WHITE MARS (2 page)

I took print-outs of relevant details. They might prove useful in the forthcoming debate. What the twentieth century had managed, we could certainly better, and on a grander scale, in our century.

In the ground-floor reception rooms, I found my boss consorting with Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Malay diplomats, all members of interested Pacrim countries. Anstruther was improving his shining image. A great amount of smiling by activating the zygomatic muscle went on, as is customary during such encounters.

When the session gong sounded, I accompanied Anstruther into the Great Hall, where we took our assigned places. Once I was seated at a desk in the row behind him, I passed him the Legalassist prints. Unpredictable as ever, he barely glanced at them.

Today's the time for oratory, not facts,' he said. His voice was remote. He was psyching himself up for the debate.

When all delegates were assembled and quiet prevailed in the hall, the General Secretary made his announcement: 'This is the General Assembly of the United Nationalities, meeting on 23 June 2041, to determine the future status of Planet Mars.'

The first speaker was called.

Svetlana Yulichieva of Russia was eloquent. She said that the manned landing on Mars marked a new page, if not a new volume, in the history of mankind. All nationalities rejoiced in the success of the Mars mission, despite the tragic loss of their captain. The way of the future was now clear. More landings must be financed, and preparations be made to terraform Mars, so that it could be properly colonised and used as a base for further exploration of the outer solar system. She suggested that Mars come under UN jurisdiction.

The Latvian delegate was eloquent. He agreed with Yulichieva's sentiments and said that the space-going nations must be congratulated on the enterprise they had shown. The loss of Captain Tracy was regretted, but must not be allowed to impede further progress. Was not, he asked rhetorically, the opening-up of a new world part of a human dream, the dream of going forth to conquer space, as envisioned in many fictions, book and film, in which mankind went forward boldly, overcoming everything hostile which stood in its way, occupying planet after planet? The beginning of the eventual encompassing of the galaxy had begun. The terraforming of Mars must assume top priority.

The Argentinian delegate, Maria Porua, begged to disagree. She spoke at length of the hideous costs of an enterprise such as terraforming, the success of which was not guaranteed. Recent disappointments, such as the failure of the hypercollider on the Moon - the brainchild of a Nobel Prize winner - must act as a caution. There were terrestrial problems enough, on which the enormous investments required for any extraterrestrial adventure could more profitably be spent.

Tobias Bengtson, the delegate for Sweden, scorned the last speaker's response to a magnificent leap into an expanding future. He reminded the assembly of the words of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the great Russian aeronautical engineer, who had said that Earth was the cradle of mankind, but that mankind could not remain for ever in the cradle. 'This great nineteenth-century visionary woke up the human race to its destiny in space. The dream has grown more real, more accurate, more pressing, as the years have progressed. A glorious prospect must not be allowed to slip away. A few deaths, a little expense, along the way must not deflect the nationalities from achieving our destiny, the conquest of all solar space, from the planet Mercury right out to the heliopause. Only then will the dreams of our forefathers - and our mothers - be fulfilled.'

Other speakers rose, many arguing that terraforming was a necessity. Why go to Mars if not to create more living space? Some warned that Mars would become a United States dependency, others that a ruling was required, otherwise competing nations would use Mars not as living space, but as a battlefield.

'I am going to talk practicalities,' said a delegate from the Netherlands. 'I have listened to a lot of airy-fairy talk here today. The reality is that we have now acquired this entire little planet of waste land. What are we to do with it? It's no good for anything.' He thumped the desk for emphasis. 'Who'd want to live there? You can't grow anything on it. But we can dump our dangerous nuclear waste on Mars. It would be safe there. You can build a mountain of waste by one of the poles - it might even make the place look a bit more interesting.'

It was Leo Anstruther's turn to speak. The antagonism generated against the previous delegate's speech gave him the opportunity to put his argument forward. He walked deliberately to the rostrum, where he scrutinised the assembly before speaking.

'Do you have to act out the dreams of your mothers and fathers?' he asked. 'If we had always done so, would we not still be sitting in a jungle in the middle of Africa, going in fear of the tribe in the next tree? EUPACUS - and not simply NASA - has achieved a great feat of organisation and engineering, for which we sincerely congratulate them. But this arrival of a crew of men and women on the Red Planet must have nothing to do with conquest. Nor should we turn the place into a rubbish dump. Have we lost our reverence for the universe about us?'

My boss went on to say that he had nothing but contempt for people who merely sat at home. But going forward did not mean merely proliferation; proliferation was already bringing ruin to Earth. Everyone had to be clear that to repeat our errors on other planets was not progress. It more closely resembled rabbits overrunning a valuable field of wheat. Now was our chance to prove that we had progressed in Realms of Reason, as well as in Terms of Technology.

What, after all, he asked, were these dreams of conquest that mankind was supposed to approve? Were they not violent and xenophobic? We had not to permit ourselves to live a fiction about other fictions. To attempt to fulfil them was to take a downward path at the very moment an upward path opened before us, to crown our century.

The old ethos of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been crude and bloody, and had brought about untold misery. It had to be abandoned, and here was a God-given chance to abandon it. He disapproved of that too readily used metaphor that said 'a new page in history had been turned'. Now was the time to throw away that old history book, and to begin anew as a putative interplanetary race. Delegates had to consider dispassionately whether to embark on a new mode of existence, or to repeat the often bloody mistakes of yesterday. 'All environments are sacrosanct,' Anstruther declared. 'The planet Mars is a sacrosanct environment and must be treated as such. It has not existed untouched for millions of years only to be reduced to one of Earth's tawdry suburbs today. My strong recommendation is that Mars be preserved, as the Antarctic has been preserved for many years, as a place of wonder and meditation, a symbol of our future guardianship of the entire solar system - a planet for science, a White Mars.' The General Secretary declared a break for lunch.

The German delegate, Thomas Gunther, came up to Anstruther, glass in hand. He nodded cordially to us both.

'You have a fine style of rhetoric, Leo,' he said. 'I am on your side against the mad terraformers, although I don't quite manage to think of Mars as in any way sacred, as you imply. After all, it is just a dead world - not a single old temple there. Not even an old grave, or a few bones.'

'No worms either, Thomas, I'm led to believe.'

'According to latest reports, there's no life on it of any kind, and maybe never has been. "Martians" are just one of those myths we have lumbered ourselves with. We need no more silly nonsense of that kind.'

He smiled teasingly at Anstruther, as if challenging him to disagree. When Anstruther made no answer, Gunther developed his line of argument. The safe arrival of men on the Red Planet could be traced back to the German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, who - in the midst of the madness of the Thirty Years War - formulated the laws of planetary motion. Kepler was one of those men who, rather like Anstruther, defied the assumptions of others.

To declare for the first time that the orbit of a planet was an ellipse, with the sun situated at one focus, was a brave statement with far-reaching consequences. Similarly, what was decided on this day, in the hall of the UN, would have far-reaching consequences, for good or ill. Brave statements were required once more.

Gunther said his strong prompting was not to vex the delegates with talk of the sanctity of Mars. Since much - everything, indeed - was owed to science, then the planet must be kept for science. Sow in the minds of delegates the doubt whether the long elaborate processes of terraforming could succeed. Terraforming so far existed only in laboratory experiments. It was originally an idea cooked up by a science fiction writer. It would be foolhardy to try it out on a whole planet - particularly the one planet easily accessible to mankind.

'You could quote,' Gunther said, 'the words of a Frenchman, Henri de Chatelier, who in 1888 spoke of the principle of opposition in any natural system to further change. Mars itself would resist terraforming if any organisation was rash enough to try it.'

He advised Anstruther to stick with the slogan 'White Mars'. The simple common mind, which he deplored as much as Anstruther, would wish something to be done with Mars. Very well. Then what should be done was to dedicate the planet to science and allow only scientists on its surface - its admittedly unprepossessing surface. People should not be allowed to do their worst there, building their hideous office blocks and car parks and fast-food stalls. They must be stopped, as they had been prevented from invading the Antarctic. He and Anstruther must fight together to preserve Mars for science. He believed there was a delegate from California who thought as they did.

After all, he concluded, there were experiments that could be conducted only on that world.

'What experiments do you mean?' Anstruther enquired.

At this, Gunther hesitated. 'You will think me self-interested when I speak. That is not the case. I seize on my example because it comes readily to mind. Perhaps we might go out on a balcony, since there are those near us anxious to overhear what we say. Take a samosa with you. I assure you they are delicious.'

'My secretary always accompanies me, Thomas.'

'As you like.' He threw me a suspicious glance.

The two men went out on the nearest balcony, and I followed them. The balcony overlooked beautiful Lake Louise, the pellucid waters of which seemed to lend colour to the sky.

'No doubt you know what I mean by "the Omega Smudge"?' Gunther said. 'It's the elusive final ghost of a particle. When it's known - all's known! As I presume you are aware, I am the president of a bank that, together with the Korean Investment Corporation, financed a search for the Gamma Smudge on Luna, following the postulate of the Chin Lim Chung-Dreiser Hawkwood formulation.' He bit into his samosa and talked round a mouthful.

'It was thought that the lunar vacuum would provide ideal conditions for research. Unfortunately, the fools were already busy up there, erecting their hotels and supermarkets and buggy parks and drilling for this and that. As you know, they have now almost finished construction on a subway designed to carry busybodies back and forth to their nasty little offices and eateries.

'At great expense, we built our ring - our superconducting search ring. Useless!'

'You did not find your smudge, I hear.'

'It is not to be found on the Moon. The drilling and the subway vibration have driven it off. Certainly experts argue about whether that was so - but experts will argue about anything. It has still to be discovered.' Gunther went on to explain that the high-energy detection of the Beta Smudge nearly two decades ago had merely disclosed a further something, a mess of resonances - another smudge. Gunther's bank was prepared to fund a different sort of research, to pin down a hidden symmetry monopole.

'And if you find it?' Anstruther asked, not concealing his scepticism.

'Then the world is changed ... And I'll have changed it!' Gunther puffed out his chest and clenched his hands. 'Leo, the Americans and the Russians have tried to find this particle, and others, without success. It has an almost mystical importance. This elusive little gizmo so far remains little more than an hypothesis, but it is believed to be responsible for assigning mass to all other kinds of particle in the universe. Can you imagine its importance?'

'We're talking about a destroyer of worlds?'

Gunther gestured dismissively. 'In the wrong hands, yes, I suppose so. But in the right hands this elusive smudge will provide ultimate power, power to travel right across the galaxy at speeds exceeding the speed of light.'

Anstruther snorted to show he regarded such talk as ridiculous.

'Well, that's all hypothetical and I'm no expert,' said Gunther, defensively, and went on, laying emphasis on his words. 'I am not yet ruined and I wish for this quest to be continued. It can be continued only on Mars. I know I can raise the money. We can find the Omega Smudge there, and transcend Einstein's equations - if we fight today to keep Mars free of the terraformers.'

Anstruther gave me a glance, as if to show that he was aware of Gunther's bluster. All he asked, coolly, was, 'What in practical terms do you have against terraforming?'

'Our search needs silence - absence of vibration. Mars is the only silent place left in the habitable universe, my friend!'

When the bell rang for the afternoon session, the delegates trooped back to their places in a more sober mood than previously. The delegate for Nicaragua gave voice to a general uncertainty.