Equilateral (19 page)

Miss Keaton stands by, ignoring the telegraphic signals that
after traveling thousands of miles across Europe and the Mediterranean now spill onto the sands unread. The telegraph bureau has become a loathsome place, the locus of all points that encompass her sorrow. But even in Thayer’s tent, the clatter of the cables reaches her ears, begging her to respond, expressing their own disappointment and fears.

The secretary is grateful for the girl’s confident ministrations. When one treatment fails to bring Thayer’s fever down, she swiftly employs another. The girl in turn recognizes Miss Keaton’s wretchedness and offers her small tasks to perform for the sake of the patient: fetching water, boiling tea. Early one morning, as his temperature spikes again, the girl signals to Miss Keaton that she’s leaving.

“Where are you going? Where?” Miss Keaton demands, alarmed.

The girl motions outside the tent, into the void.

“You can’t go! He’s burning up. What will I do?”

“Make sure he takes water. I’ll return within the hour. He’s very ill; Kharga Fever is very often fatal. If we don’t do something now, it certainly will be.”

“What are you saying?”

Δ

The girl’s secret pharmacopoeia has been depleted, and the quarter in which the apothecary was located is gone, leaving only the faint scents of myrrh and galbanum, storax and onycha, coiling up from the sands. The fellahin who have remained at Point A, unwilling or unable to return to their villages, are disconcerted when she goes out among the settlement’s ruins and
presents herself at their dispersed quarters. Although she’s fully dressed, her hairless brow reminds them of the nakedness beneath her robes, and also of her malign, shameful, obscure alliance with the astronomer. She demands whatever medicinal substances they may be hoarding.

From the raw ingredients she’s collected, the girl prepares several potions and a gray, mustardy poultice. Miss Keaton doesn’t object; the medical delegation left long ago. Gradually the fever abates. Thayer stirs. It’s October the tenth, two days before Mars’ closest approach.

They insist that he retire to his camp bed. The girl speaks urgently, fluently, rationally, affectionately, and eventually with anger; Miss Keaton says only, “Sanford!” Directly opposite the Earth from the sun, Mars rises now at evening dusk. Thayer insists that he must go to the observatory, even if it means staggering there, even if he nearly stumbles over his robe, even if Point A has taken on an unusually soft, fluid aspect that makes it difficult to find the structure, even if he’s nearly too weak to pull the lever that slides open the roof. The two women stand behind him, united in their fury. Thayer takes some time before aligning his eye with the instrument.

But Mars is there, fully twenty-two arc seconds in diameter, as large as it will get this year. The planet has been waiting for him.

Furthermore, the seeing at Point A has improved beyond Thayer’s expectations: a solid ten on the Douglass scale; no, it’s gone beyond ten, the sky is darker, more transparent, more proximate than anyone ever thought possible, reminding us, yet again, that our planet whirls through the same vacuum ocean as any celestial object. Messier 33 and M34 are visible to the naked
eye, bobbing space anemones. The Andromeda Nebula’s a starry thumbprint smudged on the underside of the heavenly dome.

In the eyepiece, Mars hangs even more tangibly, more tantalizingly ripe than it did before his illness. Hellas is again well placed for observation, near the center of the planetary disk. The Equilateral and other features are immediately apparent. He sees at once that the southern cap has melted off half its volume, corresponding to the growth of the effervescently blue Syrtis Major sea.

Even as he gazes into the disk, other features develop: a possibly new waterway or causeway linking the Hammonis Cornu promontory to Hellas, and then a peculiar shadowing in Noachis, west of Hellas. Even more peculiar, there’s something
outside
the disk, evidently in the thin upper atmosphere above Mare Australe. It’s a line, a red-pink fluorescing line, that he has never seen before. None of us have.

“Two or three …” he murmurs to himself. “Faint, wispy tendrils. Red, pink, purple … Very high atmospheric phenomena … They’re projections of some kind! That’s what they are, coming off the disk, perhaps half the disk’s radius, extending from about due south. Oh, my, oh, my! They’re prominences …”

Thayer won’t remove his eyes from the telescope or blink. He tracks the planet up and down the celestial bowl during the passage of the night, ignoring the girl’s entreaties to rest. He doesn’t invite his companions to view the planet; he doesn’t seem aware of them. The atmospheric filaments hang above Mare Australe for hours, fading only as Mars sinks into the horizon near dawn.

The telegraph finally stutters to life at Mars House. Sir Harry is summoned at once. The staff cheers. Operating the Point A telegraphic equipment himself, Thayer doesn’t report his illness,
but the unacknowledged silence of the past ten days adds gravity and credence to the electrifying cable, punched on a continuous paper strip, that unwinds from the device in London.

That morning at Point A Thayer can’t rest: he’s too stimulated, too exhilarated, too far lost in a calculating reverie. The Concession demands a clarification. He cables back a clarification, as well as elaborations, arguments, presumptive refutations of any challenges, and telegraphic shouts of triumph. By the end of the day his colleagues in California, observing Mars hours after it has set in Egypt, confirm the prominences, even if they have not seen them in as great detail.

The new geometric figure on the surface of Mars is clearly not the only response to the excavations in the Western Desert. Clouds have risen into Mars’ tenuous atmosphere. They’re likely to be rich in carbon dioxide, nitrogen, sulfur, and several potassium compounds. The Concession’s public statement draws no explicit conclusion, but its description of the phenomenon leaves the unavoidable impression of the smoky effluvia that typically accompanies the discharge of terrestrial cannon.

At dusk that evening, Thayer returns to the telescope and fails to observe Miss Keaton’s deliberate absence. Yesterday’s prominences are gone, save for a single nebulosity off the planet’s surface, high above its south pole. The other filaments have vanished, just as we would expect from the gaseous by-products of combustion.

Δ

Is Earth under attack? An Oxford linguist suggests that among the inhabitants of Mars the display of an equal-sided triangle
commonly represents a grave insult, or even a declaration of war. Mars’ own, greater Equilateral, excavated in response to this interplanetary misunderstanding, indicates then a repetition and amplification of the aspersion, or an even more belligerent, less compromising acceptance of the military challenge. The papers cry that mortars have been fired from the Martian surface. Ministers secrete themselves in their offices late into the night, wondering how they will prepare their armies for celestial bombardment.

With the full weight of the Concession behind him, Thayer assures the world of Mars’ peaceful intentions. He cables members of Parliament directly, explaining that the shells were launched without destructive force or intent. He has made precise measurements of the prominences. Judging from the size of the discharges and the peculiarities of the trails lingering in the Martian atmosphere, the projectiles are most likely several airtight vessels transporting, at this very moment, a diplomatic embassy across the forty million miles that separate the two planets, as heroic a voyage as any taken by Columbus or Magellan. Determining the velocity indicated by the dissipation of the cannon’s fumes, Thayer predicts the fleet will make landfall on Earth within a matter of months, perhaps as early as July the first, 1895, just a year after maximum elongation. He declares that the vessels will arrive somewhere in Egypt and, almost certainly, that their landing place will be located in the vicinity of the geometric figure that has beckoned them to our planet, most logically at Point A.

Thirty-One

Ballard is directed to construct the customs house. Erected on the sands formerly occupied by the wrecked pitch factory near Vertex BAC, the building will be hewn in majestic dimensions, greater than its analogue on the Thames embankment. The edifice will tower two hundred feet above the desert floor and will be equipped with accommodations for hundreds of Concession agents, its workmanship expressing the century’s highest ideals of structural beauty. A simple colonnade of the Tuscan order will sweep beneath its wings; Ionic columns and pediments will cap the building’s upper stories. Ballard may summon whatever muscle and material is necessary to have it constructed before June 1895, so that it may be properly furnished for the interplanetary travelers’ arrival. Tons of Portland stone have already been cut and shipped.

Burdened by overcoats, impatient with celebratory dinners, and fatigued with London, Ballard is pleased to accept the new assignment. He makes the arrangements to return tens of thousands of fellahin to Point A and set them to work, protected now by a British battalion. A chartered express conveys him to Marseilles, where he boards a military packet to Egypt. At
Alexandria he joins the supplies caravan south through the “Valley of Rushes,” El-Maghra, past the rocky plateau of B’ir Abu Gharadiq and the Sitra Oasis, and across the greater portion of the Bahr ar Rimal al ’Azim, the Great Sand Sea, and he recognizes how much he has missed the desert in the last several months: its soundlessness, its blankness. He misses Thayer no less.

But he’s stunned by the sight of the astronomer, who stands outside his tent as the caravan arrives, in the full sun, as haggard as a penny-ante fakir, with a fakir’s wide-eyed stare. Thayer doesn’t immediately recognize him. The Arab girl doesn’t seem to have fared any better, besides being freakishly hairless. She’s also visibly with child: the most striking measure of Thayer’s decline. Yet the greatest shock is Miss Keaton. She’s lost weight as well as stature; he perceives tremors and confusion. One of the engineer’s first commands provides them with an arriving Sister of Mercy.

Soon Point A is again the center of an infernal tumult. Thousands swing their hammers at once. Thousands more lift their burdens. The tower rises from a swarm of shouts and cries. Despite the building’s reported solidity—the thousands of tons of marble that are carted there, the entire forests of mahogany—it retains a kind of immateriality in the desert astringence. Perhaps the overwhelming volume of the sky and its purpling deepness are what make us believe we can see directly behind the structure. Oriented south to face the tracks of the sun, the moon, Mars, and the other planets, the customs house occupies a magnificent cobblestoned plaza half a mile wide that would have been admired in Vienna or Budapest; indeed, many of the cobblestones
were quarried from Vienna’s and Budapest’s city squares. Beyond the edge of the pavement lies the duned wastes.

Returning engineers and other Europeans marvel at the transformation that has been wrought so thoroughly that they can’t locate their former quarters, nor the old hammam, nor the scaffold. New buildings of brick and mortar are being raised into permanence around the customs house, which nevertheless retains its colorless translucence, and from a distance appears slightly removed from the desert floor, almost hovering there. Only the sun and the sky have remained where they were. The fellahin may not even be aware that they’ve come back to Point A.

From his movable chair, Thayer witnesses this construction with satisfaction, the men straining against the pull of terrestrial gravity, the days and nights of preparations. The girl brings him to the telescope one evening, an occasion for him to declare that the northern ice cap has greatly diminished and at the junction of nine canals the oasis of Trivium Charontis, or the “Crossroads of Charon,” is in full bloom. Ice water gurgles through channels natural and artificial. Tender shoots pierce the red soil. Avians fledge. Spring has come to Mars’ northern hemisphere.

Δ

Accompanied by orchestral fanfare and the Board of Governors, an invigorated Sir Harry arrives to take charge of the Concession’s bureau. He must also arrange for the comfort of the heads of state and the returning Khedive, who will meet the Martian representatives. When he surveys the tasks at hand, he
does so with measures of resolve and jubilation. Every thought of the astronomer, however, passes over him like the moon’s shadow.

Miss Keaton is yet another shade. She finds him one afternoon in the vast long hall of the unfinished customs house. Torrents of light and heat pour through the leaded clerestory windows. Ballard has so far been unable to solve the problem of keeping the building tolerably cool. The summer solstice is weeks away. She says to Sir Harry, “I presume you’re aware that Professor Thayer’s name has been excluded from the welcoming commission.”

He has anticipated this moment, even if he did not expect the lady to be so frail, her voice so hoarse, and her eyes so fierce. He’s taken aback.

“Professor Thayer has been indisposed …”

“He’s recovering,” she declares, even though the astronomer has not left his quarters in the past week, since making his most recent observations.

“His health is our paramount concern.”

“I can’t conceive how you plan to develop relations with Mars without the man who initiated them!”

Sir Harry smiles, demonstrating his wellborn charm despite the perspiration that has flushed his face and soaked his shirt and jacket.

“Can I offer you some tea, or a cold drink, my dear? There’s no ice, I’m afraid. Of course, Professor Thayer is a world hero. The Equilateral was his idea, and without his effort and sacrifices—and certainly your steadfastness, Miss Keaton—not a spadeful of sand would have been turned.”

“This is all the more reason for Professor Thayer to be present at the arrival of the Martian delegates. The press will demand it. So will the public. So will Mars!”

“But Professor Thayer is a scientist,” Sir Harry says firmly. His eyes bear down on the woman. “And the Equilateral is no longer a scientific concern. The interests of the Concession are strictly commercial. We have obligations to our shareholders, as well as a solemn agreement with the Khedive. In return for the vast improvements the excavation of the Equilateral has brought to his nation, as well as a percentage of future revenue, the Concession has been granted a monopoly on trade with Mars. The Concession will hold the terrestrial patent for Martian inventions. Now that our enterprise has fully assumed its mercantile aspect, men of business will have to take center stage. I’ll be the one to meet the embassy, with Herr Krupp, Mr. Rockefeller, and Baron Rothschild at my side. Professor Thayer will be welcome, once he feels fit, to engage his Martian colleagues in discussion of scientific matters, as long as they’re without application.”