Champion of Mars (7 page)

That was down there. The lights of Martian Highway 1 were way below Jonah. His quad rattled up the sloping road, a pioneer trail, blasted a century back, a quick way out of the Marineris onto the Tharsis highlands. It was dangerous as hell, and Jonah’s grandma did not like him going up it. It twisted back and forward on itself, in places running through tunnels or into natural caverns rudely opened to the sky with nGel. The road dipped up and down the uncountable subsidiary valleys and peaks of the canyon wall as it worked its way up the switchback to Tharsis, the road edge sometimes folded safely in rock, other times dropping exhilaratingly to the canyon floor miles below.

It was Jonah’s idea of fun.

“How high are we up, Cybele?” he shouted into his mask. His brown skin was caked in red dust. The quad’s electric engine was quiet, but its knobbled tires made a racket on the loose rock. The trail wasn’t much used, now the main Tharsis road was open, and it had been left to crumble.

“You do not need to shout, Jonah,” came the machine’s reply. Her voice was warm. He liked that voice a lot. “I can hear you perfectly well. We are four kilometres from the valley floor.”

“How far to go?” He had to ask; there was no signal on his implant in this part of the canyon. There was enough room in the quad’s onboard system for the family AI, so he’d borrowed her for the day, it had seemed sensible to have some back-up. He’d copied her over and deactivated the original. Even up here on Mars, the laws banning AI-splitting and copying were in force.

Grandma Sue would be mad, but he needed the company, and the help, and Jonah was glad to spend time with the machine. She was an old model, a little slow and not very good at being human, but she never judged him or got angry, and she even flirted a little with him. He liked that.

“You are sixteen hundred metres from the canyon rim in terms of elevation. You still have seventy kilometres of road to traverse, however.”

It was a damn long way up that road! That was why he had set out so early, while it was still dark. Landfall was due late in the day, in the evening. He had twelve hours or so to get to the best vantage point, nearly two hundred kilometres of rough, switchy road to travel.

Ah, he was due an adventure. His homework could wait, and as they kept telling him at school, this was history in the making. If he was living through it, he should really see at least some of it rather than sitting in a windowless classroom listening to someone else describe it. It wouldn’t wash as an excuse, but it justified the jaunt to him.

He whooped as his quad slewed around a cone of scree. His grandma would not like the way he was driving, not one bit, but she worried too much, she’d been so protective since his mum and dad had died, suffocating Jonah with her concern. He wasn’t stupid. Life up here made people grow up fast. Grandma Sue smothered him because she loved him, and because she was sad, but it made him itchy mad. He chafed under it. He was proud of his mother and father. They were all pioneers here, life was dangerous. They’d died. That was that.

He was smart enough and old enough to know that this was his way of grieving, and that he took risks to prove to himself that he was still alive. Knowing that meant he was at least a little bit careful. He wasn’t going to go totally off the rails.

Just a little bit, maybe.

The road was twenty metres wide in most places, and provided he kept wallside, he was unlikely to come to any mischief if he did come off the quad. And he hardly ever came off his quad. He kept a firm eye on his radar map, which should give him a few seconds of warning should the road be blocked anywhere.

“Jonah, you really should return home. Your grandmother will be worried.”

“I left her a note, didn’t I?”

“I hardly think that will make her feel better.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong. Besides, I told her exactly where I am going.”

“She offered to take you with everyone else. The safe way.”

“Cybele, this is fun! Do you understand?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” she said, “yes, I do.”

And she must have been enjoying the ride too, because she shut up.

Half an hour later, they stopped for a break. Jonah took in the view, captured it on his implant. The sky was split into bars of pink, blue, and violet. The river was a braid of glittering strands, worming their way out of the Noctis Labyrinth to the west. Plantations of genegineered pines were laid out like chess squares around it. The highway was a hair-thin streak, the headlamps of cars candle flames crawling along it. Spurs of rock and outcrops on the canyon walls made the Valles a geometric puzzle of blacks and pinks. The opposite side was lost in the haze of Mars’ ever-present dust. The view was something else; not what he was going up for, but a great bonus. Best of all, the suns were coming up.

He told his implant to film. “Cybele, could you compensate for me? I don’t want any camera wobble on this.”

“Compensating,” said the AI.

The sun crept over the lip of the canyon, little more than a bloated star. He filmed it and panned his head round slowly, until he was facing away from it. In the sky opposite the sun, a pulsed twinkle flashed strongly as the mirror-sat twitched its reflectors into position. Jonah was particularly pleased with the lens flare, an effect he had the implant exaggerate. A beam of concentrated sunlight swept across the landscape like a sword stroke, bringing brief light and swift shadow. The mirror satellite oriented itself, focussing a slanting ray of sunshine back down the canyon. Jonah followed the light. It ended in a broad oval, glittering off the roofs and panels of Canyon City thirty kilometres away, turning the twin lakes bracketing the settlement into brilliant white coins.

It was hardly a sprawling metropolis, not like the places Jonah had seen in holos of Earth. “But it’s home,” he said, mimicking the tones of his teachers.

He grinned. Today he felt happy. The last few years had been rough, but he was coming into himself, beginning to feel comfortable in his skin. He was growing up. It was hard to deny.

He shut the camera in his head off.

Up here, they were back in signal, but he ignored the multiple messages from his grandmother, sending her one back saying he’d be back in the morning, and not to worry.

No chance of that,
he thought.

She wouldn’t be happy about this trip. Neither would the city marshal, but what was the point of one-man shelters if you never got to use them? He was packing it all into this trip – dangerous ride
and
overnight bivouac – because he was going to be grounded for, like,
years
when he got back down.

He ate, taking quick little bites in between breaths of air from his mask. The air was so thin he felt like there was nothing going into his lungs, no matter how hard he sucked it in, and the dearth of oxygen made his head giddy and filled his vision with flashing spots. Down there, in the Valles, in the caves and buildings of Canyon City, there was just about enough oxygen, and both pressure and O-content struggled up a little higher every year. But up on the very lip of the wide open spaces of Mars, the TF programme had made so little difference yet as to be negligible.

“I wish I didn’t have to wear this stupid mask,” he said.

“In about a hundred years time, you will not have to,” said Cybele.

“That’s not much use to me now.” He scratched around the seal where grit had gathered. His face sweated under it, even though it was freezing cold. His finger came away red with dust.

“I wonder if it will be as pretty, the sunrise, when there’s hundreds of mirror-sats up there?” he said.

“I can show you, if you like.”

“No thanks, Cybele. I’ve seen the simulations. They’ll be wrong anyway.” At that time there were only five mirror-sats redirecting the sun’s energy onto the red planet: one over Canyon City, the others focussed on the poles. He’d seen pictures from when they first started up, sky-high plumes of carbon dioxide erupting from the ice caps where the light hit. A sea was already forming near the south pole, in Hellas Planitia, the big crater there. Oceans would follow. He wanted to go and see that, and he would, when he was older. Too far for his quad, that was for sure.

He finished his food. “Okay, we better be on our way, or we’re going to miss it,” he said.

He opened a pannier on the back of the quad and pulled out his radiation gear, a flimsy all-in-one made to go over his clothes. He pulled it on and drew up the hood. Cosmic ray dosage wouldn’t be too high on a two-day trip, but it’d keep Grandma Sue happy.

Or at least, a little bit less mad.

He pulled on his parka and gloves over the top of it, bulky with superinsulating foams, and activated the heating units built into them.

“I’m freezing my arse off up here,” he grumbled.

“No one made you come,” said Cybele, which made Jonah laugh.

He climbed onto the quad and drove on, wheels kicking dust up behind him as he went.

Four and a half hours later, Jonah made it up to the end of the road. A final, vicious switchback brought him up and over the lip of the canyon. It wasn’t obvious at first, as the Valles’ edges were so ragged as to present no discernible rim, but Cybele told him they were out.

The road degenerated into a dozen different tracks, heading in all directions. Jonah consulted the map in his implant. He located the hill he’d chosen as his vantage point on the horizon, and headed off toward it.

He crested the hill in good time, weary and aching from the ride. His muscles were leaden, and his bones felt like they were still vibrating. It was a fantastic feeling.

There was a star up there, getting brighter. A ferry. He’d chosen a good spot. Twenty kilometres away were the buildings of the new landing field, a spur of the new Tharsis road leading to it. The road was much wider than it needed to be, he thought, but Cybele had told him that Marsform were planning ahead. She’d showed him a projection of Martian population growth over the next century. It scared him a little. He could not visualise so many people here in his lifetime.

He set up his shelter and binoculars. He talked to Cybele as he worked; he’d set up a holograph of the AI, much better than talking to thin air. Cybele’s holo looked out over the plains, a visual marker for Jonah so he’d know what the AI was peering at through satellite eyes or over the Martian Grid. A necessary illusion.

By the time he’d finished setting up his modest camp, two other stars shone in the wake of the first, forming a line. The first glowed brilliant white, flickering a little as it passed through the thin Martian atmosphere.

Jonah settled down, ate a meal of self-heating stew, and wrapped a thermal blanket around himself. He pressed his face up to the viewfinder of the binoculars, had them magnify the spaceport. He homed in on the new immigration building, a huge thing, it seemed to him, again way in excess of the planet’s needs.

Current needs,
he reminded himself.

They were well in signal here – the port had an array of dishes and transmitters, and part of its sprawling complex was dedicated to boosting on-planet Grid access. His binoculars pointed out a bunch of stuff on enhanced reality they thought he might be interested in. It was all tub-thumping, municipal public relations nonsense. His grandma had come here from Earth, and she’d told him what enhanced reality was like there: tailored adverts, viral marketing that knew your name and shoe size, endless, unwanted solicitation. Peaceful without it, she said, here on Mars.

He sighed. It wasn’t going to be that way for very long.

He ran the binoculars over the vehicles in the car park. Ownership or rental details sprang up from each. His grandmother’s wasn’t there yet, but more were arriving with every minute.

“Cybele, what is this place going to be like?” he said suddenly.

“It is going to change,” said the AI, gently.

He took his eyes from the binoculars and looked over the Tharsis plateau around his hill. Endless, red dust, as fine as powder paint, the rocks black against it. The world was so quiet, the wind whispering sadly, in mourning for a world long gone.

“It was not always like this, Jonah,” said Cybele. “Once Mars had life. Perhaps we are only seeing it returned to how it should be.”

“Do you know what Pastor Frank says?”

“I do not know what Pastor Frank says,” said Cybele pleasantly. “Please tell me.”

“Get this, he says that the existence of Mars and Venus are clear indications of the existence of God.”

“Does he now?” said Cybele, who had no strong feelings on religion one way or another.

“Yeah, he says it’s like God gave Man stepping stones out into the universe. He gave us Earth, like,” he laughed. “You’ll like this, like Earth is a nursery, right, but our parents went away, and left the door open and a car waiting outside so we could follow. He says it is hard to imagine a better pair of planets for making into other Earths. But you know what Pastor Frank’s like, he sees the face of Jesus in his breakfast eggs.”

“Venus will not be transformed for some time,” said Cybele.

“It will be, though, won’t it? All of them will be, I expect.” He picked up a stone, held it between forefinger and thumb. “Everything’s changing.”

“All history is a succession of changes,” said Cybele.

“Like, this rock, right? It’s probably never been touched by a human being.”

“That is the balance of probability,” said Cybele.

“So, yeah, I might be the first human being ever to hold this. But –” He looked at it hard, it was just a black small stone. Basalt. Most of the rock here was. “I won’t be the last.” He tossed it down the hill, where it lost itself in a crowd of its fellows.

The air by the horizon was yellow-pink but if one lay back and looked up, the sky was bluish, and it grew a little bluer every year. And all around his camp, if he looked hard enough, there were signs of change; stubborn patches of fruticose lichen, genes hardened against the cold, cosmic radiation and the intense dryness. All these things conspired to kill it, but it was there nevertheless, bearding the stone, tiny soldiers besieging the planet. Jonah tried to imagine the cold red plains as grassland, or jungle, like he’d seen on holos from Earth. They’d re-engineered so much of the environment down there after the eco-collapse. To do the same here should be easy, once the TF got past a certain point.