Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

by Frederick Turner

  Whose crimson wedding weeds become her shroud?

  So when the matter of the Ark is raised,

  And the debate goes to and fro, she does not lead

  But watches and lets others speak for her.

  But it’s her choice that Tripitaka shall

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  Command the expedition—she’d be base

  To rob him of that honor, for revenge;

  And it will carry him away, and prove

  She has no need of him; and it will take him,

  Whispers the fierce Hecate in her blood,

  Into a place of danger where he may,

  In all honor, find his dismemberment.

  But we are not held guilty for our dreams.

  Our goodness is the game we choose to play.

  And our success in passing to the future

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  Some rich enduring thing that it may spend

  Is bound up with the harmony we make

  Of our desires and actions, dark or known.

  (But this is what the Sibyl said, years later;

  We must not judge the past by dispensations

  Grander, more generous in liberty

  Than those the players chose to rule the game.)

  Irene’s pregnancy, and her acceptance

  Into the University of Oxford,

  Place her where many a wench has stood; her choices

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  Not different from a suburban girl’s

  Whose boyfriend knocks her up in senior year.

  This bit of tissue is a miracle,

  Indeed, and Tripitaka’s doctors erred

  Telling him, as they did, he would be sterile.

  She cannot marry him, the murderer

  Of Chance, perhaps indeed the murderer

  Of Freya, whom she worships as the stars.

  She cannot let him know. And yet her fate

  Calls her to other than to nurse’s works;

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  And miracle or not, a piece of skin

  Scraped from a knuckle in karate practice

  Has no less personal identity,

  Despite its strange uniqueness, than this thing

  She bears within her; but it’s hers, a sign

  That she can be the mother of a life.

  Yet in the end prudence must still prevail;

  She sees her doctor, Vasco de Perez,

  And asks him to perform the operation.

  Now Doctor Perez is a singular man;

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  The only one of the Van Riebeck doctors

  Who followed them for honor of the craft

  And not for profit; he it was who led

  The team that healed Tripitaka; who

  Diagnosed and did the surgery

  On Beatrice in her late case of cancer.

  Like many of Earth’s best, he’s come to Mars

  To be among the makers of the future;

  And the winged snake of his caduceus

  Flies on the flag of the Martian Republic.

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  Many who came to Mars brought their religions,

  Where they might not be subject to the creep

  Of Ecotheism into their cracks;

  Perez is Catholic, and must decide

  Between Saint Aesculapius and his church.

  For him the sin is not the death of that

  Which will be human by and by, but rather

  The desecration of an ark or symbol

  Of the wild future of the Pancreator.

  And so he breaks both laws, for he is wise,

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  And sees an old behoveliness in sin;

  He tells Irene he will do her bidding,

  But breaks his oath of secrecy, and speaks

  To Beatrice without Irene’s knowledge.

  He’s not so foolish as to make suggestions,

  But still he knows his patient, and the blend

  Of hubris and of tenderness she shares

  With many of her kin. “Tell me, my friend,”

  Beatrice says at once, for, unsurprised

  At what has happened, she will not waste time

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  On more reactions, “Tell me if your craft

  Or science can do this which I will ask:

  To take an embryo from one woman’s womb

  And plant it in another’s? If that other,

  Even, should have no seed of her own?”

  Though Perez has expected this, he feels

  A wave of worship for a human being

  Pass through him, and his answer’s oddly formal:

  “Lady, if you will have me do this thing,

  It will be done.” “Then I will have it so,”

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  She says, and thus their compact is concluded.

  But Beatrice must speak to Charlie first.

  “Will you be strong enough to bear it, Charlie?

  Dear man, who’s put up with our dreadful ways

  For all these years, to have a sort of cuckoo

  In the nest, another bad Van Riebeck?”

  “You’ve cared for mine,” says Charlie cheerfully

  “But she’s my daughter. If she ever asks,

  I will not lie to her about the child.”

  “She’ll never guess. And she’ll be far away.

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  You know we can’t say anything right now:

  She’d take it as a sign we disapproved…”

  “—And have the baby, just to prove us wrong,”

  Says Charlie, with a smile: “she’s a Van Riebeck.”

  Beatrice seeks out little Chance, and takes

  His furry head, as always, in her arms,

  Then holds him out and looks into his face.

  “How would you like a baby sister, Bear?”

  It’s not hard to arrange. The speck of life

  Is transferred to a culture medium

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  Without Irene’s knowledge, and next day

  Beatrice sees her doctor normally,

  But comes away more pregnant than she went.

  And now a change comes over her. Last year

  Even before her troubles, she had felt

  The terror of a life lived consciously,

  Of purposes renewed so many times

  That they wear thin and seem like so much babble;

  The little turns love makes upon the kink

  Of feeling had well nigh fatigued its metal;

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  So bent, intention is unbearable,

  And aches like muscles kept out at a strain,

  And rots with milky acids of exhaustion.

  But now a salve, a balm, flows in her limbs,

  Like that sweet day in spring when first you may

  Cast off the clothes of winter and go warm;

  She sighs as if her calm would never cease,

  And knows her life’s work is to be revealed.

  For paleobiology is not

  A subject she can well pursue on Mars.

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  Her expertise has been for many years

  A rich resource for others’ use, but not

  A living discipline of performed being.

  And so, like an amphibian on land,

  Kept from the waters of her ancestry,

  She has felt dried and barren; to herself

  A grotesque creature with a drive to spawn

  And no moist spot or roaring beach to do it.

  The very night after the fetal transplant

  Beatrice dreams and dreams. She walks upon

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  The hills of Mars without a breathing mask,

  And feels the sweet wind blowing in her hair.

  With dreamlike emphasis she hears the words

  “Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze;

  The earth is all before me, where to choose.”

  And now the place is where her father died,

  In Arcady, beside the Alpheus,

/>   And she perceives a blue so beautiful

  In stream and sky that tears seep from her eyes;

  A blue as brilliant as Saturn’s ring,

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  As soft as the convolvulus that twined

  About the trellises at Devereux,

  As saturated as the bloom of grapes

  In clusters at the ranch of San Luis Rey.

  And when she wakes she knows what she must do:

  She’ll be the planetary gardener,

  And plant Arcadia in the wilderness.

  It is decided that Wolf and Irene

  Will take the fast ship along with Ganesh

  And thus have time to get acclimatized

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  Before the Michaelmas term begins at Oxford.

  So they must hurry. The trip can’t be delayed—

  Ganesh needs ample time to check the cultures.

  And so poor Chance must say goodbye

  To three of his best friends; with Tripitaka,

  Chance’s hero, gone ahead already.

  One morning Beatrice hears the boy’s hoarse voice,

  And something warns her this is not a song

  Or sound-effects for his elaborate games,

  And finds him weeping in his truckle-bed,

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  And feels the throb of tenderness that one

  Who has not been a parent cannot know,

  And carries him to Charlie, with his face

  Hidden in shame against her soft warm breast.

  “We’ve got a sad old baby here,” she says,

  And chuckles, but her eyes are full of tears.

  Charlie picks up the boy and cuddles him;

  Pretends to drop him, so that Chance, alarmed,

  Makes angry little movements of rebellion;

  Pretends again to drop him, whereupon

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  The boy begins to smile despite himself.

  “Too spoiled,” says Charlie gravely. “This poor child

  Must instantly be put to useful work.

  In fact I’ve just the thing. From now on, boy,

  You are the unpaid clerk of the Commission.

  You will not have a minute of your own.

  Life will be fetch and carry, books and ink,

  And speeches by opinionated men

  And even more opinionated women.

  It will be useful, having a small slave.

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  In fact I feel some orders coming on.”

  Chance is delighted. Charlie heads the board

  Whose work is to debate the Constitution,

  Prepare a draft and meld it with the work

  Of other colonies around the planet

  In preparation for the great convention.

  Now Chance is fascinated by the process,

  And hangs around the little theater

  Among the trees where the debates go on.

  He has already started reading Locke

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  And Jefferson, and asking awkward questions.

  And so the servitude that now begins

  Is not as burdensome as Charlie warns:

  And Chance has a vocation, like his mother.

  Wolf and Irene, sick with their swift passage

  Through the heavens, and sluggish with the weight

  Of that inertia the Earth generates,

  Are put to work at once by wise Ganesh.

  He sends them to the Bodleian Library

  To search the catalogs for tissue cultures

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  That the UN researchers may have missed.

  The core collections of the Bodleian

  Were looted from Cadiz by Francis Drake:

  The English took that town against the odds,

  Storming ashore under the Spanish guns;

  Raleigh cried out “Entramos!” and was wounded,

  Young Essex threw his hat into the sea;

  They say the poet John Donne was in that action.

  Dizzy with the calcium therapy

  Wolf finds himself caught in the scholar’s trance.

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  He’s got a terminal beside a casement

  Opening on a quiet Brasenose quad

  With a pale green mulberry tree in it.

  There is a small anomaly that irks

  The sense of neatness that he got from Charlie.

  He fastens on the trail and won’t let go.

  He’s looking for the master catalog

  Referred to by an obscure private source,

  Which he suspects may be identical

  To something elsewhere termed the Humboldt Project.

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  Even if incomplete, this catalog

  Might organize the bibliographic mess.

  He tracks the files until he finds an entry:

  “Humboldt Project: see Kropotkin Index.”

  Of this there is no sign. He changes tactics

  And starts a search in Russian History.

  At once he gets a full biography

  Of that serene and warm evangelist

  Of symbiosis and commensal life.

  But in the catalog there is a note:

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  “Kropotkin Index (Military Theory):

  Access Denied To Persons Without Clearance.”

  Wolf grins and pats his hands together.

  Now he can practice what Ganesh has taught him—

  There’s no security which can’t be cracked;

  Don’t break the latch until you’ve checked the mat.

  All machines want is to give information:

  That is the meaning of the Second Law—

  Just ask them nicely, they’ll betray themselves.

  After three hours Wolf knows he has the key.

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  He feeds the random prime the program gave him

  Back to its guardian, and at once he’s in.

  Before the breakup of the Soviet empire

  “Kropotkin” was a euphemism coined

  To name their partially complete collection

  Of data codes for living organisms.

  It was a library of genes for use

  In making agents of bacterial warfare

  To work the downfall of Capitalism.

  The U.S. version was the Humboldt Project:

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  Together they made up the Lima Codex.

  Kalevala comes to Earth. The poem turns to the love and jealousy between Hillel Sharon, Ximene de Vivar, and Marisol, leaders of the expedition under Tripitaka. The arkship is loaded with living tissues. Wolf and Irene meanwhile discover the meaning of the Lima Codex: a complete record of the genetic codes of all Earth species, which, if brought to Mars, would make the arkship’s mission unnecessary. They seek the Codex in Peru, where it is thought to be hidden. Gaea and the leaders of the Ecotheist Church have no intention of honoring their agreement with the Martians and attempt to destroy the arkship as it returns to Mars. We observe the opening maneuvers of the battle. Wolf and Irene discover the Codex in a library in Central Africa.

  Scene ii:

  The Battle for the Codex

  About this time Kalevala arrives.

  On moonless nights her spool-shape blazes clear;

  Holding a low earth orbit she awaits

  The lighters that will shuttle up the seed,

  The tissue cultures in their strongboxes.

  And now the lading process is begun:

  Millions of species, mollusks, arthropods,

  The many-branched tree of the vertebrates,

  Divided into genus, phylum, class,

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  In sealed vials, thousands of inertial tons,

  With life-support, are slid into their racks,

  And, labeled with their Latin names and numbers,

  Are nicely balanced round the barrel-hull,

  A cylinder a thousand cubits broad.

  Ganesh checks everything; Hilly Sharon

  Unmercifully drives himself,
his men

  And his machines. Now Tripitaka knows

  The humbling of the pure soul that must come

  When enterprises needing many hands

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  And talents not within the captain’s writ

  Are set in motion; almost can forget

  In sleepless hours of negotiation,

  Planning, improvisation, compromise,

  The shame that calls his spirit to be free.

  The stresses multiply from crew to staff:

  One day Ximene herself, the ship’s commander,

  Knocks at his office door and throws herself

  In weariness upon his little couch.

  After a while she looks up at him, smiles.

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  “It’s quite embarrassing to ask a man

  Who’s never been a parent for advice

  On family matters. But I need an eye

  On this that’s clear and free from prejudice.

  The problem isn’t just a private one.

  You put my daughter Marisol in charge

  Of the Communications Center; now I find

  I just can’t get my messages out of here.”

  There’s more to this, thinks Tripitaka grimly,

  And after further questions, interviews

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  With Marisol and with Hillel Sharon,

  The whole story slowly comes together.

  For many years Ximene and Marisol

  Have shared their gallant desperado Hilly;

  Indeed the generosity of work

  In the environment of Mars in birth

  Has given a glory and a sacrifice

  To the renunciations that all three

  Have had to make there for each other’s sake.

  But when Ximene and Hilly were appointed

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  To lead their moieties of the Martian Ark,

  Marisol felt a pang of pride and love,

  And in remembrance of the time when she

  To some minds might have seemed to be a traitor

  In the great matter of the comet Kali,

  She volunteered to join the expedition.

  Now as communications officer

  She must liaise with Admiral Sharon.

  His dealings with the UN and the unions,

  The shuttle captains and the ground controllers,

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  Observers from the Ecotheist church,

  And with Ganesh, who’s flying up and down

  With the consignments, seem to her to take

  Higher priority for now than those

  Routine communications a commander

  In steady orbit might feel called to make.

  Facilities are overloaded as

  It is, with coded messages… The case

  Is obviously a Solomonic one.

  Poor Tripitaka, as the judge, is asked

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