Finches of Mars

by Brian W Aldiss

  A woman called Deim who worked with Noel said that she thought they should move to more serious matters.

  ‘Art is a serious matter,’ said Tad, indignantly.

  Ignoring this remark, Deim reported that the Battle of Five States, so-called, continued back on Earth. So far, Tharsis had taken little notice of it; after all, armed struggle was taking place everywhere. Armed struggle was one of the reasons why they were on Mars, for security and for the possible expansion of wisdom.

  The news from so many parts of Earth continued to be bad. It was a year or so ago that the armed forces of Russo-Musil had invaded and taken over Greenland. In a troubled world this had largely been ignored. The US President had complained strongly, but American forces were engaged in the Middle East and in parts of Indonesia.

  Russo-Musil Greenland had only remained for a year. Then had come the invasion launched against Newfoundland, which had been overcome with comparative ease. Negotiations were taking place when another strike was launched against the state of Maine. Maine was overcome.

  The US President resigned. A military clique took over, calling back air support from Java. Another Russo-Musil advance using extensive field nukes gained the enemy most of New Hampshire. Their success won them support from West Russia, the state known as Belominsk after the great lands of Russia had broken into four separate states.

  With a fierce push, much of the coastline had been taken before US forces, supported by troops from Holland and Britain, formed a defensive line. This halted the enemy drive southward. But the city of Portland was virtually destroyed by nuclear attack.

  The destruction had encompassed the University of Portland—a member of the UU. A small proportion of the finances supporting the West tower had therefore been lost.

  This unhappy news quelled all discussion of art.

  VIOLENT STORM WRECKS PHILIPPINES

  MANILA CITY FLOODED WAIST DEEP

  HUNDREDS BELIEVED DROWNED

  Daark was coming off shift and having what passed for a coffee in the canteen, when Iggog entered. Daark gave a nod which encouraged Iggog to join him.

  ‘How’s the living universe?’ Iggog’s jocular enquiry was intended merely as a sort of joke.

  ‘The newly discovered normon contains amino acid, otherwise nothing biological, though there is a group linkage similar to linkages we find in DNA. Normons seem particularly prevalent in orbits about Mars, which implies –’

  ‘Hang on!’ Iggog said. ‘I can’t take all this stuff in!’ She began to paint her lips.

  ‘You asked me, so I’m telling you. Try to learn. The frequency of normons hereabouts suggests that something like DNA was on its way to a transformation similar to DNA, although by no means the same, when a catastrophe of some kind struck Mars, thus decreasing the possibilities for life to develop. The normons may yet coalesce. So that the universe—the local section at least—may then be considered “alive”.’

  Daark sat back and regarded Iggog for a response.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Iggog, scratching her nose.

  They settled down to discuss the latest news. Phipp had made a pass at a woman returning on her own from the Chinese tower—Phipp who had already caused trouble. The woman had, according to Troed who had been nearby, given Phipp a ‘healthy belt in the mush’, to use Troed’s words.

  ‘But the funniest thing,’ said Iggog, who always seemed to know what others did not, ‘is that the mush-belter was Ooma. Ooma! I suppose you know that she used to be a guy? Changed her sex.’

  Daark confessed he did not know.

  ‘Yes, she was a guy called Tompkins until she had a sex-change op.’

  Daark felt bound to ask the obvious question: ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘He was riff-raff. So was I, but I was in the police,’ said Iggog. ‘I did not much like being a cop, but it gave you the chance to see how others lived.

  ‘Do you remember when we were preparing to board the Confu we had a series of lectures from a guy called Morgan Something? Remember his T-shirt, “Different Shit”? He knew about that sex-change. He once had a dig at “Tompkins” …’

  It was not that Daark enjoyed this conversation, nor did he enjoy revealing his ignorance to this gossipy lady, but his curiosity was roused.

  ‘He—she—must be an unstable character.’ Iggog pulled a wry face. ‘How come the UU okayed Ooma for the trip? Weren’t we supposed to be the crème de la crème?’

  Iggog permitted herself one of her sly triumphant smiles.

  ‘Well … look, the famous Mangalian was duped. Does that surprise you? Sure, a ton of dough was forthcoming, but was used—or some of it—to bribe the interviewers. “Let a few trouble-makers in,” they said. Which means, “Get ’em off the planet.” They had to. Bad as things were back home, the really clever, the wise, the scholarly, had too much sense to go for the exile enterprise. They had to fill up the quota with scum like me!’

  Daark gave a short laugh.

  ‘You didn’t realise that?’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe it now.’

  Iggog leant across the table. ‘Take the best of them, Noel—or Rosemary Cavendish, as she used to be. I heard a rumour that Mangalian was married to the daughter of no less than Earth President Ban Mu Kai’s daughter. But he was also having it off with Rosemary, who worked in his offices. He saw his secret was going to get out, to be leaked. Always money to be made out of scandal … So Mangalian went to Kai and made a clean breast of it.

  ‘So then Kai saw to it that Rosemary was shipped out …’

  ‘You’re kidding me. That can’t be true!’ Daark felt his anger rising at this fanciful gossip. He drained his coffee carton.

  Iggog made a face. ‘It’s corruption, isn’t it? Gets everywhere, like dry rot. You can believe me or not as you please. But I’ll tell you one more thing. Once Kai learned that Mangalian was not to be trusted and that as a youth he had been what you might call a “rake”—Kai wasn’t going to allow the offence to go unpunished.

  ‘He sent in a heavy or two and they carved Mangalian up. His body has never been found—not that anyone was encouraged to look very hard.’

  Daark thought, Surely even here we’d know if Mangalian was dead? But all he said was that he did not know what to say.

  ‘You could say it’s lousy coffee,’ Iggog suggested. She giggled girlishly.

  As relations became cordial once more, a group of amateur historians drawn from all six towers began to meet once a month. They called themselves Thistorians, to acknowledge a certain divorce from events back on Earth which did not directly concern the post-Curiosity planet, Mars. This month they were looking at the UU, and how ‘knowledge’ had been so significant in the Mars enterprise. The UU’s step into the unknown—or at least into the only partly known—had been in the name of knowledge and human advancement. Of course, there had been much debate on the precise definitions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘human advancement’.

  It had been decided:

  a) That the Big K, as knowledge and advancement were called colloquially, was an integral part of the intelligence which constituted a major role in human consciousness.

  b) There were types of Big K which served only a minor part of intelligence, such as knowing of which country Tirana was the capital, or who was the oldest man/woman on Earth, or who was the most famous golf player in the world. All such items became known as ‘boot-locker knowledge’ or ‘quiz-answer quotes’.

  c) ‘Knowing how’ and ‘knowing when’ were essential components of Big K—such as knowing when and how a journey to Mars became possible, so that knowledge could be exercised and (most likely) enlarged.

  d) ‘Pure K’ is a suspect term, since research may reveal senses and areas of reason hitherto unknown. ‘Abstract K’ is also suspect, since there is already an aspect in which Big K is all abstract.


  e) Big K in part requires organisation, such as universities provide, whereby elements of the past may be transposed to the future, often to create new futures (in areas such as government, speculation, and affirmative pleasure). It is agreed, however, that solitary geniuses may advance knowledge, often in remarkable ways.*

  f) Thus ‘the unknown’ as a subject of investigation is an essential part of Big K.

  g) The definition of Big K was drawn up. The universities could move on to more taxing matters.

  Thus, to some jokers, the innate compromises resulting in deformed and unsound conclusions about knowledge were paralleled by the deformed babies born later on the Red Planet.

  As the Thistorians recorded, from the findings of the two hydrologists, a surprisingly short time had elapsed before the shipping of humans in sizeable numbers across millions of miles of the raging element still known as ‘space’. The towers had been set up and partially occupied almost immediately and were stocked with bioscientifically passed provisions.

  Many marvelled that this great challenge had been seized upon in the first place, let alone achieved so quickly …

  Here and there, even in this desperate period when the planet Earth was sinking under the weight of over-population and underhand warfare, there were a few scholars who recalled the words of a long-dead Scottish poet: ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.’

  It was the enforced economies and abridgements—the distances—the great agley-ment of existence—which followed that caused Sheea to sleep in a dormitory full of women instead of a little room of her own, but nevertheless to permit a lover to creep into her inviting bed.

  Women slept here in their own beds, each bed curtained off from the next. Separate cabins were still to be constructed; material had to be imported. These temporary dormitories filled the top floors of all but one of each of the towers.

  Above these dormitories, accessible only by a non-stop elevator from the ground floor, was the Astronomy Department with its various telescopes, cameras and computers and other paraphernalia, where, in the West tower, the planet Xeno was the particular subject of intensive study.

  Of a night, all above was activity. Shutters were open. On the floor below, Sheea and her like had their eyes closed in restful slumbers. Or perhaps an enterprising lover had negotiated with the guard at the door and crept into a wakeful and welcoming bed. As had happened in Sheea’s case—a small and furtive arrangement, but the entire known universe would be told of its results.

  Nor had her murmurs of delight originated as solo music. Other instruments were being played in various parts of the dormitory, and the guardian at the door was accumulating pockets full of tokens.

  Not all terrestrial pleasures were easily shed.

  * Here were instanced geniuses such as Akhenaten, Charles Darwin, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Albert Einstein and others.

  25

  Meeting an Astronomer

  Daze and Piggy found plenty to occupy them. They slept in hammocks which could serve as spaceships or submarines or the trees they dimly remembered. They had inflatable coloured balls and an electronic bug which whizzed about on one wall, defying attempts to zap it.

  Sometimes they teased Thirn, because she was shy and looked miserable. ‘You know we’re really on Saturn,’ they said.

  ‘Please go away,’ Thirn said. ‘I’m not in the mood for this. My brother’s fighting in Peshawar.’

  ‘Pooh! There’s no such planet!’

  Only recently had Squirrel, fifteen years of age, withdrawn from this juvenile gaiety. He could be seen lingering in the corridors, enduring the effects of puberty and testosterone.

  Wandering into the canteen, which served also as a bank, he sat over a mug of coffee, blank-faced, not drinking. His sister Daze peeped round the door, pulled a funny face at him, and disappeared.

  ‘You all right?’ Yerat, the waitress, asked Squirrel.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  She pulled a face not unlike Daze’s. ‘Dozens of reasons,’ she said, moving away.

  This exchange was watched by the Banker/Canteen Supervisor, by name Stroy. Stroy was a warm-hearted woman, forever restless, plump and pleasing to the eye, forever smiling.

  She in her turn went over to Squirrel. ‘Are you bored, lad? How can you ever be bored when the library houses all the world’s books, from Plato onwards?’

  ‘Plato!’ He echoed the name contemptuously.

  ‘It’s just an example. But you’d find stuff in Plato to surprise you.’

  He made no answer. She retreated, dismissing the adolescent from her mind. She had been about to make a manoeuvre of her own. A tray of food had been prepared for the Astronomy floor. A waitress usually took it up. Stroy wanted a look at the top floor and had decided to carry up the tray herself.

  The non-stop elevator delivered her. Blinds rendered the quarters in deep shade. Over in one corner, three people were sleeping in stacked bunks. Stroy had forgotten that astronomers were most busy at night.

  When Stroy stepped into the observatory, a man long in years, with white hair to match, came forward and took the tray from her. Smiling, he said in a gentle voice, ‘I don’t think we have seen you before.’ When he smiled, she registered his bright blue eyes shining in a pale unhealthy countenance. Her impression was that she stood in the presence of an unusual personality.

  ‘I haven’t been here before. Haven’t dared to. My name’s Stroy.’

  ‘I see. Somewhat like Helen of Stroy.’

  ‘Not quite, I have to say. I regret the food is so sparse. Supplies are running low. We’ll have to go on to half-rations until the next UU drone arrives.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He cleared his throat. He shook his long white locks, just enough to make them tremble. ‘Philosophy teaches us that the flesh is less important than we like to believe. I am certainly in need of that perception—though of its truth I am not fully convinced.’

  ‘So. What do you do up here, if I may ask? Are you studying the Massive Solar Companion—Nemesis?’

  ‘Oh, that’s rather gone out of fashion, I fear.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t got the telescopes to do a search—to find a new body like it?’

  Chuckling, he said. ‘Not new—ages old. No mention in the Koran or Bible, though. “God made the stars” … it’s just a wild guess.’ He shook his head reprovingly. ‘Well, we all like to believe in something, however absurd … The more ancient the better.’

  ‘People didn’t know any better in the old days,’ Stroy said in a tone suggesting she agreed with every word he said.

  He peered at her. ‘I cannot say which I most deplore, those who did not know any way of knowing better, or those who, when the better is already known, don’t bother to learn.’

  She said, ‘Oh, it must be those latter people.’

  ‘Then you have resolved that problem for me,’ he replied in a gently mocking tone. ‘But as for Nemesis, we do not have a telescope strong enough in existence here.’

  ‘You need more astronomers on the board back on Earth.’

  ‘But they may be our rivals,’ he said, turning to inspect vaguely the tray Stroy had brought.

  ‘The gods—not to mention the salaries—must have got in the way. Although our ’scope is a present from NASA, it isn’t powerful enough to sight Nemesis from Tharsis. So I stick to—well, to Eris … This tray is my one solace.’

  He raised a hand and waggled an admonitory finger.

  ‘But we are not idle, young lady. The UU keep us hard at work.’ His manner changed abruptly. ‘But I should be polite and introduce myself. My name is Ficht. How d’y’do? Wie geht? In my native Germany, I was a professor, but on Tharsis we have rightly abandoned titles. I was born in the Duchy of Wurtzberg. I had an elder brother; we were never close. My father was a wealthy lawyer, remote from the two of
us. My mother died when I was very young, from a venereal disease. Thus was my character shaped. Mis-shaped, I should say.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Will you tell me of your upbringing? Is it amusing or tragic in any way?’

  Those blue eyes were fixed on her as if, she thought, he wanted to eat her. Feeling more than slightly uneasy, she responded, ‘I was brought up in a pleasant country town, Hampden Ferrers, in Wiltshire, sir. Or it was pleasant until a biscuit factory opened. It employed foreign labour, and then trouble began. And so on …’

  Apparently with a touch of contempt, Ficht said, ‘You had parents, I assume.’

  ‘My parents and my step-father were pretty affluent. They had emigrated from Bavaria. They sent me to Keble College in Oxford.’

  ‘Why did they emigrate? Was it something sexual?’

  Ignoring the question, she told him, ‘While I was away, my parents were attacked one night and our house burnt down. My father died. My mother re-married almost at once.’

  She wondered why she had told him so much.

  Ficht seemed indifferent to her story, asking merely, ‘And had you culture? Cultivation? Was Oxford good for you?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I took a particular interest in the paintings of Holman Hunt. Later, I wrote a book on him.’

  ‘But culturally? Pardon, but this Holman Hunt doesn’t amount to much. The spirit—if one may use the expression—the spirit of mankind, the flame—is missing. The unity of all sciences, the disunity of mankind. What marks our anomalous existence within a great inorganic world?’

  ‘I would find all that stuff pretty pretentious. But, well, I mean, in the life of Holman Hunt one finds the struggle—well, just to be oneself and to create. Create as best one can …’

  He turned away. His shoulder blades showed through his thin jacket.

  He cleared his throat, turning back

  ‘I am attracted by your youth and vitality, so I endeavour to impress you. My apologies, dear lady. You asked me what we do here. Come, I will show you.’