Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [120]
I see what I see.
But the way it is, you are not even seeing. There is so much of red Mars that remains. You should go out and look! Go out and empty your mind and just see what is out there. Go out at low altitude and walk free in the air, a simple dust mask only. It would be good for you, good at the physiological level. Also it would be reaping a benefit of the terraforming. To experience the freedom it gives us, the bond with this world— that we can walk on its surface naked and survive. It’s amazing! It makes us part of an ecology. It deserves to be rethought, this process. You should go out to consider it, to study the process as areoformation.
That’s just a word. We took this planet and plowed it under. It’s melting under our feet.
Melting in native water. Not imported from Saturn or the like, it’s been there from the beginning, part of the original accretion, right? Outgassed from the first lump that was Mars. Now part of our bodies. Our very bodies are patterns in Martian water. Without the trace minerals we would be transparent. We are Martian water. And water that has been on the surface of Mars before, yes? Rupturing out in artesian apocalypse. Those channels are so big!
It was permafrost for two billion years.
Then we helped it back onto the surface. The majesty of the great outbreak floods. We were there, we saw one with our own eyes, we nearly died in it—
Yes yes—
You felt the car as that water swept it away, you were driving—
Yes! But it swept Frank away instead.
Yes.
It swept the world away. And left us on the beach.
The world is still here. You could go out and see.
I don’t want to see. I’ve seen it already!
Not you. Some previous you. Now you’re the you living now. Yes yes.
I think you’re afraid. Afraid of attempting a transmutation— a metamorphosis into something new. The alembic stands out there, all around you. The fire is hot. You’ll be melted, you’ll be reborn, who knows if you’ll still be there afterward?
I don’t want to change.
You don’t want to stop loving Mars.
Yes. No.
You will never stop loving Mars. After metamorphosis the rock still exists. It’s usually harder than the parent rock, yes? You will always love Mars. Your task becomes seeing the Mars that always endures, under thick or thin, hot or cold, wet or dry. Those are ephemeral, but Mars endures. These floods happened before, isn’t it true?
Yes.
Mars’s own water. All these volatiles are Mars’s own volatiles.
Except the nitrogen from Titan.
Yes yes. You sound like Sax.
Come on.
You two are more alike than you think. And all we volatiles are Mars’s own.
But the destruction of the surface. It’s wrecked. Everything’s changed.
That’s areology. Or the areophany.
It’s destruction. We should have tried living here as it was.
But we didn’t. And so now being red means working to keep conditions as much like the primal conditions as possible, within the framework of the areophany— the project of biosphere creation that allows humans the freedom of the surface, below a certain altitude. That’s all being a Red can mean now. And there are a lot of Reds like that. I think you worry that if you ever change in even the slightest degree, then that will be the end of redness everywhere. But redness is bigger than you. You helped start it and define it, but you were never the only one. If you had been no one would ever have listened to you.
They didn’t!
Some did. Many did. Redness will go on no matter what you do. You could retire, you could become someone entirely different, you could become lime green, and redness would always go on. It might even become something more red than you ever imagined.
I’ve imagined it as red as it can get.
All those alternatives. We’ll live one of them and then go on. The process of coadaptation with this planet will go on for thousands of years. But here we