White mars by Brian W. Aldiss & Roger Penrose. Chapter 3, 4, 5

‘And sitting there like a fat pig in a strawberry bed was Herby Cootsmith, a Megarich, squatting on his investments, gradually buying up all Darwin,’ Kathi said.

As a group, the YEAs were mistrustful of the socio-economic systems from which they emerged. They hated the disparity between the poor, with their harsh conditions and short lives, and the Megarich, whose existences were projected to extend over two centuries. Life for the Megarich, Kathi declared, misquoting Hobbes, was ‘nasty, brutish, and long’.

It was estimated that 500 people owned 89 per cent of the world’s wealth. Most of them belonged in the Megarich category, being able to pay for the antithanatotic treatments.

After your year’s community service, you had to pass the various behavioural tests. Then you were qualified for the Mars trip.

‘How did you manage?’ Kathi asked.

I hesitated, then thought I might as well tell her. ‘A rich protector came forward with a bribe.’

Kathi Skadmorr gave a harsh cackle. ‘So we’re both here under false pretences! And I wonder how many others -YEAs and DOPs?! Don’t you just long for a decent society, without lies and corruptions?’

It came as a surprise to me to discover that Tom Jefferies and his wife Antonia – both of them DOPs – had also used a bribe to get to Mars. That I shall have to tell about in a minute, and to describe Antonia’s death.

Antonia died so many years ago. Yet I can still conjure up her fine, well-bred face. And I wonder how different history would have been if she had not died.

The DOPs were reckoned to have served their communities; otherwise, they would hardly be Distinguished. As Older Persons, they did not have to undergo the GIQ examination. However, the Gen & S Health test was particularly rigorous, at least in theory, in order to avoid illness en route, that long, spiralling, burdensome route to the neighbouring planet. In some cases, behavioural tests were also applied.

DOP passages were generally paid for by some form of government grant from their own communities. In the eighteenth century, Dr.. Johnson told Boswell that he wished to see the Great Wall of China: ‘You would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence … They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the Wall of China. I am serious, sir.’ To have visited Mars brought a similar mark of distinction – conferred, it was felt, on whole communities as well as on the man or woman who had gone to Mars and returned home to them.

One of the excitements of being on Mars was that one occasionally met a famous DOP, not necessarily a scientist, perhaps a sculptor such as Benazir Bahudur, a literary figure such as John Homer Bateson, or a philosopher such as Thomas Jefferies. Or my special friend, Kathi Skadmoor.

I first saw Torn Jefferies from afar, looking sorrowful and remote, but I held the popular misconception that all philosophers looked like that. He was an elegant man, sparse of hair, with a pleasing open face. He was in his late forties. A vibrancy about him I found very attractive.

So I was immediately drawn to him, as were many others. While I was drawn, I did not dare speak to him. Would I have spoken, had I known how our paths would intertwine? Perhaps it is an impossible question – but we were destined to face plenty of those …

Many scientists went to Mars under the DOP rubric, among them the celebrated computer mathematician, Arnold Poulsen, and the particle physicist I have already mentioned, Dreiser Hawkwood. A percentage of those who had travelled on the conjunction flight became acclimatised to Mars and, because the work and lighter gravity there were congenial to them, stayed on. It should be added that many YEAs stayed on for similar reasons – or simply because they could not face another period of cryogenic sleep for the return journey.

From 2059 onwards, as interplanetary travel became almost a norm, every Martian visitor was compelled by law to bring with him a quota of liquid hydrogen (much as earlier generations of air travellers had carried duty-free bottles of alcohol about with them!). The hydrogen was used in reactions to yield methane for refuelling purposes.

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