The Empress of Mars (18 page)

He was mentally subtracting the saguaros and tumbleweeds from the picture and putting himself in a psuit and space helmet, instead of an apron and derby, when Mamma Griffith said something more, in an anxious tone.

“Ms. Griffith is asking if you don’t think this is a good idea,” said Mr. De Wit.

He imagined Giulio’s and Giuseppe’s astonishment. “I think it is a wonderful idea,” he said.

Mr. De Wit translated his response. Mamma Griffith’s face lit up. She said a great deal in a high-pitched voice, clearly very happy indeed.
She turned and harangued her daughter. The two women had a brief quarrel. Rowan threw down her broom at last and came and kissed him, sullenly, enigmatically.

Mary was watching the kiss, and congratulating herself, when she heard the lock opening behind her and recognized Cochevelou’s heavy tread. She turned and saw him advancing in some haste.

“Can you imagine, Cochevelou? Dear Mr. Vespucci is going to open a shop up here!”

“Is he likely to stock disruptor pistols?” demanded Cochevelou.

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Then I need legal advice,” said Cochevelou, continuing past Mary to loom over Mr. De Wit. He flung down a text plaquette. Mr. De Wit picked it up cautiously.

“They’re demanding you give them the biis, I assume?” he said.

“May the Iron Hammer grind them into so much greasy powder,” said Cochevelou. “They’re demanding
Perrik.”

“They never!” said Mary, as Mr. De Wit studied the plaquette.

“They are, then. Something about him being an Eccentric and belonging in Hospital. And me fined a prince’s ransom for bringing an undocumented aberrant into a British Arean Company colony,” said Cochevelou. “You know why they’re doing this, aren’t you? It’s all on account of me selling you the ironmongery to build your power plant, so it is. That’s what the clan is muttering.”

“Stand fast, Cochevelou,” said Mary. “You knew they were going to pull out their dirtiest tricks for us. Don’t be daft! That new man, that Mr. Nennius that was going on about how fabulous the biis are and valuable and all. The thing may have General Director Rotherhithe’s name on it but this is
his
game, what do you want to bet?”

“You can get around this easily,” remarked Mr. De Wit, not raising his eyes from the text plaquette. “It’s so full of holes it’s absurd. To begin with, the Aberrant Exclusion Act was waived for all immigrants agreeing to settle Mars. If they choose to disregard that now, they’ll
have to get rid of most of the Haulers and half their own lower clerical staff. And was your son ever actually diagnosed as Eccentric?”

“Of course he wasn’t!” said Cochevelou. “We’re
Celts
!”

“Point two, then. Point three: your son is not a minor. Therefore he cannot be arbitrarily declared a ward of the Crown unless diagnosed Eccentric, which—see point two—is not the case. Point four: it could be argued that British Arean Company jurisdiction doesn’t extend to territory settled by Clan Morrigan. Throw this back in their teeth and countersue. And copy the Tri-Worlds Settlement Bureau.”

“See what it is to have a lawyer in the family?” said Mary proudly. “Gives you
teeth
.”

“And please persuade your son to file a patent for the biis as soon as possible,” added Mr. De Wit.

“Right,” said Cochevelou, looking a little dazed.

“What has happened?” Ottorino inquired of Mr. De Wit. Mr. De Wit explained, briefly, in Milanese.

“So . . . these are like the evil cattle barons conspiring against the settlers?” Ottorino inquired. Mr. De Wit told him that was one possible analogy.

“Then, please tell Mamma no one will burn our barns while I am here,” said Ottorino. “To use the same analogy.”

The Heretic emerged from the kitchen, bearing a small dish of fresh butter for Ottorino’s tea. She set it at his elbow, stood back, and was turning to leave when a spasm took her. She whirled around. Her one red eye shone like a stoplight. She pointed a finger straight at him. Her voice was grinding and harsh as she said, in perfect Milanese:
“Soldier, take your place on the wall and face north!”

“I
told
you it wouldn’t work,” said Mr. Rotherhithe, glorying in schadenfreude. “You don’t know these creatures the way I do.”

He was lounging in his comfiest chair, gazing out at the empty concourse of Settlement Base. Across the room Mr. Nennius sat at the general director’s desk, studying the countersuit.

“Oh, we didn’t expect it to work, sir,” he replied. “We were simply stirring up the anthill to see what they’d do. It’s always possible we can provoke them into doing something stupid.”

“Well, but we didn’t, did we?” said Mr. Rotherhithe, a little crossly. “And now we’ve got a counterlawsuit to explain to the Company.”

“Oh, I did expect
that
,” said Mr. Nennius with a dismissive wave of his hand. “With my respected opposite number over there on their side. Don’t give it another thought, sir. It’s just part of the overall strategy. Now we take the next step.”

“And what is the next step, may I ask?”

“Extreme measures,” said Mr. Nennius. “For which we’ll need to hire one or two specialists. I’ll need to get into the Special Eventualities Fund for that.”

“The what?” Mr. Rotherhithe sat up a little in his chair, uneasy. “I’m not sure I ought to know about anything of the kind.”

“Precisely, sir, which is why you may leave all the details to me,” said Mr. Nennius. “The less you know, the better, after all. Now, this would go a great deal more quickly if I had your personal identification number. What is it, please?”

Chiring waited patiently by the lock door, double-checking the battery packs on his holocam. When the lock slid open for him he stepped through and, safe inside, slid off his mask.

“A blessing on all here,” he said, anxious to be correct. Matelot, who had been delegated to greet him, nodded brusquely. He held up a plaquette.

“Welcome to the Clan Morrigan holdings. You’ll need to read and thumbprint this,” he told Chiring. “Says Clan Morrigan retains the right to review all images taken in our colony and to approve or edit the completed feature as we see fit.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” said Chiring, and he meant it, because he was in the habit of reserving an unedited copy of anything he showed the colonists, and he was fairly certain none of the clan spoke Nepali or were likely to visit the
Kathmandu Post
to watch the completed feature. He read over the agreement, signed with his thumbprint, handed back the plaquette, and looked around.

He had been in the clan’s holdings on one or two occasions before, and noted that the smell was still the same: air clean and filtered, but not enough to quite hide the pungency of smoke, earth and animal manure. The interior walls had been painted white, and no lichen grew
anywhere, so the effect was of a cleaner, brighter place than the Empress. Chiring set up his holocam on its tripod.

“I’d like to shoot some introductory material, okay?” He backed away and took Matelot’s arm, guiding him into frame. “I’m going to be speaking in Nepali, but I’ll translate for you, and there’ll be PanCelt subtitles when you watch the finished footage. Three-two-one, go!” He continued in Nepali:

“I’m here today with Mr. Matelot Goarnic, a member of Clan Morrigan, which is a cultural organization committed to farming Mars. In the past, I’ve brought you features on the clan’s dedication to preserving ethnic folkways on a new world, including a look at the many fine objects they produce using traditional blacksmithing techniques. Today we’re going to examine a controversial topic: the practice of beast slavery on Mars.

“No one would dispute that beast slavery has no place in a technologically advanced civilization, in which vegetable-derived proteins supply all dietary requirements. Indeed, our western neighbors in the Beast Liberation Party would argue that even peaceful codependence between humanity and cattle ought to be forbidden, though of course we have only to refer to Scripture to see that this is neither desirable nor practical. To paraphrase the Rig Veda, we pray that we may own many cows to yield us milk and butter, both for our food and for offerings.

“The green meadows of the ancient sages are a world removed from the Red Planet, and yet here a western cultural group is obliged to renew the time-honored bond between species. This is Chiring Skousen, your News Martian, and I invite you to follow me as I investigate: Cows on Mars!”

“That all?” said Matelot warily, watching the lenses.

“That’s the intro piece.” Chiring shut off the holocam, folded up the tripod and stuffed them together into the carry bag. He took out the handcam and, slinging the carry bag on his shoulder, stood and trained the handcam on Matelot. “Now we’ll do a section with you explaining what kinds of animals you’re raising. Just sort of casually, as we walk along toward the cattle pens, okay? I’ll ask you about them in Nepali,
but you can answer in PanCelt, because it’ll all be dubbed over. Ready? Okay, three-two-one
go—
Why don’t you tell me a little about the cattle raised by Clan Morrigan, Mr. Goarnic?”

“Was that my cue?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, there’s the pigs of course,” said Matelot, looking over his shoulder as he led Chiring from the reception lobby and down the Tube toward the allotments. “And, er, we eat them, mostly, and of course they’re useful for manuring and bone meal and the like. Get a lot out of a pig. Don’t need any compost piles when you’ve got a pig, really, they process the old cabbage leaves a lot faster, don’t they? Then there’s the bacon, you know, and sausages, and black puddings.”

“
Black puddings
, that’s an interesting name. What’s a black pudding?”

Matelot explained at length. Chiring fought off a wave of nausea by popping a Polo mint into his mouth and made a mental note to edit out anything about black puddings. “How interesting! Go on, please.”

“Does that mean to keep talking? Okay, right, then we’ve got the sheep. We don’t eat them much, only a lamb now and again for a celebration, you know, because the sheep are too useful for their wool.”

“Ah! And you use the wool to make textiles,” said Chiring, and then repeated his statement in PanCelt.

“That’s right. That’s mostly the women do that, the spinning and weaving and all. It’s the men do most of the outdoors work, at least it isn’t outdoors as such but, you know—the farm labor. On account of those are the traditional gender roles for our culture. Anyway we don’t keep that many sheep because you can’t let them graze, you know, they just tear up the topsoil. So we keep ’em in pens and feed them new-mown stuff. Clover and vetch and that.”

“So . . . you couldn’t say they were free-range, then.” Chiring translated his remark.

“Free-range?” Matelot stared at him. “This is bloody
Mars
, man. Not even humans are free-range.”

“Okay. Okay. Let’s see the cows,” said Chiring in PanCelt, and as
Matelot led him on through the Tubes he continued in Nepali: “One has to deplore the squalid conditions in which the sheep are kept, but of course it’s important to reserve judgment on other cultures, and in any case it must be said that the Martian shelters for humans themselves are somewhat, er, dark and crowded. Primitive. Primeval. Take two, in any case the Martian shelters for humans themselves have a certain primeval quality.”

“Here’s some of our breeders, grazing,” said Matelot proudly, as they came to an airlock. He opened it and they stepped through into a field evenly green as a carpet, and as square. In the far corner three cows cropped clover, looking up with mild disinterest. Without the vizio wall, wind howled down from a pale sky and swept across red stony Mars to spatter sand against the transparency. “Pretty, eh? That’s Misty, Grania, and Enya. All about to drop calves.”

“Lovely animals,” said Chiring, keeping his handcam trained on them while he looked down to avoid the cowpies as he picked his way across the field. “Tell me, though: wouldn’t the yak have been a better choice for Mars?”

Matelot stared uncomprehendingly until the question was repeated in PanCelt, and then shook his head. “We brought our traditional animals. Cows are what we know. Now I’ll show you the cowsheds, shall I?”

“Right,” said Chiring, turning for a last pan of the cows in their field. Following Matelot out, he continued in Nepali: “Ridiculously small as the pasturage seems to be, the animals are clearly in no distress, and well fed on plenty of fresh organic fodder.”

“There’s about sixty head of cattle in the cowsheds,” said Matelot, trudging along the Tube. He glanced back at Chiring. “. . . Oh. You didn’t bring wellies, did you? Well, the manure doesn’t really hurt anything. Cleans off easy. Fairly easy anyway. So, see, once the cows have dropped their calves, they’re kept in here. It’s a bit dark, but they don’t mind.”

He paused outside an airlock and entered a command for it to open. A hot wave of concentrated essence of bovine intestinal gas shot out, enveloping them. Chiring gagged, nearly dropping his handcam.

“It can be a bit whiffy,” Matelot admitted.

“One of them must have died!”

“Oh, no, that’s just the methane,” said Matelot. “Needful for the terraforming, you know.” He went farther in and Chiring followed him, eyes watering. At first he saw only a steaming darkness that gradually resolved itself into lightless stalls, where in each a cow stood in stifling heat, motionless in the vapors of its own urine and manure.

For Chiring, who had been raised a moderately secular Hindu in an apartment block in downtown Kathmandu, it was as far from loving polychrome depictions of the goddess Prithvi as the Earth from Mars. “How can you do this?” he demanded. “How can you keep them like this?”

“They’re safe, aren’t they?” replied Matelot. “In out of the freezing cold, aren’t they? And the perishing UV? Shite’s scraped up and floor’s hosed down twice a day. Water’s clean, feed is fresh. All they’ve got to do is stand there and be milked. Wish I had things as easy!”