George Martin: Old Mars

“Take it easy with this,” I told Dr. al-Baz as I poured beer into a tallneck and pushed it across the table to him. “Until you get acclimated, it might hit you pretty hard.”

“I’ll take your advice.” The professor took a tentative sip and smiled. “Good. Better than I was expecting, in fact. Local?”

“Hellas City Amber. You think we’d have beer shipped all the way from Earth?” There were more important things we needed to discuss, so I changed the subject. “What’s this about wanting blood? When you got in touch with me, all you said was that you wanted me to take you to an aboriginal settlement.”

Dr. al-Baz didn’t say anything for a moment or so. He toyed with the stem of his glass, rolling it back and forth between his fingers. “If I’d told you the entire truth,” he finally admitted, “I was afraid you might not agree to take me. And you come very highly recommended. As I understand, you’re not only native-born, but your parents were among the first settlers.”

“I’m surprised you know that. You must have talked to a former client.”

“Do you remember Ian Horner? Anthropologist from Cambridge University?” I did indeed, although not kindly; Dr. Horner had hired me to be his guide, but if you’d believed everything he said, he knew more about Mars than I did. I nodded, keeping my opinion to myself. “He’s a friend of mine,” Dr. al-Baz continued, “or at least someone with whom I’ve been in contact on a professional basis.”

“So you’re another anthropologist.”

“No.” He sipped his beer. “Research biologist … astrobiology, to be exact. The study of extraterrestrial forms of life. Until now, most of my work has involved studying Venus, so this is the first time I’ve been to Mars. Of course, Venus is different. Its global ocean is quite interesting, but …”

“Professor, I don’t want to be rude, but do you want to get down to it and tell me why you want the blood of a”—damn, he almost got me to say it!—“an aborigine?”

Sitting back in his chair, Dr. al-Baz folded his hands together on the tabletop. “Mr. Ramsey …”

“Jim.”

“Jim, are you familiar with the panspermia hypothesis? The idea that life on Earth may have extraterrestrial origins, that it may have come from somewhere in outer space?”

“No, I’ve never heard that … but I guess that when you say ‘somewhere,’ you mean here.”

“That is correct. I mean Mars.” He tapped a finger firmly against the table. “Have you ever wondered why there’s such a close resemblance between humans and Martian aborigines? Why the two races look so much alike even though they’re from worlds over seventy million kilometers apart?”

“Parallel evolution.”

“Yes, I expect that’s what you’ve learned in school. The conventional explanation is that, because both planets have similar environments, evolution took approximately the same course on both worlds, the differences being that Martians … aborigines, sorry … are taller because of lower surface gravity, have higher metabolisms because of colder temperature, have significantly darker skin because of the thinner ozone layer, and so forth and so on. This has been the prevalent theory because it’s the only one that seems to fit the facts.”

“That’s what I’ve heard, yeah.”

“Well, my friend, everything you’ve known is wrong.” He immediately shook his head, as if embarrassed by his momentary burst of arrogance. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound overbearing. However, several of my colleagues and I believe that the similarities between Homo sapiens and Homo artesian cannot be attributed to evolution alone. We think there may be a genetic link between the two races, that life on Earth … human life in particular … may have originated on Mars.”

Dr. al-Baz paused, allowing a moment to let his words sink in. They did, all right; I was beginning to wonder if he was a kook. “Okay,” I said, trying not to smile, “I’ll bite. What leads you to think that?”

The professor raised a finger. “First, the geological composition of quite a few meteorites found on Earth is identical to those of rock samples brought from Mars. So there’s a theory that, sometime in the distant past, there was a cataclysmic explosion on the Martian surface … possibly the eruption of Mt. Daedalia or one of the other volcanoes in the Albus range … which ejected debris into space. This debris traveled as meteors to Earth, which was also in its infancy. Those meteors may have contained organic molecules that seeded Earth with life where it hadn’t previously existed.”

He held up another finger. “Second … when the human genome was sequenced, one of the most surprising finds was the existence of DNA strands that have no apparent purpose. They’re like parts of a machine that don’t have any function. There’s no reason for them to be there, yet nonetheless they are. Therefore, is it possible that these phantom strands may be genetic biomarkers left behind by organic material brought to Earth from Mars?”

“So that’s why you want a blood sample? To see if there’s a link?”

He nodded. “I have brought equipment that will enable me to sequence, at least partially, the genetic code of an aborigine blood sample and compare it to that of a human. If the native genome has nonfunctional archaic strands that match the ones found in the human genome, then we’ll have evidence that the hypothesis is correct … life on Earth originated on Mars, and the two races are genetically linked.”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Dr. al-Baz didn’t sound quite as crazy as he had a couple of minutes earlier. As far-fetched as it might seem, what he said made sense. And if the hypothesis was true, then the implications were staggering: The shatan were close cousins to the inhabitants of Earth, not simply a primitive race that we’d happened to find when we came to Mars.

Not that I was ready to believe it. I’d met too many shatan to ever be willing to accept the idea that they had anything in common with my people. Or at least so I thought …

“Okay, I get what you’re doing.” I picked up my glass and took a long drink. “But let me tell you, getting that blood sample won’t be easy.”

“I know. I understand the aborigines are rather reclusive …”

“Now, that’s an understatement.” I put down my glass again. “They’ve never wanted much to do with us. The Ares I expedition had been here for almost three weeks before anyone caught sight of them, and another month before there was any significant contact. It took years for us to even learn their language, and things only got worse when we started establishing colonies. Wherever we’ve gone, the shatan have moved out, packing up everything they owned, even burning their villages so that we couldn’t explore their dwellings. They’ve become nomads since then. No trade, and not much in the way of cultural exchange …”

“So no one has ever managed to get anything from them on which they may have left organic material? No hair samples, no saliva, no skin?”

“No. They’ve never allowed us to collect any artifacts from them, and they’re reluctant to even let us touch them. That outfit you saw Tito Jones wearing? It’s not the real thing … just a costume based on some pictures someone took of them.”

“But we’ve learned their language.”

“Just a little of one of their dialects … pidgin shatan , you might call it.” I absently ran a finger around the rim of my glass. “If you’re counting on me to be your native interpreter … well, don’t expect much. I know enough to get by, and that’s about it. I may be able to keep them from chucking a spear at us, but that’s all.”