Regarding the science quarters rather as an outpost, I was astonished to see how well the room we were in was furnished, with real chairs rather than the collapsible ones used in the domes. Symphonic music played at a low level; I thought I recognised Penderecki. On the walls were star charts, an animated reproduction of a late-period Kandinsky and a cut-away diagram of an American-made MP500 sub-machine gun.
The personal assistant had her own desk in one corner of the room. She was blonde and in her thirties, wearing a green dress rather than our fairly standard coveralls.
At the sight of that dress I was overcome with jealousy. I recognised it as made from cloth of the old kind, which wore out, and so was expensive, almost exclusive. The rest of us wore costumes fabricated from Now (the acronym of Non-Ovine Wool), which never wore out. Now clothes fitted our bodies, being made of a semi-sentient synthetic that renewed itself, given a brush occasionally with fluid. Now clothes were cheap. But that dress…
When she caught my gaze, the personal assistant flashed a smile. She moved restlessly about the room, shifting paper and mugs, while I sat mutely by Tom’s side.
Tom said, ‘Dreiser, I came over to ask for your presence and support at our debates. But I have something more serious to talk about. What are these white strips that rise from the regolith and slick back into it? Are they living things?’ He referred to the tongues (as I thought of them) we had encountered on our way over to the unit. ‘Or is this a system you have installed?’
‘You think they are living?’ asked Dreiser, looking hard at Tom.
‘What else, if they are not a part of your systems?’
‘I thought you had established that there was no life on Mars.’
‘You know the situation. We’ve found no life. But these strips aren’t a mere geological manifestation.’
Hawkwood said nothing. He looked at me as if willing me to speak. I said nothing.
He pushed his chair back, rose, and went over to a locker on the far side of the room. Tom studiously looked at the ceiling. I noticed Dreiser pat the bottom of his assistant as he passed her. She gave a smug little smile.
He returned with a hologram of some of the tongues, which Tom studied.
‘This tells me very little,’ he said. ‘Are they a life form, or part of one, or what?’
Dreiser merely shrugged.
Tom said that he had never expected to find life on Mars, or anywhere else; the path of evolution from mere chemicals to intelligence required too many special conditions.
‘My student, Skadmorr, seems to believe we’re being haunted by a disembodied consciousness or something similar,’ Dreiser remarked. ‘Aborigine people know about such matters, don’t they?’
‘Kathi’s not an Aborigine,’ I said.
Tom took what he regarded as an optimistic view, that the development of cosmic awareness in humankind marked an unrepeatable evolutionary pattern; humankind was the sole repository of higher consciousness in the galaxy. Our future destiny was to go out and disperse, to become the eye and mind of the universe. Why not? The universe was strange enough for such things to happen.
Dreiser remained taciturn and stroked his moustache.
‘Hence my hopes of building a just society here,’ said Tom. ‘We have to improve our behaviour before we go out into the stars.’
‘Well, we don’t quite know what we’ve got here,’ replied Hawkwood, after a pause, seemingly ignoring Tom’s remark. He thumped the hologram. ‘With regard to this phenomenon, at least it appears not to be hostile.’
‘It? You mean they?’
‘No, I mean it. The strips work as a team. I wish to god we were better armed. Oxyacetylene welders are about our most formidable weapon…’
As we started the drive back to the domes, Tom said, ‘Uncommunicative bastard.’ He became unusually silent. He broke that silence to say, ‘We’d better keep quiet about these strips until the scientists find out more about them. We don’t want to alarm people unnecessarily.’
He gave me a grim and searching look.
‘Why are scientists so secretive?’ I asked.
He shook his head without replying.