Read Online Champion of Mars by Guy Haley - Free Book Online Page B

might be interested in. It was all tub-thumping, municipal public relations nonsense. His grandma had come here from Earth, and she’d told him what enhanced reality was like there: tailored adverts, viral marketing that knew your name and shoe size, endless, unwanted solicitation. Peaceful without it, she said, here on Mars.
    He sighed. It wasn’t going to be that way for very long.
    He ran the binoculars over the vehicles in the car park. Ownership or rental details sprang up from each. His grandmother’s wasn’t there yet, but more were arriving with every minute.
    “Cybele, what is this place going to be like?” he said suddenly.
    “It is going to change,” said the AI, gently.
    He took his eyes from the binoculars and looked over the Tharsis plateau around his hill. Endless, red dust, as fine as powder paint, the rocks black against it. The world was so quiet, the wind whispering sadly, in mourning for a world long gone.
    “It was not always like this, Jonah,” said Cybele. “Once Mars had life. Perhaps we are only seeing it returned to how it should be.”
    “Do you know what Pastor Frank says?”
    “I do not know what Pastor Frank says,” said Cybele pleasantly. “Please tell me.”
    “Get this, he says that the existence of Mars and Venus are clear indications of the existence of God.”
    “Does he now?” said Cybele, who had no strong feelings on religion one way or another.
    “Yeah, he says it’s like God gave Man stepping stones out into the universe. He gave us Earth, like,” he laughed. “You’ll like this, like Earth is a nursery, right, but our parents went away, and left the door open and a car waiting outside so we could follow. He says it is hard to imagine a better pair of planets for making into other Earths. But you know what Pastor Frank’s like, he sees the face of Jesus in his breakfast eggs.”
    “Venus will not be transformed for some time,” said Cybele.
    “It will be, though, won’t it? All of them will be, I expect.” He picked up a stone, held it between forefinger and thumb. “Everything’s changing.”
    “All history is a succession of changes,” said Cybele.
    “Like, this rock, right? It’s probably never been touched by a human being.”
    “That is the balance of probability,” said Cybele.
    “So, yeah, I might be the first human being ever to hold this. But –” He looked at it hard, it was just a black small stone. Basalt. Most of the rock here was. “I won’t be the last.” He tossed it down the hill, where it lost itself in a crowd of its fellows.
    The air by the horizon was yellow-pink but if one lay back and looked up, the sky was bluish, and it grew a little bluer every year. And all around his camp, if he looked hard enough, there were signs of change; stubborn patches of fruticose lichen, genes hardened against the cold, cosmic radiation and the intense dryness. All these things conspired to kill it, but it was there nevertheless, bearding the stone, tiny soldiers besieging the planet. Jonah tried to imagine the cold red plains as grassland, or jungle, like he’d seen on holos from Earth. They’d re-engineered so much of the environment down there after the eco-collapse. To do the same here should be easy, once the TF got past a certain point.
    “There are AIs on the ships?” he said.
    “Many,” said Cybele.
    “I suppose you’ll be glad of the company.”
    “I am ambivalent,” she said. “It will be they who will change things here the most, however.”
    The tiny female holograph looked up to the approaching stars.
    “They’re coming,” said Cybele.
    There were seven lights in the sky now. The leading light resolved itself into a metallic glint, navigation beacons blinking. Jonah focussed his binoculars on it, cranked them up to maximum magnification. A stubby-winged space plane filled his vision, and ER factoids sprouted from it through his implant; he knew most of them by heart. The things had been designed robustly, to make