The Long Mars (29 page)

‘Yeah. I was conscripted – under Admiral Davidson’s command, but it was a commission from higher up. I was part of a multi-service, multi-disciplinary party sent to establish some kind of formal liaison with the beagles, after the first contact in 2040. President Cowley and his advisers thought it was important to mount the mission even at a time of national emergency, to make sure we had a foot in the door. We were basically military, but there was genuine scientific interest, of course. We had anatomists, linguists, psychologists, ethnologists. Even a dog trainer. Look, it was a successful project. You saw the extension that’s still running, under Ben Morton.

‘We studied every aspect of the beagles’ society, every aspect we were allowed to see anyhow, and we snooped on much of the rest. Maggie, beagles can’t step, even with a Stepper box. Hell, you know that. Aside from that, they seem to be richly intelligent, individually just as smart as we are.

‘But here’s the headline. Despite their smarts, their culture is impoverished. I don’t mean just technologically, materially, though they are stuck at the level of Stone Age herdsmen – or were, before the kobolds sold them iron-making and a few advanced weapons.’

Kobolds were something of an embarrassment: cunning humanoids, parasitical on human culture, and evidently using scraps of it to disrupt the destiny of others.

Mac said, ‘The beagles’ art is primitive, they don’t have complex writing, their religions and civilization forms are crude. Their science is non-existent, although they have a decent tradition of trial-and-error medicine – based mostly on battlefield experience.’

Maggie frowned. ‘So what? Maybe beagles don’t need writing, for instance. I know that the beagles communicate by scent, by hearing – those howls Snowy likes to run off into the night to make . . . And didn’t modern humans hang around for an age after
they
evolved, before they started painting caves and flying to the moon?’

‘It’s true. But in the end we did take off, there was a kind of spiral of invention. And, Maggie, though we’ve had calamities since then – the collapse of empires and shattering plagues and such – our progress has pretty much been, well, I won’t say “upward”, that’s a value judgement. At least in the direction of more complexity. Yes?’

‘OK.’

‘And we tend not to lose what we invent. Oh, individual civilizations lose it all, but—’

‘I get the picture. Once iron-making is invented, it stays invented. And the same isn’t true of the beagles, I’m guessing.’

‘That’s what we found. You see, the beagles go through booms and crashes, catastrophic crashes. Because their societies aren’t stable.

‘It all comes from their breeding cycle. The problem is that beagles breed like dogs – that is, they breed copiously, with huge litters. A beagle Pack is a martial matriarchy, basically, with the authority of the Mother being expressed down through Daughters and Granddaughters, even Great-granddaughters. So if you have a period of peace you end up with a population boom – and, more significantly, far too many Daughters and Granddaughters.’

‘Hmm. All of whom have an eye on the throne. I learned that from talking to Snowy. To kill you honourably is seen as a gift.’

‘All very Klingon. Anyhow, any period of peace—’

‘Inevitably ends in over-population and a devastating war.’

‘That’s the idea, skipper. In the end the conflict generally goes continental if not global, as Packs invade warring neighbours, and the rival Daughters rip each other to pieces over the spoils. Each period of recovery lasts no more than a century, maybe two, and then everybody’s busted back down to hunting and gathering, and it all starts again.

‘We learned this from the archaeology, but also from the accounts of the beagles themselves. They
know
what happens to them; they have oral traditions, histories shading into legend. But all they seek to retain from each cycle is weapon-making. They don’t tend to save farming technology, for instance. Each Pack hopes that its descendants will be the ones to win the big global war next time. Which is why their weapons tech is relatively advanced, and little else is. Although their doctors are an exception, I have to say. They at least try not to forget all they learned.

‘Anyhow, you see that the cycle of their history is quite unlike ours. And though they seem to have been around a lot longer than we have – maybe a half-million years according to some first guesses – they’ve been limited in their development. And all because of a flaw in their biology.’

Suddenly Maggie saw where this was going. ‘
A flaw
. What’s that but a value judgement?’

Mac growled, ‘They have too many babies, too many litters. Their medical science doesn’t go much beyond the treatment of traumatic wounds. They haven’t even come up with the
idea
of contraceptive treatments . . .’

‘And then in walk a bunch of idealistic humans, with simplistic theories and advanced biological science, and an impulse to meddle.’

‘Maggie, it wasn’t as crude as that. Imagine what we found when we got there. Snowy’s people had just all but wiped themselves out. The ruling elite gone. This time the damage had been worse than ever because of high-energy weapons they’d been trading from the kobolds. We felt we had to do something. I mean, the fix was so
easy
to research, from what we know of dog anatomy, and easy to administer.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘In the water supply. Dropped by drone aircraft, across the continent. We didn’t make the females unable to bear pups; we just reduced the litter sizes. We thought that was the best way; later, when they perceived the benefits, we could explain what we’d done, give them a choice.’

‘My God. I guess we do have a track record of this kind of meddling with populations back on the Datum . . . So what happened, Mac?’

‘The beagles we treated, when they stopped having big litters, thought they were cursed by their gods, or maybe infected with some plague by their enemies – a plague that made them nearly infertile. We tried to explain what we’d done, but they wouldn’t listen.’

‘They didn’t blame you?’

‘It was more that they don’t take humans seriously. Their internal politics blinds them to everything else. The Daughters and Granddaughters turned on each other, each suspecting the other of poisoning or infection. And the neighbouring Packs, seeing their continuing weakness, started invading, from all corners. As things heated up, some of them
did
start to point the finger at us. We got out of there.’

‘I bet you did. And the war got even worse, right?’

‘We let it burn out. Then Ben Morton led the first party back in . . .’

‘God knows what the long-term consequences are going to be. “Murder my people.” That’s what Snowy said. Got it about right, didn’t he?’

Mac poured another slug of whisky. ‘You know me. I’m a doctor, Maggie. I meant to help.’

‘I thought the first principle of medicine was to do no harm. Well, you should have told me all this before. Oh, get out of my sight, Mac. Go back to work – no, hell, go find Snowy. Try to talk to him. Don’t expect forgiveness; you don’t deserve any. That’s an order, by the way. And send him to see me.’

Snowy eventually showed up the following day. Shi-mi got out of the sea cabin a quarter-hour before he arrived.

Knowing the background now, Maggie tried to judge Snowy’s mood, towards Mac, towards humanity in general. ‘Mac says they were trying to help you. Mistakenly, maybe, but—’

‘Not hell-p. Cont-hhrol.’

‘I don’t think that was the intention.’

‘Cont-hhrol.’

Well, maybe he was right. Even if the party of meddlers hadn’t understood their own deeper motives. ‘Yet you flew with us. You’re here now, talking to me.’

‘Lea-hrrn about you.’ He gazed at her, huge in the small human-scale cabin, his wolf eyes wintry. ‘Some good, some bad, in stink-chhrotch kind.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Good in Mac, even. Docto-hhr. We have docto-hhrs.’

‘Yes. He’s a good man, if misguided sometimes—’

‘But not cont-hrol beagles. Never-hhr again.’

‘I understand . . .’ Her comms light sparked.

He stood, saluted smartly enough, and left.

The comms call was an urgent one, from Ed Cutler on the
Cernan
. The sister ship had gone on alone, probing deeper into this band of worlds, which Gerry Hemingway had informally named the Bonsai Belt. Now it had come hurrying back. ‘Captain Kauffman, you’d better come see this.’

‘Tell me what you found, Ed.’

‘The wreck of the
Neil Armstrong I
.’

31

E
ARTH
W
EST
182,674,101. Another world of the Bonsai Belt, with roughly the same suite of dual-origin life.

And a crashed airship.

The
Cernan
had detected it through a radio beacon, picked up as it had sailed through this world in the course of its explorations. Maggie had ordered the comms teams to check for radio signals, routinely, at each step, even under fifty-steps-per-second cruise; a fraction of a second was enough to detect if such a signal was present. As far as the geographers could tell, the
Armstrong
had come down in a scrap of continental terrain that, on other worlds, would underpin much of Washington State. The
Cernan
, and now the
Armstrong II
, had had to travel a thousand miles laterally to reach the site.

The profile of the
Armstrong I
, an airship of the same class as the
Benjamin Franklin
, was unmistakable from the air.

‘It looks like a whale carcass, dropped from the sky,’ Mac said.

The crew were fascinated by the huge wreck, as they hadn’t been by any of the natural wonders they’d seen so far. That was the Navy for you.

‘And there are survivors,’ Maggie pointed out.

You could tell that immediately. Near the fallen ship, rect angular fields had been scraped in the loamy ground, though the crops looked sparse. There were structures like tepees, evidently assembled from scavenged components of the
Armstrong
. And Maggie could see people, down there on the ground, looking up and waving. Among them were recently landed crew from the
Cernan
in their distinctive uniforms.

‘Come on down, Captain,’ Cutler called up. ‘The air’s fine in this world, the water’s clean, the hospitality’s great, and the potato fritters are cooking already.’

That made Maggie grin, but at her side Mac frowned. ‘Is he for real? That doesn’t sound like Ed Cutler.’

‘Isn’t he allowed to be pleased with himself? Finding the
Armstrong
was one of our mission goals, remember. And if there are survivors—’

‘Maggie, my eyes are kind of rheumy these days. But those guys don’t look to be wearing anything like Navy uniforms, or marine gear.’

‘Well, they evidently turned into farmers, Mac.’

‘Maybe. But
I
would dig out the old rig when Navy ships came calling. Wouldn’t you? If only to avoid being shot at. And besides, Cutler hasn’t sent up any identification of those characters with him. You’d think he would have; we have the
Armstrong
’s crew roster.’

‘Hmm.’ ‘Look, we don’t know anything about how the
Armstrong
got here, who these guys are.’ ‘OK, you old spoilsport. We’ll take precautions. But I think you’re being over-cautious. Hey, Nathan.’

‘Captain?’

‘Do we have any Fourth-of-July fireworks on this tub?’

The XO grinned. ‘We have multicolour flares.’

‘Break them out.’

‘My name is David.’

Maggie led her party in from the set-down site, past the wreck of the
Armstrong
and towards the little habitation. The man who greeted them was young, no more than twenty-five, twenty-six. Good-looking, confident, with an accent she couldn’t quite place, he walked boldly up to her and shook her hand. With him were four others, three women, one man, all about the same age. All very impressive, was Maggie’s first take, even if the clothes they wore were pretty ragged.

And none of them had been crew of the
Armstrong
.

Maggie introduced her own team, drawn from both
Armstrong II
and
Cernan
: Mac, Snowy, Nathan, Wu Yue-Sai, others. The strangers stared at the beagle, but did not seem alarmed.

Cutler was beaming from ear to ear, like he’d found Santa Claus. He introduced David’s companions. ‘Let me see if I remember.’ He pointed. ‘Rosalind, Michael, Anne, Rachel. All with the same surname – Spencer – not siblings, but from one extended family, Captain.’

David patted him on the back. ‘Well remembered, sir!’ They broke away into a huddle of friendly chatter.

Maggie murmured to Mac, ‘You’re right. That’s
not
like Ed Cutler. Is he
blushing
to be praised by that boy?’

Mac said, ‘These characters are somewhat – what’s the word?
Charismatic
. That’s my first impression. My mother once took me to Houston, when they were still flying astronauts on the shuttle. Place full of functionaries, office workers. But when an astronaut walked through the room, every head turned . . .’

Maggie was aware of a soft friction at her leg. It was Shi-mi, rubbing her face on Maggie’s trouser, hiding behind her legs.

Maggie knelt down and whispered, ‘I thought you didn’t come out when Snowy’s around. Or Mac, in fact.’

‘The dog smells me. I know he
smells
me . . . But this is important. Danger, Maggie Kauffman. Danger!’

‘What, from these shipwrecked characters? What kind of danger?’

‘I’m not sure. Not yet. Listen, Captain. Post a guard. Set up your men around a perimeter so they can’t all be taken out at once. Have the airships monitor your movements. If I were you I’d send one ship over the horizon, or step it away . . . Take precautions. Whatever you think best.’

Maggie frowned. But she remembered Mac’s cautious appraisal. ‘OK. Against my better judgement.’ She summoned Nathan and gave orders to pass on to the crew, and McKibben’s marines.