They set about destroying not merely the vulnerable living bodies of their former neighbours, the new enemies, but their enemies' homes as well, together with anything of historic or aesthetic worth.
The bridge over the River Splo was one of the few examples of local architecture worthy of preservation. Built by the Ottomans five centuries earlier, it had featured on the holiday brochures distributed by the tourist office. People came from all over the world to enjoy the graceful parabola of Splon's old bridge.
As tanks gathered in the mountains behind the town, as an ancient warship appeared offshore, as mortars and artillery were dug in along the road to town, that famous Splo Bridge was available for target practice. It fell soon, its rubble and dust cascading into the Splo.
The enemy made no attempt to enter the town. Their soldiers loitered smoking and boozing some metres down the road. They laid cowardly siege to Splon, setting about destroying it, not for any strategic purpose but merely because they had hatred and shells to spare.
Anyone trying to escape from Splon was liable to capture. As prisoners, they suffered barbaric torture. Women were raped and mutilated. Children were raped and used as target practice.
Occasionally, one such captive, broken, was allowed to crawl back to Splon to give a report on these barbarities, in order that the fear and tension of the starving inhabitants might be increased. Often such survivors died in my father's little surgery, beyond his aid.
The great organisations of the Western world stood back and watched dismayed at the slaughter on their TV screens. In truth they were puzzled as to how to quell civil war, where the will to fight and die was so strong and the reason for the struggle so hard to comprehend.
During that year of siege we lived for the most part in cellars. Sanitation was improvised. Food was scarce. I would venture out with my friend Milos under cover of darkness to fish off the harbour wall. More than once hidden snipers fired at us, so that we had to crawl to safety.
Starvation came early to Splon, followed by disease. To bury the dead in the rocky soil, exposed to snipers on all sides, was not easy - a hasty business at best. I spent some days away from the town, lying in long grass, trying to kill a rabbit with a stone from a catapult. Once, when I returned, triumphant, with a dead animal for the pot, it was to find my mother dying of cholera. My sorrow and guilt haunt me still.
I can never forget my father's cries of misery and remorse. He howled like a dog over mother's dead body.
Exhaustion set in among the struggling factions. The war finally petered out. Days came when no shells were fired at us.
A party of the enemy arrived in a truck, waving white flags, to announce an armistice. The leader of the party was a smartly uniformed captain, wearing incongruous white gloves. Quite a young man, but already bemedalled.
It was the chance our men had waited for. They rushed the truck. They set upon the soldiers with rifles and knives and bayonets, and carved up the party, all but the captain, into bloody pieces. They rubbed the face of one man into the broken glass from the vehicle's windscreen. They set fire to the truck. I stood in the broken street, watching the massacre, enjoying it, thrilling to the screams of those about to die. It was like a movie, like one of my Biker stories.
The captain was dragged into a burned-out factory down the road. He was stripped of his gloves and his uniform, made naked. Some of Splon's women were allowed -or encouraged - to hack off his testicles and penis and ram them into his mouth. They beat him to death with iron bars.
I was curious to see what was going on in the burned-out factory. A man stopped me from entering. Other boys got in. They told me about the atrocity afterwards.
Next day, a Red Cross truck rolled into town. My father and I were evacuated. My father had lost his will to live, dying in his sleep some weeks later. That was in a hospital in the German city of Mannheim.
While I was laid low in hospital these past memories returned vividly to mind. I was forced to relive them as I had rarely done before. In fear of the horrors of that awful period, I recognised my strong desire for a better ordered society, and for a time and place where reason reigned secure.
Mary and I sat up in bed. She listened sympathetically as I told my tale. Tears, pure and clear, escaped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Perhaps the riddle of Olympus had brought on my horrors. The mood under that vast carapace could be one of regret, rage even, at the way the life forms had had to imprison themselves in order to survive as the old free life died. A billion years of rage and regret...?
Several visitors came while I was recovering. They included Benazir Bahudur, the silent teacher of children.
She said, 'Until you recover fully your ability to move, dear Tom, I will dance for you to remind you of movement.'
She danced a dance very similar to the one I had watched once before. In her long skirt, with her bare arms, she performed her dance of step and gesture, as supple and subtle as deep water. Life is like this and this. There is so much to be enjoyed...
It was beautiful and immensely touching. 'You manage to dance without music,' I said.
'Oh, I hear the music very clearly. It comes through my feet, not my ears.'
Another welcome visitor was Kathi Skadmorr. She slouched in wearing her Now overalls and perched on the end of the bed, smiling. 'So this is where Utopias end - in a hospital bed!'
'Some begin here. You do a lot of thinking. I was thinking of dystopias. Presumably you think about quantum physics and consciousness all the time...'
She frowned. 'Don't be silly, Tom. I also think a lot about sex, although I never perform it. In fact, I spend much time sitting in the lotus position staring at a blank white wall. That's something I learned from you lot. It seems to help. And I also recall "I saw a new heaven and a new Earth: for the first heaven and the first Earth were passed away." Isn't that what you Christians say?'
'I'm not a Christian, Kathi, and doubt whether the guy who wrote those words was either.'
She leaned forward. 'Of course I am fascinated by scientific theory - but only because I would like to get beyond it. The blank white wall is a marvellous thing. It looks at me. It asks me why I exist. It asks me what my conscious mind is doing. Why it's doing it. It asks if there are whole subjects the scientists of our day cannot touch. Maybe daren't touch.'
I asked her if she meant the paranormal.
'Oh, the way you use that label. Tom, dearest, my hero, your adopted daughter whom you so neglect - she has inexplicable, paranormal, experiences all the time.
They're part of her normal life. Nobody can account for them. We need to reconceptualise our thought, as you have reconceptualised society. Stop clinging to frigid reason.
'Chimborazo is a million times stranger than Cang Hai's world, yet we think we can account for it within science, can accommodate it within our perceptual Umwelt. Yet all the time it's performing miracles. Turning a sack of superfluid into a conscious entity ... That's a miracle worthy of Jesus Christ. Yet Dreiser doesn't turn a hair of his moustache ...
'Anyhow, I must be going. I just called to bring you this little present.' From a pocket of her overalls she produced a photocube. In it a complex coil slowly revolved, its strands studded with seedlike dots. I held it up to the light and asked her what it was.
'They've analysed one of the exteroceptors they hacked off Chimborazo. This is just an enlarged snippet of its version of a DNA structure. You see how greatly it is more complex than human DNA? Four strands needed to hold its inheritance. The doubled double helix.'
When I was up and about I went to see Choihosla again, this time taking the trouble to knock at his door. We talked these matters over. I even ventured to speculate whether mankind was experiencing a million years of regret that it had achieved consciousness, with the burdens that accompanied it.
'We all suffer on occasions from the dark soul of the night,' he said.
'You mean the dark night of the soul, Youssef.'
'N
o, no. Look outside! I mean the dark soul of the night.'
Was it the old quirky sage, George Bernard Shaw, who had said that Utopia had been achieved only on paper? Perhaps it had been achieved too in Steve Rollins's simulation. The people in his quantputer went about their business without feeling, without any sense of tomorrow, being subject to Steve's team's supervision. Not a sparrow fell without proper computation. An enviable state?
It was time to get to work again.
I called the advisers of Adminex to me. The date was the first day of Month Ten, 2071.
'Hello!' Dayo said, seeing me with my stick for the first time. 'What's happened to you?'
'The human condition,' I told him.
It was necessary to set about drawing up a constitution for our community. We needed to have the best possible way of life memorialised and, as far as might be, made clear to all.
The Adminex meeting was well attended. Clearly the external threat - if threat it was - from Chimborazo had served to excite our intelligence, if not to unite us. Only once before had so many people attended our forums, when Dreiser had addressed us. They gathered under the doomed Hindenburg and sat there quietly. By now, I thought with affection, I knew all of their faces and most of their names, these creatures of a human Olympus.
A late arrival at our discussion was Arnold Poulsen, who came by jo-jo car. It was a long while since I had seen him; he so rarely entered our forums. He sat now, his hands clasped between his knees, his long pale hair straggling about his face, saying nothing, contributing nothing but his presence.
Because I had been away I knew that things had moved on, and I anticipated argument and opposition. But even Feneloni seemed to have undergone a change of mind.
Speaking slowly, he said, 'I must put aside my reservations regarding your creation of a better and just society. I felt the wisdom of your judgement while I was shut away, and it seems to have had its bearing on my change of mind. While it's true I long to get back to Earth, that's no reason to create difficulties here. I can't exactly bring myself to back you, but I won't oppose you.'
We shook hands. Our listeners applauded briefly.
Crispin Barcunda was present with Belle Rivers. She was looking younger and dressing differently, although she still strung herself about with rock crystal beads. It was noticeable how affectionately she and Crispin regarded each other.
'Well, well, Tom Jefferies, you will turn us yet into a pack of coenobitic monks,' Crispin said, in his usual jocular fashion. 'But your declaration of Utopia, or whatever you call it, must not be padded out with your prejudices. If you recall the passage I quoted, to the benefit of everyone, from the good Alfred Wallace's Malay Archipelago, he states that a natural sense of justice seems to be inherent in every man.
'That may not be quite the case. Perhaps it was stated merely in the fire of Victorian optimism - a fire that has long since burned itself out. However, Belle and I believe that a natural sense of religion is inherent in every man. Sometimes it's unrealised until trouble comes. Then people start believing all over again in the power of prayer.
'The little nondenominational church we set up has been well attended ever since we learned about Olympus - Chimborazo, I mean - and its movements.
'We are well aware that you are against religion and the concept of God. However, our teaching experience convinces us that religion is an evolutionary instinct, and should be allowed in your Utopia - to which we are otherwise prepared to subscribe. We need you, as chief law-giver, to realise there must be laws that go against your wishes, as there will be some laws contrary to everyone's wishes. Otherwise there will be no reality, and the laws will fail.'
Belle now turned the power of her regard on me and reinforced what Crispin had said. Tom, our children need guidance on religion, as they do on sex and other matters. It's useless to deny something exists just because you don't like it, as we once denied there was life on Mars because it made us feel a bit safer. You have seen and heard the kids with their tammies - a nuisance to us maybe, but seemingly necessary to them. You must listen too to the squeaks of the godly.
'If we are to live rational lives, then we must accept that there are certain existential matters beyond our understanding - for the present at least, and maybe always and for ever.
'It is certainly no perversion to feel a reverence for life, for the miracle of it, for the world and for the universe. Doesn't the discovery of Chimborazo increase our wonder? Into such reverence the idea of God slips easily. Our minds are not quantputers. They work in contradictory ways at one and the same time. It's for this reason we sometimes seem at odds with ourselves.'
While listening intently I nevertheless noticed at this moment a fleeting smile on the face of Poulsen, who had sat motionless, not shifting his position, making no comment.
Belle was continuing. 'Those most vehement against established religion are often proved to be those most attracted to its comforts. We exist at the heart of a complexity for which any human laws we promulgate must seem flimsy, even transitory.
'There was a time when it was bold to take up an anti-religious stance. That time is past. Now we see that religion has played an integral role in our evolution. It has been a worldwide phenomenon for many centuries, and—'
At which point Dayo broke in, sawing the air with one hand, saying, 'Look, Missis Belle, slavery too was a worldwide phenomenon for many centuries. It still exists Downstairs! Millions of people were snatched from West Africa to serve the white races in the New World - twenty-five million people snatched from East Africa by Islamic traders in one century alone. I have the figures!
'Slavery isn't done away with yet. Always it's the rich and powerful against the poor and powerless! That doesn't mean to say we don't need to banish slavery - or religion. Or that these terrible things are good, just because they're old, does it? Antiquity is no excuse. We're trying to reform these horrible blemishes on existence.'
Dayo received a round of applause. A look of delight filled his face. He could not stop beaming.
Belle gave Dayo a nod and a tigerish smile, while seeming to continue her monologue uninterruptedly.
'Life for all generations, more particularly in the dim and distant past, has been filled with injustice, fear, injury, illness and death. God is a consolation, a mediator, a judge, a stern father, a supreme power, ordering what seems like disorder. For many, God - or the gods - are a daily necessity, an extra dimension.
'We like, in our Christian inheritance, to think that God made us in His image. It's more certain that we made Him in our image.
'And where does that image live? Beyond matrix, beyond time, beyond space-time. Was it intuition that dreamed up such a place, which scientists now believe might exist?'
'You make,' I replied, 'religion sound like a unitary matter. In its many sects, in fact, it has proved divisive throughout Earth's history, a perennial cause of war and bloodshed.'
'But we are creating Mars's history now,' said Crispin, smiling and allowing a glimpse of his gold tooth, while Belle, scowling radiantly, said, 'Tom, let me quote a phrase Oliver Cromwell once used: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken!"'
I let myself be persuaded by their eloquence. 'As long as you don't start sacrificing goats,' I said.
'Heavens,' Crispin said. 'Just show me a Martian goat!'
The discussion then turned to other subjects, on which agreement was reached with unique ease, and - with everyone's assistance - Adminex accordingly drew up and put on record our laws.
As Arnold Poulsen was about to depart as silently as he had come, I caught his sleeve and asked him what he made of the debate.
'Despite wide divergence of opinion, you were agreeable together, and so able to come to an agreeable conclusion. Did you not find that a little unexpected?' He brushed his hair back from his forehead and scrutinised me narrowly.
'Arnold, you are being oblique. What are you saying?'
'From my childhood,
' he said, in his high voice, 'I recall a phrase expressing unanimity: "Their hearts beat as one". Perhaps you agree that seemed to be the state of affairs here just now. Even Feneloni was amenable to a point...'
'Supposing it to be so, what follows?'
He paused, clutching his mouth in a momentary gesture, as if to prevent what it would say. 'Tom, we have difficulties enough here, Upstairs. You have difficulties enough, trying to resolve the ambiguities of human conduct by sweet reason.'
'Well?'
Smiling, he sat down again and, with a gesture, invited me to sit by him as the hall was clearing. He then proceeded to remind me of the extract from Wallace's Malay Archipelago that Crispin Barcunda - 'very usefully', as Poulsen put it - had read to the company. Poulsen had thought about the passage for a long while. Why should a community of people, those islanders characterised by Wallace as 'savages', live freely without all the quarrels that afflicted the Western world? Without, indeed, the struggle for existence? Such utopianism could not be achieved by intellect and reason alone.
Was there an underlying physical reason for the unity of these so-called savages? Arnold said he had set his quantputer to analysing the known factors. Results indicated that the communities Wallace referred to were small, in size not unlike our stranded Martian community. It was not impossible to suppose - and here, he said, he had consulted the hospital authorities, including Mary Fangold - that one effect of isolation and proximity was that heartbeats synchronised, just as women sleeping in dormitories all menstruated at the same time of the month.
On Mars we presented a case of all hearts beating as one.
The result of which was an unconscious sense of unity, even unanimity.
Poulsen had established a small research group within the scientific community. Kathi had referred to it. To be brief, the group had decided that an oscillating wave of some kind might serve as a sort of drumbeat to assist synchronisation. In the end, adapting some of Mary Fangold's spare equipment, they had produced and broadcast a soundwave below audibility levels. That is to say, they had filled the domes with an infrasound drumbeat below a frequency of 16 hertz.
WHITE MARS Page 30
