White Mars

12

The Martian marathon was organised by a group of young scientists working on Operation Smudge. They had set an ingenious 6-kilometre course through the domes, parts of which involved them leaping from the roofs of four-storey buildings, equipped with wings to provide semi-flight in the light gravity.

The marathon was regarded as an excuse for fun. Beza and Dayo had teamed up to provide a little razmataz music. Over 700 young people, men and women, together with a smattering of oldsters, were entered in the race.

Many appeared in fancy dress. The Maria Augusta dragon was present, with several small offspring. A bespectacled and bewigged Flat Mars Society showed up. Many little and large green men, complete with antennae, were running alongside green semi-naked goddesses, jostled by other bizarre life forms.

Everyone not in the race turned out to watch. The music played. It proved an exciting occasion. First prize was a multi-legged dragon trophy, created in stone and painted by our sculptor, Benazir Bahudur, with less elaborate versions for runners who came second and third.

The winner was the particle physicist Jimmy Gonzales Dust. He finished in 1,154 seconds. He was young and good-looking, with a rather cheeky air about him; he was very quick with his answers. At a modest banquet held in his honour, he was reported to have made a remarkable speech. Feeling somewhat dizzy, I did not attend.

Jimmy said that he had once believed that the process of terraforming the planet should have been undertaken from the start of our tenure of Mars. There could be no ethical objection to such work, since there was no life on Mars that would suffer in the process.

He went on to say that the duration of life on Earth was finite. The Sun in senescence would expand until it consumed Earth and the inner planets. Long before that, Earth would have become untenable as an abode of life and the human race would have had to move on or perish.

He claimed that other ports of call—the phrase was Jimmy’s—awaited. In particular, he pointed out, it was common knowledge that the satellites of Jupiter had much to offer. Whereas the hop from Earth to Mars was a mere 0.5 astronomical units on average, a much greater leap was required to reach those Jovian satellites—a leap of 3.5 AUs. Once humanity grew away from the corruption that dogged great enterprises to devise a better mode of propulsion than the chemical fuel presently used—or not being actually used, he added, to laughter—this leap would be less formidable and would prove to be nothing compared with that leap that would surely have to be made one day, the leap to the stars themselves.

Such a leap, he continued, would be undertaken within a century. Meanwhile a great engineering project, such as that which would be required to endow Mars with a breathable atmosphere at tolerable atmospheric pressure and within acceptable temperature tolerances, would attract the populations of Earth. It would provide the inspiration to look outward and to grasp that factor which, apparently, many found insurmountable—namely that, with labour equivalent to the labour which had gone to make Earth habitable for multitudes of species, many varieties of bodies could be provided with pleasant dwelling places.

Eventually, like a flock of migratory birds, terrestrial species would have to leave an exhausted Earth and fly elsewhere. Their first resting points could well be on those moons of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto in particular. They would have the vast water resources of Europa to draw upon, and their extraordinary celestial scenery to marvel at. Thus technology would help to achieve the apotheosis of humanity.

At this point, someone interrupted the speech, shouting, This is all political rhetoric!”

It is never wise to barrack a popular young hero. The banqueters booed, while Jimmy said, smilingly, “That certainly wasn’t a politic remark,” and continued with his talk.

However, he said, his ambition to see Mars terraformed—often referred to as a first step towards humanity’s becoming a star-dwelling race—had been based on a mistaken assumption, about which he wished to enlighten his audience, he hoped without alarming them.

Certainly, he had some disturbing news.

“For many years, people believed Mars to be inhabited,” he said. The quasi-scientific opinions of Percival Lovell, author of Mars as an Abode of Life, encouraged interest in the idea, which had been founded on the erroneous assumption that Mars was a more ancient planet than Earth. Improved astronomical equipment, and visits by probes, had swept all such speculation away. Finally, with manned landings, the point had been conceded. There was no life on Mars.

“Millions of years earlier, some archebacteria developed. Conditions deteriorated. They died out. Since then, everyone believed, Mars had been destitute of life. Destitute for millions of years.”

Jimmy paused, to confront the seriousness of what he was about to say.

That is not the case. In fact, for millions of years there has been life on this planet. You will know of the white tongues which surround our laboratories. They are neither vegetable nor mineral. Nor are they independent objects. We have reason to believe they are the sensory perceptors of an enormous—animal? Being, let’s call it.

“You will be aware of the M-gravitic anomaly associated with the Tharsis Shield. That anomaly is caused by a being so large it is visible even through terrestrial telescopes. We know it as Olympus Mons.

“Olympus Mons is not a geological object. Olympus Mons is a sentient being of unique kind.”

Immediately chaos erupted in the hall. Shouts of “It can’t be!” mingled with cries of “I told you so!” When calm was restored, Jimmy resumed, smiling rather a guilty smile, pleased by the shock he had engendered.

“My fellow scientists in this room will confirm what I say. This immense being, some seven hundred kilometres across, is a master of camouflage. Or else it’s a huge kind of barnacle. Its shell resembles the surrounding terrain, much as a chameleon takes on the colour of its background. Its time-sense must be very different from ours, since it has sat where it is now, without moving, for many centuries.

“Under its protective shell is organic life.”

He gave a nervous laugh.

“Terraforming would harm it. We are, ladies and gentlemen, sharing this planet with an amazingly large barnacle!”

The learned John Homer Bateson, leaning nearby against a pillar, hands in his robe, said, “An amazingly large barnacle! The mind is inclined to boggle somewhat. Well, well … Was it not Isocrates who called man the measure of all things? Such Ptolemaic thinking needs revision. Clearly it is this mollusc that is the measure of all things.”

Others present pressed forward with anxious questions.

Jimmy sought to give some reassurance.

“We can only speculate as to where the being came from, or where it might be going. Is it friend or enemy? We can’t tell as yet.”

“You mad scientists!” Crispin Barcunda was heard to exclaim. “What might this thing do if disturbed—if, say, we had started the terraforming process, with attendant atmospheric and chthonic upheavals?”

Jimmy spread his hands. “Olympus has its exteroceptors trained on us. All we can say is that it has, as yet, made no hostile move.”

Even the special performance of Mine? Theirs?, revised once again by Paula Gallin, was ill attended after this disconcerting news.

Speculation concerning Olympus, as it became known, continued on all levels. Much discussion concerned whether it might be regarded as malevolent or benevolent. Did this strange being consider that it owned Mars, in which case it might well regard humans as parasitic intruders? Or was it merely some unexpected variety of celestial jellyfish, without intention?

More alarm was caused when Jimmy Dust and his fellow scientists revealed that they had secured as a specimen one of the white tongues—had, in fact, hacked it off. Its complex cellular organisation had convinced them that, whatever Olympus was, it enjoyed sensory perception. Some reassurance was afforded by the fact that it had not retaliated against this attack on its exteroceptors. But perhaps it was merely biding its time.

I did not at this juncture realise how unwell I was. However, I had sufficient energy to call Dreiser Hawkwood on the Ambient. I demanded to know why the news that Olympus Mons was a living entity had been released to us in such a casual manner, by Jimmy Dust, the marathon winner. I asked if some kind of dangerous joke was being played on us. I raved on. I even said it had been firmly established that there was no life on Mars.

Dreiser listened patiently. He then said, “We chose to make the announcement as informally as possible, hoping not to alarm people. You will find the strategy is largely successful. People will cluck like hens and then get on with their day-to-day business. And you, Tom, I trust, will regain your customary good humour.”

It was the meek answer that increases wrath. “You told me when we spoke about Olympus that it was in no sense alive.”

“I never said that.”

“When we were preparing to address the assembly over a year ago, did you or did you not tell me there was no life on Mars?”

“No. I may have said we had found no life on Mars. Olympus was so big that it escaped our notice…” He chuckled. “I may have said we should expect Martian life to be very different from life Downstairs. So it proves.”

“You’re trying to tell me that this monstrous thing has just flopped out of the skies from space, or from another universe?”

“I might try to tell you many things, Tom, if you were fit to listen. I merely tell you this for now—that Olympus is entirely indigenous to Mars.”

When I asked how it was that he had made this discovery, rather late in our second year of isolation on Mars, Dreiser replied that a study of satellite photographs had convinced him there was some movement in the region.

“To whom did you first communicate this knowledge?”

He hesitated. “Tom, there are two things you should know. Firstly, we owe this perception—a perception I will admit I resisted at first—to the young genius you turned up, Kathi Skadmorr. What a clever young woman she is, what a quick brain!”

“Okay, Dreiser. And the second thing?”

“This object that Kathi insists on calling the ‘Watch-tower of the Universe’ is definitely on the move. And it’s moving in our direction, slow but sure. More news later. Goodbye.”

He signed off. I felt mortified that I had spoken so ill advisedly, and that the conversation had been recorded.

I went to lie down.

The physicists proposed sending an investigative expedition to Olympus. They were told to wait. Caution was to be the order of the day. Olympus might have a slower time sense than biological beings and could be planning a counterattack, so any close approach might imperil human lives.

I held private discussions with Jimmy Dust and his scientific colleagues, including the young man who maintained that cephalopods possessed intelligence.

“Human nature being what it is, the wish to believe in something bigger than themselves comes naturally to people,” one of the women said. “But we need to discourage the idea already circulating in some quarters that Olympus is a god. As far as our limited knowledge goes, it’s just a huge lump of rather inert organic material.”

“Yet we call it Olympus—traditionally the home of the gods.”

“That’s just a semantic quibble. Our guess is that this being is of low intelligence, being rupicolous.”

“Eh? What’s rupicolous?”

“Means it lives off rocks. Not a bright thing to do.”

“How so? At least there’s a generous supply of rock around right here…”

The discussion broke up without coming to any conclusion.

Adminex invited Hawkwood to come to the Hindenburg Hall and address an assembled crowd on the subject of Olympus. In particular we wished him to clarify its nature.

He agreed as long as his talk took the form of an interview. If I would ask the questions. I agreed. When we had both prepared for the talk, an assembly was called.

Since the occasion was so important, children were permitted to be present. In they streamed, carrying their tammies—tammies that had been fed and cosseted before their entry.

Dreiser arrived in style. He was prompt. He came with a retinue of four, the wispy Poulsen, another scientist, a blonde personal assistant whom we had met, as Cang Hai reminded me, in Dreiser’s office, and a fourth member whom I hardly recognised at first. Gone were her thick and curly chestnut locks. Her hair was now black, straight, and cut short. It was Kathi Skadmorr. When she shook my hand and smiled, I knew that smile.

The retinue settled themselves in the front seats, while Dreiser and I sat under the great photograph of the flaming zeppelin, in the dazzle of Suung Saybin’s lighting.

Dreiser began by saying that he wished to inform everyone of the little he knew concerning the nature of the life form called Olympus. He reminded us that Olympus had maintained its present existence for far longer than terrestrial telescopes had been around to be trained on Mars. It was an object, a life form, of immense antiquity, almost as ancient as the rocks to which it clung.

To remind us of its size, he zapped before the audience a 3D vidslide showing Olympus in profile, with a dawn light on its higher reaches, while its tall serrated skirts remained in a dusky red twilight. Its vast span covered 600 kilometres of ground.

“There it is, waiting for we know not what, amid ancient cratered topography over three billion years old.”

A shot of Earth’s Mount Everest was superimposed over Olympus. It showed as the merest pimple below the central caldera.

“As you see,” said Dreiser, “Olympus is unusually large for a volcano. For a life form it defies the imagination.”

An uneasy hush fell on the audience.

I remarked that Mars had previously been ruled out as an abode of life.

But this, Dreiser argued, was merely a reference to the many studies that had been conducted of soil and rock samples, of the analysis of the atmosphere, and of drillings made down into the crust. None had revealed any evidence for Martian life of any kind—even when allowances were made for the fact that life here might be completely different from life on Earth.

It was still difficult, I said, not to think of Olympus as simply an extraordinarily large volcano among other Martian volcanoes, admittedly of smaller size, such as Elysium, Arsia and Pavonis. Or were they also the carapaces of living beings?

He thought not. “Reproduction is a basic evolutionary function. Nevertheless it seems that Olympus has not spawned. Maybe it is a hermaphrodite. Maybe it simply lacks a partner.”

We would come to what it resembled later, Dreiser said. He wished to state that he had no quarrel with all the previous research centering on the quest for life. Those conclusions were definitive. Olympus was unique.

At this juncture, Dreiser said, he believed that the spotlight should shine on his associate, who had first brought the movements of Olympus to scientific notice. Those movements were so unprecedented that at first they were not credited. In introducing Kathi Skadmorr, he knew she was already celebrated as the YEA who had courageously gone down into the throat of the Valles Marineris and found considerable underground reservoirs of water.

Kathi now came to the dais and spoke without preamble, almost before the clapping had finished. “I’m campaigning to call Olympus Mons by a more vital name. It was christened in ignorance, long ago. I propose rechristening it, in the light of our new-found knowledge, Chimborazo, which means the ‘Watchtower of the Universe’. So far my campaign has only one member, but I’m still hoping.

“We don’t as yet know what we have here. Okay, Chimborazo moves, but whole mountains have been known to move. So movement does not necessarily mean life. Here’s where we detected movement.”

She zapped a vidslide taken from the satcam, showing the tumbled regolith on Chimborazo’s westerly side, and continued to speak.

“The broken regolith shows where our friend upped stumps and began to move. We secured one of those elusive white tongues you will all have seen. They are in fact inorganic, but with organic nerves and feelers lacing them. It seems not all tongues are identical, and that they serve different functions.

“Our hypothesis at present is that the tongues, more scientifically termed exteroceptors and proprioceptors, were once digestive organs, and that they have been modified over the eons. Not only do they provide nourishment to Chimborazo: they also function as rudimentary detectors. Thus, you see, they provide evidence that Chimborazo is not only a massive life form: it is also a life form with some kind of intelligence.

“Now I will hand over to Tom and Dreiser again.” She did not leave the dais, but took a seat next to me.

After thanking Kathi, I asked Dreiser where this monstrous thing had come from? From outer space? The Oort Cloud?

Not at all. “Olympus Mons,” said Dreiser, then hesitated. “Very well then, Chimboranzo—”

Kathi immediately interrupted, saying, “It’s Chimborazo, Dreiser!”

He gave a grunt and grinned at her. “Chimborazo is entirely indigenous. Nor is there anything uncanny about it. Our belief is that it is the result of a curious form of evolution—curious, that is, from the point of view of one accustomed to thinking in terrestrial terms. Curious—but by no means irrational.”

But if this life form actually evolved on Mars, as Dreiser claimed, there would surely be evidence of other life in the atmosphere, I said. Not only in the atmosphere, but in the rocks and regolith. “Evolution’, after all, implied “natural selection’, so there must have been other forms of life with which this monstrous Olympus organism had been in competition. I remarked that it would be silly to turn our backs on Darwin’s findings, since natural selection was now a well-established principle.

Dreiser had adopted a slouching posture, as if scarcely interested in the topic we were discussing. Now he sat up and looked at me with a direct stare.

“I am not disputing those principles, Tom. Far from it. But it is all too easy to fall into the way of thinking that how natural selection has operated in the main on Earth is its only method. Conditions here are vastly different from those Downstairs. Which is not to say that Darwin’s perceptions do not still apply.”

Of course conditions differed, I agreed. But I could not see how his Olympus could have extinguished all other life forms on the planet, simply by sitting there like a great lump, all in one place.

“For some while we thought exactly as you do. I have to say it is a limited point of view. Mounting evidence that Olympus is a living thing has made us change our opinions, our rather parochial earthly opinions. In fact, evolution on Earth itself has not been entirely ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’. I could name many examples of cooperation between species that have led to vital evolutionary advantage. I stress that: cooperation, not competition.”

I supposed he was thinking of man and his long relationship with the dog.

“Unfortunately we did not bring our loyal friend the dog here with us, more’s the pity. We will certainly need him when we travel towards the stars to face unforeseen challenges. We did bring all the bacteria in our stomachs, without which we could not survive. That’s a handy example of a symbiotic relationship.”

What could that have to do, I asked, with his Olympian organism wiping out the rest of Martian life?

“That is not my argument. Not at all. There are many examples where symbiosis has played a vital role in evolution. Let’s take lichens. Two differing organisms got together, a fungus and an alga, to form the unbeatable lichen, the hardiest of terrestrial life forms. Lichens are the first to move in after a volcanic eruption has wiped a mountainside clean. Even we, resourceful humankind, depend on our bacteria, just as swarming microlife depends on us.”

We had found no lichen-like organisms on Mars, I argued, and asked where that left us.

“Hang on. I’m not finished. I have some even more apposite examples of cooperation. There were times in the evolution of life on Earth when symbiotic relations have been absolutely vital.

“Take the eukaryotic cell. This is the kind of cell of which all ordinary plants and all animals are composed. It’s a cell that contains a distinct nucleus within which chromosomes carry genetic material. It has long been established that the first eukaryotic cells came about by the union of two other more primitive types of organism, the earlier prokaryotic cell and a kind of spirochete. The development of all multicellular plants and animals—and humans—stems from this union.

“Incidentally, on the subject of life, you might ask yourself how likely—what are the odds—of such a coincidence happening elsewhere in our galaxy. Long odds, I’d say.”

Although I was in agreement with this statement, I got Dreiser back on track again by asking what all this had to do with Olympus’s extinction of the rest of Martian life.

“No, no, you have the wrong picture in your head still, Tom. That’s not what happened here, as we envisage it. There was no extinction.”

He paused before continuing, perhaps considering how to explain most clearly.

“With the very different conditions on Mars, the balance of advantage in evolutionary processes was also different. Even on Earth, two types of evolutionary pressure have been important. We have become accustomed to considering the idea of competition as being the more important. This may be because Darwin’s splendid perceptions were launched in 1859 into a highly competitive capitalist society.

“In the competition scenario, the different species battle it out, and the ‘fittest’ are, on the whole, the ones that survive. But the cooperative element in evolution has sometimes proved important—vital, you might say—as we’ve seen in the instances of symbiotic development I have already mentioned.

“On Earth, competitive aspects of evolution have rather dominated the cooperative elements in our consideration. Our enforced social competitiveness has led us in that direction. We tend to think that the competitive element predominates, although in fact the entire terrestrial biomass works in unconscious cooperative ways to create a favourable environment for itself.

“These cooperative processes stem from the early days when life first crept from sea to the land. Initially both land and atmosphere were hostile to life of any kind, and various symbiotic relationships had to be adopted. Otherwise life could not have survived. But gradually, as conditions on Earth became more favourable, competitive elements began to assert themselves. We now see—or think we see—the competitive elements dominating the cooperative elements.”

Somewhere in the audience, a tammy began to chirp and was hushed. I asked Hawkwood if evolution had taken a different course on Mars.

“Possibilities for life here differ considerably from Earth, as we have said. Conditions have never been other than harsh. Now they weigh heavily against life. We have low atmospheric pressure, almost zero oxygen content, abnormally dry conditions. But basic natural laws always applied.

“In the case of evolution, cooperation had a distinct edge over competition. In the early days of Mars’s history, conditions more closely resembled Earth’s. But gradually oxygen became bonded into the rocks while water vapour leaked away. As conditions became more and more adverse, cooperation among the indigenous life forms won out over competition.

“The enormous diversity of life forms, such as we find on Earth, never had a chance to develop here. Evolution on Mars was forced into a combining together of life. All forms eventually huddled together for protection against adverse Martian conditions. It was the ultimate Martian strategy.”

They huddled together, I suggested, under what we have always thought was a volcano, Olympus Mons. Why should they have chosen that particular shape?

“A cone shape is economical of material. And since the life forms were not going to be particularly mobile, they chose a defence readily adopted by countless of Earth’s creatures—they opted for camouflage. Camouflage against what we can’t tell; nor, I suppose, could they. But their instincts are readily understandable. In fact, the shell is just that, a shell made from keratin and clay—very tough and durable.”

It would keep heat in, I suggested.

“Yes, and fairly large meteorites out.”

A child’s voice from the audience asked, “What are the people like under the shell, Dreiser?”

They aren’t people in our sense of the word,” Dreiser replied. “The use of keratin as a binder in the shell suggests hair, nails, horns, hooves, feathers…”

At the words “hooves, feathers…” a frisson ran through the audience like the rustling of great wings.

Dreiser continued. “Olympus Mons—sorry, Kathi, Chimborazo—has grown gradually into the vast volcano shape we know today. The creatures under it must be still surviving, perhaps even thriving, since Olympus is now in a growth phase. It extends very slowly, we think upwards. But our surveys indicate an expansion of something like 1.1 centimetres every other decade.”

So how did it feed?

“Its exteroceptors suck nourishment and moisture from the rocks.

“As you have heard from Kathi here, Chimborazo is executing a slow horizontal movement. It advances at the rate of a few metres every Martian year.”

At the exclamations from his audience, Dreiser looked gravely ahead of him. He spoke next with emphasis.

“This advance began only when these domes and the science unit were established. Chimborazo is probably attracted by a heat source.”

“You mean it’s advancing on us?” cried a nervous voice from the floor.

“Although its forward movement is much faster than its growth rate, it is still no speedster by terrestrial standards. A snail runs like a cheetah by comparison. We’re all quite safe. It will take nearly a million years to drag itself here at present rate of progress.”

“I’m packing my bags now,” came a voice from the floor amid general laughter.

Vouchsafing the remark a wintery smile, Dreiser continued, “We monitored the horizontal movement first. You may imagine our incredulity. We did not immediately realise we were dealing with a living thing—undoubtedly the biggest living thing within the solar system.

“We did not connect it at first with those white exteroceptors, which flick so quickly out of sight. They are the creature’s sensors, and of complex function. Not eyes exactly. But they appear to be sensitive to electromagnetic signals of various wavelengths. The multitude of them together is probably used to build up a picture of sorts. They retract at any unexpected signal, which caused us problems in getting a clear picture of them to start with.”

A subdued voice asked a question from the audience. Dreiser needed it repeated: “I can’t believe what you’re telling us. How can that enormous thing possibly be alive?”

Kathi answered sharply. “You must improve your perceptions. If it can think, Chimborazo is probably asking itself how a small feeble bipedal thing like you could possibly be alive—not to mention intelligent.”

The questioner sank back in her chair.

“You can perhaps imagine our shock when we discovered that Chimborazo was advancing towards our research unit. Nothing can stop its approach,” Kathi said. “Unless we make some sort of conscious appeal to it…”

I asked if Dreiser thought that Olympus had a mind anything like ours.

“The balance of opinion is that it has a mind radically different from ours. So Kathi has half persuaded us. A mind compounded of a multitude of little minds. Thought may be greatly slowed down by comparison with our time-scales.

“Yes, I have to say it may well have awareness, intelligence. We have detected a fluttery CPS—the clear physical signal that is the signature of mind. It may tick over slowly by our standards, but speed of thought isn’t everything.”

“Now you’re being anthropomorphic!” said a voice from the floor.

“It is one of the functions of intelligence to respond discriminatingly to the events that come within its scope. Which is what Olympus seems to be doing. Its response to mankind’s arrival here is to move towards us. Whether this can be construed as hostile or friendly, or merely as a reaction to a heat source, we have yet to decide. It has decided!”

He paused for thought. “It may well have consciousness. Consciousness is not necessarily the gift solely of earthly beings such as ourselves.

“In our discussions here, I have noticed the frequency with which ancient authorities are appealed to, from Aristotle and Plato onwards—to Count Basie, I may say. This is because our consciousness has a collective element. ‘No voice is ever lost,’ if I may take my turn at quoting. Our consciousness has been enriched by the minds of those good men who lived in the past. Perhaps you may regard this as a mental evolutionary principle of cooperation in action.

“Consciousness is unlike any other phenomenon, compounded of many elements and apparent contradictions along the quantum-mechanical level. In the close quarters engendered by its shell, the huddled creatures of Olympus would probably have developed a form of consciousness.

“I will also venture the suggestion that here in our cramped quarters we could be developing a new step forward in human consciousness, represented by the word ‘utopian’. A thinking alike for the common good…

“If that is so—and I hope it may be so—it will mean the fading away of individualism. This is what has happened with our friend Chimborazo, if I guess correctly. It has become a single creature consisting of the symbiotic union of all indigenous Martian life.”

Came a shout from the audience. “What gives you the idea that this weird mind is good?”

Dreiser responded thoughtfully. “I repeat that individualism had no chance on Mars. To survive, this entity evolved a collective mind. It has therefore learned control … But we can only speculate upon all this. With awe. With reverence.”

Here Kathi chipped in to say, “It may seem to us slow and ponderous, but why should we not believe it to be superior to our own fragmented minds?”

After the talk, Helen Panorios came up to Dreiser and asked, timidly, why Olympus had camouflaged itself as a volcano.

“Olympus lies among other volcanoes. So it can become pretty well lost in the crowd.”

“Yes, sir, but what has it camouflaged itself against?”

Dreiser regarded her steadily before replying. “We can only suppose—although this is terrestrial thinking—that it feared some great and terrible predator.”

“Space-born?”

“Very probably space-born. Matrix-born…”

From this occasion onwards, Dreiser and I spent more time together, discussing this extraordinary phenomenon. Sometimes he would call in Kathi Skadmorr. Sometimes I called in Youssef Choihosla, who professed an empathy with Olympus.

One of the first questions I asked Dreiser was, “Are you now going to abandon your search for the Omega Smudge?”

He stroked his moustache as if it was his pet, gave me an old-fashioned look, and replied with a question, “Are you going to abandon your plans for a Utopian society?”

So we understood each other. Ordinary work had to continue.

But it continued under the shadow of that enormous life form that unceasingly inched its way towards us. Despite warnings to the contrary, the four of us drove out one calm day to inspect Olympus at close quarters. Crossing the parched terrain, we began to climb, bumping over parallel fracture lines. Kathi, in the rear seat with Choihosla, seemed particularly nervous, and clutched Choihosla’s large hand.

When I jokingly made some remark to her about her nervousness, she replied, “You might do well to be nervous, Tom. We are crossing Chimborazo’s holy ground. Can’t you feel that?”

The terrain became steeper and more broken. Dreiser drove slowly. The exteroceptors were all about us. They seemed thicker here, more reluctant to slide back into the frozen regolith. The buggy dropped to a mere crawl. Dreiser flicked his headlights on and off to clear the track. “God, for a gun!” he muttered. We were all tense. No one spoke.

We surmounted a bluff, and there the rim of it was, protruding above ground level like a cliff. We stopped. “Do we get out?” I asked. But Kathi was already climbing from the vehicle. She walked slowly towards Chimborazo.

I got out and followed. Dreiser and Choihosla followed me. Suited up, we could hear no external sound.

Even near to, Olympus closely resembled a natural feature, its flanks being terraced in a roughly concentric pattern. There were imitations of flowlines, channels and levees, as well as lines of craters that might or might not be imitations of the real things. We could by no means see all of its 700-kilometre diameter. Even the caldera was hardly visible, though a small cloud of steam hovered above it. Whether as a volcano or a living organism, it seemed impossible to comprehend.

In its presence I felt the hair at the back of my neck prickle. I simply stood and stared, trying to come to terms with it. Dreiser and Choihosla were busy with instruments, noting with satisfaction that there was no radiation reading, receiving a CPS.

“Of course there’s a CPS,” said Kathi. “Do you really need instruments to tell you that? How’s the back of your neck, for instance?”

Braver than we were, she climbed up on to the shell and lay flat upon it, her little rump in the air. It was as if—but I brushed aside the thought—she desired sexual intercourse with it.

After a while, she returned and joined us. “You can feel a vibration,” she said. She returned to the buggy and sat, arms folded across her chest, head down.