Brian Aldiss - White Mars

Generally the talk was about Chimborazo. When I could bear Kathi’s silence no longer, I called her on my Ambient.

“So what’s new, Kathi? Why don’t I hear from you? Are we not friends any more?”

“Friends for ever, Cang Hai—however long that may be,” she said in her best sarcastic tone. “Just to prove it, I will tell you a secret. Don’t go spreading it around, eh?”

“What is it? Are you in love with someone else?”

“Yes, with that great alien intellect on our doorstep, ninny! You know what? We have discovered that it is accelerating towards us!”

“What?” I was shocked.

“It’s making much faster progress, babe! It’s accelerating at such a rate that it could even collide with the science unit in a year or two…”

“Kathi! What does this mean? How awful!”

“And I’m luring it on!” She screamed with laughter and closed down. Her face sank into oblivion.

I managed to keep quiet about Kathi’s news, although I wondered if Tom had been told. I sat in the Nemo with Alpha on my knee as if nothing had happened.

One day Belle Rivers appeared, accompanied by Crispin Barcunda, carrying several pages downloaded from her Ambient which she spread before us. Belle was her usual majestic self, rock crystal beads jangling down to the waist of her long dress. Crispin was diminished beside her, lightly though he carried his age. We noticed with what old-fashioned courtesy he behaved towards Belle. He sported a long, floppy white moustache and his eyes at least were full of life as he smiled at the company.

“Crispin and I have become firm friends,” Belle said, cocking her head to one side. “Between us we encompass much experience of dealing with difficult people. I wish to get away from the concept of good and bad persons, and to speak of difficult people. I know the difficult ones as children, Crispin as adults, when he was Governor of the Seychelles. We have a plan for decreasing the difficulties experienced by difficult people, which we wish to present to you.”

“We have to talk about this plan,” said Crispin. “Maybe it will never get further than talk, since it requires many years for its fruition and we may not have that long.”

“Well, now, it all sounds very mysterious,” said Tom, in rather grumpy fashion.

“On the contrary, Tom,” said the old man, laughing. “Like all good radical plans for mankind’s happiness, it contains nothing that most sensible people don’t already know.”

Belle began to talk. She said that her educational regime was now running smoothly. It included, as yet informally, the education of parents in the pleasure of being parents, of reading to and listening to their progeny. The Becoming Individual classes she had established received a good response from the children. She had been interested to perceive—here she shot a stern glance at Tom—how most children had what she called “a religious sense of life”.

“No one denies that,” Tom interrupted. “It’s the divine aspect of things, Belle—what you have called the phylogenic aspect of things. Your charges have but recently evolved from the molecular state of being. Of course they are full of wonder. I’m delighted you give it expression.”

She nodded and continued. She loved her children and was concerned that the best possible teaching might not help them prevail in the rough and tumble of terrestrial life (assuming they ever returned to Earth, as she personally did not intend to do). There had been much discussion about punishment for crime; the right conclusion had been reached—that care and consultation were more effective than punishment. She wanted Crispin to talk for a moment about the bad situation on Earth.

Crispin Barcunda spoke. “As Governor of the Seychelles, I was plagued by petty crime. Muggings, theft, aggression against tourists, hot-rodding, break-ins and murder, which sprang from these sometimes rather petty incidents. And we had drug barons and their victims. Often the crimes were drug-or alcohol-related.

“In short, the Seychelles was a paradigm in small of the rest of the world. Except it was a tropical paradise…

“Only I didn’t see it as a paradise, I can tell you. Fast as we locked the little buggers up, others sprang to take their place. Our prisons were pretty savage places, sordid, old-fashioned, with frequent floggings of delinquents for deterrent effect.

“Only we know floggings don’t deter. They just keep the middle classes happy. Of the little buggers they make big buggers with a grudge against society. I will tell you how we changed all that.

“It says a great deal for the human race that goodness survives even in the worst places of confinement. Among faces that bear the expressions of rats and snakes, cold, merciless, vindictive, you meet faces that beam decency and kindness.

“Such a good face belonged to a prisoner called Java Joe. Maybe he had another name, but I never heard it. Just an ordinary black man who happened to be released from a jail sentence on the day I made a very popular speech. I had addressed my audience in Victoria town square by our famous clock tower, exhorting them to value themselves and turn from crime. I had called them, I blush to say, the noblest creatures of the universe.

“As I was resting up from this hypocrisy, this ex-prisoner, Java Joe, was shown into my presence. He was perfectly polite. He even made himself obsequious. Yet he carried himself with pride. He had come, he said, especially from Crome Island to hear me speak. I asked him if prison had reformed him.

“His answer was simple. Delivered without reproach, it was simply, ‘Hell’s for punishment, not reformation, isn’t it?’”

Crispin tugged the ends of his moustache in order to contain a smile.

“Java Joe had come to me with a suggestion, he said. He told me he had read a remarkable old book when he was held in solitary confinement in prison. Java Joe emphasised that he was not a fussy man, but the state of what he called ‘the bogs’ in the prison was a disgrace, planned and intended to humiliate all who had to use them. He repeated this latter phrase. This made a passage in this old book he was able to read all the more impressive.

“‘What was the book?’ I asked him.

“Joe was uncertain whether it was a history or a fiction. Maybe he did not understand the difference between the two types of writing, which is little enough, I grant you. Part of the book concerned the building of an ideal house, called Crome.

“The architect of Crome, Joe told me, was concerned with the proper placing of his privies. By which he meant, in plain English, sir, begging my pardon, the bogs. And here Java Joe began to quote verbatim from the book: ‘His guiding principle in arranging the sanitation of a house was to secure that the greatest possible distance should separate the privy from the sewage arrangements. Hence it followed inevitably that the privies were to be placed at the top of the house, being connected by vertical shafts with pits or channels in the ground.’

“Java Joe eyed me closely to make sure I understood this elaborate language from the ancient book. Seeing I appeared to do so, he continued to quote: ‘It must not be thought that Sir Ferdinando (the architect, sir, you see) was moved only by material and merely sanitary considerations; for the placing of his privies in an exalted position he had also certain excellent spiritual reasons. For, he argues, the necessities of nature are so base and brutish that in obeying them we are apt to forget that we are the noblest creatures of the universe.’”

“ ‘Are you trying to be satirical at my expense?’ I roared. But plainly he was not. He explained that to counteract these degrading effects, the author of the strange book advised that the privies in every house should be nearest to heaven, that there should be windows opening on heaven, that the chamber should be comfortable and that there should be a supply of good books and comics on hand to testify to the nobilty of the human soul.