Landis, Geoffrey A - SS - Ecopoiesis.pdf - Geoffrey A Landis - przemosta

Ecopoiesis

Geoffrey A. Landis

First published in Science Fiction Age May 1997

"I wonder why they call this the red planet?" I asked. The rebreather made my

voice sound funny in my ears. "Looks like the brown planet to me."

"You got a problem with brown, boy?" Tally said. Her voice was muffled by the

rebreather she wore as well.

I turned, but Tally wasn't looking at me; she was watching the opposite

direction, standing in a half crouch. That position surely couldn't be

comfortable, but for her it looked completely easy and natural. Her head turned

with a quick birdlike grace to glance now one way, now the other. Guarding our

backs, I realized. Against what?

"Nothing wrong with brown, my opinion," she said.

The more my eyes got used to the terrain, the more colors came out. Brown, yes,

barren rocky brown plains and brown buttes and a brown stream frothing over a

tiny waterfall. The hills were sharp-edged, looking as if they had been blasted

out of bedrock the day before, barely touched by erosion. But in the brown was

hints of other colors; a sheen of dark, almost purple, echoing the purple-grey

of the cloudy sky, and even patches on the rocks where the amber shaded off to

almost army green.

"It's beautiful, isn't it," said Leah Hamakawa. She was, as always, two steps

ahead of us. She was down on one knee in the dirt, her nose right up against a

rock. She'd taken both her gloves off and was scraping the surface of the rock

inquisitively with her thumbnail.

I knelt down and scooped up a handful of rocks and dirt in my gloved hand. Close

up, I could see that the brown was an illusion. The rocks themselves were the

color of brick, but clinging to them were blotches of purple algae and tiny,

dark amber specks of lichen. I pulled off one glove so I could feel the texture.

Cold, with a rough grittiness. When I rubbed it between my fingers, the blotches

of purple had a slimy feel. I was tempted to try pulling off the rebreather for

a moment so I could put it right up to my nose and smell it, but decided that,

considering the absence of oxygen in the atmosphere, that would not be wise.

"Beautiful, yeah, right," Tally said. "You got rocks in your head, girl. Stinks.

I seen prettier stinking strip mines."

"It used to be red," Leah said. "Long ago. Before the Age of Confusion; before

the ecopoiesis." She paused, then added "I bet it was beautiful then, too."

I looked at the handful of dirt in my palm. Mars. Yes, perhaps it was beautiful.

In its way.

My ears and the flesh of my face in the places not covered by the rebreather

were getting cold. The temperature was above freezing, but it was still quite

chilly. The air in the rebreather was stale, smelling slightly rotten and

distinctly sulfurous. That indicated a problem with the rebreather; the

micropore filters in the system should have removed any trace of odor from the

recycled air. I thought again about taking the rebreather off and seeing what

the air smelled like.

"Shit," said Tally. "Anyway, you and Tinkerman about done gawking the scenery?

We got a murder to solve. Two murders."

"They've been dead for well over a year," Leah said. "They can wait another day.

God, isn't this place magnificent?"

"Stinks," said Tally.

The lander was bulbous and squat, painted a pale green, with the name Albert

Alligator in cursive script next to the airlock door. Leah and I cycled through

the airlock together. Langevin, the pilot who had shuttled us down, was waiting

for us in the suiting atrium when the inner lock opened. He opened his mouth to

say something, and then abruptly shut it, gagged, and turned away, his hand

going up to cover his mouth and nose. He scrambled out of the atrium abruptly. I

looked at Leah. She shrugged, and reached up to unfasten the strap of the

rebreather from behind her head.

"Let me get that," I said, and she turned around and bent her neck. Any excuse

to touch her. Behind me, I could hear Tally cycling through the lock. The strap

unfastened, and I gently took a finger and ran it along Leah's cheek, breaking

the seal of the rebreather to the skin.

Suddenly she broke away from me. "Oh, god!"

"What?"

"Take off your rebreather."

Puzzled, I reached up, snapped the strap free, and pulled it forward over my

head. The silicone made a soft "poik!" as the seal popped loose. I took a

breath, and gagged on the sudden odor.

The smell was as if I'd been wading through a cesspool in the middle of a very

rotten garbage dump. I looked down. My shoes were covered in brown. My hands

were brown. One leg, where I'd knelt on the ground, had a brown spot on the

knee. Leah was even dirtier.

Shit.

Tally popped through the lock, accompanied by a fresh burst of fecal odor. I

held my nose and suppressed my instinct to gag.

"Of course," said Leah. "Anaerobic bacteria." She thought for a second. "We're

going to have to find some boots, and maybe overalls. Leave them outside when we

come in."

I started to giggle.

"What's so goddam funny?" Tally said.

"I've decided you're right," I told her. "Mars stinks. Take off your rebreather.

You'll see."

The utility landing platform was a hexagonal truss plate with small rocket

engines mounted on three of the six corners. The hab-and-lab module that

Spacewatch was delivering for our stay was strapped on the top. It hovered in

the cloudy sky like a flying waffle-iron. Langevin guided it in by remote

control, setting it down in the sandy valley a hundred meters from the ruins of

the earlier habitat. His landing was as neat and as unconcerned as a man passing

a plate of potatoes. Still operating by remote control, he unstowed the power

crane, lifted the habitat off of the landing platform and lowered it gently to

the ground. The habitat itself was an unpainted aluminum cylinder, fixed with

brackets onto a platform with an electromechanical jack at each corner to level

it on uneven ground. It was a small dwelling for three people, but would be

adequate for our stay.

"Man, I don't envy y'all," he said. He delicately pinched two fingers over his

nose. "No surprise nobody comes here." He shook his head. "Anything else y'all

need?"

"How about the rover?" Leah asked.

"It's still in transit from the Moon; won't arrive for a few more days. When it

gets here, I'll send it right down."

Tally was first one inside the habitat, of course. Even though it had just come

down from space, like a cat, she had to sniff it out herself. After five minutes

she waved us in.

The interior of the habitat was brand new, the fixtures molded to the interior.

Across from the airlock atrium was the air regeneration equipment, with three

spherical pressure tanks painted blue to indicate oxygen, and three

green-painted tanks of nitrogen to provide make-up gas. To the left was a

combined conference room and kitchen area, and behind that the sleeping cubbies.

"Only two cubbies," Tally said, "and a mite cozy ones at that. Guess we girls

bunk down in one; give you the other all to yourself, Tinkerman."

I couldn't breathe for a moment. Somehow I managed to sneak a quick glance up.

Tally wasn't looking at me. She hadn't yet realized that the silence was

extending a bit too long. Leah glanced across at me. Her expression was neutral,

curious, perhaps, as to what I would do. I couldn't read her intention. I never

Landis, Geoffrey A - SS - Ecopoiesis.pdf

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