by Jacques Jean Ferrat [Pseudonym of Sam Merwin, Jr.]
_Do you remember Jacques Jean Ferrat’s_ NIGHTMARE TOWER _? We’re sure
you do if we had the privilege of numbering you among our earliest
readers, for the story appeared in the very first issue of_ FANTASTIC
UNIVERSE, _and its swift, unusual plot and brilliant characterization
were so astonishingly vital as to make it quite unforgettable. Since
then demands for a sequel have been so insistent that when Mr. Ferrat
walked into our office with this exciting lead novelette in his
briefcase our joy was unconfined._
=There was need on Mars for folly half sublime and a man’s delight in
recklessness. But a woman’s steadfast gifts were needed more.=
Had Lynne Fenlay been less proud, she would have wept, openly and
unashamedly. Standing before the altar, directly in back of her twin,
Revere Fenlay, and his bride, Lao Mei-O’Connell, she felt acutely
homesick for Earth. Intellectually, of course, she understood and
accepted the need for multiple marriages on Mars. But she could not
evade a sense of emotional outrage at the assembly-line method of
marriage which circumstances had made mandatory on the alien planet
that was now her home.
The marrying officer, who trebled in brass as a circuit judge and
an electronics expert on the thinly settled Red Planet, wore only a
shabby-looking, round-cornered apron. Although it bore the twin-worlds
insignia, emblem of his high office, it was tucked with a careless lack
of dignity into the top of his wellworn clout, and everyone could see
that one of the tie-strings was missing.
A bald-headed little man with an incipient paunch and knobby knees,
he intoned the brief ceremony from rote, never glancing either at the
book in his right hand, or at the faces of the four couples standing
directly in front of him.
“...and to be mutually faithful during the period of enforced
separation, to work honorably for one another and for the planet upon
their reunion, to provide a home for the sons and daughters of their
union. For these purposes, by the virtue of the power embodied in
my....”
He mumbled on, running the words together in his haste to conclude
the ceremony which would unite the four couples from far Barkutburg,
and enable him to get on with the marriages from New Walla Walla,
Cathayville, Zuleika and the other major settlements of Mars. A few
kilometers away, a spaceship was waiting to take the brides of the Red
Planet home to Earth to bear their children--a function which was not
possible of fulfillment in the light gravity of Mars.
All of the brides were pregnant. In tacit accordance with the dictates
of expediency in frontier settlements all through man’s history on
Earth and, more lately, on Mars, a marriage was not a marriage until
offspring were on the way. When a couple decided to mate, it was only
necessary for them to sign a register and share quarters as provisional
husband and wife. The arrangement would remain in force as long as it
gave satisfaction to both parties. If it failed divorce became merely a
matter of signing another registry.
But once a child had been conceived, casualness vanished, for the
bringing of Martian children back to Mars was a major factor in the
effort to populate the planet. Such children were its hope, its future,
against the time when man should have conquered his new environment,
and child-bearing no longer necessitated a hasty return to Earth.
For the rest, Mars was populated by expert technicians, officials and
the halves of genetically induced identical twins--of which Lynne and
Revere Fenlay were unusually gifted examples. The purpose of this plan
was to give the new planet Earth’s hereditary best without stripping
the home planet of its most promising young folk. One twin, conditioned
for Earth, stayed at home--the other, carefully trained from infancy to
endure and triumph over the hardships of life on the Red Planet, went
to Mars.
Lynne was one of the few Earth-trained twins ever sent to Mars to
join her brother. Her telepathic genius, of a range and sensitivity
almost unknown on the home planet, with its dense atmosphere and other
inhibiting factors, had been urgently needed in a desperate crisis
when the telepathic lateral communications of Mars had been threatened
with destruction by strange electronically-revivified survivals of the
original Martians. She had been needed, and once the crisis had been
conquered, she had stayed on to aid in new telepathic research. She had
stayed on, and now--she was rebellious and homesick.
There was a gaunt, stripped-down, machine-shop look to the great hall.
In New Samarkand, the planetary capital where the ceremonies were
being conducted, the established ritual never varied. The marrying
officer stood on a low platform, and at his back rose a portable altar
surmounted by the symbol of universal faith. This consisted of a
cross for Christianity, in a circle representing the “wheel of life”
religions, and outside its circumference smaller crosses with their
ends bent at right angles to represent the symbol of still older faiths.
It had been battered by constant usage, and one of the tips was rudely
broken off. Recalling the symbolic beauty of the ritual that still
enhanced marriage ceremonies on Earth, and contrasting it with the
crude matter-of-factness of Martian multiple weddings Lynne wished, and
not for the first time, that she had not permitted Rolf Marcein to talk
her into coming to Mars.
She cast a quick sidelong glance at Rolf. He stood almost directly
behind the second bride, a lean, sun-bronzed figure towering over
the other guests, a sensually suggestive smile on his lips which was
anything but reassuring. He winked as he returned her glance. Even less
reassuring was her certain knowledge that Rolf was drunk. The monthly,
multiple marriages on Mars accompanied as they were by the prospects of
incipient parentage and immediate long separation, had degenerated into
one big farewell carnival.
This one, as far as Lynne was concerned, had begun three Martian days
earlier when the settlers of the Barkutburg station--the residence of
Lao, Revere and, until recently, of Lynne--had thrown a thirty-six hour
wingding for the departing bride. Lynne had attended, of course, out of
devotion to her twin and his wife. But since her neuro-emotional makeup
was too fine-tuned to enable her to enjoy alcohol in quantity, she had
been something of a spectre at the feast.
The journey to New Samarkand had been a brief interlude between binges,
followed by another revel on the eve of the official wedding. This
time, Rolf had been on hand and, under his prompting, Lynne had taken a
little too much and was suffering the inevitable after-effects. Rolf,
apparently, was just getting up a full head of steam. She wondered if
the travesty of a ceremony was ever going to end.
“... and so I now pronounce you men and wives,” the marrying officer
finally finished. Ushers hastily escorted the couples and their
attendants to a vestry, where the record books were signed, while
another group of brides, grooms and attendants, came forward to be
joined in wedlock.
_Ceremony_, Lynne thought, _by courtesy only_. Travesty would have been
a far more accurate term. She glanced at Rolf again as he signed his
name with a flourish in the book, wondering what _her_ wedding would
be like--if she ever married. At the moment, the idea was thoroughly
repugnant to her.
“Come on, _vinral_,” said Rolf, using the Martian term of endearment
as he gathered her in with his huge left hand. “Sign here--and then
over here, in this book. _Crehut_, I thought old Bretinslov would never
finish that blah-blah of his.”
Signing dutifully, Lynne said, “That blah-blah, as you call it,
legalizes the serious vows of a marriage ceremony.” It seemed a little
incredible to her that she should find herself defending a ritual which
she had decried mentally only moments before. But Rolf’s attitude
somehow infuriated her.
Rolf, whose eyes seemed pinker and foggier than usual, ran his tongue
between his teeth and said, “Come on, _vinral_, my mouth is drier than
desert dust. Let’s get over to the reception room and kiss the brides
and get a drink. They’re serving some of the new champagne-lichenwasser
the bio lab has synthesized, to its everlasting credit and glory.”
Lynne, unable to adjust herself to the recklessly riotous spirit of
Mars on a binge, said, “Rolf, dear, don’t you think you’ve had enough?
After all, there’s a limit to--”
“Enough?” Rolf interrupted her, with an incredulous grimace. “Lynne,
this party’s just getting started. After we see off the brides, we’re
going to settle down to some real drinking.” So saying, he pinched her,
hard, where men have pinched women since time immemorial.
To her horror, she found herself on the verge of tears. She was glad
she could cover her weakness by struggling with an outward display of
assurance into the aluminum-fabric coverall that was uniform protection
against the chill Martian outdoors, and the oxy-respirator worn for
occasional revivifying whiffs against the thinness of the atmosphere.
She sat on somebody’s lap, securely wedged with the others into a
land-runner for the half-kilometer trip to the reception hall. Around
her, Rolf and the rest, joined in the rousing, ribald first chorus of
_The Farmer’s Martian Daughter_, making her head ring with a volume of
sound which was almost unbearable inside such a confined space. At that
moment, she hated them all.
Nor was her dislike merely a matter of personal pique. She had felt the
malaise for some time, felt it so gradually, so far below the level of
her conscious mind, that she had been unaware of its creeping progress.
Like the _ping_ of an antique radar, a subconscious thought from the
mind of her twin, Revere Fenlay, registered. He was thinking of his
bride, Lao Mei-O’Connell, and his thought ran, _I’m glad she’s going to
be away from Mars for the next ten months. There’s bound to be trouble
and I don’t want her in danger--especially while she’s carrying our
child._
Lynne stifled an impulse to probe Revere’s mind with a telepathic
inquiry as to the nature of the danger. She decided there would be
time for that after Lao Fenlay and the other brides of the season were
safely on their way to the home planet. But with awareness of Revere’s
awareness, Lynne realized that some of her unhappiness was rooted not
in homesickness but in unaccepted telepathic fears of her own--fears
whose nature she could not pin down.
She probed Rolf’s mind carelessly and received a wholeheartedly
carnal picture of Rolf and herself that caused her to drop that line
of inquiry instantly. She was not in the mood for--what did he call
it?--such _ferkab_ canoodling. At the moment she hated the man--and not
the least of her hatred’s causes lay in the very inevitability of her
ultimate surrender to him. The _marlet_.
_Watch your language, you_ ZWIRCHY VINRAL, came his answering thought.
Lynne sealed her mind as tightly as her lips the rest of the way to the
reception hall.
Here, beneath a girdered ceiling adorned with the stunted evergreens
grown by Earthmen on Mars, a table had been set up for the marriage
parties of each city, according to tradition. Accustomed to the
fabricated foods of Earth, Lynne was astonished at the lavish display
of barbecued boar, Marsapples and other delicacies, including plump
forty-pound capon-turkeys, the pride of the husbandry labs.
She told herself she was not hungry. But she ate notwithstanding--while
Rolf and the other men went right on drinking. Thanks to the small,
closely interrelated population of the Red Planet, there was much
intermingling of the groups, and Lynne, to her surprise, found herself
facing a grinning, strapping, dark-skinned girl who said, “Welcome,
Lynne Fenlay. Try some of the food at our table.”
It was the young animal husbandry girl--Joanna Wheatley--who had shared
a cabin with her on the spaceship during the journey from Earth the
year before. Joanna seemed to have entered into the festivities with
all the vitality of her youth and her uninhibited mixture of Caucasian,
Oriental and Hamitic blood strains. But when Lynne asked her how her
work was going, Joanna’s face fell.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “We must irrigate to support any sort
of animal life, and irrigation is draining the moisture from the
atmosphere table faster than we can create it. But you must know the
problem, Lynne. It’s the _farbish_ curse of all Mars.”
“I know,” said Lynne, trying to encourage the girl. “But one of these
days we’ll have it licked and, if I know farmers, you’ll all be
complaining because too much rain is spoiling the crops.”
Joanna failed to smile. She said, “I’d give my right arm for that
day to come tomorrow. If we hadn’t been able to install a transmuter
to feed a small pond recently, our cattle would be dead. And our
farm--Woomera Station--has the most fertile soil on Mars. Right next
door, it’s so radioactive we’ve had to fence it off.”
“Radioactive?” said Lynne, wondering why she hadn’t heard of such a
deposit.
“Maybe that’s not the exact word,” said Joanna. “_Crehut_, I’m no
geologist--I’m in husbandry. But it has remarkable health-giving
qualities--and some deadly ones as well. Still, it’s not solving the
moisture problem for us.”
“You really feel it’s serious?” asked Lynne, sensing the deep concern
in the girl’s mind, the fright.
“Unless some new factor can be found that will increase moisture, it
will defeat us,” said Joanna solemnly. Then, actually shaking herself
out of her despondency, the dark girl went on, “But this is not the
time for care. My best friend has just married and will soon be off for
Earth to have her baby. You come and see our farm as soon as you can,
will you, Lynne? I think you’d be interested.”
“I know I shall be,” Lynne said, pressing the girl’s hand. “As soon as
I can.”
She joined Joanna in a toast to her friend and groom, then brought the
girl to the Barkutburg table to meet Revere, Lao Mei-O’Connell and Rolf.
Rolf leered at Joanna and said, “I’ll be out to see you the first time
Lynne’s not looking.”
And Joanna threw back her head and laughed, revealing twin rows of
flashing white teeth.
Lynne knew the amorously mocking banter was harmless enough in
itself. Rolf worked tirelessly, conscientiously for months on end,
and surely he had a right to make love lightly with his eyes. But
her Earth indoctrination would not permit her to approve of such
uninhibited revelry as was the custom on Mars when the bars were let
down. She thought of Rolf’s thousand women subordinates in his post as
Communications Coordinator, and wondered how many of them....
_Watch yourself_, VINRAL, came his mocking thought.
Lynne felt herself blush. She turned away and took a beaker of
lichenwasser and downed it quickly. But it didn’t intoxicate her--it
merely increased her physical discomfort and spiritual irritation.
She said farewell to Revere’s bride, elected leader of the Barkutburg
center, and then, when the others took off, roistering, for the
spaceport, she stayed behind in the cloakroom. Though it was what she
wanted, her wretchedness was not lessened by the fact that apparently
no one missed her. Especially Rolf....
She decided to return to Nampura Depot alone, to reassure her ego by
being of some practical use to somebody. It was, she thought miserably,
beginning to look as if the only real happiness and fulfillment she was
ever to achieve lay in her work alone. The growth of her telepathic
talent had been responsible for the breakup not only of her engagement
to a young man on Earth, but for the loss of her job as coordinating
member of one of the highly specialized human brain-teams that,
operating in conjunction with electronic computers, solved the more
difficult and intricate material and mechanical problems of the mother
planet.
It had been her job, as coordinator, to obtain problem solutions that
humanized and made realistic the sometimes over-abstruse answers that
emanated from the machines, in response to the data fed into them by
her human teammates. As her telepathic talent improved, her answers had
become too perfect, which meant she had fallen into rapport with the
computer rather than the human elements of the team--a psychological
maladroitness which had led to her dismissal. It was a desperate need
for telepaths on Mars that had brought her to the Red Planet.
Climbing aboard one of the bi-hourly transports for Nampura Depot,
Lynne faced the fact that her entire life, up to her transfer to
Mars, had been planned and lived with the single aim of enabling her
to adjust to the manners and mores of a densely populated, highly
civilized, almost effete Earth. On Mars, with its vast open spaces and
freewheeling pioneer anarchy and virility, she was a misfit.
As the transport jetted upward through the paper-thin atmosphere,
soaring above the miracle medley of towering, lacy, ancient Martian
ruins and rough, utilitarian Earthman-built structures alongside the
old canal, Lynne wondered unhappily what she was going to do about Rolf.
She adored his every pore, his every muscle, but whether she could
long endure the strain of living with him in Martian wedlock was
something else again. There was a wild, undisciplined streak in Rolf
that violated her ultra-civilized Earth-bred restraint. It could be
exciting--marriage to Rolf--but it would be distasteful, too.
Lynne opened her mind to exchange thoughts with him when another, more
powerful, more urgent message reached her from the teleteam on duty at
Nampura Depot. Its combination of two telepathic minds in unison was
overpowering. It said, _we’re in touch, we’ve finally found it, we’re
about to make contact--_
Then came a brain-wrenching flash, and--nothing at all.