Moving Mars (7 page)

Why not? I said. When our lives are straightened out.

He held onto my hand a little longer and I gently removed it. Id like to see you before that, he said. For me, at least, that might be a long way off.

All right, I said, squeezing through the door. I didnt commit myself to when. I was in no mood to establish a relationship.

My father forgave me. Mother secretly admired all that I had done, I thinkand they personally footed the bill for expensive autoclasses, to keep me up-to-date on my studies. They could have charged it to the BM education expenses, as part of the larger Goback revival. Father was a firm believer in BM rule, but too honorable to squeeze BM-appropriated guvvie funds, or take the victors advantage.

When next I saw Connor, it was on General Solar LitVid. She was on the long dive to Earth, issuing pronouncements from the WHTCIPS (Western Hemisphere Transport Coalition Interplanetary Ship) Barrier Reef, returning, she was at pains to make Martians understand, to a kind of heros welcome. Dauble was with her but said nothing, since day by day the awful truth of her failed Statist administration was coming out.

It so happened that there was a Majumdar BM advocate on that very ship, and he took it upon himself to represent all the BMs and other interests hoping to settle with Connor and Dauble. He served them papers, day after day after day, throughout the voyage

By the time both of them got to Earth, ten months later, they would be poor as Jacksons Lode, born on Mars, exiled to Earth, doomed to dodging Triple suits for the rest of their days.

2172, M.Y. 53

What was happening on Mars was an excellent example of politics in action in a young culture, my special area of study with respect to Earth history, and I should have been fascinated, but in fact I ignored much of the daily news.

My youthful ideals had been trodden on none too delicately, and I didnt know what to make of it. Before I could speck out the eventual course of my education and decide how to serve my family, I had to re-establish who I was. My mother supported my youthful indecision; my father gave in to my mother. I had some time away from commitments.

When UM restarted classes, I switched campuses and majors, going to Durrey Station, the third-largest town on Mars and home of UMs second-largest branch. I studied high humanitiestext lit from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, philosophy before quantum mechanics, and the most practical subject in my list, morals and ethics as a business art. Four hapless souls shared my major, studying things most pioneering, practical Martians could not have given a damn about.

I needed a rest. So I decided to have fun.

I hadnt thought about Charles for months. I did not know he had gone to Durrey Station as well. When classes started, we did not run into each other immediately. I saw him in Shinktown over student break.

Seven hundred and ninety students fled UM Durrey at Solstice and either went to work on their farms, if from the local, more sober and well-established families of Mariner Valley, or took refuge in Shinktown. Some, already married, spread out to their half-built warrens, soon to become new stations, and did what married people do.

My family kept no farms and required little of me in the way of overt filial piety. They loved me but let me choose my own paths.

Shinktown was a not very charming maze of shops, small and discreet hotels, game rooms, and gyms, seventeen kilometers from Durrey Station, where students went to get away from their studies, their obligations to family and town; to blow it all out and kick red.

Mars has never been a planet of prudes. Still, its attitudes toward sex befitted a frontier culture. The goals of sex are procreation and the establishment of strong connections between individuals and families; sex leads to (or should lead to) love and lasting relationships; sex without love may not be sinful, but it is almost certainly wasteful. To the ideal Martian man or woman, as portrayed in popular LitVids, sex was never a matter of just scratching an itch; it was devilishly complicated, fraught with significance and drama for individual and family, a potential liaison (one seldom married within ones BM) and the beginning of a new entity, the stronger and dedicated dyad of perfectly matched partners.

That was the myth and I admit I found it attractive. I still do. Its been said that a romantic is someone who never accepts the evidence of her eyes and ears.

In this age, few were physically unattractive. There was no need and little inclination among most Martians to let nature take its uncertain course. That particular question had been hammered into a viable public policy for most citizens of the Triple seventy Martian years and more ago. I was attractive enough, my genetic heritage requiring little adjustment if anyId never asked my mother and father, reallyand men were not reluctant to talk to me.

But I had never taken a lover, mostly because I found young men either far too earnest or far too frivolous or, most commonly, far too dull. What I wanted for my first (and perhaps only) love was not physical splendor alone, but something deeply significant, something that would make Mars itselfif not the entire Triplesigh with envy when my imagined lover and I published our memoirs, in ripe old age

I was no more a prude than any other Martian. I did not enjoy going to bed alone. I often wished I could lower my standards just enough to learn more about men; handsome men, of course, men with a little grit, supremely self-confident. For that sort of experimentation, beauty and physical splendor would be more important than brains, but if one could have bothwit and beauty and prowess

So fevered my dreams.

Shinktown was a place of temptations for a young Martian, and that was why so many of us went there. I enjoyed myself at the dances, flirted and kissed often enough, but shied from the more intimate meetings I knew I could have. The one continuing truth of male and female relationsthat the man attempts and the woman chooseswas in my favor. I could attract, test, play the doubtless cruel and (I thought) entirely fair game of sampling the herd.

In the middle of the break, on an early spring evening, a local university club held a small mixer following a jai alai game in the arena. Id attended the game and was enjoying a buzz of frustration at lithe male bodies leaping and slamming the heavy little ball, uneasy with a mix of strong Shinktown double-ferment tea and a little wine, and I hoped to dance it off and flirt and then go home and think.

I spotted Charles first, from across the room, while dancing with a Durrey third-form. Charles was talking to (chatting up I said to myself) a tall, big-eyed exotique who seemed to me way out of his league. When the dance ended, I edged through the crowd and bumped into him by accident from behind. He turned from the exotique, saw me, and to my dismay, his face lit up like a childs. He fell all over himself to disentangle from the big-eyed other.

I had thought about the UMS action for months and wanted to talk about it, and Charles seemed perfect to fulfill that function.

We could get dinner, Charles suggested as we strolled off the dance floor.

Ive already eaten, I said.

Then a snack.

I wanted to talk about last summer.

Perfect opportunity, over a late dessert.

I frowned as if the suggestion were somehow improper, then gave in. Charles took my armthat seemed safe enoughand we found a small, quiet autocafe in an outer tunnel arc. The arc branched north of Shinktown quarters for permanent residents and offered little convenience shops, most tended by arbeiters. We passed through the central quadrangle, a hectare of tailored green surrounded by six stories of stacked balconies. The quadrangle architecture tried to imitate the worst of old Earth, retrograde, oppressive. The shop arc, however, was comparatively stylish and benign.

We sat in the cafe and sipped Valley coffee while waiting for our cakes to arrive. Charles said little at first, his nerves evident. He smiled broadly at my own few words, eager to be accommodating.

Tiring rapidly of this verbjam, I leaned forward. Why did you come to Shinktown? I asked.

Bored and lonely. Ive been up to my neck in Bell Continuum topoi. You dont know what this is, I presume.

No, I said.

Well, its fascinating. It could be important someday, but right now its on the fringe. Why did you come?

I shrugged. I dont know. For company, I suppose. I realized, with some concern, that this was my way of being coquettish. My mother would have called it bitchy, and she knew me well enough.

Looking for a good dance partner? Im probably not your best choice.

I waved that off. Do you remember what Sean Dickinson said?

He grimaced. Id like to forget.

What was wrong with him?

Im not much of a student of human nature. Charles examined his tiny cup. The cakes arrived and Charles slapped palm on the arbeiter. My treat, he said. Im old-fashioned.

I let that pass as well. I think he was monstrous, I said.

Im not sure Id go that far.

My lips wrapped around the word again, savoring it. Monstrous. A political monster.

He really stung you, didnt he? Remember, he was hurt.

Ive tried to understand the whole situation, why we didnt accomplish anything. Why I was willing to follow Sean and Gretyl almost anywhere

Follow them? Or the cause?

I believedbelieve in the cause, but I was following them I said. Im trying to understand why.

They seemed to know what they were doing.

We talked for an hour, going in circles, getting no closer to understanding what had happened to us. Charles seemed to accept it as a youthful escapade, but Id never allowed myself the luxury of such japes. Failure gave me a deep sensation of guilt, of time wasted and opportunities missed.

When we finished our cakes, it seemed natural that we should go someplace quiet and continue talking. Charles suggested the quad. I shook my head and explained that I thought it looked like an insula. Charles was not a student of history. I said, An insula. An apartment building in ancient Rome.

The city? Charles asked.

Yeah, I said. The city.

His next suggestion, preceded by a moment of perplexed reflection, was that we should go to his room. I could order tea or wine.

Ive had enough of both, I said. Can we get some mineral water?

Probably, Charles said. Durrey sits on a pretty fine aquifer. This whole area lies on pre-Tharsis karst.

We took a small cab to the opposite arc, hotels and temp quarters for Shinktowns real source of income, the students.

I dont remember anticipating much of anything as we entered Charless room. There was nothing distinguished about the decorinexpensive, clean, maintained by arbeiters, with no nano fixtures; pleasant shades of beige, soft green, and gray. The bed could hold only one person comfortably. I sat on the beds corner. It occurred to me suddenly that by going this far, Charles might expect something more. We hadnt even kissed yet, however, and the agreement had been that we come here to talk.

Still, I wondered how I would react if Charles made a move.

Ill order the water, he said. He took two steps beside the desk, unsure whether to seat himself on the swing-out chair or the edge of the bed beside me. Gassed or plain?

Plain, I said.

He set his slate on the desk port and placed an order. Theyre slow. Should take about five minutes. Old arbeiters, he said.

Creaky, I said.

He smiled, sat on the chair, and looked around. Not much luxury, he said. Cant afford more. The one chair, a small net and com desk, single drop-down bed with its thin blanket, vapor bag behind a narrow door, sink and toilet folded into the wall behind a curtainall squeezed into three meters by four.

I casually wondered how many people had had sex in this room, and under what circumstances.

We could spend years trying to figure out Sean and Gretyl, Charles said. I dont want you to think Ive forgotten what happened.

Oh, no, I said.

But Ive got too much else to ponder, really. He used the word in a kind of self-parody, to deflate the burden it might carry. I cant worry about the mistakes we made.

Did we make mistakes? I asked. I smoothed some wrinkles in the thin blanket.

I think so.

What mistakes? I led him on, angry again but hiding it.

Charles finally pulled out the chair and sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. We should choose our leaders more carefully, he said.

Do you think Sean was a bad leader?

You said he was monstrous, Charles reminded me.

Things went wrong for all of us, I said. If they had gone better, everything might have turned out differently.

You mean, if Connor and Dauble hadnt hung themselves, we might have provided the noose.

It seems likely.

I suppose thats what Sean and Gretyl were trying to do, Charles said.

All of us, I added.

Right. But what would we have done after that? What did Sean really want to accomplish?

In the long ran? I asked.

Right, Charles said. He was revealing a capacity I hadnt seen before. I was curious to see how far this new depth extended. I think they wanted anarchy.

I frowned abruptly.

He looked at me and his face stiffened. But I didnt really

Why would they want anarchy?

Sean wants to be a leader. But he can never be a consensus leader.

Why not?

He has the appeal of a LitVid image, Charles said. How could he not see how much he was irritating me? I felt a perversity again; I wanted him to anger me, so I could deny him what he had come here to gain, that is, my favors.

Shallow?

Im sorry, this is upsetting you, Charles said softly, kneading his hands. I know you liked Sean. It makes me I didnt want to bring you here to

The door chimed. Charles opened it and an arbeiter entered, carrying a bottle of Durrey Region Prime Drinking Water, Mineral. Charles handed me a glass and sat again.

I really dont want to talk politics, he said. Im not very good at it.

We came here to talk about what went wrong, I persisted. Im curious to hear you out.