Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

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Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars Page 11

by Frederick Turner


  And follow Chance into the blazing stars.

  And if it were a prophecy, then I

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  Should not desire that it be divine.

  For all the legacy I wish to leave

  Is that those after me might be set free;

  I’d wish my gift to be the death of bondage,

  Even the bondage of my words, if one

  Were so constrained by them that the wellspring

  Of native novelty should cease to flow;

  For what is liberty but to create?

  Would you prefer a novel, then? No space-travel,

  No adolescent fantasy, no risk

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  Of obsolescence by the brute event?

  What would you pay? The characters must be

  What you would call believable; their acts

  Driven by some automatism you

  Can recognize, and being pictured, can

  Condone as human, psychological.

  How we twist, struggle, scrabble at the earth,

  Take any path that we might not be free.

  Freedom terrifies us. To be free

  Is to make, to love, to make all things new.

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  Praise adolescence for at least the grace

  To fantasize the unbelievable,

  To row upstream against psychology,

  To play against our probability.

  But this is shrill. Give me that calm, you friends,

  You inexhaustible daughters of joy,

  That calm that the spindle turns upon,

  The gold calm of the fertile mustardseed;

  And let me show a symbol, a made thing.

  Out over Saturn; white with a smooth grain;

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  Impossible to tell how far away;

  A child’s top, but double-ended; a spool,

  A bobbin, naked of thread, slowly spinning;

  A form as elegant as is the field

  Electromagnetism weaves itself,

  But pinched-waisted—an hourglass or a viol;

  And our first thought was right—it’s made of wood,

  Beech heartwood by the look of it, and huge—

  Those shadows that the pointlike sun casts through

  Its slender waist are vast, those pores and eyes

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  With lights behind them, spacious apertures

  Like Gaudi’s Catalonian grotesque,

  Broad windows lipped with driftwood wings of bone,

  Or flanged for their heavy crystal lenses.

  The shadows are lit pink by Saturn’s rings.

  At one end, at the center of the disc,

  There is a dimple like a graphic function;

  And out of it a beam of pure white light

  (Tainted and rendered visible, as if a dust

  Had wandered through a sunbeam, by a trace

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  Of plasma fluorescing as it cools)

  Shoots ruler-sharp a thousand miles behind.

  About the other end—is this a vessel,

  And is this the prow?—there’s a vaguer aura,

  Some puddling of the light of distant stars,

  That must bespeak the presence of a power

  That bends the laminate of time with space.

  This ship’s a living tree turned inside out.

  Chance’s and Beatrice’s engineers

  Of genes and cellular development

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  Shaped her in secret from mutated mast

  Gleaned from a windy coppice by the Glyme,

  And fed her sunlight, water and sweet air

  As she obeyed the new geometry

  Spelled out for her in double helices.

  Given enough organic chemicals the tree

  Might grow to be a planetoid, a world;

  Its barrelvault of heartwood, ten feet thick,

  Protecting an environment of green

  And leafy springtime branchiness within.

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  Let us explore the great aft lobe together:

  Its inner rim is deep with rich black soil

  In which the rootweb flourishes upon

  The wastes of this self-fed economy;

  A hadean acreage where mushrooms grow,

  And the moist air is ripe with fertile spores.

  A glassite axle towers from stern to stem

  Containing the machineries of hell

  (Where Blake might lead a skeptic angel if

  He would impose his vision on that spirit),

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  Whose function is to suck in through the intake

  The planetary gas and comet-dusts

  With an electric funnel twelve miles wide,

  And, like a ramjet, burn this vaporous fuel

  And turn its nuclear substance into light;

  Light whose reaction mass indeed is small

  But whose velocity, and thus momentum,

  Could scarcely be improved on by an angel.

  The incandescent torch the vessel wields

  Is wing and sword at once, a drive or weapon;

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  And harnessed to an asteroid or comet

  Becomes a miner’s pick or welder’s arc.

  The forrard lobe is full of windowlight;

  Part from the radiance of ancient Sol,

  Part from the fusion furnaces behind

  The glasswall of the axle at the core.

  Conservatory of eternal dawn,

  It’s laced with stories out of beechen green

  Where human dwellers, like their ancestors,

  Have made their lairs in clusters or alone

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  Among the silvery sensitive and bescarred boles

  Of the bright emerald monoforest.

  The tree is grafted with a second life:

  Orchards of apples, figs, and mangotrees,

  A fruit-lit orangery like a street

  Of Christmas lanterns, garlanded with flowers;

  The air’s bright with the screech of colored birds.

  A little prairie by a concave lake

  Pastures a herd of somnolescent cows;

  A net of streambeds carries runoff when

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  The huge vessel changes its momentum,

  And irrigates these arched slopes of eden.

  Above, the dweller sees a detailed map

  Of what lies on the far side of his world,

  A map which is also reality,

  Pierced by the mullions of the distant light.

  The ship is named Kalevala, and smells

  Of lemon trees and showers and cooking-smoke;

  And like the clippers of the southern seas

  Creaks when the press of speed is on her, so

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  A music haunts its pinched harmonic sphere,

  A sweet groan like the sound of sea or wind.

  And as we watch, the fiery torch goes out.

  The ship’s commander, Ximene de Vivar,

  Has given orders to the main computer

  To put the vessel in a grazing orbit

  About the equatorial belt of Saturn; now

  The braking burn is over, and the ship

  Coasts to its rendezvous within the ring.

  Immensity beyond immensity.

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  Where’s “below”? The world-arch of glittering flakes,

  Salmon-colored, above a further ring

  Of heart-besieging blue? But no below

  Could be so glassy, so translucent, Cin-

  Derella’s slipper, Christmas-tree bauble-

  Colored, like Hark-the-Herald-Angel wings.

  “Below” must be the other, that which the eye

  Avoids, lest the whorls of the inner ear

  Be rapt with vertigo, seduced to fall

  Into its ever-coiling lakes of oil,

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  Its oceanic paisleys, fractal-trimmed

  With fringes of eddies, turned inside out,


  So that their crimson-ocher linings show

  Pretty regurgitations and inversion layers,

  Each one a hurricane, Pacific-sized.

  Does the ear feel kinship with that bellowing,

  Oracle-cave, labyrinth-dizzy place,

  That it so yearns to fall there? Look not down,

  Says the eye, who, bound, must take control.

  Lucky for us it is so silent here

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  Above the howling toil of planet-work;

  But had we sensors as the ship has, that

  Can strain the wavebands for their wailing myths,

  We might be mesmerized by what they said,

  The ineffable meaningless word they

  Almost articulated, Saturn’s Voice,

  That we might never come among our kind

  Again, and be the servants of a god.

  Ah, but see now. The terminator sweeps

  Across the planet’s face. The darkside’s lit

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  By ringlight, but that golden glow is met

  From below with a more sinister fire:

  Diffused, a leprous magic white in fits

  Of netted spreadings breaking out and fading

  To show, beneath a further veil, cold glows

  Dimmed by their distance in the middle air:

  Storm-lightnings in continuous discharge.

  Down there the thunder’d break the human ear

  Spill its warm ichor to the acid wind;

  But it’s as beautiful as one entire

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  And perfect opal in the ear of God.

  Captain Vivar, her hands at the controls

  Of the ship’s telescope array, is searching

  That clot or twist within the ring wherein

  Tumbles the moonlet named S26.

  It will be renamed Kali the destroyer,

  Creator of the worlds; but it must first

  Be broken into halves and slung around

  The gravitation well of father Saturn.

  No greater weapon ever was conceived

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  Nor fashioned by the gentle human hand;

  This is the task Ximene has been commanded

  By that faint voice whispering Armageddon.

  And there it is. A drift of icebergs clears

  To show that huger moon, a battered spheroid

  Thirty miles in radius, brilliant

  With pikes of yellow ice, pitted with scars,

  Cracked with the tidal forces of its past

  Encounters at close perihelion.

  And now it vanishes. The planet’s shadow

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  Swallows its moon, and with a blaze of color

  Stranger than any earthly evening, lit,

  It might be, by Krakatoan suns, but

  Brief, brief, the broad limb slams the sunlight shut.

  Ximene is patient. When the light returns,

  She must give orders, be the cool commander.

  Now it is time to get a little sleep.

  She stands, flips off the viewscreen, turns to leave.

  Ximene is tall, a willowy strength of waist,

  A pale clear face like a middle-aged saint;

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  Black hair and bright black eyes. As if a mirror

  Stood before her suddenly, but one

  Which had the power of turning age to youth,

  Another woman looks her in the face.

  Her daughter Marisol. “No. I can’t do it.

  I see this comet every time I dream,

  Falling in blood upon the home of man.

  Even the threat of such a holocaust

  Is evil worse than any they have done.

  It makes us just like they are. Help me, mother.”

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  “Are you refusing, Marisol, to lead

  The anchor team tomorrow, as you warned?”

  “Yes, mother. And I’m asking for your help.”

  Ximene is suddenly as tired as death;

  She makes the usual arguments-—that they

  Will never let the comet fall to Earth;

  That it enforces reasonable claims;

  That Kali is creator as destroyer;

  That the planned flight of this enormous missile

  Will take it down to Mars to be the source

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  Of Martian oceans and of Martian skies;

  That a mid-course correction still is needed

  To let the weapon fall upon the Earth;

  That threats of sacrifices just as dark

  Have been the driving-force of history—

  But as Ximene looks in her daughter’s face

  The logic seems to waver and run pale

  Like water-painting under pouring rain.

  And Marisol sees how it is with her,

  And feels her mother’s weakness as her own;

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  She wishes she could give away some sign

  Permitting an agreed means of escape,

  Whereby the moral pressure might be eased—

  Even an open break, the invocation

  Of the codes of discipline and command—

  So that Ximene can call the ship’s gendarmes

  And, honor satisfied on both sides, clap

  A mutinous junior officer in irons—

  And Marisol, her conscience quieted,

  Might sit out actions which she half-connives

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  By following the antique roles of conflict.

  But she must make it all as hard as she

  Can make it for her mother; ethics here

  Allows for no compassion, when the world

  Itself, the ground of all morality

  Is made the pawn of struggle and the forfeit

  If some unhappy hero fails to flinch.

  And Ximene knows her daughter, and knows too

  In one long moment of insight and care

  How Marisol has chosen to impale

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  Her own deepest love on the icy horns

  Of sacrifice, and further, how that choice

  Is as her mother taught her how to be.

  And whether it’s better to destroy the race

  Rather than lose the meaning of the race,

  Which is to make—to master, mother, mate,

  And matter to, the world—or if the race

  Alive transcends all causes that it makes;

  Or whether that eternal trial of loves,

  Between Antigone and Creon, or

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  Between Lear’s way and that of naked Tom,

  The trial itself! be what must count the most;

  Ximene now knows again what she will do.

  “Lieutenant de Vivar, you disobey

  An order and are thus a mutineer.

  Consider yourself under ship’s arrest

  Until such time as you are brought to trial.”

  And now as she had half-expected, there

  Is a pistol in Marisol’s right hand;

  And as Ximene steps forward to be shot

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  Or take the weapon by an act of violence

  She sees with grief a possibility

  More terrible than any yet; her daughter

  Is collapsing, and can’t shoot; and Ximene

  Has beaten down what she would, more than any

  Outcome in the world, have straight and tall

  And peerless in her world of moral will.

  But at the final instant Marisol

  Raises the gun again to fire; too late;

  The mother’s trained karate kick disarms her;

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  The next moment the room is full of guards.

  And now Kalevala has rendezvoused

  With Kali, and a cloud of smaller craft—

  Lighters, cable-layers, command modules—

  Descends towards the surface. Anchor-points

  Are drilled, the ship made fast, its plasma-jet
>
  Directed at the surface of the object;

  All personnel withdraw to watch the burn;

  A white actinic light comes on, like dawn,

  Turning at once to green, violet, peacock

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  As the hot sublimed gases fluoresce.

  Soon fire blossoms on the farside, as

  A burning glass will sear a paper through.

  The ship is moved, the process is repeated,

  Until a web of narrow shafts is driven

  Throughout the planetoid. Next, sappers drop

  Toward the surface in their freight modules

  Manhandling with their stubby arms the blunt

  Black cylinders of demolition charges;

  And these are heavy nuclear munitions

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  Designed for mining in the asteroids.

  The charges set, the shafts tamped shut, the ship

  Withdrawn a thousand-some kilometers away,

  Ximene waits for the launch window to open.

  The ship’s computer works in nanoseconds;

  Any error here will add up to

  A million miles a little later on.

  Around the waist of Kali there’s a flare

  Of unenduring light. And then she’s two;

  One the reaction mass to drive the other:

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  Now Chance has got his hammer in his hand.

  The account of the trial now resumes, in the form of excerpts from the testimony for and against the accused. Various legal, scientific, moral, theological and philosophical aspects of terraforming are explored. We must guess the identity of some of the speakers, but they obviously include members of the Van Riebeck family, Orval Root, an expert witness from the Audubon Society, a scholar of medieval law, and an Ecotheist theologian; the voices of the prosecuting attorney and the attorney for the defense, Chance’s lawyer Giambattista Vico, are also heard. The Martian forces announce that the ice moon of Saturn, now named comet Kali, is on a collision course with Earth. Though in reality aimed at Mars, the comet is seen and intended to be seen as a veiled threat to gain the release of the Van Riebeck Enterprises leadership.

  Scene iii:

  The Trial

  Words from the trial of Chancellor Van Riebeck:

  “If it’s against the law,” says Charlie Lorenz,

  “To use recombinant gene splice techniques

  To generate new forms of life, then we

  Must punish those who choose the sweetest apple

  And save its seed to grow another tree;

  Dog-breeders must all go to jail; the bride

  Who chose her groom because his face and limbs

  Were handsome to her, his mind admirable—

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  So that she wished, as people say, to bear

  This good man’s child—must stand condemned with Chance.

 

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