Finches of Mars

by Brian W Aldiss

  Defying fate—especially the fate of others—a band stood in the main square of Armstrong, playing martial music as the ferry rose, among which uplifting airs ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ was deemed particularly appropriate.

  No crowds cheered to say farewell at the start of this historic voyage. The lungs of a multitude would have taxed the production of breathable air. Only the eyes of instruments recorded the epoch-making launch.

  The ferry carried the new exiles from Armstrong up to the Confu, waiting in orbit. The group boarded the great vessel, to find it not entirely as they had expected. This new design of ship held, below the engine room, a small ferry craft. At the right moment, when the Confu was in orbit round Mars, the small ferry would take the exiles down to their new home, together with necessary supplies of UU medicines, fuel and food. So the Confu could return for an overhaul in its orbit above Armstrong, to be used over again.

  The Confu. Their quarters were spartan and situated in the heart of the ship, as proofed as could be against the destructive powers of radiation. First came a curved-wall living space; it was like living in an egg, as someone remarked. This room led into sleeping quarters with much gleaming apparatus looming above each bunk.

  Some of the voluntary exiles regarded their protective suiting as too heavy, but the yixiing huaheng suiting had useful qualities. It never wore out and it served as partial protection against radiation.

  The exiles lay at right angles to the direction of flight. Under the space suits, worn most of the time, was fitted a liquid conditioning garment, relieving the heat generated by the body and conducting it to a heater for coffee, enjoyed during the rare breaks of consciousness on the journey.

  ‘Gee, it’s ingenious!’ one woman exclaimed.

  ‘I’d say primitive,’ said another.

  ‘Primitive? Wait till you hit Mars!’ a girl relabelled Iggog said.

  The adjoining third chamber was a gym, loaded with equipment. Off the gym was a stub of passageway leading to shower-rooms and W.C.s. Everything, as they soon decided, was decidedly cramped. But clever.

  But there they were. And they were already on their way.

  A hushed recorded voice told them of their routine. A light meal, then enforced sleep period, then enforced awakening, then forced exercise. Followed by optional shower under recycled liquid. Then a light meal, then enforced sleep, then enforced awakening, then forced exercise.

  And so on, over and over, the exercise periods gradually growing more demanding. Scenes from Mars would be shown on the screen in the living room—scenes lasting for four minutes.

  Some exiles began to feel like experimental animals. On that protracted journey, Tad who’d kept his own first name, was haunted by dreams in which, it seemed, he had lived a long time ago. He and his comrades sailed a wine-dark sea rich with monsters. The crew responded to a brisk following wind and the gulls cried, shrill as the wind.

  The men hauled up the mast, making it fast with stays. They hoisted the bellying brown sail, securing it with ropes. And all the while he stood over them, long hair caught in any breeze, beaky-nosed like his father, scowling at the wave hissing round their stern.

  They sped through the choppy seas, forging ahead for ever.

  And never a sight of land, of Ithaca.

  18

  Interlude Part II:

  A Long Journey and A Short Walk

  That long journey had been taken by human beings many times before. The towers were filling. Mars was no longer as it had been.

  Coverage of the launch had figured largely on all squealers and shriekers. Gradually the interest stirred up dissipated. Humanity went back to teaching others to behave, to watching football matches, to being good people, to being holy, to fighting each other, to collecting old books, to reading new ones, to composing poetry, to getting drunk and drugged, to painting and sculpting, to respecting and despising or loving others, to thinking, to fantasising, to finding someone suitable or unsuitable with whom to copulate, to being ill or kind or clever or positively unbearable, to laughing and crying, to dying. All the things it was possible to do.

  Only on the Confu were impossible things being done.

  The passengers were roused in shifts of six at a time. They were exercised before being allowed a twenty minute break of consciousness. In that time, they sat and drank coffee heated by their own blood temperature. And talked. Or sat silent.

  ‘I’ve longed to get to Mars. I’ve not had much of a success in life.’ A man called Ficht was talking, rather a sorry figure, stooped and with a look of fatigue about him; yet when he spoke he was succinct enough. ‘I’m an astronomer. Viewing should be excellent on Mars. I hope to be a success for a change. Or at least to learn something.’

  He looked at the man next to him. ‘I suppose you despise me after what I’ve said. What do you do in life?’

  ‘I’m Doran. I don’t care what you say, chief! Spill your beans … Spent most of my time recently on what’s left of the Ross Ice Shelf. I used to draw comic strips. I used to love a sweet blonde wench.’

  ‘Waste of time, I’d say,’ said a third man, Haddod. ‘You aren’t suffering from SNA already, are you?’

  Ignoring this remark, Doran said, in a leisurely kind of way, ‘I woke up this time thinking how quickly we learn things. Think of comic strips—I used to draw one called “Petty Proceedings”. You know you mainly draw things in little boxes. One little box can carry you into the next box just a microsecond along in the characters’ lives. Or maybe a million years. Funny, isn’t it? So your eyes move just one small space to the next box and you can be a microsecond along or a million years. We suss all that pretty damn quick. Isn’t that clever of us?’

  ‘You soon get used to it,’ said Haddod.

  ‘But isn’t that what I’m saying? We do a learning curve pretty damn quick.’

  Ficht was more sympathetic. ‘So, space is made to equal time. In other words, it’s like this trip to Mars we’re taking. Any time, the gong will go. We sleep. We wake and a thousand—two thousand—or is it three thousand?—miles of space have disappeared.’

  As he finished the mild gong sounded. They smiled at each other and nodded. Comic strip boxes. Trips to Mars …

  They all climbed back into their bunks. This brief spell of consciousness was over.

  Being born is the most convenient, conventional, way of joining a family. It is not the only way; one can join a welcoming family without undergoing one’s childhood in it. And equally one can get kicked out of a family. Nevertheless, the family has proved durable throughout the ages. In the animal kingdom, matters differ from one species to another. Elephants observe family connections. Young tigers growing up leave their family for good. The necessity to hunt and eat exercises a strong influence. Even a poor human family will sit and share fish and chips or a pizza round the screamer. One does not have to be happy in a family. To cohere or adhere is often sufficient.

  So it was with the new bank manager. With her lover on his way to Mars, Ida Precious returned to the Precious family; that is, to her old parents, her two brothers, who played musical instruments for a living of sorts, and her younger sister, Ivy, of sulky disposition, working in the Complaints Department of a large chain of furniture retailers. If a cushion split or a leg fell off a sofa, you would most likely find yourself talking to Ivy.

  The Precious house was roomy, roomy enough to contain a lodger in one of the back rooms. This lodger’s name was Mike Maplethorp, of religious but blithe nature, and it was to Mike that Ida found herself inclining in the evenings, when she returned from the rustle of bank notes and the persecution of debtors … Indeed, it was Mike the lodger who persuaded Ida that her sense of guilt at abandoning Tad Tadl could be assuaged by visiting the local church of a Sunday.

  So when the congregation was not singing hymns, she sat, elegant behind one wooden pew, with her head bowed, some
times holding Mike’s hand. She listened to the vicar telling the congregation wildly unlikely things, such as that God had spent seven days creating the world, or that Jesus, dying on the Cross, had saved generations over two thousand years later from Sin. It puzzled her that such stories were still put about. Presumably it was not yet illegal.

  Thanks to Mike’s prompting, the vicar singled out Ida as she was leaving the outer door. He was a man of medium build, rather gaunt, in his forties and already with some grey hair showing. He was bony of face, but with a kindly look to him. He approached her in a flurry of black and white skirts.

  ‘I hope I don’t encroach too greatly on your thoughts, but you have a troubled look, my dear. If I can be of any help to you …’

  The look she flashed him was not entirely unfriendly. ‘It’s quite all right, thank you.’

  ‘Our Saviour is always by our side when we need him. He will comfort us.’

  She glanced about her but saw no one.

  ‘I was speaking metaphorically, miss. Really our entire lives are a metaphor until we come to the glory of His presence. That will be our promised reality. Then we shall see Him face to face.’

  Ida wanted to ask how long they would have to stand there staring, but instead said merely, ‘I’m afraid I don’t believe all that. When we’re dead, we’re dead, and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Ah, now I understand why your face is full of sorrow.’

  They were walking along a path fringed with plants. The roses sprawling on their right hand side were particularly beautiful. Beyond the bed of flowers were gravestones, some dating back three centuries, their stones carved with loving words: ‘always in our hearts’, ‘much loved’, ‘wife of the above’, ‘never forget you’. Those who had had the phrases carved had themselves now departed, to be forgotten by following generations.

  Glancing slyly at the vicar, Ida said, ‘I am sad for a rather worldly reason. My boyfriend is on his way to Mars without me. At the last moment, I refused to go along too.’

  ‘Then you are greatly to be praised, my dear,’ said the vicar. A pigeon meandered on the path just ahead of the pair of them. It barely eluded the episcopal shoes before lumbering unharmed into the air. With scarcely a break in his speech, the vicar continued. ‘Cursed are all they who try to leave this world that God hath blessed. Remember in the Good Book it says, “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide; and he lifted up his eyes and saw …” So we may lift up our eyes and see Mars, but to wish to walk there is a sin … God gave us this world to walk upon. He had no word to say about walking on unhallowed worlds. You may well sorrow for the sin of your young man!’

  She groaned. ‘Apologies, but you have it all wrong, Vicar! What I regret is my own behaviour—that instead of joining my man I took the materialist point of view to seize on promotion at work. And that a lousy bank.’

  At the gate of the churchyard, the Vicar said gently, ‘Come again and pray with us, my dear, and your way will be made clear.’

  ‘Unfortunately it’s all too clear as it is: I have been mercenary. But thanks.’

  Ida went on her way, saying to herself, ‘Oh god! … But what a nice man.’

  19

  The Vexed Question of Umwelts

  Among the most intelligent exiles on Tharsis was the woman now known as ‘Vooky’. She had been the Professor of Philosophy in the university nearest the North Pole. It was her duty on Tharsis to worry about things, and to record those worries on the UU screech, just in case they might be useful at some future date.

  Vooky worried about the stillbirth problem, although that problem had officials investigating it. But still she worried, indeed grieved, since she had borne one of the first dying children. Ever since then, she had listened acutely to what other grieving mothers said about the situation.

  The remark she found most concerning was the resigned, ‘It was meant to be’, which sounded to Vooky like the potential birth of a religion.

  On this particular day, she was brooding over a statement set in the mouth of ‘Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia’. In Samuel Johnson’s novel of that name, the Prince addresses a man who is mourning the death of his daughter. He says, ‘Consider that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same.’

  Loath to believe that Johnson could be mistaken, Vooky took a walk outside the settlement. She invited her secretary to follow her, which the secretary did, and followed without saying a word, for fear of disturbing Vooky’s line of thought.

  Over the cold shield and a little to the south Vooky walked. She missed her collie dog, so loving and intelligent, which she had been forced to leave behind. It was now understood that dogs, cats and pigs possessed at the least their own kind of intelligence and intuitions. It was accepted that the old nursery tales with their talking wolves and bears were something more than light-headed fantasy. Such understandings formed part of the current intellectual umwelt, the environment of the understanding. For much of the span of human existence, human concepts—their umwelts—which presided over their affairs, had remained limited. For instance, the term ‘universe’ had for a long time been limited to a concept where the Earth was stationary and remained the centre of everything: and everything where the stars were simply points of light on a ceiling.

  Now the learned part of the world had vaulted itself into a new environment. Perhaps it carried its umwelt on its shoulders. Again she struggled with her own mind, to escape from something, something that she was unable to identify.

  Yoga … was it only in meditation one could escape from whatever the current imprisoning was?

  Such cogitations gained a splutter of new life when Vooky and her secretary happened on an old robotruck, all but buried under driven sand and heterogeneous material, and parked behind a curtain of lava rock.

  ‘My god,’ exclaimed Vooky. ‘Give me a hand, will you …’

  The two of them scraped some regolith away. Vooky climbed into the cabin of the truck. Some of its instruments remained operative. Vooky knew the vehicle was of historic interest—even a decade on such a young colony was a long time; it was the machine that had been used by those hydrologists, Prestwick and Simpson, in their reconnaissance, the exploration on which the entire Martian venture had depended. Though scarcely acknowledged now, it was their discoveries that had made the UU venture a viable proposition.

  The secretary reminded Vooky that both men had died returning to Earth.

  Fiddling with a bank of switches, Vooky lit up an account of a long-dead woman’s life. This strange woman, who had at first been called Theodora, had struck up a friendship with an abbot. This and her remarkable holiness formed the basis of a kind of biography. It was puzzling, incomprehensible.

  This strange Theodora had changed her name to Christina. She swore to remain chaste, untouched by mortal man—and she wasn’t lesbian. She thought of herself as a ‘Bride of Christ’. This was in the twelfth century ad.

  Christina had undergone many hardships, as detailed in this account, which was entitled A Life of Christina of Markyate. Twelfth century! What could life have been like then …? ‘You shudder to think,’ she said to herself. ‘Hideous!’

  Here was an entire umwelt of bygone beliefs, mostly mistaken to Vooky’s mind, and yet, in its small enclosed way, working well enough. Everyone believed in its tenets. So they went almost unnoticed, each in their time.

  Truth and reason were not inevitably the same.

  So she had caught Johnson in a philosophical mistake. She was both proud and ashamed—ashamed at her self-congratulatory glow of discovery.

  ‘Uhhh,’ she exclaimed, realising she had wet herself in her excitement. A dribble only; it would soon dry. The small indignities imposed by Mars had been worsened by her childbirth that was all loss and no reward.

  She had observed somewhere that at the very beginnings of space fli
ght, when a small sample of mankind had landed on the Moon, there were many who swore it had never happened; unwilling to move to a new umwelt. Now there were the stubborn ones who claimed that Mars was still uninhabitable, preferring the lie to a new umwelt.

  All over Earth—wasn’t that at the heart of the problem?—different umwelts were scattered, each one confidently believing its own kind of truth, each bruising the others with their differences.

  Nowadays it was accepted—and Vooky accepted it—that there were multiverses. But what was truth? The binary system—that, she thought, in the history of man’s search for knowledge was a relatively new truth. And at least half the cretins down on Earth refused to believe it even now.

  Those exiles who had removed themselves from the umwelts of Earth had been escaping from god and religion.

  Truth and reason were necessarily identical. Vooky switched off the curious document. She and her secretary began the plod home, to report their discovery of the old robotruck.

  Another sand gale was brewing. ‘Perhaps we can rescue the truck and get it into working order again,’ said the secretary, glancing through her mask at Vooky. ‘It would be useful, wouldn’t it?’

  She added, ‘And we’d be celebrated …’

  Vooky gave no answer.

  She had discovered a new thing to worry about.

  20

  A Troubled Exwo

  Aymee and Rooy were taking their traditional stroll over the eternal twilights close to the settlement. The silence pleased them. Only now and again did something occur to them as they walked. Aymee was remarking with a chuckle, ‘Think of all the industry and machinery it took to land us here. And you could say we’re back in a pastoral setting!’

  He clasped her arm to halt her.

  Their eyes had adjusted to the near-dark; they clearly saw the figure lying sprawled ahead of them. They were astonished. They hurried over to it.