WHITE MARS

by Brian W Aldiss

  'That's not possible,' Souto answered and was echoed by several other voices.

  'All right, smartarses, it was just a suggestion,' said Saybin tartly.

  Dreiser said, 'Just to make it clear, I can show you what we actually saw in our screens.'

  A large 3vid hung in the air above the dais, as Dreiser projected it. The image was as severe as a text-book diagram. It showed, against the fuzzy grey background, a colourless blur that wavered before shooting up a step halfway along, then continuing on a straight horizontal course.

  'The phase is the vertical,' Dreiser explained. 'The horizontal is time. In this case, it's something like 0.5 of a nanosecond from one side of the screen to the other. The step up is 4. As you see, the signal is not at all clear. But the step function makes it plain that something passed through the ring from above to below. Otherwise the step would have been down by the same 4. The oscillation before the step becomes more complex throughout our series of glitches.'

  A silence fell over the proceedings.

  The image faded from overhead.

  Kathi spoke quietly from her seat, without getting up. 'So you're all off track. Forget the HIGMO question. The glitches are being caused by Chimborazo itself.'

  Laughter came from some scientists as well as the audience.

  'Chimborazo is causing the glitches,' repeated Kathi, as if the statement was made more understandable by being recast.

  This time the laughter was more mocking.

  'Let's hear what the lady's case is,' Dreiser interjected. 'Give her a chance. What's on your mind, Kathi?'

  She flashed him a grateful look before standing to say, 'Arnold Poulsen is experimenting to see whether his 16-hertz sound oscillations will cause people to be more conciliatory towards each other. As yet, he has nothing conclusive.

  'Over the last few months, however, I have become convinced that we are experiencing a genuine improvement in personal relations. I notice the difference even in myself.' At this there was brief laughter.

  'I've become equally convinced that this has nothing to do with Arnold's experiment. Or, for that matter - sorry, Tom - with the Utopia effect. No, it's Chimborazo working on us, the Watchtower of the Universe.' She paused to let this sink in, confronting her audience with arms akimbo.

  'We know there is a powerful consciousness in that being. We get a CPS, and this has now been confirmed on an ordinary savvyometer, which we modified to accommodate an extremely low frequency range. Our rapidly advancing friend has plenty of awareness right enough!'

  She paused as we all took a deep breath at that.

  'We know too - or we think we do - that Chimborazo is a symbiotic and epiphytic being; all its component life forms have learned to cooperate rather than compete. That strong cohesive influence appears to work satisfactorily.

  'I do not think it would be at all surprising if this "influence", whatever it is, has had its effect on our own human conscious behaviour. We know that quantum effects can hold over great distances. Quantum entanglements between photons have been observed to stretch over a hundred thousand kilometres at least. Probably there is no limit.'

  'Sounds to me like fifteenth-century mysticism,' remarked Thorgeson. 'The Will of God.'

  'Well,' Kathi said challengingly, in something like her old style, 'so what does that prove? Not all fifteenth-century mystics were fools!'

  Dreiser, ignoring this exchange, said to Kathi. 'You talk about your Chimborazo - if I'm forced to use that label -having a powerful consciousness. Would you care to clarify that for us?'

  Several of the men sitting behind him showed signs of discontent. They evidently did not like the respect Dreiser - the great Dreiser Hawkwood - paid this newcomer.

  Once he had given Kathi the floor, she went happily on.

  'Well, we still aren't sure about consciousness. It's a riddle awaiting solution. The CPS device is simply a passive detector, much as a Geiger counter used to register radioactivity. It does not in any way alter consciousness. It registers the presence of consciousness by the effect of consciousness on a quantum state-reduction phenomenon - let's say on some coherent quantum superposition involving a large number of calcium ions.

  'What we do know is that consciousness in an entity can detectably affect the reduction of a quantum state, and can be affected by it. That's how a mentatrope works, after all. The quantum superposition in a mentatrope is influenced by the presence of consciousness as well as influencing consciousness. So it's not at all unreasonable that consciousness might affect the quantum coherence in our superfluid ring.'

  Willa Mendanadum spoke from the audience. 'Excuse me, Kathi, but a mentatrope contains no superfluid. The quantum superposition is between different calcium ion displacements. It's much the same as the superpositions of electron displacements in a quantputer.'

  'I'm aware of that,' Kathi replied. 'But no quantputer gives a reading on a mentatrope. The organisation of calcium ions in a mentatrope is of a completely different character from that in a quantputer - much more like the superfluid in our ring, where the total mass involved begins to be significant.'

  Willa was adamant. Her slight figure seemed to vibrate with scorn. 'Sorry, Kathi, I know you're bidding fair to be a guru and all that, but there is absolutely no evidence of any similarity between this ring and a mentatrope. The scale's completely different, for one thing. The geometry is different. The materials are different. The purposes are different.'

  'But—'

  'Let me finish, please. I must make the point that there is absolutely no evidence that the proximity of a conscious human being has any effect whatsoever on the functioning of the ring. In fact, as I understand it, the argon 36 in the ring's superfluid is geared specifically to detect the monopole gravitational effects of a HIGMO - not of a brainwave!'

  Kathi seemed unmoved. She said, 'We don't know what the appropriate quantum superposition parameters are for Chimborazo. Chimborazo is built on an entirely different scale from us humans. Very possibly it has the ability to tune its own internal mental activities so as to relate specifically to the ring.'

  'Absurd!' exclaimed Jimmy Gonzales Dust from the back row of boffins.

  She turned to him, saying mildly, 'Absurd, is it? For an alien intellect twenty-five kilometres high? How dare we presume to suggest its limitations?'

  'But you are speculating wildly,' Jimmy protested.

  'I'd say that at this juncture, a little wild speculation is in order,' Dreiser said. 'Continue, Kathi.'

  'My speculation is based on fact, by the way,' Kathi said, with something of her old tartness in her voice. I remembered her fondness for correcting those who were basically on her side. What her relationship was with Dreiser was difficult to guess. 'We know that a mentatrope works, but not why. The discovery of the Reynaud-Damien effect was an accident. The implication was that consciousness has a subtle influence on the reduction of a quantum state.'

  'I don't accept that, Kathi,' Jimmy said, cutting in. 'However, one result of the French guys' researches was the development of a CPS detector.'

  Her eyes flashed irritation, but she said with disarming mildness, 'And the CPS detector led to the development of the mentatrope for psychiatric purposes. Thanks for your contribution, Jimmy. At least we do know that a mentatrope has something in common with the ring, In each case the important element is a quantum state-reduction phenomenon. I've looked into the history of the subject. You people, like Jimmy here, are too sunk in ring-technology to remember where it all comes from.'

  Jimmy broke in indignantly. 'We all know about quantum state-reduction. That was sorted out early this century with the definitive Walter Heitelman experiment.'

  Kathi studied him for a moment, gave a brief nod, smiled, and said, changing tack, 'And there were some ideas put forth last century, suggesting various possible connections between consciousness and quantum state-reduction. They all petered out because of lack of experimental confirmation, in most cases because of a direct conflict
with observation. But the general idea itself still remains, at least in principle. There were heated discussions in the scientific literature, most of it forgotten.

  'I'd say that if you put these ideas together - bearing in mind that the glitches in the ring are indeed state-reduction effects - there's a plausible case for a connection between the ring glitches we've recorded and Chimborazo's consciousness.'

  Thorgeson gave a curt laugh. 'You'll be telling us next that the ring will reveal "a soul".'

  'Souls are even harder to define than consciousness. But, after all - why not?'

  Clapping his hands, Dreiser interposed. 'The next obvious move is to perform a mentatropic examination of the ring. I agree with Kathi that these glitches we've been observing imply that the Watcher of the Universe has already transferred some "consciousness effects" to the ring. We must find out if that is the case.

  'And, by the way, this notion that the ring is "pregnant" or "getting ready to conceive" is just a silly joke - which Jimmy probably started!

  'We do not yet understand the powers of Chimborazo. We have discussed this endlessly, and think the life form is probably benign and even defensive. Its collective mind may be immensely powerful. Maybe it could wipe out all our minds with one blast of directed thought; but shelled animals are generally pacific, if terrestrial examples are anything to go by.' He paused to let this sink in.

  'One explanation for its camouflage may be that it long ago sensed other consciousnesses on Earth - even across the great matrix distances separating the two planets - and was fearful. Despite its great bulk, it concealed itself as best it could.'

  Someone in the audience asked what Dreiser would do if it was found that the ring was acquiring elements of consciousness.

  He stroked his little moustache thoughtfully before answering. 'If that does turn out to be the case, we'll have to rethink the whole Smudge experiment. To turn off the refrigeration would be tantamount to murder. Or, let's say, abortion ... It might also be dangerous with Chimborazo towering above us! It's a dilemma...

  'The ring would no longer be a viable tool in the search for the Omega Smudge. The UN authorities, supposing they still exist, would not be happy about that. On the other hand, we would stand on the brink of another great discovery. We would be on the way to understanding what consciousness is all about - what causes it, sustains it...'

  Kathi had a word to add. 'Just to respond to Charles Bondi's earlier remark. Of course, if the ring were to be kept going, there could never be any terraforming permitted...'

  My thoughts were so overwhelmed by speculation that I could not sleep. I was walking down East Spider (late Dyson Street) in dim-out, when the unexpected happened. Two masked men jumped from the shadows, armed with either pick helves or baseball bats or similar weapons.

  'This is for you, you bloody titox, for ruining religion and normal human life!' one shouted as they pitched into me. I managed to strike one of them in the face. The other caught me a blow across the base of my skull. I fell.

  I seemed to fall for ever.

  When I roused, I was in the hospital again, being wheeled along a corridor. I tried to speak but could not.

  Cang Hai and Alpha were waiting for me. Alpha was sitting on the floor, watching her mother bounce a ball again and again against the wall. I saw how Cang was still something of a child, using the excuse of her daughter to play childishly. She stopped the bouncing rather guiltily, scooped Alpha up in her arms, and approached me.

  'My dear little daughter,' I tried to say.

  'You need rest, Tom, dear. You'll be okay and we'll be here.'

  Mary Fangold came briskly along, said hello to Alpha and directed my carriage into a small room, talking meanwhile, ignoring Cang Hai. The room became full of tiny specks of light, towards which I seemed to float.

  With an effort I roused, to see Cang Hai close by. A spark of anger showed in her eyes. She said, determinedly and loudly, 'Anyhow, as I was saying, my Other in Chengdu told me of a dream. An orchestra was playing—'

  'Perhaps we'd better leave Mr. Jefferies alone just now,' said Mary, sweetly. 'He needs quiet. He will be fully restored in a day or so.'

  'I'll go soon enough, thank you. You could use that symphony orchestra as a symbol of cooperative evolution. Many men and women, all with differing lives and problems, and many different instruments - they manage to sublimate their individualities to make beautiful harmony. But in this dream, they were playing in a field and eating a meal at the same time. Don't ask me how.'

  'Would you like a shower, Mr. Jefferies?' Mary asked. I gestured to her to let Cang Hai rattle on for a moment.

  'And you see, Tom, I thought about the first ever restaurant - no doubt it was outdoors - which opened in China centuries ago. It was a cooperative act making for happiness. You had to trust strangers enough to eat with them. And you had to eat food cooked by a cook who maybe you couldn't see, trusting that it was not poisoned ... Wasn't that restaurant a huge step forward in social evolution...?'

  'Really, thank you, I think we've had enough of your dreams, dear,' said Mary Fangold.

  'Who's this rude lady, Mumma?' Alpha asked.

  'Nobody really, my chick,' said Cang Hai and marched indignantly from the room.

  I managed to say goodbye after she had gone. My head was clearing. Mary looked sternly down at me and said, 'You're delivered into my care again, Tom!' She suppressed a joyous laugh, pressing her fingers to her lips. 'I hope all this irrational chatter did not disturb you. Your adopted daughter seems to have the notion that she is in touch with someone in - where was it? Chengdu?'

  'I too have my doubts about her phantom friend. But it makes her rather lonely life happier.'

  Wheeling me forward, she tapped my name into the registry. 'Mmm, same ward as before...'

  She gave me a winning smile. 'There I have to disagree with you. We must try to banish the irrational from our lives. You have fallen victim to the irrational. We need so much to be governed by reason. Most of your gallant efforts are directed towards that end.'

  She wagged her finger at me. 'You really mustn't make private exceptions. That's not the right route to a perfect world.

  'But there, it's not for me to lecture you!'

  The attack on me had shattered a vertebra at the top of my spine. The nanobots replaced it with an artificially grown bone-substitute. But a nerve had been damaged that, it appeared, was beyond repair, at least within the limited resources of our hospital.

  I stayed for ten days, in that ward I had so recently left, to enjoy once more Mary's pleasant brand of physiotherapy. I lived for those hours when we were in bed together.

  Perhaps all ideas of Utopia were based on that sort of closeness. In the dark I thought of George Orwell's dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell set forth there his idea of Utopia: a shabby room, in which he could be alone with a girl...

  Mary looked seriously at me. 'When your assailants are captured, I have drugs in my pharmaceutical armoury that will ensure they never do anything thuggish again...' She nodded reassuringly. 'As we agree, we want no prisons here. As my captive, you naturally want me to keep you happy.'

  'Passionately I want it,' I said. We kissed then, passionately.

  I practised walking with my arm on a nurse's arm. My balance was always to be uncertain; from then on, I found it convenient to walk with a stick.

  I rested one further day in hospital. As I was leaving its doors, Mary bid me farewell. 'Go and continue your excellent work, my dear Tom. Do not trouble your mind by seeking revenge on those who attacked you. Their reason failed them. They must fear a rational society; but their kind are already becoming obsolete.'

  'I'm not so sure of that, Mary. What kind are we?'

  Laughing, she clucked in a motherly way and squeezed my arm. She was her professional self, and on duty.

  Suddenly she embraced me. 'I love you, Tom! Forgive me. You're our prophet! We shall soon live,' she said, 'into an epoch of pure reason.'

  I
thought, as I hobbled back to Cang Hai with my stick, of that wonderful satire of Jonathan Swift's, popularly known as Gulliver's Travels, and of the fourth book where Gulliver journeys among the cold, uninteresting, indifferent children of reason, the Houyhnhnms.

  If our carefully planned new way of life bred such a species, we would be entering on chilly and sunless territory.

  Where would Mary's love be in those days?

  Yet would not that rather bloodless life of reason be better than the world of the bludgeon, the old unregenerate world, continually ravaged by war and its degradations in one region or another? My father, whose altruism I had inherited, had left his home country to serve as a doctor in the eastern Adriatic, among the poor in the coastal town of Splon. There he set up a clinic. In that clinic, he treated all alike, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant.

  My father believed that the West, with its spirit of enquiry, was moving towards an age of reason, however faltering was its progress.

  In Splon I passed many years of my boyhood, unaffected by the poverty surrounding us, ranging free in the mountains behind the town. My elder sister, Patricia, was my great friend and ally, a big-hearted girl with an insatiable curiosity about nature. We used to swim through the currents of our stretch of sea to gain a small island called Isplan. Here Pat and I used to pretend to be shipwrecked, as if in prodromoic rehearsal for being stranded on another planet.

  Civil war broke out in the country when I was nine years old, in 2024. My father and mother refused to leave with other foreign nationals. They were blind to danger, seeing it as their duty to stay and serve the innocent people of Splon. However, they sent Pat away to safety, to live with an aunt. For a while, I missed her greatly.

  Civil war is a cancer. The innocent people of Splon took sides and began to kill and torture each other. Their pretext was that they were being treated unfairly and demanded only social justice, but behind this veneer of reasonable argument, calculated to dull their consciences and win them sympathy abroad, lay a mindless cruelty, a wish to destroy those whose religious beliefs they did not share.