THE MARTIAN WĒTĀ

Hemideina maori

In winter, the mountain stone wētā crawls into crevices, into cracks in the stone, and it squats there waiting. It is a creature of summer days and winter strengths, of cryogenic hibernation. When the world freezes around it, becoming a stretch of snow and ice and darkness, the stone wētā freezes solid in its bolthole. Over eighty percent of the water in its body turns to ice. The wētā is climate in a single body. It is a continent broken off, geology made flesh.

When the weather warms, the wētā thaws and resumes its life amidst the stone monuments of the Rock and Pillar range.

#

The Stone Wētā found it harder than she expected to get used to red instead of green, to be so constantly within walls, with a roof hanging over. Sometimes, with the horizon before her, she’d felt more claustrophobic than she had on her colony ship – but that had been a marvel of reduced space, a time of hibernation while she waited for a planet that would take the place of the old.

A data drive still hung between her breasts, but it was there more for symbolism at this point than anything else. All the data she’d brought with her was publicly accessible. “Not that it’s much use here,” she said, on a planet with an environment so different to the one they’d left that cross-over was minimal. But the climate data was part of a shared heritage that none of the settlers were willing to forego.

The Stone Wētā was not a wilful optimist, and most of her remaining optimism had drained away when news of the space station’s destruction arrived. They weren’t cut off entirely – information still came through – but the chance of future arrivals had been materially set back. But it was symbolism again, the feeling of an umbilicus broken off, and if there had once been any scientists on Mars who had motivation for destroying data the new distance certainly gave them less incentive to expose themselves.

The Stone Wētā had come to believe that it was easier to be a sleeper agent in winter.

#

Selaginella lepidophylla

A desert dweller, the resurrection plant is adapted to dehydration, to the long dry seasons of its arid environment. When parched for short periods, its outer stems curl into circles, but as the waterless days endure the resurrection plant hunches further down, its inner stems compressing into spirals and minimising surface area. Tucked in, the resurrection plant survives almost complete desiccation. Until the rains come it takes on the appearance of a dead thing, but beneath the surface there is revival waiting.

#

When the time came to let her interns go, Resurrection took them out into the desert for the final time and opened a bottle of wine to congratulate them. It was a habit of hers to make the final field trip a celebration, something to send her students off into their new lives and make sure they knew she was grateful for the work they’d done.

“It’s not really a celebration though, is it?” said Teresa.

“You’ve done good work,” said Resurrection. “You’ve learned all sorts of new skills. You should be proud.”

“I’d be prouder if we got a different result,” was the reply. Resurrection had set the pair of them an analysis of change over time, with their own results the final data set. She’d done it for every group she’d had ever since she started working in the protected area.

There was no mistaking the outcome, or the ecological trend. She hadn’t expected there to be. The desert of Resurrection’s childhood was different in her memory than the desert she saw today. Change in species richness and vegetation cover didn’t alter that, and no number of pretty demonstrations with water bottles could distract from what was happening to what was above ground – or what was below it.

“It’s not for you to decide the result in advance,” she reminded them. “You are scientists. What matters is the evidence. You follow where it takes you and don’t falter in it.”

Beside her, Verónica drained her wine and said nothing. Resurrection worried for the girl – she’d found evidence of more than science in the desert, and neither of them knew where following it would take her. Resurrection almost wanted to warn her off, but it was no longer enough to train scientists to focus on data alone instead of context. That blindness had cost them all, and dearly.

She had her own glass. Didn’t drink more than a sip because she was driving, and that sip was for the toast she made them when she opened the bottle. The rest she poured on the ground when they left, and that ground was empty.

#

The Stone Wētā never copied data now. It would have indicated distrust, and even if she wasn’t fully trusting it would have been unwise to bring that distrust to light, an obstacle to the cohesion of community they all needed to survive.

It went against the grain – for so long she’d gone against all her training, kept secrets and pretended to be what she wasn’t, but the sight of the wētā draped over her flesh with its inked and spindly legs, and the comforting weight of breasts, no longer new but a normal part of the body she’d always wanted, reminded her that pretending had never gone well for her before.

She’d never been able to pretend her way into masculinity, never been able to pretend that what was happening to the data of her colleagues was a minor thing.

So she told them, all of them, who she was. She’d never made a secret of it on the voyage, and had spoken plainly to the few who’d guessed and asked, but she hadn’t advertised it. Then the station orbiting Earth blew up, taking with it a woman who’d helped her on the way, and the Stone Wētā had called a meeting.

“This is what I am,” she said. “This is what I’ve done. This is what I’ve brought.”

They were all scientists together, and she couldn’t afford to treat them as less.

#

Scolymastra joubini

The glass sponge crouches on sea beds beneath the Antarctic ice. The silica skeleton sways in the dark water, chilled by the currents of a continent. It is the oldest organism on the planet; for 15,000 years, perhaps, the glass sponge has endured a long night, its growth a slow and silent thing. But the ice shelves collapsing above have brought light and plankton in levels the glass sponge is not accustomed to. It grows wildly, branching out quickly, while destruction takes place above it.

#

The Glass Sponge had learned habit from destruction. Learned, too, that her own reflection in ice was a terrible thing.

“Am I a complete coward?” she asked. “I’ve gone on so long, in the dark, expecting it all to be the same.” And then she’d let a friend be taken in her place, the secrecy and necessity of her under-life become a priority above all others, and the destruction caused by that choice had brought her behaviour into light, given her endless opportunity to reassess her actions. “I lie awake at night and wonder what I should have done differently,” she said, all her certainty melting like the ice she’d spent so much of her life on.

“The bargains I have made,” she said. The friendships gone, the loss of respect – from her peers and from herself.

“The bargains we made,” said Dave. “At least your motive was good.” The protection of climate, and of science, compared to the protection of adultery. He loved his wife, the Glass Sponge knew, but what marriage wouldn’t crumble under the weight of such a secret?

She couldn’t think of her own naiveté without cringing. All the idealism she’d had, all the actions she’d debated. The ability of her own government to resist, the comparison with the national history of nuclear activism. It had all been so optimistic.

She didn’t even know where her friend had gone. Scott Base was New Zealand jurisdiction, but just after landing in Christchurch Lexi had disappeared from a holding cell, and the Glass Sponge didn’t believe it was coincidence.

“She could have escaped,” she said, aware as she said it that it was a lame explanation. Either their own government was in on it, or Lexi had disappeared because they weren’t.

“I can’t live like this anymore,” she said, her dreams full of absence and rainbow boats, of melting ice caps and mushroom clouds and sinking into deep water. “I want to believe that we can be more than this.”

The day she got off the ice she flew to Wellington, and the next morning the Glass Sponge dressed with grim care, as if for exposure. She marched herself past the Parliament buildings and into Environment House, home to the Members of Parliament responsible for the environment and for climate change. She had with her the most responsible journalist she knew. “I need to speak to the Ministers,” she said.

#

Felis margarita

The sand cat protects itself from sunlight, and from the lack of it. The desert is a place of extreme temperatures and the bottom of the sand cat’s feet, the spaces between its toes, are thick with fur for when the sand is scalding in the noon sun. This fur blurs its footsteps, and the tracks of the sand cat through the dunes are hard to follow.

The sand cat, relative to its size, bites harder than any other feline.

#

The advantage to having a local network as well as an international one was breadth and immediacy. The Sand Cat had been preparing dinner when she realised she was out of onions, and was making a quick run to market when her neighbour caught up with her.

“Two strange men drove up to your house,” she said. “They knocked on the door and went straight in.” She’d seen the Sand Cat set off minutes before, and knew her husband was working late at the hospital that month, and her uncle down in Bamako visiting relations. “They left their car outside the door.” She shook her head. “Something’s not right. I’d say come home with me, but …” But she was next door, and easy to notice. “Do you have somewhere to go?” she said. “Can I call anyone for you?”

“It’s probably just a couple of friends of my husband,” said the Sand Cat, knowing full well that it wasn’t. “I’ll give him a call. Thank you for letting me know,” she said. “But you should go home now. You haven’t seen me, understand?”

She called her husband as the other woman hurried off. “I’m just getting some meat for dinner,” she said, naming a butcher’s shop that was twenty minutes out of her way, and in the other direction. “Would you prefer chicken or goat?” It was a question they’d thought up together, perfectly innocuous, perfectly unnoticeable.

“Goat, please,” he said. “And will you make that special bread you do, you know, your mother’s recipe?”

(I understand, he didn’t say. I’m not alone. Be careful.)

“Of course I will,” she said, and it was an effort to make her voice as cheerful as it should have been. “I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

The Sand Cat dropped her mobile into the nearest rubbish bin, careful to keep her head down and to avoid attention as she walked to the city outskirts, leaving her life behind and going into the desert. The sun was going down, and darkness covered her.

#

Geckolepis megalepis

The fish-scale gecko is an escape artist of particular and gruesome aspect. Its sister-species amputate themselves in the face of predation, but the fish-scale gecko holds its escape in its skin instead of its tail. That skin is large-plated and scaly, and its attachment to the flesh beneath is temporary. When the fish-scale gecko is grabbed or threatened, it sheds its skin and skitters, bald and pulsing, into the trees.

#

The woman gave the Fish-scale Gecko an extra blanket, and a cup of tea to take away the chill. She was still shaking – as well as she knew the forest, it was a different place at night and she hadn’t wanted to risk much light. It was lucky the moon was out, lucky she knew ropes and climbing enough to do it blindfolded, if necessary.

She’d kept a pack hidden in a distant canopy, stuffed with false papers and basic supplies. Something she’d arranged after the first data drop, when the possible need for escape had been so strongly on her mind, and the identification with arboreal creatures an ever-present one. She took the data box too, rescued it from a second site, the skin scraped from her body as she clambered up through branches.

Her host she knew less well than she’d have liked. A nurse from one of the outlying villages, a widow who’d shown interest at village meetings, when the Fish-scale Gecko had come to give talks on the economic benefits of eco-tourism. There was a first aid kit in her pack but she’d fallen into karst, trying to skirt enough for secrecy, and the laceration down one leg required stitches.

“Please don’t say anything,” she begged. “I can’t go to a hospital.”

“It’s not my business to give my patients away,” said the nurse. She worked quickly, careful and clean, doing what she could to hold the skin together. “I ask no questions. But there is someone I know who works with women sometimes, if their husbands or family are unkind. She keeps them secret and helps them move.”

It was craven, perhaps, taking on the character of a battered woman. But it was camouflage as well, and the Fish-scale Gecko had worked and lied and bled for the data she had with her and she could not endanger it now.

“Thank you,” she said, swallowing her pride. “I need the help.”

#

“I miss him.”

The Stone Wētā waited, knowing there was nothing to be said to make it better. The colonists had left a lot behind, friends and family the most and least of it, but they’d left, most of them, confidently. Believing the people they’d left were safe and happy.

They’d been interested in space travel, all of them. Wouldn’t have come to a new planet if they weren’t, and wouldn’t have then made friends with others who shared that interest, who’d become astronauts instead of colonists. Who’d died with their own colleagues, orbiting the planet they’d never entirely chosen to leave.

“And you think it’s because of this. Because of this climate data.”

“Yes,” said the Stone Wētā. She’d had this same conversation a number of times – with people who’d known the dead astronauts well, from people who’d only had passing conversations with them on their way up but were disturbed nevertheless. From people, even, who’d never met any of them, but who had scientist friends left on Earth.

“I see.” The clenched jaw, the clenched fists. The Stone Wētā had seen these things before. “This is not the news I ever wanted,” she heard.

It hurt her that none of them truly seemed surprised. What did we give up when we came here, she thought. What did I give up?

#

Asterias amurensis

The Japanese sea star owes its success to adaptability and reproductive strategy. It owes that success, as well, to the interconnection of the world. Its larvae, spread through ballast waters, are shipped to other oceans and other countries. It is one of the most invasive species alive, and there is hungry persistence in each of its five arms.

#

They caught her at port, waiting for an international ferry. “I suppose even the stupidest, most irresponsible merchant seaman checks his bilge water occasionally,” she said. There was no point trying to deny anything, no point to calling for legal assistance. They had her handbag, were rooting through it with all the elegance of oafs, and to tell them she was coming back from a conference was a limited truth at best.

The drives at least were anonymous. Some she’d been able to disperse, and these were the minority – new research being passed on to her so that she could make copies again and distribute them. Some of that research had already been published, in reduced form, and a simple comparison would be enough to blow her identity. Since the destruction of the space station, the Japanese Sea Star had begun to wonder if her level of relative fame would be any protection after all. Clearly a delusion, she thought, with a brief grim amusement. A confusion of colour and clarity.

Colour, in the natural world, gained attention and respect. It also signified toxin. A difficult balancing act, and one she’d failed to judge sufficiently.

“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” said her interrogator. “Really, I am. We would have preferred to work with you. There’s no profit to us in doing it the hard way – and none to you either.”

“We both have very different understandings of the word profit,” said the Japanese Sea Star. She smiled at him, polite and humourless. “I suspect mine is the less pedestrian.”

Her interrogator smiled back, equally humourless. His dimples were plastic things, entirely artificial. “You think you’re so smart,” he said. “So above the rest of us. Look where you’re sitting, lady. What has smart got you?”

“Self-respect,” said the Japanese Sea Star.

#

“We’ve held ourselves apart too long.”

The Stone Wētā, in another life, had thought it was her influence that took a previously untried individual and exposed her to the possibilities of a new life. But the Martian colony was not an individual. It was a community – one that argued and fought and tested to breaking – and it was beyond her small influence.

“We’re scientists. For too long we’ve told ourselves that that’s all we are. It’s not enough anymore. We can’t stand by and do nothing. We can’t recognise what’s happening and stay silent. People will say it’s easy for us to speak up now, when there’s nothing to lose. That is a lie.”

The Stone Wētā listened with the rest, and nodded. There was a certain freedom of speech on the colony, one that would no doubt have its own future challenges. But outsiders had little influence here, and while the destruction of the space station might have caused colony collapse, they set themselves tight restrictions and aimed for sustainability. There was no guarantee, with what they were about to do, that any help would come from Earth again.

“We might be starved, we might be damaged. We might die. Perhaps that’s the price of speech. Perhaps it’s what we’ve earned by staying silent. But it’s not going to stop us doing better.”

The colony had solar panels, the ability to transmit information to Earth. Any information, as much as they wanted. As long as they wanted.

The Stone Wētā felt a tap on her shoulder. It was the head of the botanical department, who was looking to establish lichens like Buellia over the surface of Mars, an early stage of terraforming.

“Not that I object,” he said, “but does it strike you at all as hypocritical that we’re protesting the deliberate change of climate on one planet at the same time as we’re trying to change the climate on this one?”

“Believe me, mate,” said the Stone Wētā, laughing, “it really bloody does.”

#

Dendrocnide moroides

The gympie gympie covers itself with stinging hairs and neurotoxin. It is one of the most poisonous plants in the world, and one of the most painful. A human who brushes up against a gympie gympie will experience agony for up to two years: a persistent reminder of trespass.

It flourishes best after disturbance, when the ground is overturned and in full sunlight.

#

When the Gympie Gympie was a little girl she’d heard the stories from her grandmother, who had heard them from her grandmother, about a long slow war that cut all of her people down around her.

She wanted to say, grown now and with her grandmother dead, with all her grandmothers dead, that she never expected such a war to happen again in her lifetime. Wanted to say it, but never could. It hadn’t escaped her that disturbance had become ubiquitous, and that ubiquity was nonetheless focused on communities that didn’t have the weapons for fighting back, or not the weapons that had come to count.

The Gympie Gympie had seen what had happened to her own lands. Seen what had happened to the lands of other peoples in other countries, seen where the burden of managing the change had fallen. The patterns were all too familiar.

She’d been expecting war for quite some time, and when the first transmissions from Mars began to arrive on Earth, she realised that, for all its opening skirmishes, the war for climate had finally started.

#

Pinus longaeva

The bristlecone pine of the American south-west grows slowly, perhaps increasing its diameter as little as several centimetres per century, but it does grow. The tree is so accustomed to cold and aridity that it can colonise mountain tops where few other trees can grow, and it is so long-lived in these environments that a bristlecone pine planted today might still be alive when humans have colonised other star systems.

#

“Persistence,” said the Bristlecone Pine, “is what differentiates adaptation.” It was an archaeological class that she spoke to, not students who were typically and primarily concerned with climate change and ecology, but she trusted that they could draw the parallels.

“This isn’t an extraordinary phenomenon,” she said. “It’s plain common sense. If a new type of pot is more useful than the old – maybe it holds more, or is waterproof, or is easier to make – then it will become increasingly more present in the record than a pot that’s less useful, or falls to pieces not long after use.” She pointed to a boy in the first row, who’d made a particularly terrible attempt at clay-work in a recent workshop on ancient technique. “I know you know what I’m talking about.

“The same is true,” she continued, “of information. Useful information gets passed on – in records, in teaching. In stories. It’s how we know which snakes to avoid, what plants to eat. The more widespread that useful information is, the greater the opportunity it has to survive. You’ll note that none of you are currently suffering from smallpox, due to the spread of information about vaccines. But sometimes, and we see this, for example, in some rituals or customs, information is restricted to certain groups. Can anyone tell me why, or give an example?”

She knew damn well what the first example offered would be.

“An example that’s related to archaeology, and not the Martian situation?” About half the hands went down, which was disappointing, but Bristlecone Pine couldn’t risk the appearance of bias. She did not want to end up like her predecessor, and if data that couldn’t be shared was always at risk, then there was data, too, that was dangerous in itself.

#

The Fish-eating Spider stared up into the dark. She missed the waters of her own country, but she could no longer say what country it was that held those waters – the old home, or the new. It was harder to miss the earth of either; the way it smelled when she turned it over for burial. That was homesickness turned into plain sickness, the guilt of regret and necessity both.

Those countries, both of them, were behind her now, here in this place where even the stars were different, the Southern Cross nowhere in sight. She knocked again, and when the door opened she saw a girl her own age, with familiar eyes.

I’m not a soldier, she thought. I don’t know what I am. But if I have to fight, I’ll do it my way.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I think I knew your father.”

Resistance might be preservation, and it might be survival, but if it were honest it was also price, and consequence.