Like thousands of other men and women of his age and class, Wun had submitted his credentials to the committees who were designing and coordinating a proposed journey to Earth, without any real expectation that he would be selected. He was, in fact, relatively timid by nature and had never ventured far beyond his own prefecture, except for scholarly journeys and family reunions. He was deeply dismayed when his name was called, and if he had not recently entered his Fourth Age he might have refused the request. Surely someone else would be better suited to the task? But no, apparently not; his talents and life history were uniquely suited to the work, the authorities insisted; so he settled his affairs (such as they were) and boarded a train to the launch complex at Basalt Dry (on our maps, Tharsis), where he was trained to represent the Five Republics on a diplomatic mission to Earth.
Martian technology had only recently embraced the notion of manned space travel. In the past it had seemed to the governing councils a profoundly unwise adventure, liable to attract the attention of the Hypotheticals, wasteful of resources, requiring acts of large-scale manufacturing that would dump unbudgeted volatiles into a meticulously managed and highly vulnerable biosphere. The Martians were conservators by nature, hoarders by instinct. Their small-scale and biological technologies were ancient and sophisticated, but their industrial base was shallow and had already been strained by the unmanned exploration of the planet's tiny, useless moons.
But they had watched and speculated about the Spin-enshrouded Earth for centuries. They knew the dark planet was mankind's cradle, and they had learned from telescopic observation and data retained from a late-arriving NEP ark that the membrane surrounding it was penetrable. They understood the temporal nature of the Spin, though not the mechanisms that produced it. A journey from Mars to Earth, they reasoned, while physically possible, would be difficult and impractical. The Earth, after all, was effectively static; an explorer dropped into the terrestrial darkness would remain entrapped there for millennia, even if, by his own reckoning, he left for home the next day.
But vigilant astronomers had lately detected boxlike structures quietly constructing themselves hundreds of miles above the Martian poles—Hypothetical artifacts, nearly identical to the ones associated with the Earth. After a hundred thousand years of undisturbed solitude, Mars had finally come to the attention of the faceless and omnipotent creatures with whom it shared the solar system. The conclusion—that Mars would soon be placed under a Spin membrane of its own—was inescapable. Powerful factions argued for a consultation with the shrouded Earth. Scarce resources were mustered. A spacecraft was designed and assembled. And Wun Ngo Wen, a linguist and scholar deeply familiar with the extant fragments of terrestrial history and language, was conscripted to make the journey—much to his own dismay.
Wun Ngo Wen made peace with the likelihood of his own death even as he prepared his body for the confinement and debilitation of a long space voyage and the rigors of a high-gravity terrestrial environment. Wun had lost most of his immediate family in the Kirioloj flood of three summers ago—one reason he had volunteered for the flight, and one reason he had been accepted. For Wun, the risk of death was a lighter burden than it would have been for most of his peers. Still, it was not something he looked forward to; he hoped to avoid it altogether. He trained vigorously. He taught himself the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of his vehicle. And if the Hypotheticals did embrace Mars—not that he was hoping for such a thing—it would mean he might have a chance of returning, not to a planet rendered strange by millions of passing years but to his own familiar home, preserved with all its memories and losses against the erosion of time.
Although, of course, no return voyage was anticipated: Wun's vessel was a one-way device. If he ever did come back to Mars it would be at the pleasure of the terrestrials, who would have to be very generous indeed, Wun thought, to provide him with a ticket home.
And so Wun Ngo Wen had savored what would likely be his final look at Mars—the wind-gullied flatlands of Basalt Dry, Odos on Epu-Epia—before he was locked into the flight chamber of the crude iron-and-ceramic multistage rocket that carried him into space.
He spent much of the subsequent journey in a state of drug-induced metabolic lethargy, but it was still a bitter and debilitating test of endurance. The Martian Spin membrane was emplaced while he was in transit, and for the remainder of the flight Wun was isolated, cut off by temporal discontinuity from both human worlds: the one ahead and the one behind. Dreadful as death might be, he thought, could it be much different from this sedated silence, his brooding custodianship of a tiny machine falling endlessly through an inhuman vacuum?
His hours of true consciousness ebbed. He took refuge in reverie and forced sleep.
His vessel, primitive in many ways but equipped with subtle and semi-intelligent guidance and navigation devices, spent most of its fuel reserves braking into a high orbit around the Earth. The planet beneath him was a black nothingness, its moon a huge gyrating disk. Microscopic probes from Wun's vessel sampled the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, generating increasingly red-shifted telemetry before they vanished into the Spin, just enough data to calculate an angle of entry. His spacecraft was equipped with an array of flight surfaces, aerodynamic brakes, and deployable parachutes, and with luck it would carry him through the dense and turbulent air to the surface of the enormous planet without baking or crushing him. But much still depended on luck. Far too much, in Wun's opinion. He immersed himself in a vat of protective gel and initiated the final descent, fully prepared to die.
He woke to find his only slightly charred vessel at rest in a canola field in southern Manitoba, surrounded by curiously pale and smooth-skinned men, some of them wearing what he recognized as biological isolation gear. Wun Ngo Wen emerged from his spacecraft, heart pounding, muscles leaden and aching in the terrible gravity, lungs insulted by the thick and insulating air, and was quickly taken into custody.
He spent the next month in a plastic bubble in a room at the Department of Agriculture's Animal Disease Center on Plum Island, off the coast of New York's Long Island. During that time he learned to speak a language he had known only from ancient written records, teaching his lips and tongue to accommodate the rich modalities of its vowels, refining his vocabulary as he struggled to explain himself to grim or intimidated strangers. This was a difficult time. Earthlings were pallid, lanky creatures, not at all what he had imagined when he deciphered the ancient documents. Many were pale as ghosts, reminding him of Embermonth stories that had terrified him as a child: he half expected one of them to rise up at his bedside like Huld of Phraya, demanding an arm or a leg for tribute. His dreams were restless and unpleasant.
He was, fortunately, still in possession of his skills as a linguist, and before long he was introduced to men and women of status and power who proved far more hospitable than his initial captors. Wun Ngo Wen cultivated these useful friendships, struggling to master the social protocols of an ancient and confusing culture and waiting patiently for the correct moment to convey the proposal he had carried at such personal and public expense between the two human worlds.
* * * * *
"Jason," I said when he had reached approximately this point in the narrative. "Stop. Please"
He paused. "You have a question, Tyler?"
"No question. It's just that it's… a lot to absorb."