say that Carter should be sure to come, there was a special surprise in store.

  Carter walked faster. The truth of the matter was, the weekend in the desert had put him in a strange mood. Usually, on his excursions outside, he saw Mars as full of promise. He remembered growing up, his screen at home blazing with images of people settling into the new bases on Mars, and his mother telling him that they did not know it yet, but they were building a new society. At twelve he had a map of Mars on his wall, and he would recite the mystical names: Tharsis, Elysium, Sirenum, and Syrtis Major, the great dark splotch that had first been charted in the 1600s. He had built a telescope a few years later. In certain years of astrological import Mars came close enough that he could see the polar ice and Syrtis Major itself. He had grown up imagining himself severing the constraints of Earth, standing on the red sands, helping to build this new world. Usually he could recapture that feeling when he looked at the endless empty plains. But this time, it was the emptiness that lingered in his mind, along with the endless budget fights with Mars Council. Here he was, part of the mating dance of humanity and nature, locked in their yin-yang embrace, and he was beginning to wonder, as Felicia back on Earth used to say, where the relationship was going. Felicia, who had left him for some rich lawyer type who ran around in a gasoline-powered car.

  High above the equator of Mars, the Phobos shuttle made its normally scheduled departure from Phobos University. With its small steering jets puffing like a dragon out of breath, it backed away from the colony's giant rotating wheel. The wheel was pegged through its heart to the north pole of the potato-shaped moon. The ship turned slowly, aligning itself for the main engine burn. Its shadow slithered silently over the dark craters of Phobos's soot-black surface.

  Suddenly the sun slipped behind Mars. The ship glowed in a brief blaze of deep red, and then disappeared into blackness. It was as if the whole ship had ceased to exist.

  Aboard, Annie Pohaku, tall, dark, and uncomfortable in the cramped cocoon seats, tried to slip off her jacket. With annoyance she noticed a worn LIKELEATHER commercial tag protruding from the seat lining in front of her. She tore it off, cramming it into the little seat pouch. Her long black hair began its billowy zero-G dance, a crown of softness, more luxurious than it could ever be on a pillow. A halo. She started gather it into a knot, then decided to let it float free.

  She was startled when the ship slipped into blackness. It was as if she had ceased to exist. Other passengers began turning on their individual lights. She peered out her window, holding up her jacket to block the reflections from the nearby lights. Mars hid the stars.

  "Planets have a way of blotting out the universe." She recorded the thought quietly. She'd use all these pithy phrases someday. Right. Another triumph of optimism over experience.

  The ship's maneuvering took forever. Finally, the requisite prerecorded voice came on. "For your comfort and convenience, please"—she always finished the sentence for herself—"remain tig
htly strapped into your cramped cocoon and pray while we go slamming into the Mars atmosphere at five kilometers per second."

  The main ascent/descent engines (the pilots called them AC/DC) fired on schedule. The great dragon had regained his pale, luminous breath. From the middle of night, the ship began its forty-five-minute arc down toward the surface, toward early evening in Mars City.

  The engines made a minute-long, visceral, low-frequency shudder, and then ceased. Now she floated again in her cocoon. She thought about atmosphere entry, coming in a few moments, but her main emotion was anticipation of a real bath in Mars City, where water was an abundant luxury after the stingy showers of Phobos.

  It would have to be a short bath. Damn. Well, luxury would be sacrificed in a good cause. In a couple of hours she was scheduled to meet the guy who had created the Martian Stonehenge. Art on Mars; it would be a great little segment. She could see Takemitsu smiling. Brach, the artist, had already offered to take her out there to see it for herself. After all, what man could resist showing off his latest project?

  Brach sounded interesting. Euro artist on Mars. She liked his accent. She had vaguely fantasized about going out into the desert with him Wednesday, bringing him into her orbit, seducing him with her radioed voice as they walked in their suits among the stones he had erected, as she encouraged him to brag how the sun would rise over some particular stone. Business-wise, they had something to offer to each other. They'd have a great time together. If his installation was really impressive, and if the shooting schedule worked out right, she could maybe get the camera crew out there on the day when the sun came over ... what had he said about a special stone? She'd get him to explain it during the dinner interview she had cunningly got him to suggest.

  Business aside, she had discovered that it was always interesting to meet people here. Some of the people—she was not yet comfortable calling them Martians—seemed to pulse with the newness of the place, a pulsation missing in the crowded cities back home.