Now that I have shown you the way to the four principal goals of human life, to wit, how to survive, gain riches, become famous, and play a part in a transcendent cause, it behooves me to spare a few lines to discuss secondary matters that nevertheless remain of interest to some readers. These generally fall under the category of achieving “social success.”
Can you find your soul mate on Mars? Someone for you to love, but more, someone worthy of your love, who will love you passionately in return, and stand by you, as your loyal and true comrade, lover, friend, and defender, sharing all joys and facing all dangers and adversity together, eternally and forever, through dust storm and solar flare, through score and scandal, for richer or (heavens forbid) poorer, till death do you part?
The idea is not as silly as it sounds. In the first place, it should be clear that finding such a companion would be of great utility, as he or she could potentially provide you with (a) regular sex, (b) someone to watch your back, (c) someone to lend you money on reasonable terms to get started again if your luck turns sour and you go broke, (d) valuable business connections, and (e) children of a sort who might prove useful at some time in the future. In the second place, contrary to your Earth experience and its derived cynicism, on Mars, such things are possible. Yes, fully possible, even for you, a person who obviously was a complete social failure on Earth—otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. You just need to listen to my advice.
But before I begin my discourse on how to find, wisely choose, successfully woo, and partner with a mate on Mars, I need to discuss that one fact concerning our social life that inevitably startles and amazes all new Earthling immigrants once they get over their incredulity: On Mars the institution of marriage still exists. I am not making this up. If you don’t believe me, just ask the kids playing around Founders’ Square or in the New Plymouth Central Agricultural Dome. Nine out of ten of them have two parents, and not only that, nearly all of those have had the same two parents for their entire lives. The same pattern holds true in Tsandergrad and Taikojing, as well. I know it must sound unbelievably prehistoric to you, but it is a fact; on Mars, people can and do get married, just as they do in Shakespeare’s plays when performed in their unauthorized nonupdated versions.
But perhaps you shouldn’t be so shocked. Marriage was, after all, still fairly common on Earth in at least some out-of-the-way places like Lapland, Outer Mongolia, Tierra del Fuego, and southern Utah as recently as fifty years ago, and was normative, if declining, nearly everywhere fifty years before that. The collapse of marriage as a major social institution on Earth is really a comparatively recent phenomenon, brought about by the bureaucracy’s mad assortment of divorce laws, domestic-violence laws, child-abuse laws, spousal-certification laws, parental-suitability laws, education laws, indoctrination laws, anti-indoctrination laws, health laws, dietary laws, pharmaceutical-treatment laws, mental-hygiene laws, therapy laws, counseling laws, psycho-certification laws, household-inspection laws, and endless other state invasions that more or less made stable families impossible, at the same time that the general spread of deranged ideas about the supposed evil that humans represented to Nature made their primary previous purpose appear undesirable. Think about that: if you had been born on Earth a century ago, you might well have known (with as much as 50 percent accuracy) who your biological father was, and been virtually certain as to the identity of your mother! It’s true that they did have state orphanages, but being raised in one was rather the exception than the rule that it is on Earth today. In fact, in premodern English, the very word “orphan” was not a general synonym for “child,” but only used to refer to a child whose parents were both dead. If your parents were alive, it was not only legal, but expected, that they would raise you themselves.
Well, that is how it is on Mars today. There are no state orphanages. Children are born, generally speaking, to married couples who raise them at home, rather than by single women who produce them by accident or as part of their two-birth obligation to the Social Security system. Incredible as it sounds, people on Mars actually want to have children of their own, and they form families for that purpose.
Thus, while sexual attractiveness is a factor among us while seeking pairings, unlike Earth, it is not the only factor. If you wish to succeed in the dating game here, you need to understand this, because when you approach someone of the opposite sex, he or she will not just be evaluating you shallowly on the basis of your looks, but will be asking themselves deeper questions like: “Do I want this man to be the father of my children?” or “Do I want this woman to be the mother of my children?” If you want to be able to score with any frequency, it is essential that, as they search their consciences and feelings, your marks are able to answer these questions in the affirmative.
On Mars, families still exist. (List of Illustrations 15.1)
Thus it should be clear that the key to making it with members of the opposite sex on Mars is to be rich. Put simply, if you have piles of money, you will easily be able to secure whatever liaison you want, including, but not limited to, the life partner of your dreams. As the wise old saying goes: Make yourself rich, and love will follow. So, since we have already dealt adequately with the critical subject of how to get rich, we may also regard the secondary matter of winning the heart you desire as being settled as well.
Nevertheless, that still leaves unanswered the critical question: Whom should you choose to marry? The obvious answer, of course, is others who are rich as well. The problem, however, with this method is that rich mates are very much in demand, and so they tend to get taken off the marriage market so quickly that you may never get a shot at one. Or if they are available, it could well be due to the fact that they are so totally disagreeable in their physical or emotional attributes that no one will take up with them despite the fact that they are loaded. It is therefore the unfortunate case that you may well be faced with the unpalatable prospect of choosing your mate from among the unrich. There is no need to panic, however, since all you need to do to come out well is to use your keen eye for character to identify someone who, while disgustingly poor today, is likely to become delightfully rich in the future. Essentially, that’s all there is to it. (If you are unsure of someone, ask them some test questions based on the financial success chapters of this book. If they’re too dumb to get it, drop them.)
In addition to obvious future financial failures, there are several other types you need to avoid. These include most of those employed by the Mars Authority, especially any of their hordes of inspectors, regulators, revenuers, and shrinks. It is true that members of the first three categories can occasionally be useful to have in your corner, but having one of them around will make you so odious to all other right-thinking Martians that you will find the association a net debit regardless. As for the fourth, they are useless on all occasions, and are generally quite irritating besides. I mean really, do you want to face a life filled with conversations that go like this:
“Honey, great news. I think I just struck it rich!”
“That’s wonderful dear, but how do you feel about it?”
Or:
“Did you hear it? Those MA bastards just put a tax on rover repairs.”
“I see. So, would you say you are feeling anger right now?”
Get the picture? Yick. Besides, they’re incapable of making any serious money.
On the other hand, having a well-qualified Mars Authority geologist in the family can be a real asset, as you can use him or her to validate your mining claims. The two of you will be a popular couple with other Martians for the same reason. Just be sure not to take the same name after marriage, as doing so could cause unnecessary concern among those doing due diligence on behalf of potential purchasers of stock in your bonanza.
If you are a man, you may be tempted to marry a member of the Sisterhood, as doing so will indeed provide you with links to a whole web of valuable connections. But don’t do it—the power within the marriage will be too unequal. Marrying a member of the Sisterhood is putting yourself into the same position that husbands were in during the last days of marriage on Earth, when their wives could dispossess them simply by calling 9 on their telephones (shortened from 911, to make the process quicker). She may set you up to score some easy money, but ask yourself this question: Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog?
The kind of person you want for a mate is a man or woman like yourself, someone of real character, a rugged individual, willing to stand on his or her own two feet and make it through honest hard work, courage, and skill. You came to Mars because you are such a person; others have done the same, so they are here to be found. But the best place to find them is not in the bureaucracy or the spaceport syndicates but among those willing to take on the challenge of the new frontier at its front—among the prospectors and miners and daring peddlers of the outback.
So one obvious way to meet your soul mate is just to sign on with a prospecting team and get to know the other people at your camp. This procedure has the great advantage that you really will get to know them, and get to see their characters and business acumen tested in action. As a way of choosing a true comrade for your lifelong partner, this can’t be beat.
Unfortunately, however, a typical prospecting camp might only have a dozen people, and so the number of available eligible candidates to choose from in yours could well be limited, or nonexistent. So the place you are most likely to find the prospector boy or peddler girl of your dreams is not among those working your own small camp but at the grand jamborees where the outback people come together for a rousing good time with outdoor rover races and indome dances that show one and all that we Martians really know how to have fun.
You can meet your soul mate on Mars, even while working. Just stay alert. (List of Illustrations 15.2)
Very well. So let’s say you are at one of these events, or are merely standing in line at a film revival in New Plymouth, and you see someone who strikes your fancy. How can you initiate a conversation? There is no universal rule, of course, but here are some standard openers that have stood the test of time:
• Hold still! I think the oxygen line on your suit is loose! Let me tighten it for you.
• Wait a minute. You better get that rover checked before you take it out. So, do you need a ride somewhere? I’ll drive you in mine.
• You look like the nurse who debriefed me when I had my debarkation medical inspection. No? Well, it’s not too late …
• Cold today, isn’t it?
• New in town? Need a hab for the night?
• Hi, I’m looking for a prospecting partner too. But don’t you think we ought to get to know each other first?
• Did you hear they are expecting an aurora tonight? The best viewing will be a hundred kilometers to the north, but I’ve got a pressurized rover that can get us there.
• Have you heard about the new two-person-model cocoon bag they are selling at S&R? It’s really something. I just got one. Want to see it?
• Hi. I’m looking for a lost baby goat. I think it ran into your hab. Can we go look for it?
• Are you really as beautiful as I imagine you are under that suit?
• Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be in movies on Earth?
• Hi. Do you need a partner to practice cocoon emergency procedures?
• Hi, do you need a sponge-bath partner?
• So, the word is we need to conserve on nighttime heating power. Have you thought about how you could help?
• Have you ever had tilapia for breakfast?
• Hi, do you need a place to go to get out of your suit for a while?
• Want to see my rock collection?
• Do you need a physical exam? I do them for free.
• Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be a skinsuit model?
• I heard that they got a new case of banned films off the last ship from Earth. Do you know the show schedule?
• It’s kind of noisy here, don’t you think? I have some homemade hooch and some new recordings at my hab. Why don’t we go there and talk?
• Do you like mushrooms?
• You certainly are lively on the dance floor. How are you at home?
• Hi, I’m new in town. Can you give me directions to your hab?
• Don’t tell me you are from the old U.S. of A. Really? So am I.
• Is that a Russian accent? You must like poetry.
• Excuse me, but are you paramagnetic?
• Wait a second. I think there is something on your faceplate.
• I have a fantastic book for you to read, but I don’t dare let it out of my hab.
• Where did you get that great pressurized rover? Care to take it on an overnight trip to check out some possible alien artifacts?
• Is the claim office near here? I’m new, and I’ve gotten all turned around …
• I know you from somewhere.… Did you immigrate from Earth?
• Did I get on the wrong ship? I thought I was going to Mars, but this must be heaven.
• Hi. I’m looking for a guy to help out on my salvage team, but I need to test your muscles first.
• Wow! Have you seen what a beautiful job they have done on the dome garden?
• Do you have a wrench? Are you good with it?
• What in the world is that you are drinking? Did you make the catalyst to synthesize it yourself? Could we go test it in my still?
People like to have fun. So, if you find yourself courting a prospect whose net worth places him or her significantly beyond your just deserts, you can sometimes improve your apparent marriage value enough to seal the deal regardless by showing that you know how to have a really good time. Thus the importance of knowing the best places on Mars to go to have fun can hardly be overstated.
Within the settlements, the liveliest public place for merry mingling is the dance hall. Mars is free of two-thirds of the gravity field that burdens Earth, and so the superior levity of our environment has brought dancing into a whole “new world” of possibilities. Dances like the jitterbug, which went out of style on Earth when men became too weak to lift women readily, are especially popular, as both partners toss each other about with frenetic gaiety, and perform wonderful tricks together in the air. But the waltz can become something even more extraordinary in one-third gravity (provided you have the right partner), as those moments of special intimacy that can occur during a closely held gliding flight are simply not to be missed (especially if you show some initiative, and follow up appropriately afterwards.)
For lighter amusement, there is the large full-Earth-atmosphere dome that the Mars Authority maintains for its senior personnel just outside of New Plymouth. If you sneak into this place with your honey, the thick air there will allow the two of you to strap wings on your arms and soar like birds in Mars’s one-third gravity. The fact that this upsets the bureaucrats in residence there to no end only adds to the fun. You need to watch out for the flocks of airborne chickens, however, which have multiplied out of control. If your date is a neat freak, you would be wise to keep your flight altitude well above that generally frequented by the hens. Otherwise, though, engaging your aerial skills to herd the flocks over suitable ground targets can be great sport, whether done competitively or as a team effort.
If you can afford an excursion in a ballistic hopper, the place to go is Olympus Mons. This extinct volcano is 27 km high, making it three times as tall as Mount Everest on Earth. Take the hopper to the summit, and then strap roller skis onto your boots for a trip down that the two of you will never forget.
For a good time, take your date flying in the full-Earth-atmosphere Mars Authority headquarters dome. Note: Be sure to stay above the chickens. (List of Illustrations 15.3)
Another enjoyable hopper excursion destination is the north polar cap, which is covered with water ice. They have sleds at the base there, which they tie to tethered balloons. These capture the high-speed winds aloft, which then whip the sled along at speeds of over 100 km/h. Trust me, it’s quite a ride.
Finally, for those who prefer to save their romantic adrenaline for more intimate moments, there is nothing like the dirigible tour of the Valles Marineris. This canyon is 5 km deep and 3,000 km long, and the towering majesty of the incredible cliffs that parade by you as your airship cruises slowly down the slot inevitably creates a mood that, if you can afford a good stateroom, is simply not to be missed.
These out of town excursions are expensive, but the object of your desire will certainly be impressed. Think of them as business investments. If s/he is worth it, s/he is worth it. If not, see if you can get your date to pay. After all, there is no telling who else you might meet while out traveling.
Once you get married and have children, it is of critical importance that you do everything you can to provide them with the best possible education. The identity of the optimal school in your area will generally be well known, but if you have any doubt, it can be readily determined by obtaining full-disclosure data on the income distribution of the parents of the attending pupils. By enrolling your children in a school populated principally by the scions of wealthy families, you will maximize the number of valuable business connections that both you and your children can extract from their educational experience, and vastly improve their marriage prospects as well. The benefits of such preparation for success in life can hardly be overstated.
Because the value of such a high-quality education is so clear, Martians have taken definitive steps to create institutions that can assure its delivery. One technique is to form an academy that charges tuition beyond the reach of all but the well-to-do. This definitely does the job, but sending your kid to such a school is a real gamble, since the large tuition expenditure has no resale value. For this reason, a more popular plan is to join a community that only issues permits for first-class, brand-new habs with three or more decks. The community then can set up a school with virtually no tuition charge at all, but still keep the poor out simply by maintaining a residency requirement for admission. It is true that you will generally have to lay out a bundle to buy your way into such a settlement, but you get to live in swank quarters for the duration, and when your kids are done with school, you can sell out and recoup your entire cash investment, or possibly more, should local property appreciate. Thus, using such a strategy eliminates virtually all the risk otherwise associated with a high-priced education.
If you can’t afford either an elite academy or a move into a wealthy settlement, your best alternative is just to keep your children at home and educate them yourself. Take them out with you prospecting, building, or exploring; teach them how to fix machines, grow plants, heal animals, analyze mineral samples, or plan field expeditions. It’s true they won’t make any good social connections with rich kids this way, but at least they’ll avoid getting mixed up with poor ones, and, as partial compensation for losing the benefits that come from good schooling, they might actually learn something useful.
If your child is well-behaved, home schooling is a good low-budget option. (List of Illustrations 15.4)
Once you become wealthy, famous, and well-settled with an attractive, socially and financially useful mate, situated in a good community, with your fine brood of children properly directed on the road to success, the time may come when you might consider enhancing your social position further through the acquisition of elective office.
The ongoing development of political institutions on Mars is a complex subject, of which I will have more to say in the next chapter. Suffice it at this point to say that, while our governmental structure is still very much a work in progress, there are already quite a few public offices open and available for the taking by anyone with sufficient time, connections, and resources to muster the necessary votes. Provided you choose wisely, you can do very well by taking appropriate advantage of these opportunities.
Public powers break down into two types: those that punish and those that reward. The great Greek philosopher Plato has one of the characters in his celebrated dialogue The Republic say somewhere that the happiest of men is he who has unlimited power to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and this may well be true. However, in our modern systems of divided governmental power, no one person can ever hope to attain this blissful state, and so, should you enter politics, you will need to choose which of these noble professions will be your specialty.
Choosing a punishment office, such as that of a prosecutor, can be very gratifying, as you get to destroy people whom you hate. It can also serve as a tremendous source of self-esteem, by allowing you to engage in a crusade on behalf of your favorite abstract principle, crushing those reprobates who dare to demean its importance—and by implication yours—in the process. This is all great fun. Yet one must question the priorities of those who choose such a course for their lives. For while it is true that you can sometimes accomplish some real substantial good by engaging in such activities (for example by putting a difficult competitor out of business), sooner or later the number of enemies you create by such antics will become so great that your downfall will be certain. Think of Shakespeare’s Richard III: a high and mighty terror one day, offering his kingdom for a horse the next, and then, to cap it all, slandered as a hunchback the day after that. You don’t want that to happen to you. Thus, as tempting as they might be, punishment offices should generally be shunned.
Reward offices, however, are another matter entirely. If you can install yourself in an office where your role is dishing out wealth to appropriate recipients (which you can do with a clear conscience, because the money involved is not your own), you can make innumerable friends of the most useful sort, without incurring the overhead of an excessive revenge threat. It’s true that you will still displease some by rewarding others, but the animosity of such disappointed types will generally not be so great that they will actually devote themselves to your destruction. This is especially true, not merely because of the modest nature of their injury, but because they will know that, as a caring dispenser of goodness, you have it in your power to utterly squash them simply by showing your generosity to a sufficiently grateful prosecutor. Thus it is much better in every way to be one who uses his power to show love to his fellow man rather than hate.
Now the Mars Authority has funds to spread around, of course, but the freedom of those with budgetary authority to spend them in truly productive ways is painfully constrained by various levels of bureaucratic oversight. Furthermore, such offices are not open to election, and regardless, as a person with initiative, character, and a clear idea of where the real money is to be made, you don’t want to work for the MA, anyway.
The Martian colonies are beginning to create their own representative institutions to manage necessary community functions. These tend to be rather stingy with their money, however, since it comes from the settlers themselves, and some of these guys seem to have nothing better to do with their time than watch the public till and criticize how it is spent. So there is really no point in running for such public offices as they offer.
So, if you want to accomplish anything worthwhile by venturing into electoral activity, you need to target offices that both possess sufficient resources and offer adequate free scope for your talent to make good use of them. Fortunately, there are a growing number of such opportunities, with the best so far to be found among the important public-private partnerships such as the Interregional Highway Commission (IHC).
Mars today possesses few roads, and no highways. Yet it is obvious that in the future, a fully developed highway system will be necessary to promote the continued growth of our planet’s economy. Accordingly, a number of Mars’s leading citizens have acted to meet this need in a timely fashion by setting up the IHC. Richly funded as it is through bonds floated among Earthside investors who have no need to know how their money is being spent, the IHC provides its elected board members with innumerable opportunities to do good things for Martians of all walks of life—but especially the truly deserving—all over the planet.
Indeed, the IHC program has proven so successful that we are now moving to set up sister organizations to deal with our pressing needs for bridges and railways. The Martian terrain is riddled with canyons, and given the fact that there will someday be roads and highways leading to them, there is no reason why we should not act immediately to put bridges across them as well. Indeed, since the roads will inevitably go to where the bridges are, those who have the wisdom to act preemptively and build the bridges in advance also will be able to secure the most valuable land rights needed by the highway ahead of time. (Look, I don’t care whether this pitch sounds believable to you; they’re believing it on the Lagos bond exchange, and that’s what counts.) The need for a railway system is even more clear, and given the very large amounts of capital that must and can be mobilized for railway construction, even more lucrative. Thus practically everyone on the planet is extremely excited about the birth of our new Interregional Railway Commission.
Mark my words: the New Plymouth–Tsandergrad transcontinental railway project is going to be one of the wonders of the solar system. All you need to do to be among those visionaries who get to decide how the program money is spent is line up enough votes to get yourself elected to the board of the IRC. And with so much loot available to pass around after you achieve office, mortgaging the required electoral support beforehand should not be a problem. Of course, as a relatively new immigrant, people might not know you well enough to trust that you will deliver on your promises, so you may have to settle for lesser offices first. But providing you show that you are honest and reward your followers adequately, your popularity will grow, and you are certain to rise from one office to the next, doing well by doing good.
Public service calls.