The Martian Sphinx

by John Brunner

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

By the twenty-first century the world was drowning in its own population. A solution had to be found quickly - and it was, in 'gravi-power'. Wonderful, unending source of power - only the scientists knew that its use was reducing the Earth's distance from the sun at a dangerous rate. But if another planet's gravi-power could harnessed . . . An expedition was launched to Mars, known to be uninhabited - except that a woman was wandering around its surface who claimed she had come from another galaxy to warn Earth of a terrible menace, and there was a huge poly-hedron of metal emanting a force very much like that of gravipower. Someone else had discovered it! A thousand years ago, or now? Friend, or enemy? (First published 1965)

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 146

Sample

JASON LOMBARD was not ill pleased with the world when he rolled yawning from bed and padded on bare feet across the warm floor of his room.
He had slept deeply, but his dreams had been dull and gray, leaving him now—this early morning—with a vague sense that
he was lucky: that the fates might have treated him far worse if they’d taken the trouble.


Random thoughts along this general track crossed and recrossed his still only half-wakeful mind as he went through the regular
just-after-rising routine. The coffee might be heavily cut with chicory, but it was ground from natural beans, not some powdery
second-stage derivative; the room was cramped, but from the stories they told, his own parents had started their married life
in a trailer not much larger; and certainly a student on an exiguous financial grant in his father’s time hadn’t enjoyed all the conveniences he could call on at the touch of a switch. Of course, the power which ran
these devices …


His face twisted into a brief grimace as the day’s first irritant penetrated his sleepy acceptance of the world, twenty-first
century pattern. He found he was hesitating to turn the heat on under the coffee-maker.


Damnation! As if I make one millionth of one percent difference!

Megalomania in there somewhere? This insistent idea that it’s up to me to save the world from itself?

Angrily, he clicked the knob of the stove hard round to maximum heat, and made for the stall shower. Here, no joy for the
moment. When he turned the tap he got the red light, signifying that as many showers were in use as the block’s hot-water
system could cope with.


Crazy damned planet! More ocean than dry land, and here in the age of unlimited power I have to wait for water!

Put it down to the spread of personal hygiene. Put it down to centuries of Cork mockery: black boy, you stink. He yawned again and took the five paces necessary to check the mail.


And that was when the tatters of his mood of well-being blew over the horizon on a gale of dismay, to be replaced by awareness
of all the things that were not right with the world: the first and then the second rejection of his projects for a graduation
thesis, without which his long struggle to come here was null; the snubs, the contempt, the weary waiting …

He stood turning over the little silvery disc in both hands. A vidrec, of course. Formal. They went for formality in a big
way, in this and most other parts of the modern world. A letter: too impersonal, adequate for circular communications (though
even then having to be typed automatically, not reproduced, and to contain custom-inserted errors if the recipient was to respect the information in it) or for curt messages to social inferiors with no chance of one day overtaking the sender
and snubbing him in his turn. A live conversation: too casual, too immediate, too fraught with the risk of unforeseen complications.


So: a vidrec, the ideal compromise. A conversation sent by mail.

He drew a deep breath and slid the disc into the play-over socket of the phone, thinking once more about the source of the
power which would bring it alive on the small square screen.


At once the image of a stout Chinese appeared. It could at least have been a Jap, Lombard told himself morosely. They rubbed against us for a long time; they aren’t so frigid and fierce …

But the man in the screen was Chinese. One couldn’t have been certain from his face or his build; the leveling of world nutrition
standards had abolished major differences of stature. His clothing, though, stated it instantly. He was even definable as
high-ranking and conservative from his blue Maosjacket buttoned to the neck and loose-legged pants.


Oddly enough he had recorded the message not in his own language but in English, a compliment absolutely at variance with
the depressing implications Lombard read into it.


“Student Lombard Jason”—the name reversed, of course: it was the traditional Chinese order, patronymic first, but in this
civilization of alphabetical classification it was also a universal commonplace—“it is requested that you attend at my office
in the fraternity building to discuss a matter closely concerning your future plans. It is hoped you will find it convenient
to present yourself first thing today. My name is Sun Yen Soo.”


A courtly bow to the unseen listener, with hands put briefly together and almost instantly drawn apart, a marvel of half-politeness.
And the screen blanked.


Numb, Lombard returned to the stall shower. The red light again answered his pressure on the tap. He muttered a curse with
no real feeling behind it and found he was looking at himself in the wall-mirror.


The sour hopelessness on his face, pale under its tan, was frightening. He ran his fingers through his untidy fair hair, twisted
them there and tugged, as though by inflicting pain he could distract himself from the alarming prospect.


Sun Yen Soo! What his position in the hierarchy of the fraternity was, Lombard didn’t know, but he also had a university title—something like “step-father of students”. No, not father: “great-uncle.” An age-honorific. And to rate that he must be right
near the top of the ladder.


Like giving a hanged man an extra yard of drop to ensure he snaps his neck.

Well, it would always be possible to work at something, even without a graduate thesis approved and published. To have been
accepted as a Cork student here counted for much by itself. In India under the British Raj—so he had been told by a fellow-student
from Madras—there had been such a premium set on European education that babus would proudly add to their names such distinctions
as “failed B.A., Oxford”.


So all right. Call me Lombard Jason, failed M.Sc., Afrasian U. Carry on a great tradition.

“But—hell!” he said aloud. “For all they make such a fuss about their blasted ‘face,’ I’m not going to cover up mine. It’s
been kicked in the teeth, and I don’t give a damn who gets to know!”


Not that they’ll care if they do get to know …

He had addressed himself to his own reflection. Much of the past three years he’d had few other people to talk to; the form
of his problems was pretty predictable, for one thing, so he might as well discuss them with his own image as with an outsider.
He’d considered coming here as a married student—the news of his acceptance at Afrasian U. after a long struggle and a long wait had given him such prestige that several
girls had suddenly decided they were willing. But in the long run he was glad he’d not settled for one of them. The advantages—company, freedom from the obsessive hunt for sexual relief, all that—would have been outweighed by the near-certainty
of disaster before now. A Cork girl here, not a student but merely a student’s wife, would have gone through hell and most
likely taken it out on her husband.


He looked around the room, his mind darting bird-fashion to any perch-thought which might distract him from facing the probable
deeper meaning of this order to go to the fraternity building. The retracting table, not quite flush to the wall—ought to
be adjusted for a smoother fit. The blackboard over by the door, with its lines and lines of calculations converging on an
elusive goal—strange that with computers so far developed it was still more satisfying to make one’s own marks with a bit
of chalk, like a cave-dweller smearing mud on the walls of his home in patterns that trapped magic …

On the other hand, not to be married led to unavoidable loneliness—unavoidable, even though clearly foreseen. He had expected
to be older than the vast majority of the students from the privileged areas of the world; he was, by some years. He had expected
to have little in common with other Cork students; he’d been correct in that, too. Coming as most of them did from overcrowded,
depressed Western Europe, they typically were introverted, bitter, carrying enormous chips on their shoulders.


Me too now, Lombard thought, and felt his own resentment boil up inside him like a black gusher of bile.


“Bastards,” he told his reflection. “For all their smug patronizing manner, they can’t take you, can they? They can’t bear
to have a Cork here who makes the colored students look small!”


Was that the size of it? He’d determinedly fought off coming to that conclusion, yet seemingly nothing remained as an alternative.
Allegedly, the highest IQ ever tested at Afrasian U. belonged to Jason Lombard; yet both his projects for graduation theses
had been turned down—as too original, too unusual, for the rigid-minded authorities?


It would be absurd if they turned him out without letting him graduate! But how to fight them if they decided to?

Me, a Cork, fight the fraternity? Because that’s who I’d have to tackle, not the university staff. Fight them? Hear me laugh!

His belly was tight as a kettledrum, hollow and booming.

Go home? Yale, Harvard—such places still had respectable standards, some kind of reputation, and if he’d got into Afrasian
he could be sure of …

“No,” he said aloud. “No, if I’d wanted a home degree I’d have got one, years ago. I wanted one with world status. But—but
what the hell good is it all? Am I to sweat away my whole life, fighting prejudice, to acquire a string of letters after my name when I know
that anyone who learns I’m a Cork will automatically discount them? I think I’ve thrown away three years. I think I should
never have got on this stinking treadmill.”


And his image looked back in wordless agreement from the mirror.

HE WALKED breakfastless along the streets connecting his block with the university, trying to escape the burden of imminent disaster
by dismissing his own thoughts, concentrating on what impinged from outside. But far too often exterior sights and sounds and sensations recalled to him subjects bearing
on his problem and shattered his neutral blankness into fragments.


The day had barely begun, yet the sun blazed hot and the crowds were on the move. Days here felt odd to a Cork, conditioned
to a temperature-zone day-structures: the long morning starting shortly after dawn, divided by a siesta which was more than
a mere long lunch-hour, a necessity even with unlimited power to drive the air-coolers, from an evening which was indifferently
leisure-time or working time.


Already the sidewalks were jammed with people who gave him curious looks for the white skin under his tan, the fairness of
his hair. Perhaps I should dye it and have done. A hundred years ago they used to sell products to rid African hair of its kindly spirals.
Crazy. Put in curlers, me? Not to go that far. Indians have straight hair.

Fat mothers in calf-long skirts, laughing children clinging, exchanging the day’s gossip in rapid argot, sweat putting a plumripe
bloom on their berry-black skin. And the little slant-eyed Asian women, delicate as porcelain. I had a slender fragile girl once: Samiko, Nisei, where are you? Married and raising fortunate meek children to inherit the
earth …

Shopkeepers, in this area mainly of Indian descent, bringing their wares out for display. Wonderful how tradition enables curb-side sellers to survive the competition of big stores with their modern merchandizing
methods. Shoppers enjoy the gossip, maybe. Like to be friends with the seller, thinking he will not cheat them, half-afraid
of the enormous impersonal machine which is a multiple store …

“Cigar, man! Have a cigar!”

Abruptly waving under his nose, a tobacco-brown hand with a sheaf of cigars in it, like four extra grown fingers. Lombard
flinched away automatically, fearing some practical joke.


“Gwan! Go wan! It’s my birthday, and the first twenty go past get a cigar!”


“Oh. Oh—uh—many happy returns.” And the cigar taken, with haste rather than appreciation.

But so habitual to be lonely among the crowds of this city—so easy to yield to the desire for privacy simply by shutting
the mind and pretending they’re not there, the millions of them. Ostrich-wise, so easy.


And completely impossible.

Cork bobbing on the tide of Frics, he halted at an intersection. On the corner here, to his left, was an electronics store
and service center. Pulled in the side of the tributary road was a fraternity wagon, flame-yellow and lightning-blue, and
the driver and inspector were chatting, laughing with the proprietor of the store. Inspection just over, no doubt, and all
found satisfactory.


A griping rose in his throat, like a need to vomit. Two half-qualified grease-monkeys, one with enough training to balance
a turbine and the other capable of picking his slow way around a circuit diagram, and running a fraternity wagon, both secure
and looked up to in their social block and making progress, getting somewhere they wanted to go.


Compare Jason Lombard, genius. With the IQ just beyond measurable limits and the future blacker than a Bushman’s bottom. Like to say that some time. Never dared. They say it in a hundred languages, grinning, and I don’t dare. Not aloud.

That single ridiculous gloomy thought occupied him from then until he came in sight of the fraternity building, sited where
the frenzy of the commercial city gave way to the landscaped placidity of the university campus, the biggest on Earth with
its three hundred seventy thousand students. By then the tide of humanity which carried. . .