Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

“I know. Do not worry about it. That is not why we wished to meet with you.”

“We?”

“You will have the answer to that question very soon now. We are almost there.”

The road that the car traveled had leveled off, while total darkness was giving way to a diffuse glow ahead. The car was emerging to an environment much more familiar to Bey. They were no longer in a natural cave, but approaching the side of a well-lit four-story building that filled the whole end of the tunnel. A dozen auto cars were parked outside, in front of double doors of frosted glass. Their own car rolled forward to halt at the end of the line.

“I said you should prepare to be amazed. I know you were unimpressed by what you have seen so far.” Rafael Fermiel had descended from the car, and he motioned Bey to do the same. “But I was not referring to the habitats. Follow me, please. You are about to see something quite unique.”

The glass doors swung open, to reveal a lobby beyond, escalators, and a bank of elevators. Fermiel went in, but he remained right by the entrance. A great cube of grey stone stood there, as tall as a human. He pointed to one face of it, where a plate of hardened transparent plastic had been set into the rock.

“The original.” Rafael Fermiel tried to sound casual, but the reverence showed through. “There have been millions of copies, but this is the original.”

Bey stepped closer. Behind the impermeable plastic sheet stood an oblong piece of yellowed paper. He could see the printing and the couple of dozen signatures scrawled at the bottom, but the words were almost too faded to make out.

“Be it known by all who follow … ” he read aloud.

And then he knew. “The Declaration! I thought it was lost—a century ago.”

“It was. It was buried when the Ladnier Cavern collapsed. We found it last year during a secondary excavation. Are you amazed now, Behrooz Wolf?”

“More than amazed. I am overwhelmed.” Bey leaned close. Of the original Mars colony, three men and three women had died during the first few days. The remaining twenty-four signatories were all here, immortalized by far more than a crumbling piece of paper a century and a half old. Their names were engraved on the memory of every child born on Mars.

Rafael Fermiel reached forward and touched his finger to three of the signatures. “Ilya Mahajani, Mira Alveida, and Dilys Chang,” he said proudly. “I am a direct descendant of each of them. But I did not bring you here to boast of that. Nor, indeed, merely to show it to you. Come along, Mr. Wolf.” He tapped Bey, who was still crouched forward in total absorption, lightly on the arm. “Mr. Wolf! I was informed of your interest in historic writings, but there will be time later for a fuller examination. In any case, you will see the Mars Declaration—or at least a far more readable copy of it—again in a few minutes.”

He led a reluctant Bey to the escalator. They ascended, two stories. The arrival of the car must have been noted on some automatic routing board, because a group of men and women stood waiting for them in silence at the top of the escalator.

If Rafael Fermiel did not actually preen himself, he came close to it. The red beard jutted out, and he squared his shoulders. “Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present Behrooz Wolf, former head of the Earth Office of Form Control.”

He turned to Bey. “Mr. Wolf, you are in the presence of the policy council, leaders of what is popularly referred to as ‘Old Mars.’ Our enemies in the media often use a different term—‘The Rulers of the Underworld.’ So far you have showed remarkable restraint in asking questions of me. But now you will have answers.”

Fermiel waved Bey forward, following him into a long room whose grey table held places for precisely twenty-five people. The twenty-three others came crowding in after them and moved to pre-assigned seats. Bey found himself at the head of the table, facing two long lines of intent faces. Rafael Fermiel sat at his right hand. At the far end, occupying most of one wall, the first section of the Declaration was engraved in huge letters.

Fermiel waited until Bey was settled in his seat before he leaned closer. “Before we perform introductions and begin in earnest, let me ask Mr. Wolf if he would like to say anything. I assume that you know nothing about us?”

Any colleague of Bey Wolf’s would have recognized that as a dangerous question. Fifty years with the Office of Form Control was a long time, enough to master a few party tricks.

“Very little.” Bey’s voice was deliberately casual. “Of course, most of you restrict the use of form-change to medical functions, rather than to cosmetic ones. Nothing wrong with that, so do I. I’m pretty happy with the shape I was born with, and like you I feel content to stick to it. But I note that”—Bey glanced along the line of name plaques, which sat in front of each member of the policy group—“that Ms. Beulah Cresz needed remedial work in the form-change tanks as a child, for kidney problems. Mr. Willi Moskewitz spent time in a tank very recently, after an accident that broke his left arm and produced facial scars. Ms. Katerina Dussek suffers a hormonal imbalance, one which requires monthly corrective sessions. Seth Stein, like me, is naturally myopic. And like me, he tends to put off remedial work rather too long with the form-change equipment. Tomas Sedgwick has a hereditary chromosomal defect, which calls for occasional treatment now and will need more frequent ones later. While Janos O’Mara”—Bey paused and gave the man next to Rafael Fermiel a long, thoughtful stare. O’Mara gasped, turned white, and put his hand to his mouth. The two men gazed into each other’s eyes for five seconds.

“I think that’s probably more than enough,” Bey said at last. “Let’s agree that I really know very little about any of you—or about the reasons why you brought me here.”

No one seemed to be listening. The members of the policy council for Old Mars were staring at each other and past each other, throwing in an occasional venomous glance at Rafael Fermiel.

Bey reflected that there was no justice in the world. After all Fermiel’s efforts in snaring Bey and bringing him to the Council Headquarters, the red-bearded man would be given little credit for that work on the basis of the meeting so far.

“Perhaps we should proceed without further introductions.” Rafael Fermiel cleared his throat and looked at Bey. “Although I must say that I should hate to hear your comments, Mr. Wolf, about a group you do claim to know something about. Let us get right down to business. That”—he pointed to the engraving on the far wall—“was not placed in this room by accident. The Declaration guides and motivates all the council’s work. We begin and end each of our meetings with its words. I now ask that we do so again, familiar as it may already be to most of us.” Be it known by all who follow … The Mars Declaration was indeed familiar to Bey, and to the whole solar system—as a unique historical document. But no one else, in Bey’s experience, treated the words with anything like the reverence accorded them here.

Be it known by all who follow that Mars is now a home for humans. We, the surviving crew of the exploration ship Terra Nova, pledge never to leave this world. We will not obey any order to return to Earth, no matter how or by whom delivered. We will venture no more into space. We will remain here to live, to labor, and to die.

Since we will not survive to see the end of our work, we give our dream to those who come after. This we believe:

That Mars, before our arrival, was barren of life.

That Mars will never after this be without the life forms of Earth.

That Mars is destined to be one day fertile and blooming, as a second Earth.