‘Kissorian goes by favour, eh?’
Looking at me poker-faced, Crispin said that he wanted legislation to improve the Martian brand of ersatz coffee. ‘Tom, joking apart, we are so fortunate as to have the bad luck to be stuck on Mars! We both see the survival of humanity on a planet on which we were not born as an extraordinary, a revolutionary, step.
‘I must say I listened to your five bugbears with some impatience. I wanted you to get to the bugbear we have clearly escaped from: the entire systematic portrayal of sexuality and violence as desirable and of overwhelming importance. We no longer have these things pouring like running water from our television and Ambient screens. I fancy that deprived of this saccharine/strychnine drip, we can only improve morally.’
At the next meeting of Adminex (as always, televised for intercom and Ambient), we discussed this aspect of life: the constant projection of violence and sexual licence on media that imitated life. Both Kissorian and Barcunda were coopted on to the team. It was agreed – in some cases with reluctance – that most of us had been indoctrinated by the constant representation of personal assult and promiscuity on various screens, so as to accept such matters as an important part of life, or at least as a more dominant component of our subconscious minds than we were willing to admit to. In Barcunda’s elegant formulation: ‘If a man has an itch, he will scratch it, even when talking philosophy.’
Without pictorial representations of a gun and sex culture, there seemed a good chance that society might become less aggressive.
But Kissorian disagreed. ‘Sex is one thing, and violence quite another. Barcunda compounds them into one toxic dose by talking of the saccharine/strychnine drip. I agree that it’s really no loss that we do not have these activities depicted on TV here, but, believe me, we need sex. What else do we have? Everything else is in short supply. We certainly need sex. You speak as if there were something unnatural about it.’
Barcunda protested that he was not against sex, only constant and unnecessary depictions of its various activities.
‘It’s a private thing,’ he said, leaning across the table. ‘Showing it on the screen transforms a private thing into a public, a political, act. And so it muddies the deep waters of the spirit.’
Kissorian looked down his nose. ‘You DOPs had better realise that for the amount of screwing that goes on you’d think we were on Venus.’
Kathi Skadmorr’s activities as a speleologist had made her the hero of the hour. It was suggested at the end of the meeting that I should coopt her on to the Adminex, if only to make that body more popular. I agreed, but was not eager to have another confrontation with her on Ambient.
We continued our discussion of Crispin Barcunda’s saccharine/strychnine drip privately. One of the fundamental questions was whether love and sexuality would become more enjoyable if they retreated into being private things? Without constant representation visually in the media, would not a certain precious intimacy be restored to the act? But how to bring this thing about without censorship: that is, to influence public opinion so that ordinary persons who wished to do so could rid themselves of the poisonous drip, as they had in previous ages rid themselves of the enjoyments of cock-fighting, slavery and tobacco-smoking?
Crispin said, ‘You want to advance towards the betterment of mankind? Maybe it can be done, maybe not! But let’s have a try, Tom. After all, it gives our lives here an objective. Betterment means a break with the past – chop, like that! – not just a continuation of it, as would have been the case had the terraformers and realtors had their way. Maybe we can do it. But I’d be against any suspicion that sexuality and eroticism was not in itself one of mankind’s blessings. The older I get, and the more difficult sex gets, the more I become convinced it holds the meaning of any valued life.’
I could but agree. ‘We must try to influence minds. It is important – and not just for our little outpost here. We’re not going to be isolated for ever. Once EUPACUS or its successors have been reassembled, once the world economy has picked up, ships are going to be operating again.