Brian Aldiss: White Mars

The main category of person was a Young Enlightened Adult (YEA). This was my category, and Kathi Skadmorr’s. Provision was also made for—the Taiwanese established this term—Distinguished Older Persons (DOPs). Tom Jefferies was a DOP.

Once these visitors reached Mars—I’m talking now about how it was back in the 2060s—she or he had to undergo a week’s revival and acclimatisation (the unpopular R A routine). Maybe they also saw a psychurgist. R A took place in the Reception House, as it was then called, a combined hospital and nursing home run by Mary Fangold, with whom I did not get along. This was in Amazonis. Later other RHs were set up elsewhere.

“In the hospital,” Helen reminded me, “you were given physiotherapy in order to counteract any possible bone and tissue loss and to assist in the recovery of full health. Why did you not accept the offer of psychurgy there and then?”

This was when I had to admit to her that I was different.

“How different?”

“Just—different.” I did not wish to be explicit, which was perhaps a mistake.

If you were unversed in history, you might wonder that anyone endured all these demanding travel conditions. The fact is that, given the chance to travel, people will endure almost any amount of discomfort and danger to get to a new place. Such has been the case throughout the history of mankind.

Also you must remember that an epoch was drawing to a close on Earth. There was no longer the promise of material abundance that once had prevailed. Not through exploration, conquest, or technological development. The human race had proved itself a cloud of locusts, refusing to curb their procreative and acquisitive habits. They had sucked most of the goodness from the globe and its waters. The easier days of the twentieth century, with individual surface travel readily available, were finished.

So for the young, us YEAs, harsh Martian conditions were seen as a challenge and an invitation. The experience of being on Mars, of identifying with it, was seen as worth all the time spent in community work and matrix travel.

But somehow, with me … well, it was different. I guess I just took longer to adjust. It was something to do with my personality.

We have the testimony of an early Mars visitor, Maria Gaia Augusta (age twenty-three) on video. Her report says: “Oh, the experience must not be missed. I have ambitions to be a travel writer. I spent my YEA community service in the outback of Australia, seeding and tending new forest areas, and was glad to have a change.

“At the back of my mind was a decision to gather material on Mars for knocking copy. I mean, Mars was to me like just a shadowy stone in the sky. I couldn’t see the attraction—apart from curiosity. But when I got there—well, it was another world, quite another world. Another life, if you like.

“You know what the surface of Mars is? Loneliness made solid, rock solid.

“Course, there were restrictions, but they were part of the deal. I loved all the fancy-shaped domes they’re setting up in Amazonis Planitia. In the desert, in fact. They put you in the mood of some Arabian Nights fantasy. You get to thinking, ‘Well, look at the frugal life the Arabs used to lead. I can do that.’ And you do.

“I did the compulsory aerobic classes during my R A period after we had landed, and got to enjoy them. I had been a bit overweight. Aerobics is weird in lighter gravity. Fun. I met a very sweet guy in the classes, Renato, a San Franciscan. We got along fine.

“We enjoyed sex in that light gravity and maybe invented a few positions not in the Kama Sutra. Mars is going to be left behind in a few years’ time, when we settle the moons of Jupiter. Sex will really be something out there, in real low gravity! Meantime, Mars is the best thing we got in that respect.

“Me and Renato got on the list for a four-body expedition beyond the domes. Four-bodies were then the standard package. I know it’s different now. Two-bodies were considered too dangerous, in case one body got ill or something. Not that there are all that many illnesses on Mars, but you never know.

“We didn’t go madly far, just to the Margarite Sinus, towards the equator, because of fuel restrictions, but that was enough. Of course, every little four-body had to have a scientific component—the buggy was like a small lab, complete with cameras and electrolysis equipment and I don’t know what-all. Radio, of course, to keep us oriented, and listen out for dust storms. We were exploring the canyons in Margarite and we came on a great wall of rock, rubbed smooth by the wind. Me and Renato were seized with a mad idea. We slipped into suits—you have to wear suits—atmosphere there was about 10 millibars, compared to 1,000 millibars back on Earth. Any case, you couldn’t breathe it. We got these paints from the buggy store, climbed outside and began to decorate the rock surface. The other couple joined in. There we were, actually alone on the open surface. Wild!

“And we painted a lovely luminous Mars dragon, flying up to the stars. We worked till nightfall, just using red, green and gold colours. To finish off, we had to turn on the buggy headlights. There was a sort of—well, I almost said religious feeling about what we were doing. It was like we were aborigines, making a sacred kind of hieroglyph.

“When we got back to base, we showed photos of the dragon around and nearly started a panic. Some people thought it was the work of autochthonous Martians! Quite impossible, of course, but some folk are incurably superstitious.

“No, I lapped up my time on Mars. It was a life apart. A formative experience. I longed to be out there alone, or alone with Renato, but that wasn’t considered safe until my last month there. Just to be out in the desert at night, in a breather-tent, it’s beyond description. You’re alone in the cosmos. The stars come down and practically touch you. You just feel they should come right in and penetrate your flesh…

“It’s contradictory. You’re entirely isolated—you could be the only person who ever lived, ever—and yet you are an intense part of everything. You know you’re—what’s the word?—well, somehow you’re an integral part of the universe. You are its consciousness.

“Like being the seeing eye of this incalculably vast thingme out there…

“I say it’s contradictory. What I mean is the perception feels contradictory, because you’ve never experienced it before. You’ll never forget it, either. It’s a tattoo on your soul, sort of…

“Oh, sure, there were things I missed out there. Things I did without but didn’t miss, and things I missed. What things? Oh, I missed trees. I missed trees quite badly at first.

“But my life has changed since I was there. I can never go again but I’ll never ever forget it. I try to live a better life because of it.

That’s no joke in the muddle we’re in here, downstairs on Earth.”

END TAPE.

The “fancy-shaped domes” to which Maria Gaia Augusta refers are the linked spicules, constructed from a small number of repetitive sections, which formed the basis of what was eventually to become Mars City or Areopolis. The monotony of this structure was relieved by conjoined tetrahedral structures, rather similar to those erected in the north of Siberia a few years previously.

From orbit, this sprawling structure, white-painted against the tawny Martian regolith, made a striking pattern.

Looking back, I see how silly I was in my early days—silly and shy. I worked in the biogas chamber unit, and practically took refuge there. Everyone else seemed so clever. Kathi was clever. Why did she seek out my company?

Her interest at this time was in politics, about which she talked endlessly. Placements within the YEA and DOP brackets were systematically arranged through the Mars Department, under Secretary Thomas Gunther. Kathi had a particular dislike of Gunther, saying he was radically corrupt.