Second generation, p.2
Second Generation, page 2
A smaller dome poked out the side of the larger one that was raining. Unusually, it looked a little like an afterthought. Demetria knew it was the first one to be erected in Tithonium Chasma. The dome that saved the lives of the colonists who fled here after the disaster at Pavonis.
The funicular car passed its counterweight car mid way. A young couple smiled and waved to Demetria from the rising car, and she waved back. Leo stubbornly kept his back to the window. As they drew near to the dome roofs, she saw sunlight reflecting and diffracting off their air cushioned surfaces, conjuring hundreds of tiny rainbows. She giggled involuntarily and pushed up on her toes so that her feet left the floor of the car. Instinctively she reached up and caught hold of the rail at the top of the window. When the car slowed within the smaller dome, she allowed herself to be drawn gently to the floor again.
The doors opened and they stepped out. The translucent air cushions rose in an arc overhead, each laced with swirls of solar PVs that looked like leaves blown by the wind. Pink sunlight filtered between them, dappling the floor. The centre of the dome was filled with the luminous green shoots of young potato plants, while an incongruous scattering of dusty old habitation cabins, or habs, lined the edges. A family were showing their boys around one of the shabby habs.
“And this is where Verena Meier lived while she planned our city,” said the father.
“And this is where the first Martian was born,” enthused the mother, “right here in this hab. Do you remember his name, boys?”
“Leo,” said the younger one, perhaps about four Martian years. Eight Earth years old. His elder brother looked bored.
“Well done!” cooed the mum.
Demetria glanced at her dad who, as she expected, was looking the other way, trying to keep her between him and the family. “Go say hello,” she urged. “It’ll make their sol.”
Leo ignored her and carried on in his reluctant lope, trying to keep up with her nimble gait.
“Go on, Dad, it won’t kill you to be sociable for once,” urged Demetria. Sometimes she despaired that he hid away in the observatory, distancing himself from his family. Though she reflected that she had chosen her mother’s family name rather than her father’s. Was she distancing herself from him too?
“Don’t want to keep The Architect waiting, do we?”
Demetria rolled her eyes. She knew how much Verena hated it when people called her that, especially when it was Leo. The title was often used in an overly obeisant way or, in her dad’s case, sarcastically.
They slipped through the airlock into the next dome. Airlocks between domes were held open, yet they were ready to close instantly if there was a leak. The first dome had seemed large. The second was immense. The same air cushions soared up and over their heads, drawing their eyes to the light. This was the Central Park dome. A rim of rock like the edge of a crater circled a flourishing space full of fruit trees, lawns and pools. Glazed slots were cut into the rocky rim, some lit, others curtained or dark. Several of the glazed slots were slid back to reveal their families chatting, eating, hanging out clothes to dry or simply leaning on the glass balustrade and watching those below them take a walk in the park. Those like Demetria and Leo.
The park was busy. It was a Sunday. Despite living there for twenty Martian years, the Earth names for the sols of the week had persisted. It gave their time a structure. Sols for work and sols for rest and play, though there were still many at work on any sol of the week. Demetria was often one of them. She was studying at the Tithonium Hospital to become a fully qualified Doctor of Medicine, like her other grandmother, Sofia. Demetria plucked an apple from a low bough and passed it to Leo, then picked another for herself. She was always on call but was enjoying a sol out of the wards. Sofia continued to advise Tithonium Hospital though she no longer practiced. Grandad Sunil occasionally lectured on Martian and Earth meteorology at Tithonium University, but he needed help to get around now. Old age and cancer treatment were taking their toll. Demetria knew she would be lucky to have Sunil around for another year.
“Hello young Demetria!” called an elderly woman in a sari, sitting on a bench beside her friends. “Teaching your dad to be sociable, are you?” she smiled mischievously.
“Oh, Bhanu! Behave,” said a grey-haired woman wearing a terracotta-orange jumpsuit beside her. The jumpsuits were fashionable, yet practical. They symbolised a willingness to get down to work while remaining smart, no matter how much red dust might be rubbed all over them. Bhanu’s sari almost looked frivolous beside her.
“We see so little of him, Debbie,” said Bhanu. “Like your son, Pawel, he hides himself away.”
Demetria recognised Debbie Starczewski, one of the first team colonists, and her friend, Bhanu Bahmani who had arrived later in the Armstrong with the third team. Like most Martians, she knew all the surviving original colonists by sight and most of them by name. There were few left alive.
Debbie scowled angrily at Bhanu, “You know why Pawel shuns company, Bhanu.”
“Poor lad can’t do anything about his deformity,” argued Bhanu. “It’s not his fault and everyone knows and accepts that. He should get over it and realise people don’t care. He’s not unique.”
“I don’t think that makes it any easier for him,” said Debbie. “You know how he is.”
Bhanu waved her head from side to side. She knew.
Demetria knew Pawel Starczewski too. He was one of her patients. Several first-generation Martians had been born with withered and deformed limbs because of their mothers’ exposure to radiation. It was one of the great fears of the colonists. Mars had no magnetosphere to deflect the harsh solar radiation. Their old habs had weak protective screens but they relied on the shelter of solid rock which their new homes provided, giving better shielding. Building them took time. Time in which the radiation took its toll, mutating cells, starting cancers, altering and slowly taking people’s lives. Demetria and her generation were lucky. The only time they were unshielded was if they stood in a suit outside Tithonium City on the bare Martian surface. Sure, some got through. But it was a tiny fraction of what hit Mars, even during the solar flares.
Debbie had alluded that Pawel’s withered arm was not his only challenge. Demetria knew that some of his behaviour was obsessive-compulsive, hovering on the edge of Asperger syndrome. He found social exchanges hard work and tended to minimise them, preferring the absorption of his work.
“Perhaps Mademoiselle Demetria wishes a little quiet time with her father,” suggested a stooped little bald man at the far end of the bench. Georges Fillioud. He had arrived in the second team. With Verena.
“I’m taking Dad to see Nanna,” said Demetria.
“Ooh!” exclaimed Bhanu theatrically, “Better be on your best behaviour!”
“Nanna’s a sweetie,” said Demetria.
“She is until you piss her off,” said Debbie. “I know.”
“Verena is everyone’s friend,” said Georges, thoughtfully, “And no one’s.”
“She has to be,” admitted Debbie. “I don’t envy her. She still carries so much responsibility.”
“While us old biddies get to sit on a park bench in the sun and cackle at the young things passing by,” smiled Bhanu. “Give our love to Verena when you get there.”
“I will,” said Demetria, smiling back.
The people of Mars had evolved in three strata, laid down like fresh rock over time. The colonists: the elders who founded this city and made life on Mars a reality. Their sons and daughters who made up the first generation. They expanded the city. And their grandchildren, of which Demetria was the first. The second Martian generation took life on the red planet for granted. It was their birth right.
Now they wanted new challenges.
This was no normal society, so there was a gap between Demetria and the youngest of the first generation of about four years. Eight Earth years. Not much, but just enough to separate her from them sociably. She in turn was the eldest of her second generation. The gap was tiny, barely half a Martian year, but it was there all the same. She too was well known. She liked it, unlike her father who shunned anyone who mentioned his status as the first-born Martian.
“Don’t they irritate you?” asked Leo.
“The biddies?” asked Demetria. “No, I think they’re charming in their way.”
“They’re like vultures, sitting around picking holes in everything we do.”
“Oh, come on, Dad. They’re just enjoying each other’s company and the world they helped create. While they still can.”
Leo shook his head and looked away.
Demetria paused by The River on the far side of the dome. The grassy banks sloped gently into the water and the edges were broken by stands of rushes. She knew there was a lining, about two metres beneath the soil, to stop the precious water from trickling away into the frozen Martian crust. But the illusion was perfect. Her mum had told her about the creatures of Earth who used to make their home among the rushes of riverbanks. Demetria would sometimes sit at the bank and imagine moorhens weaving in and out of the rushes, or a proud mother duck leading a ‘V’ of fluffy ducklings. She had seen vids in school. Like most of her peers she found Earth Natural History fascinating and exciting. Her father seemed intrigued yet saddened.
“Imagining ducks again?” he asked.
“Do you ever imagine anything, Dad?”
Leo looked at her, hurt, then made his way towards the next open airlock. “Better get my audience with The Architect over and done with. She’s the one with imagination, not me.”
“She’s worried about you.”
“There are many other things to worry about, more important than me.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dad! Stop wallowing.”
Leo stopped abruptly. No mean feat in the weak Martian gravity. He glowered at Demetria, then pulled himself up to his full height and walked through the airlock. Over his shoulder he said, “It wasn’t you she abandoned when your granddad died.”
2
The Architect
The Elder Chamber, Tithonium City, Mars – Leo Meier
Leo stepped into the next dome which rose even higher than the last. A ring of tall stone cliffs encircled him, glittering with windows and balconies that clung to the rock, hinting at the warren of rooms burrowed within. It was the heart of learning at Tithonium. The creche, school, university and technical college all formed one virtuous circle of knowledge for the young Martians. There were only a couple of hundred students for the teachers and tutors to lavish their attention, but each year the numbers grew. When Leo was a boy, he had started with one-to-one lessons, which were more of an earnest conversation with someone he considered an informal aunt or uncle. Gradually he found himself sharing those conversations with other boys and girls. At first, he had resented it. Then he came to enjoy the fact he was a little ahead of them. Later he grew tired of having to explain things to those who were struggling to keep up.
The second generation, like his daughter, Demetria, enjoyed the new school carved into the rocks around him. Not as structured as lessons on Earth, according to Sam Grayson, but there were enough of them to make a class. A class where you could enjoy being not-the-best and not-the-worst. A class where you were one of many, not the first and only. Demetria had excelled in her class but showed the patience to help her schoolmates. Her friends looked up to her and she enjoyed it.
Leo hung his head in shame. He hated arguing with his family. He loved his daughter, Demetria, but she pushed his buttons and unveiled his worst. Just like his partner, Georgia. And his mother, Verena.
“She’s up there,” Demetria pointed to a spiral stair that emerged from the canopy of trees in the centre of the dome. The stair wound around a lift shaft wrapped in a fine steel gauze and rose to the dome’s crown, where a metallic chamber protruded through the roof, shining with magenta sunlight.
Leo nodded, taking a hardened soil path between wheat fields, towards the stand of hazel trees. “I’m sorry,” he said, watching the dust rise from his shoes as he walked.
Demetria was silent.
“I’m sorry. I… I wish I could be what you all want me to be.”
“Perhaps you should stop trying. Most of us just want you to smile.”
Leo paused, looking up at Demetria. She stood half a head taller than him. The orange glow that rimmed her deep brown pupils looked almost alien compared to the eyes of the elder colonists. Compared to his. He may be the first born on Mars, but she was truly the first Martian. All her peers had her willowy grace and the same terracotta tint to their skin. They shared the amber sparkle at the edge of her eyes. Mars looks red because of the haematite, the iron oxide dust that gathers in every corner of the planet. That dust found its way into the colonists’ clothes, their hair, their food and their blood. Eventually it turned everything red. Including the Martians.
Leo attempted a smile, “I am so very proud of you, Demetria. I don’t say that enough.”
Demetria looked away, “Perhaps nanna wants to say that to you?”
Leo shook his head and walked on, towards the foot of the stair among the trees. They could have taken the lift but there was a taboo among the Martians. Don’t ride if you can walk or climb. No one was going to climb five thousand metres to the observatory unless they had all morning but climbing three hundred was little effort under the light touch of Martian gravity. It saved power. Power was precious. Every drop of water they drank and every breath of manufactured air they took existed because of the power they generated. Nothing was free on Mars.
He paused at the last landing, before taking the final flight into the chamber that conjured the illusion of hovering over their heads. No doubt the structural supports were firm yet concealed. He looked down at the treetops, surrounded by golden fields and sparkling cliffs. This was the world his mother had designed. Every colonist had helped to build it, but Verena had imagined it. Verena Meier was the architect and his mother. Sometimes she intimidated him. He knew he wasn’t the only one.
“Come on dad,” said Demetria.
Leo climbed the last few steps, slowing on each one until he emerged through an open hole at the centre of the chamber floor and stopped. The chamber was circular. Three rows of concentric benches encircled him and Demetria, each raised above the one in front. Beyond was a three-sixty-degree view of the rooftops of Tithonium City. They shimmered under the haze of red dust and pink sun. There was a gap in the benches where a scale model of the city had been set. Leo’s younger sister, Lena, stood at the eastern end of the city model. She wore a casual black jumper that complimented her short-cropped auburn bob. It bounced as she nodded, listening to a small white-haired woman in smartly pressed orange overalls. The fashionable symbol of hard work and service.
“…and that’s why I suggest we put the new generators here,” said Verena. “The chasm closes in beyond, so our expansion in that direction is limited. We want the west end free for more agriculture and homes.”
“Surely we’ll need more generators for them eventually?” asked Lena. “Aren’t we putting these ones too far away?”
“There’ll be more. The new ones can sit to one side of the main thread of domes, when we need them. We need this one close to our mining operations. I see it as a kind of full stop to eastern development.”
“Perhaps we might go further east than you think? Widen the chasm, perhaps?” suggested Lena.
“Think of the energy that would take!”
“We might be generating enough to spare by the time we reach a thousand Martians.”
“I hope so, but we must still use it wisely. And touch our planet lightly.”
That’s my mother and sister, thought Leo. Planning for our future, leading the expansion of the Martian people, protecting the planet. All the things he felt he could never hope to contribute to. It made him feel inadequate just listening to them.
Lena put her head on one side, “You’re still worried we’ll trash Mars, like humans trashed Earth.”
“I am.”
“We’re different,” argued Lena, “we were born to this. We know we depend on these domes to survive.”
“People forgot they depended on the Earth to survive… until it was taken from them.”
Demetria cleared her throat.
“Hi!” Lena ran forward to throw her arms around her niece, then turned to nod at her brother. “Good to see you.”
Her words sounded empty to Leo, but he forced a smile and gave her a gentle peck on the cheek. Then he turned to face Verena.
Verena nodded at Lena.
“Come on, Demetria,” said Lena, “let’s get some tea. I want to hear how your medical studies are going.”
Demetria smiled and waved at Verena then followed Lena back down the spiral stair. It seemed she had taken a hint to leave Leo with his mother.
“Come sit with me,” invited Verena and waved at the bench beside her.
Leo walked over and sat. Far enough away that neither could touch. “I suppose you’ve summoned me so you can tell me how I’ve been wasting my life by staring at stars.”
“No. I’m glad you have a hobby, Leo.”
He stiffened. He liked to tell people he worked at the observatory, but she had said what he didn’t want to admit to himself. It was not a formal job. It was something to tinker with and pass the time. “Are you going to find something useful for me to do? Like you did when I was only three and pestering you.”
Verena frowned, “No. I’m worried about you.”
Leo stared at Verena, “Worried? Now? Isn’t it a bit late for that?”
“Stop,” murmured Verena.
“You stopped worrying about me thirteen years ago. That’s twenty-six of your Earth years, mum.”
“Stop talking to me as if I’m an alien.”
“Stop treating me like one.”
“For heaven’s sake, Leo, you know how hard it was for me when Cathal died.”
“It was hard for me. He was my father.”
“You didn’t have the whole colony to look after.”
