Red Dust Part 1

Paul Mcauley.

Red Dust.

One.

Mars was dying.

Year after y, ,hard pink ski ning. Each year, the and spring arrived lab

In the second year day of calm spring w sixth of April. The tho danwei suddenly disc.

long winter confinen crickets, heroic opera ments for fun and pre of a late dust storm, Lee had no trouble ir citizens to clear the Dome.

It was filthy work, suits. Edging along r hand over hand up lit which studded one in hexagonal panes. Sticl ing enveloped in a p, Lee cleared the last w face plate clear, hook out to take in the vie

The King of the ear, the summer rains failed and the .'s were st.i.tched only with dry light,inter dust storms raged more fiercely, er than the year before.

of the Silence of the Emperor, the first eather did not arrive until the forty-asand or so people in the Bitter Waters overed that they were weary of their aent, their enthusiasms for fighting , and handcrafting fur-trimmed odd>fit.

Despite a seventy per cent chance Contract Agronomist Technician Wei rounding up half a dozen volunteer :logged filters of Number Eight Field

requiring full face masks and sealed netre-wide frame elements. Climbing les of rung staples to find the air vents every hundred of the field dome's big king in the blower's nozzle and becomersonal storm of red dust. When Wei .'nt at the top of the dome, he blew his .d his line to the vent's grid and leaned W,.

Cats was playing some down-home I rock'n'roll in Lee's earpiece; apart from that he was more alone than he'd been all winter. This was his first year at the Bitter Waters danwei, his second as an itinerant agronomist technician. Already he was chafing to move on through the emptying landscapes of Mars; if he could he'd never stop moving until he found his parents or, at least, found the truth behind his great-grandfather's honeyed evasions.

The librarian program Xiao Bing had built was all very well, but it searched the other world of the common information s.p.a.ce, not the real world, the world all around him.

The dome curved away on either side of Lee, facets glittering against the shocking-pink sky. A dozen identical domes stood in a grid of drainage ca.n.a.ls and tracks. Beyond were the sours, green-brown patches showing through the thin mantling of red dust, riven by the lightning bolt of the dry riverbed and spreading north towards the lowlands of the Plain of Gold. Dust hazed the line between land and sky; westward, the notch of the Great Valley was hardly visible.

Perhaps he'd travel down it, come summer, to the Paved Mountain and the strange ecosystem of the Dust Seas, hitch a ride on a dust skimmer and climb Tiger Mountain...

Shouts floated up,' no louder than the King's music. Directly below, the others were semaphoring at Lee. Their shadows made small black oblique strokes against the red ground. He abseiled all the way down, kicking off lightly once, twice against structural struts. He just missed the trestle which carried the water line into the dome and landed sprawling on his back in a bank of soft dust.

"Make speed, Technician," one of the men shouted as Lee picked himself up. "Lin Yi is drowning!"

Field Dome Number Eight grew rice. The ca.n.a.l which carried away the overflow from its flooded fields had been choked by winter dust storms, forming a slough of deep mud covered by a thin dry crust on to which Citizen Lin Yi had ventured and broken through. Now he floundered up to his chest in algae-tinted gloop while the others laughed and shouted advice.

"Do you think you're a fish, Lin Yi?"

"Fish swim in water, not mud. Maybe he's a hog!"

"You're taking conchie recapitulation too far!"

"Recapitulation? If he's a hog, then he's evolved!"

They were waiting for Lin Yi to call for help, none of them willing to break ranks and lose face; and Lin Yi wouldn't ask for help because he would lose face too. He made a kind of sobbing grunt and tried to lunge forward, but succeeded only in sinking deeper. His hands plashed uselessly in dark green slime; his head was tipped back, his mouth wide open.

Lee tossed an end of his safety line to Lin Yi, missed and dragged it back, threw it again. "You might be enjoying your swim," he shouted, "but we'll need your help to clear up this mess, Lin Yi!"

Lin Yi threw himself at the line, his head going under the slop even as he grabbed hold with both hands. The line snapped taut and Lee fell flat on his a.s.s. Some of the watchers laughed. Lin Yi came back up, eyes rolling white in his mud-caked face, and started to claw along the line in panic.

For every meter he gained, Wei Lee was pulled a meter closer to the mud. The watchers hooted and stamped their feet as Lee was dragged feet first towards the ca.n.a.l while at the other end of the line Lin Yi pulled himself out hand over hand, as neat a demonstration of Newton's third law of motion as anyone could wish. By the time Lin Yi made dry land, gasping like a future-shocked amphibian and streaked from head to foot with slimy clods and viridescent strands of algae, Lee was lying waist deep in mud beside him.

Lin Yi held out a hand. "Help me up, Technician," he said. After all, he was a shareholding citizen, and Lee was just an itinerant worker. He had rights; Lee had a contract.

The fact that Lee had just saved his life meant that Lin Yi had to regain face by a.s.serting his position.

Knowing that didn't cool Lee's temper. He clambered to his feet, smarting in a dozen different places. He pulled off his face mask, swept his black, greased hair back into its DA, and mopped his face with the red kerchief he'd knotted around his neck, the way the King wore one in Charro to hide his branded wound.

"Help me up," Lin Yi said impatiently, and Lee said he'd do better than that, and stalked over to the big raised water line that served the dome's hydroponic fields. He had already attached a hose to a spur valve and hooked it over one of the struts which supported the water line as a kind of makeshift shower to wash dust from the protective suits. Now he shook it free.

Lin Yi had climbed to his feet, and the first high-pressure burst sent him sprawling. He sputtered and spat and swore and tried to get up again, and a second burst knocked him on to his back. He began to laugh, paddling upside down in mud and water like an overturned turtle, trying to splash his fellows.

"If you can't swim," Lee said, "you should stay out of the water!" And he lifted the jet so that it rose towards the pink sky in a trembling fountain, glittering in cold sunlight and torn by wind and falling in fat droplets that darkened the red dust. The men danced beneath it, faces raised to the precious rain, hands cupped to catch it, laughing at each other; and Lee laughed too and sent the fountain shooting to new heights.

A voice said loudly, "This is a n.o.ble way to waste a morning, Wei Lee!"

Lee turned, sending water spraying in a flat fan. The men ran from it, screeching in mock alarm.

Guoquiang reached up and shut off the valve; the hose quivered and fell slack in Lee's hands. "A little early for a rain dance," he remarked.

"We wash ourselves of dust, after our labours."

Beside Guoquiang, Xiao Bing held on to the harness of a draught bact. Face pale as powdered chalk; white hair; silver caps over pink irises. With his free hand he thumbed a vial into the waist pocket of his long jacket and said, "You are an inspiration to us all, with your selfless dedication. How is my librarian?"

"Still searching. You're going hunting?"

Guoquiang grinned. He was as tall and burly as a Yankee, with a shock of bristly hair, a craggy face with heavy brows.

Like Xiao Bing he was dressed in rust-coloured field clothes.

A rifle was slung at one shoulder, and a pistol was b.u.t.toned into a holster at his hip. "We're not here to shovel s.h.i.t. The low-pressure cell shifted. The probability that the storm will hit us has dropped to twenty per cent. It's spring, Wei Lee!

All kinds of furry critters are stirring in their burrows! Here, put these on." He tossed Lee a bundle of clothes: padded cotton trousers; a long many-pocketed jacket; a zippered shirt; knee-high hiking boots. "A good idea to get out, but we've a better one. And we're good enough to share it with you."

"Besides," Xiao Bing said, "someone has to lead this bact, Contract Agronomist Technician Wei Lee, and it isn't going to be me."

Two.

The terraced cliffs of the Red Valley rose step by step to a scalloped rim that stood out sharply against the hard pink sky. As the three cadres marched through the sours, a straggling V of geese flew out over the cliffs, honking each to each as they headed north to their breeding

grounds in the polar sinks.Spring!Wei Lee shaded his eyes to watch the birds, and out of casual spitefulness, an attribute some gene cutter had forgotten to edit out of the camel-derived genome of its kind, the draft bact took advantage of the slack harness rope to try and s.n.a.t.c.h at his hair. Lee felt the rope swing out and ducked the bact's swipe, then whacked it on its muzzle."Ho! Ho there! Don't you know I'm cleverer than you!"He mopped his face with his kerchief and whacked the bact again, to get it moving."Ho! Understand who is the master!"Guoquiang and Xiao Bing had heard Lee shout, and now they shouted at him, asking how he knew he was smarter, asking who was leading who. Xiao Bing said, "We'd be better off if the bact set the traps and Wei Lee carried the gear!"Lee laughed, and said, "I think maybe you should carry the gear. This bact is not so dumb he could mistake heroic opera for art, and I can lay out traps in my sleep."Guoquiang said, "Thank you for enlightenment! Now I know that only bacts and contract workers are dumb enough 6.RED DUST.

7.

to pay attention to the King of the Cats and his old-fashioned anarchist propaganda."

"Oh! You know very well I like the historical King, not some machine floating in Jupiter who thinks it's the King, reborn all over again. No, I like the real one, the one who was born in a stable and became a planet-wide media star, who was exiled to the Moon and returned a hero after leading a revolution against the tyranny of Colonel Parker, who was crucified upon a burning cross, and returned as a thousand acolytes who surgically altered themselves to look exactly like him."

"And who could raise the dead, and turn water into wine,"

Xiao Bing said.

"I can turn wine into water," Guoquiang said. "The trick is finding the wine."

"I may be dumb," Lee insisted, "but I wouldn't mistake historical reality for the construct who jockeys the show."

"But you listen to it, all the same," Guoquiang said. "A contradiction there, Wei Lee."

"Not at all! I just like the songs he plays. I'm smart enough to know they mean something. Nothing in those operas could ever happen in the real world."

"That's the point," Guoquiang said amiably.

"And if you're so smart," Xiao Bing said, "why are you slogging through this stuff with us?"

"Oh! I don't mind this."

For most of the afternoon the three had been picking a path through the marshy saltpans of the sours. Low black willows and tenacious soldier gra.s.ses grew along the ragged cuts of sandclogged irrigation ditches; slimes and moulds threw up wrinkled stinking banks that slumped into sands crusted with leached iron salts. Every footstep threw up a rotten salty stench, and the three cadres walked with their kerchiefs drawn over nose and mouth. Only the bact seemed unaffected; its black lips drawn back in a perpetual sneer as it padded behind Lee.

But while the others grumbled about the stink of the sours, Lee saw it for what it was: a co-operative ecological 8.PAUL J. MCAULE.

structure which had once forced the Martian desert slowly to yield to wetland ecology. The roots of black willows reached deep down into the frozen regolith; and special strands in their bark cambium conducted heat to melt and mine the permafrost. Soldier gra.s.ses wove a net of stolons through the dusty soil, holding it together. Fungi broke the chemical bonds of the thin surface crust of iron oxides, bindg the iron to more stable forms, releasing the oxygen.

Rainbow slicks on the black mud in the clogged ditches were a sign that bacteria were multiplying in the anaerobic muck, slowly turning it into soil that would grow crops.A slow tide of life feeding on the Martian regolith, feeding on itself, processing red dust into oxygen and water and life-filled muck. And the whole system crippled by the imbalance which was locking three grams of water in the polar icecaps for every two produced. The battle fading. Crumbs of water spilled into thirsty sand. The front line where once unre-claimed Martian desert had grudgingly given way to pioneer vegetation was now a festering wound circling the danwei's fifty-kilometre perimeter.As the three men moved farther from the danwei, the black willows grew smaller. Thickly clumped stands thinned out.

Tussocks of soldier gra.s.s had tails of red sand, each miniature sand dune pointing in the same direction, away from the dan-wei and the winds that blew off the Plain of Gold. The men's boots kept breaking through a duricrust of hydrated minerals, making a soft creaking sound with each step.But there was life there, too. Succulent green spears were pushing through the crusted soil, tipped with transparent cells which focused light down to deeply buried corms. The bact flared its nostrils hungrily, and Lee had to keep jerking at its bridle to remind it that it wasn't there to look for lunch. A few bees were out, commuting between widespread patches of yellow-flowered rock vetch. A patch of frosty soil had gathered in the lee of two weather-split boulders, and a lupin had rooted there, its spread of half a dozen leaves no bigger than Lee's hand but already sending up a spike laden RED DUST.

9.

with purse-shaped flowers, white and yellow against blood-red rock.Life. It was delicate and tenacious, mocking the propaganda of the conchies, the triumph of the inorganic. Marswas dying, yet still spring stirred the little lives."Time to take a break," Guoquiang said.Lee and Guoquiang sprawled on a tilted slab of sun-warmed rock and munched dried fish. The bact nibbled at foliose lichens, tearing them from overhangs with its mobile lips. Xiao Bing ranged to and fro, too excited to keep still.

He kept taking delicate snorts from his little tube, jolts of memory enhancer that would let him fix every detail. He had taken the pledge to die out of this world into the next, and was remembering details for the niche he was creating in Heaven, the part of information s.p.a.ce that belonged to the elective dead. Lee had experienced his design: a desert garden full of reflecting pools and strange half-melted machinery under a starry sky where five moons swung by."Look here, a periwinkle! And here is moss campion, a very big cushion. But this, I do not know what this is. Wei Lee!"Lee asked what it looked like, and Xiao Bing said, "Black glossy leaves in a big rosette, a fat flower spike covered with, I don't know, what looks like silver dusting. The spike shines so bright, and there's a patch of wet soil around the rosette, crusted with blue-green algae. It's beautiful, like a machine.

Come and see, Wei Lee!""I don't need to. It's ice sunflower, one of Cho Jinfeng's species. It helped melt the polar caps back when. Very common above three kilometers, I suppose what you have there is a remnant from the early days."Guoquiang yawned. "Perhaps it is coming back down from the mountains. The winters are colder than they once were.""Perhaps. Don't you ever sit down, Bing?""I've been sitting down all winter. Look at that! There, there, there it goes!"Lee saw it at once, an ice mouse jinking into the shadow 10.PAUL J. MCAULEY.of an undercut boulder, tufted tail held up like an aerial.

Spring, and the animals which had hibernated through the long winter or which like the ice mouse had lain neither dead nor alive, blood vessels and body cavity filled with ice crystals minutely shaped by antifreeze peptides, were now all alive alive-o. Running and feeding and breeding all unawares of the humans who had brought them here. Mice and men: men and the Ten Thousand Years.