Blue Mars (33 page)

PART
SEVEN

              
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---Making
Things Work

              
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An ice-choked sea now covered much of the north. Vastitas Borealis
had lain a kilometer or two below the datum, in some places three; now with sea
level stabilizing at the minus-one contour, most of it was underwater. If an
ocean of similar shape had existed on Earth, it would have been a bigger Arctic
Ocean, covering most of Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Scandinavia, and
then making two deeper incursions farther south, narrow seas that extended all
the way to the equator; on Earth these would have made for a narrow North
Atlantic, and a North Pacific occupied in its center by a big squarish island.

This Oceanus Borealis was dotted by several large icy islands, and
a long low peninsula that broke its circumnavigation of the globe, connecting
the mainland north ofSyrtis with the tail of a polar island. The north pole was
actually on the ice ofOlympia Gulf, some kilometers offshore from this polar
island.

And that was it. On Mars there would be no equivalent of the South
Pacific or the South Atlantic, or the Indian Ocean, or the Antarctic Ocean. In
its south there was only desert, except for the Hellas Sea, a circular body of
water about the size of the Caribbean. So while ocean covered seventy percent
of the Earth, it covered about twenty-five percent of Mars.

In the year 2130, most of Oceanus Borealis was covered by ice.
There were large pods of liquid water under the surface, however, and in the
summer, melt lakes scattered on top of the surface; there were also many
polynyaps, leads and cracks. Because most of the water had been pumped or
otherwise driven out of the permafrost, it had deep groundwater’s purity,
meaning it was nearly distilled: the Borealis was a freshwater ocean. It was
expected to become salty fairly soon, however, as rivers ran through the very
salty regolith and carried their loads into the sea, then evaporated,
precipitated, and repeated the process—moving salts from the regolith into the
water until a balance was reached—a process which had the oceanographers
transfixed with interest, for the saltiness of Earth’s oceans, stable for many
millions of years, was not well understood.

The coastlines were wild. The polar island, formally nameless, was
called variously the polar peninsula, or the polar island, or the Seahorse, for
its shape on maps. In actuality its coastline was still overrun in many places
by the ice of the old polar cap, and everywhere it was blanketed by snow, blown
into patterns of giant sastrugi. This corrugated white surface extended out
over the sea for many kilometers, until underwater currents fractured it and
one came on a “coastline” of leads and pressure ridges and the chaotic edges of
big tabular bergs, as well as larger and larger stretches of open water.
Several large volcanic or meteoric islands rose up out of the shatter of this
ice coast, including a few pedestal craters, sticking up out of the whiteness
like great black tabular bergs.

The southern shores of the Borealis were much more exposed and
various. Where the ice lapped against the foot of the Great Escarpment there
were several mensae and colles regions that had become offshore archipelagoes,
and these, as well as the mainland coastline proper, sported many beetling sea
cliffs, bluffs, crater bays, fossa fjords, and long stretches of low smooth
strand. The water in the two big southern gulfs was extensively melted below
the surface, and, in the summers, on the surface as well. Chryse Gulf had
perhaps the most dramatic coastline of all: eight big outbreak channels
dropping into Chryse had partly filled with ice, and as it melted they were
becoming steep-sided fjords. At the southern end of the gulf four of these
fjords braided, weaving together several big cliff-walled islands to make the
most spectacular seascapes of all.

Over all this water great flocks of birds flew daily. Clouds
bloomed in the air and rushed off on the wind, dappling the white and red with
their shadows. Icebergs floated across the melted seas, and crashed against the
shore. Storms dropped off the Great Escarpment with terrifying force, dashing
hail and lightning onto the rock. There were now approximately forty thousand
kilometers of coastline on Mars. And in the rapid freeze and thaw of the days
and the seasons, under the brush of the constant wind every part of it was
coming alive.

When the congress ended
Nadia made plans to get off Pavonis Mons immediately. She was
sick of the bickering in the warehouse, of arguments, of politics; sick of
violence and the threat of violence; sick of revolution, sabotage, the
constitution, the elevator, Earth, and the threat of war. Earth and death, that
was Pavonis Mons—Peacock Mountain, with all the peacocks preening and strutting
and crying Me Me Me. It was the last place on Mars Nadia wanted to be.

She wanted to get off the mountain and breathe the open air. She
wanted to work on tangible things; she wanted to build, with her nine fingers
and her back and her mind, build anything and everything, not just structures,
although those would be wonderful of course, but also things like air or dirt, parts
of a construction project new to her, which was simply terraforming itself.
Ever since her first walk in the open air down at DuMartheray Crater, free of
everything but a little CO2 filter mask, Sax’s obsession had finally made sense
to her. She was ready to join him and the rest of them in that project, and
more than ever now, as the removal of the orbiting mirrors had kicked off a
long winter and threatened a full ice age. Build air, build dirt, move water,
introduce plants and animals: all that kind of work sounded fascinating to her
now. And of course the more conventional construction projects beckoned as
well.

When the new North Sea melted and its shoreline stabilized, there
would be harbor towns to be inlaid everywhere, scores of them no doubt, each
with jetties and seafronts, channels, wharves and docks, and the towns behind
them rising into the hills. At the higher altitudes there would be more tent
towns to be erected, and covered canyons. There was even talk of covering some
of the big calderas, and of running cable cars between the three prince
volcanoes, or bridging the narrows south of Elysium; there was talk of
inhabiting the polar island continent; there were new concepts in biohousing,
plans to grow homes and buildings directly out of engineered trees, as Hiroko
has used bamboo, but on a bigger scale. Yes, a builder ready to learn some of
the latest techniques had a thousand years of lovely projects ahead of her. It
was a dream come true.

Then a small group came to her and said they were exploring
possibilities for the first executive council of the new global government.

Nadia stared at them. She could see their import like a big
slow-moving trap, and she tried her best to run out of it before it snapped
shut. “There are lots of possibilities,” she said. “About ten times more good
people than council positions.”

Yes, they said, looking thoughtful. But we were wondering if you
had ever thought about it.

“No,” she said.

Art was grinning, and seeing that she began to get worried. “I
plan to build things,” she said firmly.

“You could do that too,” Art said. “The council is a part-time
job.”

“The hell it is.”

“No, really.”

It was true that the concept of citizen government was written
everywhere into the new constitution, from the global legislature to the courts
to the tents. People would presumably do a good deal of this work part-time.
Nadia was quite sure, however, that the executive council was not going to be
in that category. “Don’t executive council members have to be elected out of
the legislature?” she asked.

Elected by the legislature, they told her happily. Usually fellow
legislators would be elected, but not necessarily.

“Well there’s a mistake in the constitution for you!” Nadia said.
“Good thing that you caught it so soon. Restrict it to elected legislators and
you’ll cut your pool way down—” Way down—

“And still have lots of good people,” she backpedaled.

But they were persistent. They kept coming back, in different
combinations, and Nadia kept running toward that narrowing gap between the
teeth of the trap. In the end they begged. A whole little delegation of them.
This was the crucial time for the new government, they needed an executive
council trusted by all, it would be the one to get things started, etc. etc.
The senate had been elected, the duma had been drafted. Now the two houses were
electing the seven executive council members. People mentioned as candidates
included Mikhail, Zeyk, Peter, Marina, Etsu, Na-nao, Ariadne, Marion, Irishka,
Antar, Rashid, Jackie, Charlotte, the four ambassadors to Earth, and several
others Nadia had first met in the warehouse. “Lots of good people,” Nadia
reminded them. This was the polycephalous revolution.

But people were uneasy at the list, they told Nadia repeatedly.
They had become used to her providing a balanced center, both during the
congress and during the revolution, and before that at Dorsa Brevia, and for
that matter throughout the underground years, and right back to the beginning.
People wanted her on the council as a moderating influence, a calm head, a
neutral party, etc. etc.

“Get out,” she said, suddenly angry, though she did not know why.
They were concerned to see her anger, upset by it. “I’ll think about it,” she
said as she shooed them out, to keep them moving.

Eventually only Charlotte and Art were left, looking serious,
looking as if they had not conspired to bring all this about.

“They seem to want you on the executive council,” Art said.

“Oh shut up.”

“But they do. They want someone they can trust.”

“They want someone they’re not afraid of, you mean. They want an
old babushka who won’t try to do anything, so they can keep their opponents off
the council and pursue their own agendas.”

Art frowned; he had not considered this, he was too naive.

“You know a constitution is kind of like a blueprint,” Charlotte
said thoughtfully. “Getting a real working government out of it is the true act
of construction.”

“Out,” Nadia said.

But in the end she agreed to stand. They were relentless, there
were a surprisingly large number of them, and they would not give up. She
didn’t want to seem like a shirker. And so she let the trap close down on her
leg.

The legislatures met, the ballots were cast. Nadia was elected one
of the seven, along with Zeyk, Ariadne, Marion, Peter, Mikhail, and Jackie.
That same day Irishka was elected the first chief justice of the Global
Environmental Court, a real coup for her personally and the Reds generally;
this was part of the “grand gesture” Art had brokered at the congress’s end, to
gain the Reds’ support. About half the new justices were Reds of one shade or
another, making for a gesture just a bit too grand, in Nadia’s opinion.

Immediately after these elections another delegation came to her,
led this time by her fellow councillors. She had gotten the highest ballot
total in the two houses, they told her, and so the others wanted to elect her
president of the council.

“Oh no,” she said.

They nodded gravely. The president was just another member of the
council, they told her, one among equals. A ceremonial position only. This arm
of the government was modeled on Switzerland’s, and the Swiss didn’t usually
even know who their president was. And so on. Though of course they would need
her permission (Jackie’s eyes glittered slightly at this), her acceptance of the
post.

“Out,” she said.

After they had left Nadia sat slumped in her chair, feeling
stunned.

“You’re the only one on Mars that everyone trusts,” Art said
gently. He shrugged, as if to say he hadn’t been involved, which she knew was a
lie. “What can you do?” he said, rolling his eyes with a child’s exaggerated
theatricality. “Give it three years and then things’ll be on track, and you can
say you did your part and retire. Besides, the first president of Mars! How
could you resist?”

“Easy.”

Art waited. Nadia glared at him.

Finally he said, “But you’ll do it anyway, right?”

“You’ll help me?”

“Oh yes.” He put a hand on her clenched fist. “All you want. I
mean—I’m at your disposal.”

“Is that an official Praxis position?”

“Why yes, I’m sure it could be. Praxis adviser to the Martian
president? You bet.”

So possibly she could make him do it.

She heaved a big sigh. Tried to feel less tight in her stomach.
She could take the job, and then turn most of the work over to Art, and to
whatever staff they gave her. She wouldn’t be the first president to do that,
nor the last.

“Praxis adviser to the Martian president,” Art was announcing,
looking pleased.

“Oh shut up!” she said.

“Of course.”

He left her alone to get used to it, came back with a steaming pot
of kava and two little cups. He poured; she took one from him, and sipped the
bitter fluid.

He said, “Anyway I’m yours, Nadia. You know that.”

“Mm-hmm.”

She regarded him as he slurped his kava. He meant it more than
politically, she knew. He was fond of her. All that time working together,
living together, traveling together; sharing space. And she liked him. A bear
of a man, graceful on his feet, full of high spirits. Fond of kava, as was
obvious in his slurping, in his squinched face. He had carried the whole
congress, she felt, on the strength of those high spirits, spreading like an
epidemic—the feeling that there was nothing so fun as writing a
constitution—absurd! But it had worked. And during the congress they had become
a kind of couple. Yes, she had to admit it.

But she was now 159 years old. Another absurdity, but it was true.
And Art was, she wasn’t sure, somewhere in his seventies or eighties, although
he looked fifty, as they often did when they got the treatment early. “I’m old
enough to be your great-grandmother,” she said.

Art shrugged, embarrassed. He knew what she was talking about.
“I’m old enough to be that woman’s great-grandfather,” he said, pointing at a
tall native girl passing by their office door. “And she’s old enough to have
kids. So, you know. At some point it just doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe not to you.”

“Well, yeah. But that’s half of the opinions that count.”

Nadia said nothing.

“Look,” Art said, “we’re going to live a long time. At some point
the numbers have to stop mattering. I mean, I wasn’t with you in the first
years, but we’ve been together a long time now, and gone through a lot.”

“I know.” Nadia looked down at the table, remembering some of
those times. There was the stump of her long-lost finger. All that life was
gone. Now she was president of Mars. “Shit.”

Art slurped his kava, watched her sympathetically. He liked her,
she liked him. They were already a kind of couple. “You help me with this
damned council stuff!” she said, feeling bleak as all her technofantasies
slipped away.

“Oh I will.”

“And then, well. We’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” he said, and smiled.

So there she was, stuck on Pavonis Mons. The new government was
assembling up there, moving from the warehouses into Sheffield proper,
occupying the blocky polished stone-faced buildings abandoned by the metanats;
there was an argument of course over whether they were going to be compensated
for these buildings and the rest of their infrastructure, or whether it had all
been “globalized” or “co-opted” by independence and the new order. “Compensate
them,” Nadia growled at Charlotte, glowering. But it did not appear that the
presidency of Mars was the kind of presidency that caused people to jump at her
word.

In any case the government was moving in, Sheffield becoming, if
not the capital, then at least the temporary seat of the global government.
With Burroughs drowned and Sabishii burned, there was no other obvious place to
put it, and in truth it didn’t look to Nadia like any of the other tent towns
wanted to have it. People spoke of building a new capital city, but that would
take time, and meanwhile they had to meet somewhere. So around the piste to
Sheffield they retired, inside its tent, under its dark sky. In the shadow of
the elevator cable, rising from its eastern neighborhood straight and black,
like a flaw in reality.

Nadia found an apartment in the westernmost tent, behind the rim
park, up on the fourth floor where she had a fine view down into Pavonis’s
awesome caldera. Art took an apartment in the ground floor of the same
building, at the back; apparently the caldera gave him vertigo. But there he
was, and the Praxis office was in a nearby office building, a cube of polished
jasper as big as a city block, lined with chrome blue windows.

Fine. She was there. Time to take a deep breath and do the work
asked of her. It was like a bad dream in which the constitutional congress had
suddenly been extended for three years, three m-years.

She began with the intention of getting off the mountain
occasionally and joining some construction project or other. Of course she
would perform her duties on the council, but working on an increase in
greenhouse gas output, for instance, looked good, combining as it did technical
problems and the politics of conforming to the new environmental regulatory regime.
It would get her out into the back country, where a lot of the feedstocks for
the greenhouse gases were located. From there she could do her council business
over the wrist.