Red Mars (3 page)

Outside it was intensely cold as always, and the diamond pattern of the walker’s heating element burned through his clothes. He crunched over concrete and then duricrust. Loose sand flowed east, pushed by the wind.

Grimly he looked around. Rocks everywhere. A planet sledgehammered billions of times. And meteors still falling. Someday one of the towns would take a hit. He turned and looked back. It looked like an aquarium glowing in the dusk. There would be no warning, but everything would suddenly fly apart, walls, vehicles, trees, bodies. The Aztecs had believed the world would end in one of four ways: earthquake, fire, flood, or jaguars falling from the sky. Here there would be no fire. Nor earthquake nor flood, now that he thought of it. Leaving only the jaguars.

The twilight sky was a dark pink over Pavonis Mons. To the east stretched Nicosia’s farm, a long low greenhouse running downslope from the city. From this angle one could see that the farm was larger than the town proper, and jammed with green crops. Frank clumped to one of its outer locks, and entered.

Inside the farm it was hot, a full sixty degrees warmer than outside, and fifteen degrees warmer than in the city. He had to keep his helmet on, as the farm air was tailored to the plants, heavy on CO2 and short on oxygen. He stopped at a work station and fingered through drawers of small tools and pesticide patches, gloves and bags. He selected three tiny patches and put them in a plastic bag, then slipped the bag gently into the walker’s pocket. The patches were clever pesticides, biosaboteurs designed to provide plants with systemic defenses; he had been reading about them, and knew of a combination that in animals would be deadly to the organism. . . .

He put a pair of shears in the walker’s other pocket. Narrow gravel paths led him up between long beds of barley and wheat, back toward the city proper. He went in the lock leading into town, unclipped his helmet, stripped off the walker and boots, transferred the contents of the walker pockets to his coat. Then he went back into the lower end of town.

Here the Arabs had built a medina, insisting that such a neighborhood was crucial to a city’s health; the boulevards narrowed, and between them lay warrens of twisted alleyways taken from the maps of Tunis or Algiers, or generated randomly. Nowhere could you see from one boulevard to the next, and the sky overhead was visible only in plum strips, between buildings that leaned together.

Most of the alleys were empty now, as the party was uptown. A pair of cats skulked between buildings, investigating their new home. Frank took the shears from his pocket and scratched into a few plastic windows, in Arabic lettering,
Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew
. He walked on, whistling through his teeth. Corner cafés were little caves of light. Bottles clinked like prospectors’ hammers. An Arab sat on a squat black speaker, playing an electric guitar.

He found the central boulevard, walked up it. Boys in the branches of the lindens and sycamores shouted songs to each other in Schwyzerdüütsch. One ditty was in English: “John Boone/Went to the moon/No fast cars/He went to Mars!” Small disorganized music bands barged through the thickening crowd. Some moustached men dressed as American cheerleaders flounced expertly through a complicated can-can routine. Kids banged little plastic drums. It was loud; the tenting absorbed sound, so there weren’t the echoes one heard under crater domes, but it was loud nevertheless.

Up there, where the boulevard opened into the sycamore park— that was John himself, surrounded by a small crowd. He saw Chalmers approaching and waved, recognizing him despite the mask. That was how the first hundred knew each other . . .

“Hey, Frank,” he said. “You look like you’re having a good time.”

“I am,” Frank said through his mask. “I love cities like this, don’t you? A mixed-species flock. It shows you what a diverse collection of cultures Mars is.”

John’s smile was easy. His eyes shifted as he surveyed the boulevard below.

Sharply Frank said, “A place like this is a crimp in your plan, isn’t it?”

Boone’s gaze returned to him. The surrounding crowd slipped away, sensing the agonistic nature of the exchange. Boone said to Frank, “I don’t have a plan.”

“Oh come on! What about your speech?”

Boone shrugged. “Maya wrote it.”

A double lie: that Maya wrote it, that John didn’t believe it. Probably. Even after all these years it was almost like talking to a stranger. To a politician at work. “Come on, John,” Frank snapped. “You believe all that and you know it. But what are you going to do with all these different nationalities? All the ethnic hatreds, the religious manias? Your coalition can’t possibly keep a thumb on all this. You can’t keep Mars for yourselves, John, it’s not a scientific station anymore, and you’re not going to get a treaty that makes it one.”

“We’re not trying to.”

“Then why are you trying to cut me out of the talks!”

“I’m not!” John looked injured. “Relax, Frank. We’ll hammer it out together just like we always have. Relax.”

Frank stared at his old friend, nonplussed. What to believe? He had never known how to think of John— the way he had used Frank as a springboard, the way he was so friendly . . . hadn’t they begun as allies, as friends?

It occurred to him that John was looking for Maya. “So where is she?”

“Around somewhere,” Boone said shortly.

It had been years since they had been able to talk about Maya. Now Boone gave him a sharp look, as if to say it was none of his business. As if everything of importance to Boone had become, over the years, none of Frank’s business.

Frank left him without a word.

The sky was now a deep violet, streaked by yellow cirrus clouds. Frank passed two figures wearing white ceramic dominoes, the old Comedy and Tragedy personas, handcuffed together. The city’s streets had gone dark and windows blazed, silhouettes partying in them. Big eyes darted in every blurry mask, looking to find the source of the tension in the air. Under the tidal sloshing of the crowd there was a low tearing sound.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, he shouldn’t. He knew John as well as one could know another person; but it had never been any of his business. Into the trees of the park, under the hand-sized leaves of the sycamores. When had it been any different! All that time together, those years of friendship; and none of it had mattered. Diplomacy by other means.

He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven. He had an appointment with Selim. Another appointment. A lifetime of days divided into quarter hours made him used to running from one appointment to the next, changing masks, dealing with crisis after crisis, managing, manipulating, doing business in a hectic rush that never ended; and here it was a celebration, Mardi Gras,
Fassnacht!
and he was still doing it. He couldn’t remember any other way.

He came on a construction site, skeletal magnesium framing surrounded by piles of bricks and sand and paving stones. Careless of them to leave such things around. He stuffed his coat pockets with fragments of brick just big enough to hold. Straightening up, he noticed someone watching him from the other side of the site— a little man with a thin face under spiky black dreadlocks, watching him intently. Something in the look was disconcerting, it was as if the stranger saw through all his masks and was observing him so closely because he was aware of his thoughts, his plans.

Spooked, Chalmers beat a quick retreat into the bottom fringe of the park. When he was sure he had lost the man, and that no one else was watching, he began throwing stones and bricks down into the lower town, hurling them as hard as he could. And one for that stranger too, right in the face! Overhead the tent framework was visible only as a faint pattern of occluded stars; it seemed they stood free, in a chill night wind. Air circulation was high tonight, of course. Broken glass, shouts. A scream. It really was loud, people were going crazy. One last paving stone, heaved at a big lit picture window across the grass. It missed. He slipped further into the trees.

Near the southern wall he saw someone under a sycamore— Selim, circling nervously. “Selim,” Frank called quietly, sweating. He reached into his jumper pocket, carefully felt in the bag and palmed the trio of stem patches. Synergy could be so powerful, for good or ill. He walked forward and roughly embraced the young Arab. The patches hit and penetrated Selim’s light cotton shirt. Frank pulled back.

Now Selim had about six hours. “Did you speak with Boone?” he asked.

“I tried,” Chalmers said. “He didn’t listen. He lied to me.” It was so easy to feign distress: “Twenty-five years of friendship, and he lied to me!” He struck a tree trunk with his palm, and the patches flew away in the dark. He controlled himself. “His coalition is going to recommend that all Martian settlements originate in the countries that signed the first treaty.” It was possible; and it was certainly plausible.

“He hates us!” Selim cried.

“He hates everything that gets in his way. And he can see that Islam is still a real force in people’s lives. It shapes the way people think, and he can’t stand that.”

Selim shuddered. In the gloom the whites of his eyes were bright. “He has to be stopped.”

Frank turned aside, leaned against a tree. “I . . . don’t know.”

“You said it yourself. Talk means nothing.”

Frank circled the tree, feeling dizzy. You fool, he thought, talk means everything. We are nothing but information exchange, talk is all we have!

He came on Selim again and said, “How?”

“The planet. It is our way.”

“The city gates are locked tonight.”

That stopped him. His hands started to twist.

Frank said, “But the gate to the farm is still open.”

“But the farm’s outer gates will be locked.”

Frank shrugged, let him figure it out.

And quickly enough Selim blinked, and said “Ah.” Then he was gone.

Frank sat between trees, on the ground. It was a sandy damp brown dirt, product of a great deal of engineering. Nothing in the city was natural, nothing.

After a time he got to his feet. He walked through the park, looking at people. If I find one good city I will spare the man. But in an open area masked figures darted together to grapple and fight, surrounded by watchers who smelled blood. Frank went back to the construction site to get more bricks. He threw them and some people saw him, and he had to run. Into the trees again, into the little tented wilderness, escaping predators while high on adrenaline, the greatest drug of all. He laughed wildly.

Suddenly he caught sight of Maya, standing alone by the temporary platform up at the apex. She wore a white domino, but it was certainly her: the proportions of the figure, the hair, the stance itself, all unmistakable Maya Toitovna. The first hundred, the little band; they were the only ones truly alive to him anymore, the rest were ghosts. Frank hurried toward her, tripping over uneven ground. He squeezed a rock buried deep in one coat pocket, thinking Come on, you bitch. Say something to save him. Say something that will make me run the length of the city to save him!

She heard his approach and turned. She wore a phosphorescent white domino with metallic blue sequins. It was hard to see her eyes.

“Hello, Frank,” she said, as if he wore no mask. He almost turned and ran. Mere recognition was almost enough to do it.

But he stayed. He said, “Hello, Maya. Nice sunset, wasn’t it?”

“Spectacular. Nature has no taste. It’s just a city inauguration, but it looked like Judgment Day.”

“Yes.”

They were under a streetlight, standing on their shadows. She said, “Have you enjoyed yourself?”

“Very much. And you?”

“It’s getting a little wild.”

“It’s understandable, don’t you think? We’re out of our holes, Maya, we’re on the surface at last! And what a surface! You only get these kind of long views on Tharsis.”

“It’s a good location,” she agreed.

“It will be a great city,” Frank predicted. “But where do you live these days, Maya?”

“In Underhill, Frank, just as always. You know that.”

“But you’re never there, are you? I haven’t seen you in a year or more.”

“Has it been that long? Well, I’ve been in Hellas. Surely you heard?”

“Who would tell me?”

She shook her head and blue sequins glittered. “Frank.” She turned aside, as if to walk away from the question’s implications.

Angrily Frank circled her, stood in her path. “That time on the
Ares
,” he said. His voice was tight, and he twisted his neck to loosen his throat, to make speech easier. “What happened, Maya? What happened?”

She shrugged and did not meet his gaze. For a long time she did not speak. Then she looked at him. “The spur of the moment,” she said.

And then it was ringing midnight, and they were in the Martian time slip, the thirty-nine-and-a-half-minute gap between 12:00:00 and 12:00:01, when all the clocks went blank or stopped moving. This was how the first hundred had decided to reconcile Mars’s slightly longer day with the twenty-four-hour clock, and the solution had proved oddly satisfactory. Every night to step for a while out of the flicking numbers, out of the remorseless sweep of the second hand . . .

And tonight as the bells rang midnight, the whole city went mad. Almost forty minutes outside of time; it was bound to be the peak of the celebration, everyone knew that instinctively. Fireworks were going off, people were cheering; sirens tore through the sound, and the cheering redoubled. Frank and Maya watched the fireworks, listened to the noise.

Then there was a noise that was somehow different: desperate cries, serious screams. “What’s that?” Maya said.

“A fight,” Frank replied, cocking an ear. “Something done on the spur of the moment, perhaps.” She stared at him, and quickly he added, “Maybe we should go have a look.”

The cries intensified. Trouble somewhere. They started down through the park, their steps getting longer, until they were in the Martian lope. The park seemed bigger to Frank, and for a moment he was scared.