The Saccharine/Strychnine Drip

Meanwhile our humdrum lives in the domes were continuing, but I at least was filled with optimism regarding our plans, which ripened day by day.

Adminex circulated our findings on the Ambient and published them on impounded EUPACUS printers. We emphasised that people must be clear on what was acceptable. We invited suggestions for guiding principles.

We suggested a common meeting for discussion in Hindenburg every morning, which anyone might attend.

We placed a high priority on tolerance and the cultivation of empathy.

We concluded by saying, What Cannot be Avoided Must Be Endured.

I received a message back on my Ambient link, saying, 'Be practical, will you? We need more toilets, boss. What cannot be endured must be avoided.' I recognised Beau Stephens's voice.

In those days, I became too busy to think about myself. There was much to organise. Yet some things organised themselves. Among them, sport and music.

I was jo-joing back from the new hospital wing when I saw the freshly invented game of skyball being played in the sports arena. I stopped to watch. Aktau Badawi was with me.

Skyball was a team game played with two b.a.l.l.s the size of footb.a.l.l.s. One ball, painted blue, was half filled with helium so that, when kicked into the air, its descent was slow. Play could continue only when the blue ball was in the air. Grouping and positioning went on while it was descending. The blue ball could not be handled, unlike the other ball, which was brown.

'Thankfully, we are too old to play, Tom,' said Aktau.

A young man turned from the watching crowd and offered to explain the subtleties of the game to us.

We laughingly said we did not wish to know. We would never play.

'Nor would I,' the man said, 'but I in fact invented the blue ball in honour of our lighter gravity. My name is Guenz Kanli, and I wish to speak to you about another innovation I have in mind.'

He fell in with us and we walked back to my office.

Guenz Kanli had a curious physiognomy. The flesh of his face seemed not to fit well over his skull, which came to a peak at the rear. This strange-looking man came from Kazakstan in Central Asia. He was a YEA who, at twenty years of age, had fallen in love with the desolation of the Martian landscape. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks so mottled with tiny veins they resembled an indecipherable map.

He lived at the top of one of our spicules, which gave him a good outlook on the Martian surface. He described it in eloquent terms.

'It's all so variable. The wispy clouds take strange forms. You could watch them all day. There are fogs, and I have seen tiny snow falls - or maybe frost it was. The desert can be white or grey or almost black, or brown, or even bright orange in the sun.

Then there are many kinds of dust storm, from little dust devils to ma.s.sive storms like avalanches.

'None of this can we touch. It's like a form of music to me. You teach people to look inward on themselves, Tom Jefferies. Maybe looking outward is good too.

'We need more of a special music. It exists already, part sad, part joyful.

'If I may, I will take you to hear the wonderful Beza this evening.'

Guenz Kanli was enthusiastic to a remarkable degree, which was perhaps what commended him to me in the first place. I dreaded that a mood of irreversible depression would descend on us if the ships did not soon return.

That evening, we went to hear Beza play.

I was seized with Guenz's idea, although I never entirely saw the connection, as he did, between Beza's gipsy music and the Martian landscape.

There was always music playing somewhere in the domes - cla.s.sical, jazz, popular, or something in between. But, from that evening on, one of our favourite musicians was Beza, an old Romanian gypsy. I persuaded the leading YEAs to listen - Kissorian, May Porter, Suung Saybin, and others. They were taken by it, and from then on Beza was in fashion.

Beza had been elected as DOP - rather against his wish, we gathered - by a remote community in the Transylvanian highlands.

To see Beza during the day, sitting miserable and round-shouldered at the Mars Bar or a cafe table, wearing his floppy off-white tunic, you would wonder what such a poor old fellow was doing on Mars. But when he took up his violin and began to play - bashavav, bashavav, to play the fiddle - his real stature became apparent. to play the fiddle - his real stature became apparent.

His dark eyes gleamed through his lank grey hair, his stance was that of a youngster, and the music he played - well, I can only say that it was magic, and so compelling that men ceased their conversation with women to listen. Guenz sometimes took up his fiddle too and played counterpoint.

With the fiddle at his chin and his bow dancing, Beza could play all night. His music was drawn from a deep well of the past, like wine flowing from centuries of slavery and wandering, rising from the pit of the brain, from the fibres of the body. These tunes were what is meant when music is said to be the first of all human arts.

A time dawned when Guenz's theory that this was the true music of Mars became real to me. I wondered how it had come into being before Mars had ever been thought of as a place for habitation.

After I had listened to Beza I would lie in bed, wide awake, trying to recreate his music in my head. It always eluded me. A slow sad la.s.su, la.s.su, with its notes long drawn out, would be followed by a sprightly with its notes long drawn out, would be followed by a sprightly friss, friss, light and airy as a stroll along an avenue, which then broke into the wild exhilaration of the light and airy as a stroll along an avenue, which then broke into the wild exhilaration of the czardas. czardas. Then, quite suddenly, sorrow again, driving into the heart. Then, quite suddenly, sorrow again, driving into the heart.

I must admit I learned these foreign terms from Guenz, or from Beza himself. But Beza was a silent man. His fiddle spoke for him.

Beza's music was so popular that it became subject to plagiarism. In a small cla.s.sical quintet was an ambitious Nigerian, Dayo Obantuji. He played the violin adequately, and the quintet was a success, perhaps because Dayo was something of a show-off. He liked to leap to his feet to play solos and generally appear energetic.

The quintet became less popular while Beza's music was still the rage.

Dayo was also a composer. He introduced a piece, a rather elegant sonata in B flat major, which he christened 'The Musician'.

After 'The Musician' had been played several times, Guenz became suspicious. He made a public denunciation of the fact that much of the sonata, transposed into another key and with altered tempo, was based on a piece that Beza played.

Dayo strongly denied the accusation.

When Beza was brought into an improvised court as a witness in this case of plagarism, he would only laugh and say, 'Let the boy take this theme. It is not mine. It hangs in the air. Let him play with it - he can only make it worse.'

There the matter was dropped. But 'The Musician' was not played again.

Instead Dayo came to me and complained that he was the victim of racism. Why had this unfair charge been brought, if not because he was black? I pointed out that although Beza was himself of a minority - indeed a minority of one - he was almost the most popular man in Mars City. I said I felt strongly that racism had no place on the planet. We were all Martians now. Dayo must be mistaken.

Angrily, Dayo a.s.serted that I was denying what was obvious. He had been disgraced by the accusation. His name had not been properly cleared. He was the victim of injustice.

A long argument ensued. Finally Guenz was brought in. He also denied prejudice. He had found an echo of Beza's music in Dayo's piece. It was hardly surprising, but there it was. However, he had been convinced that the similarity was accidental, so powerful was Beza's influence. He was content to believe that Dayo's name had been cleared. And he apologised graciously, if rather playfully, for having made the charge in the first place.

Dayo again a.s.serted he had been victimised. He burst into angry tears.

'Oh dear, the blue ball is in the air again,' said Guenz.

Then Dayo changed tack. He admitted that he had stolen the theme from Beza's music, having been unable to get it out of his head.

'I admit it. I'm guilty as h.e.l.l. You lot are guilty too. Okay, you show no racial prejudice against Beza and the Orientals, but you are prejudiced against us blacks. You secretly don't believe we're good for anything, though you'll never admit it. I'm quite a good musician, but still I'm a black musician, not just a musician. Isn't that the case?

'My compositions were not appreciated. Not until I took that Romanian tune and transcribed it. Didn't Brahms do the same sort of thing? What's wrong with it? I altered it, made it my own, didn't I? But just because I was black, you picked on me.'

'Perhaps the mistake was,' said Guenz, mildly, 'not to label the piece "Romanian Rhapsody" - to acknowledge the borrowing. Then you'd have been praised for your cleverness.'

But Dayo insisted that he would merely have been accused of stealing.

'I meant no harm. I only wished to raise my status. But if you're black you're always in trouble, whichever way you turn.'

He went off in dejection.

Tom and Guenz looked at each other in dismay.

Then Guenz broke into a laugh. 'It's you whites who are to blame for everything, including getting us here,' he said.

'My instinct is to legislate. But what could legislation do in a case like this? How might one word it? Can I ask you, Guenz, do you feel yourself racially discriminated against, as a Central Asian?'

'It has sometimes proved to be an advantage, because it had some slight novelty value. That's worn off. There was a time when people were suspicious of my foreignness, but that is in-built, a survival trait. I was equally suspicious of you whites. Still am, to a degree.'

They discussed whether they had any extra in-built discrimination against the Nigerian, Dayo. Had they expected him to 'get away' with something? Had the dismal past history of white victimisation of blacks anything to do with it? Was there a superst.i.tious mistrust of 'black' as a colour, as there might be of left-handedness?

These were questions they could not answer. They had to conclude it might be the case. Certainly, they would be wary if a traditional green Martian appeared in their midst.

They could only hope that such atavistic responses would die away as rational men of all colours mixed.

We could only hope that the colour question would fade away, united as we were by a common concern regarding survival and in perfecting our society. However, the matter was to arise again later, and in a more serious case.

During this period, I consulted with many people, delegating duties where it was possible to do so. Many people also came to my office to deliver advice or complaint. One of these visitors was a rather lackl.u.s.tre-looking young YEA scientist. He announced himself as Chad Chester.

'Maybe you know my name as the guy who went down into the water caves off Marineris with Kathi Skadmorr. I guess I didn't make a great showing compared with her.'

'Not many of us do. What can I do for you?'

Chad explained that he had listened to my lecture on the five obstacles to contentment on Earth. He noted that at one point I had referred to the slogan, 'All men are equal'. He was sure this saying embodied a mistaken a.s.sumption; he never thought of himself as equal to Kathi, for example. That experience in the caves had led him to put down his thoughts on paper. He felt that 'All men are equal' should not be used in any Utopian declaration we might make, for reasons he had tried to argue.

When he had gone I set Chad's paper aside. I looked at it two days later.

His argument was that the very saying was self-denying, since it mentioned only men and not women. It was meaningless to pretend that men and women were equal; they were certainly similar in many ways, but the divergence between them made the question of being equal (except possibly in law) irrelevant. Furthermore, the diversity of the genetic code meant a different inheritance of capacities even within a family.

'All men are equal' held an implication that all could compete equally; that also was untrue. A musician may have no capacity for business. A nuclear physicist may be unable to build a bridge. And so forth, for several pages.

He suggested that a better slogan would be, 'All men and women must be allowed equal opportunities to fulfil their lives.'

I liked the idea, although it had not the economy, the snap, of the original it replaced. I wondered about 'All dudes are different.'

Any such sloganeering boiled down to one thing. It was important to have maximum lat.i.tude to express ourselves within the necessarily confining rules of our new society. Someone mentioned the dragon that earlier YEAs had painted on the rock face; they emphasised the way in which it had caused alarm, being unexpected. Yet creativity must continue to produce the unexpected or the community would perish. Although lat.i.tude was needed, it was generally accepted that our society had to operate within prescribed rules.

Creativity we needed, but not stupidity and ignorance.

We had begun to discuss education when a slightly built and handsome young woman with dark hair came forward. She poured out from the pockets of her overalls on to a central table a number of gleaming objects, various in shape.

'Before you speak of any orderly society, you'd better be aware,' she said, 'that Mars is already occupied by a higher form of life. They carved these beautiful objects and then, evidently dissatisfied with them, cast them away.'

The room was in an uproar. Everyone was eager to examine the exquisite shapes, seemingly made of gla.s.s. Some appeared to be roughly shaped translucent models of small elephants, snails, l.a.b.i.as and phalluses, puppy dogs, hippopotami, boulders, coproliths, and hedgehogs. All were bright and pleasant to the touch.

The faces of those who picked up the objects were full of alarm. Always at the back of our minds had been the suspicion that the yet almost unexplored planet might somehow, against all reason, harbour life.

The young woman allowed the drama of the situation she had created to sink in before saying, loudly, 'I'm an areologist. I've been working alone in the uplands for a week. Don't worry! These are pieces of rock crystal, chemical formula SiO2. They're just translucent quartz, created by nature.'

A howl mingled with dismay and approbation rose.

The young woman said with a laugh, 'Oh, I thought I'd just give you a scare while you were making up all these rules to live by.'

I persuaded her to sit by me while the crowd rea.s.sembled. She was lively and restless. Her name was Sharon Singh, she told me. She was half-English, half-Indian, and had spent much of her young life in the terrestrial tropics.

'You can't find Mars particularly congenial,' I remarked.

She gave a wriggle. 'Oh, it's an adventure. Unlike you, I do not intend to live here for ever. Besides, there are many idle and eager men here who enjoy a little romance. That's one of the real meanings of life, isn't it? Mine is a romantic nature...' She flashed a smile at me, then regarded me more seriously. 'What are you thinking?'

I could not tell her, saying instead, 'I was thinking that we can sell these pretty rock crystal objects for souvenirs when matrix traffic resumes.'

Sharon Singh uttered a rather scornful laugh, momentarily showing her pretty white teeth. 'Some things are not for sale!' She gave her wriggle again.

That night, I could not sleep. The smile, those dark eyes fringed by dense lashes, the carelessness, the wriggle - they filled my mind. All my serious contemplations were gone, together with my resolves. I thought - well, I thought that I would follow Sharon Singh to Earth, and gladly, if need be. That I would give anything for a night with her in my arms.

In order to sublimate my desire for Sharon Singh, I made a point of talking personally to as many men and women as possible, sounding out their opinions and gathering an impression of their feelings towards our situation and the practicalities of living decently.

My quantcomp rang as I was going down K.S. Robinson. A woman's voice requested an appointment. In another half-hour, I found myself confronting Willa Mendanadum and her large companion, Vera White. I saw them in my small office. With Vera in her large flowing lilac robes, the room was pretty full.

Willa had a commanding voice, Vera a tiny one.

'As you will no doubt be aware, Vera and I are mentatropists,' said Willa. 'While we support your wish to form a Utopian society, we have to tell you that such is an impossibility.'

'How so?' I asked, not best pleased by her haughty manner.

'Because of the contradictory nature of mankind in general and individuals in particular. We think we desire order and calm, but the autonomous nervous system requires some disorder and excitement.'

'Is it not exciting enough just to be on Mars?'

She said sternly, 'Why, certainly not. We don't even have the catharsis of S&V movies to watch.'

Seeing my slight puzzlement, Vera said in her high voice, 's.e.x and Violence, Mr. Jefferies, s.e.x and Violence.' She spread "violence" out into its three component syllables.

'So you consider Utopia a hopeless project?'

'Unless...'

'Unless?' Vera White drew herself up to her full girth. 'A full course of mentatropy for all personnel.'

'Including all the scientists,' added Willa in her deepest tone.

They departed in full sail when I thanked them for their offer and said Adminex would consider it.

Kissorian came in and exclaimed that I looked taken aback. 'I've just met some mentatropists,' I said.