by Adam Roberts
Of course, Splendour-of-Thought’s objections to the war were not unique to him, or merely eccentric. Many otherwise good-thinking Martians shared his concerns, so much so that the ruling council had posted a continual guard along the length of the great launching tube. A saboteur might hope to interfere in some way with the tube, and so prevent our troops from so much as launching across the void to the target world. Patrols were ubiquitous to prevent precisely this. The two of us were stopped by one such patrol; my feelers passed the authorisation cylinder from my walker to the Guard Captain’s, and we were permitted to move on.
The sun sent magenta shadows fluttering away from our metal legs as we strode towards the dome. The dust was red with the dried remains of the Great Weed - not dead through drought - the weed had been permitted to die away of natural causes so as not to overgrow the launch tube. The red sun settled onto the red horizon. It was a desolately beautiful sight.
Splendour-of-Thought’s voice came through on my speaker again. ‘I only wish you wouldn’t talk of civilising them.’
‘How else would you describe it?’ I countered. ‘Taking away the chains of their ignorance and backwardness - leading them into the age of thought, of technology, of space flight.’
‘It’s as if you haven’t been watching the news . . .’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I snapped,
‘You’ve surely seen the reports of atrocities,’ he said petulantly.
I did not enjoy hearing my colleague speaking in this way. ‘If I didn’t know that the vetting processes for employing technicians on the great launch tube were as thorough as they are,’ I said, ‘I might start to suspect you of harbouring antiwar ambitions to sabotage Operation Free Blueworld.’
‘Atrocity,’ Splendour-of-Thought continued, ‘is the word that describes what is going on over there. How can you disagree? You must have seen the pictures - those poor Blueworld natives tortured - killed.’
‘There is bound to be unfortunate collateral damage in any military operation,’ I pointed out. ‘Regrettable, but a price worth paying - the sooner the military can bring the fighting to an end the better for everybody, Blueworld natives included.’
‘Which means . . .’
‘Which means our patriotic duty is to support our troops. It only prolongs the war to criticise, as you are doing. That way nobody benefits. A swift Martian victory is imperative for everybody’s sake.’
‘You’re certain,’ Splendour-of-Thought said with a new tone of slyness in his voice, ‘that victory is assured?’
‘Of course.’ This was almost an idiotic question. ‘We are many thousands of years in advance of the Blueworld natives in technological terms. We have mastered the machinery of war, the tactics, the possible obstacles. Our war-tripods are virtually unassailable. We have anticipated every eventuality; the greater gravity of the Blue World, the thickness of the atmosphere, the alien germs and organisms.’
‘Our advanced troops have certainly been treated with the most up-to-date genetic enhancement to preserve them from infection by Blueworld viruses or bacteria,’ said Splendour-of-Thought.
‘Bacteria to which the natives themselves are susceptible!’ I pointed out. ‘They cannot even protect themselves from simple infections, as we can. They lack our intellect, our technology, and our will to win. Victory is inevitable.’
We were almost at the dome.
‘The genetic enhancement laboratories that treated our troops,’ said Splendour-of-Thought, his voice more sly still, like a child with a secret, ‘produce many things apart from regimens to protect troops against alien bugs.’
I didn’t like his tone. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I am merely saying,’ he said. ‘It would be possible - let’s say - for the sake of argument - that a disgruntled antiwar technician could develop a superbug that would overcome even the immunity of our shock troops.’
I stopped. ‘Go on.’
Splendour-of-Thought brought his walker to a halt beside me. ‘Well, it’s possible that this lab-worker could pass a vial of this superbug to a worker on the launch tube - perhaps a like-minded Martian, somebody also opposed to the war.’
‘And?’
‘And, given the official access granted such a worker, it’s possible that the rocket shells could be contaminated with this superbug before being accelerated along the tube.’
My brain pulsed heavily with the implications of what Splendour-of-Thought was saying. ‘But then . . .’
‘Then the troops would carry the infection with them ... an infection designed to lay them low, and leave the Blueworld natives untouched. After a few days the troops would begin to sicken, and eventually die. In that case,’ said Splendour-of-Thought, ‘Martian victory would not be as certain as you are suggesting.’
‘That would be an act of such barbarous treachery . . .’ I began to say, quivering with rage. ‘. . . a terrible, appalling act. . .’
‘It’s just hypothetical,’ said Splendour-of-Thought. ‘I’m only floating the notion. But it gives one pause for thought, doesn’t it? What if the war is not won? Eh? What then for our supposedly civilised Mars?’
And he activated his walker and strode quickly away. I stood and watched him disappear across the purple and red wastes, his shadows fluttering after him along the dirt like torn ribbons in the wind.
<
~ * ~
Woodpunk
My story, since you ask for it.
A wolf was rummaging amongst a bed of wild strawberries. We were in a clearing in the wood, and it was filled with hot bright light. The wolf made the noise of a newborn baby snuffling at the breast, he did, comical, though it didn’t stop me from being terrified. All around, the forest hushed itself, as if trying to keep the lid on its own temper. Metaphorically counting to twenty before speaking. As for what it might say, if its temper were to flare - that’s no idle question.
Shh, shh.
We were making our way through what Conoley had described to me, not once but many times, as the greatest expanse of primal forest on the entire globe. The only expanse of primal forest on the entire globe. The greatest. The only. Conoley kept his rifle trained on the beast as we passed by, but it plain ignored us.
The name of this forest is Chernobyl.
And he was a larger-than-life auld Irish-American, was Conoley (that’s the one L, as he said when introducing himself). And he was a tall and muscular and red-faced individual, with hair the colour and consistency of dandelion fluff. And he took another swig of The Great Enabler out of a flask, and breathed out noisily. And he sang, as we moved through the woods, and startled birds into the air. ‘Up here,’ he said again. ‘Just through here.’ The rifle poking up from his back looked like a digital aerial.
‘There’s something wrong with my,’ I said, ‘my G-M tube.’
‘Wrong,’ Conoley drawled, ‘and because, why? Because it ain’t registering excessive radiation?’
‘It’s not registering at all,’ I said, and just as I said that, as if to mock me, the device popped, and then popped again.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Oh, it’s active, round here. Active, sure. But that’s not to say it’s a desert where the sand has been turned to glass. I’ve been here plenty of times, and I’ve more to fear from my liquid narcotic than any radiation, I tells ya,’ and he pulled out his flask again. ‘Kurt’s been here a year and a half now,’ he added. ‘And no ill effects for him.’
Then I caught sight of a creature, in amongst the trees, amongst the fantastically prolific foliage with its tremendous range and variety of greens. Man, it was enormous, this creature - large as an elephant, but with raging scarlet eyes and pupils glinting with evil. It must have been forty foot high, and I yelled in the sheerest surprise and terror. But then the eye winked, and lifted away, and it was a butterfly shuddering upwards; and when that was removed the whole mirage fell apart.
‘Jumpy, aren’t we,’ sa
id Conoley. Arrunt wi.
‘I like city streets,’ I said. ‘I like London and Paris. I know where I am when I’m in London.’
‘You know where you are. You’re in London,’ Conoley said, reasonably enough.
We moved through hip-high ferns, and the strangely urinous smell of the vegetation. The sun in its summer vigour flared and faded in amongst the canopy above as we went. There is something cathedral-like about the primal forests of Old Europe; something very striking about the sheer scale.
The greatest. The only.
Kurt had started out in the camp built in the overgrown remains of a village abandoned by its occupants and overgrown by the forest. But this had involved too great a disruption of the forest logic, he said; so he had moved into the middle of the growth with a tent and a scrollscreen. By the time I came to reclaim him, on behalf of Co., he had even given up the use of his tent. I barely recognised him: huge-bearded and tangle-haired. He was wearing a puffed-up Greensuit, the outside of which was messy with mud and adhered forest detritus. I assume he slept in it; that he just lay down where he was and pulled the hood over his face and went to sleep.
There seemed to be little point in preliminaries.
‘They’ve cancelled your salary, Kurt, and withdrawn all project funding. You come back with me now.’
But the expression on his face was that of a spirit-medium half-hearing mutterings from some other reality. He looked from me to Conoley. Then he said: ‘You’ve got the memory?’
‘Here you go, you wild and woody man,’ boomed Conoley, pulling a toothpick-sized memory expansion chip from his pocket. Kurt snatched it, and rolled out his scrollscreen onto a boulder.
‘I could add, “I’m sorry,” ‘ I conceded. ‘ “About the end of the project.” I could add, “How are you Kurt? It’s good to see you again.” I could add, “How’s things? Long time no see.” ‘
He had inserted the expansion chip and was paddling his fingers over the screen. I began to think that he was simply going to ignore me, but then he said: ‘You still have access to the satellites?’
‘They’ve rescinded your passwords,’ I said. ‘They did that. Look, you need to take a break from the research now. You’ve been here too long now.’
‘I’ll need you,’ he croaked to me, ‘to log in. I need an updated scan of the whole forest.’
I was content to bargain with him. I was concerned to get him home without undue fuss, and that was all I was concerned about. ‘If I do that,’ I said, ‘will you come back with me? We’ve a truck a couple of hours away.’
He glowered at me, as if bringing a truck within three hours was polluting his virgin forest appallingly. But I entered my details and the scrollsheet accessed the latest data.
‘Let’s have a snack,’ said Conoley, with his large voice and his grating jollity, unzipping his bumbag. ‘Some supplies, and a drop of the Great Enabler, and there’ll be time and enough to walk back before evening.’
It was a warm day. Kurt had unrolled his scrollscreen over a large, moss-plumped boulder. Flies swung back and forth in the air, as if dangled on innumerable invisible threads. I heard a bird sing a car-alarm song somewhere far off. Everything that I could see in every direction was alive. Yet despite all this vitality, there was something distressingly silent about this place. Unless - unless there was an almost sub-audible hum? Unless that wasn’t just my imagination? Kurt said, ‘I need the satellite data, so that I can see what it’s telling me. It’s telling me to do stuff, and I need the satellite to get a proper read-out.’ I tuned him out, and breathed in the clean air.
All in amongst the forest. The greatest. The only. When he said, ‘It’s telling me to do stuff,’ Kurt meant the forest was telling him.
As we were, sat amongst the tree trunks, Kurt’s manner was almost normal again. He ate, and he drank, and he made conversation that could have passed as ordinary talk in half the pubs in London. ‘I guess I look a fright,’ he said. He tugged his beard. ‘I guess the hairs gone pretty radical.’
‘Gillette have an implant now,’ I said. ‘It’s a new thing. It goes inside the mouth, the inside of the lower lip, and the ads say you don’t even feel it after a day. Egg-smooth for thirteen months.’
‘You tried it?’
‘Not I,’ I said, nibbling an energy cake.
Kurt fondled his own beard. ‘It shows how caught up in shit a person can be. You forget to - well, you know. Hey!’ he added, abruptly. ‘You know what the forest is?’
‘You asking me?’ I said. ‘Or Conoley?’
But he had gone weird, old-man-of-the-woods again, muttering something under his breath and staring directly and intensely at me. It was like meeting a tramp in the subway and smelling alcohol on him and wondering if he might be about to knife you. Ironic.
‘AND IF I WERE TO TELL YOU,’ he barked, with a sudden furious volume, glowering first at me, and then at Conoley, and then back at me, and he left his sentence hanging for a beat for the dramatic effect.
‘What? What?’
‘If-I-were-to-tell-you that Conoley changed his name from Conolley two Ls to Conoley one L to make himself more interesting to girls?’ This last word was oirish, goy-uls, but it still took me a long moment to understand he was joking.
‘I’ve enough of your German humour,’ said Conoley. ‘In my belly, I’ve enough already.’ He stuffed a biscuit in his craw. ‘I’ve enough of your American-Deutsch fucking humour in my belly thank you muchly.’
Kurt said, ‘I’m sorry,’ half a dozen times, modulating from giggling to sober, and the conversation wound down. I dared to hope that we’d soon start walking back through the forest to the truck, and that I’d be back in the hotel in Kiev in time for a nightcap and CNN.
Kurt leant across Conoley, and it looked for a moment as if he were kissing him, which would have taken high-jinks too far, I think. But he wasn’t kissing him. That was an illusion created by the pattern-seeking human mind. He was only leaning across him to reach the bottle of rum. Conoley grunted, as if to say: ‘Go on then, you old boozer. Have another swig, you drunk.’ As if a single grunt could communicate all those words.
A grunt.
Kurt drank. I wiped my mouth. We sat in silence together for a little while.
Then Kurt got to his feet and stretched. It was a lazy afternoon. In the forest the warmth was a drowsy, pleasant, unexcessive heat. ‘We’re like weevils crawling across a motherboard,’ he said.
Conoley appeared to have gone to sleep.
‘You know what, Kurt?’ I said. ‘It’ll need a little politics, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t be back here in six months. You’ve done good work. Put yourself about the company, shake the right hands, and who knows?’
‘It’s a code,’ he said. ‘It’s the great code. It’s the only code.’
‘Code,’ I said, getting to my feet too. I think I didn’t like the way he was above me and talking down at me. I think I wanted to be on a level with him. ‘And, yes?’
‘You know what this forest is? I will tell you what this forest is. You know what it is?’
‘Deciduous?’
‘It’s a com,’ he said. He paused. ‘Pew,’ he added, very slowly. ‘Ter.’
‘And what does it compute?’
‘Hey, hum, hum, I been trying to think of an analogy. Say a new infection arose amongst men. What would we do?’
‘Again with the rhetorical questions,’ I said, aiming for hearty, but not quite hitting it. To be honest he was starting to freak me out. ‘Shake Conoley awake there, and we can all three have this conversation as we walk back.’
‘He’ll not wake,’ said Kurt, in what I took to be a jocular reference to the fellow’s fondness for the booze. But then I looked again and saw that Conoley was not flicking away the flies that were sipping the salt from his open eyes, and Kurt’s words took on a new meaning.
‘Jesus,’ I said, in a small voice.
‘So there’s
a new infection,’ he said. ‘What do we do? We’d want to work out a bunch of things about it. Things like, what’s the epidemiology? How fast and far will this spread? Things like, how do the symptoms correlate to the databases of other diseases. We’d plug in to the Boston Medical Database. That’s not a very exact analogy.’
As he gesticulated, I could see the glint of the blade in his hand. Most of the knife was cached up his sleeve. ‘Kurt,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’
‘It’s a poor analogy,’ he decided, thinking further. ‘Let’s start again.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Hum hum,’ he said to himself.