Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  And so it did. The hallucinations appeared less often, but they were just as vivid and lifelike as before. They even became somewhat more complicated, and now my phantasmagorical guests would sometimes begin conversing with me. Of these conversations, however, there was only one, near the end of my illness, which made any sense or held any significance for me. As I awoke one morning, I saw Netti sitting at my bedside as usual. Behind him stood an old revolutionary comrade of mine, Ibrahim. He was an elderly man, an agitator known for his malicious tongue. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen. When Netti went into the adjoining room to draw me a bath, Ibrahim said to me in a harsh and resolute voice:

  “You fool! Are you blind! Can’t you see what your doctor is?”

  I was for some reason not very surprised by the insinuation in his remark, nor was I disturbed by his cynical tone, which was typical of Ibrahim and thus familiar to me. But I remembered the iron grip of Netti’s little hand, and I refused to believe him.

  “Mores the pity for you!” he said with a contemptuous grin and vanished.

  Netti came into the room. I felt clumsy and embarrassed. He looked at me intently.

  “Good,” he said, “Your recovery is progressing rapidly.”

  He seemed especially taciturn and pensive the rest of the day. The following morning, being convinced that I was feeling well and would not suffer any new hallucinations, he appointed another doctor in his place and left on business, not returning until that night. For the next several days he only came to see me in the evening in order to put me to sleep. It was only then that I realized how important and pleasant his presence had become to me. As waves of well-being poured into my organism from the environment around me, I fell more and more often to pondering over Ibrahim’s insinuation. I vacillated, trying in every way I knew to convince myself that it was absurd and merely a result of my illness. Why would Netti and my other friends deceive me on that score? Still, a vague doubt remained, and that pleased me.

  Sometimes I questioned Netti about his work. He explained that a series of conferences was in progress to discuss the organization of new expeditions to other planets, and that he was needed as an expert. Menni was in charge of these meetings, but I was glad to learn that neither he nor Netti was planning on leaving in the near future.

  “What about you? Wouldn’t you like to go home?” Netti asked me, and I seemed to detect a note of uneasiness in his voice.

  “But I have not yet accomplished anything,” I replied.

  Netti’s face lit up.

  “You are wrong. You have done a great deal . . . merely by answering like that,” he said.

  I sensed that he was hinting at something which I did not know but which had to do with me.

  “Couldn’t I accompany you to one of these conferences?” I asked.

  “Most certainly not!” Netti declared firmly. “Besides the fact that you absolutely must rest, for several months yet you will have to avoid everything that is closely connected with the early stages of your illness.”

  I did not argue with him. It was so pleasant to rest, and my sense of duty to mankind had receded into the background. The only thing that continued to bother me was my strange thoughts about Netti. One evening I was standing at the window looking down at the mysterious red “greenery” darkening below me in the park. It was a beautiful scene that no longer struck me as strange or alien. There was a quiet knock at the door, and I sensed immediately that it was Netti. He strode in with his usual brisk, light gait and smiled as he offered me his hand in the Earthly greeting that appealed to him. I squeezed it so happily and vigorously that I must have bruised even his strong fingers.

  “Well, I see that my role as a doctor is over,” he said with a laugh. “Still, I shall have to ask you some questions just to be absolutely sure.”

  He questioned me, but for some reason I became so confused that my answers were incoherent. I detected a laugh in his huge eyes. Finally I could hold back no longer:

  “Tell me, why do I feel so strongly attracted to you? Why am I so extraordinarily glad to see you?”

  “Above all, I should imagine, because I have cured you, and you are unconsciously projecting your joy at recovery onto me. And perhaps . . . there is another reason . . . perhaps because . . . I am a woman.”

  Lightning flashed before my eyes, everything went black, and my heart felt as though it had stopped beating. A second later I was crushing Netti in my arms like a madman, kissing her hands, her face, her huge deep eyes, green as the Martian sky.

  Simply and generously, she yielded to my unbridled impulses. When I recovered from my joyous insanity I again kissed her hands with involuntary tears of gratitude in my eyes. My crying, of course, was due to weakness caused by my illness. Netti said with her sweet smile:

  “You know, it seemed to me just now that I was holding your whole youthful world in my arms. Its despotism, its egotism, its desperate hunger for happiness—I felt all of that in your caresses. Your love is like murder. But . . . I love you, Lenni.”

  This was happiness.

  PART III

  1. Happiness

  Those months . . . As I recall them my body thrills, my eyes become shrouded in mist, and everything around me seems insignificant. There are no words to express the happiness I once knew. Now I began to become very fond of my new world, and it seemed to me that I understood it completely. My past failures did not bother me, my youth and faith returned, and I felt sure that they would never abandon me again. I had a strong and reliable ally, the old weakness was banished, the future was mine. I seldom gave a thought to the past any more, but concentrated on Netti and our love.

  “Why did you conceal your sex from me?” I asked her not long after that first evening.

  “In the beginning it simply happened that way, by accident. But later I quite deliberately confirmed you in your error and even changed everything in my dress that might have put you on the right track. I was frightened by the difficulty and complexity of your mission and was afraid that I would only complicate things further, especially when I noticed your unconscious attraction for me. I did not fully understand my own feelings, at least not until you fell ill.”

  “So that was what decided the matter! How grateful I am to my dear hallucinations!”

  “Yes, the news of your illness came like a thunderbolt. If I had failed to heal you completely, I might have died.”

  She was silent a few seconds and added:

  “You know, among your friends there is another woman of whom you have suspected nothing, and she also loves you very much . . . not, of course, the way I do.”

  “Enno!” I guessed immediately.

  “Of course. And she also purposely deceived you, on my advice.”

  “Oh, how much deceit and perfidy there is in your world!” I exclaimed with feigned pathos. “But please, let Menni remain a man, because it would be terrible if I were to fall in love with him.”

  “Yes, that would be terrible,” Netti agreed thoughtfully, and I was puzzled by the sudden note of gravity in her voice.

  The days passed, and I joyously set about mastering my wonderful new world.

  2. Separation

  Nevertheless, the day came—the day I cannot remember without cursing it, the day when the black shadow of a hateful but inevitable separation rose up between us. With her usual calm and composed expression, Netti told me that she would be leaving in a few days for Venus on a gigantic expedition commanded by Menni. Seeing how stunned I was by the news, she added:

  “It will not be for long. If we are successful, and I am certain that we will be, part of the expedition will return very soon, and I will be with them.”

  Then she explained to me what it was all about. The Martian reserves of minus-matter, needed for interplanetary travel and for decomposing and synthesizing elements, were nearly exhausted, and there was no way to replenish them. It had been established beyond doubt that very near the surface of Venus, a young planet only one
-fourth the age of Mars, there were colossal deposits of still active substances. The richest field was located on an island the Martians called the Island of Hot Storms in the middle of the largest ocean on Venus. It had been decided to begin mining operations there immediately. First, however, it was necessary to build very high and strong walls to shield the workers from the hot, moist wind, which was far more destructive than our desert sandstorms on Earth. The expedition consisted often etheronephs and 1,500 to 2,000 persons. Only about five percent of these were chemists, almost all the rest being construction workers. The best scientists had been enlisted, including some of the most experienced doctors. Both the climate and lethal radiation posed a threat to the health of the workers. Netti claimed that she could not decline to take part in the expedition, but assumed that if the work went well, after about three months one etheroneph would be sent back to Mars with reports and a supply of ore. She would be on it, having been away a total often or eleven months.

  I could not understand why Netti had to go. She told me that the undertaking was too important to refuse. It was of great significance to my mission as well, since frequent and developed communications with Earth depended on its success, and inadequate medical care could doom the enterprise from the start. These were persuasive arguments, for I already knew that in situations that placed heavier than usual demands on the capacity of established medical science Netti was considered the best doctor on Mars. Still, it seemed to me that this was not the whole truth. I had the feeling that she was withholding something from me. But of one thing I was certain—Netti and her love for me. If she said that she had to go, then she had to go. If she would not tell me why, then I had no business asking her. When she was unaware I was looking at her, however, I detected fear and pain in her beautiful eyes.

  “Enno will be a good and dear friend to you,” she said with a sad smile. “And do not forget Nella. She loves you for my sake. She is intelligent and experienced, and she can give you valuable support in moments of difficulty. As for me, all you should think of is that I shall return as soon as I can.”

  “I believe in you, Netti,” I said, “and therefore I also believe in myself, in the man you love.”

  “You are right, Lenni. And I know that whatever trials and disappointments fate may have in store for you, you will emerge from them true to yourself, stronger and purer than ever.”

  The future cast its shadow over our parting caresses, which were mingled with Netti’s tears.

  3. The Clothing Factory

  With Netti’s help, in the course of those short months I was nearly ready to implement my main plan, which was to become a productive worker in Martian society. I could have given lectures about Earth and its inhabitants instead, but I deliberately declined all invitations to do so. It would have been foolish to specialize in such a subject, for it would have meant artificially restricting my attention to images from the past. The past, I reasoned, was within reach without any special exertion on my part—it was the future I had to conquer, and so I decided simply to begin working in industry. After careful consideration and comparison, I chose a clothing factory.

  The work, of course, was among the easiest there was, but I was nevertheless forced to make considerable preparations. I had to study the established scientific principles of industrial organization and then acquaint myself in particular with the structure of the factory in which I would be employed, including its architecture and management. Moreover, I had to acquire a general notion of all the machines in use there and know in detail the one with which I would be working. This obliged me to learn beforehand certain branches of theoretical and applied mechanics and technology and even mathematical analysis. The main difficulties I encountered concerned the form rather than the content of the subjects I was studying. The textbooks and instructions were not intended for a person from an inferior culture. I remembered how I was tormented as a child by a French textbook of mathematics I happened to come across. I was seriously interested in the subject and I evidently had an unusual aptitude for it. The notions of limits and derivatives that plague most beginners came to me effortlessly, as if I had always known them. But I lacked the logical discipline and experience of scientific reasoning which the French professor took for granted in his reader and pupil. He expressed himself clearly and precisely, but provided few explanations and constantly omitted those logical bridges that were perhaps self-evident to a man of high scientific culture but wholly obscure to a young “Asiatic.” On more than one occasion I spent hours pondering the magical transformation following the words: “whence, given the preceding equations, we obtain. . . .” The same problem, only even more difficult, confronted me now as I read Martian scientific literature. I was no longer deceived, as in the early stages of my illness, by the illusion that everything was easy and clear. Now, however, I had Netti’s constant, patient help to smooth out the bumps in my difficult road.

  Soon after Netti’s departure I took the final step and began working in the factory. It was a gigantic and extremely complex enterprise that did not correspond at all to our usual notion of a clothing factory. Spinning, weaving, cutting, sewing, and dyeing were all performed under the same roof. The raw materials used were not flax, not cotton, or any other plant fiber, not wool or silk, but something quite different. In earlier periods the Martians had manufactured textiles in more or less the same way we do today: fibrous plants were cultivated, hair and skin were obtained from animals, a special kind of spider was bred whose webs yielded a substance similar to silk, and so on. The impulse for a change of techniques came from the growing necessity to increase grain production. Fibrous plants gave way to fibrous minerals not unlike asbestos. Later, chemists turned their attention to the study of spider-web fabrics and the synthesis of new materials possessing similar characteristics. Successful research resulted in a veritable revolution in this branch of industry, and now the old types of fabrics can only be found in museums.

  Our factory was a living example of the changes wrought by this revolution. Several times a month “material” for spinning was brought in by rail from the nearest chemical plants in the form of a transparent, semiliquid substance in huge cisterns. Special machines pumped the liquid from the cisterns into an enormous metal reservoir near the ceiling of the factory. The flat bottom of this tank had hundreds of thousands of microscopically tiny apertures through which the viscous liquid was forced at high pressure, so that it emerged in ultrafine strands which contact with the air hardened just a few centimeters from the openings into tough gossamer fibers. These were then wound onto tens of thousands of spindles, which twisted them by the dozens into threads of varying thicknesses and strengths and drew them further into ready “yarn” that was fed into the next section of the factory. There weaving machines knitted the threads into various fabrics, from the finest, such as muslin and cambric, to the coarsest, like broadcloth and felt. These textiles streamed out in broad unbroken ribbons to the cutting shop, where they were seized by other machines that piled them in many layers and cut out individual pieces of clothing according to thousands of different predetermined patterns.

  In the sewing section the cut pieces were “stitched” together into ready-made clothing, without, however, the use of needles, thread, or sewing machines. The pieces were laid evenly edge to edge and moistened with a special chemical solvent which transformed the material into its previous semiliquid state. A moment later this very volatile solvent had evaporated, and the pieces of fabric were fused together more solidly than could have been done by any stitched seam. All necessary fastenings were soldered on at the same time, producing ready-to-wear suit pieces in several thousand models of different forms and sizes.

  There were several hundred models for each age group, so that almost everyone could find his exact size, especially since the Martians’ clothing usually tends to fit rather loosely. If the right size could not be found for, say, a wearer with an unusual build, special measurements were immediately taken, the
machine was set according to the specifications of the new pattern, and in an hour or so a suit was “tailored” for the customer.

  The clothing factory on Mars at which Leonid worked

  As to the color of the clothing, most Martians are satisfied with the usual dark, soft shades of the material itself. Should someone want a different color, the suit is sent to the dyeing section, where it is treated by electrochemical techniques and emerges a few minutes later colored with perfect evenness in the desired hue. Footwear and warm winter clothing are produced in much the same way, although the fabrics are coarser and stronger. Our factory was not involved in this production, which was done instead at other, even larger plants which made absolutely everything a person would need to dress from head to toe.

  I worked by turns in all the sections of the factory, and at first I found the job fascinating. I was especially interested in the cutting section, where I had an opportunity to apply my newly acquired knowledge of mathematical analysis. The work consisted in cutting out all the pieces of a suit with the least possible waste of material. It was a very prosaic task, of course, but it was also very important, because even a slight error multiplied many millions of times resulted in enormous losses. I managed “no worse” than the others.

  I tried as hard as I could to work “no worse” than my comrades, and for the most part I was successful. I could not help noticing, however, that it cost me much greater effort than it did them. After 4 to 6 Earth hours of work I was thoroughly exhausted and in immediate need of rest, whereas my fellow workers went to museums, libraries, laboratories, or to other factories to watch and sometimes even to work some more. I hoped that in time I would become accustomed to my new job and catch up with the others, but that did not happen. It became increasingly obvious to me that what I lacked was the culture of concentration. The necessary physical movements were not very demanding, and here I was as fast and nimble as most and even better than some. But the constant, intense concentration that was needed to look after the machines and the fabric tired my brain. Evidently it took several generations to develop this capability to a degree the Martians would consider ordinary and average.