White Mars

6

Stranded on Mars! Although I wished only to mourn the death of Antonia, some force within me insisted that I should turn to the future and face the challenge of existence on a Mars isolated for an indefinite period.

This necessity became more urgent when we were confronted by a wave of suicides. There were those whose spirit was not strong enough to face this challenge. Whereas I saw it as an opportunity. Perhaps it was curiosity that drove me on.

Taking command, I ordered that there should be only one memorial service for all suicides, which numbered thirty-one, the majority of them single men in their thirties. I viewed the act of despair with some contempt and saw to it that the memorial service was kept short. At its conclusion the corpses were consigned to the biogas chambers below ground.

“Now we are free to build our future constructively,” I declared. “Our future lies in operating as a unit. If we fail to cooperate—zero future!”

The strange airless landscapes beyond our domes had only a remote relationship with our existences; our task was to make good what was inside, not outside, the domes. And since I had taken command—though not without opposition—a grand plan developed slowly in my mind: a plan to transform our society, and hence humanity itself.

I called people together. I wanted to address them direct and not through the Ambient.

“I’m going to kick down a rotten door. I’m going to let light in on human society. I need your help to do it.” That’s what I said. “I’m going to make us live as we dream of being—great and wise people, circumspect, daring, inventive, loving, just. The people we deserve to be.

“All we have to do is dare to throw away the old and difficult crooked ways and leap towards the new and difficult and wonderful!”

I was determined that the collapse of EUPACUS and our subsequent isolation on Mars—for however long that might be—should not be viewed negatively. After the considerable sacrifices everyone had made to reach the Red Planet, we had to struggle to exist, to prove something. With the death of my beloved wife, I decided I would never leave Mars, but remain here all my days, finally to mingle my spirit with hers.

Ambient was already in place. Working with other technicians, we extended it so that everyone had a station. I now sent out a nine-point questionnaire, enquiring into which features of terrestrial life we who were temporarily stranded on Mars were most pleased to escape. I asked for a philosophical approach to the question; such factors as bad housing, uncertain climatic conditions, etc., were to be taken for granted.

Instead of isolating myself with any period of mourning, I set about analysing the responses I received. Remarkably, 91 per cent of the domes’ inhabitants answered my questionnaire.

Enlisting the assistance of able organisers, I announced that there would be a meeting to discuss the ways in which we might govern ourselves happily, in justice and truth. All Martian citizens were invited to attend.

At this momentous meeting, a great crowd assembled in our grandest meeting-place, Hindenburg Hall. I took the chair, with the distinguished scientist, Dreiser Hawkwood, at my right hand.

“There is only one way in which we can survive the crisis of isolation,” I said. “We must cooperate as never before. We do not know how long we will have to stay on Mars with our limited resources. It will be sensible to anticipate a long stay before world finances and the pieces of EUPACUS are put together again. We must make the best of this opportunity to work together as a species.

“Do not let us regard ourselves as victims. We are proud representatives of the human race who have been granted an unique chance to enter into an unprecedented degree of cooperation. We shall make ourselves and our society anew—to turn a new page in human history, as befits the new circumstances in which we find ourselves.”

Dreiser Hawkwood rose. “On behalf of the scientific community, I welcome Tom Jefferies’s approach. We must work as a unit, setting aside nationality and self-interest. Without attributing intention to what looks like blind chance, we may be given this opportunity to put ourselves to a test, to see what miracles unity can work.

“The humble lichen you see on boulders or stonework back home can flourish in the most inhospitable environments. Lichen is a symbiosis between an alga and a fungus. We might regard that as an inspiring example of cooperation. On this boulder, on which we are temporarily stranded, we will also survive.

“Remember that our survival is necessary for more than personal reasons, important though those are. We scientists are here to press forward with the Smudge Project, in which much finance and effort has been invested. A positive result will influence the way in which we comprehend our universe. For a successful outcome, here too we need unity and what we used to call good old team work…”

Heartened by Hawkwood’s support, I went on to say, “In our misfortune we can see great good fortune. We are in a position to try something new, revolutionary. We have here a population equivalent to that of ancient Athens in numbers—and in intellect about equal—and in knowledge much greater. We are therefore ideally placed to establish a small republic for ourselves, banning those elements of existence we dislike, as far as that is possible, and enshrining the good in a constitution upon which all can agree. That way we can flourish. Otherwise, we fall into chaos. Chaos or new order? Let’s talk about it.”

As I spoke, I heard murmurs of dissent from the audience. Among the visiting YEAs were many who cared nothing for the Smudge Project and regarded Hawkwood as a career man.

A Jamaican TV star, by name Vance Alysha, one of the YEAs, spoke for many when he rose and said, “This Smudge Project is typical of the way science has become the tool of the rich. It’s all abstract nowadays. There was a time when scientific, or let’s say technological, advance brought the poor many advantages. It made life easier—you know, motorbikes, motor cars, refrigerators, radio, of course, and the television. All that was practical, and benefited the poor all over the world. Now it’s all abstract, and increases the gulf between rich and poor—certainly in the Caribbean, where I come from. Life becomes harder all the time for our people.”

There were murmurs of approval from the hall. Dreiser asked, “Is it an abstraction that such ills as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are now curable? We cannot predict exactly what the Smudge will bring, but certainly we would not be here on Mars without investment in the research.”

At this point a young dark-eyed woman stood up and said, in clear tones, “Some may view our being stranded here as a misfortune. They should think again. I would like to point out that our being here, living in the first community away from Earth and Luna, comes as the end result of many kinds of science and knowledge accumulated throughout the centuries—science both abstract and practical.

“We’re fooling ourselves if we don’t grasp this opportunity to learn new things.”

As she sat down, Hawkwood leaned forward and asked her what sort of things she imagined we should learn.

She stood up again. “Consciousness. Our faulty consciousness. How does it come about? Is it affected perhaps by magneto-gravitic forces? In the lighter gravity of Mars, will our consciousness improve, enlarge? I don’t know.” She gave an apologetic laugh. “You’re the scientist, Dr. Hawkwood, not I.” She sat down, looking abashed at having spoken out.

“May I ask your name?” This from Hawkwood.

“Yes. My name is Kathi Skadmorr and I come from Hobart in Tasmania. I worked in Water Resources in Darwin for my community year.”

He nodded and gave me a significant look.

Assembled in the Hindenburg Hall were almost all the men, women, and children on the planet. Since there were insufficient chairs to seat everyone, boxes and benches were drawn up. When everyone was as comfortable as could be, the discussion proper began.

It was interrupted almost at once by a commotion from the rear door, and female cries for us to wait a minute.

In came three overalled women from Communications, bringing with them lights and video cameras.

The leader, Suung Saybin, showed herself to be a perceptive woman. She had thought of something that had not occurred to the rest of us. “Allow us to set up our equipment,” she said. “This may prove an historic occasion, which must be recorded for others to study.”

The scene was lit, she gave the sign, we began our discussion.

Almost immediately a group of six masked men charged the platform. Both Dreiser and I were roughly seized.

One of the masked men shouted, “We don’t need discussion. These men are criminals! This dome remains EUPACUS territory. They have no right to speak. We are in charge here until EUPACUS returns—”

But they were mistaken in naming EUPACUS so boldly. It had turned into a hated name, the name of failure, the label for those who had isolated us. Half the hall rose en masse and marched forward. Had any of the masked intruders been armed—but guns were forbidden on Mars—there would have been shooting at this point. Instead, a fight ensued, in which the intruders were easily overpowered and Dreiser and I released.

How were the masked men to be punished? All proved to be EUPACUS technicians in charge of landing operations, refuelling or repairs. They were not popular. I sent for six pairs of handcuffs, and had them cuffed around metal pillars for six hours, with their masks removed.

“Is that all their punishment?” asked one of my rescuers.

“Absolutely. They will not reoffend. They suddenly lost their authority. They are only disoriented by the new situation, as we are. Now everyone can have a look at them. That will be shame enough.”

One of my attackers shouted that I was a fascist.

“You are the fascist,” I said. “You wanted to rule by force. I want to use persuasion—to bring about a just and decent society here, not a mob.”

He challenged me to define just and decent.

I told him I would not define what the words meant just then, particularly since I had never experienced a just and decent society. Nevertheless, I hoped that we would work together to form a society based on those principles. We all knew what just and decent meant in practice, even if we did not define them with precision. And I hoped that in a few months we would recognise them as prevailing in Mars City.

The man listened closely to this, pausing before he spoke.

“My name, sir, is Stephens, Beaumont Stephens, known as ‘Beau’. I will assist your endeavours if you will free me from these handcuffs.”

I told him that he must serve his punishment. Then he would be welcome to help me.

Our forum found a powerful supporter in Mary Fangold, the woman who ran the Reception House. She was a neat, rather severe-looking woman in her late thirties, of Mediterranean cast, with dark hair cut short, and striking dark blue eyes. I had developed a strong liking for her through her kindness to Antonia in the latter’s last days.

“If we are to survive here as a society, then everyone must be given a chance to be part of that society.” Her voice, while far from shrill, held a ring of conviction. I was to find that indeed she was a woman with a strong will. “On Earth, as we all know, millions of people are thrown on the scrap heap. They’re unemployed, degraded, rendered useless, while the rich and Megarich employ androids. These wasteful creatures are the new enemies of the poor—as well as being inefficient.

“It’s no good talking about a just society. First of all, we must ensure that everyone works, and is kept busy at a job that suits her or his intellect.”

“What job is that?” someone shouted.

Mary Fangold replied coolly, “My Reception House must become our hospital. I need enlarged premises, more wards, more equipment of all kinds. Come and see me tomorrow.”

While I had anticipated that many of us would harbour negative responses, even feeling suicidal, about being stranded on Mars, I had not expected so many clearly stated objections to everyday existence on Earth. These the forum wished to discuss first of all, as bugbears to be disposed of.

These bugbears came roughly under five heads, we finally decided. The first four were Mistaken Historicism, Transcendics, Market Domination and Popular Subscription, all of which made existence more difficult than it need be for the multitudinous occupants of our green mother planet. Fifthly, there was the older problem of the rich and the poor, the Haves and Have Nots, a problem of heightened intensity since a long-living Megarich class had developed.

When it came my turn to sum up the debate, which continued for some days, I had this to say (I’m checking here with the records):

“Some issues on Earth are much discussed, or at least make the headlines. They consist in the main of crime, education, abortion, sex, climate, and maybe a few other issues of more local interest. These issues could be fairly easily dealt with, if the will were there.

“For instance, education could be improved if the teaching profession were paid more and better respected. That would happen if children and their futures were the subject of more active general concern. And, if that were the case, then crime rates would fall, since it is the disappointed and angry child who becomes the adult lawbreaker. And so on.

“Unfortunately, a dumbing-down of culture has precluded the general consideration of five issues about which you have expressed unhappiness. They are far less easy to deal with, being more nebulous. Perhaps they are difficult to discern in the general hubbub of competing voices and anxieties. The six thousand of us assembled here must seize on the time and chance we have been given to consider and, if possible, to eliminate these issues.

“I will take these issues, which do not mirror our needs for a decent society and are impediments to such a society, one by one, although they are interrelated.

“Mistaken Historicism is a clumsy label for the problems of squaring a global culture with varied local traditions. The problems spring perhaps from conflating human history with evolutionary development. We are prone to conceive of deep cultural differences as merely an episode on the way to a universal consensus—a developmental phase, let’s say, to an homogenous civilisation. Our expectation is that these various local traditions will die out and the global population become homogenised. This idea is patronising, and will not hold water much longer, as the days of Euro-Caucasian hegemony draw to a close.

“For example, we cannot expect the quarter of the terrestrial population that speaks a Chinese language to convert to English instead. Nor can we expect those whose faith is in Mohammed to turn into churchgoers of the Methodist persuasion. The Chinese and the Muslims may fly by airplanes manufactured in the United States for at least a few decades longer: that does not alter their inward beliefs in the superiority of their own traditions one whit.

“We observe the tenacity of tradition even within the European Union. A Swede may spend all his working life in Trieste, designing parts for the fridge wagons; he may speak fluent Italian and enjoy the local pasta; he may holiday on the beaches of Rimini. But, when it comes time to retire, he returns to Sweden, buys a bungalow in the archipelago, and behaves as if he had never left home. He soon forgets how to speak Italian.

“Our traditional roots are valuable to us. We may argue whether or not they should be, but the fact remains that they are. Nor are the arguments against them always valid.

“For instance, such roots are supposedly the cause of war. True, certainly they have been in the past. There were the Crusades, the Opium Wars against China, and so on and so forth. But modern wars, when they happen, are most frequently not between different civilisations but are waged among the same civilisations, as were the terrible wars in Europe between 1914 and 1918 and 1939 and 1945.

“The mistaken assumption that cultural differences are going to disappear and a single civilisation will prevail, perhaps in the manner of Mr. H.G. Wells’s Modern Utopia, has precluded constructive intellectual thought on ways to ease friction between cultures which are, in fact, permanent and rather obdurate features of the world in which we have to live. The sorry tale of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a recent example of the ill effects of Mistaken Historicism.

“If we could drop our Mistaken Historicism, we might establish more effective international buffers for intercultural relationships.”

At this point there was an important intervention by a small sharp-featured man with scanty white hair. He rose and introduced himself as Charles Bondi, a worker on the Smudge Project, whom we already knew was one of the prime movers of the scientific project.

“While I take your point about linguistic differences and religious differences and so forth,” he said, in a pleasant husky voice, “these are all global items we have learned to put up with, and to some extent overcome. I believe it might be claimed that cultural differences are dying out, at least where it matters, in public relations. Certainly there is evidence of a fairly general wish to help them die out, or else we would have no revived United Nationalities.

“You could argue, indeed, that Mistaken Historicism was mistaken but is no longer. Don’t we see a convergence in prevailing attitudes of materialism, for instance, in East and West—and all points in between? What we want is a new idea, something that overrides cultural difference. I believe that the revelations that the detection of a Smudge phenomenon will grant us could be that transforming idea.”

“We’ll discuss that question when a Smudge has been identified,” I said.

“Smudge interception is vastly more likely than Utopia,” Bondi said, sharply. I thought it wiser not to answer, and continued with my list.

“We come next to Transcendics. I use the term rather loosely, not in the Kantian sense, but to mean the transcendence of humanity over everything else on the globe. Perhaps anthropocentrism would be a better word. Despite the growth of geophysiology, people by and large value things only as they are useful for human purposes. The rhinoceros, to take an obvious example, was hunted to extinction within the last forty years, simply because its horn was valued as an aphrodisiac. This splendid creature was killed off for an erroneous notion.

“But more widely we still use our seas as cesspits and our globe as a doormat. We take and take and consume and consume. We have a belief that we are able to adapt to any adverse change, and can survive and triumph, in spite of all the diseases that rage among us—in many cases diseases we have provoked through our ruination of the balance of nature. For instance when that vegetarian grazing animal, the cow, was fed meat and offal, bovine spongiform encephalitis infected herds and spread to the perpetrators of the crime.

“The myth of man’s superiority over all other forms of life is, I’m bound to say, propagated by the Judaic and Christian religions. The truth is that the globe would thrive without human beings. If our kind was wiped from the earth, it would heal over in no time and it would be as if we had never been…”

At this point, reflection on the miseries we had created for ourselves on the beautiful terrestrial globe overcame me. I cried aloud in protest at my own words, knowing in my heart that, though we must make the best of our opportunities on Mars, Mars would never be the lovely place that Earth was, or had been.

Perhaps I should interrupt my narrative here to say that the hall in which we held our public discussions was dominated by a blow-up of one of the most extraordinary photographs of the Technological Age. Towering over us in black and white was a shot taken in 1937 of an enormous firework display. When the Nazi airship the Hindenburg was about to attach itself to a mooring mast, having flown across the Atlantic to the United States, its hydrogen tanks exploded and the great zeppelin burst into flame.

That beautiful, terrifying picture, of the gigantic structure sinking to the ground, may seem like the wrong signal to those who had crossed a far greater distance of space than had the ill-fated airship. Yet it held inspiration. It showed the fallibility of man’s technological schemes and reminded us of evil nationalist aspirations while remaining a grand Promethean image. We spoke under this magnificent Janus-faced symbol.

But, for a moment, I was unable to speak.

Seeing my distress, Hal Kissorian, a statistical demographer and one of the stranded YEAs, spoke up cheerfully.

“We all have complaints against our mother planet, Tom, much though we love it. But we have to learn things anew, to suit our new circumstances here. Do not be afraid to speak out.

“Let me offer you and all of us some comfort. I have been looking into the computer records, and have discovered that only fifteen per cent of us Martians here assembled are the first-borns in their families. The great majority of us are later-born sons and daughters.”

There was some laughter at the apparent irrelevance of this finding.

Kissorian himself laughed so that his unruly hair flopped over his brow. He was a cheerful, rather wanton-looking, young fellow. “We laugh. We are being traditional. Yet the fact is that over a great range of scientific discoveries and social upheavals which have changed mankind’s view of itself, the effects of familial birth order have played their part.”

At calls for examples, Kissorian instanced Copernicus, William Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood, William Godwin with An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Florence Nightingale, The Lady with the Lamp’, the great Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Marx, Lenin, Dreiser Hawkwood, and many others, all later-born progeny.

A DOP I recognised as John Homer Bateson, the retired principal of an American university, agreed. “Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, makes more or less the same point,” he said, leaning forward and clutching the chair back in front of him with a skeletal hand, “in one of his essays or counsels. He says that, among children, the eldest are respected and the youngest become wantons. That’s the term he uses—wantons! But in between are offspring who are pretty well neglected, and they prove themselves to be the best of the bunch.”

This observation was delivered with such majesty that it incurred a number of boos.

Whereupon the retired principal remarked that dumbing-down had already settled itself on Mars.

“Anything can be proved by statistics,” someone called to Kissorian.

“My claim will demonstrate its validity here by our general contrary traits and our wish to change the world,” Kissorian replied, unperturbed.

“Our wish is to unite and change this small world,” I rejoined, and went on with my catalogue of the five partially concealed causes of global unhappiness.

“Our preconceived concept of mankind as master of all things prevents us from establishing sound institutions—institutions that might serve to provide worldwide restraints against the sort of depredations of which we have talked. Were it not for our anthropocentrism, we would long ago have established a law, observed by all, against the pollution of the oceans, the desecration of the land, and the destruction of the ozone layer.

“The myth that we can do anything with anything we like causes much misery, from the upsetting of climates onwards. As you all know, had we acted under that mistaken belief, Mars would now be flooded with CFC gases in an attempt to terraform it, had it not been for a good man as General Secretary of the UN and his few far-sighted supporters.

“Transcendics I regard as embodying something destructive in the character of mankind. For instance, the lust to obliterate old things, from buildings to traditions, which make for stability and contentment. Terraforming is just one instance of that intention. Yet new things have no rich meaning for us unless they can be seen to develop from the old. Existence should be a continuity.

“While I am no believer, I see the role of the Church—and its architecture—in communities as a stabilising, unifying factor. Yet from within the Church itself has emerged a retranslation of Bible and prayer into so-called plain language—a dumbing-down that destroys the old sense of mystery, reverence and tradition. We need those elements. Their loss brings a further challenge to family life.”

“Forget family life!” came a voice.

“Yeah, let’s forget oxygen,” came a speedy rejoinder from my new supporter, Beau Stephens.

For some minutes an argument raged about the value of family life. I said nothing; I did not entirely know where I stood on the question; mine had been a strange upbringing. I held what I considered an old-fashioned view: that at the centre of “family life” was the woman who must bring forth a new generation, and both she and her children needed such protection as a male could give. Undoubtedly, the time would come when the womb was superseded. Then, I supposed, family life would fade away, would become a thing of the past.

After a while, I called for order and returned to my list of discontents.

“Let’s move on to the third stumbling block to contentment, Market Domination—another little item we have escaped here on Mars. We have all felt, since we came here, the relief of having no traffic with money. It feels strange at first, doesn’t it?

“Money, finance, has come increasingly to dominate every facet of life on Earth, particularly the lives of those people who have least, who are at the bottom of a wasps’ nest of economics. How can we claim that all men are equal when on every level inequalities exist?

“It became a shibboleth in the twentieth century that maximum economic growth would resolve human problems. Earning power outweighed social need, as the quest for greater profit failed to count the cost in civilised living.

“One way in which this happened was in the dismantling of welfare provisions, such as health care, pensions, child benefit, unemployment allowances.”

Mary Fangold interrupted. She stood tall and proud.

“Tom, I have been thankful to live on Mars, having to watch terrestrial affairs go from bad to worse. Perhaps the people there don’t notice the decline. The dismantling of welfare provisions of which you speak has deepened a well of worldwide poverty. One result is an increase in many infectious diseases.

“We all know smallpox returned with the pandemic of about ten years ago. Cholera is rampant in the Pacrim countries. Many contagious diseases once thought all but vanished early in the century have returned. Fortunately those diseases do not reach Mars.”

“Sit down then!” someone shouted.

Mary looked towards the interruption. “Bad manners evidently have travelled. I am making a reasonable point and will not be deflected.

“I would like everyone here to realise how fortunate we are. The encouraging medical statistics put out by terrestrial authorities are often drawn from the Megarich class, who of course have their own private hospitals, and whose orderly records make them easy subjects for study.

“There is at present a serious outbreak of multiple drug resistance, notably of VRE, or vancomycin-resistant-enterococci, particularly in the ICUs in public hospitals. This is caused in part by the over-employment of antibiotics, while the synthesis of new and effective antibiotics has been falling off. Many thousands of people are dying as a result. Hundreds of thousands. Intensive Care Units are breaking down everywhere on Earth.

“A cordon sanitary exists between Earth and Mars. Because of the long journey time, anyone who happens to be carrying VRE or any virus or infective disease—not, alas, cancer, or any malfunctioning cellular illness”—here she glanced sympathetically at me—“will have recovered from the disease or have died from it. People do die in their cryogenic caskets en route, you know. Perhaps that statement surprises you. We try to keep it quiet.

“So all you YEAs and DOPs, do not wish the journey to take a shorter time. We are fairly safe from terrestrial disease. And that, to my mind, counts for more on the plus side than these dreary negatives we are listening to.”

For her speech Fangold was applauded. She gave me a glance, half apology, half smile, as she sat down.

I could only agree about the dreary negatives, and called a break for lunch.

As usual, we all sat at long communal tables. We were served with vegetable soup, so-called, followed by a synthetic salami stew, accompanied by bread and margarine.

Discussion ran up and down the table. Several voices were raised in anger. Aktau Badawi asked me what I was going to say about Market Domination. “Is this about multinationals?”

“Not really. We all know about the biggest of the lot, EUPACUS, which has stranded us here.

“Downstairs, on Earth, work became an overriding imperative for those in whom poverty and unemployment had not become ingrained. The family mealtime, often rather better than what we are getting now, where families talked and argued and laughed and ate in a mannerly way together, fell victim to the work ethic at an early stage. Fast food was often eaten while preparing to leave for work, at work, or in the streets. There was no mingling of the generations, such as we have here in Amazonis Planitia, no conversation. At least we have that,” I said, pushing my plate aside.

“If jobs were not available locally, then the worker must go elsewhere. In the United States of America, this was no great hardship; it was already a pretty rootless society, and the various states made provision for people to move from one state to another. Elsewhere, the hunt for jobs can mean exile—sometimes years of exile.”

Aktau Badawi said, in his halting English, “My family is from Iran. My father has a big family. He has no employ. His brother—his own brother—was his enemy. He travels far to get a job in the Humifridge plant in Trieste, on a distant sea, where they make some units for the fridge wagons. After a two-year, we never hear from him. Never again. So I must care for my brothers.

“I am like Kissorian has said, second brother. I go north. I work in Denmark. Is many thousand kilometres from my dear home. I see that Denmark is a decent country, with many fair laws. But I live in one room. What can I do? For I send all my monies to home.

“Then I do not hear from them. Maybe they all get killed. I cannot tell, despite I write the authorities. My heart breaks. Also my temper. So I rather do the community year in Uganda in Africa. Then I come here, to Mars. Here I hope for fairness. And maybe a girl to love me.”

He hung his head, embarrassed to have spoken so openly. May Porter, a technician from the observatory, sitting next to him, patted his arm.

“Labour markets require high mobility, no doubt of that,” she said. “Careers can count very low in human values.”

“Human values?!” exclaimed Badawi. “I don’t know its meaning until I listen today to the discussions. I wish for human values very much.”

“Another thing,” said Suung Saybin. “Food warehouses dominate cities because, once a machinery of supply is established, it is hard to stop. Small shops are forced out by competition. Their closure leads to social disorder and the malfunction of cities. The bigger the city, the worse this effect.”

A little Dravidian whose name I never learned broke in here, saying, “There is always the excuse given by pharmaceutical manufacturers. They profit greatly from the sale of fertilisers and pesticides that further decimate wildlife, including the birds. My country now has no birds. These horrible companies claim that improved crop yields are necessary. This is one of their lies. World food production is more than sufficient to feed a second planet! There are 1.5 billion hungry people in the world of today, many of them personally known to me. Their problem is not so much the lack of food as lack of the income with which to purchase food already available elsewhere.”

Dick Harrison agreed. “Don’t by this imagine we’re talking only of starving India, or of Central Asia, forever unable to grow its own food. The most technologically advanced state, the United States, has forty million people on the breadline—forty million, in the world’s largest producer of food! I should know. I came from New Jersey to Mars to get a good meal…”

After the laughter died, I continued.

“The all consuming machinery of greater and greater production entails deregulation of worker safety laws and health provisions. In our lifetimes we have seen economic competition increasing between states. They must grow monstrous to survive, as trees grow to eclipse a neighbour with their shade. So bad capitalist states drive out good, as we see in South America. Greater profits, greater general discomfort.”

At this point, I was unwilling to continue, but my audience waited in silence and expectancy.

“Come on, let’s hear the worst,” Willa Mendanadum, the slender young mentatropist from Java, called down the table.

“Okay. The three concealed discomforts we have mentioned occasion much of the unhappiness suffered by terrestrial populations. They form the undercurrents behind the headlines. Where remedies are applied only to the headline troubles—capital punishment for murder, private insurance for accident, abortion for unwanted babies—they do little good. They merely increase the burdens of life.

“Why are they not thrown out and deeper causes attended to?

“The answer lies in Popular Subscription, our fourth impediment.”

“Now we’re getting to it,” said Willa. Someone hushed her.

“What it means, Popular Subscription?” asked Aktau Badawi.

“We are conditioned to subscribe to the myths of the age. We hardly question the adage that fine feathers make fine birds, or that young offenders should be shut up in prisons for a number of years until they are confirmed in misery and anger. When witchhunts were the thing, we believed in witches or, if we did not believe, we did not like to speak out, for fear of making ourselves silly or unpopular.

“That fear is real enough, as we see in the instances of rare individuals who dare to speak out against unscrupulous practices in giant pharmaceutical companies or national airlines. Their lives are rapidly made impossible.

“It is Popular Subscription that permits the three other mistaken conceptions we’ve mentioned to beggar our lives.”

“This is no new perception, by the way, Tom,” came the supercilious voice of John Homer Bateson. “The learned Samuel Johnson remarked long ago that the greatest part of mankind had no other reason for their opinions than that they were in fashion.”

I nodded in his direction. “The fifth of our bugbears is, simply, the prevalence of Haves and Have Nots—of the gulf between rich and poor. It has always existed on Earth. Perhaps it always will exist there. Now we have the new long-lived Megarich class, living behind its golden barricades.

“But here—why, on Mars we start anew! We’re all in the same boat. We have no money. We’re all dirt poor and must live at subsistence level. Rejoice that we have escaped from a deep-rooted evil—as deeply rooted as the diseases of which Mary Fangold has spoken.

“We six thousand Crusoes are cut adrift from these miseries—and other miseries you can probably think of. Our lives have been drastically simplified. We can simplify them still further by maintaining a forum here, wherein we shall endeavour to extirpate these errors of perception from our society.

“With a little team work, we can and we will build a perfect and just society. The scientists will do their work. As for the rest of us—why, we have nothing better to do!”