Red Planet (24 page)

MacRae walked down to the group standing on the ramp and addressed them. Voices boomed back at him. He entered the group and the boys could see him talking, answering, gesticulating with his hands. The conference continued quite a long time.

Finally MacRae dropped his arms to his sides and looked tired. Martian voices boomed in what was plainly farewell, then the whole party set out at a rapid, leisurely pace for the bridge and their own city. MacRae plodded back up the ramp.

In the lock Jim demanded, ‘What was it all about, Doc?’

'Eh? Hold your peace, son.’

Inside MacRae took Marlowe's arm and led him toward the office they had pre-empted. ‘You, too, Rawlings. The rest of you get about your business.’ Nevertheless the boys tagged along and MacRae let them come in. ‘You might as well hear it; you're in it up to your ears. Mind that door, Jim. Don't let anyone open it.’

'Now what is it?’ asked Jim's father. ‘What are you looking so grim about?’

'They want us to leave.’

'Leave?’

'Get off Mars, go away, go back to Earth.’

'What? Why do they suggest that?’

'It's not a suggestion; it's an order, an ultimatum. They aren't even anxious to give us time enough to get ships here from Earth. They want us to leave, every man jack, woman, and child; they want us to leave right away—and they aren't fooling!’

Four days later doctor MacRae stumbled into the same office. Marlowe still looked tired, but this time it was MacRae who looked exhausted. ‘Get these other people out of here, Skipper.’

Marlowe dismissed them and closed the door. ‘Well?’

'You got my message?’

'Yes.’

'Is the Proclamation of Autonomy written? Did the folks go for it?’

'Yes, it's written—we cribbed a good deal from the American Declaration of Independence I'm afraid, but we wrote one.’

'I'm not interested in the rhetoric of the thing! How about it?’

'It's ratified. Easily enough here. We had quite a few startled queries from the Project camps, but it was accepted. I guess we owe Beecher a vote of thanks on that; he made independence seem like a fine idea.’

'We owe Beecher nothing! He nearly got us all killed.’

'Just how do you mean that?’

'I'll tell you—but I want to know about the Declaration. I had to make some promises. It's gone off?’

'Radioed to Chicago last night. Too soon to expect an answer. But let me ask the questions: were you successful?’

'Yes.’ MacRae rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘We can stay. It was a great fight, Maw, but I won. They'll let us stay.’

Marlowe got up and started to set up a wire recorder. ‘Do you want to talk it into the record and save having to go over it again?’

MacRae waved it away. ‘No. Whatever formal report I make will have to be very carefully edited. I'll try to tell you about it first.’ He paused and looked thoughtful. ‘Jamie, how long has it been since men first landed on Mars? More than fifty Earth years, isn't it? I believe I have learned more about Martians in the past few hours than was learned in all that time. And yet I don't know anything about them. We kept trying to think of them as human, trying to force them into our moulds. But they aren't human; they aren't anything like us at all.’

He added, ‘They had interplanetary flight millions of years back ... had it and gave it up.’

'What?'
said Marlowe.

'It doesn't matter. It's not important. It's just one of the things I happened to find out while I was talking with the old one, the same old one with whom Jim talked. By the way, Jim was seeing things; he's not a Martian at all.’

'Wait a minute—what is he, then?’

'Oh, I guess he's a native of Mars all right, but he isn't what you and I mean by a Martian. At least he didn't look like one to me.’

'What did he look like? Describe him.’

MacRae looked puzzled. ‘Uh, I
can't.
Maybe Jim and I each saw what he wanted us to see. Never mind. Willis has to go back to the Martians and rather soon.’

'I'm sorry,’ Marlowe answered. ‘Jim won't like that, but it's not a high price to pay if it pleases them.’

'You don't understand, you don't understand at all. Willis is the key to the whole thing.’

'Certainly he's been mixed up in it,’ agreed Marlowe, ‘but why the key?’

MacRae rubbed his temples. ‘It's very complicated and I don't know where to start. Willis
is
important. Look, Jamie, you'll go down in history as the father of your country, no doubt, but, between ourselves, Jim should be credited for being the saviour of it. It was directly due to Jim and Willis—Willis's love for Jim and Jim's staunch befriending of him—that the colonists are alive today instead of pushing up daisies. The ultimatum to get off this globe represented a concession made to Jim; they had intended to exterminate us.’

Marlowe's mouth dropped open. ‘But that's impossible! Martians wouldn't do anything like that!’

'Could and would,’ MacRae stated flatly. ‘They've been having doubts about us for a long time. Beecher's notion of shipping Willis off to a zoo pushed them over the edge—but Jim's relationship to Willis pulled them back again. They compromised.’

'I can't believe that they would,’ protested Marlowe, ‘nor can I see how they could.’

'Where's Beecher?'
MacRae said bluntly.

'Mmm ... yes.’

'So don't talk about what they can or can't do. We don't know anything about them ... not anything.’

'I can't argue with you. But can you clear up some of this mystery about Jim and Willis? Why do they care? After all, Willis is just a bouncer.’

'I don't think I can clear it up,’ MacRae admitted, ‘but I can sure lace it around with some theories. Do you know Willis's Martian name? Do you know what it means?’

'I didn't know he had one —’

'It reads: In whom the hopes of a world are joined. That suggest anything to you?’

'Gracious, no!’

'I may have translated it badly. Maybe it means Young Hopeful, or merely Hope. Maybe Martians go in for poetical meanings, like we do. Take my name, Donald. Means World Ruler. My parents sure muffed that one. Or maybe Martians enjoy giving bouncers fancy names. I once knew a Pekinese called, believe it or not, Grand Champion Manchu Prince of Belvedere.’ MacRae looked suddenly startled. ‘Do you know, I just remembered that dog's family-and-fireside name was Willis!’

'You don't say!’

'I do say.’ The doctor scratched the stubble on his chin and reflected that he should shave one of these weeks. ‘But it's not even a coincidence. I suggested the name Willis to Jim in the first place; I was probably thinking of the Peke. Engaging little devil, with a pop-eyed way of looking at you just like Willis—our Willis. Which is to say that neither one of Willis's names necessarily means anything.’

He sat so long without saying anything that Marlowe said, ‘You aren't clearing up the mystery very fast. You think that Willis's real name does mean something, don't you?—else you wouldn't have brought it up.’

MacRae sat up with a jerk. ‘I do. I do indeed. I think Willis's name is meant literally. Now wait a minute—don't throw anything. I won't get violent. What do you think Willis is?’

'Me?’ said Marlowe. ‘I think he's an example of exotic Martian
fauna,
semi-intelligent and adapted to his environment.’

'Big words,’ complained the doctor. ‘
I
think he is what a Martian is before he grows up.’

Marlowe looked pained. ‘There is no similarity of structure. They're as different as chalk and cheese.’

'Granted. What's the similarity between a caterpillar and a butterfly?’

Marlowe opened his mouth and closed it. ‘I don't blame you,’ MacRae went on, ‘we never think of such metamorphosis in connection with higher types, whatever a higher type is. But I think that is what Willis is and it appears to be why Willis has to go back to his people soon. He's in the nymph stage; he's about to go into a pupal stage—some sort of a long hibernation. When he comes out he'll be a Martian.’

Marlowe chewed his lip. ‘There's nothing unreasonable about it—just startling.’

'Everything about Mars is startling. But if my theory is correct—and mind you, I'm not saying it is—then it might explain
why
Willis is such an important personage. Eh?’

Marlowe said wearily, ‘You ask me to assimilate too much at once.’

'Emulate the Red Queen. I'm not through. I think the Martians have still another stage, the stage of the old one to whom I talked—and I think it's the strangest one of all. Jamie, can you imagine a people having close and everyday relations with Heaven—
their
heaven—as close and matter of fact as the relations between, say, the United States and Canada?’

'Doc, I'll imagine anything you tell me to.’

'We speak of the Martian other world; what does it mean to you?’

'Nothing. Some sort of a trance, such as the East Indians indulge in.’

'I ask you because I talked, so they told me, to someone in the other world—the old one I mean. Jamie, I think I negotiated our new colonizing treaty with a
ghost.'

'Now just keep your seat,’ MacRae went on. ‘I'll tell you why. I was getting nowhere with him so I changed the subject. We were talking Basic, by the way; he had picked Jim's brains. He knew every word that Jim might know and none that Jim couldn't be expected to know. I asked him to assume, for the sake of argument, that we were to be allowed to stay—in which case, would the Martians let us use their subway system to get to Copais? I rode one of those subways to the conference. Very clever—the acceleration is always
down,
as if the room were mounted on gymbals. The old one had trouble understanding what I wanted. Then he showed me a globe of Mars—very natural, except that it had no canals. Gekko was with me, just as he was with Jim. The old one and Gekko had a discussion, the gist of which was
what year was I at?
Then the globe changed before my eyes, bit by bit. I saw the canals crawl across the face of Mars.
I saw them being built,
Jamie.

'Now I ask you,’ he concluded, ‘what kind of a being is it that has trouble remembering which millennium he is in? Do you mind if I tag him a ghost?’

'I don't mind anything,’ Marlowe assured him. ‘Maybe we're all ghosts.’

'I've given you one theory, Jamie; here is another: bouncers and Martians and Old Ones are entirely separate races. Bouncers are third class citizens, Martians are second class citizens, and the real owners we never see, because they live down underneath. They don't care what we do with the surface as long as we behave ourselves. We can use the park, we can even walk on the grass, but we mustn't frighten the birds. Or maybe the old one was just hypnosis that Gekko used on me, maybe it's bouncers and Martians only. You name it.’

'I can't,’ said Marlowe. ‘I'm satisfied that you managed to negotiate an agreement that permits us to stay on Mars. I suppose it will be years before we understand the Martians.’

'You are putting it mildly, Jamie. The white man was still studying the American Indian, trying to find out what makes him tick, five hundred years after Columbus—and the Indian and the European are both
men,
like as two peas. These are
Martians.
We'll never understand them; we aren't even headed in the same direction.’

MacRae stood up. ‘I want to get a bath and some sleep ... after I see Jim.’

'Just a minute. Doc, do you think we'll have any real trouble making this autonomy declaration stick?’

'It's got to stick. Relations with the Martians are eight times as delicate as we thought they were; absentee ownership isn't practical. Imagine trying to settle issues like this one by taking a vote back on Earth among board members that have never even
seen
a Martian.’

'That's not what I mean. How much opposition will we run into?’

MacRae scratched his chin again. ‘Men have had to fight for their liberties before, Jamie. I don't know. It's up to us to convince the folks back on Earth that autonomy is necessary. With the food and population problem back on Earth being what it is, they'll do anything necessary—once they realize what we're up against—to keep the peace and continue migration. They don't want anything to hold up the Project.’

'I hope you're right.’

'In the long run I have to be right. We've got the Martians pitching on our team. Well, I'm on my way to break the news to Jim.’

'He's not going to like it,’ said Jim's father.

'He'll get over it. Probably he'll find another bouncer and teach him English and call him Willis, too. Then he'll grow up and not make pets of bouncers. It won't matter.’ He looked thoughtful, and added, ‘But what becomes of Willis? I wish I knew.’