'You tried this experiment without consulting anyone?' I demanded.
'We consulted each other.' He spoke in the light, rather amused tone into which he frequently slipped. 'We knew there would be protests from the generality, as there always are when anything new is introduced.'
'But what was the result of your experiment?'
Arnold Poulsen laid a thin hand on my shoulder, saying, 'Oh, we've been running the beat for six days now. You saw the benevolent results in our discussion. All hearts beat as one. Science has delivered your Utopia to you, Tom ... The human mind has been set free.'
I didn't believe him. Nor did I argue with him.
Later, when I was lying with Mary, I told her of what Poulsen claimed to have done, for his pride in scientific ingenuity had irritated me. 'To claim that an oscillating wave brought about our Utopia, instead of our own endeavours - why, you might as well claim that God did it...'
She was silent. Then she said, almost in a whisper, 'I don't want to sound unreasonable, but perhaps all those things conspired together...'
I kissed her lips: it was a better course than argument.
Further Memoir by Cang Hai
21
Utopia
Dear Tom has been dead now for twenty years. He died at the youthful age of sixty-seven. I zeep these words in what would be midway through 2102 by the old calendar.
A statue to Tom stands at the entrance of the Strangers Hall of Aeropolis in Amazonis Planitia. It depicts him in an absurdly triumphalist pose. I never saw him stand like that. Tom Jefferies was a modest man. He regarded himself as ordinary.
But perhaps the legend below his name is correct:
Prime Architect of Mars -
2015-2082
The Man Who Made Utopia Part of Our Real World.
Did Tom love me? I know he loved Mary Fangold. They never married. Marriage had gone out of fashion. But they were In Liaison as the new rationalism has it.
Do I miss him? Probably I do. I did not remain on Mars. In my old age I have decided to move further out, to lighter gravities.
My daughter Alpha went to seek out those Lushan Mountains I painted for her when she was a child. But I find I am an independent animal, as long as I retain contact with my Other. So our lives unfold.
On the occasion when Tom's just society was announced and its constitution read aloud, everyone was in a mood for rejoicing. We truly knew we had made a human advance.
Our proceedings, together with the celebrations that followed, were recorded as usual and, as usual, broadcast to Earth.
One incident of that day is vividly recalled. I had not seen my friends, Hal Kissorian and Sharon Singh, for some while - not, in fact, since their marriage - and longed for their company to make my happiness complete.
I rang their bell and was admitted. Both of them greeted me warmly. They were scantily dressed. As they embraced me, I smelt sweet and heavy odours about the room. We talked about all that was happening - or rather, I talked. I talked about Chimborazo and about the wonderful sense of social completeness we had managed to build. They regarded me with fixed smiles on their faces. I belatedly realised that the topics held little interest for them.
On the wall behind the sofa on which they sat was a hand-painted mural. I recognised a blue-skinned Krishna with his flute. Krishna was plump, his figure rather rounded in a girlish way, his eyes large and sparkling. Around him lounged pink ladies in diaphanous gowns, holding flower buds or tweaking one of the god's oily locks scarcely contained by his crown. They all gazed with lascivious approval at his immense mauve erection.
'Well, that enough of my affairs,' I said. 'What have you two been doing?'
Both Kissorian and Sharon burst into joyous laughter. 'Shall we show you?' asked Sharon.
I came away with that curious mixture of shame and envy that people of the mind feel for people of the flesh.
It was then I decided I was a solitary person. With a numb heart, it is easy to behave like a true Utopian.
By the fifth year after the collapse of EUPACUS our society had settled on an even keel. All our various disciplines had taken root and were beginning to blossom. The Birth Room was a thriving institution. We had found room for diverse personalities to live together peacefully.
At that time, I visited the Birth Room frequently. I miss it now such things do not exist. I went not only for companionship but to enjoy the transformation in women's personalities from their personae among men when they entered there. They became simpler and more direct, perhaps I should say unguarded, when they escaped from male regard.
Many were the arguments there about a possible return to Downstairs. By no means all women wanted it. Life Upstairs, although austere, was far less abrasive than it had been on Earth. Certainly child-rearing was easier, while the new generation of children seemed brighter and more companionable, despite their tammies.
Received wisdom was traded.
'Earth has decided to leave us here.'
'Let Downstairs get on with its affairs while we get on with ours.'
'They've forgotten all about us.'
Such remarks, often heard, were made with varying tones of optimism or gloom.
Olympus was moving steadily nearer. Observation showed, alarmingly, that its rate of progression was ever increasing. Various attempts to communicate with it failed. Willa and Vera, the mentatropists, had driven to the site, where they picked up a CPS, followed by a scrambled signal. The signal was intensively studied, but years passed before it was understood.
It was in that fifth year of our exile that Meteor Watch reported an object approaching Mars at a considerable velocity. Everyone was alarmed. But the speed of the object decreased. Eventually, a capsule shot from it, extruded a helichute, and landed a few kilometres north of the domes. An expedition set out immediately to investigate it.
The capsule bore a large symbol, TUIS, painted on its side. When transported into the domes and opened up, it was found to contain various medical supplies, scientific equipment, and a veritable store of foodstuffs, many of the names of which we had all but forgotten.
The supplies were accompanied by a plaque that read, 'With the Admiration of the Terrestrial Utopian International Society'. We wondered at the title, which indicated that the times were changing Downstairs.
Early in our sixth year, which is to say six terrestrial years on the calendar to which we clung, notching up days like Crusoe on his island, the outer rim of Chimborazo appeared over the horizon, to be clearly viewed from both domes and science unit. Its leading edge seemed now to be approaching at a rate that was hard to credit - at least 500 metres a day. It was easy to imagine its paddles beating furiously through the underlying regolith. However, the speed of movement did not represent the motion of Chimborazo as a whole. Chimborazo's scope encompassed more and more of the Martian surface, tumbling in our direction -a terrifying wave of regolith ploughed up before its prow.
Willa-Vera announced they would soon decode the signals they had recorded: Chimborazo's 'voice' fluctuated up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, and might be comprehended more as music than actual speech. They would have everything interpreted in a year or possibly two.
Their well-publicised conviction was that, after many centuries of meditation, this towering mentality - a mentality dwarfing Everest - had become a virtual god in wisdom. Once its mode of communication was understood, Chimborazo's immaterialism and transcendent qualities would set humankind upon a fresher and more vital path than could at present be visualised.
We would then move forward into 'an ultimate reality'.
I would certainly welcome a reality beyond my present day-to-day life...
It was six years and 100 Martian days since the economic collapse that had swept EUPACUS away, carrying the terrestrial infrastructure with it. A manned ship arrived within Mars matrix and went into orbit about the planet. The visitor appeared enormous, resembling, some said, St.
Paul's Cathedral turned u
pside-down. We marvelled at it as if we were peasants.
Another age had dawned in the history of matrixflight. This strange object proved to be a ship powered by nuclear fusion. The epoch of wasteful chemical rockets was dead.
'What - what kind of rocket is that, for God's sake?' exclaimed a young YEA.
It was John Homer Bateson who replied, and even he sounded impressed, 'I would suggest that rockets are now as obsolete as the bathysphere.'
'What in hell is a bathysphere?' was the response.
A ferry floated down from this new marvel. Witnesses remarked that in the gentleness of its descent it was like a giant metal leaf. Our isolation was now ended...
Much jubilation broke out in the domes. Of a sudden, the prospect of green meadows, golden beaches and blue oceans became almost overwhelmingly desirable. We looked eagerly to see the faces of our rescuers from Downstairs.
Three unsmiling men confronted us. Marching into the domes, they announced that the Premier of the UK had taken over the assets of the failed EUPACUS consortium. They were the legal inheritors of all EUPACUS property. A EUPACUS ship had been stolen five years previously; its pilot, one Abel Feneloni, together with his accomplices on the ship, had been arrested. The ship was badly damaged when crash-landing in the north of Canada.
In his defence, continued the newcomers, Feneloni had claimed he was sent in the stolen ship under direct orders from the so-called government of Mars. A considerable stack of dollars was therefore owed by Mars to the government of the UK. Until this outstanding bill was paid, no free flights back to Earth were going to be allowed.
So we were quickly given the opportunity to relearn the value of money, and that some people lived by it.
Tom stepped forward. 'We do not use money here.'
'Then you do not use our ship.'
The three terrestrials were invited to a consultation meeting. They refused, saying there was no necessity for consultation. All they required was settlement of an unpaid debt. They were clumsy in their spacesuits and we easily overpowered them.
To our disgust we found they wore guns under their suits. These were the first guns ever seen on Mars, our White Mars. We imprisoned them, took over their ship and signalled the UN on Earth.
We stressed that guns were not permitted on Mars; their importation therefore constituted an illegal act. Nor did we accept responsibility for the actions of Abel Feneloni; we regarded him as an outlaw. The UK had no entitlement to try and extract monies from us for Feneloni's crimes.
To ameliorate this confrontational tone, we declared that we possessed a discovery beyond price that, as Utopians, we were prepared to share with everyone.
Clearly, much had changed on Earth during our absence. The United Koreas had become a great power, but were at odds with the UN - and with the rest of the planet. The response we received was favourable to us. The matter of the stolen ship remained to be resolved. Meanwhile our three captives had to be convinced that they were in the wrong and released, pending trial; and as many people as wished to return to Earth were immediately to embark on the waiting ship. They would be welcome Downstairs.
It was done. Many of our people crowded aboard the great orbiting ship - in particular, those who had children.
I wept when saying farewell to my friends.
I cannot tell here the histories of those who returned Downstairs. Some adjusted to the hectic heavy-gravity globe. Some became happy and settled. Some struggled in a world grown unfamiliar - and, of those, some prospered while others sank into failure.
Sharon Singh and Hal Kissorian parted company. Perhaps their involvement with each other had been too intense to endure. Kissorian became a great utopianist, and held a responsible position in government in Greater Scandinavia. Sharon Singh emigrated to Mercury and joined the FAD rebels in the Fighters Against Dictatorship struggle for Mercurian Utopia.
The fact remains that when our Martians stepped out from the rescue ship into the dazzling draughty light of their mother planet, they were greeted like heroes. Receptions were held for them in many of the world's great cities. Several of them found themselves to be famous, their faces well known, even their speeches memorised.
Dreiser Hawkwood was the star of this select group. TUIS, the Terrestrial Utopian International Society, which had sent provisions to Mars, had gained power in several places, and in some countries had become the de facto government. They saw to it that Dreiser's achievements were widely recognised.
The explanation for this widespread acceptance was not far to seek. Leo Anstruther had become the founder of TUIS. Against the interdictions of many powers, his society had recorded all our transmissions from Mars and beamed them via satellite round the world. At that time, the world -humbled, uncertain - had been in the mood to listen, watch and learn.
Ramifications of the EUPACUS collapse had brought the capitalist system into disrepute and, in some cases, had demolished it entirely. The tentacles of corruption had reached out to involve famous figures in both East and West. Complex legal proceedings were still grinding through the law courts of California, Germany, China, Japan, Indonesia and elsewhere.
Climate, that unacknowledged legislator in the history of mankind, was a contributory cause of the marked change in political thinking. The overheating of the globe had brought hazardous weather and great oceanic turbulences. New York, London and Amsterdam, together with many another low-lying city, had been invaded by ocean. These cities were now practically deserted, crumbling under the force of the tides. Climatic change had ruined many an economy and revived others, the United Koreas among them.
Into this unsettled situation the possibility of building a free and just society had infiltrated. The example of the Martian exiles proved more attractive than we could have imagined.
Planet Earth, we found, was now largely a Han planet. Which is to say that modes of Chinese Pacific thought prevailed, as more confrontational Western modes of thought had dominated in the previous century.
Yearning for a better life had always been latent in society. Now came a renaissance. One of its effects was the establishment of Huochuans in many global centres. Huochuan was a Chinese word for cargo vessel; the name caught on for travelling institutes, which drifted from city to city with a freight of learning and wisdom. One whole section of a Huochuan was devoted to a huiyan, literally 'minds that perceive both past and future', now applied to life-story-storage systems.
As nationality came to play a less active role in human affairs, the concept of age-grouping, with activities suitable for each age, became predominant. Divisions such as YEAS and DOPS were influential in this shift in thinking. It proved to be the thirty-something group that received most benefit from Huochuan teaching.
Huochuans promoted a system of two-way communications. Those whose lives had taken a wrong turning could receive consultation and/or counselling. A method developed whereby long-bygone conversations could be recalled verbatim and improved. Anyone had opportunities to reconsider their lives and alter career or direction if insight demanded it.
In payment the beneficiary contributed to the huiyan by depositing a vid, document or disk, recording their inward and outward lives. In this way, the Huochuans accumulated a grand compendium of the experiences of generations in a kind of psychic genetic inheritance. For the first time in human history, attention was paid to the individual life - to all individual lives - 'this odd diversity of pain and joy', as an old folk song has it.
Such huiyan records served as a style of general entertainment/enlightenment (called tuokongs), much in the way of some serious TV programmes of the twentieth century.
With the proliferation of genetically altered vegetables and fruits, the eating of meat became a thing of the past in many regions. Domesticated animals became a rarity, although cats, dogs and songbirds were almost venerated, as were the semi-domesticated reindeer of far northern lands. Here and there, gates of zoo cages were flung open and their occupants set free.
P
eople lived differently. They thought differently. Their cities were now contained; they kept in contact with one another by Ambient, much as ships at sea had once kept in touch by radio satellite. The old system of M-roads fell into decay. Beyond city walls, the wilderness was allowed to return. There, as on Mars, a degree of solitude could be enjoyed.
'The Utopians!' It became a magical word. While a percentage of those returning from Mars fell prey to terrestrial diseases, the virus of Utopian thinking spread. I am told that, in the great hall of the Unified World (as the reconstituted United Nationalities is called) stands a row of bronze busts of those of us who made history. There in effigy is Dreiser Hawkwood, there is Tom Jefferies, of course, and Kathi Skadmoor and Arnold Poulsen. And I am there too!
If future generations enquire why I, my humble little self, should stand there with the great, there is a reason. For I it was who went out with Kathi and Dreiser to confront Chimborazo when it gave birth.
The inspiration to do this came to me in a waking dream from my earthly Other. I was walking somewhere in a kind of desert called Crapout - though how I knew its name I have no idea - with another person, maybe male, maybe female, when a strange manifestation filled the sky.
It appeared like the cloud of an explosion, very alarmingly. I sheltered my companion in my arms, and was unafraid. A noise of trumpets sounded when, from the great threatening cloud, something beautiful appeared. I can't describe it. Not an angel, no. More like a - well, a winged octopus, a pretty winged octopus, trailing streamers. It seemed to glance down at me with much kindness, so that I woke crying.
I gathered my courage and called Kathi. She spoke to Dreiser. We suited up and went out on the surface. Chimborazo was immense; the furrow of regolith it ploughed before itself was close to the science unit. The Smudge ring was covered in a layer of grit.
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