Brian Aldiss - White Mars

Kissorian and Sharon were among the first to take advantage of the greater scope for solitude afforded by the subterranean extensions. Their marriage was celebrated to the joy of many (and the envy of some), and they retired for a while from public life.

At the same time, the men who worked on the Smudge Project were experiencing new difficulties. One of the positive results of the recognition of Chimborazo as a life form was a closer union between scientists and non-scientists. Most of the gallant 6,000 realised that ours was one of the great scientific ages, and took pride in sharing its news. So we all felt involved when Dreiser announced that there was a minor glitch in the superfluid. At last, a signal had been received that was interpreted as the passage of a HIGMO through the ring.

Dreiser said that the Mars operation was coming to fruition as planned.

“When we have found just two more HIGMOs, or even one more, we shall finally have an approach towards an estimate of the crucial parameters of the Omega Smudge.”

“How long do we have to wait?” someone asked.

“Depends. We must be patient. Even ten or fifteen more HIGMOs will begin to give us fairly accurate values for these parameters. Various controversial issues will be settled once and for all, among other important things.” He glanced sidelong at Kathi Skadmorr, as if saying “Don’t rock the boat’, when her face now came up on the Ambient.

“We should just say there are some minor anomalies about the glitch detected in the superfluid,” she said. “Maybe we have a signal representing a HIGMO passing through the ring, maybe not. Some of us have a few worries about that. So we are waiting for the second HIGMO. As Dreiser says, we must be patient.”

But a second HIGMO was indicated only two days later.

“Well, it does seem a little fishy,” said Dreiser. “The ring has only been in full working order for a year. I’m talking terrestrial years now, as though we were no more aware than our androids that we are on another planet.” He gave a dry chuckle. “A year till we get a signal, then a second so soon.”

“Can’t they come in groups?” I asked.

He seemed to ignore the question, muttering to someone beyond lens range. Turning to face his audience again, he said, “There’s something particularly odd about the signature of this second glitch. It’s not the form we expected. You see, there’s a gradual oscillatory build-up instead of the anticipated almost clean ‘step-function’ you’d expect from a HIGMO. You have to appreciate that the first glitch took us unawares. Full details of its profile were not obtained.

“We’ll keep you posted.”

So we had to get on with our lives. The betterment of conditions brought about by the development of Lower Ground, as we called it, improved everyone’s morale. But, as with many improvements, these would not guarantee lasting contentment. I had taken a liking to Dayo Obantuji, the anxious young Nigerian, who showed great interest in our circumstances. We often discussed the developments of Lower Ground. Having abandoned musical composition, Dayo proved adept at devising decorative tile patterns, bursting with life and colour, to adorn the main corridor.

But I said to him, “If we look back to the metropolises of the nineteenth century, we see filthy cities. In New York and Paris and London, filth and grit and stench were permanent features of life. These cities—London in particular—were coal-oriented. There was coal everywhere, coal dumped down chutes in the street, coal dragged upstairs, coal spilt and burned in a million grates, grimy smoke, cinders and ash strewn here and there.

“The exudations of coal mingled with the droppings of the horses that dragged the coal carts through the streets and pulled all kinds of carriages and cabs. The whole place was a microclimate of filth. The twentieth century saw vast improvements. Coal was banished, smokeless zones were introduced. The noisome fogs of London became a thing of the past. Electric heating developed into central heating and air-conditioning. Solar-heating panels replaced chimneys. Animals disappeared from the streets, to be replaced by automobiles, which—at least until they multiplied beyond tolerance and were banished from our cities—brought a decided improvement to urban life.

“And was the new comfort and ease of the home, reinforced by vacuum-cleaners and other devices that made homes more hygienic, considered Utopian? Not at all. The improvements came in gradually and, once there, were taken for granted.”

“I wish they could have been taken for granted where I came from,” said Dayo. “Our governments never had the interests of the people at heart.”

“To greater or lesser extent,” I said, “that is the characteristic of all governments. It happened that in Western countries an educated population had a strong enough voice to regulate or become government. That educated class also accumulated the capital to invest in sustained improvement, which has in itself promoted more improvement, often in unanticipated spheres.

“To give an instance of the sort of thing I’m thinking of, back in the 1930s, in the fairly early days of motoring, an ordinary family found that a small car was within its price range; they could buy what was called, in those bygone days, ‘the freedom of the road’.

“Crude though methods of contraception were in those days, the family then had a choice: another baby or a Baby Austin? Another mouth to feed or a T-model Ford? By opting for the car, they lowered population growth rates, which improved family living standards and encouraged the liberation of women.”

Dayo looked moody. “In Nigeria it is scarcely possible to speak of the liberation of women. Yet when I think how intelligent my mother was—far more clever than my father…” Looking at the floor, he added, “I wish I was dead when I think how I behaved to her—learned behaviour, of course … Now she’s gone and it’s too late to make amends.”

Because I was afflicted by a migraine, Belle Rivers and Crispin Barcunda conducted the debate on sex and marriage. The motion was opposed by John Homer Bateson and Beau Stephens.

Bateson began in his most flowery manner: “To look back over the history of matrimony is to recoil from the cruelty of it. Love between a man and a woman hardly enters into the picture. It all comes down to a question of property and dowry and enslavement, either and most probably of the woman by the man, or of the man by the woman. As a woman by name Greer or Green said last century, ‘For a woman to effect any amelioration in her condition, she must refuse to marry.’

“I would say too for a man to attain the detachment that wisdom brings, he also must refuse to marry. He must quell the lust to possess, which lies at the base of this question. The woman, until recently, was legally bound to give up everything, her freedom, even her name, while the man was supposed to give up his freedom of choice and to apply himself, sooner or later, to the expense of the rearing of the children he conceived on his wife.

“Thus, while the word ‘wedding’ may cause some excitement in some breasts, somewhat like the word ‘mealtime’, the excitement is evanescent as the true nature of marriage dawns on the wedded pair. They must then contrive somehow to love their demanding offspring, who, it is fair to say, are most unlikely to requite that love by reciprocal affection or gratitude.

“We have already made what to my mind is overdue provision for children here—not to mention their careless addition to our population. Let them go—as the saying used to be—‘on the parish’, into the care of Belle Rivers and her professional carers. Let there continue to be the usual conjunction of overheated bodies, men with women, women with women, and men with men. But let us not consider the continuance on Mars of matrimony in any shape or form. We are imprisoned enough as it is.”