Finches of Mars (5 page)

7

The Care of a Child

‘Excuse me,' said Amboise. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, indicating that he was only partially regretful for his remarks. ‘I wished to make the point that any idea of mankind—including the ladies of whom you and I are so fond—actually living on this Planet Rouge is meretricious. Not only will humanity there slowly die out, but there is a more serious aspect.'

‘Such as?'

‘I may phrase it briefly,' said Amboise. ‘You UU people, if I may so call you, m'sieu, have a selection procedure whereby intelligent and balanced personalities are accepted to fly away and be lost to this world—which badly requires them. We need precisely such people here, m'sieu. There is a shortage of the grave and the good.'

A tabby cat jumped off the nearby wall. It sat upright, front paws together, watching the two men as if sitting in judgement upon them.

‘I see your point,' said Mangalian, ‘but the universities of Bordeaux and Toulouse evidently do not, since they have already joined the UU.'

Amboise swept away both Bordeaux and Toulouse with a gesture of his hand. ‘We require those fine personalities here because we need hope in the world. Such personalities represent a saner future. No more missile systems but systems of civilised living. Such is my hope.'

‘Hope? But it is hope that overcomes all difficulties and takes us to Mars. The colony has now been working for—what? Almost ten years. No living child born as yet, malheureusement, but … You are hoping against hope because you can see this world of ours, this worn old world, is still without sanity or balance, despite all the wise and well-intentioned personalities there have ever been, of both sexes, over the centuries.'

Amboise sighed. ‘Yes, and also those millions who live quiet lives. Who perform minor good works for the unfortunate—the feeding of cripples, let's say, the reading of stories to illiterates—in their squares and streets and possibly homes. But perhaps they did not disturb themselves with hope and had to live for the day.'

‘That's a waste of resources, sir. A vegetable existence. It's better to be pessimistic, to worry about the world, to reach out for a new thing, a new chance, to be never satisfied.' Mangalian paused, remembering. So he had let Rosemary go; she was now but a name. ‘I grew up among brothers and sisters. We were happy but mischievous. We regretted we lived confined to such a small island as San Salvador. Excellent swimmers, yes, but poor thinkers. Perhaps that may be what prompts me as an adult to regret we live on such a small planet.'

‘… and Mars is even smaller,' said Amboise, smiling falsely.

‘You'll find that its land area is the equal in extent to Earth's.'

With his hands in his pockets, Amboise strolled about in a circle, thinking, his shadow forming a confused pattern at his feet. The cat moved cautiously away from him. ‘We are not getting far, Mr Mangalian. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” My hope is also for tomorrow, that you can retain your useful scheme of UU, but you do not send into exile people who are our “hope for tomorrow”.'

Impatiently, Mangalian said, ‘There is a conflict of hope. You do not, I believe, hope at all. You fear. If I agree with that quote from what's-his-name, I do truly hope for tomorrow, hope for, strive for, a new and better existence on our neighbouring world.'

Amboise gave a strained laugh. ‘As a keen horseman, I have no wish to be ever on Mars. I understand that the planet suffers from permanent grass shortage.'

Mangalian shrugged. ‘Maybe, in time, our descendants will discover existences far beyond the modest world of Mars. Human beings will always struggle for greater understanding. We know conditions will be harsh initially, but we shall triumph.'

‘Conditions will not be harsh. They will be impossible.'

‘You see, you have no hope! In any case, I cannot halt what already has momentum beyond my control. You should voice your fears elsewhere. Come to a UU meeting. I must go. I have another appointment.'

He nodded curtly to the Professor of Medical Studies, rose, and walked out of the courtyard. The cat followed him as far as the gate.

An armed guard, Yat, awaited him outside the premises. He cared for Mangalian as if he were his child.

And Mangalian, when he was a small boy, long before he was big enough to think of chasing women, had certainly loved his father.

San Salvador was not a large island. It grew sugar cane. Mangalian's father had been a sharecropper—cast off by his employers without pension as was the custom at the age of sixty. He walked with the aid of a staff taller than himself, painted white. He walked slowly, so that his son could easily keep up with him.

His father liked to stroll by the sea. They would walk along the front, past the row of thatched-roof shops until they came to the last shop, a small café.

There they sat, under a large sun umbrella. Father would order Coke. Sometimes they would talk. Father liked to spout old country sayings. ‘Just because you're an idiot don't mean to say you're sillier than me.' ‘You can be ready for anything, but that don't say you ain't good for nothin'.'

Father kept a hold of his staff as they listened to the screeching of the gulls and watched the waves break on the shore.

Mangalian went barefoot into the little saloon to buy a second bottle of Coke. A radio perched on a shelf behind the bar was giving out news in a tinny voice.

‘Capitalist astronomers in Tampa, Florida, just now claimed that we've got company. We are in what they call a binary system, with a dwarf star out beyond the Oort Cloud. Meanwhile, “Baby-Face” Morte was captured by police last night, about to set off for Cuba. Charged with the murder of the dancer, Francesca Pagnesa.'

Clutching the Coke bottle, Mangalian went out to his father.

‘Pop, what's a binary system?'

‘Son, that just means there's two of whatever. Fact is, the more you learn, the more you find you don't know.'

The gulls still sailed and screeched overhead, as if in mockery.

His son looked down at the sand between his bare toes. Later, as an adult, Mangalian liked to say that this was the moment when he decided he must get off the island, put on shoes, and start learning about astronomy and many other things with which the capitalist world seemed stocked.

So he liked to say. He could even recall the taste of the Coke. But memory was uncertain—although the anecdote made a good tale when, much later, he was being interviewed at one grand meeting or another.

BABY BOOM ON RED PLANET

NO WATER—BUT CHRISTENING NOW DUE

‘A MIRACLE' SAYS MARVELLING MOTHER

IT'S A BOY! EVEN BETTER: IT'S ALIVE

Such were some of the headlines in squealers and shriekers all round the world, driving out the exciting news that nine hundred intending immigrants from Africa had been shot dead within Italian waters, off the coast of Catanzaro.

Other news began to re-emerge, but Mars still appeared in some headlines.

KUWAIT ON FIRE—SEGREGATION RIOTS TO BLAME

ITALIAN PRESIDENT'S PARTNESS POISONED

TWENTY UN TROOPS KILLED IN KALMYTSKAYA

THARSIS CELEBRATES NEW BABY

In fact there was little celebration in the Tharsis settlement, as the Terrier found when he spoke on the shrieker. A small Chinese delegation came to offer felicitations to the West tower. Phipp officiated at the gate in a suppressed rage. Local people, aware that Sheea had taken another lover and wishing to tease, or not knowing he'd quarrelled with Sheea, kept congratulating him. But the amazing baby had been sired by someone unknown.

Sheea still would not give the name of her lover, and was in a weakened state, needing nursing. Her baby lay by her side. It was of a yellowy colour and malformed. Oxygen was being fed to it through a Perspex mask.

‘But how is Dolores herself?' the Terrier asked.

Twenty minutes was consumed in getting word to Mars, with another twenty minutes for a response.

‘She is in a somewhat depressed state, but being brave. The child is still alive. But unconscious.' Such was the response from a nurse who then severed communication.

Tibbett found he needed a strong drink.

Daze and Piggy, two of Sheea's three Earth-born children, sat anxiously near their mother's bed, speaking—when they spoke—in whispers. Squirrel, Sheea's senior child, was nowhere to be seen.

As Phipp grudgingly let in the Chinese delegation, one of the men stared curiously at him. Ill-tempered as he was, Phipp challenged the man.

‘What are you staring at me for?'

‘No, I don't stare,' was the reply. ‘You are to be congratulated to have a living child born here. Why you are not pleased?'

For answer, Phipp seized the man by the throat and shook him.

Uproar broke out. Guards burst in. The Chinese punched Phipp.

Phipp was dragged away, kicking savagely. The guards pushed him into a side chamber. ‘What the hell are you thinking about, you fool? You have disgraced us. The Chinese are—or were—our friends.'

‘Look, some bastick got up my partness. Why not that guy—giving me that gloating stare?'

‘You're psychotic. Why should some Chinese guy sneak into her bed? And you don't own Sheea. We don't do such things here. It's psychoanalysis for you. And you've lost your job.'

The news of this incident circulated fast. No one was happier to hear that Phipp would be confined than was his son Squirrel. Still, Squirrel could not bring himself to face his mother. Just a half hour of dear wicked pleasure and he was disgraced for ever—yes, disgraced, even if his act had produced the first living Martian baby …

He could never tell anyone about that.

8

The Death of a Hero

Barnard and Lulan escorted Barrin by ambulance to St Thomas's Hospital in the heart of London. He had collapsed just as the session ended. The hospital buildings were surrounded by solid concrete blocks, one storey high. Armed men looked out from the rooftops. Suicide-bombers had attacked the hospital almost from the moment Barrin had arrived, indifferent to any other casualties.

These attackers, the faithful, acted in accord with a passage from the Koran which says, ‘Neither on earth nor in heaven shall you escape His reach: nor have you any besides God to protect or help you. Those that disbelieve God's revelations and deny that they will ever meet Him shall despair of My mercy. A woeful punishment awaits them.'

His people's response to a visitor from Mars was ‘Kill him!' or ‘Burn him!'

Barrin was settled in a ward of his own. Attention was immediately given to his lungs and heart. He lay supported by a breathing apparatus, his legs under local anaesthesia, while undergoing analysis under Earth gravitation. His heart had become too weak to circulate blood under the increased gravity.

‘I fear I cannot,' he began to tell the doctor who attended him. He saw but could not focus. She who sat by him was nothing but a shadow. ‘Survive,' he managed at last.

‘You just need a little repair,' she said, comfortingly. ‘You are brave. You have a medal for it. Interplanetary travel is an attack on both body and intellect.'

‘Not on intellect, ma'am.' It was his twilight. ‘Space exists to be travelled.' His voice died away on the word ‘travelled' while he fought for another breath. ‘We are, aaaafter all, products of the … of th' cosmos.' Had he said what he meant to say? Speech was such an effort. ‘Products of th' compass,' he murmured, trying again. He panted.

‘Bug–' was all he managed to say. Then ‘–ger', on a dying fall.

She held his hand, regarding him gravely. ‘Are we in some way a dream of the cosmos? Although it goes against my profession, I mean the profession of healing, I sometimes find myself inclining to a belief that we are insubstantial beings.'

He blinked at her, acknowledging that indeed he was a prime example of an insubstantial being.

‘After all, religions that do not entail worship of graven images worship insubstantial gods, monstrous creatures that cannot be seen or heard any more than creatures of fiction, creatures supposedly ruling the entire world. The Christian god is an example.

‘We may in a sense be insubstantial in such a way as him. We create him in our image and not vice versa, as the Bible claims.'

Barrin sighed. He was not well enough for such irritating banality. He heard his heart thudding in his ears. ‘But still–' he began, only to find he could not complete the sentence. He did not even know what the sentence was going to be. ‘Still …'

The doctor mopped Barrin's forehead with a damp tissue. ‘I was always struck by that passage in Plato's
Republic
. About the shadows seen in the cave? I expect you know it.'

In feeble irritation he whispered he had never heard of Plato, in the hope she would cease talking.

She regarded him as a special case, one recognised by the King's medal. To have been to Mars and back earned her respect, yet she felt that behind that compulsion (as she saw it) lurked illusion.

Even as she told him Plato's analogy, Barrin felt himself drifting away.

It was indeed a striking analogy, so striking that it had lived for something like twenty-five centuries. Some people have been imprisoned in a large cave since childhood. They are unable even to move their heads and must always stare in front of them. (Just like us, she said.) Somewhere behind them bright lights shine. Between the bright lights and the prisoners is a raised walk. Free persons pass along this walk. Their shadows are thrown on the cave wall at which the prisoners have no alternative but to stare. Were they to hold a discussion with one another concerning life, they would assume that those shadows before them were the real, the only, things. They would make of them what sense they could.

‘So, my dear Barrin, do you not see that truth could prove to be nothing but mere shadows?'

He made no response. She felt for his pulse. There was no pulse.

‘Just as I talk to you, my dear, now but a shadow,' she said with sorrow.

Late in the afternoon, when the doctor was off duty, she sat grieving with her partner by the fountain in their garden, attempting a light meal. There were butterflies on the buddleia and a nuthatch in the rhododendron bushes.

She said, ‘Barrin was the first, the
only
, person to reach Mars and return here. Oughtn't we to start a fund to raise a statue to him? Better than that medal, which hardly anyone saw … You don't seem to grasp how unique his achievement was?'

‘Get on with your gazpacho, dear,' her partner said.

Barrin's death took up a lot of air space. Another rival for attention was the invasion and take-over of Greenland by Russo-Musil forces. The world was so full of disturbances that the fate of Greenland seemed unimportant. It was not a particularly popular tourist resort. The leader of the invasion, and now the president of the state, was Colonel Ketel Mybargie, his name sounding quite friendly. He had announced, ‘We have taken over Greenland for spiritual purposes. This we trust will benefit all native Greenlanders.'

Most of the world, with troubles of their own, were prepared to be reassured by these words, unaware that native Greenlanders had already been reduced almost to single figures.