White Mars Part 17

But it continued under the shadow of that enormous life form that unceasingly inched its way towards us. Despite warnings to the contrary, the four of us drove out one calm day to inspect Olympus at close quarters. Crossing the parched terrain, we began to climb, b.u.mping over parallel fracture lines. Kathi, in the rear seat with Choihosla, seemed particularly nervous, and clutched Choihosla's large hand.

When I jokingly made some remark to her about her nervousness, she replied, 'You might do well to be nervous, Tom. We are crossing Chimborazo's holy ground. Can't you feel that?'

The terrain became steeper and more broken. Dreiser drove slowly. The exteroceptors were all about us. They seemed thicker here, more reluctant to slide back into the frozen regolith. The buggy dropped to a mere crawl. Dreiser flicked his headlights on and off to clear the track. 'G.o.d, for a gun!' he muttered. We were all tense. No one spoke.

We surmounted a bluff, and there the rim of it was, protruding above ground level like a cliff. We stopped. 'Do we get out?' I asked. But Kathi was already climbing from the vehicle. She walked slowly towards Chimborazo.

I got out and followed. Dreiser and Choihosla followed me. Suited up, we could hear no external sound.

Even near to, Olympus closely resembled a natural feature, its flanks being terraced in a roughly concentric pattern. There were imitations of flowlines, channels and levees, as well as lines of craters that might or might not be imitations of the real things. We could by no means see all of its 700-kilometre diameter. Even the caldera was hardly visible, though a small cloud of steam hovered above it. Whether as a volcano or a living organism, it seemed impossible to comprehend.

In its presence I felt the hair at the back of my neck p.r.i.c.kle. I simply stood and stared, trying to come to terms with it. Dreiser and Choihosla were busy with instruments, noting with satisfaction that there was no radiation reading, receiving a CPS.

'Of course there's a CPS,' said Kathi. 'Do you really need instruments to tell you that? How's the back of your neck, for instance?'

Braver than we were, she climbed up on to the sh.e.l.l and lay flat upon it, her little rump in the air. It was as if - but I brushed aside the thought - she desired s.e.xual intercourse with it.

After a while, she returned and joined us. 'You can feel a vibration,' she said. She returned to the buggy and sat, arms folded across her chest, head down.Cang Hai's Account

13.

Jealousy at the Oort Crowd

At this period, I used to like to go with my baby daughter to a small cafe on P. Lowell called the Oort Crowd. The talk there was all about Chimborazo. The threat from outside seemed to have drawn people together and the cafe was more crowded than ever.

My Ambient was choked with messages from Thorgeson, which alternated between apologies, supplications, abuse and endearments. I preferred cafe life, as did Alpha.

Although I did not wish to be impolite, I eventually sent Thorgeson a message: 'Go to h.e.l.l, you and your ventriloquist's dummy!' At the same time, I found some sheets on the Ambient network and tried to gain a better understanding of particle physics. I was making little progress, and called Kathi, asking if I might see her.

'I'm busy, Cang Hai, sorry. We have problems.'

Trying to keep the disappointment from my voice, I asked her what the problems were.

'Oh, you wouldn't understand. There's some trouble with the smudge ring. Stray vortices in the superfluid. We're getting spurious effects. Sorry, must go. Meeting coming up. Love to Alpha.' And she was gone.

Possibly this was what my Other in Chengdu had warned me about. I had been walking up a mountain with a king -or at least a man with a crown on his head. The air was so pure. We listened to bird song. Another man came along. He too had something on his head. Or perhaps it was a mask. I wanted him to join us. He smiled beautifully, before starting to run at a great pace up the mountain ahead of us. Then I saw a lake.

The manager of the Oort Crowd was Bevis Paskin Peters. He had taken over a department of the old Marvelos travel bureau. He ran the cafe very casually, being a part-time dress designer - the planet's first. Peters was rather a heavy man, with a sullen set to his features that disappeared when he smiled at you. In those moments, he looked amazingly handsome.

However, Peters was not the reason I went to the Oort Crowd. Nor was Peters often there, leaving the running of the cafe to an a.s.sistant, a fair-haired wisp of a lad. I went because Alpha loved to watch the cephalopods. The front wall of the cafe consisted of a thin aquarium in which the little cephalopods lived, jetting their way about the tank like comets.

A YEA marine biologist had become so attached to his pets that he had brought two pairs with him to Mars. Convinced of their intelligence, he had built them a computer-operated maze. The maze, built from multicoloured perspex, occupied the tank. Its pa.s.sageways and dead ends altered automatically every day. The cephalopods multiplied and had to be culled, so the Oort often had real Calamari on the menu. Ten of the creatures lived in the tank, and seemed to take pleasure in threading their way about the maze.

Alpha sat contentedly for hours, watching. Her particular admiration was for the way in which the squid changed body colour as they glided through the coloured pa.s.sageways.

We were there one day - I was chatting to some other mothers - when in came Peters with a dark-skinned man I did not know, together with the famous Paula Gallin.

She scooped up Alpha, who knew her well, and kissed her pa.s.sionately, calling endearments and making Alpha give her beautiful chuckle. The two men, meanwhile, were putting a ca.s.sette into a player at the rear of the bar.

Then Paula demanded the attention of the cafe's clientele.

'I just want you all to take a look at a piece of film. A sneak preview of my next production, okay? It won't take a minute. Okay, guys.'

The mirror behind the bar opaqued and there were figures moving and talking. They were in a long hall, filmed in longshot. All was movement. A man and a woman were talking in the crowd, talking and quarrelling. In the main, they avoided each other's gaze, shooting angry glances now and then. As they continued walking but their voices grew louder, the crowd about them froze into immobility.

The man said, 'Look, all I do I do for you.'

'You don't. You do it for yourself,' said the woman.

'You're the selfish one. Why are you always attacking me?'

'I don't attack you, you liar. I was just asking you why-'

'You were distinctly interrogating me,' he said, breaking into her sentence. 'You're always on at me.'

'I simply had a small suggestion to make, but you would not listen. You never listen.'

'I've already heard what you have to say.' He was red in the face now.

'I do everything for you. What do you do for me?'

His manner changed entirely. 'I do nothing for you, do I?' He appeared completely crestfallen. The woman turned her head angrily away.

The film cut, the mirror returned.

Paula laughed with a rich kind of gurgle. 'Okay, folks, now which of those two characters do you think was in the wrong, or was most wrong?'

We gave our opinions, the few of us sitting in the cafe. Some thought the man was feeling guilty about a misdemeanour. Others thought the woman was a nagger. Most of the speakers took sides. I said that they had got themselves into the kind of situation where both parties were wrong; they needed to stop quarrelling and try to find agreement, if necessary calling in a third party.

'Gee, you're an enlightened bunch,' said Paula, jos.h.i.+ngly. 'Now tell me what you make of the woman's last remark, "I do everything for you; what do you do for me?"'

So we chewed it over, we cafe-goers, while Paula cooed over Alpha. We were more or less in agreement that the woman's statement was destructive in itself. We disagreed about whether it was made more awful by being the truth or a vicious lie. Nor could we agree about the man's response: was it a sullen repudiation of her remark or a wretched admission of the truth?

'That's enough,' Paula said, sharply. 'Thanks. Bevis, Vance...'

What we did not realise was that the mirror behind the bar was a two-way mirror. Later, we saw an edited version of ourselves in Paula's new filmplay, Mine? Theirs? Mine? Theirs? Since we never knew what the filmed pair were quarrelling about, our judgements seemed facile. It was one of Paula's rather unpleasant tricks. Since we never knew what the filmed pair were quarrelling about, our judgements seemed facile. It was one of Paula's rather unpleasant tricks.

Perhaps that habit of hers caused the tragedy that was to follow - a tragedy that for a while eclipsed our preoccupation with Chimborazo.

Paula had a beautiful and strong face with marked features - a forceful jaw, in particular, and a beaky nose; her features were very unlike my rather ambiguous ones. Although she often took and discarded lovers, her real interests, or so it seemed to me, were directed elsewhere. Her predatory and creative mind wished to ingest the experiences of other people, and by so doing widen her own dimensions. Perhaps she had a driving need to resolve her own tensions.

Her clothes were designed by Bevis Paskin Peters. She rejected the customary unis.e.x Now overalls, so Peters became the planet's first popular costume designer. He evolved a cla.s.sical line imaginatively in keeping with the shortage of materials. The other man in Paula's menage a trios was called Vance Aylsha. He was a technician and rather a genius, according to report. He also looked after the little cephalopods in the cafe aquarium.

At times Paula could be large and florid. At other periods she appeared smaller, perhaps when she was actually working in her studio and unconscious of her own persona. I cannot say I liked her much. She was bigger than I, and unpredictable.

Nevertheless I was quite frequently in her company because she adored - or at least was fascinated by the growth experience of - Alpha. She would cease her work, towards which she was otherwise obsessive, to play for two hours at a stretch with Alpha. There was nothing Alpha liked better.

Nor was there much I liked better than to see these two intellects, the mature and the awakening, meeting in quizzes and tricks and mock deceptions and sheer nonsenses. I was aware of the antiquity of these games and that awareness added to my happiness.

How starkly the lovely energies of the three of us, the warmth of our bodies, contrasted with the frozen world outside, making it more thrilling to be there!

It was not all plain sailing; with such an outgoing character, arguments were always springing up. I had made some remark in praise of Tom Jefferies, whereupon Paula said, cuttingly, 'You should stay away from that creep.'

When I protested that Tom was a courageous and altruistic man, Paula gave this reply.

'Not at all. He's a creep. Of course he loves his plan. He wants us all to conform to it. He wants us all to be better people. That's because he doesn't like us much. Maybe he's scared of us - no, not of you, Cang Hai, but you're another s.e.xless little thing, aren't you?'

'I'm certainly not s.e.xless. Nor is Tom.'

'But you don't have s.e.x, do you?' She laughed. 'You need awakening. Come to bed with me and I'll show you what you're missing.'

Although I did not take up her offer, it was from lack of courage rather than from virtue. I saw why her two current men l.u.s.ted for her.

I saw how her interest, as expressed in her plays, was in people rather than theories of behaviour. She liked chaos. It answered a dangerous element in her make-up.

At the time of which I am speaking, Paula Gallin was working on Mine? Theirs? Mine? Theirs? She spent her days cutting, editing, morphing, swearing. I was witness to her outbreaks of anger against her male friends, whom she found necessary even as they broke her concentration. Creativity was by now better understood and better respected, but I went to the Ambient stand to look at the words of an old savant, Doctor Storr, whose work on the dynamics of creation remained of value. She spent her days cutting, editing, morphing, swearing. I was witness to her outbreaks of anger against her male friends, whom she found necessary even as they broke her concentration. Creativity was by now better understood and better respected, but I went to the Ambient stand to look at the words of an old savant, Doctor Storr, whose work on the dynamics of creation remained of value.

Doctor Storr says that a child who has a parent who ill treats him but on whom he is nevertheless dependent will regularly deny the 'bad' aspects of the parent and repress his own hatred, perhaps by developing some symptom such as nail-biting or hair-pulling. These activities show the displacement of repressed aggression and its turning against the self.

'It seems likely, however,' the doctor continues, 'that there is another way of dealing with incompatibles and opposites within the mind, provided one is sufficiently robust to stand the tension; and this is the way adopted by creative people. One characteristic of creative people is just this ability to tolerate dissonance. They see problems that others do not see; and do not attempt to deny their existence. Ultimately the problem may be solved, and a new whole made out of what was previously incompatible, but it is the creative person's tolerance of the discomfort of dissonance that makes the new solution possible.

'The process is easy to see in the case of scientific discovery. Something very similar may be going on in the case of the production of works of art. I have discussed the quest for ident.i.ty characteristic of at least some creative artists, and suggested that, if this is a particular need for such people, as it seems to be, it is connected with an attempt to reconcile incompatibles or opposites in the mind. This is, of course, intimately connected with the problem of ident.i.ty; for ident.i.ty, or rather the sense of one's own ident.i.ty, is a sense of unity, consistency and wholeness.

'One cannot have a sense of one's continuous being if one is always conscious of two or more souls warring within one breast. In the case of Tolstoy, the ascetic and the sensualist were never reconciled; but one aspect of his creative existence was certainly an attempt to bring this about.'

I was surprised. For the first time I saw that the doctor's statement, true as far as it went, did not encompa.s.s the contrasts and conflicts built into the mind by blind evolutionary development - the phylogenetic, as opposed to the ontogenetic, brain.

To employ the doctor's rather poetic phraseology, there would always be the two souls warring within one breast; this was what gave to h.o.m.o sapiens h.o.m.o sapiens our restless drive to develop further; it was part of the general creativity we were attempting to harness. We were now developing into a phylogenetic-conscious society, accepting and coming to terms with our inbuilt contradictions, revealing the 'natural' human. our restless drive to develop further; it was part of the general creativity we were attempting to harness. We were now developing into a phylogenetic-conscious society, accepting and coming to terms with our inbuilt contradictions, revealing the 'natural' human.

Paula's drama on which she was working, Mine? Theirs?, Mine? Theirs?, was precisely about the interplay between the two kinds of conflict, the ancient generic and the personal. was precisely about the interplay between the two kinds of conflict, the ancient generic and the personal.

I considered these intellectual ideas but, even when practising my pranayama, I taunted myself with the thought of what it would be like to be in bed with Paula, with her dark tempestuous body against mine. These images crept in upon my meditation...

At this juncture Vance Alysha and Bevis Paskin Peters were the two rivals for Paula's love. Both were men of spirit and worked on the computer simulations necessary for episodes in Paula's drama. Alysha was Caribbean; he had been a star on television in his native Jamaica, and remained proud of it. Peters had won a prize for paranimation at the age of six; he was vain and had a quick temper. And he was said to dress privately in his own flamboyant women's costumes.

An argument arose between the two men over the interpretation of a turn in Paula's narrative: was a certain character's decision to retreat into the wilds a brave or a cowardly act? This developed into a quarrel over which of them best satisfied Paula's s.e.xual needs. Happily, Alpha and I were not present.

They fell on the floor, wrestling with and punching each other. Peters seized on a length of computer cable and wrapped it round Alysha's neck. Paula entered the workshop at this point and screamed for Peters to stop. He did not stop. Although Alysha struggled, he was choked to death.

Mars City had no police as such. Paula called for the guards - those men who maintained the integrity of our structures. They hauled Peters away, unresisting. Since there was nothing like a prison on Mars, they shut Peters in their office, where he sat and wept, overcome by what he had done.

The guards summoned Tom. Tom and Guenz called our legal forum together to discuss the case. It a.s.sembled under the blow-up of the incandescent Hindenburg.

We were silent, rather sullen this time. Everyone was miserable in their own way. I sat at the rear with other onlookers, holding Alpha, next to a grim Paula. She shed no tear, but her face was ashen. I put a comforting arm round her waist, but she shrugged it off.

Thinking back to that time, I am surprised that we had faced no such crisis before. There had been animosities and quarrels, certainly, but all had been settled peaceably. Without the aggravation of money or those inhibitions of marriage so wrapped up in old-fas.h.i.+oned notions of property, the levels of discontent had been considerably lowered.

Jarvis Feneloni was one who spoke up for Peters's execution. Since the sallow-complexioned young man had attempted to leave Mars with his brother - nothing more had ever been heard of Abel and his s.h.i.+p - he had gained something of a reputation by being unruly. 'We have no doubt the man is guilty. He confesses to the crime. We have nowhere to imprison him. In any case, the traditional punishment for murder is death. Why muck about? We must execute Peters. Let's discuss how that should be done.'

'His confession lessens the case against him, while his remorse is his own punishment,' Tom responded. 'How exactly do you suggest we should kill him? By the methods he used on Alysha? By throwing him out on the Martian surface? By cutting off his head or his oxygen? We have no more right to kill than he. All methods of deliberate killing are distasteful to civilised men.'

'Well, I'm not civilised! We must set an example, take strong measures. This is our first case of murder, particularly the murder of a-' He stopped himself. We guessed what he was about to say. Instead Feneloni finished lamely, 'Particularly the murder of one so young. We must set an example, so that it does not happen again. And we must build a prison.'

Tom replied that he agreed an example must be set. But they had to set that example for themselves. If a family has a boy who misbehaves, punishment will probably make him worse; the family must seek to discover what makes him misbehave and remedy it. They will in all probability find that they themselves are in some way at fault. Far from punis.h.i.+ng Peters, the a.s.sembly should try to see what provoked him to violence.

's.e.x, of course,' said Feneloni, with a laugh. 'Look no further. It's s.e.x. Why are your sympathies with the murderer, not his victim?'

Guenz responded, eyes twinkling. 'I fear, Jarvis, that sympathy with Peters's victim can do the victim little good.'

'Okay then, try to discover what motives Peters had, other than s.e.xual jealousy. Then we hang him. Both phases of the operation to be done in public.'

Tom said that could not be permitted, else all would be implicated in a second death. Peters must submit to a private course of mentatropy.

Then, said Jarvis, legislation had to be drawn up. Were they to deal with crimes of pa.s.sion as a special subject, subject to special measures?

Interruptions from the floor continued for many minutes. 'We want no deaths here!' Choihosla shouted.

Someone claimed that freedom could not be legislated for. He was answered by another voice that said that they were not free, were indeed isolated far from their home ground, but had founded a contented society; fulfilment need not depend on freedom at all.

At this, there was uproar. A woman claimed that their 'happy society' was breaking up. It had been at its best one of de Tocqueville's 'voluntary a.s.sociations', viable only while everyone subscribed.

But like de Tocqueville's, another voice replied, it depended on hierarchy. Perhaps all this time, they'd been living under the wrong hierarchy. Laughter followed this remark, and the temperature cooled.

So soon after the disgrace of Dayo, no one in the court dared suggest there was a racial element in Alysha's murder. Perhaps there wasn't, although such suspicions circulated on the Ambient. But who could prove a negative? Better to sweep the whole notion under the carpet.

Bill Abramson rose to suggest that they had paid too much attention to building a good society and not enough to lobbying Earth to rescue them and restore them to their own planet. What if the subterranean fossil water gave out? It was to their credit that a sort of mediating structure had been established, permitting them to live orderly lives; but perhaps they forgot on what an uncompromising basis that order was built. For himself, with a family at home in Israel, he prayed every night that Earth would send s.h.i.+ps.

'Pray there'll be no more murders,' called a voice from the rear.

Paula and I had been listening in silence to all this. She now rose, and brought the debate back to the subject, saying in a quiet voice, 'You lay no blame on me, the cause of the men's quarrel. But I also must share the guilt. I liked to have the men vying for me with each other. It satisfied my egotism - and other senses as well. I'm greedy for life, as Peters is and Alysha was. But frankly I'd rather be hanged than have some fool shrink prying into my past life. My past is my property as much as my breath.'

Tom asked if Paula was trying to alienate the forum's sympathy. 'You might think differently about hanging if you were actually on trial for such a hideous crime. A course of mentatropy must be Peters's sentence. It can but have a better effect on him than a hanging...'

A vote was taken on what Peters's punishment should be. The audience was four to one against his execution.

Jarvis Feneloni bowed to Tom, who declared the court adjourned. Jarvis's manner throughout had been courteous. But I caught a look of hatred as he made his salutation to Tom. He had ambitions for himself as well as for justice, and did not like to be bested in argument.

As usual, the debate was filmed. No one gave a thought to how it would be received on Earth.

14.