Finches of Mars

by Brian W Aldiss

  These attackers, the faithful, acted in accord with a passage from the Koran which says, ‘Neither on earth nor in heaven shall you escape His reach: nor have you any besides God to protect or help you. Those that disbelieve God’s revelations and deny that they will ever meet Him shall despair of My mercy. A woeful punishment awaits them.’

  His people’s response to a visitor from Mars was ‘Kill him!’ or ‘Burn him!’

  Barrin was settled in a ward of his own. Attention was immediately given to his lungs and heart. He lay supported by a breathing apparatus, his legs under local anaesthesia, while undergoing analysis under Earth gravitation. His heart had become too weak to circulate blood under the increased gravity.

  ‘I fear I cannot,’ he began to tell the doctor who attended him. He saw but could not focus. She who sat by him was nothing but a shadow. ‘Survive,’ he managed at last.

  ‘You just need a little repair,’ she said, comfortingly. ‘You are brave. You have a medal for it. Interplanetary travel is an attack on both body and intellect.’

  ‘Not on intellect, ma’am.’ It was his twilight. ‘Space exists to be travelled.’ His voice died away on the word ‘travelled’ while he fought for another breath. ‘We are, aaaafter all, products of the … of th’ cosmos.’ Had he said what he meant to say? Speech was such an effort. ‘Products of th’ compass,’ he murmured, trying again. He panted.

  ‘Bug–’ was all he managed to say. Then ‘–ger’, on a dying fall.

  She held his hand, regarding him gravely. ‘Are we in some way a dream of the cosmos? Although it goes against my profession, I mean the profession of healing, I sometimes find myself inclining to a belief that we are insubstantial beings.’

  He blinked at her, acknowledging that indeed he was a prime example of an insubstantial being.

  ‘After all, religions that do not entail worship of graven images worship insubstantial gods, monstrous creatures that cannot be seen or heard any more than creatures of fiction, creatures supposedly ruling the entire world. The Christian god is an example.

  ‘We may in a sense be insubstantial in such a way as him. We create him in our image and not vice versa, as the Bible claims.’

  Barrin sighed. He was not well enough for such irritating banality. He heard his heart thudding in his ears. ‘But still–’ he began, only to find he could not complete the sentence. He did not even know what the sentence was going to be. ‘Still …’

  The doctor mopped Barrin’s forehead with a damp tissue. ‘I was always struck by that passage in Plato’s Republic. About the shadows seen in the cave? I expect you know it.’

  In feeble irritation he whispered he had never heard of Plato, in the hope she would cease talking.

  She regarded him as a special case, one recognised by the King’s medal. To have been to Mars and back earned her respect, yet she felt that behind that compulsion (as she saw it) lurked illusion.

  Even as she told him Plato’s analogy, Barrin felt himself drifting away.

  It was indeed a striking analogy, so striking that it had lived for something like twenty-five centuries. Some people have been imprisoned in a large cave since childhood. They are unable even to move their heads and must always stare in front of them. (Just like us, she said.) Somewhere behind them bright lights shine. Between the bright lights and the prisoners is a raised walk. Free persons pass along this walk. Their shadows are thrown on the cave wall at which the prisoners have no alternative but to stare. Were they to hold a discussion with one another concerning life, they would assume that those shadows before them were the real, the only, things. They would make of them what sense they could.

  ‘So, my dear Barrin, do you not see that truth could prove to be nothing but mere shadows?’

  He made no response. She felt for his pulse. There was no pulse.

  ‘Just as I talk to you, my dear, now but a shadow,’ she said with sorrow.

  Late in the afternoon, when the doctor was off duty, she sat grieving with her partner by the fountain in their garden, attempting a light meal. There were butterflies on the buddleia and a nuthatch in the rhododendron bushes.

  She said, ‘Barrin was the first, the only, person to reach Mars and return here. Oughtn’t we to start a fund to raise a statue to him? Better than that medal, which hardly anyone saw … You don’t seem to grasp how unique his achievement was?’

  ‘Get on with your gazpacho, dear,’ her partner said.

  Barrin’s death took up a lot of air space. Another rival for attention was the invasion and take-over of Greenland by Russo-Musil forces. The world was so full of disturbances that the fate of Greenland seemed unimportant. It was not a particularly popular tourist resort. The leader of the invasion, and now the president of the state, was Colonel Ketel Mybargie, his name sounding quite friendly. He had announced, ‘We have taken over Greenland for spiritual purposes. This we trust will benefit all native Greenlanders.’

  Most of the world, with troubles of their own, were prepared to be reassured by these words, unaware that native Greenlanders had already been reduced almost to single figures.

  9

  Life Elsewhere?

  The squealers produced varieties of uncomfortable news.

  In the Middle East, President Iduita Gane admitted to, indeed boasted of, the desecration of Westminster Abbey, carried out on the grounds that it had become a refuge for gay men. More seriously, the small university in ‘Lhasa’, Tibet, withdrew from the UU, pleading poverty. Since the university was under direct Chinese control, this move was seen as a first reprisal for the attack on a visitor at the West’s tower gate.

  A counter move was also reported. The Florida universities, a group calling itself ‘Tampa’ within the UU, were celebrating the anniversary of their sighting of Earth’s companion sun, ‘Nemesis’. They offered a peace-making infusion of finance to ‘Lhasa’. The offer was ‘being considered’.

  In small print at the bottom of the flash, it was announced that some of ‘the gallant’ Barrin’s possessions had gone missing.

  The Terrier and the Grey Wolf, ignoring the medal, had in fact taken hasty possession of Barrin’s rather old-fashioned shrieker. It contained the Terrier’s parting advice to Barrin as the latter had prepared for his journey back to Mars. Directed at Barrin, it had been given as an off-the-record talk, with a small audience of trusted colleagues. It had taken place before that routine committee meeting which had turned out to be Barrin’s last.

  They played the recording to a select few on the UU Council.

  Tibbett’s talk had begun with an item he thought wiser to keep restricted for the present:

  ‘So far, governments have mainly regarded the UU as something of a derisible exercise, an eccentricity that could not be maintained for long. But, there are also some cautious signs of approval because, during a time of severe recession, the Mars expedition brought employment and a modicum of life to a sluggish economy.

  ‘I have to warn you that opinion in Washington has shifted under the new President. Planners, military men and others are considering bringing UU under government control. Don’t you hate planners? Don’t you hate military men? We are doing all we can to disabuse them, short of cutting the President’s throat …

  ‘Remain constantly aware that the UU is not a united body but a series of wise or ambitious or just plain crazy heads of educational establishments. You are not dealing with a church, a united body, although of course we think highly of the UU. The Principals of some universities, pleading poverty, wish to withdraw their support; they claim they gain nothing in the way of knowledge as a return. Some wish to prune their contributions, or to send their subscriptions less frequently.

  ‘A learned if short-sighted man from Stockholm suggested we should turn to governments for a hand-out. While we would appreciate a hand, we are old enough to savvy that some hands have a vice-like grip. You will unde
rstand, my dear brave Barrin, that the last thing we want is governmental involvement, which would probably transform our quiet assembly of towers into a military outpost.

  ‘In some cases political motives predominate which have little to do with us. In some cases, the Indonesian universities for example, they entered the union for complex reasons beneficial to themselves, having suffered badly from fault-line disturbances and consequent earthquakes and tsunamis. You might find it expedient to mention this case, stressing that on Mars you do not suffer from fault lines. Tsunamis too are singularly lacking.’

  He smiled but the audience did not find the remark very funny.

  ‘Take what advantages you can out of our situation. In particular, the news that we live in a binary system has caused the population at large to take a new view of our cosmic status. In fact, a change of umwelt.

  ‘You must nevertheless continue to emphasise the rigours of life on Tharsis, and above all how you are now, and shall be for a while, entirely dependent on the UU’s many scientific and humane contributions. If you can do that, it would be wise also to stress how you are working towards independence—positive night soil strategies, for example, with potential for growth of potatoes—so that the UU consortium do not convince themselves that their contributions will prove unending.

  ‘Recall too that the towers often send out expeditions over the surface of Mars, in search of previous life forms.’

  A pause followed while Barrin gathered himself together.

  ‘How do you advise treating the religious question, should it arise?’ Barrin asked from his wheelchair. He looked a sick man, quite unfit to make a journey to the Moon, never mind back to Mars.

  The Terrier paused to blow his nose, perhaps to delay answer.

  It was an opportunity for a humourist in the audience. ‘As we are part of a binary system, will our taxes be doubled?’

  Whereupon the Grey Wolf spoke, ignoring the laughter. ‘By the lack of comment regarding our quest for previous Martian life forms, I take it you have a scorn, as do many people, for the mere notion of life on Mars. A Professor Lowell in the early years of the twentieth century spread the notion of, as he quaintly put it, “Mars as the Abode of Life”. The idea then became quite fashionable. “Martians” became a serious subject for conversation. But then the comics got hold of them and for a number of years the concept of two-legged green people became laughable.’

  ‘They’re even more laughable now,’ Barrin murmured.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Grey Wolf agreed. ‘But the idea of life itself is again the subject of serious contemplation.’

  The Terrier took over again.

  ‘Your question, Barrin—the belief in life elsewhere resembles a religion. One of the hallmarks of most religions is “life elsewhere”. It is bound to recur, along with other metaphysical riddles. Of course the UU know that the colonists are all atheist, or at least agnostic. Remember that a clause about atheism was written into our original charter. It almost provoked a war.

  ‘This was one of the several reasons we were, sadly, unable to introduce Muslims to Mars. Not that there were many Muslim universities willing to contribute. True, there were some Muslim communities that would have been welcome—Malaysia, for instance. Also those dissident Muslims in China in—what’s it called?—Urumchi.’

  ‘So if we are accused of excluding a large proportion of the human race, what precisely is the defence, President?’ Barrin asked.

  ‘A large proportion excludes itself …’

  There, in the middle of the Terrier’s response, the recording cut out.

  Over coffee after that talk, the Grey Wolf had been asked the same question about religion. She had smiled as she began to count on her fingers for emphasis.

  ‘Firstly, the great majority of humanity would hate to go there, fear the journey, fear Mars itself.

  ‘What if we find it proves to be inhabited by non-humans hiding somewhere?’ Another finger.

  ‘What if it proves never to be truly habitable, if those of us already there are forced to go back?’ A third finger.

  ‘But the ruling in our UU charter states categorically that there is to be no religion on Mars. I was a script girl when the charter was set up, and one of the council’s fears was that a new religion might spring up, become indigenous and prove even more of a cause for division than do terrestrial religions.’

  In her earnestness, her fingers were forgotten.

  A recorder clerk spoke.

  ‘That doesn’t quite answer the question about mass exclusions. After all, there are forward-looking people everywhere. Many would be proud to join us.’

  ‘You will have to explain to them how limited are our Martian facilities.’

  One of the women from the Exploration Desk laughed. ‘Oh, the toilets, you mean? But thousands of Muslims live happily without toilets. And Africans. And–’

  ‘Stop it! Yes, we did have an initial problem without plentiful water. But that’s been solved the Chinese way, with night soil distribution and so forth. Do not let yourself be drawn into such minor arguments. Just remember the ghastly complexities of terrestrial global wars and the unrest we experience everywhere.

  ‘For the majority of inhabitants, oppression, shortages, racism, tribalism, sexism, rapine, and of course the kaleidoscope of religions, makes of existence a living hell.’

  ‘It’s the old lungs and penises problem,’ a man remarked.

  The Grey Wolf, undeflected, said, ‘Such issues interest only the washed and well-dressed and wily. If you want to assist, you must get what you can from them. Neither beg nor boast. See if they are researching a quicker way to get supplies out to Tharsis.’

  As the group shook hands and put cheek to cheek, the Grey Wolf had pressed her lean cheek to the Terrier’s whiskery one.

  Those who lived in the towers took exercise. Tennis was popular. Sport itself did not entirely exercise their minds. But they feel themselves to be closer to the mystery. The mystery was alluring, even obsessional. Nor was it easy to define. But there certainly was a mystery.

  ‘Life is the invisible elephant in the room,’ as someone put it.

  The mystery lodges in the skulls of humans.

  See, here’s a man. It’s night and he sits by a small fire in a forest. The seasons are turning; it grows colder. His woman lies by his side, not asleep but with no speech or movement. The man has a dog, part wolf, on a leash, made restless by the crackle of burning sticks.

  These three beings are in a continent almost uninhabited. It is full of trees. The trees grow straight, in silent competition, one with another. The man tears branches off the trees to burn, to keep him warm. He sits there, hands out to the blaze. He thinks. He is attempting to think about the mystery.

  He can’t even name it, but he feels its presence.

  Enormous lengths of time, lengths beyond human visualisation, stand between the present and that moment when the universe exploded from a nothingness—nothingness also beyond human visualisation. The illuminations of that distant beginning have sunk into almost complete night. Fires burn out.

  Yet the dust and debris of that beginning still continue to fly outwards. The universe, to use a phrase we almost understand, continues to expand. We label some of the clusters of blazing material galaxies. Stars are lit in these galaxies, yet throw no light on their meaning.

  Suppose there is no meaning in a galaxy and we are just wasting our time. No meaning in a galaxy—or in the whole universe? Why should there be? The strange thing is that human entities who worry about this question exist. It may be that mind lends meaning. Is that what mind is for? We have to live, to die; neither is a voluntary process. Yet we find what happens between birth and death important, to have meaning.

  The wily squirrel, clearly a conscious being, prefers its tree. But we have come down from the trees to face—or to invent—the
mystery alone.

  So human life, let us say for a moment, has meaning. Does that mean also that the existence of viruses holds a meaning for them? Animals certainly have minds. But no concept of Mind.

  These days, we can departmentalise this mystery into scientific, religious and philosophical slots—even if we believe that all three departments form one invisible elephant in our thinking.

  And another elephant. The telescope at Tampa had actually managed to pinpoint Nemesis, the Massive Solar Companion—in fact a dull dwarf star. It proved that Earth had been a component in a binary system, without an inkling of the fact, throughout all history and prehistory.

  And if there is no understanding, then what meaning can there be in human life? Or supposing the universe has a meaning—supposing it is its own meaning—does that give human life meaning? And what if ‘meaning’ itself holds no meaning?

  Here we ask questions which are sometimes put less naively round the desks and tables in the settlement, in the evening relaxation period, except in Singa-Thai, where they dance.

  We hope the questions probe the mystery more clearly than does the man squatting by his fire in the great forest of the night on that forbidding continent. But do they get closer to answers?

  A mathematician, by name Daark, works on Noel’s computer. His character has changed since his life on Earth. He had a partness and two children, but his career was failing. On Tharsis, a measure of remorse makes him a solitary in the crowd. It was he who had built on Madame Amboise’s work, and discovered the normon. He drew up an equation which proved that the universe itself is a life form.

  This solution proved unwelcome. There are now other clever people who are seeking to disprove Daark’s proof.

  One man, Nors, committed suicide in order to prove that if Daark’s figures were correct and the universe itself was a life form, then suicide would be impossible.