Finches of Mars (11 page)

20

A Troubled Exwo

Aymee and Rooy were taking their traditional stroll over the eternal twilights close to the settlement. The silence pleased them. Only now and again did something occur to them as they walked. Aymee was remarking with a chuckle, ‘Think of all the industry and machinery it took to land us here. And you could say we're back in a pastoral setting!'

He clasped her arm to halt her.

Their eyes had adjusted to the near-dark; they clearly saw the figure lying sprawled ahead of them. They were astonished. They hurried over to it.

The figure wore an air mask. As Aymee was about to take the man's pulse, the figure rolled over and said weakly, ‘Dying … my Maker. Following our Saviour.' He began to choke, his air supply failing.

Rooy pulled off his own mask, and alternated holding it to the other man's face then his own, so that they could take turns having access to oxygen. The man groaned. Struggling, he managed the words, ‘Too late.'

‘Let's get him on our shoulders and drag him home.' As Rooy was speaking, he heaved the man more or less upright. Aymee flung one of his dangling arms over her shoulder, and together they got him into a more-or-less vertical position.

He was half-walking, knees knocking together, mainly being dragged. He began to sob. They heard him crying, gulping down his sobs. ‘I was following Jesus …' he managed to say. ‘Jesus ahead. Me—me following …'

They got him to the West tower gate, rang for re-admittance. Rooy was panting.

Phipp opened up, to stare in surprise at the trio. He looked more closely at the figure Rooy was propping up.

‘He's one of those Exwos,' he said.

‘Just get through the test, will you?' said Aymee. ‘We need a doctor. This man almost died.'

The three got themselves into the elevator. It carried them to the little emergency ward on the second floor. The man groaned when they stripped off most of his clothes and put him on a bed; an air mask was clamped over his head. Rooy was given an improvised armchair and a pipe of oxygen.

As soon as Aymee was satisfied that both men were being cared for, she nodded farewell to her partner and began to hurry to her suite on the second floor.

‘Hang on, I'm not dead yet,' said Rooy, heaving himself up. He caught Aymee's hand. She turned a relieved face to him. They kissed each other.

Later, Rooy took the elevator down into the depths, where he worked among the E&M (Electronics and Machines) which kept the tower functional.

His first task on this day was to incinerate a malformed baby corpse—and keep quiet about it.

On Aymee's door was a small notice saying,

TELL ME YOUR TROUBLES AYMEE CLINIC

She was researching early files on the truck Vooky had discovered when there was a tap on her door.

A large man in overalls was waiting nervously to speak to her. Short hair stood stiffly on his head. He had an artificial pearl dangling from his left ear. Aymee led him into her tiny inner sanctum, where she offered him a cup of coffee. He relaxed somewhat.

‘I was given to understand you was a psychotherapist, miss. Is that so? And that you saved me, out on the Shield.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't recognise you. You were a tad worse for wear. You have made a rapid recovery.'

‘Providence, ma'am. You and your partner were sent to rescue me. The Lord did not wish me to die. He still has work for me to do.'

Aymee looked puzzled. ‘What lord to you mean? Not the Director?'

‘The Lord God, ma'am. The Lord who rules over us all.'

She was vexed.

‘Let me have your name first of all.'

‘Oh, I'm Herb, miss.' He spoke, she thought, with some pride.

She clicked it into her squealer. ‘You can call me Aymee.'

Ignoring the suggestion, Herb said, ‘I'm an Exwo, miss. Or I was. The Lord sent me here to Mars to do odd jobs.'

Aymee knew well enough what an Exwo was. To relieve the high rate of unemployment on Earth, or at least to appear to relieve it, and to make economically useless people useful on Tharsis, a number of unemployed men had been sent out from Earth. The order which had made this possible proved unpopular locally. All other ‘settlers' on Mars were strictly volunteers, who regarded the Exwos as being of low mental calibre. But they had, in their way, been as deliberately selected as any.

‘This is too much like Britain in the past sending criminals to Australia,' Mangalian had said.

Flights to Mars had by this time become commonplace. Yet somehow an accident had occurred on a space plane used to transport five hundred ‘ex-workers'. All but three men had died en route and two of those had died after landing. The shipyard on Luna had been nationalised and the accident had been hushed up, so that other potential travellers were not deterred from making the journey.

Herb viewed her steadily over the rim of his mug as she thought.

‘So, Herb, you are the only Exwo who made it here … I guess you have not yet entirely taken to the experience?' Aymee said, keeping sarcasm from her voice.

‘The Lord had reason to spare me.'

‘And to have all the other men die?'

He barely shrugged. ‘The Lord moves in a mysterious way.'

She was annoyed by this smugness. ‘My notice invites you to tell me your troubles, so I gather that this Lord of yours needs some help occasionally.'

‘I am called to return to Earth.'

She told him that that could not be done. Returns to Earth were for freight, and to reuse the carriers. While the Exwo contracts were different to those of the volunteers, they could not return home before their allocated time—there were no suitable ships.

He appeared unperturbed. ‘There's a man called Barrin back on Earth,' Herb said. ‘How did he get back there? And he's coming back here again, I hear. Or supposed to be. So why not others?'

‘Barrin was special—and celebrated—and the journey to Earth made him gravely ill. He died before he could return here.'

Herb paid no attention to this remark. He went into a story about how his family owned a boathouse on the River Nene. His family had been makers of small boats for years. ‘Willows and mud and river water—that's what we been used to.' But there had been a fire in which all was lost. His father had lost his life, trying to put out the blaze; when they came to claim the insurance, the courts ruled that Herb's father had committed suicide. His father had not been religious.

‘Everything's against you in life, miss.'

‘We may sometimes say that here on Tharsis, in the light of a good deal of tangible evidence, because what we call circumstances appear to be against us. But it's an attitude we hope to overcome. Talking of a god is not going to help. We need to look after ourselves.'

‘Sorry, miss—everything
is
against you, whatever you may claim, when you don't even have a priest here.'

Aymee took a moment to consider whether to refute Herb's claim. ‘There are many people who become entrenched in an attitude which will prove unhelpful, barring them perhaps from the achievement of a more resilient and consequently happier life. All of us at one time or another may feel that things are against us. But to continue to consider ourselves as being perennially the victims of adversity is to dig ourselves a trench from which we may ultimately find ourselves unable to escape. In other words, it is not this rather fictional “everything” that sinks us: it is our own perversity.'

Herb hunched his shoulders and shrugged his hands.

‘You use all them big words. But they don't worry me. I'm not such a fool as I look. The Lord is my shepherd.'

‘I was hoping to help. Life is hard here, but rewarding. And you're not a sheep.'

‘Jesus!' he exclaimed, slapping his forehead. ‘Look, miss, there's no rivers here on Mars, is there? How can you bear a place without rivers? I'm falling sick. I know it. I feel it in me bones. The Lord needs me to get back to Earth. Possibly start up my old trade again. By a river, okay?'

‘I'm afraid there are laws, Herb. An Exwo may not return to Earth for eight years, Earth years. You'll have to try and make the best of things. You might find you even enjoy it here. I do not wish to be rude, but you must forget all this troublesome business about God.'

‘It's not fair. I seen them used supply rockets lying about near to here in the desert. Can't we send me home in one of those?'

‘We have no way of launching used supply rockets. I'm afraid you will have to adjust to our way of life here. Come and talk to me again in a month, and we'll see how you get on.'

For the first time, Herb showed impatience. ‘God gives me powers others do not have, prophetic powers, for instance. One day, strange people with strange voices will land here and show powers you never dreamed of. I need to leave before then.' He gave a curt little bow and left, slamming Aymee's door behind him.

All these brief human lives were being lived out as part of the great drama of the century, the arrival of groups of people on another world, the long-dreamed-of world of Mars. Even the knowledge that humanity lived in a binary system did not greatly alter matters.

The burly man with an artificial pearl in his left ear was fortunate. All he wanted was to go home. Aymee and Rooy talked the conversation over. Rooy laughed. ‘Cheeky blighter! All his talk about God was to scare you into getting him back to Earth!'

‘What about these aliens he claims will arrive?'

‘Oh, the idiot was only trying to frighten you.' He hugged her to him.

When Herb had removed himself from Aymee's office, Aymee had sat staring into space, remembering unbidden a time on earth when her parents had taken her from the West for a holiday in Rajasthan. They had stayed by a tributary of the River Karai. There, she and her little sister had had their fill of ‘willows and mud and river water', as Herb had put it.

Oh yes, and the flowers there, flowers on the bank, flowers of a deep reddish gold, tiny forests of them. And the butterflies.

Ah, those butterflies …

But it was useless to be nostalgic. There was this newly discovered hydrologists' truck to be hauled up to the towers.

21

Images of the Past

The Brighteners were at risk of becoming less and less cheerful. The topic of childbirth was avoided, but only replaced with complaints about other bodily functions failing.

‘We all have to put up with various aches and pains,' Noel said. ‘We know that you men all suffered from constipation and testicular pain for a long while after your journeys here.'

Ooma added in her deep husky voice, ‘Also, Noel, some of us ladies have been suffering from what we know as “dim-eye”, simply because the sunlight is rather attenuated. The retina tends to drop into sleep mode.'

‘Quite so. Thank you, Ooma,' said Noel kindly. ‘In fact—I hate to tell you this—it is possible we are developing new aches, advanced cateracts, for instance, individual to Mars. Mind-clutter, too. That thing we christened SNA—Suppressed Nostalgia Affliction. Many of us suffer from a kind of mental conflict, part of us wanting to remember a peaceful scene from our childhood on Earth, or perhaps our first love affair, and so on.

‘And on the other hand, wishing not to remember—something delightful, something hateful, an aberrant form of home-sickness. Doesn't matter, not to SNA—because it simply will not help us here on Tharsis, where we have determined to live out our destiny.'

Ooma mentioned something about her predecessor's poem, but it was Aymee who interrupted. ‘Surely there is something—well, if not healing, then at least soothing, regarding the past. About an hour ago, I was remembering a river in Rajasthan with beautiful flowers on its banks. That did me no harm.'

‘But if you pined for it?' Noel said.

‘Well, it was poignant, admittedly. But a five-minute pine should not hurt anyone.' She laughed, as did several others round the table.

Daark spoke later, bringing up the one hope for the problem of the stillbirths—that it might fade out as physiologies adjusted to the lighter Martian gravity. ‘An evolutionary change, you might call it. But evolutionary changes often happen surprisingly rapidly.' An instance Daark gave was how soon the tusks of African elephants had shrunk in response to poachers killing them for their ivory.

He changed the topic, clearly uncomfortable speaking about it for long. ‘Another notion just mentioned we might use to our general benefit. No reason why Earth memories should atrophy. Let's have a series of sessions of formal reminiscences of past incidents in our lives on Earth. Record them. I left behind a wife and children, which I feel bad about. Such sessions could be curative. Everyone allowed just—oh, I don't know, let's say fifteen minutes. We don't want life stories.'

There was general agreement that Daark's suggestion was a good one.

‘Those lovely flowers of yours,' said Thirn, overcoming her shyness to address Aymee. ‘They may not be on that river bank any more, sad to say.'

Tad, who was a night-soil supervisor, continued, ‘In memory, those flowers did you no harm. But you must know that after the recent Indi-Rajasthan disturbances, when so many homes and lives were wantonly destroyed, your riverbank flowers are probably no more. Obvious grounds for SNA, in my book.'

‘Whatever has happened since, my memory remains a happy one.' said Aymee. Yet inwardly, knowing the district had been so stricken, she was less sure than she pretended.

Someone asked Noel, ‘How about looking forward? Is that as bad as looking back?'

‘Even worse, I'd guess,' said Noel, amid a few chuckles round the table.

The old derelict surveyors' truck was dragged into the open space in front of the six towers. There was some puzzled interest in the recording about the ‘Bride of Christ'. A service of a kind was held, to which all were invited, and the names of the two surveyors evoked.

This was used as an excuse to resume communication with all the other towers. After Phipp's incident with the Chinese, colonists in the other towers had been more aloof. Nearly a year later, they still seldom initiated conversation with the West. Now, a conference was called, in a room dedicated to inter-tower video communications. It moved almost immediately from the topic of the surveyors to that which was preying on every mind.

Russ-East spoke straightforwardly of the failure to produce living babies. ‘In fact, for two months all sexual intercourse was forbidden here. As a result of demonstrations, we had to allow intercourse again, but strict contraceptive measures are now in force. We realise this does not solve this terrible issue. Please keep in touch.'

The Singa-Thai tower was more cautious. ‘We admit sadly we have only stillbirths to report so far. We have been cautious regarding talk of this matter, believing that we had here some kind of viral disease. Our gynaecologists are still investigating the problem. If you have definite results, stay in touch. We are pleased to speak with you on this painful subject.'

The Scand tower admitted that fifty-nine babies had been delivered. All badly malformed, all dying within five minutes of birth. Their gynaecologists believed this unanticipated disaster to be caused by the mothers being unaccustomed to lighter gravity. They had little hope for future normalisation. They suggested that if only one male and one female child could survive to maturity, they would mate and produce a perfectly normal series of children, or by then—as they put it—wombs would have acclimatised. But such was only speculation.

The Sud-Am tower said that they were too shocked to discuss the matter. They had now reverted to religion and prayer, seeing religion as the one hope for survival. A woman called Sue Souto spoke of the power of prayer, walking to and fro in a nervous way, in a kind of greenhouse.

‘God bless us all in this awful world,' she said in conclusion.

As Sud-Am cut off, Daze, watching from Sheea's knee, squealed, ‘That was a birdie in there, mummy. I heard it!'

‘Of course it wasn't,' said her mother. ‘It was just something in the camera, squeaking.'

Daze shook her little fists in emphasis. ‘I know it was a birdie. I was born on Earth, where lots of birds are everywhere.'

It was Ooma who first spoke up for the girl, and then others in the audience agreed they too had heard the chirp of a bird.

‘If that is the case,' said Noel, ‘it's another serious breach of our UU agreement. “No Pets”, that's the rule we established.'

One of the men remarked that it might be a comfort for a pregnant woman to have a bird or a cat for company by her bed. Women were like that, whatever the rules.

A young brightly painted woman from Records said, ‘You men, you don't know what we go through!'

But she was told this was a sexist remark, not encouraged within the confines of the settlement.

Noel gave an order to the compoutat for all top medical staff not already present to join the conference. ‘There's another guideline we should observe—not to interfere with the activities of another tower unless invited.'

To her audience she said, ‘We have to face realities. We are good at facing realities. You might say we came to Mars to face realities. Well, here's a real reality for us. We must focus on the facts or we'll never solve the problem. We are not alone in this catastrophe. New-born babies cannot live on Tharsis. That's the truth of it. At present at least.

‘Our sad little corpses are preserved in the mortuary or outside. We will issue a thorough medical report on the matter as soon as possible. And of course—I must remind you—you are not allowed in the mortuary.'

A young woman called Tuot said, ‘I am pregnant. I think I am prepared to face the facts but I would like to be clear about what the facts really are.'

Even as she spoke, even as the man sitting next to her reached for and held her hand, three doctors spoke together.

They addressed the company, admitting there was as yet no cure for the infant deaths in sight.

‘Dear Tuot,' one of them said, ‘we shall do everything we can for you. Let's have a chat and an examination after the meeting.'

‘Me too, please,' said another young woman, blushing.

‘And me,' said a third.

These young ladies had been what had become known as ‘flooring'. Originally, the term had been ‘third flooring'. The West tower had never attempted to ban sex. It was agreed, however, that sexual matters might be formalised, and a number of comfortable little nooks had been arranged for such necessary occasions. These were on the third floor. Since the nooks were frequently used, so the term for them had been abbreviated. Flooring had decreased since Noel's announcement; the prospect of delivering a deformed and dead infant proved a deterrent to copulation, to men almost as much as to women. Almost, but not quite.