Kim Robinson - Red Mars

As he got in his rover with Maya John said good-byes, and as they drove around the rim of Olympus Mons they caravanned with rovers containing Arkady and Nadia, and Ann and Simon and their son Peter. In conversations that day John said, “We need to talk to Helmut, and get the U.N. to accept us as speakers at large for the local population. And we need to present the U.N. with a draft of the revised treaty. Around Ls ninety I’m scheduled to go to a dedication ceremony for a new tent city on east Tharsis. Helmut is supposed to be there, maybe we could meet then?”

Only a few of them could make it, but they were named delegates for the rest, and the plan was agreed on. After that they talked about what the contents of the draft treaty should be, calling around to all the caravans and the dirigibles. The next day they came to the ramp down the northern escarpment, and at its foot they took off each in a different direction. “That was a good party!” John said over the radio to each in turn. “See you at the next one!”

The Sufis rolled by while they were stopped, and they waved from their windows and came on the radio to say good-bye as well. John recognized the voice of the old woman who had tended him at the toilet after his dance in the storm; as he was waving at their caravan she said over the radio,

“Whether it be of this world or of that,

Your love will lead us yonder at the last.”

The day John Boone was assassinated we were up on east Elysium and it was morning and this meteor shower came raining down on us, there must have been thirty streaks or so and they were all black, I don’t know what those meteorites were made of but they burned black instead of white. Like smoke from crashing planes except straight and fast as lightning. It was so strange to see that we all were amazed and we hadn’t even yet heard the news, but when we did we figured back, and it happened at exactly the same time.

We were down in Hellas Lakefront and the sky went dark and a sudden wind whipped over the lake and blew every walktube in that town away, and then we heard.

We were in Senzeni Na where he worked a lot, and it was night and lightning started hammering us, giant bolts of lightning were shooting right down into the mohole, no one could believe it, and it was so loud you couldn’t hear. And there was a picture of him down in the workers’ quarters, up on the wall of one suite, and a lightning bolt hit the concourse window and everyone was blinded for a second, and when our sight returned the frame of that picture was busted and the glass cracked and it was smoking. And then we heard the news.

We were in Carr and we couldn’t believe it. All the first hundred there were crying, he must have been the only one in that whole gang that everyone liked, if most of them were killed a good half of the rest would be cheering. Arkady was out of his mind, he cried for hours and it was so scary because it was so unlike him, Nadia kept trying to comfort him and she was saying It’s all right, it’s all right and Arkady kept saying It’s not all right, it’s not all right, and roaring and throwing things and then falling into Nadia’s arms again, even Nadia was freaked. And that was when he ran off to his room and came back with one of the ignition transmitter boxes, and when he explained what it was Nadia got really furious at all of us, she said Why would you ever do a thing like that? And Arkady was crying and yelling What do you mean why? Because of this, because of what just happened to John, they killed him, they killed him! Who knows which of us will be next! They’ll kill all of us if they can! And Nadia kept trying to give the transmitter back and he got so upset, he kept making her hold it saying Please Nadia please, just in case, just in case, please, until finally she had to keep it to get him to calm down. I never saw anything like it.

We were in Underhill and the power went off, and when it came back on every plant in the farm had frozen solid. The lights and heat came back on and the plants all began to wilt. We sat around all night telling stories about him. I remembered what it was like when he first touched down back in the twenties, a lot of us did. I was just a kid at the time but I remember everyone laughing at his first words, I thought it was funny myself but I remember being very surprised that all the adults were laughing too, everyone was so tickled, I think everyone fell in love with him at that moment, I mean how could you not like someone who was the first person on another planet walking out there and saying Well, here we are. It was impossible not to like him.

Oh I don’t know. I saw him punch a man once, it was on the Burroughs train and he was in our car obviously high, and there was this woman who had some kind of deformity, a big nose and no chin and when she went down to the toilets some guy said My Lord that woman has really been beat hard with the ugly stick, and Boone bam! knocks him into the next seat and says, There is no such thing as an ugly woman.

That’s what he thought.

That is what he thought, why he slept with a different woman every night, and he didn’t care what they looked like. Or how old they were, he had to talk fast when they found him with that fifteen-year-old. I don’t suppose Toitovna ever heard of that one or it would have been his balls, and hundreds of women would have gone wanting. He used to like to do it in two-person gliders with the woman on top of him while he piloted.

Oh man once I saw him pull a glider out of a downdraft that would have killed anyone else, it was a shear-off and it would have ripped the glider apart if he’d tried to resist it, but he just went with it and the plane dropped like a Rickover a thousand meters in a second, three or four times terminal velocity, and then when it was about to go smash he just tweaked it to the side and up and pancaked it in about twenty meters. Came out with his nose and ears bleeding. He was the best pilot on Mars, he could fly like an angel. Hell the whole first hundred would’ve been dead if he hadn’t hand flown them into their orbital insertion, that’s what I heard.

There were people who hated him. And with good reason too. He stopped the mosque on Phobos from being built. And he could be cruel, I’ve never met a man more arrogant.

We were on Olympus Mons and the whole sky went black.

Well, back before the beginning, Paul Bunyan came to Mars, and he brought his blue ox Babe with him. He walked around looking for lumber and his every footprint cracked the lava and left a rift canyon. He was so tall that he could reach into the asteroid belt while he walked around, and he chewed those rocks like Bing cherries and spit the pits out and boom there would be another crater.

And then he ran into Big Man. It was the first time Paul had ever seen anyone bigger than himself, and believe me Big Man was bigger— the usual two magnitudes, and that ain’t just twice as big let me tell you. But Paul Bunyan didn’t care. When Big Man said Let’s see what you can do with that axe of yours Paul said Sure, and with one stroke he hit the planet so hard that all the cracks of Noctis appeared at once. But then Big Man scratched the same spot with his toothpick, and the entire Marineris system yawned open. Let’s try bare fists, Paul said, and he landed a right cross on the southern hemisphere and there was Argyre. But Big Man tapped a spot nearby with his pinky and there was Hellas. Try spitting, Big Man suggested, and Paul spat and Nirgal Vallis ran as long as the Mississippi. But Big Man spat and all the big outflow channels ran at once. Try shitting! Big Man said, and Paul squatted and pushed out Ceraunius Tholus— but Big Man threw back his butt and there was the Elysium massif right next to it, steaming hot. Do your worst, Big Man suggested. Take a shot at me. And so Paul Bunyan picked him up by the toe and swung his whole bulk around and slammed him into the North Pole so hard that that whole northern hemisphere is depressed to this day. But without even getting up Big Man grabbed Paul by the ankle, and caught up his blue ox Babe in that same fist, and swung them into the ground and slammed them right through the planet and almost out the other side. And that’s the Tharsis Bulge— Paul Bunyan, almost sticking out— Ascraeus his nose, Pavonis his cock, and Arsia his big toes. And Babe is off to one side, pushing up Olympus Mons. The blow killed Babe and Paul Bunyan both, and after that Paul had to admit that he was beat.