Both the Soviet Union and the United States were at a stalemate until someone came up with a brilliant solution.
Mars would be divided in half. The northern part would be known as North Viet-Mars and the south would be known as South Viet-Mars.
The Soviets would be in charge of the North, the U.S. in charge of the South, and free elections would be promised within two years of partition.
The United States immediately set up a Mars aid program to give the Martians economic and financial assistance when the time came. It also trained military-assistance teams which would land with the aid people and train the Martians in defense against the North.
The Soviets divided North Viet-Mars into communes and trained political commissars and technicians to go into the country and communize it.
In the meantime, Communist China, which had not been asked to the conference, started making its own plans for Mars. It announced an Afro-Asian-Mars Conference to take place in Peking, where both the Western “bandits” and the Soviet “deviationists” would be attacked. China said, as soon as it had enough spaceships, it would send one million Chinese volunteers to Mars to save the planet from American and Soviet imperialism.
Although the French had nothing to do with the space explorations, they insisted Mars should become part of a Third Force under the direction of General de Gaulle.
Unbeknownst to the great powers on Earth, the Martians were holding a summit meeting of their own on the Mars Bar Canal.
“Then it is agreed upon,” the Grand Clyde of Mare Cimmerium said. “We shall set up an East Earth and a West Earth. We shall have the East, and Trivium Charontis will have the West.”
The Trivium Charontis Super Zilch said, “We shall hold elections within two years and let the Earth people decide for themselves what form of government they want.”
“I cannot state strongly enough,” said the Grand Clyde of Mare Cimmerium, “that if Trivium Charontis does anything to violate the treaty we will be forced to use all the weapons at our disposal.”
“And I can assure you, Grand Clyde, Trivium Charontis will not stand by and see West Earthlings swallowed up by Mare Cimmerium. If need be, we shall use the clong.”
The Grand Clyde said, “We shall see which system prevails.”
Art Buchwald writes from Washington, these days. But back in 1948, Buchwald, an ex-Marine, was in Paris, working for the Herald-Tribune. Another young American, an ex-bomber pilot, was camping out on the steps of the Palais de Chaillot in the middle of Paris, but technically not in France at all, because the building had just been declared international territory, the domain of the new United Nations. Garry Davis had proclaimed himself a World Citizen and was demanding citizenship papers of the UN.
To many of us, in those apocalyptic days, Garry Davis was a symbol of—literally—life or death. To most of the American press he was just one more loose nut. As I recall, Buchwald was one of the few newsmen published here who seemed to comprehend the wonderful and terrible myth Davis was acting out.
We did not win our One World. Not with Davis’ intuitive dramas not with the scientists’ naive sanity. Today we seem farther than ever from the name—yet the game (between Crises) appears virtually in our hands. The world shrinks daily. Global communications and transportation pull us together in shared language, handicrafts, entertainment, cuisine, and personal contact—while the growing pressure of our awed awareness of the immensity of the universe pushes at us from outside, turning us toward each other.
Looking for biographical material on Brian Aldiss, I found instead my first letter from him, in February, 1959:
So Oxford fascinates you? What effect do you think “Pike County” has on me? Oxford these days is a beautiful and exciting city—very lively, one facet of it resembling exactly a dour, congested. Midland town, with big cinemas and traffic jams and Morris Motors, making the university side look like its Latin quarter. But the other side of it, the side that contains thirty-one colleges and a wedge of beautiful living and buildings, is even more exciting. And you can see both sides at once. 80,000 people live here....
Morris Motors? Factories? Cinemas? 80,000 people? This had nothing to do with the Oxford I knew, from three centuries of English literature. Not that it mattered: I could keep my pretty picture. I would never see the reality.
Last year I saw Oxford. I went to England, for a World Science Fiction Convention. (Brian Aldiss was guest of honor.)
The convention took me there, but London kept me: I went for two weeks; and stayed two months—and of course went up to Oxford (as in all those British novels) for a weekend. It is everything Brian said, and everything those English novels promised, too. (Nothing had prepared me for the House of 12th-century Wood-Carvings and Stuffed Birds, home of Bonfiglioli and Impulse.)
Six months later, Aldiss’ publishers brought him here to receive in person one of the first annual SFWA awards. The Aldisses came out to Pike County for a weekend, and I took them for my favorite long drive through the Pocono foothills and back along the Delaware River, on the Hawks’ Nest Drive, into Port Jervis—where the Silver Grill, has an all-jazz, and ail-good, jukebox. (Margaret Aldiss had never played a jukebox.)
The other day I had a letter from Brian:
. . . We know how you feel about England; we feel that way about the States—well, the 0.0001% of it we saw. We’ll be back. And we do thank you for the time we spent with you, and the lick of American myth we saw through your eyes. . . .
The globe is getting smaller, as the universe gets bigger.
(Who Can Replace a Man? Best SF Stories of Brian Aldiss should be just out from Harcourt, Brace, and World.)
SCARFE’S WORLD
BRIAN W. ALDISS
I
Young Dyak and Utliff with the panting breath stood on the seamed brow of the hill. It was a fine hot day, with a million cicadas thrilling about them like the heat itself. Under the heat haze, the far mountains were scarcely visible, so that the river that wound its way down from them held a leaden grayness until it got close to the foot of their hill.
At the foot of the hill, it flattened out into swamps, particularly on the far side where marshy land faded eventually into mist. The iguanodons were croaking and quacking by the water’s edge, their familiar lumpy shapes visible. They would not trouble the men.
“How is it with you Utliff? Are you coming down the hill with me?” Dyak asked.
He saw by Utliff’s face that there was something wrong with him. The lie of his features had altered. His expression was distorted, changed in a way Dyak did not like; even his bushy beard hung differently this morning. Utliff shrugged his thick shoulders.
“I will not let you hunt alone, friend,” he said.
Determined to show his imperviousness to suffering, he started first down the sandy slope, sliding among the bushes as they had often done. He was pretending to be indifferent to an illness to which no man could be indifferent. With a flash of compassion, Dyak saw that Utliff was not long for this life.
Glancing back, Utliff saw his friend’s expression.
“One more runner for the pot, Dyak, before I go,” he said, and he turned his eyes away from his friend.
Living things scuttled out of the bush as they headed toward the river, the furred things that were too fast to catch, and a couple of the reptiles they called runners—little fleet lizards, waist-high, which sped along on their hind legs.