Life on Mars
Page 30
Then it was after six, and he was out in the evening smog with Mike and Nassim, carpooling home. They got on the 210 freeway and rolled along quite nicely until the carpool lane stalled with all the rest, because of the intersection of 210 and 110, and then they were into stop-and-go like everyone else, the long lines of cars brake-lighting forward in that accordion pattern of acceleration and deceleration so familiar to them all. The average speed on the LA freeway system was now eleven miles per hour, low enough to make them and many other Angelenos try the surface streets instead, but Nassim’s computer modeling and their empirical trials had made it clear that for any drive over five miles long the clogged freeways were still faster than the clogged streets.
“Well, another red-letter day,” Mike announced and pulled a bottle of Scotch from his daypack. He snapped open the cap and took a swig, then passed the bottle to Bill and Nassim. This was something he did on ceremonial occasions, after all the great JPL successes or disasters, and though both Bill and Nassim found it alarming, they did not refuse quick pulls. Mike took another one before twisting the cap very tightly on the bottle and stuffing it back inside his daypack, actions which appeared to give him the feeling he had returned the bottle to a legally sealed state. Bill and Nassim had mocked him before for this belief, and now Nassim said, “Why don’t you just carry a little soldering iron with you so you can reseal it properly.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Or adopt the NASA solution,” Bill said. “Take your swigs and then throw the bottle overboard.”
“Ha-ha. Now don’t be biting the hand that feeds you.”
“That’s the hand people always bite.”
Mike stared at him. “You’re not happy about this big discovery, are you Bill?”
“No!” Bill said, sitting there with his foot on the brake. “No! I always thought we were the—the bringing of the inhabitation of Mars. I thought that people would go on to live there and terraform the planet, you know, establish a whole world there, a second strand of history, and we would always be back at the start of it all. And now these damn bacteria are there already, and we may never land there at all. We’ll stay here and leave Mars to the Martians, the bacterial Martians—”
“The little red natives—”
“And so we’re at the start of nothing! We’re the start of a dead end.”
“Balderdash,” Mike said.
And Bill’s spirits rose a bit; he felt a glow like the Scotch run through him; he might have slaved away in a cubicle burning ten years of his life on the start of a dead-end project, a project that would never be enacted, but at least he had been able to work on it with people like these, like brothers to him now after all the years, brilliant weird guys who would use the word balderdash in conversation in all seriousness, because (in Mike’s case) he read Victorian boy’s literature for entertainment, among other odd habits, a guy whose real self had not in the slightest way appeared on TV while playing the Earnest Rocket Scientist, stupid role created by the media’s questions and expectations, all of them playing their stupid roles in precisely the stupid soap opera way that Bill had dreamed they were going to escape someday: What does life mean to you, Dr. Labcoat, what does this discovery mean; Well, it means we have burned up our lives on a dead-end project. “What do you mean, balderdash!” Bill exclaimed. “They’ll make Mars a nature preserve! A bacterial nature preserve, for God’s sake! No one will risk even landing there, much less terraforming the place!”
“Sure they will,” Mike said. “People will go there. Eventually. They’ll settle, they’ll terraform—just like you’ve been dreaming. It might take longer than you were thinking, but you were never going to be one of the ones going anyway, so what’s the rush? It’ll happen.”
“I don’t think so,” Bill said.
“Sure it will. Whichever way it happens, it’ll happen.”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you very much! Whichever way it happens, it’ll happen? That’s so very helpful!”
“Not your most testable hypothesis,” Nassim noted.
Mike grinned. “You don’t have to test it, it’s that good.”
Harshly Bill laughed. “Too bad you didn’t tell the reporter that! Whatever happens will happen! This discovery means whatever it means!” And then they were all cackling. “This discovery means that there’s life on Mars!” “This discovery means whatever you want it to mean!” “That’s how meaning always means!”
Their mirth subsided. They were still stuck in stop-and-go traffic, in the rows of red blinks on the vast viaduct slashing through the city, under a sour milk sky.
“Well, shit,” Mike said, waving at the view. “I guess we’ll just have to terraform Earth instead.”
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON grew up in Orange County, California, and attended UC San Diego and Boston University. His first novel, The Wild Shore, appeared in 1984, the first of his Orange County trilogy, reflecting his interest in utopian and ecological issues. It was followed by The Gold Coast (1988) and Pacific Edge (1990), the last the winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
Robinson is best known for his trilogy about terraforming Mars: Nebula winner Red Mars (1992), and Hugo and Locus award winners Green Mars (1993) and Blue Mars (1996). A collection of related material, The Martians (1999), also won the Locus Award. Near-future ecological thriller Antarctica (1997) was the result of a National Science Foundation grant that sent Robinson to Antarctica as writer-in-residence, while Locus Award winner The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) was a major alternate history about the development of science. His most recent works are the science fiction trilogy Science in the Capital (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting) and the novel Galileo’s Dream. A new collection, The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, is forthcoming.
A reference Web site for his work can be found at www.kimstanleyrobinson.info.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Jane Johnson, my friend and editor at HarperCollins UK, asked me for a story for a private volume celebrating the fifth anniversary of her imprint HarperVoyager. I had visited JPL in Pasadena a few times in the previous years, and the recent claim by NASA scientists in Houston that they had found signs of fossil bacteria in a Martian meteorite had surprised everyone. The story was then included in the American paperback edition of The Martians, in 2000.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one day this one came to pass. Seasonal appearances of methane on Mars seem to suggest life may be there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An anthology is not assembled by one person, neatly and tidily, working in idyllic isolation (at least, not in my experience). Rather it’s the incredibly fortunate outcome of the efforts of a village of talented and giving people.
Life on Mars would not exist without the efforts of the remarkable Sharyn November or my indefatigable agent Howard Morhaim. I am grateful to them both. I would also like to thank Stephan Martiniere for another remarkable cover and say how grateful I am to each and every one of the book’s contributors who really were far kinder and more patient than I had any right to hope.
I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of Jack Dann, Cat Sparks, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Alisa Krasnostein, Katie Menick, James Patrick Kelly, Garth Nix, and Gary K. Wolfe, all of whom provided critical assistance when it was needed.
Finally, as always, I would like to thank my wife, Marianne, and my daughters, Jessica and Sophie, who allow me to steal time from them to do books like this one. It’s a gift I intend to repay.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
JONATHAN STRAHAN is an editor, anthologist, and critic. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1964, and moved to Perth, Western Australia, in 1968. He graduated from the University of Western Australia with a bachelor of arts in 1986. In 1990 he cofounded a small press journal, Eidolon, and worked on it as coeditor and copublisher until 1999. He was also copublisher of Eidolon Books.
In 1997 Jonathan started worked for Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field as an assistant editor
. He wrote a regular review column for the magazine until March 1998 and has been the magazine’s reviews editor since January 2002. His reviews and criticism have also appeared in Eidolon, Eidolon: SF Online, Ticonderoga Online, and Foundation. Jonathan has won the William J. Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism and Review and the Australian National Science Fiction Ditmar Award.
As a freelance editor, Jonathan has edited or coedited more than a dozen reprint and original anthologies, which have been published in Australia and the United States. These include various “year’s best” annuals, The Locus Awards (with Charles N. Brown), The New Space Opera (with Gardner Dozois), and the ongoing Eclipse series. As a book editor, he has also edited The Jack Vance Treasury and Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling. In 1999 Jonathan founded The Coode Street Press, which published the one-shot review zine The Coode Street Review of Science Fiction and copublished Terry Dowling’s Antique Futures. The Coode Street Press is currently inactive.
Jonathan married former Locus managing editor Marianne Jablon in 1999, and they live in Perth, Western Australia, with their two daughters, Jessica and Sophie.
His Web site is www.jonathanstrahan.com.au.
ANTHOLOGIES BY JONATHAN STRAHAN
Best Short Novels (2004 through 2007)
Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005
Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volumes 1 – 4
Eclipse One: New Science Fiction and Fantasy
Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy
Eclipse Three: New Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows
Godlike Machines
Under My Hat
WITH LOU ANDERS
Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery (forthcoming)
WITH CHARLES N. BROWN
The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Fantasy and Science Fiction
WITH JEREMY G. BYRNE
The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volumes 1 and 2 Eidolon 1
WITH TERRY DOWLING
The Jack Vance Treasury
The Jack Vance Reader
Wild Thyme, Green Magic
Hard Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance
WITH GARDNER DOZOIS
The New Space Opera
The New Space Opera 2
WITH KAREN HABER
Science Fiction: Best of 2003
Science Fiction: Best of 2004
Fantasy: Best of 2004
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
ATTLEE AND THE LONG WALK
THE OLD MAN AND THE MARTIAN SEA
WAHALA
ON CHRYSE PLAIN
FIRST PRINCIPLE
MARTIAN CHRONICLES
GOODNIGHT MOONS
THE TASTE OF PROMISES
DIGGING
LARP ON MARS
MARTIAN HEART
DISCOVERING LIFE
Acknowledgements
ABOUT THE EDITOR