Finches of Mars Read online

  Barrin protested. The Terrier insisted.

  Swivelling the wheelchair, Barrin turned to face the audience. He spoke, with a tremor in his voice.

  ‘I know this family on Tharsis. The partness’ name is Sheea. He’s Phipp. Sheea has borne a living child. A living child! We rejoice at this news.’

  The response of the audience was mixed. Many were simply pleased. A few, better informed, remained sceptical.

  Barrin continued.

  ‘Some of you academics may know this but thousands of ordinary people have been kept in ignorance. But I must now state plainly that until this child of Sheea’s arrived alive, no woman on Tharsis has ever borne a living child. Baby bodies were born broken, distorted, dead …’

  He paused to choke back tears. ‘Yes, broken, dead, some with no legs, some with eggshell skulls, one of them with no brain at all …

  ‘The President has said I should tell you this. So far, only eighty-five babies have been born in the West tower. And all were stillborn.’

  There were some aghast cries from the audience at his words.

  ‘Yes, still-born. Eighty-five. Malformed, as I’ve said. The grief of it … impossible to describe.’

  A woman in the audience shouted, ‘How did this happen? How could it happen?’

  Barrin could not go on. Tibbett took over, to continue in a slightly steadier voice. ‘The number of these miscarriages has tailed off, these last two years—simply because Tharsis women refuse to become pregnant, knowing, fearing, what the outcome will almost inevitably be.

  ‘Sheea is—we all believe—incredibly fortunate. Her child lives.

  ‘He was born only a couple of hours back. Sadly, he is deformed and is not well. We will keep this information from the public.

  ‘But the great thing is we have a living Martian child at last!’

  Most of the audience rose and clapped. Then the questions began. Eighty-five stillbirths! How could it be?

  * Here meaning mainly custodian of all wills and ordinances.

  6

  Mangalian Among the Ladybirds

  A small courtyard behind one of the buildings of the Sorbonne in Paris contained an oak bench and table. The news of the birth had not yet reached Paris. Mangalian, unaware of the momentous news, was sitting relaxing on a bench. He had been guest lecturing to the Earth Sciences students on the colonisation so far, and the merits of going to live in what he had described as ‘the new old world’ of Mars. After lunch, a debate had been held with Mangalian and Adrien Amboise on one side—for the necessity of the Martian venture—and a group of German and Chinese scientists on the other.

  Sunshine bathed the courtyard with mellow light and warmth. In the cracks between the flagstones with which the courtyard was paved, small weeds had sprung up. In one of the cracks near Mangalian grew a little yellow flower with tiny spiked petals and a fuzzy rich heart the size of a baby’s fingernail.

  Mangalian was idly watching a ladybird. It crawled over the leaves of the weed to the flagstone, where it made haste to walk to the distant stalk of another weed. On reaching the stalk, the insect climbed it, opened its wing case, and flew away.

  He wondered what impulse governed it. Could it feel contentment or discontent? On what did it feed? How would it die? He had not studied such matters, although he imagined the insects went from eggs to larvae to the adult form he had been watching. What could it feel like to undergo such a transformation? Would humanity undergo as dramatic a transformation on Mars? What might happen to Rosemary?—Rosemary who had taken flight just like the ladybird.

  He realised at that point—as a man was approaching from the nearby building—that his ladybird had no spots on its wing-case. He had assumed that all ladybirds had spots. Possibly this was a new evolutionary variety, adapting to the environs of Paris.

  The man approaching stood before Mangalian, smiling. This was Adrien Amboise, Professor of Medical Studies at the Sorbonne. Amboise was about forty-five, trim and sporting a small moustache. He wore a gown. His father had worked at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, where he had fallen in love with and married in old-fashioned style the elegant German woman whose researches led to the later discovery of the normon.

  Mangalian admired both Adrien’s father and his intellectually formidable mother. And, normally, would delight in conversation with Adrien. However, at the moment, he wanted only an hour’s peace, but he rose and the men shook hands. ‘I apologise for interrupting your reverie.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I was only thinking about ladybirds.’

  Amboise looked confused. After a slight pause, he said, ‘I too am an admirer of the ladies.’

  ‘What can I do for you? Do you wish to apply to me for a life on Mars?’ Mangalian was speaking jokingly, after relaxing in the sun and not feeling avid for conversation. He had been thinking of Rosemary Cavendish, regretting that he had been so chaste where she was concerned. But there had been a kind of hauteur in her manner. Well, all that was but a dream … Already, it was five years since Rosemary had left Earth for her Tharsis occupation.

  ‘Sadly, monsieur, the idea of living on Mars is a bad dream, so I have come to believe.’ Adrien Amboise endeavoured to show regret. He stood there poised and graceful, in a suit, in the sun, smiling politely as he gazed at Mangalian, who had showed no inclination to get up from his chair. ‘I would support you in a debate, but that is not for me. Here on Earth, continual disturbance, distraction, disaster … but on Mars—what? Continual boredom … And the unresolved stillbirth problem …’

  ‘Yet to be on that silent planet, Adrien … Isn’t that a wonderful success? Applied science … It’s a dream that has been pondered for some centuries and is now more than just a dream—a waking dream which–’

  ‘Oh, of course for over two centuries there have been stories—as there have been ghost stories—what you may call the science fiction—but they are made for superficial adventure, as the often uninspired writing indicates–’

  ‘Ah, so you are not only a medico but a critic of literature!’ Mangalian, with a curl of his lip, stared into the distance as he spoke.

  ‘No, no, no, but such tales had no true deliberation, only conveying thrills of conquest or doom. A shallow fiction …’

  Mangalian would not let such a sweeping generalisation pass. ‘Well, sir, as a mere boy on San Salvador, I happened on a story by a Mr Wells. Later in life, I heard he was celebrated and respected, although he wrote of things that did not exist in reality. This particular book that caught my fancy was called The War of the Worlds, although I found it was rather “The War against Woking”, of which I had never heard until then. That story denigrates mankind. It is a chastisement, a real fiction, an analogy. There is no hero—or if there is a hero, then it is a bacillus.’

  Amboise stared up at the sky, as if in the hope that his impatience might steam off to the troposphere. ‘But H.G. Wells was an exception. A chastisement, as you put it. It does not prove the rule. Immediately after Mr Wells’s book appeared, an American journalist wrote a sequel in which a fleet of ships led by a Professor Edison went to Mars and knocked—what is your phrase?—yes, knocked hell from them … You see, no morality, just violence. The irony of Wells is lost amid all the aggression.’

  Mangalian did not answer, merely sighing. Silence fell.

  Amboise feared he had offended the visitor.

  ‘I do not object to fantasy, please understand me. Indeed, in my boyhood I read a story called The Sword of Rhiannon, set on an imaginary Mars. It was a romance pure and simple, aiming only at a pretty tale. In my memory the simple prose held no subordinate clauses, not one. I am no snob. I loved that story.’

  Mangalian became stony-faced. ‘Have you another subject in mind to discuss?’

  7

  The Care of a Child

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Amboise. He thrust his hands into his trouser pocke
ts, indicating that he was only partially regretful for his remarks. ‘I wished to make the point that any idea of mankind—including the ladies of whom you and I are so fond—actually living on this Planet Rouge is meretricious. Not only will humanity there slowly die out, but there is a more serious aspect.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I may phrase it briefly,’ said Amboise. ‘You UU people, if I may so call you, m’sieu, have a selection procedure whereby intelligent and balanced personalities are accepted to fly away and be lost to this world—which badly requires them. We need precisely such people here, m’sieu. There is a shortage of the grave and the good.’

  A tabby cat jumped off the nearby wall. It sat upright, front paws together, watching the two men as if sitting in judgement upon them.

  ‘I see your point,’ said Mangalian, ‘but the universities of Bordeaux and Toulouse evidently do not, since they have already joined the UU.’

  Amboise swept away both Bordeaux and Toulouse with a gesture of his hand. ‘We require those fine personalities here because we need hope in the world. Such personalities represent a saner future. No more missile systems but systems of civilised living. Such is my hope.’

  ‘Hope? But it is hope that overcomes all difficulties and takes us to Mars. The colony has now been working for—what? Almost ten years. No living child born as yet, malheureusement, but … You are hoping against hope because you can see this world of ours, this worn old world, is still without sanity or balance, despite all the wise and well-intentioned personalities there have ever been, of both sexes, over the centuries.’

  Amboise sighed. ‘Yes, and also those millions who live quiet lives. Who perform minor good works for the unfortunate—the feeding of cripples, let’s say, the reading of stories to illiterates—in their squares and streets and possibly homes. But perhaps they did not disturb themselves with hope and had to live for the day.’

  ‘That’s a waste of resources, sir. A vegetable existence. It’s better to be pessimistic, to worry about the world, to reach out for a new thing, a new chance, to be never satisfied.’ Mangalian paused, remembering. So he had let Rosemary go; she was now but a name. ‘I grew up among brothers and sisters. We were happy but mischievous. We regretted we lived confined to such a small island as San Salvador. Excellent swimmers, yes, but poor thinkers. Perhaps that may be what prompts me as an adult to regret we live on such a small planet.’

  ‘… and Mars is even smaller,’ said Amboise, smiling falsely.

  ‘You’ll find that its land area is the equal in extent to Earth’s.’

  With his hands in his pockets, Amboise strolled about in a circle, thinking, his shadow forming a confused pattern at his feet. The cat moved cautiously away from him. ‘We are not getting far, Mr Mangalian. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” My hope is also for tomorrow, that you can retain your useful scheme of UU, but you do not send into exile people who are our “hope for tomorrow”.’

  Impatiently, Mangalian said, ‘There is a conflict of hope. You do not, I believe, hope at all. You fear. If I agree with that quote from what’s-his-name, I do truly hope for tomorrow, hope for, strive for, a new and better existence on our neighbouring world.’

  Amboise gave a strained laugh. ‘As a keen horseman, I have no wish to be ever on Mars. I understand that the planet suffers from permanent grass shortage.’

  Mangalian shrugged. ‘Maybe, in time, our descendants will discover existences far beyond the modest world of Mars. Human beings will always struggle for greater understanding. We know conditions will be harsh initially, but we shall triumph.’

  ‘Conditions will not be harsh. They will be impossible.’

  ‘You see, you have no hope! In any case, I cannot halt what already has momentum beyond my control. You should voice your fears elsewhere. Come to a UU meeting. I must go. I have another appointment.’

  He nodded curtly to the Professor of Medical Studies, rose, and walked out of the courtyard. The cat followed him as far as the gate.

  An armed guard, Yat, awaited him outside the premises. He cared for Mangalian as if he were his child.

  And Mangalian, when he was a small boy, long before he was big enough to think of chasing women, had certainly loved his father.

  San Salvador was not a large island. It grew sugar cane. Mangalian’s father had been a sharecropper—cast off by his employers without pension as was the custom at the age of sixty. He walked with the aid of a staff taller than himself, painted white. He walked slowly, so that his son could easily keep up with him.

  His father liked to stroll by the sea. They would walk along the front, past the row of thatched-roof shops until they came to the last shop, a small café.

  There they sat, under a large sun umbrella. Father would order Coke. Sometimes they would talk. Father liked to spout old country sayings. ‘Just because you’re an idiot don’t mean to say you’re sillier than me.’ ‘You can be ready for anything, but that don’t say you ain’t good for nothin’.’

  Father kept a hold of his staff as they listened to the screeching of the gulls and watched the waves break on the shore.

  Mangalian went barefoot into the little saloon to buy a second bottle of Coke. A radio perched on a shelf behind the bar was giving out news in a tinny voice.

  ‘Capitalist astronomers in Tampa, Florida, just now claimed that we’ve got company. We are in what they call a binary system, with a dwarf star out beyond the Oort Cloud. Meanwhile, “Baby-Face” Morte was captured by police last night, about to set off for Cuba. Charged with the murder of the dancer, Francesca Pagnesa.’

  Clutching the Coke bottle, Mangalian went out to his father.

  ‘Pop, what’s a binary system?’

  ‘Son, that just means there’s two of whatever. Fact is, the more you learn, the more you find you don’t know.’

  The gulls still sailed and screeched overhead, as if in mockery.

  His son looked down at the sand between his bare toes. Later, as an adult, Mangalian liked to say that this was the moment when he decided he must get off the island, put on shoes, and start learning about astronomy and many other things with which the capitalist world seemed stocked.

  So he liked to say. He could even recall the taste of the Coke. But memory was uncertain—although the anecdote made a good tale when, much later, he was being interviewed at one grand meeting or another.

  BABY BOOM ON RED PLANET

  NO WATER—BUT CHRISTENING NOW DUE

  ‘A MIRACLE’ SAYS MARVELLING MOTHER

  IT’S A BOY! EVEN BETTER: IT’S ALIVE

  Such were some of the headlines in squealers and shriekers all round the world, driving out the exciting news that nine hundred intending immigrants from Africa had been shot dead within Italian waters, off the coast of Catanzaro.

  Other news began to re-emerge, but Mars still appeared in some headlines.

  KUWAIT ON FIRE—SEGREGATION RIOTS TO BLAME

  ITALIAN PRESIDENT’S PARTNESS POISONED

  TWENTY UN TROOPS KILLED IN KALMYTSKAYA

  THARSIS CELEBRATES NEW BABY

  In fact there was little celebration in the Tharsis settlement, as the Terrier found when he spoke on the shrieker. A small Chinese delegation came to offer felicitations to the West tower. Phipp officiated at the gate in a suppressed rage. Local people, aware that Sheea had taken another lover and wishing to tease, or not knowing he’d quarrelled with Sheea, kept congratulating him. But the amazing baby had been sired by someone unknown.

  Sheea still would not give the name of her lover, and was in a weakened state, needing nursing. Her baby lay by her side. It was of a yellowy colour and malformed. Oxygen was being fed to it through a Perspex mask.

  ‘But how is Dolores herself?’ the Terrier asked.

  Twenty minutes was consumed in getting word to Mars, with
another twenty minutes for a response.

  ‘She is in a somewhat depressed state, but being brave. The child is still alive. But unconscious.’ Such was the response from a nurse who then severed communication.

  Tibbett found he needed a strong drink.

  Daze and Piggy, two of Sheea’s three Earth-born children, sat anxiously near their mother’s bed, speaking—when they spoke—in whispers. Squirrel, Sheea’s senior child, was nowhere to be seen.

  As Phipp grudgingly let in the Chinese delegation, one of the men stared curiously at him. Ill-tempered as he was, Phipp challenged the man.

  ‘What are you staring at me for?’

  ‘No, I don’t stare,’ was the reply. ‘You are to be congratulated to have a living child born here. Why you are not pleased?’

  For answer, Phipp seized the man by the throat and shook him.

  Uproar broke out. Guards burst in. The Chinese punched Phipp.

  Phipp was dragged away, kicking savagely. The guards pushed him into a side chamber. ‘What the hell are you thinking about, you fool? You have disgraced us. The Chinese are—or were—our friends.’

  ‘Look, some bastick got up my partness. Why not that guy—giving me that gloating stare?’

  ‘You’re psychotic. Why should some Chinese guy sneak into her bed? And you don’t own Sheea. We don’t do such things here. It’s psychoanalysis for you. And you’ve lost your job.’

  The news of this incident circulated fast. No one was happier to hear that Phipp would be confined than was his son Squirrel. Still, Squirrel could not bring himself to face his mother. Just a half hour of dear wicked pleasure and he was disgraced for ever—yes, disgraced, even if his act had produced the first living Martian baby …

  He could never tell anyone about that.

  8

  The Death of a Hero

  Barnard and Lulan escorted Barrin by ambulance to St Thomas’s Hospital in the heart of London. He had collapsed just as the session ended. The hospital buildings were surrounded by solid concrete blocks, one storey high. Armed men looked out from the rooftops. Suicide-bombers had attacked the hospital almost from the moment Barrin had arrived, indifferent to any other casualties.