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Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

Page 17

by Frederick Turner


  Wind over coarse grass dried out in the sun.

  It’s reckoned that the Indonesians hold

  The military balance of advantage;

  They are well trained, and will be heavily armed;

  Their force is larger, and, far more important,

  Trained as a single unit and equipped

  With standard weapons. But the Aussies have

  The home-ground savvy, and that mystery

  Of territorial morale; their sensors,

  Desert-trained survival expertise,

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  Communications, are superior;

  The Papuans are fighting for their kin;

  The Thais are masters of new strategies

  Derived from generalship in ancient China;

  New Zealand radar jamming gear is known

  To be state of the art. If, then, the allies

  Can weather the first Indonesian blow,

  Coordinate their forces, and survive,

  Time will be on their side. Such is the talk.

  As is traditional, three days before

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  The opening ceremonies of the war,

  The teams are brought to Adelaide to meet

  The press, which, during camp, is kept at bay.

  Again traditional, though not explicit,

  There is one night when the Victoria

  Hotel lays open all its rooms, and feasts

  The young contestants, and the liquor’s free.

  That night the groupies from around the world

  Who’ve followed in the fanzines and the press

  The stories of their heroes, true or false,

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  Are given access to the warrior-victims

  That they have worshipped for so long—who wear

  In celebration white bands round their heads,

  And who, this night, are granted any crime

  They may desire before they go to war.

  Across the banquet hall in a bright haze

  Of human uproar, music, alcohol,

  We may see Tripitaka on the dais,

  Perfectly sober, legs crossed under him,

  His headband bowed in deep contemplation.

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  Around him, and within the many rooms,

  Women with naked breasts and crowns of flowers,

  Boys with lit torches and with gilded bodies,

  Garlanded Brahma bulls and Javan dancers,

  Sequined ecdysiasts and blind dirge-singers

  Bearded and ancient, their cheeks wet with tears,

  Join in the glad communion of the dead.

  Film stars and entertainers, famous faces,

  Permitted here whatever licence they

  And their appetites deem needful, dance

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  In the purple strobe-lights and the smoke

  Of curious drugs; each woman is corrupted

  Into the primal stereotype of woman,

  So that her hormones make her swollen breasts

  Drip with the child-milk; and each gun-hung male,

  His shoulders and his upper arms enlarged

  With white gonadic tides of rage and milt,

  Feels in his limbs the steroids rot and burn;

  They are like mating salmon in their plumes,

  Their golden Quetzal-eyes, their jagged flesh.

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  Next day the troops discover in their midst

  A new phenomenon—a pair of chaplains

  Fresh from the Ecotheist seminary:

  The brightest and the best, bursting with zeal,

  Eager to win acceptance in the group.

  The female’s dumpy, caring, and supportive;

  Full of old-time phenomenology

  And very big on how we all must share

  Our common feelings of inadequacy;

  She wears the uniform of the thunder-thighed,

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  The blue stretch slacks, the blouse, the golden pin

  With the earth-symbol—dot within a circle—

  Denoting membership within the Church.

  The male is a believer in free love,

  An existentialist, a PhD,

  Given to saying “hey;” with skinny arms,

  A mustache, and that look which says that I

  Am fully open to experience.

  The Church, it seems, has sent the warriors

  These, as reminders what they’re fighting for,

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  And tactfully arranged for their arrival

  Just at the peak of beverage fatigue.

  Billy Macdonald, of the Ned Kellies,

  Observes that it’s an ill wind blows no good:

  If their supplies run low, as often happens,

  The fat one might be nice with pinto beans.

  But glory calls; the morning of the war

  Dawns bright and cold; the Krichauff Range, like scales

  Of an ancient monster, rears over plains

  Exhausted by the power of the sun.

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  The warriors have moved, in one traverse,

  Forty-eight tons of war materiel

  Across the DMZ; and that is all

  They’ll be allowed until the mort is blown.

  Media drones buzz by above, ignored;

  The techies set up radars, while the scouts

  Advance toward the base camps in the hills;

  The carriers lie gasping on the ground,

  And General Kung speaks with his officers.

  Three days later: first contact. A night raid

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  By Indonesian fighter planes against

  The radars of the allies on the hills.

  The mission’s a success; the eyes are blinded,

  Three of the five planes get away, and Kung

  Is much perplexed, for by this sudden blow

  He knows the enemy has spent his fuel

  Reserve, and must have little left. The Aussies

  Can distil from eucalyptus leaves

  Some drops of bike and aviation spirit;

  The enemy lacks this technology.

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  It must be one big strike, then. Just as Kung

  Comes to this quick conclusion and prepares

  His soldiers for the worst, there’s an attack

  In force, against the allied camps.

  The allies have advantage of terrain:

  The enemy must charge a barren slope.

  But Kung has chosen to equip his force

  With few firearms, and those but light ones too;

  The Indonesians must take heavy losses

  Storming the glacis, but it’s now quite clear

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  The allies cannot hold the ridge. Kung sends

  His specialists in hand-to-hand melee—

  His Burmese infantry, his berserk Thais,

  And Tripitaka with his kendo sword,

  To hold the enemy while others move

  The indispensable equipment back

  To safety. Now is the old game of blood.

  The sunrise shines upon the golden flesh

  Of boys and girls in the bright flush of health,

  Their muscles warm and ready, their swift breath

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  Perfectly balanced to the tasks they serve;

  And all is motion, and the red blood runs

  As if its springs were endless, and its beauty

  As harmless as the rush of sperm or milk.

  And till that moment when the mastery

  Of spirit over body, joy in pain,

  Bewildered by some wound that severs it,

  Is broken—and the martial shape the mind

  Imposes as a template on the flesh,

  That fiery net invisible that holds

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  The feeble chemistry of life together,

  Ceases to coincide with the breathed truth—

  Until that time these children of the wars

  Are as
immortal and invulnerable.

  Those who say war is horrible speak only

  Half the truth; the other half is joy.

  And Tripitaka, stripped down to the waist,

  His hair tied back, his sword glittering,

  Is like the motion of a running stream,

  The rainbow trout within it, and the liquid

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  Running in the creature’s arteries.

  No weapon touches him. His few companions

  Fall one by one, and only chance—the flash

  Of a landmine going off, that clears the stage

  A moment, and brings him to his senses—

  Rescues him from that place of light and blood.

  Out of the rearguard he alone escapes.

  The Indonesians sought to end the war

  By this one stroke. Indeed, the allies,

  Broken into small bands and bled of troops,

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  Seem to be finished; but this kind of war

  Is more against the sun and need and time

  Than against human beings. The Indonesians

  Have expended most of their supplies

  And are but poorly furnished with the tools,

  The water-stills, and desert expertise

  That Kung relies on for his victory.

  And now there is a slow guerrilla war

  Waged with the bow, the stake-pit, and the knife.

  The Indonesians’ radios are jammed

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  And thus they cannot separate to forage;

  They die of thirst, of sunstroke, and disease.

  The allies live on roasted bandicoots,

  The pods of wattle trees, the moist petals,

  Tender stems and tubers of the lily,

  And brew their water from the billabongs;

  Their electronic sensors show them when

  The enemy is at a disadvantage;

  And then they strike, and quickly fade away.

  Pictures the memory might store of this,

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  A little epic in itself: the smoke

  Of Indonesian campfires rising from

  Behind the bald head of a grassy hill

  At dawn, and the smell of eucalyptus;

  Dried up Lake Amadeus, like a paisley

  Painted in red, grey, ochre, dazzling white,

  Seen from a spotter plane whose canvas buzzes

  With the light two-stroke in the afternoon;

  Messenger-service on a motorbike,

  Swooping and skidding over grassy dunes;

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  A valley all ablaze with pollen, yellow

  Red and pink, the naked-stamened flowers

  Of mallee, myrtle, melaleuca, gum;

  A bloated body by a watercourse;

  The sunflash on a flight of arrowheads;

  A colony of furry wallabies;

  A dark storm-mountain in the evening sky

  Lit by the bronze sun and the silver lightning;

  The yells of parrots in the ragged trees.

  But Tripitaka has a troubling dream.

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  He sees that young girl warrior he killed

  In the first dawn raid against the camp;

  She was a splendid master of the sword

  And might have taken him but for a stumble;

  He dreams about her death, her little smile,

  Her Khmer beauty, Sumikami-like;

  And in this simple dream she has become

  The face of Chance at Vassae when they fought;

  And then the face of Beatrice; and now

  He wakes to feel the thick juice of his sex

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  Slip from his body in a living stream.

  He looks up at the shiny black night sky,

  A dome of bright designs and hidden meaning

  Like the great driver of a music speaker;

  And all the lines of star-connections point

  To the gold star that he knows is Mars

  And the long veil of the falling comet.

  At last he knows his soul. He must take arms

  In the cause of his former enemies

  And offer up his body as a penance

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  To Chance’s heirs, the pioneers of Mars.

  The chaplains, meanwhile, have been worth the feeding:

  After each skirmish they remind the troops

  Not to enjoy their triumph, nor to glory

  In their skill, which is unfairly gained;

  But to think only of the sacrifice

  And feel the sufferings of the enemy

  As if they were one’s own. This last, perhaps,

  Might be a thought redundant; in all wars

  Soldiers in close engagement, face to face,

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  Have always loved their enemy, and have seen

  In him or her the image of themselves;

  Notwithstanding, in revenge, deceit,

  And loss, a hatred cordial as any

  Divorcing husband for a cheerful wife,

  Junior exec for a department head,

  Or pinched caseworker for a legislature.

  One morning Tripitaka’s own patrol

  Draws the short straw and gets the company

  Of “Scooter” (as the male reverend

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  Likes to be called). They are to circle round

  The enemy’s defenses and report

  All of advantage to the allies’ plans.

  At noon they take a wounded prisoner,

  And having questioned her must then decide

  How to dispose of her. If she is left,

  She’ll die, after some days of agony.

  If she is brought along, the chances are

  The inconvenience, or her cries, will lead

  To their discovery as they return.

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  The only way is death; and Tripitaka

  Draws his sword, his face as grey as dreams.

  But Scooter throws his body in the way.

  “Some things I won’t be part of. I’ll report

  What happens here. I make my stand for mercy.”

  The soldiers know he is a commissar

  Sent by the powers that be to get control

  Of this, the last free ritual, however

  Bloody, old, and undermined by guilt;

  But it’s their duty to obey him, and

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  They leave the brown girl begging for her death.

  A few days later the fortunes of war

  Bring this ground under the allies’ control;

  The girl is found; what she herself has not

  Torn with her teeth to shreds in her last fever,

  The dingoes and the birds have visited.

  The camp is sullen, and the word goes round

  That General Kung has had enough at last;

  He calls a conference of all the soldiers

  And asks wherein their perfect duty lies.

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  And Tripitaka speaks for the first time:

  The moment he’s awaited all his life.

  “Don’t you think, comrades, that this world we live in

  Has suddenly grown old? But we are soldiers;

  We date our lives from what our lives are for:

  The moment of our death. (Some of us then

  Can count our ages by the days.) Or is it that

  We are the eldest thing on earth, the metal

  That can never tarnish, or the tree

  That puts out bitter pollen every spring?

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  There is no place for us here any more.

  These chaplains we must feed will change the rules:

  The Church will settle all the quarrels now.

  But I have seen at night a star of gold,

  The planet of the god who rules our kind;

  A world is being born, and here we are,

  Fighting for what we don’t believe—a star

  Tha
t needs our arms and calls us to a war

  Whose end’s not peace but more abundant life.

  What is the real duty of a soldier?

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  Our work is to disturb the course of things,

  To task the world up to its very brink,

  To be the bloody spade that turns the sod,

  To prove the game is honest by our deaths;

  We’re the account on which the world writes checks,

  And where its money is its heart will be;

  It is our duty then, say I, to take

  Our swords and offer them to Mars, the new

  Republic of the breath of humankind.”

  At this—but even now (when history

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  Is not a comfortable subject for

  The young, for what sense can it make, what point,

  When there’s no hope and no direction to it?),

  Yes, even now, I think, the Mutiny,

  And the events it sparked, are still familiar,

  And do not need rehearsal in these lines.

  Recall then how the soldiers voted for it,

  But for the Papuans, who, sympathetic,

  Felt it their duty to continue fighting—

  How in their suicide attack upon

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  The Indonesian camp, they died in glory—;

  How then the Indonesians were “suborned”

  To kiss the flag of Mars; how other groups

  Of gladiators heard the call; how some

  Fought through to the Woomera shuttle base;

  How others, crucified for their rebellion,

  Died in the flies along the desert roads;

  How the new chaplains were exchanged for arms;

  Of the wild struggle at the launching-pads;

  How seven shuttles, burned with laser fire,

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  Escaped to orbit under Tripitaka.

  Tripitaka after many battles against the Terran forces comes to Mars. We learn of the cave-dwellings of the colonists; of the progress of the terraforming; of the children Wolf and Irene, and Chance the younger, the son of Beatrice and Charlie; of how the children learned to fly; and of how Tripitaka was forgiven.

  Scene iii:

  The Coming of Tripitaka to Mars

  A rush of driving rain. It could be evening

  On a deserted airstrip in New Zealand,

  The parking lot of a provincial high school

  During vacation, in British Columbia;

  A wet parade ground in the southern islands

  Of pacific Chile, or the Hebrides.

  Beyond the chainlink fence, though, there’s a green

  Too brilliant in this semidarkness: moss,

  Hummocked, fantastic, with a haze of brown

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  Or mauve calyptrae, heavy with white drops

  Of rain that join and pool and slowly run

 

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