White Mars

1

On this day, Leo Anstruther decided he would walk to the jetport because he believed in being unpredictable. I went with him, carrying his notecase. Two bodyguards walked behind us, following at a short distance.

We wound our way down narrow back streets. Anstruther walked with his hands clasped behind his back, seemingly deep in thought. This was a part of his island he rarely visited; it held few charms for him. It was poverty alley. The narrow houses had been sub-divided in many cases, so that their occupants had overflowed into the streets to pursue their livelihoods. Vulcanisers, toy-makers, shoemakers, kite-sellers, junk-dealers, chandlers, fishermen and sellers of foodstuffs—all obstructed the freeway with their various businesses.

I knew Anstruther had a concealed contempt for these unfortunates. These people, no matter how hard they worked, would never improve their lot. They had no vision. He often said it. Anstruther was the man of vision.

He paused abruptly in a crowded square, looking about him at the shabby tenements on all sides.

“It’s not just the poor who help the poor, as the absurd saying has it,” he said, addressing me although he looked elsewhere, “but the poor who exploit the poor. They rent out their sordid rooms at extortionate rates to other families, inflicting misery on their own families for the sake of a few extra shekels.”

I agreed. “It’s not a perfect world.” It was my job to agree.

Among the dreary muddle of commerce, a bright stall stood out. An elderly man dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt stood behind a small table on which were stacked jars of preserved fruit, together with mangoes, blackcurrants, pineapples and cherries, as well as a handful of fresh vegetables.

“All home-grown and pure, senor. Buy and try!” cried the old man as Anstruther paused.

Observing Anstruther’s scepticism, he quoted a special low price per jar for his jams.

“We eat only factory food,” I told him. He ignored me and continued to address Anstruther.

“See my garden, master, how pure and sweet it is.” The old man gestured to the wrought-iron gate at his back. “Here’s where my produce comes from. From the earth itself, not from a factory.”

Anstruther glanced at the phone-watch on his wrist.

“Garden!” he said with contempt. Then he laughed. “Why not? Come on, Moreton.” He liked to be unpredictable. He gestured to the bodyguards to stay alert by the stall. On a sudden decision, he pushed through the gate and entered the old fellow’s garden. He slammed the gate behind us. It would give the security men something to think about.

An elderly woman was sitting on an upturned tub, sorting peppers into a pot. A sweet-smelling jasmine on an overhead trellis shaded her from direct sunlight. She looked up in startlement, then gave Anstruther and me a pleasant smile.

“Buenos dias, masters. You’ve come to look about our little paradise, of that I’m certain. Don’t be shy, now.”

As she spoke, she rose, straightened her back and approached us. Beneath the wrinkles she had a pleasant round face, and though fragile with age stood alertly upright. She wiped her hands on an old beige apron tied about her waist and gave us something like a bow.

“Paradise, you say! It’s a narrow paradise you have here, woman.” Anstruther was looking down its length, which was circumscribed by tile-topped walls.

“Narrow but long, and enough for the likes of Andy and me, master. We have what we require, and do not covet more.”

Anstruther gave his short bark of laughter. “Why not covet more, woman? You’d live better with more.”

“We should not live better by coveting more, merely more discontentedly, sir.”

She proceeded to show her visitors the garden. The enclosing walls became concealed behind climbers and vines.

Their way led with seeming randomness among flowering bushes and little shady arbours under blossom trees. The paths were narrow, so that they brushed by red and green peppers, a manioc patch and clumps of lavender and rosemary, which gave off pleasant scents as they were touched. Vegetables grew higgledy-piggledy with other plants. The hubbub of the streets was subdued by a murmur that came from bees blundering among flowers and the twitter of birds overhead.

The woman’s commentary was sporadic. “I can’t abide seeing bare earth. This bit of ground here I planted with comfrey as a child, and you see how it’s flourished ever since. It’s good for the purity of the blood.”

Anstruther flicked away a bee that flew too near his face. “All this must cost you something in fertiliser, woman.”

She smiled up at him. “No, no, senor. We’re too poor for that kind of unwise outlay. Human water and human waste products are all the fertilising we require in our little property.”

“You’re not on proper drainage? Are you on the Ambient?”

“What’s that, the Ambient?”

“Universal electronic communication system. You’ve never heard of it? The American bio-electronic net?”

“We are too hard-up for such a thing, sir, you must understand. Nor do we require it for our kind of modest living. Would it add to our contentment? Not a jot. What the rest of the world does is no business of ours.” She searched his face for some kind of approval. He in his turn studied her old worn countenance, brown and wrinkled, from which brown eyes stared.

“You say you’re content?” He spoke incredulously, as though the idea was new to him.

She gave no answer, continuing to gaze at him with an expression between contempt and curiosity, as if Anstruther had arrived from another planet.

Resenting her probing regard, he turned and commenced to walk back the way we had come.

“You aren’t accustomed to gardens, I perceive, senor.” There was pride in her voice. “Do you shut yourself in rooms, then? We don’t ask for much. For us, ours is a little paradise, don’t you see? The soil’s so rich in worms, that’s the secret. We’re almost self-sufficient here, Andy and me. We don’t ask for much.”

He said, half joking, “But you enjoy moralising. As we all do.”

“I only tell you the truth, sir, since you invited yourself in here.”

“I was curious to see how you people lived,” he told her. “Today, I’m off to discuss the future of the planet Mars—which you’ve probably never heard of.”

She had heard of Mars. She considered it uninteresting, since there was no life there.

“No worms, eh, my good woman? Couldn’t you do something better with your life than growing vegetables in your own excreta?”

She followed us up the winding path, brushing away a tendril of honeysuckle from her face, amused and explaining, “It’s healthy, my good sir, you see. They call it recycling. I’ve lived in this garden nigh on seventy years and I want nothing else. This little plot was my mother’s idea. She said, ‘Cultivate your garden. Don’t disturb the work of the worms. Be content with your lot.’ And that’s what Andy and I have done. We don’t wish for Mars. The vegetables and fruits we sell keep us going well enough. We’re vegetarian, you see. You two gentlemen aren’t from the council, are you?”

Something in the tone of her voice stung Anstruther.

“No. Certainly not. So you’ve simply done what your mother told you all the years of your life! Did you never have any ideas of your own? What does your husband make of you being stuck here for seventy years, just grubbing in the soil?”

“Andy is my brother, master, if you refer to him. And we’ve been perfectly happy and harmed no one. Nor been impolite to anyone…”

We had regained the tiny paved area by the gate. We could smell the fragrance of the thyme, growing in the cracks between the paving stones, crushed underfoot. The two looked at each other in mutual distrust. Anstruther was a tall, solidly built man, who dominated the fragile little woman before him.

He saw she was angry. I feared he might destroy all her contentment with an expression of his irritation at her narrow-mindedness. He held the words back.

“Well, it’s a pretty garden you have,” he said. “Very pretty. I’m glad to have seen it.”

She was pleased by the compliment. “Perhaps there might be gardens like this on Mars one day,” she suggested, with a certain slyness.

“Not very likely.”

“Perhaps you would like some beans to take away with you?”

“I carry no money.”

“No, no, I mean as a gift. They might improve your temperament after all that factory food you eat.”

“Don’t be disgusting. Eat your beans yourself.”

He turned and gestured to me to open the gate. His two security men were waiting for him outside.

Anstruther’s jet took us to the UN building. Members of the United Nationalities rarely met in person. They conferred over the Ambient, and only on special occasions were they bodily present; this was such an occasion, when the future of the planet Mars was to be decided. For this reason, the United Nationalities building was small, and not particularly imposing, although in fact it was larger than it needed to be, to satisfy the egos of its members.

On my Ambient I called Legalassist on the third level and gained entry to their department while Anstruther fraternised with other delegates below.

A Euripides screened me various files on EUPACUS, the international consortium whose component nations—the European Union, the Pacific Rim nations, and the United States—all had a claim on Mars.

Flicking to a file on the legal history of Antarctica, I saw that a similar situation had once existed there. Twelve nations had all laid claim to a slice of the White Continent. In December 1959 representatives of these nations had drawn up an Antarctic Treaty, which came into effect in June 1961. The treaty represented a remarkable step forward for reason and international cooperation. Territorial disputes were suspended, all military activities banned, and the Antarctic became a Continent for Science.

I took print-outs of relevant details. They might prove useful in the forthcoming debate. What the twentieth century had managed, we could certainly better, and on a grander scale, in our century.

In the ground-floor reception rooms, I found my boss consorting with Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Malay diplomats, all members of interested Pacrim countries. Anstruther was improving his shining image. A great amount of smiling by activating the zygomatic muscle went on, as is customary during such encounters.

When the session gong sounded, I accompanied Anstruther into the Great Hall, where we took our assigned places. Once I was seated at a desk in the row behind him, I passed him the Legalassist prints. Unpredictable as ever, he barely glanced at them.

Today’s the time for oratory, not facts,” he said. His voice was remote. He was psyching himself up for the debate.

When all delegates were assembled and quiet prevailed in the hall, the General Secretary made his announcement: “This is the General Assembly of the United Nationalities, meeting on 23 June 2041, to determine the future status of Planet Mars.”

The first speaker was called.

Svetlana Yulichieva of Russia was eloquent. She said that the manned landing on Mars marked a new page, if not a new volume, in the history of mankind. All nationalities rejoiced in the success of the Mars mission, despite the tragic loss of their captain. The way of the future was now clear. More landings must be financed, and preparations be made to terraform Mars, so that it could be properly colonised and used as a base for further exploration of the outer solar system. She suggested that Mars come under UN jurisdiction.

The Latvian delegate was eloquent. He agreed with Yulichieva’s sentiments and said that the space-going nations must be congratulated on the enterprise they had shown. The loss of Captain Tracy was regretted, but must not be allowed to impede further progress. Was not, he asked rhetorically, the opening-up of a new world part of a human dream, the dream of going forth to conquer space, as envisioned in many fictions, book and film, in which mankind went forward boldly, overcoming everything hostile which stood in its way, occupying planet after planet? The beginning of the eventual encompassing of the galaxy had begun. The terraforming of Mars must assume top priority.

The Argentinian delegate, Maria Porua, begged to disagree. She spoke at length of the hideous costs of an enterprise such as terraforming, the success of which was not guaranteed. Recent disappointments, such as the failure of the hypercollider on the Moon—the brainchild of a Nobel Prize winner—must act as a caution. There were terrestrial problems enough, on which the enormous investments required for any extraterrestrial adventure could more profitably be spent.

Tobias Bengtson, the delegate for Sweden, scorned the last speaker’s response to a magnificent leap into an expanding future. He reminded the assembly of the words of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the great Russian aeronautical engineer, who had said that Earth was the cradle of mankind, but that mankind could not remain for ever in the cradle. “This great nineteenth-century visionary woke up the human race to its destiny in space. The dream has grown more real, more accurate, more pressing, as the years have progressed. A glorious prospect must not be allowed to slip away. A few deaths, a little expense, along the way must not deflect the nationalities from achieving our destiny, the conquest of all solar space, from the planet Mercury right out to the heliopause. Only then will the dreams of our forefathers—and our mothers—be fulfilled.”

Other speakers rose, many arguing that terraforming was a necessity. Why go to Mars if not to create more living space? Some warned that Mars would become a United States dependency, others that a ruling was required, otherwise competing nations would use Mars not as living space, but as a battlefield.

“I am going to talk practicalities,” said a delegate from the Netherlands. “I have listened to a lot of airy-fairy talk here today. The reality is that we have now acquired this entire little planet of waste land. What are we to do with it? It’s no good for anything.” He thumped the desk for emphasis. “Who’d want to live there? You can’t grow anything on it. But we can dump our dangerous nuclear waste on Mars. It would be safe there. You can build a mountain of waste by one of the poles—it might even make the place look a bit more interesting.”

It was Leo Anstruther’s turn to speak. The antagonism generated against the previous delegate’s speech gave him the opportunity to put his argument forward. He walked deliberately to the rostrum, where he scrutinised the assembly before speaking.

“Do you have to act out the dreams of your mothers and fathers?” he asked. “If we had always done so, would we not still be sitting in a jungle in the middle of Africa, going in fear of the tribe in the next tree? EUPACUS—and not simply NASA—has achieved a great feat of organisation and engineering, for which we sincerely congratulate them. But this arrival of a crew of men and women on the Red Planet must have nothing to do with conquest. Nor should we turn the place into a rubbish dump. Have we lost our reverence for the universe about us?”

My boss went on to say that he had nothing but contempt for people who merely sat at home. But going forward did not mean merely proliferation; proliferation was already bringing ruin to Earth. Everyone had to be clear that to repeat our errors on other planets was not progress. It more closely resembled rabbits overrunning a valuable field of wheat. Now was our chance to prove that we had progressed in Realms of Reason, as well as in Terms of Technology.

What, after all, he asked, were these dreams of conquest that mankind was supposed to approve? Were they not violent and xenophobic? We had not to permit ourselves to live a fiction about other fictions. To attempt to fulfil them was to take a downward path at the very moment an upward path opened before us, to crown our century.

The old ethos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been crude and bloody, and had brought about untold misery. It had to be abandoned, and here was a God-given chance to abandon it. He disapproved of that too readily used metaphor that said “a new page in history had been turned”. Now was the time to throw away that old history book, and to begin anew as a putative interplanetary race. Delegates had to consider dispassionately whether to embark on a new mode of existence, or to repeat the often bloody mistakes of yesterday. “All environments are sacrosanct,” Anstruther declared. “The planet Mars is a sacrosanct environment and must be treated as such. It has not existed untouched for millions of years only to be reduced to one of Earth’s tawdry suburbs today. My strong recommendation is that Mars be preserved, as the Antarctic has been preserved for many years, as a place of wonder and meditation, a symbol of our future guardianship of the entire solar system—a planet for science, a White Mars.” The General Secretary declared a break for lunch.

The German delegate, Thomas Gunther, came up to Anstruther, glass in hand. He nodded cordially to us both.

“You have a fine style of rhetoric, Leo,” he said. “I am on your side against the mad terraformers, although I don’t quite manage to think of Mars as in any way sacred, as you imply. After all, it is just a dead world—not a single old temple there. Not even an old grave, or a few bones.”

“No worms either, Thomas, I’m led to believe.”

“According to latest reports, there’s no life on it of any kind, and maybe never has been. ‘Martians’ are just one of those myths we have lumbered ourselves with. We need no more silly nonsense of that kind.”

He smiled teasingly at Anstruther, as if challenging him to disagree. When Anstruther made no answer, Gunther developed his line of argument. The safe arrival of men on the Red Planet could be traced back to the German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, who—in the midst of the madness of the Thirty Years War—formulated the laws of planetary motion. Kepler was one of those men who, rather like Anstruther, defied the assumptions of others.

To declare for the first time that the orbit of a planet was an ellipse, with the sun situated at one focus, was a brave statement with far-reaching consequences. Similarly, what was decided on this day, in the hall of the UN, would have far-reaching consequences, for good or ill. Brave statements were required once more.

Gunther said his strong prompting was not to vex the delegates with talk of the sanctity of Mars. Since much—everything, indeed—was owed to science, then the planet must be kept for science. Sow in the minds of delegates the doubt whether the long elaborate processes of terraforming could succeed. Terraforming so far existed only in laboratory experiments. It was originally an idea cooked up by a science fiction writer. It would be foolhardy to try it out on a whole planet—particularly the one planet easily accessible to mankind.

“You could quote,” Gunther said, “the words of a Frenchman, Henri de Chatelier, who in 1888 spoke of the principle of opposition in any natural system to further change. Mars itself would resist terraforming if any organisation was rash enough to try it.”

He advised Anstruther to stick with the slogan “White Mars”. The simple common mind, which he deplored as much as Anstruther, would wish something to be done with Mars. Very well. Then what should be done was to dedicate the planet to science and allow only scientists on its surface—its admittedly unprepossessing surface. People should not be allowed to do their worst there, building their hideous office blocks and car parks and fast-food stalls. They must be stopped, as they had been prevented from invading the Antarctic. He and Anstruther must fight together to preserve Mars for science. He believed there was a delegate from California who thought as they did.

After all, he concluded, there were experiments that could be conducted only on that world.

“What experiments do you mean?” Anstruther enquired.

At this, Gunther hesitated. “You will think me self-interested when I speak. That is not the case. I seize on my example because it comes readily to mind. Perhaps we might go out on a balcony, since there are those near us anxious to overhear what we say. Take a samosa with you. I assure you they are delicious.”

“My secretary always accompanies me, Thomas.”

“As you like.” He threw me a suspicious glance.

The two men went out on the nearest balcony, and I followed them. The balcony overlooked beautiful Lake Louise, the pellucid waters of which seemed to lend colour to the sky.

“No doubt you know what I mean by ‘the Omega Smudge’?” Gunther said. “It’s the elusive final ghost of a particle. When it’s known—all’s known! As I presume you are aware, I am the president of a bank that, together with the Korean Investment Corporation, financed a search for the Gamma Smudge on Luna, following the postulate of the Chin Lim Chung-Dreiser Hawkwood formulation.” He bit into his samosa and talked round a mouthful.

“It was thought that the lunar vacuum would provide ideal conditions for research. Unfortunately, the fools were already busy up there, erecting their hotels and supermarkets and buggy parks and drilling for this and that. As you know, they have now almost finished construction on a subway designed to carry busybodies back and forth to their nasty little offices and eateries.

“At great expense, we built our ring—our superconducting search ring. Useless!”

“You did not find your smudge, I hear.”

“It is not to be found on the Moon. The drilling and the subway vibration have driven it off. Certainly experts argue about whether that was so—but experts will argue about anything. It has still to be discovered.” Gunther went on to explain that the high-energy detection of the Beta Smudge nearly two decades ago had merely disclosed a further something, a mess of resonances—another smudge. Gunther’s bank was prepared to fund a different sort of research, to pin down a hidden symmetry monopole.

“And if you find it?” Anstruther asked, not concealing his scepticism.

“Then the world is changed … And I’ll have changed it!” Gunther puffed out his chest and clenched his hands. “Leo, the Americans and the Russians have tried to find this particle, and others, without success. It has an almost mystical importance. This elusive little gizmo so far remains little more than an hypothesis, but it is believed to be responsible for assigning mass to all other kinds of particle in the universe. Can you imagine its importance?”

“We’re talking about a destroyer of worlds?”

Gunther gestured dismissively. “In the wrong hands, yes, I suppose so. But in the right hands this elusive smudge will provide ultimate power, power to travel right across the galaxy at speeds exceeding the speed of light.”

Anstruther snorted to show he regarded such talk as ridiculous.

“Well, that’s all hypothetical and I’m no expert,” said Gunther, defensively, and went on, laying emphasis on his words. “I am not yet ruined and I wish for this quest to be continued. It can be continued only on Mars. I know I can raise the money. We can find the Omega Smudge there, and transcend Einstein’s equations—if we fight today to keep Mars free of the terraformers.”

Anstruther gave me a glance, as if to show that he was aware of Gunther’s bluster. All he asked, coolly, was, “What in practical terms do you have against terraforming?”

“Our search needs silence—absence of vibration. Mars is the only silent place left in the habitable universe, my friend!”

When the bell rang for the afternoon session, the delegates trooped back to their places in a more sober mood than previously. The delegate for Nicaragua gave voice to a general uncertainty.

“We are required to pronounce judgement on the future of Mars. But can ‘judgement’ possibly be a proper description for what will conclude our discussions? Are we not just seeking to relieve ourselves of a situation of moral complexity? How can we judge wisely on what is almost entirely an unknown? Let us therefore decide that Mars is sacrosanct, if only for a while. I suggest that it comes under UN jurisdiction, and that the UN forbids any reckless developments on that planet—at least until we have made doubly sure that no life exists there.”

Thomas Gunther rose to support this plea.

“Mars must come under UN jurisdiction, as the delegate from Nicaragua says. Any other decision would be a disgrace. The story of colonisation must not be repeated, with its dismal chapters of land devastation and exploitation of workers. Anyone who ventures to Mars must be assured that his rights are guaranteed right here. By maintaining the Red Planet for science, we shall give the world notice that the days of land-grabbing are finally over.

“We want a White Mars.

“This is not an economic decision but a moral one. Some delegates will remember the bitter arguments that raged when we were deciding to move the international dateline from the Pacific to the middle of the Atlantic. That was a development dictated purely by financial interests, for mere convenience of trade between the Republic of California and their partners of the Pacrim. We must now make a more serious decision, in which financial interest plays no part.

“If we are to explore the entire solar system and beyond, then this first step along the way must be marked by favourable omens and wise decisions. We must proceed with due humility and caution, forgetting the damaging fantasies of yesterday.

“I beg you to set aside a whole folklore of interplanetary conquest and to vote for the preservation of Mars—White Mars, as Mr. Leo Anstruther has called it. By so doing, we shall speak for knowledge, for wisdom, as opposed to avarice.” Gunther nodded in a friendly way to Anstruther as he strode from the podium.

Other speakers went to the podium to have their say, but now, increasingly, the emphasis was on how and why the Red Planet should be governed.

The sun was setting over the great milky lake beyond the conference hall when the final vote was taken. The General Secretary announced that the UN Department for the Preservation of Mars would be set up, and the White Mars Treaty executed.

Taking Thomas Gunther aside, the Secretary asked casually if Anstruther should be appointed head of the department.

“I would strongly advise against it,” Gunther said. “The man is too unpredictable.”