Ramifications of the EUPACUS collapse had brought the capitalist system into disrepute and, in some cases, had demolished it entirely. The tentacles of corruption had reached out to involve famous figures in both East and West. Complex legal proceedings were still grinding through the law courts of California, Germany, China, j.a.pan, Indonesia and elsewhere.
Climate, that unacknowledged legislator in the history of mankind, was a contributory cause of the marked change in political thinking. The overheating of the globe had brought hazardous weather and great oceanic turbulences. New York, London and Amsterdam, together with many another low-lying city, had been invaded by ocean. These cities were now practically deserted, crumbling under the force of the tides. Climatic change had ruined many an economy and revived others, the United Koreas among them.
Into this unsettled situation the possibility of building a free and just society had infiltrated. The example of the Martian exiles proved more attractive than we could have imagined.
Planet Earth, we found, was now largely a Han planet. Which is to say that modes of Chinese Pacific thought prevailed, as more confrontational Western modes of thought had dominated in the previous century.
Yearning for a better life had always been latent in society. Now came a renaissance. One of its effects was the establishment of Huochuans in many global centres. Huochuan was a Chinese word for cargo vessel; the name caught on for travelling inst.i.tutes, which drifted from city to city with a freight of learning and wisdom. One whole section of a Huochuan was devoted to a huiyan, literally "minds that perceive both past and future", now applied to life-story-storage systems.
As nationality came to play a less active role in human affairs, the concept of age-grouping, with activities suitable for each age, became predominant. Divisions such as YEAS and DOPS were influential in this shift in thinking. It proved to be the thirty-something group that received most benefit from Huochuan teaching.
Huochuans promoted a system of two-way communications. Those whose lives had taken a wrong turning could receive consultation and/or counselling. A method developed whereby long-bygone conversations could be recalled verbatim and improved. Anyone had opportunities to reconsider their lives and alter career or direction if insight demanded it.
In payment the beneficiary contributed to the huiyan by depositing a vid, doc.u.ment or disk, recording their inward and outward lives. In this way, the Huochuans acc.u.mulated a grand compendium of the experiences of generations in a kind of psychic genetic inheritance. For the first time in human history, attention was paid to the individual life - to all individual lives - "this odd diversity of pain and joy", as an old folk song has it.
Such huiyan records served as a style of general entertainment/enlightenment (called tuokongs), much in the way of some serious TV programmes of the twentieth century.
With the proliferation of genetically altered vegetables and fruits, the eating of meat became a thing of the past in many regions. Domesticated animals became a rarity, although cats, dogs and songbirds were almost venerated, as were the semi-domesticated reindeer of far northern lands. Here and there, gates of zoo cages were flung open and their occupants set free.
People lived differently. They thought differently. Their cities were now contained; they kept in contact with one another by Ambient, much as ships at sea had once kept in touch by radio satellite. The old system of M-roads fell into decay. Beyond city walls, the wilderness was allowed to return. There, as on Mars, a degree of solitude could be enjoyed.
"The Utopians!" It became a magical word. While a percentage of those returning from Mars fell prey to terrestrial diseases, the virus of Utopian thinking spread. I am told that, in the great hall of the Unified World (as the reconst.i.tuted United Nationalities is called) stands a row of bronze busts of those of us who made history. There in effigy is Dreiser Hawkwood, there is Tom Jefferies, of course, and Kathi Skadmoor and Arnold Poulsen. And I am there too!
If future generations enquire why I, my humble little self, should stand there with the great, there is a reason. For I it was who went out with Kathi and Dreiser to confront Chimborazo when it gave birth.
The inspiration to do this came to me in a waking dream from my earthly Other. I was walking somewhere in a kind of desert called c.r.a.pout - though how I knew its name I have no idea - with another person, maybe male, maybe female, when a strange manifestation filled the sky.
It appeared like the cloud of an explosion, very alarmingly. I sheltered my companion in my arms, and was unafraid. A noise of trumpets sounded when, from the great threatening cloud, something beautiful appeared. I can"t describe it. Not an angel, no. More like a - well, a winged octopus, a pretty winged octopus, trailing streamers. It seemed to glance down at me with much kindness, so that I woke crying.
I gathered my courage and called Kathi. She spoke to Dreiser. We suited up and went out on the surface. Chimborazo was immense; the furrow of regolith it ploughed before itself was close to the science unit. The Smudge ring was covered in a layer of grit.
Chimborazo towered over us, ridged and immeasurable. A fearful wind blew. I remember the date. It was the second day of Month One of the year 2072.
Then came the noise, a call of some kind, like bugles and cellos combined.
The three of us stood our ground. The mighty thing reared up. We had a glimpse of p.r.o.nged exteroceptors and a kind of mucus curtain. From the curtain shot a pale stalk, perhaps like an elephant"s trunk, withered in appearance, with a mouth and l.a.b.i.a, moist, at its end. This strange protrusion penetrated the ring.
Again the trumpet note of triumph. I gripped Kathi"s hand. Liquid surged. Dreiser said faintly, "Amniotic fluid!"
The enormous creature seemed to back away and settle down. It became motionless.
On the churned regolith lay a thing resembling a small boulder. I went forward and lifted it with ease. It was comparatively light. As I carried it in my arms into the science unit, the thing began to open up.
After billions of years, Chimborazo had managed to reproduce itself, pumping both male and female cells into the receptive fluid...
So the great yearning for Utopia spread on Earth. It brought about revolution first of all in Europe, that fertile ground of so many past upheavals. Was it Chimborazo"s influence that made us unite as one, as never before? Be that as it may, we must believe we achieved Utopia of our own volition. We must believe in free will and the strength of will.
Now my daughter Alpha lives far away from me, while I myself am even further from Earth than Mars is. She has a man and a child, so her life is fruitful and, I suppose, happy. I will never see her again, or embrace her, or kiss her little daughter.
At least it is a consolation to know she will enjoy the promises of what to me is the inaccessible future.Note.
By Beta Greenway, Daughter of Alpha Jefferies I am a Jovian. I live a life of pattern. My actions are premeditated. I am pleased to contribute to this report.
Since the Jovian moons carried little or no emotional freight for human beings, they were not treated with the scruples Mars had once enjoyed.
Monitor probes, accompanied by a freighter, arrived by the turn of the century at what Galileo Galilei originally termed "the Medician stars", our four sizeable moons. A base was established on Ganymede while the other satellites, in particular Io and Europa, were surveyed by machinonauts.
Ganymede was made habitable by bioengineered plant-insect stock. These ephemeral life forms had been despatched in unmanned probes, to soft-land here and prepare it for human life. They clothed it in their corpses before we arrived. Such advances were not possible in the early days of Mars landings.
Our first ugly prefabricated buildings have long since been devoured and regurgitated to form our spinlifters.
Life is pleasant here. I find much scientific research to keep me occupied, and am compiling an Amb ent.i.tled Pluto As an Abode of Life. Pluto As an Abode of Life. Although the sun is distant, we enjoy the brilliant spectacle of Jupiter in our skies, together with the swarming variety of other moons to inspire us and tempt our thoughts ever outwards, into further and better transformations of human life. Although the sun is distant, we enjoy the brilliant spectacle of Jupiter in our skies, together with the swarming variety of other moons to inspire us and tempt our thoughts ever outwards, into further and better transformations of human life.
The quest for knowledge continues.
Indeed, such work continues beyond the solar system, beyond the Oort Cloud. There, beneath the light of stars, a Cheeth-Rosewall is coming into operation. This Chheeth-Rosewall is immeasurably larger than the failed miniature HIGMO detector constructed on Mars a century ago.
The ring has a diameter of about the same extent as one of Saturn"s outer rings, with a cross-section of just a few millimetres. The volume of superfluid is therefore not too large. However, we expect to detect a HIGMO at last.
HIGMO density is a good deal less than antic.i.p.ated. However, the research has acquired vital importance: as generally agreed, it will yield important truths about the nature of consciousness - consciousness - as well as solving the riddle of ma.s.s. as well as solving the riddle of ma.s.s.
Once we can control these things, we shall be able to project our minds across the universe. And what we shall there encounter, who can say?
I have no communication with the person who was my mother. She lives on Iapetus, out by Saturn. But I will zeep this note to her for her mother"s record of ancient times. Frankly, the thought of womb-birth amuses me. How clumsy and inefficient it was, and how inconvenient for womankind! We do not have families.
Our Jovian generations are now all of extra-uterine extraction, apart from the subbermans. E-u techniques have enabled us to combine pseuplant life into our genes; when our lungs breathe out, our foliagics breathe in; what the foliagics emit, we breathe in.
Thus we are almost entirely independent of atmosphere suits for long periods. We are a mathematical people. By the end of their first year, infants can calculate the orbits of most matrix bodies we observe orbiting about us.
Having trained Chimborazo to sp.a.w.n, we now have small Chimbos with us everywhere. We benefit from their acute diagnostic powers. Indeed, it can be claimed that human and Chimbos form a symbiotic species.
Together, we and Chimbos are planning to voyage out into the universe, far beyond the heliopause. We hope to call it to account. Because we are Utopians, we can do this. One can proudly say that the human race, risen from lowly and irrational forms, with a mind, in Darwin"s words, once as low as that of the lowest animal, has at last become REASONABLE.Appendix by Dr. Laurence l.u.s.tgarten The United Nationalities Charter for the Settlement of Mars The peoples of the Earth, represented through the United Nationalities, do hereby make provision for the human settlement of our sister planet, Mars, consistent with respect for its equal status with the nations of Earth within the solar system.
The United Nationalities, recognising the fragility of the Martian environment and acutely conscious of our present ignorance of the capability of its ecosystem to sustain physical incursion and change, hereby agrees: Art. I: All nations comprising the United Nationalities do individually and collectively disclaim any territorial rights of ownership or control over any portion of the planet Mars or its airs.p.a.ce. Equally they bind themselves to reject any such claims that may in future be a.s.serted by any political ent.i.ty on the planet Earth.
Art. II: Mars shall be governed by the United Nationalities as a trusteeship, held in trust for the entire population of Earth. It shall be treated as a single ent.i.ty, and never sub-divided and subject to different regimes. The environment of Mars shall be regarded as sacrosanct; any large-scale projects that threaten its individual character shall be prohibited, at least until such time as the entire globe has been scientifically explored and studied.
Art. III: In light of the severe limitations on its ability to sustain the intrusion of an alien civilisation, human settlement of Mars shall be strictly limited in numbers and subject to qualifications by the United Nationalities. While it is accepted that member states may select exclusively their own nationals for their share of any settlement quota, they shall observe the principles of non-discrimination on grounds of race, colour, s.e.x and religious or political opinion in their selection.
Art. IV: All questions of economic or other relations with the settlement established on Mars shall be conducted with the delegates of the United Nationalities, who shall be ever mindful of their trusteeship obligations.
Art. V: Mars shall be used for peaceful purposes only. All activities of a military nature, such as the establishment of bases or fortifications, or the testing of any type of weapons, are absolutely prohibited. Serious scientific projects that find the Martian environment advantageous to their researches are not prohibited.
Art. VI: The disposal of waste products generated on Earth, of any kind, is absolutely prohibited. The exiling of criminal elements from Earth to Mars is also prohibited.
Art. VII: The United Nationalities shall appoint observers whose function is to ensure compliance with the foregoing provisions. The observers shall enjoy full freedom of access at all times to any installation or structure established on Mars.How It All Began APIUM: a.s.sociation for the Protection and Integrity of an Unspoilt Mars Plans are already afoot to send human beings to Mars. Behind these exciting possibilities lies a less worthy objective: an a.s.sumption that the Red Planet can be turned into something resembling a colony, an inferior Earth. This operation would extend prevailing dystopian tendencies into the next century.
Planets are environments with their own integrity. Any vast engineering schemes would be invasive. The end result could only be to turn Mars into a dreary suburb, imitating the less attractive features of terrestrial cities. A military-industrial complex would probably rule over it.
APIUM stands for humanity"s right to walk on Mars, and is against its rape and ruination. Mars must become a UN protectorate, and be treated as a "planet for science", much as the Antarctic has been preserved - at least to a great extent - as unspoilt white wilderness. We are for a WHITE MARS!
Mars should remain as a kind of Ayers Rock in the sky. It must be made visitable to ordinary men and women (the travel costs to be met by community service at home). Its solitudes will be preserved for silence and meditation and honeymooning. From Mars, traditionally the G.o.d of War, a myth of peace will spread back to Earth, supplanting the myth of energy/power/exploitation that has so darkened the twentieth century.
APIUM believes that great good will come to both planets if we have the courage to sustain a WHITE MARS.
Brian W. Aldiss President, APIUM Pamphlet distributed January 1997 Green College, Oxford, England