Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [232]
In Hephaestus a new mohole crew was settling in, old-timers for the most part, tech and engineering types, but much more sophisticated than the newcomers on Pavonis. Frank talked with quite a few of them, asking about those who had disappeared, and one morning at breakfast, next to a window that looked out on the mohole’s solid white thermal plume, an American woman who reminded him of Ursula said, “These people have seen the videos all their life, they’re students of Mars, they believe in it like a grail, and organize their lives around getting here. They work for years, and save, and then sell everything they have to get passage, because they have an idea of what it will be like. And then they get here and they’re incarcerated, or at best back in the old rut, in indoor jobs so it’s all just like it’s still on TV. And so they disappear. Because they’re looking for more of the kind of thing they came here for.”
“But they don’t know how the disappeared live!” Chalmers objected. “Or even if they survive at all!”
The woman shook her head. “Word gets around. People come back. There are one-play videos that show up occasionally.” The people around her nodded. “And we can see what’s coming up from Earth after us. Best to get into the country while the chance is still there.”
Frank shook his head, amazed. It was the same thing the bench presser in the mining camp had been saying, but coming from this calm middle-aged woman it was somehow more disturbing.
That night, unable to sleep, he put out a call for Arkady, and got him half an hour later. Arkady was on Olympus Mons of all places, up at the observatory. “What do you want?” Frank said. “What do you imagine will happen if everyone here slips away into the highlands?”
Arkady grinned. “Why then we will make a human life, Frank. We will work to support our needs, and do science, and perhaps terraform a bit more. We will sing and dance and walk around in the sun, and work like maniacs for food and curiosity.”
“It’s impossible,” Frank exclaimed. “We’re part of the world, we can’t escape it.”
“Can’t we? It’s only the blue evening star, the world you speak of. This red world is the only real one for us, now.”
Frank gave up, exasperated. He had never been able to talk to Arkady, never. With John it had been different; but then he and John had been friends.
He trained back to Elysium. The Elysium massif rose over the horizon like an enormous saddle dropped on the desert; the steep slopes of the two volcanoes were pinkish white now, deep in snows that had packed down to firn, and would become glaciers before too long. He had always thought of the Elysium cities as a counterweight to Tharsis— older, smaller, more manageable and sane. But now people there were disappearing by the hundreds; it was a jump-off point into the unknown nation, hidden out there in the cratered wilderness.
In Elysium they asked him to give a speech to a group of American newcomers, on the first evening of their orientation. A formal speech, but there was an informal gathering before, and Frank wandered around asking questions as usual. “Of course we’ll get out if we can,” one man said to him boldly.
Others chipped in immediately. “They told us not to come here if we wanted to get outdoors much. It’s not like that on Mars, they said.”
“Who do they think they’re fooling?”
“We can see the video you sent back as well as they can.”
“Hell, every other article you read is about the Mars underground, and how they’re communists or nudists or Rosicrucians—”
“Utopias or caravans or cave-dwelling primitives—”
“Amazons or lamas or cowboys—”
“What it is, is everyone’s projecting their fantasies out here because it’s so bad back there, do you understand?”
“Maybe there’s a single coordinated