The New Space Opera

by Gardner Dozois

  “I wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to Earth. This might be a good thing for us! How many actors can there be on Mars anyway?” His smile dimmed a little. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t want to leave your family.”

  “Are you mad?” Meera cried. “I’d give anything to put half the solar system between us!”

  “Okay, then!” Crispin pulled a shirt on over his head. “Let’s mail the guy.”

  “There’s something else,” said Meera, looking down at her hands. She clasped them tight. “Cris . . . you remember the night we went to Gupta’s party?”

  “Heh heh heh,” said Crispin, leering at her. She didn’t say anything else. There was a silence of about thirty seconds, in which he connected the dots. Her eyes filled with tears. He went pale.

  “Oh, no,” he murmured. “I mean—oh, babe, what a wonderful thing! It’s only—”

  “It’s a bloody disaster!” Meera wailed. He sat down beside her and took her hands.

  “We—we’ll think of something. I’ll get a job. And . . . and if I manage to work off the fine in five years—”

  “We couldn’t work off the fine in twenty years,” said Meera, gulping back a sob. “I’ve already checked. The baby would be shaving by the time we were free.”

  “Shrack,” said Crispin. He thought about the other alternative, but that carried an even stiffer penalty. Meera fought to compose herself. She said:

  “But you see—if we emigrated to Mars—we wouldn’t need a Reproduction Permit.”

  “We wouldn’t?” said Crispin. “Oh . . . we wouldn’t, would we? They let you have them, up there.”

  Meera nodded.

  “That settles it.” Crispin grabbed a datastick from the pocket of his coat. “Where’s the one with your head shot? We’ll both apply. What can we lose?”

  Six weeks later, they were emerging from the shuttle in the hangar at Settlement Base, a little wobbly-legged from their journey.

  “Shouldn’t we have our air masks on?” said Meera fretfully.

  “Nobody else has,” said Crispin. “We’re under a dome, see?” He drew in a deep breath. “Phew!” Hastily he clapped his mask on. “They must have had a leak in a sewer pipe!”

  “No, actually,” said the shuttle pilot, grinning. “It always smells like this. They raise cattle down the MAC tubes. You’ll get used to it.”

  Meera slid her mask in place and reached for Crispin’s hand. “Let’s go claim our trunks.”

  They took a few steps forward and promptly stopped, as all newcomers did, startled by Martian gravity.

  “This is lovely!” Meera bounced on tiptoes. Crispin, giggling, let go her hand and ran a few paces, bounding athletically toward an imaginary basketball hoop.

  “That’ll be them, I’m guessing,” said one of a pair of men walking toward them.

  “Oh, dear, are we that obvious?” said Meera, turning to smile. Her eyes widened.

  The taller of the two was very tall indeed and very thin, suited all in black, with an old-fashioned bubble helmet; it made him look rather like Jack Skellington. The other was wide and barrel-chested, with a bushy beard. He wore no mask. He had clearly washed for the occasion, but not very well; soot lay in every crevice, in the creases of his big hands and in the wrinkles around his pale eyes, which gave him an alarmingly villainous appearance.

  “That’s all right,” he said, grinning. He had a thick pan-Celtic accent. “We was all immigrants once.”

  “Ms. Suraiya, Mr. Delamare, what an honor!” cried the other gentleman, with his voice a little muffled and echoing. He clasped Meera’s hand in both his own and bent to kiss it, but only succeeded in rapping her knuckles with the curve of his helmet. “Oh—I’m so sorry—”

  “Ah, hell, Morton, take the damn thing off,” said the bearded one. He inhaled deeply. “It ain’t that bad down here. Reminds me of old times, so it does.”

  “I can’t bear it, and obviously neither can they,” said Mr. Morton. He leaned down solicitously. “The air is much fresher where we’re going, though I must admit it’s a little thin. I cannot express what a pleasure it is to welcome you to Mars, Ms. Suraiya! Mr. Delamare! Amadeus Ruthven Morton at your service, and may I present Mr. Maurice Cochevelou? May we collect your trunks for you?”

  “Yes, please,” said Meera.

  “I think they’re over here,” said Crispin, and vaulted away to the baggage claim area with Cochevelou walking after him.

  “We were so awfully impressed by the holoshots of your theater, Mr. Morton,” said Meera. “When are auditions?”

  “Oh, you needn’t audition!” said Mr. Morton. “We do get all the latest holos up here now, you know. Everyone’s seen Mr. Korkunov Says Hello!”

  “How nice!” Mr. Korkunov was a kiddie holo in which Crispin had had a recurring role as Brophy the Bear, until the show’s cancellation.

  “And of course, you were one of Smeeta’s daughters on Wellington Square,” Mr. Morton said.

  “The one who got married to a millionaire and moved to Montana,” said Meera ruefully. She had been written out of the show after refusing to sleep with the director.

  “Yes. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be working with real professionals!” said Mr. Morton. “I’m afraid our little theater is still something of an amateur undertaking—”

  “Meera! Check it out!” yelled Crispin, balancing his trunk on one hand as he approached. He tossed it to the other hand as though it were made of balsa. “One-third gravity!”

  “Careful—” Meera threw up her hands as Crispin butted the trunk like a football, and promptly clutched his head.

  “Ow!”

  “It’s lighter, but it’s just as hard,” Mr. Cochevelou told him. He scooped up the fallen trunk, swung the other trunk to his shoulder, and led them out of the hangar. They had their first glimpse of Mars: Settlement Dome above them, scoured to near-opacity by sandstorms, and the portals to the Tubes opening off it. To one side was the Ephesian Mission, breathing out incense which mingled peculiarly with the prevailing methane reek.

  “So this is Mars,” said Meera, trying not to show her disappointment.

  “Oh, no, darlin’,” said Cochevelou. “This ain’t Mars.” He grinned and led them to an airlock. “Masks on tight? You might want to pull up those hoods. We’re going Outside.” He slid on his own mask, around which his beard protruded to bizarre effect, and handed them a pair of heavy suits such as he wore, waiting patiently while they pulled them on and sealed up. Then he shouldered his way through the airlock. They followed him, holding hands tightly.

  “This is Mars,” said Cochevelou. He dumped their trunks into the back of a rickety-looking vehicle with balloon tires, and turned to wave an arm at the immense red desert. Rocks like crusts of dried blood, boulders in the colors of tangerines or bricks, wind-scoured curry-colored pinnacles and spires of rock. Far off, pink whirlwinds moved lazily across the plain. Looming before them was a gentle slope that rose, and rose, looking not so impossibly high as all that until they saw the cluster of tiny buildings far up and still not halfway to the sky.

  Meera barely noticed that she was colder than she’d ever been in her life. It was all so vast, and so silent, and beautiful in a harsh way. It did not look like the surface of an alien world.

  And it isn’t, is it? she thought. We’re Martians now. This is home.

  The view was even more breathtaking by the time they had rumbled up the mountainside as far as the little buildings, but by that time the cold really was more than either of them could stand another minute, and they staggered gratefully through the airlock into what seemed, by comparison, a place as warm and steamy as a sauna.

  “And here they are!” bellowed Cochevelou, pulling up his mask. Crispin and Meera followed suit. They stood in a domed darkness relieved only by lamps at scattered tables and booths, and one brighter light over the . . . bar? Yes, unmistakably a bar. It had a concentrated smell of old ale and fried food that anywhere else would have been overpowering, but by con
trast with the stench of Settlement Dome seemed pleasant and wholesome. Quite a crowd was assembled there, and all eyes were turned to Crispin and Meera.

  A buxom lady of a certain age pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Welcome to the Empress of Mars, my dears. Did you talk to them about housing, Mr. Morton? No, not you. Never mind. Mary Griffith, and delighted to make your acquaintance. Manco? Just take their trunks up to the best nook, there’s a dear. Rowan! Set a booth for them, they’ll not have had anything but those nasty squeezy pastes for days and days. Come and sit, dears.”

  A girl edged her way forward, holding up a stylus and plaquette. “Please—can I have your autograph, Ms. Suraiya?”

  “Me too?” inquired a man, clearly a miner or prospector, so covered in red dust he looked like a living statue. “And yours, Mr. Delamare?”

  “Mr. Delamare, Ms. Suraiya, I’m with the Ares Times,” said a gentleman, bowing slightly. “Could I ask you just to step over here for the holocams a moment? Chiring Skousen, so pleased to meet you—and I wonder whether you’d consider doing an interview a little later . . . ?”

  Meera looked sidelong at Crispin, who flashed her a triumphant smile. It was going to be all right.

  And it was all right, even after Meera’s first visit to the Settlement Base clinic, when she learned that having a child on Mars meant that there could be no second thoughts about emigration. Returning to Earth presented unacceptable risks to a baby born in Martian gravity, at least until adulthood, when it could train for the ordeal of Earth weight.

  It was all right, even after Cochevelou gave them a midday tour Outside, and they saw the little mounds of red stones that had been placed, here and there, over the suffocated and frozen remains of prospectors who had ventured Out with no clear idea of the dangers they faced; or the ruined foundation of the big Ephesian temple that had been destroyed in some kind of hurricane, causing the good mothers to rebuild much more humbly within the protective stench of Settlement Base.

  It was all right, even when they discovered how many of their new neighbors had been in Hospital, because the haulers and the laborers and the prospectors didn’t act as though they were liable to cause breaches of the public peace. Mostly they minded their manners, and only occasionally laughed a little too loudly or got into fights in the bar. There were no Public Health Monitors snooping around to have them collared and dragged off in any case, and, when you got right down to it, Eccentrics were people just like anyone else.

  It was all right because Crispin and Meera had free food and free lodging, in one of the funny little lofts plastered like swallow’s nests within the dome of the Empress of Mars, and were promised better housing yet, as soon as Mr. Morton’s workers completed the new block of flats—the first ever on Mars! It was all right because their interview with Mr. Skousen made the front page of the Ares Times, and they were treated like royalty everywhere they went.

  It was all right because they soon got used to the smell, except when they ventured down to Settlement Base; and there were Scentstrips available in Mother Griffith’s convenience shop that could be stuck across the air filter in one’s mask, so that one hardly noticed anything except Island Spice, Berry Potpourri, or Spring Bouquet.

  And it was all right because, on their first walk up to the EAPCPA, Meera had looked up at its black spires sharp against the purple sunset of Mars, and seen above them the soaring frame of the dome being built to shelter a new city, its bright steel catching the last of the sunlight, tiny points of blue glowing where the suited welders worked so far up. Standing there, Meera had felt the little flutter of the baby moving for the first time.

  Meera peered at the plaquette screen.

  “‘As the old man spoke,’” she read aloud, “‘I became aware of a vast and gradually increasing sound.’”

  “That’s your cue,” said Crispin, leaning toward, in the makeup mirror.

  “Actually I think he said he’s just going to record us for that bit, so he can put in some effects,” said Meera, “So the Visitor goes on, ‘vast bed of the waters, frenzied convulsion, heaving boiling hissing, prodigious streaks of foam’—blah blah—and there’s me and the other two girls just sort of pacing around in a circle in the background, looking dangerous. And I suppose you’re going to be just sort of staring at us in horror.”

  “How’s this look?” Crispin turned to her. In addition to the white wig and beard, he had put in a set of tooth appliances. He gave her a mad snaggly smile and rubbed his hands together, cackling like a lunatic.

  “Maybe . . . a little over the top,” said Meera, as gently as she could.

  “No, no, see, the guy has been driven mad by his experience,” said Crispin. “You have to put in some comic relief, when the story’s an absolute downer like this. It’s, like, this psychological release for the audience.”

  Meera bit her lip.

  “Go on, go on,” said Crispin. “Who got the part of the Visitor, anyway, did Morton tell us?”

  “Mr. Skousen,” said Meera. “The newsman up here.”

  “Oh, good, at least he’ll know how to read. Go on.”

  “‘These streaks of foam, spreading out to a great distance, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form another, more vast.’ You know what I’d do, if I were you? Talk to some of those hauler people. They go Outside a lot. Mother Griffith was telling me about some of the really dreadful storms.”

  “Oh, yeah, the . . . Raspberries or something, they call them.” Crispin nodded. “Like what took out that temple. Yes, brilliant. Who’s that big guy who plays my brother, in the boat? Alf. He’s an old-timer here. I’ll buy him a beer or something. Go on, go on.”

  Meera lifted the plaquette. “‘I looked down a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, speeding dizzily around and around with a swaying and sweltering motion, sending forth to the winds an appalling voice. The mountain trembled to its very base.’ He looks at the Old Man. ‘This, this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom!’ And that’s your cue.”

  Crispin clasped his hands together and gave a shrieking laugh. “‘Ah! I will tell you a story—’ What are you making that face for?”

  “Darling, that was your SpongeBob laugh.”

  Crispin scowled, an effect the dental appliances rendered hideous. “No it wasn’t. It was crazier.” He did it again. “No, you’re right. Sorry.” He gave a sepulchral chuckle instead. “Oh, that’s it. ‘I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Maelstrom!’”

  “I’d like to thank you all for being here today,” said Mr. Morton, clasping his long white hands. “Especially our stars, who have—ha, ha—truly crossed the heavens to shine here amongst us. But I am positive that each and every one of you will shine in your own proper sphere as we begin our journey toward True Art.”

  “Yaaay!” cried Mona. There was polite applause.

  “Our stars, of course, need no introduction,” Mr. Morton went on. “However, I’d like each of the rest of the cast to stand and have his or her moment in the spotlight. Why don’t we begin stage left? That would be you, Alf.”

  “Erm,” said Alf. “Name, Alf Chipping. Dee-oh-bee twenty-free April twenty-two-eighty-free. Patient number seven-seven-five. Haulers’ Union Member number sixteen.”

  “And . . . why did you decide to take up acting, Alf ?”

  “Like plays,” said Alf.

  “Good for you,” said Crispin.

  Mona stepped forward. “I’m Mona Griffith, and I’m engaged to be married next year, and I’ve always wanted to be a performer. When I was little I used to climb on the table and pretend I was a hologram. I can still sing the Perky Fusion song. Want to hear it? ‘Perky Fusion, he’s the man, Perky Fusion in a can, cleaner source of energy, lights the world for you and me, Perky Fusion one-two-three!’”

  “How nice,” said Mr. Morton. “And how about you next, Ms. Hawley?”

  He addressed a girl who l
ooked rather like Joan of Arc, with her shaven head and hyperfocused stare. She stood straight.

  “Exxene Hawley,” she said. “Joined the MAC with my boyfriend. Wanted to make a better world on Mars. He turned out to be a stinking bastard. I said, I’d make my own stinking better world. Left him and the stinking MAC. Now I’m here. It makes as much sense as anything.”

  “And you’re in theater because . . . ?”

  “It’s a good outlet for my issues, innit?”

  “O—kay,” said Mr. Morton. “And so we come to Chiring.” A dapper gentleman rose and flashed them a smile.

  “Chiring Skousen, your News Martian. I’m shooting a documentary on the birth of Theater on Mars.” He waved a hand at the holocams stationed about the room.

  “Which will, no doubt, win him another award from the Nepalese Journalists’ Association,” said Mr. Morton coyly. “Mr. Skousen is our other celebrity, of course, but we knew him when!”

  “And I’ve always cherished a secret ambition to play Edgar Allan Poe,” added Chiring.

  “And so we come to Maurice,” said Mr. Morton, nodding toward that gentleman. He stood and nodded.

  “Maurice Cochevelou,” he said. “I run Griffith Steelworks. Used to do a bit of acting with the Celtic Federation’s National Theater Project. Thought it might be nice to step back on the old boards, you know. Oh, and I’m engaged to be married to Mother Griffith.”

  Someone snickered.

  “Well, I am,” said Mr. Cochevelou plaintively.

  “And there we are,” said Mr. Morton, but Crispin raised his hand.

  “Hey! Everyone else had to stand and face the music. We shouldn’t be exempt!” He rose to his feet and raised his arms at the elbows, holding them out stiffly. “Hey hey, Mr. Korkunov, I’ve had such a busy morning!” he said, in his loudest Brophy the Bear voice. Mona giggled and applauded. “And I’d just like to say that Crispin Delamare is really looking forward to working with you all!”

  He sat down. Meera rose, blushing.

  “I’m Meera Suraiya, and I’m looking forward to working with you too.”