Brian Aldiss - White Mars

I realise that I have made little mention in this record of Cang Hai, who had attached herself to me. Certainly she is devoted, and it is hard not to return affection when it is offered without condition. She became increasingly useful to me, and was no fool.

Of course she was no substitute for Antonia.

In hospital I learned to walk with my artificial leg. At first it had no feeling; cartilage growth was slow. Now the nerves were growing back and connecting, giving a not unpleasant fizzy sensation. When I was allowed out of hospital for an hour at a time, I took a stroll through the domes, feeling my muscle tone rapidly return.

Attempts had been made to brighten the atmosphere of our enforced home while I had been out of action. The jo-jo buses were being repainted in bright colours; some were decorated with fantastic figures, such as the “Mars dragon”.

Glass division walls were tanks containing living fish, gliding like sunlit spaceships in their narrow prisons. The flowering trees recently planted along the main avenues were doing well. More Astroturf had been planted. Between the trees flitted macaws and parrots, bright of plumage, genetically adapted to sing sweetly.

I liked the birds, knowing they had been cloned.

Inspired by these improvements, I tried to brighten Tom’s spartan quarters.

When I was fit enough to rejoin my fellows, I found more confidence in myself, perhaps as a result of my friendship with Kathi.

So a year passed, and still we remained isolated on Mars.

Our society was composed as follows. There were 412 non-visitors or cadre (all those who were conducting scientific experiments, technicians, “carers’, managers, and others employed permanently on Mars before the EUPACUS crash), together with their children. This number comprised 196 women, 170 men and 46 children, ranging in age from a few months to fifteen years old, plus 62 babies under six months. Of the 2,025 DOPs, 1,405 were men and 620 women, and of the 3,420 YEAs, 2,071 were men and 1,349 women. A visiting inspection team consisted of 9 medics (5 women and 4 men) and 30 flight technicians (28 men and 2 women).

Thus the total population of Mars in AD 2064 was 5,958.

To which it must be added that two carers, two DOP women and 361 of the YEA women (about one-quarter of them) were pregnant. The population of the planet was, in other words, due to increase by about 6 per cent within the next six months.

This caused some alarm and much discussion. Blame went flying about, mainly from the DOPs, although as a group they were not entirely blameless. A pharmacist came forward to admit that the pharmacy, which was housed in the R A hospital, had run out of anti-conception pills, having been unprepared for the EUPACUS crash and the cessation of regular supplies of pharmaceuticals.

After this revelation some DOPs suggested that young people use restraint in their sexual lives. The suggestion was not well received, not least because many couples had discovered that sex held an additional piquancy and that an act of intercourse could be sustained for longer, in the lighter Martian gravity. Nevertheless worries were expressed concerning the extra demands on water and oxygen supplies that the babies would exert.

I tried to commune with my shaded half in Chengdu. My message was: “Once more, the spectre of overpopulation is raising its head—on an almost empty planet!” It was puzzling to receive in return an image of a barren moorland covered in what seemed to be a layer of snow.

As I tried to peer at this snow cover, it resolved itself into a great white flock of geese. The geese bestirred themselves and took to the air. They flew round and round in tight formation, their wings making a noise like the beating of a leather gong. The ground had disappeared beneath them.

It was all beautiful enough, but not particularly helpful.

Tom and I took a walk one evening, and were discussing the population question. A strip of sidewalk along the street was covered with an Astroturf that mimicked growth and was periodically trimmed. This was Spider Plant Alley, renamed after the plants that mopped up hydroxyls, much as Poulsen had said. Throughout the domes, plants were pervading the place.

I particularly liked Spider Plant at the evening hour. It was then that the quantcomp that controlled our ambient atmospheric conditions turned lighting low and cut temperatures by 5 degrees for the night. A slight breeze rustled the plants—a tender natural sound, even if controlled by human agency.

As I hung on Tom’s arm, I asked him when he was going to regulate primary sexual behaviour.

He replied that anyone who attempted such regulation would meet with disaster, that sexuality was a vital and pervasive part of our corporeal existence. While other facets of that existence were denied us on Mars, it was only to be expected that sexual activity should intensify.

“You also have to understand, dear daughter, that sexual pleasure is good in itself—a harmless and life-enhancing pleasure.” He looked down at me with a half-smile. “Why else has it excited so many elders to control it throughout the ages? Of course, beyond the sexual act lie potential ethical problems. With those we can perhaps deal. I mean—well, the consequences of the sexual act, babies, diseases and all those rash promises to love for ever when lust is like fire to the straw i’ the blood, as Hamlet says.”

We walked on before I added, “Or, of course, whether both parties give their consent to the merging of their bodies.”

I thought of how I was always reluctant to give that consent. Had I, by becoming Tom’s adopted daughter, somehow managed to avoid giving that consent yet again? I did not know myself. Though I lived in an info-rich environment, my inner motivations remained unknown to me.

“You are justifying sex simply because it’s enjoyable?” I asked.

“No, no. Sex justifies itself simply because it’s enjoyable. Sometimes it can even seem like an end in itself.”

Silence fell between us, until Tom said—I thought with some reluctance—“My father spent all his inherited wealth on a medical clinic in a foreign land. I was brought up there. When I was repatriated at the age of fifteen, both my parents were dead. I was utterly estranged, and put under the nominal care of my Aunt Letitia.” He stopped, so that we stood there in the semi-dark. I held his hand.

“I fell in love with my cousin, Diana—‘Diana, huntress chaste and fair’, the poet says. Luckily, this Diana was fair and unchaste. I was cold, withdrawn—traumatised, I suppose. Diana was a little older than I, eager to experience the joys of sexual union. I cannot express the rapture of that first kiss, when our lips met. That kiss was my courageous act, my reaching out to another person.”

“Is that what it needs? Courage?”

He ignored me. “Within hours we were naked together, exploring each others’ bodies, and then making love—under the sun, under the moon, even, once, in the rain. The delirium of innocent joy I felt … Ah, her eyes, her hair, her thighs, her perfume—how they possessed me! … I’m sorry, Cang, this must be distasteful to you. I’ll just say that beyond all sensual pleasure lies a sense of a new and undiscovered life.

“No, I’m a dry old stick now, but I’d be a monster if I tried to deny such pleasures to our fellow denizens…”

I was feeling cold and suggested we went inside.

“People still think you’re some kind of a dictator,” I said, with more spite in my tone than I had intended.

Tom replied that he imagined he was rather a laughing stock. Idealists were always a butt for humour. Fortunately, he had no ambition, only hope. Enough hope, he said, lightly, to fill a zeppelin. He repeated, enough hope…