Kim Robinson - The Martians

Eileen looks over at the youngsters, their backs to the old ones as they cook. They’re debating salt too, but then she sees one put a handful of it in the rice.

In the fragrance of basmati steam they spoon out their meals. Freya and Jean-Claude eat seated on the floor. They listen to the old ones, but don’t speak much. Occasionally they lean heads together to talk in private, under the talk at the little table. Eileen sees them kiss.

She smiles. She hasn’t been around people this young for a long time. Then through their reflections in the cockpit dome she sees the ice outside, glowing under the stars. It’s a disconcerting image. But they are not looking out the window. And even if they were, they are young, and so do not quite believe in death. They are blithe.

Roger sees her looking at the young giants, and shares with her a small smile at them. He is fond of them, she sees. They are his friends. When they say good night and duck down the passageway to their tiny quarters in the bow, he kisses his fingers and pats them on the head as they pass him.

The old ones finish their meal, then sit staring out the window, sipping hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps.

“We can regroup,” Hans says, continuing the discussion with Frances. “If we pursued the heavy-industrial methods aggressively, the ocean would melt from below and we’d be back in business.”

Frances shakes her head, frowning. “Bombs in the regolith, you mean.”

“Bombs below the regolith. So that we get the heat, but trap the radiation. That and some of the other methods might do it. A flying lens to focus some of the mirrors’ light, heat the surface with focused sunlight. Then bring in some nitrogen from Titan. Direct a few comets to unpopulated areas, or aerobrake them so that they burn up in the atmosphere. That would thicken things up fast. And more halocarbon factories, we let that go too soon.”

“It sounds pretty industrial,” Frances says.

“Of course it is. Terraforming is an industrial process, at least partly. We forgot that.”

“I don’t know,” Roger says. “Maybe it would be best to keep pursuing the biological methods. Just regroup, you know, and send another wave out there. It’s longer, but, you know. Less violence to the landscape.”

“Ecopoesis won’t work,” Hans says. “It doesn’t trap enough heat in the biosphere.” He gestures outside. “This is as far as ecopoiesis will take you.”

“Maybe for now,” Roger says.

“Ah yes. You are unconcerned, of course. But I suppose you’re happy about the crash anyway, eh? Being such a red?”

“Hey, come on,” Roger says. “How could I be happy? I was a sailor.”

“But you used to want the terraforming gone.”

Roger waves a hand dismissively, glances at Eileen with a shy smile. “That was a long time ago. Besides, the terraforming isn’t gone now anyway”—gesturing at the ice—“it’s only sleeping.”

“See,” Arthur pounces, “you do want it gone.”

“No I don’t, I’m telling you.”

“Then why are you so damn happy these days?”

“I’m not happy,” Roger says, grinning happily, “I’m just not sad. I don’t think the situation calls for sadness.”

Arthur rolls his eyes at the others, enlisting them in his teasing. “The world freezes and this is not a reason for sadness. I shudder to think what it would take for you!”

“It would take something sad!”

“But you’re not a red, no of course not.”

“I’m not!” Roger protests, grinning at their laughter, but serious as well. “I was a sailor, I tell you. Look, if the situation were as bad as you all are saying, then Freya and Jean-Claude would be worried too, right? But they’re not. Ask them and you’ll see.”

“They are simply young,” Hans says, echoing Eileen’s thought. The others nod as well.

“That’s right,” Roger says. “And it’s a short-term problem.”

That gives them pause.

After a silence Stephan says, “What about you, Arthur? What would you do?”

“What, me? I have no idea. It’s not for me to say, anyway. You know me. I don’t like telling people what to do.”

They wait in silence, sipping their hot chocolate.

“But you know, if you did just direct a couple of little comets right into the ocean...”

Old friends, laughing at old friends just for being themselves. Eileen leans in against Roger, feeling better.

Next morning with a whoosh they are off east again, and in a few hours’ sailing are out on the ice with no land visible, skating on the gusty wind with runners clattering or schussing or whining or blasting, depending on wind and ice consistencies. The day passes, and it begins to seem like they are on an all-ice world, like Callisto or Europa. As the day ends they slide around into the wind and come to a halt, then get out and drive in some ice screws around the boat and tie it into the center of a web of lines. By sunset they are belayed, and Roger and Eileen go for a walk over the ice.

“A beautiful day’s sail, wasn’t it?” Roger asks.

“Yes, it was,” Eileen says. But she cannot help thinking that they are out walking on the surface of their ocean. “What did you think about what Hans was saying last night, about taking another bash at it?”

“You hear a lot of people talking that way.”

“But you?”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t like a lot of the methods they talk about. But—” He shrugs. “What I like or don’t like doesn’t matter.”

“Hmm.” Underfoot the ice is white, with tiny broken air bubbles marring the surface, like minuscule crater rings. “And you say the youngsters aren’t much interested either. But I can’t see why not. You’d think they’d want terraforming to be working more than anyone.”

“They think they have lots of time.”

Eileen smiles at this. “They may be right.”

“That’s true, they may. But not us. I sometimes think we’re sad not so much because of the crash as the quick decline.” He looks at her, then down at the ice again. “We’re two hundred and fifty years old, Eileen.”

“Two hundred forty.”

“Yeah yeah. But there’s no one alive older than two-sixty.”

“I know.” Eileen remembers a time when a group of old ones were sitting around a big hotel restaurant table, building card houses, as there was no other card game all of them knew; they collaborated on one card house four storeys high, and the structure was getting shaky indeed when someone said, “It’s like my longevity treatments.” And though they had laughed, no one had the steadiness of hand to set the next card.

“Well. There you have it. If I were twenty I wouldn’t worry about the crash either. Whereas for us it’s very likely the last Mars we’ll know. But, you know. In the end it doesn’t matter what kind of Mars you like best. They’re all better than nothing.” He smiles crookedly at her, puts an arm around her shoulders, and squeezes.

The next morning they wake in a fog, but there is a steady breeze as well, so after breakfast they unmoor and slide east with a light slick sliding sound. Ice dust, pulverized snow, frozen mist—all flash east past them.

Almost immediately after taking off, however, a call comes in on the radiophone. Roger picks up the handset, and Freya’s voice comes in. “You left us behind.”

“ What? Shit! What the hell were you doing out of the boat?”

“We were down on the ice, fooling around.”

“For Christ’s sake, you two.” Roger grins despite himself as he shakes his head. “And what, you’re done now?”

“None of your business,” Jean-Claude calls happily in the background.

“But you’re ready to be picked up,” Roger says.