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Authors: Edmund Cooper
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Perhaps, by studying you, we shall learn what went wrong in human development. Perhaps the information we gain will enable us to define our own development programme.” He glanced at the girl. “Zylonia de Herrens is an officer in our Mental Health Department. She has volunteered to live with you, to orientate you in our ways, to give you companionship, to learn from you. I hope you will find her a pleasing companion. I believe you will.”
“Live with me!” Idris laughed grimly. “How can she live with me? I am just a piece of debris in a tank.”
“We made this facsimile of your cabin, Idris Hamilton, as a reality-anchor. Zylonia is also to be used as a reality-anchor. She will stay with you, talk to you, learn from you, sleep in the bunk you used to occupy. As a woman, she will do her best to please you. As a scientist, she will do her best to understand you. Later, when you understand our society better, there may be a less passive role for you to play. That is all I can say now. For the time being, I will leave you, Idris Hamilton. Be assured that we are doing our best for you.”
Zylonia said: “Idris, I want to please you very much. Believe that I think of you not as a brain in nutrient solution, but as a man. I have my own dreams, just as you have yours.”
Idris Hamilton uttered a great electronic sigh. “Then we must each take consolation from our dreams. Thank you for volunteering to keep me company. It is almost an act of love.”
Zylonia tossed back her hair. “It
is
an act of love,” she said.
10
T HERE WERE TWO clocks in the cabin. One was the actual clock taken from the bulkhead of the master’s cabin on the
Dag
, miraculously persuaded to work once more after an interval of five thousand years. The other was Zylonia’s—a much evolved replica of a Swiss cuckoo-clock. She had had it since she was a child. Evidently it was a kind of talisman.
They were both twenty-four hour clocks; but they did not often tell the same time. The Martian day being longer than the terrestrial day, each Martian minute was almost one and a half seconds longer than each Earth minute. Idris amused himself briefly by calculating that once every forty-three days—Earth days—the clocks ought to tell the same time.
The standard Martian day, he learned, was still used to regulate the passage of time on Minerva, though the planetary period of rotation was almost exactly twenty terrestrial hours. It was used for sentimental, traditional and practical reasons. It was used because the first colonists brought Mars time with them, and lived by it. It was used because a twenty-four hour day—even allowing for the slight Martian variation—corresponded to the ancient cycle of human metabolism. It was used because night and day on Minerva were almost meaningless abstractions.
The planet, nearly six billion miles from the sun, existed in perpetual night. It was a frozen world. The sun, the brightest star in its sky, was too far away to afford any life-givingwarmth, any appreciable increase of light. The surface of Minerva was permanently frozen in permanent darkness. The first colonists had burrowed beneath its surface to establish underground refuges, which later expanded into small cities. They had returned to the surface as little as possible, though they maintained a few scientific and technological installations amid the wastes of rock and frozen gasses, and even a small space-port.
The space-port serviced and maintained five small ferry rockets, used chiefly for short planetary shoots and for exploratory shoots to Minerva’s only satellite, an irregular lump of cosmic debris no more than five hundred kilometres in diameter which orbited the planet at a mean distance of seventy-three thousand kilometres. There was also one ancient deep-space vessel, carefully maintained but rarely used. It was three thousand Earth-years old and had been part of the original exodus fleet from Mars. It had been repaired and
“Live with me!” Idris laughed grimly. “How can she live with me? I am just a piece of debris in a tank.”
“We made this facsimile of your cabin, Idris Hamilton, as a reality-anchor. Zylonia is also to be used as a reality-anchor. She will stay with you, talk to you, learn from you, sleep in the bunk you used to occupy. As a woman, she will do her best to please you. As a scientist, she will do her best to understand you. Later, when you understand our society better, there may be a less passive role for you to play. That is all I can say now. For the time being, I will leave you, Idris Hamilton. Be assured that we are doing our best for you.”
Zylonia said: “Idris, I want to please you very much. Believe that I think of you not as a brain in nutrient solution, but as a man. I have my own dreams, just as you have yours.”
Idris Hamilton uttered a great electronic sigh. “Then we must each take consolation from our dreams. Thank you for volunteering to keep me company. It is almost an act of love.”
Zylonia tossed back her hair. “It
is
an act of love,” she said.
10
T HERE WERE TWO clocks in the cabin. One was the actual clock taken from the bulkhead of the master’s cabin on the
Dag
, miraculously persuaded to work once more after an interval of five thousand years. The other was Zylonia’s—a much evolved replica of a Swiss cuckoo-clock. She had had it since she was a child. Evidently it was a kind of talisman.
They were both twenty-four hour clocks; but they did not often tell the same time. The Martian day being longer than the terrestrial day, each Martian minute was almost one and a half seconds longer than each Earth minute. Idris amused himself briefly by calculating that once every forty-three days—Earth days—the clocks ought to tell the same time.
The standard Martian day, he learned, was still used to regulate the passage of time on Minerva, though the planetary period of rotation was almost exactly twenty terrestrial hours. It was used for sentimental, traditional and practical reasons. It was used because the first colonists brought Mars time with them, and lived by it. It was used because a twenty-four hour day—even allowing for the slight Martian variation—corresponded to the ancient cycle of human metabolism. It was used because night and day on Minerva were almost meaningless abstractions.
The planet, nearly six billion miles from the sun, existed in perpetual night. It was a frozen world. The sun, the brightest star in its sky, was too far away to afford any life-givingwarmth, any appreciable increase of light. The surface of Minerva was permanently frozen in permanent darkness. The first colonists had burrowed beneath its surface to establish underground refuges, which later expanded into small cities. They had returned to the surface as little as possible, though they maintained a few scientific and technological installations amid the wastes of rock and frozen gasses, and even a small space-port.
The space-port serviced and maintained five small ferry rockets, used chiefly for short planetary shoots and for exploratory shoots to Minerva’s only satellite, an irregular lump of cosmic debris no more than five hundred kilometres in diameter which orbited the planet at a mean distance of seventy-three thousand kilometres. There was also one ancient deep-space vessel, carefully maintained but rarely used. It was three thousand Earth-years old and had been part of the original exodus fleet from Mars. It had been repaired and
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