Free Finches of Mars by Brian W. Aldiss Page A

one woman asked.
    â€˜There are trillions of bifidobacteria—though I’ve never counted them—in the prettiest female gut. They keep us going, but where they will go themselves we can’t tell. Nor can they. I’m sure it’s just that the long voyage here has upset them.’
    If you include bacteria, more genetic information is stored in the gut, male or female, than in the human genome. The importance of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is another question discussed among worried females. This long molecular strand could well have been an instruction hastily scribbled down on a human cell by some demi-god or other (although there is no holy scripture which happens to have mentioned it), but the inscription seems to have worked fairly well and is copied and transmitted from generation to generation.
    Here again come those enchanting, enchaining questions. Supposing the DNA had been a little different? Why is it what it is?
    We assume it is essential for the continuity of life. Yet among all the debris flying about in space, we find traces of an amino acid known as glycine, scattering like a light shower of rain on the planets of the solar system.
    Glycine is a basic component of proteins without which our kinds of life could not exist.
    Supposing the glycine shower falls everywhere … then the distant galaxies might well be thronging with life. Perhaps the camp fires burn more brightly in Andromeda, individual existences are longer, calmer, intellects sharper. A slant on eugenics of which we are never likely to have confirmation.
    â€˜Message in last night. The Russos from Greenland have occupied Newfoundland.’
    â€˜Really? What on Earth for? Is it important?’
    â€˜I suppose it would be if you were a Newfoundlander.’
    The human brain has its limitations. A resolution of the great eugenic mystery may not be possible. Questions lie in wait for answers. The trap is baited. There was a hope that some approach to some answers might be found on the arid shores of the planet Mars.
    Meanwhile, humanity must mull over the discovery of our binary sun, with its orbit about the old sun of 1.5 light years. Many suns are binary; it is not understood why. Humanity has lived happily—or indeed miserably—for centuries without knowing it lived in a binary system. Do similar large revelations await?
    It was because the brain has its limitations that there was no one entirely in command of the West tower. Indecision triumphing, Noel—to use her compname—was officially known as Director and Advisor. The compoutat had ears in every chamber in the tower, as well as its range of shriekers and squealers. Such was the pressure on housing that Noel had her bunk moved into the compoutat room. She was frequently the one who heard the news first, which naturally gave her a stronger say in things.
    As it happened, Noel was an uncommunicative woman. She had grown up in a home for orphaned girls. She had always felt herself alone in an over-crowded world. While still immature, she allied herself with a man she had just met. She had not loved him, but was prepared to be an attentive partness. She found him violent and sexually overpowering—a brute who used his fists. She began working for Mangalian, who was gentle and liked to please women. She had won Mangalian’s attention, and under his influence had become dedicated to the UU project. She studied hard and finally passed all the requisite tests for Martian exile, escaping from her unpleasant alliance.
    On Mars she had the company of others, many of whom, like her, had suffered isolation in early youth, and in consequence had adapted to the chills of solitude. She was enthralled by Mars—or rather, more accurately, enthralled by the fact that she was living on this mysterious planet. Her guarded nature responded to the isolation of the Tharsis bulge.
    Currently, she had to cope with a spread of depression in the West tower,