Her interest at this time was in politics, about which she talked endlessly. Placements within the YEA and DOP brackets were systematically arranged through the Mars Department, under Secretary Thomas Gunther. Kathi had a particular dislike of Gunther, saying he was radically corrupt.
Whether that was true or not—many people praised Gunther—there was always bad feeling over the placements. Who was accepted or not as a YEA was open to local manipulation. I thought the system worked pretty well, enabling as many people as possible to visit the Red Planet. The United States insisted that matrix travel (the term “space travel” had become old-fashioned) was a democratic right.
Kathi’s main complaint concerned the whole business of selection as a YEA. To qualify within the 16-28 years age bracket we had to undergo a rigorous Genetic and Superficial Health Test as well as a GIQ Exam. The General Intelligence was supposedly free from cultural and sexual bias and intended to establish the emotional stability of the examinee. Kathi was one-eighth Aborigine, and swore this was held against her at the Sydney board.
“I came up against a filthy little man who gave me the final interview. Do you know what he said? Only my granting him sexual favours would get me through! Can you imagine?”
I hardly dared ask what she had done.
She tossed her hair back. “What the hell do you think? I wasn’t going to let him stop me. I let him screw me. Next day my boyfriend broke both his stinking legs in his back yard…”
By far the greatest percentage of YEAs had no means by which to cover the exorbitant costs of interplanetary travel. Nor was financial payment allowed—although Kathi said this too could be arranged if you were one of the Megarich. Funding poured through the UN Matrix Tax to EUPACUS. Gunther was pocketing a “whole river” of this money, according to Kathi. I had seen pix of Gunther and thought he looked nice.
Having passed their exams, the young educated adults were allocated to stations in which to spend a year of community service. Some got lucky, some lived like slaves, as I did. Some laboured on newly established fish farms in Scapa Flow, or the anchovy nurseries off the west coast of South America. Some served in the great new bird ranges of the taiga, or in satellite manufactories, 2,000 miles above Earth. Some were sent to Luna to work on the underground systems as technicians. Kathi was lucky and went to Darwin and the Water Resources.
“And sitting there like a fat pig in a strawberry bed was Herby Cootsmith, a Megarich, squatting on his investments, gradually buying up all Darwin,” Kathi said.
As a group, the YEAs were mistrustful of the socio-economic systems from which they emerged. They hated the disparity between the poor, with their harsh conditions and short lives, and the Megarich, whose existences were projected to extend over two centuries. Life for the Megarich, Kathi declared, misquoting Hobbes, was “nasty, brutish, and long”.
It was estimated that 500 people owned 89 per cent of the world’s wealth. Most of them belonged in the Megarich category, being able to pay for the antithanatotic treatments.
After your year’s community service, you had to pass the various behavioural tests. Then you were qualified for the Mars trip.
“How did you manage?” Kathi asked.
I hesitated, then thought I might as well tell her. “A rich protector came forward with a bribe.”
Kathi Skadmorr gave a harsh cackle. “So we’re both here under false pretences! And I wonder how many others—YEAs and DOPs?! Don’t you just long for a decent society, without lies and corruptions?”
It came as a surprise to me to discover that Tom Jefferies and his wife Antonia—both of them DOPs—had also used a bribe to get to Mars. That I shall have to tell about in a minute, and to describe Antonia’s death.
Antonia died so many years ago. Yet I can still conjure up her fine, well-bred face. And I wonder how different history would have been if she had not died.
The DOPs were reckoned to have served their communities; otherwise, they would hardly be Distinguished. As Older Persons, they did not have to undergo the GIQ examination. However, the Gen S Health test was particularly rigorous, at least in theory, in order to avoid illness en route, that long, spiralling, burdensome route to the neighbouring planet. In some cases, behavioural tests were also applied.
DOP passages were generally paid for by some form of government grant from their own communities. In the eighteenth century, Dr… Johnson told Boswell that he wished to see the Great Wall of China: “You would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence … They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the Wall of China. I am serious, sir.” To have visited Mars brought a similar mark of distinction—conferred, it was felt, on whole communities as well as on the man or woman who had gone to Mars and returned home to them.
One of the excitements of being on Mars was that one occasionally met a famous DOP, not necessarily a scientist, perhaps a sculptor such as Benazir Bahudur, a literary figure such as John Homer Bateson, or a philosopher such as Thomas Jefferies. Or my special friend, Kathi Skadmoor.
I first saw Torn Jefferies from afar, looking sorrowful and remote, but I held the popular misconception that all philosophers looked like that. He was an elegant man, sparse of hair, with a pleasing open face. He was in his late forties. A vibrancy about him I found very attractive.
So I was immediately drawn to him, as were many others. While I was drawn, I did not dare speak to him. Would I have spoken, had I known how our paths would intertwine? Perhaps it is an impossible question—but we were destined to face plenty of those …
Many scientists went to Mars under the DOP rubric, among them the celebrated computer mathematician, Arnold Poulsen, and the particle physicist I have already mentioned, Dreiser Hawkwood. A percentage of those who had travelled on the conjunction flight became acclimatised to Mars and, because the work and lighter gravity there were congenial to them, stayed on. It should be added that many YEAs stayed on for similar reasons—or simply because they could not face another period of cryogenic sleep for the return journey.
From 2059 onwards, as interplanetary travel became almost a norm, every Martian visitor was compelled by law to bring with him a quota of liquid hydrogen (much as earlier generations of air travellers had carried duty-free bottles of alcohol about with them!). The hydrogen was used in reactions to yield methane for refuelling purposes.
Another factor powered the movement in the direction of Mars. Competition to exist in modest comfort on the home planet grew ever more intense. To gratify its desire for profit and then more profit, capitalism had required economies of abundance, plus economies of scarcity into whose markets its entrepreneurs could infiltrate. Now, under this guiding but predatory spirit, there existed only the voracious developed world and a few bankrupt states, mainly in Africa and Central Asia. Increased industrialisation, bringing with it global overheating and expensive fresh water, made life increasingly difficult and corrupted the competence of democracies. Prisons filled. Stomachs went empty.
While there were many who deplored this state of affairs, they were as powerless to alter it as to stop an express train.
Now a number of them had an alternative.
The Martian community developed its own ethos. Being itself poor in most things, it proclaimed an espousal of the poor, downtrodden and unintelligent. More practically, it fostered a welcoming of the estrangement that Mars brought, a passion for science, a care for the idea of community.