Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 1 - Red Mars

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Mars was empty before we came. That s not to say that nothing had
ever happened. The planet had accreted, melted, roiled and cooled,
leaving a surface scarred by enormous geological features: craters,
canyons, volcanoes. But all of that happened in mineral unconsciousness,
and unobserved. There were no witnesses-except for us, looking from the
planet next door, and that only in the last moment of its long history. We
are all the consciousness that Mars has ever had.
Now everybody knows the history of Mars in the human mind: how for
all the generations of prehistory it was one of the chief lights in the sky,
because of its redness and fluctuating intensity, and the way it stalled in its
wandering course through the stars, and sometimes even reversed
direction. It seemed to be saying something with all that. So perhaps it is
not surprising that all the oldest names for Mars have a peculiar weight on
the tongue-Nirgal, Mangala, Auqakuh, Harmakhis- they sound as if they
were even older than the ancient languages we find them in, as if they were
fossil words from the Ice Age or before. Yes, for thou sands of years Mars
was a sacred power in human affairs; and its color made it a dangerous
power, representing blood, anger, war and the heart.
Then the first telescopes gave us a closer look, and we saw the little
orange disk, with its white poles and dark patches spreading and shrinking
as the long seasons passed. No improvement in the technology of the
telescope ever gave us much more than that; but the best Earthbound
images gave Lowell enough blurs to inspire a story, the story we all know,
of a dying world and a heroic people, desperately building canals to hold off
the final deadly encroachment of the desert.
It was a great story. But then Mariner and Viking sent back their photos,
and everything changed. Our knowledge of Mars expanded by
magnitudes, we literally knew millions of times more about this planet than
we had before. And there before us flew a new world, a world
unsuspected.
It seemed, however, to be a world without life. People searched for
signs of past or present Martian life, anything from microbes to the doomed
canal-builders, or even alien visitors. As you know, no evidence for any of
-+=*=+-
". . . And so we came here. But what they didn't realize was that by the
time we got to Mars, we would be so changed by the voyage out that
nothing we had been told to do mattered anymore. It wasn't like
submarining or settling the Wild West-it was an entirely new experience,
and as the flight of the Ares went on, the Earth finally became so distant
that it was nothing but a blue star among all the others, its voices so
delayed that they seemed to come from a previous century. We were on
our own; and so we became fundamentally different beings."
All lies, Frank Chalmers thought irritably. He was sitting in a row of
dignitaries, watching his old friend John Boone give the usual Boone
Inspirational Address. It made Chalmers weary. The truth was, the trip to
Mars had been the functional equivalent of a long train ride. Not only had
they not become fundamentally different beings, they had actually become
more like themselves than ever, stripped of habits until they were left with
nothing but the naked raw material of their selves. But John stood up
there waving a forefinger at the crowd, saying "We came here to make
something new, and when we arrived our earthly differences fell away,
irrelevant in this new world!" Yes, he meant it all literally. His vision of
Mars was a lens that distorted everything he saw, a kind of religion.
Chalmers stopped listening and let his gaze wander over the new city.
They were going to call it Nicosia. It was the first town of any size to be
built free-standing on the martian surface; all the buildings were set inside
what was in effect an immense clear tent, supported by a nearly invisible
frame, and placed on the rise of Tharsis, west of Noctis Labyrinthus. This
location gave it a tremendous view, with a distant western horizon
punctuated by the broad peak of Pavonis Mons. For the Mars veterans in
the crowd it was giddy stuff: they were on the surface, they were out of the
trenches and mesas and craters, they could see forever! Hurrah!
A laugh from the audience drew Frank's attention back to his old friend.
John Boone had a slightly hoarse voice, and a friendly Midwestern accent,
place, said John-meaning a frozen ball of oxidized rock on which they
were exposed to about fifteen rem a year; "And with our work," John
continued, "we are carving out a new social order and the next step in the
human story"-i.e. the latest variant in primate dominance dynamics.
John finished with this flourish, and there was, of course, a huge roar of
applause. Maya Toitovna then went to the podium to introduce Chalmers.
Frank gave her a private look which meant he was in no mood for any of
her jokes; she saw it and said, "Our next speaker has been the fuel in our
little rocket ship," which somehow got a laugh. "His vision and energy are
what got us to Mars in the first place, so save any complaints you may
have for our next speaker, my old friend Frank Chalmers."
At the podium he found himself surprised by how big the town
appeared. It covered a long triangle, and they were gathered at its highest
point, a park occupying the western apex. Seven paths rayed down
through the park to become wide, tree-lined, grassy boulevards. Between
the boulevards stood low trapezoidal buildings, each faced with polished
stone of a different color. The size and architecture of the buildings gave
things a faintly Parisian look, Paris as seen by a drunk Fauvist in spring,
sidewalk cafés and all. Four or five kilometers downslope the end of the
city was marked by three slender skyscrapers, beyond which lay the low
greenery of the farm. The skyscrapers were part of the tent framework,
which overhead was an arched network of sky-colored lines. The tent
fabric itself was invisible, and so taken all in all, it appeared that they stood
in the open air. That was gold. Nicosia was going to be a popular city.
Chalmers said as much to the audience, and enthusiastically they
agreed. Apparently he had the crowd, fickle souls that they were, about as
securely as John. Chalmers was bulky and dark, and he knew he
presented quite a contrast to John's blond good looks; but he knew as well
that he had his own rough charisma, and as he warmed up he drew on it,
falling into a selection of his own stock phrases.
Then a shaft of sunlight lanced down between the clouds, striking the
upturned faces of the crowd, and he felt an odd tightening in his stomach.
So many people there, so many strangers! People in the mass were a
Of course he could never say it. Not at any time, perhaps, and certainly
not in a speech. So he collected himself. "In the martian desolation," he
said, "the human presence is, well, a remarkable thing" (they would care for
each other more than ever before, a voice in his mind repeated
sardonically). "The planet, taken in itself, is a dead frozen nightmare"
(therefore exotic and sublime), "and so thrown on our own, we of necessity
are in the process of... reorganizing a bit" (or forming a new social order)-so
that yes, yes, yes, he found himself proclaiming exactly the same lies they
had just heard from John!
Thus at the end of his speech he too got a big roar of applause.
Irritated, he announced it was time to eat, depriving Maya of her chance for
a final remark. Although probably she had known he would do that and so
hadn't bothered to think of any. Frank Chalmers liked to have the last
word.
# # #
People crowded onto the temporary platform to mingle with the
celebrities. It was rare to get this many of the first hundred in one spot
anymore, and people crowded around John and Maya, Samantha Hoyle,
Sax Russell and Chalmers.
Frank looked over the crowd at John and Maya. He didn't recognize the
group of Terrans surrounding them, which made him curious. He made his
way across the platform, and as he approached he saw Maya and John
give each other a look. "There's no reason this place shouldn't function
under normal law," one of the Terrans was saying.
Maya said to him, "Did Olympus Mons really remind you of Mauna
Loa?"
"Sure," the man said. "Shield volcanoes all look alike."
Frank stared over this idiot's head at Maya. She didn't acknowledge the
look. John was pretending not to have noticed Frank's arrival. Samantha
Hoyle was speaking to another man in an undertone, explaining something;
he nodded, then glanced involuntarily at Frank. Samantha kept her back
turned to him. But it was John who mattered, John and Maya. And both
The air filled with overlapping conversations. Frank sank beneath the
turbulence, wandered out to the northern perimeter. He stopped at a waist-
high concrete coping: the city wall. Out of the metal stripping on its top
rose four layers of clear plastic. A Swiss man was explaining things to a
group of visitors, pointing happily.
"An outer membrane of piezoelectric plastic generates electricity from
wind. Then two sheets hold a layer of airgel insulation. Then the inner
layer is a radiation-capturing membrane, which turns purple and must be
replaced. More clear than a window, isn't it?"
The visitors agreed. Frank reached out and pushed at the inner
membrane. It stretched until his fingers were buried to the knuckles.
Slightly cool. There was faint white lettering printed on the plastic: Isidis
Planitia Polymers. Through the sycamores over his shoulder he could still
see the platform at the apex. John and Maya and their cluster of terran
admirers were still there, talking animatedly. Conducting the business of
the planet. Deciding the fate of Mars.
He stopped breathing. He felt the pressure of his molars squeezing
together. He poked the tent wall so hard that he pushed out the outermost
membrane, which meant that some of his anger would be captured and
stored as electricity in the town's grid. It was a special polymer in that
respect; carbon atoms were linked to hydrogen and fluorine atoms in such
a way that the resulting substance was even more piezoelectric than
quartz. Change one element of the three, however, and everything shifted;
substitute chlorine for fluorine, for instance, and you had saran wrap.
Frank stared at his wrapped hand, then up again at the other two
elements, still bonded to each other. But without him they were nothing!
Angrily he walked into the narrow streets of the city.
# # #
Clustered in a plaza like mussels on a rock were a group of Arabs,
drinking coffee. Arabs had arrived on Mars only ten years before, but
already they were a force to be reckoned with. They had a lot of money,
and they had teamed up with the Swiss to build a number of towns,
including this one. And they liked it on Mars. "It's like a cold day in the
square Hajr el-kra Meshab, the red granite open place in town. He
gestured at the rust-colored flagstones. Frank nodded and asked what
kind of stone it was. He spoke Arabic for as long as he could, pushing the
edges of his ability and getting some good laughs in response. Then he
sat at the central table and relaxed, feeling like he could have been on a
street in Damascus or Cairo, comfortable in the wash of Arabic and
expensive cologne.
He studied the men's faces as they talked. An alien culture, no doubt
about it. They weren't going to change just because they were on Mars,
they put the lie to John's vision. Their thinking clashed radically with
Western thought; for instance the separation of church and state was
wrong to them, making it impossible for them to agree with Westerners on
the very basis of government. And they were so patriarchal that some of
their women were said to be illiterate-illiterates, on Mars! That was a sign.
And indeed these men had the dangerous look that Frank associated with
machismo, the look of men who oppressed their women so cruelly that
naturally the women struck back where they could, terrorizing sons who
then terrorized wives who terrorized sons and so on and so on, in an
endless death spiral of twisted love and sex hatred. So that in that sense
they were all madmen.
Which was one reason Frank liked them. And certainly they would
come in useful to him, acting as a new locus of power. Defend a weak
new neighbor to weaken the old powerful ones, as Machiavelli had said.
So he drank coffee, and gradually, politely, they shifted to English.
"How did you like the speeches?" he asked, looking into the black mud
at the bottom of his demitasse.
"John Boone is the same as ever," old Zeyk replied. The others
laughed angrily. "When he says we will make an indigenous Martian
culture, he only means some of the Terran cultures here will be promoted,
and others attacked. Those perceived as regressive will be singled out for
destruction. It is a form of Ataturkism."
"He thinks everyone on Mars should become American," said a man
named Nejm.
They laughed at that, but the younger men s hoots had a bitter edge.
They all believed that before their arrival Boone had argued in secret
against UN approval for Arab setlements. Frank encouraged this belief,
which was almost true-John disliked any ideology that might get in his way.
He wanted the slate as blank as possible in everybody who came up.
The Arabs, however, believed that John disliked them in particular.
Young Selim el-Hayil opened his mouth to speak, and Frank gave him a
swift warning glance. Selim froze, then pursed his mouth angrily. Frank
said, "Well, he's not as bad as all that. Although to tell the truth I've heard
him say it would have been better if the Americans and Russians had been
able to claim the planet when they arrived, like explorers in the old days."
Their laughter was brief and grim. Selim's shoulders hunched as if
struck. Frank shrugged and smiled, spread his hands wide. "But it's
pointless! I mean, what can he do?"
Old Zeyk lifted his eyebrows. "Opinions vary."
# # #
Chalmers got up to move on, meeting for one instant Selim's insistent
gaze. Then he strode down a side street, one of the narrow lanes that
connected the city's seven main boulevards. Most were paved with
cobblestones or streetgrass, but this one was rough blond concrete. He
slowed by a recessed doorway, looked in the window of a closed boot
manufactury. His faint reflection appeared in a pair of bulky walker boots.
Opinions vary. Yes, a lot of people had underestimated John Boone-
Chalmers had done it himself many times. An image came to him of John
in the White House, pink with conviction, his disobedient blond hair flying
wildly, the sun streaming in the Oval Office windows and illuminating him
as he waved his hands and paced the room, talking away while the
President nodded and his aides watched, pondering how best to co-opt that
electrifying charisma. Oh, they had been hot in those days, Chalmers and
Boone; Frank with the ideas and John the front man, with a momentum that
was practically unstoppable. It would be more a matter of derailment,
really.
Selim el-Hayil's reflection appeared among the boots.
The treaty comes up for renewal soon, Frank said. And Boone s
coalition is bypassing me." He ground his teeth. "I don't know what their
plans are, but I'm going to find out tonight. You can imagine what they'll
be, anyway. Western biases, certainly. He may withhold his approval of a
new treaty unless it contains guarantees that all settlements will be made
only by the original treaty signatories." Selim shivered, and Frank pressed;
"It's what he wants, and it's very possible he could get it, because his new
coalition makes him more powerful than ever. It could mean an end to
settlement by non-signatories. You'll become guest scientists. Or get sent
back."
In the window the reflection of Selim's face appeared a kind of mask,
signifying rage. "Battal, battal," he was muttering. Very bad, very bad. His
hands twisted as if out of his control, and he muttered about the Koran or
Camus, Persepolis or the Peacock Throne, references scattered nervously
among non-sequiturs. Babbling.
"Talk means nothing," Chalmers said harshly. "When it comes down to
it, nothing matters but action."
That gave the young Arab pause. "I can't be sure," he said at last.
Frank poked him in the arm, watched a shock run through the man. "It's
your people we're talking about. It's this planet we're talking about."
Selim's mouth disappeared under his moustache. After a time he said,
"It's true."
Frank said nothing. They looked in the window together, as if judging
boots.
Finally Frank raised a hand. "I'll talk to Boone again," he said quietly.
"Tonight. He leaves tomorrow. I'll try to talk to him, to reason with him. I
doubt it will matter. It never has before. But I'll try. Afterwards... we should
meet."
"Yes."
"In the park, then, the southernmost path. Around eleven."
Selim nodded.
Chalmers transfixed him with a stare. "Talk means nothing," he said
brusquely, and walked away.
he said to two young women in front of him. They nodded politely and then
resumed conversation in guttural Schwyzerdüütsch, a dialect never written
down, a private code, incomprehensible even to Germans. It was another
impenetrable culture, the Swiss, in some ways even more so than the
Arabs. That was it, Frank thought; they worked well together because they
were both so insular that they never made any real contact. He laughed
out loud as he took a mask, a black face with studded with red paste gems.
He put it on.
A line of masked celebrants snaked down the boulevard, drunk, loose,
at the edge of control. At an intersection the boulevard opened up into a
small plaza, where a fountain shot sun-colored water into the air. Around
the fountain a steel drum band hammered out a calypso tune. People
gathered around, dancing or hopping in time to the low bong of the bass
drum. A hundred meters overhead a vent in the tent frame poured frigid
air down onto the plaza, air so cold that little flakes of snow floated in it,
glinting in the light like chips of mica. Then fireworks banged just under
the tenting, and colored sparks fell down through the snowflakes.
# # #
Sunset, more than any other time of day, made it clear that they stood
on an alien planet; something in the slant and redness of the light was
fundamentally wrong, upsetting expectations wired into the savannah brain
over millions of years. This evening was providing a particularly garish and
unsettling example of the phenomenon. Frank wandered in its light,
making his way back to the city wall. The plain south of the city was littered
with rocks, each one dogged by a long black shadow. Under the concrete
arch of the city's south gate he stopped. No one there. The gates were
locked during festivals like these, to keep drunks from going out and getting
hurt. But Frank had gotten the day's emergency code out of the fire
department AI that morning, and when he was sure no one was watching
he tapped out the code and hurried into the lock. He put on a walker,
boots, and helmet, and went through the middle and outer doors.
The twilight sky was a dark pink over Pavonis Mons. To the east
stretched Nicosia's farm, a long low greenhouse running downslope from
the city. From this angle one could see that the farm was larger than the
town proper, and jammed with green crops. Frank clumped to one of its
outer locks, and entered.
Inside the farm it was hot, a full sixty degrees warmer than outside, and
fifteen degrees warmer than in the city. He had to keep his helmet on, as
the farm air was tailored to the plants, heavy on CO2 and short on oxygen.
He stopped at a work station and fingered through drawers of small tools
and pesticide patches, gloves and bags. He selected three tiny patches
and put them in a plastic bag, then slipped the bag gently into the walker's
pocket. The patches were clever pesticides, biosaboteurs designed to
provide plants with systemic defenses; he had been reading about them,
and knew of a combination that in animals would be deadly to the
organism. . . .
He put a pair of shears in the walker's other pocket. Narrow gravel
paths led him up between long beds of barley and wheat, back toward the
city proper. He went in the lock leading into town, unclipped his helmet,
stripped off the walker and boots, transferred the contents of the walker
pockets to his coat. Then he went back into the lower end of town.
Here the Arabs had built a medina, insisting that such a neighborhood
was crucial to a city's health; the boulevards narrowed, and between them
lay warrens of twisted alleyways taken from the maps of Tunis or Algiers, or
generated randomly. Nowhere could you see from one boulevard to the
next, and the sky overhead was visible only in plum strips, between
buildings that leaned together.
Most of the alleys were empty now, as the party was uptown. A pair of
cats skulked between buildings, investigating their new home. Frank took
the shears from his pocket and scratched into a few plastic windows, in
Arabic lettering, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew. He walked on, whistling through
his teeth. Corner cafés were little caves of light. Bottles clinked like
prospectors' hammers. An Arab sat on a squat black speaker, playing an
electric guitar.
摘要：

Marswasemptybeforewecame.Thatsnottosaythatnothinghadeverhappened.Theplanethadaccreted,melted,roiledandcooled,leavingasurfacescarredbyenormousgeologicalfeatures:craters,canyons,volcanoes.Butallofthathappenedinmineralunconsciousness,andunobserved.Therewerenowitnesses-exceptforus,lookingfromtheplanetne...

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