Moving Mars Read online

  Moving Mars

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy,

  recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is

  entirely coincidental.

  © Copyright 1993 by Greg Bear First e-reads publication 1999 www.e-reads.com

  ISBN 0-7592-4213-5

  Other works by Greg Bear

  also available in e-reads editions

  Beyond Heaven's River

  Blood Music

  Hegira Legacy

  Songs of Earth and Power

  Strength of Stones

  For Ray Bradbury

  A day on Mars is a little longer than a day on Earth: 24 hours and 40 minutes. A year on Mars is less than two Earth years: 686 Earth days, or 668 Martian days. Mars is 6,787 kilometers in diameter, compared to Earth's 12,756 kilometers. Its gravitational acceleration is 3.71 meters per second squared, or just over one-third of Earth's. The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Mars averages 5.6 millibars, about one-half of one percent of Earth's. The atmosphere is largely composed of carbon dioxide. Temperatures at the "datum" or reference surface level (there is no "sea level," as there are presently no seas) vary from — 130° to +27° Celsius. An unprotected human on the surface of Mars would very likely freeze within minutes, but first would die of exposure to the near-vacuum. If this unfortunate human survived freezing and low pressure, and found a supply of oxygen to breathe, she would still be endangered by high levels of radiation from the sun and elsewhere.

  After Earth, Mars is the most hospitable planet in the Solar System.

  Moving

  Mars

  Part One

  The young may not remember Mars of old, under the yellow Sun, its cloud-streaked skies dusted pink, its soil rusty and fine, its inhabitants living in pressurized burrows and venturing Up only as a rite of passage or to do maintenance or tend the ropy crops spread like nests of intensely green snakes over the wind-scoured farms. That Mars, an old and tired Mars filled with young lives, is gone forever.

  Now I am old and tired, and Mars is young again.

  Our lives are not our own, but by God, we must behave as if they are. When I was young, what I did seemed too small to be of any consequence; but the shiver of dust, we are told, expands in time to the planet-sweeping storm . . .

  2171, M.Y. 53

  An age was coming to an end. I had studied the signs half-innocently in my classes, there had even been dire hints from a few perceptive professors, but I had never thought the situation would affect me personally . . . Until now.

  I had been voided from the University of Mars, Sinai. Two hundred classmates and professors in the same predicament lined the brilliant white floor of the depot, faces crossed by shadows from sun shining through the webwork of beams and girders supporting the depot canopy. We were waiting for the Solis Dorsa train to come and swift us away to our planums, planitias, fossas, and valleys.

  Diane Johara, my roommate, stood with her booted foot on one small bag, tapping the tip of the boot on the handle, lips pursed as if whistling but making no sound. She kept her face pointed toward the northern curtains, waiting for the train to nose through. Though we were good friends, Diane and I had never talked politics. That was basic etiquette on Mars.

  "Assassination," she said.

  "Impractical," I murmured. I had not known until a few days ago how strongly Diane felt. "Besides, who would you shoot?"

  "The governor. The chancellor."

  I shook my head.

  Over eighty percent of the UMS students had been voided, a gross violation of contract. That struck me as very damned unfair, but my family had never been activist. Daughter of BM finance people, born to a long tradition of caution, I straddled the fence.

  The political structure set up during settlement a century before still creaked along, but its days were numbered. The original settlers, arriving in groups of ten or more families, had dug warrens in water-rich lands all over Mars, from pole to pole, but mostly in the smooth lowland plains and the deep valleys. Following the Lunar model, the first families had formed syndicates called Binding Multiples or BMs. The Binding Multiples acted like economic super-families; indeed, "family" and "BM" were almost synonymous. Later settlers had a choice of joining established BMs or starting new ones; few families stayed independent.

  Many BMs merged and in time agreed to divide Mars into areological districts and develop resources in cooperation. By and large, Binding Multiples regarded each other as partners in the midst of Martian bounty, not competitors.

  "The train's late. Fascists are supposed to make them ran on time," Diane said, still tapping her boot.

  "They never did on Earth," I said.

  "You mean it's a myth?"

  I nodded.

  "So fascists aren't good for anything?" Diane asked.

  "Uniforms," I said.

  "Ours don't even have good uniforms."

  Elected by district ballot, the governors answered only to the inhabitants of their districts, regardless of BM affiliations. The governors licensed mining and settlement rights to the BMs and represented the districts in a joint Council of Binding Multiples. Syndics chosen within BMs by vote of senior advocates and managers represented the interests of the BMs themselves in the Council. Governors and syndics did not often see eye to eye. It was all very formal and polite — Martians are almost always polite — but many procedures were uncodified. Some said it was grossly inefficient, and attempts were being made to unify Mars under a central government, as had already happened on the Moon.

  The governor of Syria-Sinai, Freechild Dauble, a tough, chisel-chinned administrator, had pushed hard for several years to get the BMs to agree to a Statist constitution and central government authority. She wanted them to give up their syndics in favor of representation by district. This meant the breakup of BM power, of course.

  Dauble's name has since become synonymous with corruption, but at the time, she had been governor of Mars's largest district for eight Martian years and was at the peak of her long friendship with power. By cajoling, pressuring, and threatening, she had forged — some said forced — agreements between the largest BMs. Dauble had become the focus of Martian Unity and was on the sly spin for president of the planet.

  Some said Dauble's own career was the best argument for change, but few dared contradict her.

  A vote was due within days in the Council to make permanent the new Martian constitution. We had lived under the Dauble government's "trial run" for six months, and many grumbled loudly. The hard-won agreement was fragile. Dauble had rammed it down too many throats, with too much underhanded dealing.

  Lawsuits were pending from at least five families opposed to unity, mostly smaller BMs afraid of being absorbed and nullified. They were called Gobacks by the Statists, who regarded them as a real threat. The Statists would not tolerate a return to what they saw as disorganized Binding Multiples rule.

  "If assassination is so impractical," Diane said, "we could rough up a few of the favorites — "

  "Shh," I said.

  She shook her short, shagged hair and turned away, soundlessly whistling again. Diane did that when she was too angry to speak politely. Red rabbits who had lived for decades in close quarters placed a high value on politeness, and impressed that on their offspring.

  The Statists feared incidents. Student protests were unacceptable to Dauble. Eve
n if the students did not represent the Gobacks, they might make enough noise to bring down the agreement.

  So Dauble sent word to Caroline Connor, an old friend she had appointed chancellor of the largest university, University of Mars Sinai. An authoritarian with too much energy and too little sense, Connor obliged her crony by closing most of the campus and compiling a list of those who might be in sympathy with protesters.

  I had majored in government and management. Though I had signed no petitions and participated in no marches — unlike Diane, who had taken to the movement vigorously — my name crept onto a list of suspects. The Govmanagement Department was notoriously independent; who could trust any of us?

  We had paid our tuition but couldn't go to classes. Most of the voided faculty and students had little choice but to go home. The university generously gave us free tickets on state chartered trains. Some, including Diane, declined the tickets and vowed to fight the illegal voiding. That earned her — and, guilty by association, me, simply slow to pack my belongings — an escort of UMS security out of the university warrens.

  Diane walked stiffly, slowly, defiantly. The guards — most of them new emigrants from Earth, large and strong — firmly gripped our elbows and hustled us down the tunnels. The rough treatment watered my quick-growing seed of doubt; how could I give in to this injustice without a cry? My family was cautious; it had never been known for cowardice.

  Surrounded by Connor's guards, packed in with the last remaining voided students, we were marched in quickstep past a cluster of other students lounging in a garden atrium. They wore their family grays and blues, scions of BMs with strong economic ties to Earth, darlings of those most favoring Dauble's plans; all still in school. They talked quietly and calmly among themselves and turned to watch us go, faces blank. They offered no support, no encouragement; their inaction built walls. Diane nudged me. "Pigs," she whispered.

  I agreed. I thought them worse than traitors — they behaved as if they were cynical and old, violators of the earnest ideals of youth.

  We had been loaded into a single tunnel van and driven to the depot, still escorted by campus guards.

  The depot hummed.

  A few students wandered down a side corridor, then came back and passed the word. The loop train to the junction at Solis Dorsa approached. Diane licked her lips and looked around nervously.

  The last escorting guard, assured that we were on our way, gave us a tip of his cap and stepped into a depot cafe, out of sight.

  "Are you coming with us?" Diane asked.

  I could not answer. My head buzzed with contradictions, anger at injustice fighting family expectations. My mother and father hated the turmoil caused by unification. They strongly believed that staying out of it was best. They had told me so, without laying down any laws.

  Diane gave me a pitying look. She shook my hand and said, "Casseia, you think too much." She edged along the platform and turned a corner. In groups of five or less, students went to the lav, for coffee, to check the weather at their home depots . . . Ninety students in all sidled away from the main group.

  I hesitated. Those who remained seemed studiously neutral. Sidewise glances met faces quickly turned away.

  An eerie silence fell over the platform. One last student, a female first-form junior carrying three heavy duffels, did a little shimmy, short brown hair fanning around her neck. She let one duffel slip from her shoulder. The shimmy vibrated down to her leg and she kicked the bag two meters. She dropped her other bags and walked north on the platform and around the corner.

  My whole body quivered. I looked at the solemn faces around me and wondered how they could be so bovine. How could they just stand there, waiting for the train to slow, and accept Dauble's punishment for political views they might not even support?

  The train pushed a plug of air along the platform as it passed through the seals and curtains. Icons flashed above the platform — station ID, train designator, destinations — and a mature woman's voice told us, with all the politeness in the world and no discernible emotion, "Solis Dorsa to Bosporus, Nereidum, Argyre, Noachis, with transfers to Meridiani and Hellas, now arriving, gate four."

  I muttered, "Shit shit shit," under my breath. Before I knew what I had decided, before I could paralyze myself with more thought, my legs took me around the corner and up to a blank white service bay: dead end. The only exit was a low steel door covered with chipped white enamel. It had been left open just a crack. I bent down, opened the door wide, glanced behind me, and stepped through.

  It took me several minutes of fast walking to catch up with Diane. I passed ten or fifteen students in a dark arbeiter service tunnel and found her. "Where are we going?" I asked in a whisper.

  "Are you with us?"

  "I am now."

  She winked and shook my hand with a bold and happy swing. "Someone has a key and knows the way to the old pioneer domes."

  Muffling laughter and clapping each other on the back, full of enthusiasm and impressed by our courage, we passed one by one through an ancient steel hatch and crept along narrow, stuffy old tunnels lined with crumbling foamed rock. As the last of us left the UMS environs, stepping over a dimly lighted boundary marker into a wider and even older tunnel, we clasped hands on shoulders and half-marched, half-danced in lockstep.

  Someone at the end of the line harshly whispered for us to be quiet. We stopped, hardly daring to breathe. Seconds of silence, then from behind came low voices and the mechanical hum of service arbeiters, a heavy, solid clank and a painful twinge in our ears. Someone had sealed the tunnel hatch behind us.

  "Do they know we're in here?" I asked Diane.

  "I doubt it," she said. "That was a pressure crew."

  They had closed the door and sealed it. No turning back.

  The tunnels took us five kilometers beyond the university borders, through a decades-old maze unused since before my birth, threaded unerringly by whoever led the group.

  "We're in old times now," Diane said, looking back at me. Forty orbits ago — over seventy-five Terrestrial years — these tunnels had connected several small pioneer stations. We filed past warrens once used by the earliest families, dark and bitterly cold, kept pressurized in reserve only for dire emergency . . .

  Our few torches and tunnel service lamps illuminated scraps of old furniture, pieces of outdated electronics, stacked drums of emergency reserve rations and vacuum survival gear.

  Hours before, we had eaten our last university meal and had a warm vapor shower in the dorms. That was all behind us. Up ahead, we faced Spartan conditions.

  I felt wonderful. I was doing something significant, and without my family's approval.

  I thought I was finally growing up.

  The ninety students gathered in a dark hollow at the end of the tunnel, a pioneer trench dome. All sounds — nervous and excited laughter, questioning voices, scraping of feet on the cold floor, scattered outbreaks of song — blunted against the black poly interior. Diane broke Martian reserve and hugged me. Then a few voices rose above the dull murmurs. Several students started taking down names and BM affiliations. The mass began to take shape.

  Two students from third-form engineering — a conservative and hard-dug department — stood before us and announced their names: Sean Dickinson, Gretyl Laughton. Within the day, after forming groups and appointing captains, we confirmed Sean and Gretyl as our leaders, expressed our solidarity and zeal, and learned we had something like a plan.

  I found Sean Dickinson extremely handsome: of middle height, slight build, wispy brown hair above a prominent forehead, brows elegantly slim and animated. Though less attractive, Gretyl had been struck from the same mold: a slim young woman with large, accusing blue eyes and straw hair pulled into a tight bun.

  Sean stood on an old crate and gazed down upon us, establishing us as real people with a real mission. "We all know why we're here," he said. Expression stern, eyes liquid and compassionate, he raised his hands, long and callused fingers re
aching for the poly dome above, and said, "The old betray us. Experience breeds corruption. It's time to bring a moral balance to Mars, and show them what an individual stands for, and what our rights really mean. They've forgotten us, friends. They've forgotten their contractual obligations. True Martians don't forget such things, any more than they'd forget to breathe or plug a leak. So what are we going to do? What can we do? What must we do?"

  "Remind them!" many of us shouted. Some said, "Kill them," and I said, "Tell them what we — " But I was not given a chance to finish, my voice lost in the roar.

  Sean laid out his plan. We listened avidly; he fed our anger and our indignation. I had never been so excited. We who had kept the freshness of youth, and would not stand for corruption, intended to storm UMS overland and assert our contractual rights. We were righteous, and our cause was just.

  Sean ordered that we all be covered with skinseal, pumped from big plastic drums. We danced in the skinseal showers naked, laughing, pointing, shrieking at the sudden cold, embarrassed but greatly enjoying ourselves. We put our clothes back on over the flexible tight-fitting nanomer. Skinseal was designed for emergency pressure problems and not for comfort. Going to the bathroom became an elaborate ritual; in skinseal, a female took about four minutes to pee, a male two minutes, and shitting was particularly tricky.

  We dusted our skinseal with red ochre to hide us should we decide to worm out during daylight. We all looked like cartoon devils.

  By the end of the third day, we were tired and hungry and dirty and impatient. We huddled in the pressurized poly dome, ninety in a space meant for thirty, our rusty water tapped from an old well, having eaten little or no food, exercising to ward off the cold.

  * * *

  I brushed past a pale thoughtful fellow a few times on the way to the food line or the lav. Lean and hawk-nosed and dark-haired, with wide, puzzled eyes, a wry smile and a hesitant, nervously joking manner, he seemed less angry and less sure than the rest of us. Just looking at him irritated me. I stalked him, watching his mannerisms, tracking his growing list of inadequacies. I was not in the best temper and needed to vent a little frustration. I took it upon myself to educate him.