“What do you suggest?” I asked.
“What else you got?”
We went through my limited wardrobe and selected a similar outfit, in black, but in the plainer, tougher coriace tissu material that seemed to be standard wear.
“Dressup is generally just a clean set of whatever you wear regularly,” Wootten told me. “Damned few governor’s balls here.” Then he cackled lewdly and grinned. “Get that stuff on and let’s get ourselves wrapped around some of the local pop-top.”
I groaned at the thought, but dressed quickly enough and followed Wootten out and down the street that wandered through the town. I caught a glimpse of the big cylindrical structure that housed the GE fusion torch and the long zome with the buildings of varying size and form that suckled on the torch, each for the various major elements it needed.
Wootten saw me looking and said, “It goes night and day, y’know. Heavy metals, garbage, everything. Rips the raw material down to the atomic level, or would, if you put it through enough times. We do that for anything we ship back to Earth. It’s cheaper. That torch is why we can go without masks around here and how they can have all the farms, y’know.”
I nodded. “The air-maker.” Garbage, dirt, tons of rock, dead bodies, trash were all stripped down to the basic elements, the nitrogen and oxygen recombined for atmosphere, with dashes of other gases, with pinches of trace elements, and a glug or two of whatever might have slipped through, and the planet Mars was getting itself another blanket of air—breathable, this time, by Homo sapiens. Terraforming. Adaptation. The fusion torch had just barely saved Earth from strangling in its own wastes. Hundred-, two-hundred-year-old trash dumps were mined for material. Some of these sites were the richest sources of heavy metals left on our ruined Mother Planet. My own Ecolocorp had bought options on hundreds of municipal dumps just as soon as I knew a practical and portable fusion torch and mass accelerator was feasible. It was cheaper to bring the torch to the trash than the trash to the torch. Great scoops dumped gobs of the planet’s plundered resources on conveyor belts that fed into the hoppers.
Earth was still far from cleaned up. Piles of pure elements did not feed the billions, but they helped, mainly by sustaining the technology. Oil and the heavy metals were recycled. The technology that was needed to recombine the raw elements was even more complex than the technology that produced the raw material.
But atomically pure was even better than chemically pure and many of the delicate sciences, such as body and brain chemistry were aided by these pure elements, which reduced the X factor. Today, everyone gets at least an annual readout and delicate chemical adjustments are made where the nutritional balance has been disrupted. The fusion torch and attendant technology have saved man’s ass, but man’s soul is still in danger.
Maybe that was why I was on Mars.
Kochima’s Star Palace was our destination. First a dram of pop-top served in a rosy glass made from local silica, then a thick, tasty slab of algae steak, ragged cubes of soyasen, a few rounds of carrot as thick as my wrist, and some sort of blue-green lettuce. Between the drink and the food were introductions to a score or more of miners, torch technicians, farmers, and biologists. I noticed that whether hard-rock miner or test-tube biologist they all had a common factor of self-reliance, of independence and reliability. I was pleased to note that these traits were not the creation of the vidtab writers and that, as far as I could see,
“My word is my bond” was a truism.
Oh, not that everyone loved everyone else, and certainly not that they were all saints. You can be a self-reliant, independent, and reliable assassin or jewel thief or computer criminal. It was simply that these seemed common traits, and I found it comforting. I had been too long in the world of pragmatic business, where truth was a commodity and friendship a matter of whom you were dealing with. Nuvomartians wanted each individual to be what he seemed. They lived close to nature, but it was an alien nature that man was only beginning to understand. The need to trust one’s own kind was strong.
Maybe it was a little early, but I felt at home.
I found there were surprising aspects to some of these men. Easton had been in Leavenworth for six years for “adjusting” Union Oil’s computers to pay large sums into a dummy account. Now he ran the complex mass accelerator’s computers. “Long Jim” Trotter had been James Trotter IV, scion of a New England financial megafamily. Wayland and Migliardi had fought at New Orleans, in the Riots, one on each side. Drayeen had been a space salesman for a vidtab readout magazine. Puma had been Reymundo Santiago, a painter of note, and now a partner in Rojorock, Inc., a small mining company. They wanted to know all the latest news and gossip about Earth, and I wanted to know about Mars. But there were more of them so I ended up answering the questions.
Yes, Rosita Chavez and Olga Norse, Jr., were lovers but they had recently formed a notorious triad with Ed Avery, the director of City on Top of Itself, the muckraking exposé of the predominantly homosexual archotolog called Heaven. No, it would be at least two years before the new Mark IX torch would be ready. Yes, the food riots in India had resulted in the deaths of millions. Peru and parts of the PanArab Republic had also suffered riots. No, there were no plans for saving Kennedy Space Center even as a historical monument. Yes, the White House wanted to chop off aid to Mars.
No, China Corlon was not a transsexual. Yes, President DeVore had called President Goldstein a mastoc cornard, and the insult was still shaking the beds of Washington. No, the Femmikin robots were no substitute for real women, no matter how well programmed to your tastes. Your own suspension of disbelief was their best asset. Yes, the FSA had picked John Grennell and Terry Ballard for the Callisto mission. No, Margarita Silva did not have implants, as far as I knew, just a bounty from nature.
Yes, Utah had gotten an injunction against Femmikin, Inc. after the Secretary of Robotics had fallen in love with one. No, Lila Fellini had not had any special geriatric treatments, nothing that wasn’t standard for all of us. Yes, the antipollution vigilantes had been disbanded. No, the Curtain of the Unknown cult had not quite won their election in England. Yes, some of the plastic surgeons considered certain of their patients to be living works of art, and it was true that Dolores Salazar, Helen Troy, and Illusiane had appeared nude, or in scanty power jewel costumes, on pedestals, at a gallery opening. No, they had not quite perfected the DNA regrowth techniques at Johns Hopkins West, but the RNA research was progressing well. Yes, the subcerebral learning techniques were much improved. No, the bordello bill had been defeated in Australia. Yes, Ron Manuel and Neola Digarth would be doing their next sensafilm on Mars. No, you didn’t go insane living in an archo tower complex, it only seemed that way.
I finally begged off by saying that all my talking was preventing me from drinking. They laughed and filled my glass with bubbling purple. When I was sufficiently drunk I was helped to bed, then got up to help Tanaka and Migliardi to their bunks.