The Martians(96)

7  There have been fourteen amendments passed in the twenty m-years the constitution has been law. Most reconcile contradictions embedded in the constitution, or in the local/global or tolerance situations, or refine the terraforming laws to meet current conditions.

8  Passed October 11, m-year 52, by 78% to 22%. Now operating successfully for twenty-one m-years.

At this point I believe the constitution can be judged a success. Those who argued at the time that a constitution was itself anachronistic and unnecessary did not understand its function: not to be a static “final law” wherein all social contradiction was resolved forever, but rather to be a template to structure argument, and a spur to justice. Despite the difficulties encountered since with enacting the vaguer or more radical sections of the document, I believe it has, like its great American and Swiss predecessors, succeeded in this sense.

The form of government mandated by this constitution can be called polyarchy; power is distributed out through a great number of institutions and individuals, in a web of checks and balances that reduces any possibilities of oppressive hierarchy. The goals of the constitution, listed in the preamble, come down to justice and peaceful dissent. Where those have been created, all else will follow.

Of course the constitution has somewhat receded into the background now, as huge masses of legislation and informal practice have accreted around it, regulating the day-to-day activities of most Martians. But that was its function to begin with and not to be lamented. The constitution was, to my mind, written to give people a sense that their management of their affairs was in no way “natural” or written in stone; laws and governments have always been artificial inventions, practices, and habits. They can change, they have changed, they will change again. That being the case, there is no reason not to try to change them for the better. And that is what we did. What the result will be in the long run no one can say. But I think it has been a good beginning.





Jackie on Zo

It didn't seem that bad to me but I had an epidural so what do I know. It was like an extremely arduous athletic effort that I couldn't choose not to do. I've seen people's scornful looks when I mention the epidural, but I say we're Terran animals and if we're going to give birth on another planet we deserve a little medical intervention. To insist on a natural childbirth on Mars is a kind of machismo I'm not interested in.

She was hard from the start. She was pulled out of me and put on my chest and I saw this little red face looking me right in the eye and yelling in protest. She was pissed off, you could read that on her face just as clear as on anyone older than her. I doubt not that we're conscious in the womb, for at least the last part of the confinement, lost in thought without language, like music or meditation. And so we come out with our character already in place, intact and complete. Nothing afterward changes it. And in fact she was pissed off like that for years to come.

She sucked voraciously, cried inconsolably, slept fitfully, shrieked in her sleep as if fully awake—then woke up terrified by her own noise and cried some more. I often wondered what she dreamed about to scare her so. For thousands of years they've called it colic and no one knows what it is. Some say it's the slow adjustment of the digestive system to the barrage of new chemicals. From the writhing of her torso I judge there is some truth to that. But I also think she was still pissed off about being ejected from the womb. Rage at the unfair loss of that narcissistic oceanic bliss. She remembered the womb. Even later when she forgot she remembered, and did everything she could to get back to that place. That's Zo's whole story really.

The colic drove me crazy. I couldn't comfort her and couldn't get her to stop crying. Nothing worked, and believe me I tried everything I could think of, because it exasperated me no end. Sometimes she cried ten hours straight. That's a long time when a baby's crying. The only thing that worked even a little was to hold her in my hands, one under her butt and one behind her head and neck, and raise her up and down rapidly, as if she were in a swing. This boggled her into silence and she even seemed to like it, or at least be interested. In any case she would stop crying. But one time when I was doing it an Arab woman came up to me and put her hand out and said, “Please, you should not do that, you might hurt the baby.”

“I've got her head supported,” I told her, and showed her.

“Still, their necks are so weak.” She was nervous, even scared, but persisting.

“She likes it. I know what I'm doing.”

But I never did it again. And I thought later about the kind of courage it takes to remonstrate with a stranger about his or her parenting.