<DIV class=postcolor><B><FONT size=4>Falling Onto Mars</FONT></B><BR><BR><!----><STRONG>Geoffrey A Landis</STRONG><BR><BR><!----><BR><STRONG><I>History is not necessarily what we’d like it to be. . . .</I><BR></STRONG><BR>The people of the planet Mars have no literature. The colonization of Mars was unforgiving, and the exiles had no time to spend writing. But still they have stories, the tales they told to children too young to really understand, stories that these children tell to their own children. These are the legends of the Martians.<BR><BR>Not one of the stories is a love story.<BR><BR>In those days, people fell out of the sky. They fell through the ochre sky in ships that were barely functional, thin aluminum shells crowded with fetid humanity, half of them corpses and the other half little more than corpses. The landings were hard, and many of the ships split open on impact, spilling bodies and precious air into the barely-more-than-vacuum of Mars. And still they fell, wave after wave of ships, the refuse of humanity tossed carelessly through space and falling onto the cratered deserts of Mars.<BR><BR>In the middle of the twenty-first century, the last of the governments on Earth abolished the death penalty, but they found that they had not yet abolished killing or rape or terrorism. Some criminals were deemed too vicious to rehabilitate. These were the broken ones, the ones too cunning and too violent to ever be returned to society. To the governments of Earth, shipping them to another world and letting them work out their own survival had been the perfect solution. And if they failed to survive, it would be their own fault, not the work of the magistrates and juries of Earth.<BR><BR>The contracts to build ships to convey prisoners went to the cheapest supplier. If prisoners had a hard time and didn’t have quite as much food or water as had been specified, or if the life-support supplies weren’t quite as high a quality as had been specified, what of it? And who would tell? The voyage was one-way; not even the ships would return to Earth. No need to make them any more durable than the minimum needed to keep them from ripping apart during the launch. And if some of the ships ripped open after launch, who would mourn the loss? Either way, the prisoners would never be returned to society.<BR><BR>G-g-grampa Jared, we are told, was in the fifth wave of exiles. Family tradition says Jared was a political dissident, sent in the prison ships for speaking too vigorously in defense of the helpless.<BR><BR>The governments of Earth, of course, claimed that political dissidents were never shipped to Mars. The incorrigible, the worst criminals, the ones so unrepentant that they could never be allowed back into human society: this was what the prisons of Earth sent to Mars, not political prisoners. But the governments of Earth are long skilled at lying. There were murderers sent to Mars indeed, but among them were also those exiled only for daring to give voice to their dangerous thoughts.<BR><BR>Yet family tradition lies as well. There had been innocent men who were sent into exile, yes, but my great-great grandfather was not one of them. Time has blurred the edges, and no one now knows the details for sure. But he was one of the survivors, a skinny, ratlike man, tough as old string and cunning as a snake.<BR><BR>My g-g-grandma Kayla was one of the original inhabitants of Mars, one of the crew of the science base at Shalbatana, the international station that had been established on Mars long before anybody thought up the idea to dump criminals there. When the order came that the science station was to close and that they were to evacuate Mars, she chose to stay. Her science was more important, she told the politicians and people of Earth. She was studying the paleoclimate of Mars, trying to come to an understanding of how the planet had dried and cooled, and how cycles of warming and cooling had passed over the planet in long, slow waves. It was an understanding, she said, that was desperately needed on the home planet.<BR><BR>Great-great-grandma Kayla, in her day, had earned a small measure of fame for being one of the seventeen that had stayed on Mars with the base at Shalbatana. That fame might have helped some. Their radio broadcasts, as people fell out of the sky, nudged the governments of Earth to remember their promises. Exile to Mars was not–or at least they had claimed it was not–intended as a death sentence. The pleas of the refugees could easily be dismissed as exaggerations and lies, but Shalbatana had a radio, and their vivid and detailed reports of the refugees had some effect.<BR><BR>The first few years, supplies were sent from Earth, mostly from volunteer organizations: Baha’i relief groups, Amnesty International, the Holy Sisters of Saint Paul. It wasn’t enough.<BR><BR>After the first two waves, the scientists who stayed behind realized that they would have no more hope of doing science. They greeted the prisoners as best they could, helped them in the deadly race against time to build habitats, to start growing the plants they would need to purify the air and survive.<BR><BR>Mars is a desert, a barren rock in space. There was no mercy in sending criminals to Mars instead of sending them to death. They could learn quickly, or die. Most of them died. A few learned: learned to electrolyze the deep-buried groundwater to generate oxygen, learned to refine the raw materials to make the tools to make the furnaces to reduce the alloys to make the machines to build the machines that would allow them to live. But as fast as they could build the machinery that might keep them alive, more waves of desperate, dying prisoners poured down from the sky; more angry, violent men who thought that they had nothing left to lose.<BR><BR>It was the sixth wave that wrecked the base. This was a stupid, self-destructive thing to do, but the men were vicious, resentful, and dying. A generation later, they called themselves political refugees, but there is little doubt that for the most part they were thugs and robbers and murderers. From the sixth wave came a leader, a man who called himself Dingo. On Earth, he had machine-gunned a hundred people in an apartment block that fell behind in paying him protection. On the ship, Dingo killed seven prisoners with his bare hands, simply to make the point that he was going to be the leader. <BR><BR>Leader he was. From fear or respect or pure anger, the prisoners on the ship followed him, and when they fell onto Mars, he harassed them, lectured them, beat them, and forged them into an angry army. They had been abandoned on Mars, Dingo told them, to die slowly. They could only survive if they matched the Earth’s brutality with their own. He marched them five hundred kilometers across the barren sands to the Shalbatana habitat.<BR><BR>The habitat was taken before the inhabitants had even realized it was under attack. The scientists who hadn’t abandoned the station were beaten with scraps of metal from the vandalized habitat, blindfolded, and held as hostages while the prisoners radioed the Earth with their demands. When the demands were unanswered, the men were stripped and thrown naked out onto the sands to die. In rage and desperation, the mob that had been the sixth wave ripped apart the base, the visible symbol of the civilization that had sent them a hundred million miles to die. The women who remained on the base were raped, and then the destroyers gave them the chance to plead for their lives.<BR><BR>The men of the fourth and fifth waves had joined together. For the most part, they were strangers to each other–many of them had never seen each others’ faces except through the reflective visor of a suit. But they had slowly learned that the only way to survive was to cooperate. They learned to burrow under the sand, and when their home-made radios told them the base was being sacked, they crept across the desert, and silently watched and waited. When the destroyers abandoned the base after looting it of everything they thought was valuable, the fifth wave, hiding under the sands, burst out and caught them unprepared. Of the destroyers who had attacked Shalbatana base, not a single one survived. Dingo fled into the desert, and it was Jared Vargas, my great-great grandfather, who saw him, tracked him down, and killed him.<BR><BR>And then they went to Shalbatana base, to see whether anything could be salvaged.<BR><BR>G-g-grandpa found her in the wreckage and ripped the tape off her eyes. She looked at him, her eyes unable to focus in the sudden light, and thought him one of the same group that had raped her and sabotaged the habitat. She had no way of knowing that others from his group were frantically working to patch up one of the modules to hold air, while g-g-grandpa and others searched for survivors. As the leaking air shrieked in her ears, she looked up at him, blinking, blood running from her nose and ears and anus, and said, "You have to know before I die. Oxygen in the soil. Release it by baking."<BR><BR>"What?" g-g-grandpa said. It was not what he had expected to hear from a naked, bleeding woman who was about to pass out from anoxia. <BR><BR>"Oxygen!" she said, gasping for breath. "Oxygen! The greenhouses are dead. Some of the seedlings may have survived, but you don’t have time. You need oxygen now. You’ll have to find some way to heat the regolith. Make a solar furnace. You can get oxygen by heating the soil."<BR><BR>And then she passed out. G-g-grandpa dragged her like a sack of stones to the one patched habitat module, and shouted, "I found one! ¡Está viva! I found one still alive!"<BR><BR>Over the following months, Jared held her when she cried and cursed, nursed her back to health, and stayed with her through her pregnancy. Theirs was one of the first marriages on Mars, for although some women had been criminals infamous enough to be sentenced to Mars, still the male prisoners outnumbered the females by ten to one.<BR><BR>Between them, the murderer and the scientist, they built a civilization.<BR><BR>And still the ships came from Earth, each one more poorly built than the last and delivering more corpses than living men. But that was in its way a blessing, for the men would mostly die, while the corpses, no matter how emaciated, had valuable organic content that could turn another square meter of dead Martian sand into greenhouse soil. Each corpse kept one survivor alive.<BR><BR>Thousands died of starvation and asphyxiation. Thousands more were murdered so the air that they breathed could be used by another. The refugees learned. Led by my great-great-grandfather and grandmother, when a ship fell to Mars, they learned to rip it apart to its components before its parachutes had even settled. Of its transportees–well, if they couldn’t breathe vacuum (and the thin Mars air was never more than dust-laden vacuum), they had better scramble.<BR><BR>Only the toughest survived. These were mostly the smallest and the most insignificant, the ones like rats, too vicious and too tenacious to kill. A quarter of a million prisoners were sent to Mars before the governments of Earth learned that behavior-modification chips were cheaper than sending prisoners to Mars, and tried their hardest to forget what had been done. <BR><BR>My great-great-grandfather Jared became the leader of the refugees. It was a brutal job, for they were brutal men, but he fought and bullied and connived to lead them.<BR><BR>There are no love stories on Mars; the refugees had no time, no resources for love. Love, to the refugees, was an unpredictable disease that strikes few people and must be eradicated. To the refugees, survival required obedience and ceaseless work. Love, which thrives on individuality and freedom, had no place on Mars.<BR><BR>Yes, Jared Vargas was a dissident sent from Earth for speaking against his government. But Jared Vargas died in the desert. When the men of the fifth wave came to the rescue of the Shalbatana habitat, Jared Vargas had chased Dingo into the desert, and that had been the last mistake of his life. Only one of them returned from the desert, wearing the suit of Jared Vargas, and calling himself by the name of Jared Vargas. No one recognized him, but the men of the fifth wave were from a dozen ships, and if any of them had been friends of the original Jared Vargas, they died after the new Jared Vargas returned from the desert. And the only men who would have recognized Dingo were the exiles of the sixth wave, and they were all dead.<BR><BR>He returned from the desert, and rescued my great-great-grandmother, and the men of the fifth wave accepted him.<BR><BR>But surely my great-great-grandmother was not fooled. She was an intelligent woman–brilliant, in her own field–and she must have realized that the man who claimed her for his wife was the same man who had led the army of angry rabble to rape her, rip apart her base, and laugh as they watched her friends die in the thin air of Mars.<BR><BR>But Mars required survival, not love. And Jared Vargas was the only leader they had.<BR><BR>There are many stories from the days of the first refugees on Mars. None of them are love stories.<BR><!----><BR><!----><BR><!----><BR><!----><BR><!----><BR><!----><BR><!---->翻译:北星 <BR> <BR> 历史并不一定是我们所希望的那样…… <BR> 行星火星上的人们没有文学。移民火星的过程是不可原谅的。那些被放逐的人们没有时间写作。但是他们还是有故事。他们把这些故事讲给那些年轻的不能理解的孩子们,他们的孩子们又讲给他们自己的孩子们。这些故事成了火星的传说。 <BR> 这些故事里没有一个是爱情故事。 <BR> 那些日子里,人们从天上坠落下来。他们从赭色的天空落下来,从那些有着薄薄的铝制外壳,挤满了带着恶臭味的人体的几乎已经不能用了的飞船里落下来。他们中一半是尸体,另一半也几乎是尸体。登陆是艰难的。许多飞船被撞得裂开了,将人的身体和珍贵的空气洒在几乎跟真空差不多的火星上。但是他们仍然随着一波接一波的飞船坠落下来。这些人类的渣滓被随意地从空间抛落在火星那坑坑洼洼的沙漠上。 <BR> <BR> 在二十一世纪中叶,地球上最后的政府废除了死刑。但是他们发现他们废除不了谋杀,强奸和恐怖活动。有些罪犯被认为是太邪恶以至于不可能改恶从善。他们是些残缺者,太狡猾,太暴力,永远不会被社会接受。对于地球上的政府而言,把他们送到另外一个世界,让他们自己去求生是一个完美的解决办法。如果他们生存不下去,那也只能怪他们自己,不能怪地球上的法官和陪审团们。 <BR> <BR> 建造运送囚犯的飞船的合同落到了最便宜的厂商那里。如果囚犯们在飞船上过得很艰难,没有得到像指定的那么多的水和食物,或者生命支持系统的质量没有指定的那么高,那又怎么样?谁会说出来?旅途是单程的,连飞船都不会回到地球来。没必要把飞船作得那么结实。只要它们不在起飞的时候被撕开就行了。即使有的飞船在起飞的时候被撕开了又有谁会为那些死者而悲哀呢?反正那些囚犯永远也回不了社会。 <BR> <BR> 我们听说我们的爷爷的爷爷的爷爷,贾瑞得,在第五批放逐者里面。在我们的家族传说里,他是一个政治异议者,因为为那些无助的人积极辩护而被送进了放逐飞船。 <BR> 当然,地球上的政府宣称,没有一个政治异议者被送到火星。只有那些根深蒂固的最坏的罪犯,那些他们绝不允许返回人类社会的死不改悔的罪犯,才是被地球上的监狱放逐到火星。而政治犯不在此之列。但是地球上的政府都善上于撒谎。确实有些谋杀犯被送到火星,但是夹在他们之中的也有仅仅因为敢于说出他们那危险的思想的人被犯逐。 <BR> <BR> 但是我们的家族传说也是个谎言。是的,是有些无辜的人被放逐。但是我的爷爷的爷爷的爷爷并不是这里面的一个。时间模糊了事实,现在没有谁能确切地说出真相。但是他是最后活下来的一个。一个瘦小得像老鼠一样的男人,像旧绳子一样结实,像蛇一样狡猾。 <BR> 我的奶奶的奶奶的奶奶,凯拉,是火星最初的居民之一。是位于肖巴塔纳科学基地的成员之一。这个国际基地在有人想到在火星上放逐罪犯之前很久就已经建立了。当接收到关闭基地,撤离火星的命令的时候,她选择了留下来。她跟地球上的的政治家和其他人说,她的科学更重要。她在研究火星上的古气候,试图理解这个行星是怎么变干变冷的,以及热和冷是怎么在火星以漫长的,波动的方式交替的。 <BR> <BR> 这知识,她说,是她的母星急迫需要的。 <BR> 我的奶奶的奶奶的奶奶凯拉在她那个时代作为留在火星的肖巴塔纳基地的十七个人之一得到了一点有限的名声。这名声也许有一点帮助。当人们从天空坠落的时候,他们的电台广播提请地球的政府记住他们的许诺。放逐火星并不是──至少如他们宣布的那样──作为死刑的。难民们的请愿可以被轻易地当作夸张和谎言被打发掉。但是肖巴塔纳有电台。他们对于难民们的生动详细的报道产生了些效果。 <BR> <BR> 在头几年里,地球运来了一些补给。大多数是来自于一些自愿者组织:巴哈依救济集团,国际大赦组织,圣保罗的神圣姐妹。但是这并不够。 <BR> 在两次移民潮之后,留下来的科学家们认识到他们已经没有希望研究科学了。 <BR> 他们尽自己所能迎接那些囚犯,帮助他们在与时间进行殊死的竞争中去建立居住地,去开始种植植物来净化空气使人们能够生存。 <BR> 火星是一个沙漠,是太空中一块光秃秃的大石头。将罪犯送到火星并不比给他们死刑多多少慈悲。他们必须很快地学习,否则就是死亡。大多数都死了。少数的学会了。他们学会了电解深埋在地下的地下水来生成氧气,学会了精炼原料制造工具去制造熔炉去冶炼合金去制造能使他们活下去的机器。但是就在他们制造那些也许可以使他们活下去的机器的时候,更多绝望的,滨死的囚犯从天空扑落下来,更多愤怒残暴的认为自己已经再没有什么可以失去的人们。 <BR> <BR> 是第六波移民潮毁掉了基地的。这是一件愚蠢的自杀行为。但是那些人邪恶,充满怨恨,而且正在走向死亡。一代过后,他们称自己为政治难民。但是几乎可以毫无疑问地说他们是些暴徒,强盗和谋杀犯。从第六次移民潮里来了一个领导者。 <BR> 他叫自己为丁勾。在地球上,他在一个宿舍街区用机枪射死了太迟给他付保护费的数百人。在飞船上,仅仅为了证明他是他们的头,他徒手杀死了七个囚犯。 <BR> 他成了头。带者恐惧,尊敬或纯粹的愤怒,囚犯们开始跟随他。当他们落到火星上的时候,他折磨他们,训斥他们,揍他们,锻炼他们,使他们成为一支愤怒的军队。丁勾告诉他们,他们是被抛弃到火星上来慢慢地死亡的。他们要想生存下来的唯一希望是以自己的残忍来对付地球的残忍。他叫他们穿过火星荒芜的沙漠长途跋涉五百公里来到了肖巴塔纳居住地。 <BR> <BR> 居住地在居民们认识到他们被攻击之前就被占领了。那些没有抛弃基地的科学家们被从破坏的居住地得到的废金属打倒了。他们被蒙上眼睛抓起来当作人质。囚犯们向地球广播提出了他们的要求。当地球没有答应他们的要求之后,他们把男人都脱光了扔到沙漠里死去。在愤怒和绝望之中,来自第六次移民潮的暴徒们摧毁了基地这个将他们从几亿公里外运来送死的文明的可见的象征。留在基地的女人们则被强奸,然后这些破坏者给了她们机会让她们乞怜求生。从第四次和第五次移民潮来的人联合了起来。大多数时间他们之间都是陌生人。很多人除了从通过衣服上的反射面罩之外从来没有看到过别人的脸。但是他们慢慢地学习到生存下来的唯一方法是合作。他们学会了在沙底下打洞。他们自制的收音机告诉他们基地被洗劫了之后,他们爬过了沙漠,沉默地看着,等待着。当破坏者们在掠夺完他们认为的一切有价值的东西,放弃了基地之后,躲在沙底下,来自第五次移民潮的人们冲了出来,在他们措手不及的情况下抓住了他们。这些袭击基地的破坏者们没有一个活了下来。丁勾逃向了沙漠。是贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯,我的爷爷的爷爷的爷爷,看到了他,追上了他,并且杀死了他。 <BR> <BR> 然后他们去到肖巴塔纳基地,看看那里还有什么可以挽救的。 <BR> 爷爷的爷爷的爷爷在废墟里找到了她,撕开了她眼睛上的带子。她看着他,她的眼睛一时间还不能适应突然的亮光。所以她以为他是跟那些强奸了她并掠夺了居住地的人是一伙的。她当然不可能知道,在爷爷的爷爷的爷爷和别的人在搜寻幸存者的时候,他这一帮人里的其他人正在疯狂地修补太空舱里的一个企图保持住空气。当泄漏空气的尖叫声在她的耳朵响起的时候,她往上看着他,眨着眼睛,她的鼻子,眼睛和肛门都在流血。她说:“你必须在我死之前知道,土壤里面有氧气。烘烤土地可以把它放出来。” <BR> <BR> “什么?”爷爷的爷爷的爷爷说。他没有想到,这个全身赤裸的,流着血的,快要因为缺氧症而晕过去的女人会说出这种话。 <BR> “氧气!”她用力喘着气说,“氧气!温室完了。有些种子也许还活着。但是你们没有时间了。你们现在就需要氧气。你们必须找到什么方法给地表土加热。作一个太阳炉。你们可以通过加热土壤获得氧气。” <BR> 然后她就晕了过去。爷爷的爷爷的爷爷像拖一袋石头一样将她拖到一个补好的太空舱里,叫了起来:“我找到一个。还活着!我找到一个还活着的!” <BR> 在以后的几个月里,贾瑞得在她哭泣和苦恼的时候抱着她,照料她直到她恢复了健康,并且在她怀孕的时候跟她待在一起。他们的婚姻是火星上的第一次。虽然也有些女犯人罪行重得足以被放逐火星,但是男囚犯的数目仍然是女囚犯的十倍。 <BR> 在他们之间,谋杀犯和科学家,他们建立起了文明。 <BR> 飞船还在继续从地球上来。每艘飞船都修得比上一艘差,每次送来的死尸都比活人多。从某种意义上来说,这也是一种恩赐。因为人总会死的。而尸体,无论怎么消瘦,都具有珍贵的有机物质,可以将另一平方米的贫瘠的火星沙转化成温室土壤。每具尸体能使一个幸存者活下去。 <BR> 成千的人死于饥饿和窒息。更多的人被谋杀了,这样他们呼吸的空气就可以给别人用。难民们学习着。在我的爷爷的爷爷的爷爷和奶奶的奶奶的奶奶的领导下,每当有飞船降落的时候,他们学会了在降落伞还没来得及收起来的时候就将飞船拆开成部件。至于那些被运来的人,如果他们不能呼吸真空的话(火星稀薄的空气从来就没有好过充满灰尘的真空),他们最好也来抢。 <BR> <BR> 只有最坚韧的生存下来。这些人大多是最矮小的,最不起眼的人,就像老鼠一样。太邪恶太顽强以至于难以被杀掉。二十五万囚犯被送到火星。只到地球的政府发现行为修改芯片比运送囚犯去火星便宜为止。然后地球的政府就竭尽全力忘掉他们曾经作过的事。 <BR> 我的爷爷的爷爷的爷爷贾瑞得成了难民们的领袖。这是个残忍的工作。因为那些人都是些残忍的人。但是他通过战斗,威吓和合谋来领导他们。 <BR> 在火星上没有爱情故事。难民们没有时间和资源留给爱情。爱情,对于难民们来说,是侵袭少数人的一种难以预料的疾病,必须彻底清除掉。对于难民们来说,生存需要的是服从和永不休止的工作。在个人和自由中繁荣的爱情,在火星上没有位置。 <BR> 是的,贾瑞得是因为说了反对政府的言论被从地球送到火星上来的。但是贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯早就死在了沙漠。当来自第五次移民潮的人们救援肖巴塔纳基地的时候,贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯追踪丁勾进了沙漠。这是他一生中犯的最后一个错误。他们中只有一个从沙漠里回来,穿着贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯的衣服,把自己叫作贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯。 <BR> 没有人认出他。因为第五次移民潮的人来自大约十二艘飞船。如果这里面的任何人曾经是原来的贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯的朋友的话,他们都在新的贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯从沙漠回来之后死去了。而能认识丁勾的人只有那些来自第六次移民潮的放逐者。但是这些人已经全部死掉了。 <BR> 他从沙漠里回来,救了我的奶奶的奶奶的奶奶。第五次移民潮的人们接受了他。 <BR> 但是显然我的奶奶的奶奶的奶奶没有被愚弄。她是一个智慧的人──在她自己的领域里可以说是杰出的──她一定认出了那个娶了他的男人和那个带领着愤怒的暴徒军队强奸了她,破坏了她的基地并在他们看着她的朋友们死在火星稀薄的空气里的时候大笑的家伙是同一个人。 <BR> 但是火星需要的是生存,不是爱情。而贾瑞得·瓦嘎斯是他们唯一可能的领袖。 <BR> 从第一个难民来到火星的时候开始,在火星上就发生了很多的故事。这些故事里没有一个是爱情故事。 <BR></DIV><!-- THE POST -->