White mars by Brian W. Aldiss & Roger Penrose. Chapter 10, 11

These and many more understandings had a behavioural effect on our community. Certainly we became more thoughtful, if by thought we include pursuing visions. It was as if by unravelling the secrets of truly living we had come up against the tantalising conundrum of life itself, and its reasons, which were beyond biology. Single people or couples or families preferred to live alone, combining with others only on special occasions, such as a new performance of My Culture or a Sustaining Individuality session.

Thus most people came to live as individually as limited space would permit. As a would-be Utopia, it was non-authoritarian, in distinct contrast to Plato’s definition of a good place.

Nor do I imply that a sense of community was lost. We still ate together once or twice a day. It happened that many a time I caught the jo-jo bus to work with Alpha in my arms and found the whole place humming and vibrating like a hive; so many people were doing pranayama yoga on their own, uttering the eternal ‘Om’.

Oh, then how happy I was! For me it was the best period of our Martian existence, too sensitive, too in-dwelling to prove permanent. I clutched my dear child in my arms and thought, ‘Surely, surely Mars people will never again be as united as this!’

Since all our teach-in and community sessions were videoed, beamed to Earth, and saved, we could check on our progress towards individuality. Many of us had to chuckle at our earlier selves, our naive questions, our uncertainty.

We were moving towards a degree of serenity when I received a nasty little shock. I caught on my globe an Ambient exchange between Belle Rivers and my beloved Tom.

She was saying, ‘… on Earth. And there’s a scientist by name Jon Thorgeson. He says he wants to talk to Cang Hai. He says she suggested he might give a lecture about the Omega Smudge to us plebs. Is that okay by you?’

‘Just keep her out of my hair, Belle. Let Thorgeson go ahead.’

Belle’s image remained. With her head on one side, she regarded Tom. Then she asked, ‘Do you know of anything odd going on in the science unit?’

‘No. It’s true I haven’t heard from Dreiser just recently. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, simply the feeling something was in the air when I was speaking to Thorgeson. Could be the oncoming marathon, I suppose.’

By the time their images faded I was worried. What did he mean by keeping me out of his hair? He was always so good and kind. He relied on me, didn’t he? It was true he had become rather grumpy recently.

Perhaps it was simply that he disliked hearing Alpha cry – such a beautiful sound! I pitied him.

11

The Missing Smudge

In a rotation of jobs, I was allocated to the synthetic foods department. I preferred it to the biogas department. The smells were better. Here I helped in time to develop something which resembled a Danish pastry. We always glossed over the fact that our foods were created from everyone’s manure. Nevertheless, my friends teased me about it.

One of my closest friends, Kathi Skadmorr, had adopted a teasing approach to me since I had danced naked before her and her lover. She rang me unexpectedly in serious vein and invited me on a short expedition to view what she called the ‘Smudge experiment’. I was always ready to learn. Although baby Alpha was so small, I left her in the care of Paula Gallin for a few hours while I joined Kathi.

Behind the science unit, Amazonis sprawled brokenhearted under a layer of dusty colour which seemed to be sometimes pink, or rose, or sometimes orange. A swan’s feather of cloud vapour overhead reflected these hues.

Kathi and I had suited up before leaving the science unit. As we walked along a netted way, where latticed posts supported overhead cables, a slight agoraphobia attacked me. I clutched Kathi’s hand: she was more used to open spaces than I. Yet at the same time I found something closed about the Martian outdoors. Perhaps it was the scarcity of atmosphere; or perhaps it was the indoor feeling of dust lying everywhere, dust much older than ever dimmed the surface of a table back on Earth.

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