Reach for Infinity

REPORT CONCERNING THE PRESENCE OF SEAHORSES ON MARS



Pat Cadigan


[Transcript: plog Rose Polat Feenixity, edited & annotated]


“WHAT IS THAT?” Beau asked nervously, retreating a little on the mesh in the reception grotto.

“Kidding me? It’s a mobi,” I said.

“It’s my ass,” he said. “What are they playing at?”

“Nothing. They’re Earth people.” I turned to see he’d actually climbed the netting on the wall. “Hey?”

“Does the name ‘Shelob’ mean anything to you?” Tiny blobs of sweat fell away in slow motion from his handsome dark face.


I blinked at him. “The Hobbit? Seriously?” I jerked my head at the walls where a few dozen sp(eye)ders were bouncing around the basalt mesh either relaying data or monitoring the ambience. They ranged in size from barely three centimetres across, legs included, up to critters twice the size of the average Earth tarantula. They were all half-organic, half-tech; still photos have been known to cause hysterics in the more fragile, usually Earth people. “Is this a bad time to mention you’re on the web?”

“Rose. Tarantulas are normal-big. This is like something out of a horror movie! It’s the size of a Marserati! I’m gonna have nightmares!”

Beau’s exaggerate-itis was exacerbated by his obsession with surface racing; I knew the Marserati he was referring to and the mobi wasn’t even half that size. On first sight, I’d thought it looked like an overgrown toy but now that Beau had pointed it out, I could kinda see what he meant, damn him. It did have an unnerving quality – eight jointed legs spread out from a centre globe with a full 360o view for the visitor/ operator, whose head was displayed within as 3D hologram. All the legs ended in round pads with a plethora of tiny hairs on the bottom, possibly for climbing walls and running across ceilings. As if we could actually just give it the run of Feenixity. Most of our long-distance visitors, either from Earth or from elsewhere on Mars, came Down Here via AugmAr. Mobis are workhorses, used either on the surface or by tunnelling crews. Only a major juice box could have pulled this off but no one had seen fit to tell us who that might be. We’d just gotten a buzz to go to the south-southeast reception grotto and meet a mobi guest.

The head on display in the globe looked natural as anything for a composite. Whenever we dealt with a representative of some important Earth body, individual or corporate, it was usually an ArP designed by committee. It’s how Earth people do business. An Artificial Person is easier to control than a live front with an earwig – it’ll never think for itself and go off script, it doesn’t need to be paid, praised, or promoted, and it won’t get head-hunted. Stolen or hacked, maybe, but never lured away by a bigger salary and better perks. Or so they tell me. My own experience is – well, not limited, exactly, but skewed. I’ve been out of the blue and deep in the red for almost twenty Mars years and I barely remember what it’s like to live on Earth any more.

Now I looked over my shoulder at Beau and signed, Should I speak first? He signed back No idea. Big help, that guy. I took a breath and bounced gently over to the mobi, stopping right in front of it.

“Welcome to Feenixity,” I said cheerfully. “I’m Rose, this is Beauregard, we’ll be your guides while you’re here. I’m sorry to say that we haven’t been briefed as to the purpose of your visit or what you want to accomplish while you’re here, but we are both long-time residents and we’re prepared to help you however we can.” I raised my left hand and used the LED in my index finger to write my first name backwards in the air. Most Earth people prefer long-form to ideograms, at least until they get to know you better. “This is a link to our bios.” And then I waited. The average gap in a Mars-Earth conversation was anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending.

The head stared blindly through me. Like most commercial ArPs, it was androgynous and ethnically ambiguous. That’s a thing with Earth people, hedging their bets by trying to appeal to everyone.

After a bit, the head came to life, its androgyny tipping toward feminine as it focused on me. “I am Soledad DimitrovichWalker,” the head told me. “I don’t believe I caught your last names?”

I waited but that was all. So it was going to be like that. I swear to God, there are thousands of manuals in every freakin’ language; there are videos, slide shows, even dog-and-pony shows (cartoons – they’re cute) that explain how even when Mars and Earth are at their closest, it can take about four minutes for light to travel between them – that’s just light, all by itself. It takes longer than that for a message to be coded by the sender, then decoded by the receiver. Then there’s the time it takes for a message to be understood, considered, evaluated. Composing a reply takes more time, depending on what you’re talking about, which won’t be the weather, celebrity gossip, or how your day is going. Finally, the reply has to be encoded, transmitted, received, decoded, read, etc. Given all that, you have to make every transmission count on a live line, which is why most people stick to email.

I glanced at Beau; he gave me a barely perceptible nod. Creeped out or not, he had my back, one of the many reasons why I love him.

“We all have the same last name here,” I said. “Feenixity. We adopted the custom almost ten years ago. Ten Mars years, that is. Other cities–”

Abruptly, the head perked up again. “Ah, we’ve linked your images to your resumes, thank you. I represent the Federal Government of the United States of America, under whose aegis the settlement now known as Phoenix City was established.” The emphasis was slight but pointed.

I wasn’t sure what boggled me more – an outsider telling me how to pronounce Feenixity or the fact that an authority powerful enough to force an underground visit by mobi didn’t seem to know better than to speak before getting a response to their previous communication. It was the equivalent of talking over someone while they were trying to answer you in a normal conversation – not a felony but something a child would do.

“We understand that mobile units of this nature aren’t customary for sub-surface visitation,” the head went on in a stiffer, more formal voice, “but we have intel concerning unauthorised, even criminal activity by residents. Previous visits conducted virtually via AugmAr have been unsatisfactory. On Earth, we would simply send a delegation to investigate in person. However, interplanetary travel is not only an extreme expense but problematic time-wise.” Problematic time-wise; I almost grinned at the antiquated expression. The US and nostalgia – heirloom tomatoes, heirloom language. “We hit on this unorthodox procedure as a compromise and sincerely hope that it will obviate any further action. I would appreciate it if you would take me directly to the Governor’s office now, and we’ll continue conversing as we go.”

Beau’s gaze met mine. He didn’t seem at all startled; a quick glance at the scrap in my lens told me I didn’t, either. When you live under constant surveillance, you learn how to keep a straight face sans Botox. Our vitals, however, were another matter. H&S didn’t even bother with a ping-if-you’re-still-alive.

“Talk to me, Rose,” commanded the voice in my ear. My first sister, Lily; I felt a whole lot calmer immediately. Everyone in Health & Safety is pretty level-headed but even all of them agree that if you’re spurting from an artery, Lily’s your best bet.

I made the sign for a red-alert/defcon-one situation not involving imminent literal death, then shifted position to block the head’s view of Beau while he signed the details. Not that our visitor(s) couldn’t see him if they really wanted to, but tapping into our surveillance would take a lot of time and effort, things that are never cheap. Considering they’d mentioned money right away, it was probably safe to assume there was another financial crisis in progress and they were trying very hard not to over-spend. Or spend at all.


Eyemail from my supervisor appeared in my lens. Nu sumthin ≈ this wud hapn, pmp ndfns. I almost laughed out loud. Rudi thought popping out an exercise band and pumping endorphins was the solution gateway to just about any problem. Well, it was the best way to play for time with Earth people; they couldn’t argue about mandatory procedures to keep our muscles from atrophying and our bones from dissolving. And the Martian workout was still trending big in the west. They loved trampolines and bungee cords as much as heirloom tomatoes; still do, I hear. I slipped off my belt and did a few sets of slow push-kicks until the head perked up again.

“I see we haven’t left the reception area,” it said in an authoritatively displeased tone. “Is there some technical reason for this delay? We have the most recent layout onboard. You only need to plot a course for the mobile navigator. If you are unfamiliar with this particular technology, there’s a help file with complete instructions.”

While the head nattered on a little more about the file, I transmitted a link and then quickly composed the message it was supposed to connect with, working online so it wouldn’t just come up blank if they were quick on the click. With any luck, someone there would know enough to wait for the complete text, even if they didn’t seem to understand how to have an interplanetary conversation. Or maybe they did but whoever was running the head just wouldn’t pay attention. That was also a thing with Earth people: they didn’t take orders from us. Ever. (Sure liked to give them, though.)

Because I was working online, I knew when they got the link and when they clicked it – well, seven minutes after the fact, to be precise. I’d been mostly done by then. The only thing that would have come in while they were reading the message was my suggestion that ‘Soledad Dimitrovich-Walker’ review the standard guidelines for ultra-long-distance phone calls, because they weren’t really like phone calls. (And then I almost sabotaged the whole thing by putting Shelob instead of Soledad. Luckily, I caught it. Even if I’d been weasel enough to try blaming Beau for putting the idea in my head, it wouldn’t have helped.)

There was a much longer wait for an answer. I could imagine the vigorous discussion going on back in the blue. Lots of local phone calls and people all talking at once saying things like, How can they get away with this? And, We tried to tell you and But it’s supposed to be American soil, isn’t it? And, Say what you will but I bet the Chinese don’t have these problems with their people.

Finally, the head made a throat-clearing noise. “All right, we’ll do things your way, one full message at a time.” My way? That was both laughably inaccurate and disturbingly ominous. I wished like anything I’d still been full-time in the greenhouse. Greenhice management are all crazy but in a way that makes sense. “We have some questions. If the dimensions of the tunnels that we have been given are correct, our mobile unit will fit with some room to spare. Why then do you insist the unit is too big to move about freely, even in the grottos, which we happen to know are cavernous?

“If you insist the current hardware is unsuitable, can you supply a substitute that will meet the following requirements: free-standing, independently mobile, controlled solely by us, with a secure, unmonitored comm-link? Are you willing to allow the visit to continue until the substitute can be procured? Do you understand that if you refuse to cooperate, the consequences may be severe enough to endanger lives or worse? Reply soonest, thank you.”

This time, Rudi phoned. “’I’ve sent them a copy of the transport regulations concerning mass and volume with the appropriate areas highlighted, and a personal note apologising for the inconvenience.”

“Great,” said Beau. “And if they want to argue they should be exempt from size and weight restrictions?”

“I’ll be happy to debate them later,” Rudi said cheerfully. “Six dogs are on their way to you. They’ll disassemble the damned thing, take it to the Main Grotto, and put it back together before they can answer.”

Beau didn’t quite frown. “What if they think it’s an AugmAr fake-out?”

“The goddam log’s running,” Rudi replied, the goddam belying his stolid cheeriness. “They’ll have a perfect, authentic record of every glorious moment. Dogs comin’ through now.”

I hopped back to join Beau on the wall as half a dozen dogsbodies in yellow work-suits pedalled in from the south tunnel, slotted their cycles, and went to work under a foreman only they could see and hear. From the way they went at it and what they were saying to each other, I knew Aster Li was giving the orders. Of everyone I’d ever worked for in my dogs-body days, she was my favourite. She preps every job by seeing it in three dimensions in her head and her work-plans all come out like choreography. Earth people can’t get enough of her videos; her dog crews routinely get the highest number of views, and that’s premieres and re-runs. The Firefly Murmuration video still holds the record for most paid hits on debut. Just a repair crew wearing fairy lights taking mole-bots apart in a dark grotto but even I love that one and I’m not much for soya entertainment these days (low-gravity isn’t conducive to sitting on your ass).

Six and a half minutes later, we were all on our way to the Main Grotto. Beau and I let the crew go ahead – our cycles were set on high effort, Beau’s higher than mine. I’d just done some resistance sets so I was good for a while. But my physical monitor probably figured I’d have hung back with Beau anyway and decided not to waste the effort. That’s the sort of thing you really want in a fizz; it’s also one of a thousand things about life in the red that they don’t get back in the blue, no matter how you explain it.

“So what do you suppose the life-threatening consequences of failing to cooperate are?” I asked Beau.

“All the candy-bar people pull their sponsorship?” he wheezed, rearranging the handle-bars so he could pedal in the recumbent position. (I keep telling Transport Hardware that if they added actual wheels to these things so they weren’t just handles and pedals on a pole, they’d be more a lot more fun. They always say the same thing: Maybe someday, when there’s more space and storage Down Here.)

“Or all their candy-bars.” I heard myself and stopped laughing. “What if they did? Seriously. That would be...” I trailed off, unable to think of a word awful enough to describe life without the semi-annual chocolate holidays.

“Really awful,” Beau puffed, breathless.

I reached over and pulled on the back of his shirt to remind him not to lean forward, thinking that the upper body/lower body divide between men and women had never been as clearcut as it was now, for all of us. “Worse than that. We don’t have enough coca or coffee plants yet for a commercial-sized crop.”

“So I guess that’s at least another year without a Marsbucks franchise Down Here, then? And they dare to call this America.” Beau grunted with effort. “But I don’t understand where the threat to life comes in.”

“Maybe they’ll cut everything off,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘everything’? Like–” he had to slow down to talk now. “They’d just abandon us? Leave us here to die?”

“If we’re costing them more than they’re taking in, yeah. One of the first things they mentioned was how expensive space travel is. Any time they bring up money that soon, it means it’s high priority, and money’s only a high priority when it’s scarce.” I actually wanted to stop talking because I was scaring the living fuq out of myself but I couldn’t. My mind was racing, showing me a stream of pictures, none of them pretty. “I don’t remember the Federal Government ever being so concerned with crime on Mars that they felt they had to intervene. Or interfere.”


Beau sighed. “I opted out of the government module in favour of folklore and oral traditions, so I’m not really qualified to make any pronouncements on the matter. But–” he huffed mightily. “That’s never stopped me before. Would they go to this much trouble to intervene – or interfere – if they were planning to cut us off?”

“Well, no,” I said, feeling slightly better for all of two seconds. “But they could be taking inventory to decide which settlements to keep and which are more trouble than they’re worth.” My heartbeat was way up now and not just from physical effort. “During my rotation in cityhall, my mentor told me Earth is always pushing for scripted videos, for more things happening. One of the greenhice down south actually has a separate crew just for drama – they pretend they’re having affairs or plotting to steal, I don’t know, stuff, or something. The network wanted to kill off one of the characters by having another character murder them but they couldn’t get anyone to go along with it. Surveillance society – somebody’s always watching so it has to be worth looking at.”

“Or listening to,” Rudi said quietly in my ear. “Loose lips get your ass kicked, remember? Or worse, all our asses.”

“And if all our asses are gonna get kicked anyway?” I said evenly.

“Don’t talk like you know something when you don’t,” Rudi said just as evenly. “Hurry up, that thing’s almost reassembled.”

[Annotation... I guess; admin didn’t explain all the functions on this thing very well. (Pause #1) Testing, testing – is this thing on? (Pause #2) Well, it is or it isn’t. Okay, I don’t see why I couldn’t have done this as a standard personal log; I’d be done by now. How’s that for an annotation?]


NOTHING TRAVELS AS fast Down Here as a scandal or a scare. Sp(eye)ders were pouring into the Main Grotto from all directions; I’d never seen so many in one place. Everybody in town must have sent one, and some, more than one. Nobody wanted to miss a thing. This was Feenixity’s version of an uproar. At least it wasn’t an actual crowd – climate-control would have crashed. But parts of the walls looked like they were alive and if sp(eye)ders kept on coming like this, the mass might throw the local environment out of balance, which would in turn stress other areas of Feenixity. Down Here, balance is nothing to screw around with. You can’t count on a whole lot of wiggle room because there’s only so much breathable air.

Local life-support is calibrated in two steps, first in general to establish gradated parameters and then continuous maintenance – [Plogger’s note: Seriously? I really have to explain this?] which means everything’s measured and balanced. Being near the North Pole, Feenixity has the advantage of easy – well, easier – access to water and oxygen. But even so, it took a while before we could start supplying plant cuttings and fresh produce to other settlements on a regular basis. Everyone says because we have the largest number of greenhice, we’ve got the best air. The numbers bear that out, although there isn’t as much difference between our air and other settlements’ now as there was even ten Mars years ago. Eventually, when the botanicals in other settlements are more mature, they’ll all smell good, or at least better. But it’ll be a long time before we can be spontaneous without a permit.

It’s not an ideal way to live. I mean, we’d all still be under surveillance even if a gazillion people on Earth weren’t watching us on the Reality Show Network (I hear they even watch us on the Moon; the meta must make their reality shows pretty static). Everything we consume/breathe is measured, going in and coming out; the ecology depends on it and our lives depend on the ecology. On Earth, if you get fed up with your job or your neighbourhood or even your whole life, you can just take off, go somewhere else and try something new. On Mars, you’ve already committed in advance to be where you’re needed, to do what needs doing. You can express a preference and you might even get it… but you’ll probably have to wait and there’s no telling how long.

Which is why we’re all so hobby-crazy. I got into the basaltroving knitting thing in a big way when I first got here. Then crocheting and even lace tatting – the stuff can be as fine as hair (I still have basalt lace all over the walls of my bedroom). Being pre-disposed to fidget got me a GMO apprenticeship on the greenhouse track. It never crossed my mind to turn it down; to paraphrase an old saying, I didn’t come here to say no.


ANYWAY, BY THE time Beau and I hit the Main Grotto, I had more message flags in my lens than I’d had all year. Eyemail is supposed to be more secure than email but it’s an intranet, not telepathy. And even if it were, someone would probably figure out how to hack into that in less than a day.

Some people can handle eyemail while they’re doing something else but my multi-tasking tree won’t branch that far. I didn’t have time even to tell everyone that I didn’t have time to answer them so I marked myself unavailable, which bounced all the messages. That’s one of those things that sounds really rude to Earth people but it isn’t any more impolite than a busy signal or an answering machine. Rude would have been accepting all the messages and flushing them unread.

[Plogger’s note: I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be rude now, either, but how much do I have to explain to Earth people? If anyone can tell me, don’t be shy, okay?]


THE MAIN GROTTO has four levels: ground, first, second, and ceiling. The ground is mainly machinery – climate control, power, plumbing – and various kinds of micro-algae coatings. The netting on the first level is for general foot traffic and extends wall to wall. The second level nets are divided into separate sections around the perimeter for meetings or classes or other kinds of get-togethers, leaving the centre open so people can move between levels via the stiffened tethers anchored in the ceiling gym. It’s not the most efficient layout but we voted to leave it as is for historical reasons. (Incidentally, all the nets are the original basalt roving. That stuff lasts.)

“What are you doing here?” I asked Rudi, who was still hanging around. “I thought you’d be conferring with the council.”

“First, I take responsibility with my team,” he said, serenely, dangling from a tether with a few dozen sp(eye)ders along a stretch just above his head. More sp(eye)ders were gathering on the net around the mobi a few metres away. The crew had reassembled it with only four legs – enough to keep it propped up for conversation but not enough to move easily. I found myself wondering if a three-legged configuration would have worked equally well to stabilise it while making even more difficult, if not impossible, to move.

“A bit too hostile,” Beau whispered, reading my mind through my would-be poker face. It’s the lighter gravity – like every other part of your body, your facial muscles work a bit differently with less pulling them down. Some people, like Beau, have a talent for spotting minute tells in people they know well (I think it’s something to do with pattern recognition, but don’t quote me).

“Ix-nay on the indreading-may,” I whispered back, frowning. “Especially around you-know-what.”

“FYI, I was thinking the same thing.” Beau chuckled a little. “But this is okay, too. Not so Shelob, I feel better.” He gave me a little push. “Go ahead, get a little closer. Before the sp(eye)ders crowd you out.”


The nearest tether was closer than I really wanted to be but all the others were a little too stand-offish. I looked at the dogs, who were hanging on the wall with the other four legs. A couple of them were busily taking one apart, apparently out of curiosity. Probably career dogs, who were all compulsive tinkerers; I hoped for all our sakes they could figure out how to put it back together. I was about to ask Rudi what I’d missed when the head in the globe woke up again.

“Ah. Now can we go to the Governor’s office? I would like to get started reviewing your records and scheduling interviews with the women. I would also like to consult with the Governor and whoever else can transport this mobi from one place to another about the feasibility of less formal interviews. More than that, I don’t wish to say to anyone except the Governor, who must be in his office by now? Over to you.”

This time, the hologram dimmed, indicating the connection had actually been broken. Everyone sighed with relief.

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do now. Do I try to explain that the Governor’s office is a completely virtual construct or do I say the Governor is unavailable? If so, what lie do I tell?”

“Something with laryngitis or some other throat infection that means the Governor can’t speak,” suggested Beau.

“That’s good. I vote for that, too,” piped up one of the dogs, an ambid named Jazm. We had come out of the blue on the same transport. S/he’d gone off to pick blueberries in the Land of Opportunity. Apparently, her/his interest had shifted from rocks to machines. I sent her/him a catch-up-later ping.

“Maybe the Governor has a contingency plan?” I said, looking at Rudi.

“If he does, it’s not something he’s shared with me.” Behind his goggles, his gaze was distant; eyemail. Rudi was one of those people who couldn’t accommodate an implanted lens so he had to go around looking like he was on his way to a wind tunnel. A few moments later, he gave a short, surprised laugh. “Zeke knew they were coming.”

A sp(eye)der landed on my shoulder and started to make itself at home. “No hitchhikers,” I told it and it dropped away. I turned back to Rudi. “And Zeke decided to keep that to himself because... oh, he thought we’d like a surprise?”

“No,” Rudi said, unperturbed. “He knew there was no way to stop them so he figured it was better not to stir everyone up ahead of time.”

“And you think that was a good decision?” I said, trying not to sound disrespectful.

“Actually, yes.” The circuit tattoo on Rudi’s forehead puckered slightly. “In light of the furore we all know is coming, keeping things running smoothly here for as long as possible is the best thing to do.”

Ezekiel Kebede Feenixity was a genius city-planner but not my favourite Governor. He could understand all kinds of systems objectively from the outside but he had a harder time seeing one from the inside, as part of it. Probably because he was thinking – over-thinking – instead of feeling the flow. His latest project was unprecedented and he’d managed to keep it quiet until it was close to completion.

Something hit the backs of my knees and I crumpled on the net. “Where are you?” Rudi demanded, suddenly beside me.

“Somewhere in the future.” My face was burning as I bounced back up. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” I glanced at Beau, who winced and shook his head.

Rudi was about to say something else when Shelob woke up again. “Excuse me for communicating again before receiving your answer but readings indicate the mobi is only partially assembled. Is there some problem with the hardware or are the readings in error? Also, we have received two separate files on the layout of Phoenix City, one more extensive than the other. Neither is a complete match for the one we have. Which one reflects the current configuration? Please send another file with photographic walk-through of all habitable areas in a format suitable for viewing on a flat screen but with true-life resolution or as close to it as possible.” The head dimmed again as it fell silent.

“Okay,” I said, “who wants to handle that one? Don’t be shy.”

“We can worry about that later,” Rudi said impatiently. “What I was about to tell you before I was so, uh, completely interrupted is, that’s not an ArP composite. Soledad DimitrovichWalker is a living person, a US special envoy.”

“Really.” I was a bit skeptical, considering how her appearance had shifted. “Do special envoys always tinker with their looks?”

“If you still had one gee pulling your face down toward your knees every moment of every day, you’d touch up your image, too.” Rudi paused, head tilted to one side.

“What?” I asked after a few moments.

“The Governor’s been out of surgery for two hours. He’s on his way over.”

I was surprised and not surprised all at the same time. Zeke always did have a tendency to showboat.


TWO NURSES STRETCHERED Zeke in and used extra tethers to stabilise him. He looked great, considering. A little tired but his colour was good. Shelob would never guess what he’d just gone through unless he told her. I tried to bet Beau three vacation days that he would but he refused to take it; Beau likes him as Governor more than I do but he’s not stupid.

Zeke was wearing the royal blue robe of office, which covered him from neck to ankles; the gold belt was sash-style, shoulder to hip instead of around his waist. The outfit’s strictly ceremonial, very seldom worn. Voluminous garb in low gravity is a pain in the ass – if it’s not getting caught on something, it’s flying into someone’s face – but it looks great on video. Earth people like to see us bounding around in capes and aerodynamic BASE-jumper flyer-suits and we go along with it despite the occasional Isadora-Duncan-esque accident (but no fatalities so far, thank Ares). We had to keep those ratings up. Ratings meant dollars and dollars meant everybody back in the blue was happy.

Right then it occurred to me that ratings might not help us now.

See, the Federal Government was quite happy when NASA started crowd-funding itself – themselves? – via entertainment. There was a lot of collaboration between the government and the Reality Show Network. The RSN pushed for a new channel completely dedicated to Mars rather than just adding us to the space channels. Both the government and NASA were skeptical at first – they weren’t sure they’d get enough material from us to support an all-Mars schedule and they were worried about classified stuff getting out. Well, that was mostly the government. NASA had a different perspective – all of their people had been up, either in orbit or to the moon, which meant they were spaced out. The formal term for it is the Overview Effect. It happens when you see Earth from space as whole and undivided – no borders, no boundaries, no human-made lines dividing land masses into countries or territories.

That’s a life-changing experience, nothing like merely seeing a picture of Earth taken from space, or even a super-highresolution real-time video; believe me, I know. I still remember the initial impact – it was like taking a blow to the head with a great big stick, but from inside my head (it took me years to come up with that description and I’m still not sure about it). Everyone on my transport was moved in the most profound way. Some got weepy, some couldn’t talk about it, some couldn’t stop talking about it, and some, like me, cycled through all of the above several times.


Just for the record, our first sight of Mars was also quite affecting: our new world.

Anyway, once you’re spaced out, the whole classified thing seems counter-productive. The people at NASA followed orders for the sake of their jobs – they indulged the government while they waited for opportunities to go up again, perhaps permanently. That’s how it was when I left Earth, anyway – all NASA employees had to have space-flight experience. But if expenses were tight, I realised, that was probably no longer the case.

If so, it wasn’t just a crying shame – it meant all of us on Mars no longer had the level of advocacy that had so often protected settlement funding when the times that were always a-changin’ on Earth a-changed for the worse. When people work for money, you can never pay them enough; when they work for what they believe, they’ll pay themselves.

I shook the thought away; Zeke was adjusting the stretcher so he was sitting up with restraints criss-crossing his chest so as to avoid pressure on his abdominal area. His deep brown face had a glow to it and his eyes were almost crazy-bright, if you know what I mean. But at least he didn’t look like he might get teary. One of the nurses leaned in to say something to him and Zeke waved her/him away, saying, “I’m fine, I really am.” He looked at the mobi and then at the masses of sp(eye)ders crawling all over the place before he turned to me, Beau, and Rudi.

“I hope they don’t think we’ve got some kind of infestation,” he said. “Would everyone who doesn’t absolutely have to have a personal eye in here please re-call their sp(eye)ders? The bandwidth is probably so overloaded at this point, it’ll run an hour behind. They’ll see it back in the blue before you do. We’ve got plenty of surveillance – watch that. You won’t miss a thing. What have I ever hidden from any of you?” he added with a chuckle.

The sp(eye)der exodus was so gradual that I wondered if everyone had decided to ignore him. But after a bit, I noticed they were dropping through the net onto the ground level, where they picked their way through the machinery and the algae beds to the vents and maintenance conduits. Not all of them, though; some of them settled down in nooks and crannies and went to sleep. Zeke noticed and I could practically see the wheels turning while he considered making the Main Grotto a no-parking zone and then decided not to. I’ll say this for him, he knew when to take formal command and when to settle for just as good. (Governors who didn’t insist on asserting their authority all the time always did a lot better in Feenixity than authoritarians, although I think it helps to have the occasional bossy-ass just to remind us why we don’t like them.)

Beau gave me a nudge and jerked his head toward the mobi. The head was awake again, turning all the way around in the globe. “Is there some problem? We’re still waiting for a response. Please advise if there are technical difficulties on your end.” It dimmed again.

“I’ll handle this now.” Zeke’s face blanked briefly as he scanned the reports in his lens.

After a minute or two, Rudi cleared his throat. “Who else from the council will be here?”

“Besides you and Rose?” Zeke asked.

“I’m in greenhouse now,” I said, “not cityhall. And I’m only on the council track. I’m not a council member yet.” He knew that; had recent events actually affected his memory?

Zeke looked past me to Beau. “What about you?”

“I’m not on the council track,” he said, “and I don’t want to be.”

“Ah.” The Governor looked blank again. “Well, this is definitely one for oral traditions, possibly folklore.” He chuckled, then tilted his head to one side. “Hello? Yes, now, Pearl. Everyone here seems to think we need more councillors in attendance. Bring anyone you can get to come with you.” He straightened up. “Sorry. All right, now, for transmission.” He signed Start Message in the air. The gesture made him wince but when the nurse leaned over to offer him something, he waved him/her away again. I saw the other nurse frown.

“Hello, I’m the current Governor, Ezekial K Feenixity. I’m sure you know that as I haven’t exactly kept a low profile. I know why you’re here. I’m not going to talk around this or try to obfuscate the issue. It’s not a new idea. Feenixity was buzzing about it when it was still Phoenix City. That was back when I first got here, thirty-one Mars years ago. I’ll let you figure out how many Earth years that is. I’m afraid we don’t think in Earth time and we’ve recently agreed on a resolution that makes converting to any Earth measures optional. A bot can do it. In fact, our Division of Weights and Measures have several very good conversion bots for all kinds of formats from common to niche or boutique, audio and/or video and they’ll give you a good rate if you buy multiple licenses. Elementary schools get a discount. Pardon the commercial. Maybe you can find a way to insert it into RSN programming as a PSA. FTR.” Zeke chuckled; so did Beau and Rudi.

I had mixed feelings. I wanted to chuckle but I didn’t think Zeke was doing himself or us any favours with disingenuous insolence. Besides, he wasn’t talking directly to Earth people. Shelob and her posse were so far removed from the society they claimed to represent that they might as well have been from Mars, too. (Not ours, though.)

“We’re not ungrateful,” Zeke went on. “But we feel that we’ve reached a point where we must either change and grow or stagnate and die. I know every other settlement, regardless of their affiliation, feels the same. None of us will return to Earth, and not just because of the physical problems of going back to heavier gravity. We have lives here and there’s much more to them than what you see on the Reality Show Network. We want even more than that. It’s normal. It’s human.

“What we’ve done – what I’ve done – some call it civil disobedience in the grand tradition of Thoreau. Personally, I’d say it’s a legal loophole, in that, to my knowledge, no woman in Feenixity is pregnant or has delivered a living baby.

“We have pregnant men. I was one of them.”

Zeke winced again and this time did not wave the nurse off when s/he applied an analgesic patch to the inside of his forearm. “I had a fertilised ovum implanted in my peritoneal cavity. A few hours ago, I gave birth, by surgery, to a healthy baby girl. Her name is Juno Amara Feenixity. Juno, for anyone who doesn’t know, was the mother of Mars.” Zeke’s proud expression turned a bit sheepish. “That may be far too much to expect of a newborn so perhaps she’ll go by Amara for a while. It was my wife’s mother’s name.” He leaned slightly to one side. “Means unfading, eternal.”

All at once, the nurses were stretchering him out again. The one that had given him the patch looked both furious and scared. My heart did a weird leap-up-and-sink-down move and a heavy feeling swept through me, as if I’d been instantly transported to a centrifuge running at one gee. Or two.

“He just overdid it,” Beau said, putting an arm around my waist. “That’s all it is. He’ll be okay.”

“When did you switch to the medical track?” I asked him.

“Hey, I just know my emergency first aid,” he said. “His colour didn’t change, he didn’t get confused or delirious or pass out. He just mistook happiness for energy. Or stamina, or whatever. They don’t call it labour for nothing.”


“He wasn’t exactly in labour. There’s no birth canal leading to an exit.”

“Well, metaphorically. Women have babies by Caesarean section all the time so it’s not like it’s all that remarkable.”

“Cutting into the abdominal cavity is major surgery, for anybody. And bleeding is no joke in lower gravity–”

“His colour was good,” Beau insisted. “You saw that yourself.”

“I don’t know what I saw,” I said unhappily.

Rudi gave my arm a shake. “Get solid or get out,” he whispered.

I looked up and saw that Pearl Bashir had arrived with Sasha Nikolai and Oren Snow. Pearl beckoned for Rudi to join them at the tethers where Zeke and his nurses had been. He hesitated, looking at me uncertainly.

“She’ll be fine,” Beau said, looking from him to me. “Won’t you?”

I nodded, although I had no idea whether I was lying or not. But I did my best to look solid.

The councillors huddled for a fast consult, then broke apart and braced themselves for whatever was coming up next. I had a sudden mental image of everybody in Feenixity doing the same, the cultivators on duty in my greenhouse, in all the greenhice, the colorists in decor and design, the weavers in the basalt roving plant, the librarians in data management, doctors, nurses, and patients in the clinics and infirmaries, everybody in cityhall, every dogsbody on call, the newest arrivals and their mentors in orientation and training – all of us might have been holding our breath together.

In which case, we’d have suffocated en masse. An hour later, we still hadn’t had a response.

“We have to wait them out,” Pearl said finally, taking the lead; appropriate, as she was Zeke’s successor. “And I’d prefer to have us all hold position here, including you.” She nodded at the crew hanging on the wall with the mobi legs. “Anyone object?”

Nobody did. The crew were probably carrying at least three hitchhikers each, despite Zeke’s request to free up bandwidth. But even if they weren’t, no force in the solar system could have made them leave. Me, either, although I was starting to wonder if anyone had ever died of suspense, like maybe having a stroke when it ended.

When the head came to life again, everybody jumped.

“This revelation has created a crisis,” Shelob said stiffly. I couldn’t think of her actual name any more. “This discussion is suspended while we call an emergency summit to decide what action to take. I’ve been asked to read a statement from the Executive Chair.

“‘This latest development has thrown the entire future of every settlement on Mars into jeopardy, not just Phoenix City. You may feel that you have made use of a legal loophole but this is a clear violation of the spirit and intent of the law. Restricting reproduction was meant to serve as a safety measure to keep the population stable until it could be determined beyond a reasonable doubt that this settlement is capable of supporting life without extraordinary intervention from Earth. At the moment, we do not feel Phoenix City is anywhere near such a state of existence.

“‘Meanwhile, the support given to Phoenix City and other settlements is always costly, and must be borne by those developed nations that choose to participate in the off-planet settlement program. The US has been at the forefront financially as well as technologically. During times of austerity and fiscal crisis, it has always fallen to the US to continue bearing the burden even when other nations reduce their contributions at the behest of their own citizens, or even cut them altogether.

“‘While the US has always done its best to look after her citizens no matter where they are, and to be responsible for all territories on Earth and elsewhere, it cannot condone or allow actions that would endanger everyone resident in a given territory. Unrestricted reproduction most definitely comes under this heading. Reproductive freedom is for people for whom radiation, limited breathable air, possible food shortages and/or underground cave-ins are not routine.

“‘If it was your intention to try to reduce or even end the US’s participation in your part of the off-planet program, congratulations – you may get your wish.’”

Shelob paused, seemed about to say something else, and then apparently decided not to. The head dimmed and then vanished altogether.


AFTER THAT, THERE was no keeping a lid on anything. Mars’ entire pregnant population came out, along with a much smaller number of actual parents. Zeke actually seemed kind of miffed that Juno wasn’t the first child born on Mars; that title belonged to a girl named Fola Adeyemi in the Land of Opportunity. Juno wasn’t even the first in Feenixity. Rosco Feenixity was the first by something like twenty-four Mars days; the second was his identical twin brother Toby, who came along a few minutes later, pushing Juno Amara into third place, and seventh place over all. I suspect a few children were delivered by mothers, and there were rumours that the baby down in Huygens grew to term in an artificial womb, or a cow, or an artificial womb implanted in a cow, but I didn’t give that much credence. Gossip brings out the creativity in the dullest souls.

Anyway, Zeke had to settle for being the first high-ranking political leader on Mars to bear a child, which was, in fact, no small thing. Lending the clout of his office to the Mars-Born Movement meant authorities on Earth couldn’t just spin it as the product of a disillusioned few whose romantic notions of adventure on another planet had been shattered by the decidedly un-romantic, un-adventurous, and never-ending brute toil of staying alive. They tried, but nobody bought it. But that didn’t mean most people on Earth, or even in the US, were on our side.


SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT of the very first Mars base, the only way the population increased was by volunteers coming out of the blue and into the red. Among other things, it meant an all adult population – they don’t let kids get on rockets. The matter of children and space travel was still controversial and probably always will be. There are still some places on Earth where it’s illegal for anyone under the age of eighteen to even take an edge-of-space sightseeing tour.

You see, it’s one thing to choose a personal life without children, but an entire society without them is something else. Once you’ve gone from huddling up and actively not dying every day to a thriving social order with amenities, children are crucial. A society without children isn’t the real thing – it’s weird, it’s unnatural, and it’s unhealthy.

Now, everyone who qualified for lift-off had to agree to be snipped or tied or whatever they do now. Some opted for full sterilisation but most didn’t; I didn’t. It’s not hard to reverse those procedures even on Mars and it was only a matter of time before someone did. I guess the folks back in the blue thought it would be sooner than later – every so often, we’d get a flurry of reminders that Mars settlers were legally bound not to reproduce without authorisation.

Actually, the statute, which every nation with interests on Mars signed, was quite specific: all females resident on Mars, whether on the surface or underground, were prohibited from engaging in any activity that would result in their becoming pregnant with the intention of carrying a foetus to term, resulting in a live birth, and all residents of any gender were forbidden to aid, abet, or conspire with others to cause a woman to become pregnant and deliver a child, or to conceal same.


Getting around that restriction wasn’t a simple matter but not so difficult as to be completely infeasible in terms of time and/ or effort. Obviously.


THE WAY THINGS blew up on Earth was scary. Even after we managed to filter the firehose of news down to reliable sources of confirmed fact, it was scary. At first, it looked like they were going to cut off all support for every single settlement, including communications – no entertainment, no news, no email, no data of any kind – in order to re-think the purpose and practicality of funding a project threatening to run out of control when it was still a long way from delivering a reasonable return on the investment. Unquote. (In a lot of the videos we saw, people really stressed delivering and delivered and any other form of the word. Everybody seemed determined not to miss any opportunity to use a birth metaphor.) In the end, nobody cut off anything immediately, but there were a lot of dark hints/veiled threats about the near future.

No, I’m wrong – there was one supply they cut off: people. Emigration to Mars was suspended indefinitely.

As Beau’s own due date drew closer, I stopped looking at any news from Earth. There were just too many stories about crazies – the Right To Life/Anti-Abortion people didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, the Campaign for Fathers’ Rights started a riot in a family-planning clinic, and the La Leche Society had a major schism that I’m not sure I even understand.

And everybody had to read us the riot act. Everybody knew better. Everybody knew what we should have done instead. Everybody blamed us for needlessly stirring up trouble. Even people who claimed to be sympathetic said we were in the wrong.

I think Shelob summed it up best, in one of those sound-bites I failed to avoid: “While we can understand their point of view, the people on Mars seem to have forgotten one very important thing: we didn’t send them there to lead normal lives. And that’s not why they went.”

If I’d still been back in the blue, I might have agreed. But being in the red gives me a different viewpoint.

When people were first exploring Earth, it wasn’t because they wanted a normal life – they wanted a new one. But a new life isn’t something you get – it’s something you produce... and reproduce. We’ve always had animals and insects on Mars; the numbers are carefully limited but we get more in the usual fashion, with occasional imports to fresh up the gene pool.

Without additions from outside, the lack of diversity would eventually kill off every species. But with only additions from the outside, life continues without continuity; there is increase but no growth, flowering but no root.

Maybe I’ll feel differently when I’m cycling home after a long day and someone in the tunnel is back-packing a baby that won’t stop crying. Or Beau and I are up all night sponging vomit off the ceiling.

And – oh my God, how did I not think of this before? – toilettraining in low gravity! (If it’s a boy, maybe I can off-load that to Beau.) Not everyone on Mars wants to have kids and maybe those that do will have second thoughts when they hear about things like this.

I never thought I was really cut out to be mommy myself but when Beau said he wanted to go for it, I realised it was probably the most daring thing we could ever do together. Not even crater-racing Marseratis is this audacious.

They didn’t beat around the bush back on Earth when I first applied to go to Mars – they said everyone who went would die here. Well, we will. But first, we’re going to live.



[P.S.: It was a boy.]