The Long Mars

‘Hmm. All of whom have an eye on the throne. I learned that from talking to Snowy. To kill you honourably is seen as a gift.’

‘All very Klingon. Anyhow, any period of peace—’

‘Inevitably ends in over-population and a devastating war.’

‘That’s the idea, skipper. In the end the conflict generally goes continental if not global, as Packs invade warring neighbours, and the rival Daughters rip each other to pieces over the spoils. Each period of recovery lasts no more than a century, maybe two, and then everybody’s busted back down to hunting and gathering, and it all starts again.

‘We learned this from the archaeology, but also from the accounts of the beagles themselves. They know what happens to them; they have oral traditions, histories shading into legend. But all they seek to retain from each cycle is weapon-making. They don’t tend to save farming technology, for instance. Each Pack hopes that its descendants will be the ones to win the big global war next time. Which is why their weapons tech is relatively advanced, and little else is. Although their doctors are an exception, I have to say. They at least try not to forget all they learned.

‘Anyhow, you see that the cycle of their history is quite unlike ours. And though they seem to have been around a lot longer than we have – maybe a half-million years according to some first guesses – they’ve been limited in their development. And all because of a flaw in their biology.’

Suddenly Maggie saw where this was going. ‘A flaw. What’s that but a value judgement?’

Mac growled, ‘They have too many babies, too many litters. Their medical science doesn’t go much beyond the treatment of traumatic wounds. They haven’t even come up with the idea of contraceptive treatments . . .’

‘And then in walk a bunch of idealistic humans, with simplistic theories and advanced biological science, and an impulse to meddle.’

‘Maggie, it wasn’t as crude as that. Imagine what we found when we got there. Snowy’s people had just all but wiped themselves out. The ruling elite gone. This time the damage had been worse than ever because of high-energy weapons they’d been trading from the kobolds. We felt we had to do something. I mean, the fix was so easy to research, from what we know of dog anatomy, and easy to administer.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘In the water supply. Dropped by drone aircraft, across the continent. We didn’t make the females unable to bear pups; we just reduced the litter sizes. We thought that was the best way; later, when they perceived the benefits, we could explain what we’d done, give them a choice.’

‘My God. I guess we do have a track record of this kind of meddling with populations back on the Datum . . . So what happened, Mac?’

‘The beagles we treated, when they stopped having big litters, thought they were cursed by their gods, or maybe infected with some plague by their enemies – a plague that made them nearly infertile. We tried to explain what we’d done, but they wouldn’t listen.’

‘They didn’t blame you?’

‘It was more that they don’t take humans seriously. Their internal politics blinds them to everything else. The Daughters and Granddaughters turned on each other, each suspecting the other of poisoning or infection. And the neighbouring Packs, seeing their continuing weakness, started invading, from all corners. As things heated up, some of them did start to point the finger at us. We got out of there.’

‘I bet you did. And the war got even worse, right?’

‘We let it burn out. Then Ben Morton led the first party back in . . .’

‘God knows what the long-term consequences are going to be. “Murder my people.” That’s what Snowy said. Got it about right, didn’t he?’

Mac poured another slug of whisky. ‘You know me. I’m a doctor, Maggie. I meant to help.’

‘I thought the first principle of medicine was to do no harm. Well, you should have told me all this before. Oh, get out of my sight, Mac. Go back to work – no, hell, go find Snowy. Try to talk to him. Don’t expect forgiveness; you don’t deserve any. That’s an order, by the way. And send him to see me.’

Snowy eventually showed up the following day. Shi-mi got out of the sea cabin a quarter-hour before he arrived.

Knowing the background now, Maggie tried to judge Snowy’s mood, towards Mac, towards humanity in general. ‘Mac says they were trying to help you. Mistakenly, maybe, but—’

‘Not hell-p. Cont-hhrol.’

‘I don’t think that was the intention.’

‘Cont-hhrol.’

Well, maybe he was right. Even if the party of meddlers hadn’t understood their own deeper motives. ‘Yet you flew with us. You’re here now, talking to me.’

‘Lea-hrrn about you.’ He gazed at her, huge in the small human-scale cabin, his wolf eyes wintry. ‘Some good, some bad, in stink-chhrotch kind.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Good in Mac, even. Docto-hhr. We have docto-hhrs.’

‘Yes. He’s a good man, if misguided sometimes—’

‘But not cont-hrol beagles. Never-hhr again.’

‘I understand . . .’ Her comms light sparked.

He stood, saluted smartly enough, and left.

The comms call was an urgent one, from Ed Cutler on the Cernan. The sister ship had gone on alone, probing deeper into this band of worlds, which Gerry Hemingway had informally named the Bonsai Belt. Now it had come hurrying back. ‘Captain Kauffman, you’d better come see this.’

‘Tell me what you found, Ed.’

‘The wreck of the Neil Armstrong I.’

31

EARTH WEST 182,674,101. Another world of the Bonsai Belt, with roughly the same suite of dual-origin life.

And a crashed airship.

The Cernan had detected it through a radio beacon, picked up as it had sailed through this world in the course of its explorations. Maggie had ordered the comms teams to check for radio signals, routinely, at each step, even under fifty-steps-per-second cruise; a fraction of a second was enough to detect if such a signal was present. As far as the geographers could tell, the Armstrong had come down in a scrap of continental terrain that, on other worlds, would underpin much of Washington State. The Cernan, and now the Armstrong II, had had to travel a thousand miles laterally to reach the site.

The profile of the Armstrong I, an airship of the same class as the Benjamin Franklin, was unmistakable from the air.

‘It looks like a whale carcass, dropped from the sky,’ Mac said.

The crew were fascinated by the huge wreck, as they hadn’t been by any of the natural wonders they’d seen so far. That was the Navy for you.

‘And there are survivors,’ Maggie pointed out.

You could tell that immediately. Near the fallen ship, rect angular fields had been scraped in the loamy ground, though the crops looked sparse. There were structures like tepees, evidently assembled from scavenged components of the Armstrong. And Maggie could see people, down there on the ground, looking up and waving. Among them were recently landed crew from the Cernan in their distinctive uniforms.

‘Come on down, Captain,’ Cutler called up. ‘The air’s fine in this world, the water’s clean, the hospitality’s great, and the potato fritters are cooking already.’

That made Maggie grin, but at her side Mac frowned. ‘Is he for real? That doesn’t sound like Ed Cutler.’

‘Isn’t he allowed to be pleased with himself? Finding the Armstrong was one of our mission goals, remember. And if there are survivors—’

‘Maggie, my eyes are kind of rheumy these days. But those guys don’t look to be wearing anything like Navy uniforms, or marine gear.’

‘Well, they evidently turned into farmers, Mac.’

‘Maybe. But I would dig out the old rig when Navy ships came calling. Wouldn’t you? If only to avoid being shot at. And besides, Cutler hasn’t sent up any identification of those characters with him. You’d think he would have; we have the Armstrong’s crew roster.’