Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

by Frederick Turner

  Scene iii:

  The Fate of Tripitaka

  And now the remnants of the Terran fleet

  Are grappled to the huge hull of the Ark.

  Although they’re locked in battle, they must share

  Their atmospheres through many charred mouths.

  Neither combatant can risk decompression:

  The Terran infantry is not equipped

  With bulky pressure-suits; the Ark-defenders

  Must till all hope is gone preserve the air

  That keeps their cargo, and the tree itself

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  That is its vessel, still alive. The sight

  That meets the crippled escort might remind

  One, so inured to irony, of that

  Cruel moment in conception when the egg

  Is sieged with feebly-beating sperms, that try

  To sink their package of genetic meaning

  Into the vast bulk of the Mother’s womb.

  Within, through sad woodlands torn and splintered

  With explosions, the troops of Tripitaka

  Form and reform in desperate defense.

  20

  The flagship of the escort group, the Dove,

  Has for the past half-hour been overwhelmed

  By waves of massed attackers. Hilly Sharon

  Sees on his screens the toil of all he loves,

  The seedpod of the Promised Land, the mother

  And her daughter, both his brides, the ark

  Of his new covenant, the Shekinah,

  Rent by her enemies and violated.

  He breaks off contact with the enemy,

  Orders the two remaining escort ships

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  To bum all new besiegers of the Ark,

  And docks his vessel with the mother ship.

  As he does so the Raven, the yard-sister

  To Hilly’s Dove, is gutted by explosions.

  Meanwhile the bridge of the Kalevala

  Is calm and bright; for Tripitaka knows

  The clear-eyed Chih of generalship, and holds

  The ship’s morale in his still folded hands.

  No matter if he knows that presently

  Defeat is to relieve him of command,

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  That all his enterprises come to nothing;

  That the insufferable debt he owes

  To the Van Riebeck clan must go unpaid;

  That the true body of the live tradition,

  The hearth-gods of the ancient Earth, the scriptures

  It is his name and fate to carry back

  Across the wastes of space to the new country

  Must now be quite consumed and lost. Be calm.

  As he gives orders swiftly and quietly,

  Ximene beside him works her dying ship.

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  Both know that in attempting a relief

  Sharon has breached his orders; Tripitaka

  Passes Ximene a brief sad smile. That moment

  Marisol appears upon the screen.

  “Urgent. A message from the Earth. The twins

  Found something called the Lima Codex. Vico

  Says it’s important, says Ganesh will know.”

  The latter, who’s been working feverishly

  At the master board of the ship’s computer,

  Pricks up his ears. “No, listen, guys, this is

  60

  The big end run—if it is what I think.

  Patch me on through and let me talk to them.”

  In thirty seconds he has heard enough.

  “Everything’s changed, OK? New ballgame.

  Mars doesn’t need our cargo. It’s just wetware.

  Those crazy kids have aced the bunch of us.

  Right now the most important thing there is

  Is that small rucksack on Irene’s back

  With the eight high density disks in it.

  That’s all we need. They’ve got the Book of Life.”

  70

  Tripitaka sees what must be done.

  The Codex would take months to send, in code,

  At the low baud rates of the twins’ equipment.

  Giamba Vico’s under house arrest.

  The Codex and the twins must be got out.

  The only hope is that in victory,

  Or the illusion of it, the UN

  Will let them leave the planet with the rest

  Of the Van Riebeck personnel. “Ganesh,”

  Says Tripitaka, “Tell me the plain truth.

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  Who has the skill to read and use the Codex?”

  “I was afraid you’d ask me that,” he says.

  “The answer is, nobody, not one person.

  The minimum is Charlie, Bea, and me.

  That means, I guess, you have to wrap me up

  And send me off to Mars.” For the first time

  In his life, his friends see a great tear

  Roll down the pitted cheek of the wise nerd.

  As if it were not there, he grins and says,

  “One of the perks of brains, mes camarades.”

  90

  Now Hilly’s boarding party, blackened with fire,

  Reaches the bridge. Outside the control capsule

  The battle rages still. “Mr. Sharon,”

  Says Tripitaka, “You have disobeyed

  My order, and I shall lodge formal charges

  When this affair is over. But meanwhile,

  I command you to carry Mr. Wills

  And the flight staff of the Kalevala

  To our agreed-on rendezvous on Phobos.

  Their safety, chiefly Mr. Wills’, is now

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  Your paramount responsibility.”

  Then, to them all: “We must evacuate

  All but the garrison; the conflict, though,

  Must be as fiercely waged as if there were

  No other hope for our survival as

  A viable society and world.

  I, therefore, and my troops, must stand and fight.”

  Ximene casts one tormented glance at Hilly;

  And now she speaks. “Sir, with respect I must

  Point out that if the ship that I command

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  Does not fight too, the military goal

  Of misdirection lacks a certain color.

  I must insist I stay and fight my ship.”

  Tripitaka groans in soul but sees

  How it would be impossible to refuse.

  He knows already that the Terran fleet

  Must be disabled here to save the Dove.

  This may mean the annihilation of

  Kalevala; he knows she knows this too.

  He cannot ask her, therefore, to appoint

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  Subordinates to stay here in her place.

  “Very well then. Proceed about your duties.”

  The three bridge officers now volunteer

  To stay with Commodore Vivar; Sharon,

  After a moment’s agonized delay,

  Salutes the turned back of Ximene his lover

  And gathers those who are to fight their way

  Back to the airlock and the waiting escort.

  Tripitaka now prepares himself

  For his last battle. In his private room

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  He ritually dons his battle armor

  And binds about his waist the antique swords

  That Nishiyama gave him at their parting,

  Tying the silken cord in prescribed knots.

  He breathes his spirit gently out and in,

  And meditates on his unworthiness,

  The gulf between his proper duty and

  The acts that should have bodied out the form;

  He feels too the ancient vigor flow

  From the cold navel into thigh and armpit.

  140

  And if his tree should not have fruited, nor

  The saintly promise of his birth be kept,

  And if his moth
er’s sacrifice be vain,

  And if his first command be but a feint

  To draw the enemy from greater prizes;

  Yet like those breeds of peony or peach,

  Or flowering cherry or the bitter plum,

  Those beauties hybridized by cruel arts

  To be infertile while they feed the soul,

  He will now blossom into deathly spring,

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  The barren glory of a pointless end.

  And how indeed are such as he employed

  Upon a garden-world, a nest of birth?

  What occupation for this ghost of fire?

  What makes a country kitchen with a sword?

  The warrior-caste, the kshatriya, the knight,

  The samurai, are bloody parents for

  The sweet republic of the human being.

  As warrior he is a criminal.

  There is a kind of perfectness in crime,

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  That leads the soul to a renunciation

  Of all desire, all pleasure, all decay;

  That seeks out pain as the one ground of truth.

  But such a perfectness is worth a moment

  Only, must abrogate itself into

  Eternity, cleansed of the kiss of time.

  Such meditations may be based on lies.

  How can I say this, follower as I am

  Of this strange hero of another past?

  How disagree with what is true in being,

  170

  If false in fact? His seed is planted, growing

  In the womb of her whose servant he

  Had pledged himself to be; his tree is sprung.

  Let us say this: The garden of the spirit

  Only lives through infertility.

  Grant that the meaning of this hero’s life,

  Is, as he knows it, only a dead end.

  Grant that his seed is no more but a spot

  Of albumen, a brute coincidence.

  Grant this, but what would any garden be,

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  Without the flame, the unnatural blanch of flower

  That bursts from sterile trees and seedlessness?

  Time would be base and tame if only growth,

  If only nature should command its flow.

  Let there be immolations, sacrifice,

  Corpses buried in the walls of worlds;

  Let Nature bear the guilt of its extinctions:

  Thus only is the spirit brought to flower.

  In the evacuation, Marisol

  Is hustled by her lover’s troops toward

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  The besieged berth of the Dove. Halfway there

  She realizes that Ximene’s not with them,

  And feels that panic children know when crowds

  Part them from Mother. Fear turns to rage.

  She struggles up to Hilly, grabs his shoulder,

  Whirls him around. “How could you leave her there?

  Brute. Bastard. After all the love she’s given.

  Go back and fetch her now, if you’re a man.”

  Hilly looks vaguely at her, wipes the blood

  Of a young Terran from about his mouth.

  200

  “You’re right. They were my orders. I’d be dead

  If I had any choice. She would not come.”

  “Then I’m going back. I hate you, Hilly. Always.

  Don’t ever think we might have said goodbye.”

  He tries to hold her, but she’s got away;

  He sees her hit and spun by a stray bullet,

  Pick herself up, and stumble on. She does

  Not once look back. Fresh Terran troops appear,

  And he must cut his way through to the Dove.

  Wolf and Irene have slipped quietly back

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  Into their Oxford digs on Beaumont Street.

  They sit up late at night with the TV

  Waiting for news of the great space battle

  And drinking coffee black to ride the waves

  Of nauseous sleepiness, the crawling flesh

  Of compound jet fatigue, and grief, and rage.

  The disks are in an empty plastic bowl

  Which once held margarine, inside the fridge.

  Irene’s in a cold blue killing fury.

  “The mad old bitch has got to die for this.

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  We swore to kill her after Grandfather.

  I want to see her black blood on the floor;

  I want to see her gut-fat welling out.

  Everyone else is hypnotized by her,

  Including you. The bitch deserves to die,

  And nobody sees it, they all forgive,

  Like little jesuses, like little birds

  With the big mammasnake’s stone eyes on them.

  Oh Wolf, oh come on brother, we’ve got time.

  The shuttle won’t be ready for two days.

  230

  We can get out to Devereux and pop

  Her damned eyes out for her, and get right back,

  Nobody wiser, a good job well done,

  And hop the shuttle on the Monday morning.”

  Like Garrison before his mother, Wolf

  Shrinks at the fury of his sister’s face,

  And loves her for it terribly, and fears her.

  “Grandfather loved her though,” he says. “I’ve read

  His letters to her. And if you or I

  Believed as she does, we could do no other.

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  According to her guiding principles

  She’s good, when it can’t be easy for her…”

  “Guiding principles,” she spits, and turns

  Away, just as her grandmother might do.

  “I’ll do it by myself then. Don’t you worry.

  Set your mind at rest. You’ll just wake up

  And it will all be done, your conscience clear—”

  “That’s it,” says Wolf, and feels a deadly chill

  Come over him, the chill of fated action;

  “Of course we must be faithful to our vow.

  250

  It’s not a case of feelings or of hatred.

  It is an act of war.” For Wolf is not

  His uncle Garrison, and knows the bone

  That stiffens human flesh to acts of terror,

  That serves our noblest daemon, as our worst.

  Now through the stricken Ark the enemy

  Pours as a flood will through a beaten city,

  The levees down, exhausted volunteers

  Still trying to fill the breaches, but in vain;

  With their fierce general the Martian troops

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  Form and reform in pockets of defense;

  Kalevala becomes a charnel-house

  Of burnt and broken men and women; less

  Would not be expected from a nation

  Whose one great treasure lay exposed to sack.

  The access to the bridge is held most dearly:

  A clearing in the woods, a great door set

  Into a hummock in the inner hull;

  The woods around are full of Terran dead.

  Three hours have passed now since Sharon, in tears,

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  Only a handful of his party left,

  Has fought through to the airlock of the Dove,

  Broken off contact with the mother vessel,

  And, with the crippled escort, got away,

  Pursued by half a dozen Terran cruisers;

  He’s blown up two of them, outrun the others,

  And now is in the long trajectory to Mars.

  General Maghreb of the Terran forces

  Orders a full assault upon the bridge.

  In waves the Terran youth storm through the trees;

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  They fall in windrows, instantly replaced

  By others, with like hope of paradise.

  At last it’s noticed that the hostile fire

  Has slackened off, and the
defense is broken.

  The Terran troops enter the clearing slowly

  From all directions; this is what meets their eyes.

  Surrounded by a heap of Martian dead,

  That strange warrior who had led the charge

  So many times against the Terran siege

  Is kneeling, and unbuckling his armor.

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  Some of them aim their weapons, but are waved

  To lower them by officers in command.

  Now he removes his helmet, and they see

  The fine dark features still defiled with grey.

  Before him is a short sword on a stand.

  He takes his long sword, one hand on the hilt,

  The other on the blade, wrapped for protection

  With a silk cloth, and snaps it effortlessly.

  And now he ties his knees with a white sash,

  And now he meditates a while, at ease,

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  And now he speaks a few words that the soldiers

  Can barely catch and do not understand.

  The ring of enemies is stunned and silent.

  Now with a certain satisfaction, as of one

  Who finishes a task long since begun,

  He reverently lifts the shorter sword,

  Sword of the spirit of a fighting-man,

  And turns it carefully upon himself.

  He drives a quick stab inward to the belly;

  Then with both hands, the razor edge is drawn,

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  Fighting the tremors of the autonomic

  System, which governs nausea and such

  Internal, ticklish glides as this, across

  The abdomen, then up toward the ribs—

  A virtuoso touch—and now he falls.

  What were those words he said that few could hear?

  The red sun of the last day of the year;

  Great and less come to one end. What they meant?

  Perhaps the eyes that closed in meditation

  Last saw the green bolt of an energy weapon,

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  And burned upon the retina in crimson

  Was the soft oval of a phosphene’s mask;

  Perhaps the red sun is the Shinto god

  Of war, the blood-nativity and aura

  Of all the silken worship of Japan;

  Or was it that bright disk of purest Tao,

  Of non-attachment and the tacit Way?