Читать книгу Finches of Mars - Brian Aldiss - Страница 13

A small courtyard behind one of the buildings of the Sorbonne in Paris contained an oak bench and table. The news of the birth had not yet reached Paris. Mangalian, unaware of the momentous news, was sitting relaxing on a bench. He had been guest lecturing to the Earth Sciences students on the colonisation so far, and the merits of going to live in what he had described as ‘the new old world’ of Mars. After lunch, a debate had been held with Mangalian and Adrien Amboise on one side – for the necessity of the Martian venture – and a group of German and Chinese scientists on the other.

Sunshine bathed the courtyard with mellow light and warmth. In the cracks between the flagstones with which the courtyard was paved, small weeds had sprung up. In one of the cracks near Mangalian grew a little yellow flower with tiny spiked petals and a fuzzy rich heart the size of a baby’s fingernail.

Mangalian was idly watching a ladybird. It crawled over the leaves of the weed to the flagstone, where it made haste to walk to the distant stalk of another weed. On reaching the stalk, the insect climbed it, opened its wing case, and flew away.

He wondered what impulse governed it. Could it feel contentment or discontent? On what did it feed? How would it die? He had not studied such matters, although he imagined the insects went from eggs to larvae to the adult form he had been watching. What could it feel like to undergo such a transformation? Would humanity undergo as dramatic a transformation on Mars? What might happen to Rosemary? – Rosemary who had taken flight just like the ladybird.

He realised at that point – as a man was approaching from the nearby building – that his ladybird had no spots on its wing-case. He had assumed that all ladybirds had spots. Possibly this was a new evolutionary variety, adapting to the environs of Paris.

The man approaching stood before Mangalian, smiling. This was Adrien Amboise, Professor of Medical Studies at the Sorbonne. Amboise was about forty-five, trim and sporting a small moustache. He wore a gown. His father had worked at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, where he had fallen in love with and married in old-fashioned style the elegant German woman whose researches led to the later discovery of the normon.

Mangalian admired both Adrien’s father and his intellectually formidable mother. And, normally, would delight in conversation with Adrien. However, at the moment, he wanted only an hour’s peace, but he rose and the men shook hands. ‘I apologise for interrupting your reverie.’

‘Don’t worry. I was only thinking about ladybirds.’

Amboise looked confused. After a slight pause, he said, ‘I too am an admirer of the ladies.’

‘What can I do for you? Do you wish to apply to me for a life on Mars?’ Mangalian was speaking jokingly, after relaxing in the sun and not feeling avid for conversation. He had been thinking of Rosemary Cavendish, regretting that he had been so chaste where she was concerned. But there had been a kind of hauteur in her manner. Well, all that was but a dream … Already, it was five years since Rosemary had left Earth for her Tharsis occupation.

‘Sadly, monsieur, the idea of living on Mars is a bad dream, so I have come to believe.’ Adrien Amboise endeavoured to show regret. He stood there poised and graceful, in a suit, in the sun, smiling politely as he gazed at Mangalian, who had showed no inclination to get up from his chair. ‘I would support you in a debate, but that is not for me. Here on Earth, continual disturbance, distraction, disaster … but on Mars – what? Continual boredom … And the unresolved stillbirth problem …’

‘Yet to be on that silent planet, Adrien … Isn’t that a wonderful success? Applied science … It’s a dream that has been pondered for some centuries and is now more than just a dream – a waking dream which–’

‘Oh, of course for over two centuries there have been stories – as there have been ghost stories – what you may call the science fiction – but they are made for superficial adventure, as the often uninspired writing indicates–’

‘Ah, so you are not only a medico but a critic of literature!’ Mangalian, with a curl of his lip, stared into the distance as he spoke.

‘No, no, no, but such tales had no true deliberation, only conveying thrills of conquest or doom. A shallow fiction …’

Mangalian would not let such a sweeping generalisation pass. ‘Well, sir, as a mere boy on San Salvador, I happened on a story by a Mr Wells. Later in life, I heard he was celebrated and respected, although he wrote of things that did not exist in reality. This particular book that caught my fancy was called The War of the Worlds, although I found it was rather “The War against Woking”, of which I had never heard until then. That story denigrates mankind. It is a chastisement, a real fiction, an analogy. There is no hero – or if there is a hero, then it is a bacillus.’

Amboise stared up at the sky, as if in the hope that his impatience might steam off to the troposphere. ‘But H.G. Wells was an exception. A chastisement, as you put it. It does not prove the rule. Immediately after Mr Wells’s book appeared, an American journalist wrote a sequel in which a fleet of ships led by a Professor Edison went to Mars and knocked – what is your phrase? – yes, knocked hell from them … You see, no morality, just violence. The irony of Wells is lost amid all the aggression.’

Mangalian did not answer, merely sighing. Silence fell.

Amboise feared he had offended the visitor.

‘I do not object to fantasy, please understand me. Indeed, in my boyhood I read a story called The Sword of Rhiannon, set on an imaginary Mars. It was a romance pure and simple, aiming only at a pretty tale. In my memory the simple prose held no subordinate clauses, not one. I am no snob. I loved that story.’

Mangalian became stony-faced. ‘Have you another subject in mind to discuss?’