Blue Mars (35 page)

So Art would bring in breakfasts, singing “All of Me” in a pretty
good voice, and with Satchmo’s basic insight that American song lyrics could
only be treated as silly jokes: “All of me, why not take all of me, Can’t you
see, I’m no good without you.” And call up some music, and sit with his back to
the window; and the mornings were fun.

But no matter how well the days began, the council was eating her
life. Nadia got more and more sick of it—the bickering, negotiating,
compromising, conciliating—the dealing with people, minute after minute. She
was beginning to hate it.

Art saw this, of course, and began to look worried. And one day
after work he brought over Ursula and Vlad. The four of them had dinner
together in her apartment, Art cooking. Nadia enjoyed her old friends’ company;
they were in town on business, but getting them over for dinner there had been
Art’s idea, and a good one. He was a sweet man, Nadia thought as she watched
him moving about the kitchen. Canny diplomat as guileless simpleton, or vice
versa. Like a benign Frank. Or a mix of Frank’s skill and Arkady’s happiness.
She laughed at herself, always thinking of people in terms of the First
Hundred—as if everyone was somehow a recombination of the traits of that
original family. It was a bad habit of hers.

Vlad and Art were talking about Ann. Sax had apparently called
Vlad from the shuttle rocket on its return to Mars, shaken by a conversation
with Ann. He was wondering if Vlad and Ursula would consider offering Ann the
same brain plasticity treatment that they had given him after his stroke.

“Ann would never do it,” Ursula said.

“I’m glad she won’t,” Vlad said. “That would be too much. Her
brain wasn’t injured. We don’t know what that treatment would do in a healthy
brain. And you should only undertake what you can understand, unless you are
desperate.”

“Maybe Ann is desperate,” Nadia said.

“No. Sax is desperate.” Vlad smiled briefly. “He wants a different
Ann before he gets back.”

Ursula said to him, “You didn’t want Sax to try that treatment
either.”

“It’s true. I wouldn’t have done it to myself. But Sax is a bold
man. An impulsive man.” Now Vlad looked at Nadia: “We should stick to things
like your finger, Nadia. Now that we can fix.”

Surprised, Nadia said, “What’s wrong with it?”

They laughed at her. “The one that’s missing!” Ursula said. “We
could grow it back, if you wanted.”

“Ka,” Nadia exclaimed. She sat back, looked at her thin left hand,
the stump of the missing little finger. “Well. I don’t need it, really.”

They laughed again. “You could have fooled us,” Ursula said.
“You’re always complaining about it when you’re working.”

“I am?”

They all nodded.

“It’ll help your swimming,” Ursula said.

“I don’t swim much anymore.”

“Maybe you stopped because of your hand.”

Nadia stared at it again. “Ka. I don’t know what to say. Are you
sure it will work?”

“It might grow into an entire other hand,” Art suggested. “Then
into another Nadia. You’ll be a Siamese twin.”

Nadia pushed him sideways in his chair. Ursula was shaking her
head. “No no. We’ve done it for some other amputees already, and a great number
of experimental animals. Hands, arms, legs. We learned it from frogs. Quite
wonderful, really. The cells differentiate just like the first time the finger
grew.”

“A very literal demonstration of emergence theory,” Vlad said with
a small smile. Nadia saw by that smile that he had been instrumental in
designing the procedure.

“It works?” she asked him directly.

“It works. We make what is in effect a new finger bud over your
stump. It’s a combination of embryonic stem cells with some cells from the base
of your other little finger. The combination functions as the equivalent of the
homeobox genes you had when you were a fetus. So you’ve got the developmental
determiners there to make the new stem cells differentiate properly. Then you
ultrasonically inject a weekly dose of fibroblast growth factor, plus a few
cells from the knuckle and the nail, at the appropriate times . . . and it
works.”

As he explained Nadia felt a little glow of interest spread
through her. A whole person. Art was watching her with his friendly curiosity.

“Well, sure,” she said at last. “Why not.”

So in the following week they took some biopsies from her
remaining little finger, and gave her some ultrasonic shots in the stump of the
missing finger, and in her arm, and gave her some pills; and that was it. After
that it was only a matter of weekly shots, and waiting.

Then she forgot about it, because Charlotte called with a problem;
Cairo was ignoring a GEC order concerning water pumping. “You’d better come check
it out in person. I think the Cairenes are testing the court, for a faction of
Free Mars that wants to challenge the global government.”

“Jackie?” Nadia said.

“I think so.”

Cairo stood on its plateau edge
, overlooking the northwestern-most U-valley of Noctis
Labyrinthus. Nadia walked out of the train station with Art onto a plaza
flanked by tall palm trees. She glared at the scene; some of the worst moments
of her life had occurred in this city, during the assault on it in 2061. Sasha
had been killed, among many others, and Nadia had blown up Phobos, she
herself!—and all just a few days after finding Arkady’s burned remains. She had
never returned; she hated this town.

Now she saw that it had been damaged again in the recent unrest.
Parts of the tent had been blown, and the physical plant heavily damaged. It
was being rebuilt, and new tent segments were being tacked onto the old town,
extending west and east far along the plateau’s edge. It looked like a
boomtown, which Nadia found peculiar given its altitude, ten kilometers above
the datum. They would never be able to take down the tents, or go outside
without walkers on, and so Nadia had assumed it would therefore go into
decline. But it lay at the intersection of the equatorial piste and the Tharsis
piste running north and south, the last place one could cross the equator
between here and the chaoses, a full quarter of the planet away. So unless a
Trans-marineris bridge were built somewhere, Cairo would always be at a
strategic crossroads.

And crossroads or not, they wanted more water. The Compton
Aquifer, underlying lower Noctis and upper Mar-ineris, had been breached in
‘61, and its water had poured down the entire length of the Marineris canyons.
This was the flood that had almost killed Nadia and her companions during the
flight down the canyons, after Cairo was taken. Most of the floodwater had
either frozen in the canyons, creating a long irregular glacier, or had pooled
and frozen in the chaoses at the bottom of Marineris. And some water had of
course remained in the aquifer. In the years since, the water in the aquifer
had been pumped out for use in cities all over east Tharsis. And the Marineris
Glacier had slowly dropped downcanyon, receding at its upper end where there
was no source to replenish it, leaving behind only devastated land and a string
of very shallow ice lakes. Cairo was therefore running out of a ready supply of
water. Its hydrology office had responded by laying a pipeline to the northern
sea’s big southern arm in the Chryse depression, and pumping water up to Cairo.
So far, no problem; every tent town got its water from somewhere. But the
Cair-enes had lately started pouring water into a reservoir in the Noctis
canyon under them, and letting a stream out from this reservoir to run down
into lus Chasma, where eventually it pooled behind the upper end of the
Marineris Glacier, or ran by it. Essentially they had created a new river
running right down the big canyon system, far away from their town; and now
they were establishing a number of riverside settlements and farming
communities downstream from the city. A Red legal group had gone to the Global
Environmental Court to challenge this action, asserting that Valles Marineris
had legal consideration as a natural wonder, being the largest canyon in the
solar system; if left alone the breakout glacier would eventually have slid
down into the chaos, leaving the canyons again open-floored. This was what they
thought should happen, and the GEC had agreed with them, and issued an order (Charlotte
called this a “gecko”) against Cairo, requiring them to halt the release of
water out of the town reservoir. Cairo had refused to desist, claiming that the
global government had no jurisdiction over what they called “vital town
life-support issues.” Meanwhile building new downstream settlements as fast as
they could.

Clearly it was a provocation, a challenge to the new system. “This
is a test,” Art muttered as they walked across the plaza, “this is only a test.
If this were a true constitutional crisis, you would hear a beep all over the
planet.”

A test; exactly the kind of thing for which Nadia had lost all
patience. So she crossed the city in a foul mood. No doubt it did not help that
the awful days of ‘61 were called back so vividly to mind by the plaza, the
boulevards, the city wall at the canyon rim, all just as they had been back
then. They said one’s memory was weakest from one’s middle years, but she would
have lost those memories happily if she could have; fear and rage, however,
seemed to function as some kind of nightmare fixative. For it was all still
there—Frank tapping madly away at his monitors, Sasha eating pizza, Maya
shouting angrily at something or other, the fraught hours of waiting to see if
they would be passed over by the falling pieces of Phobos. Seeing Sasha’s body,
bloody at the ears. Clicking over the transmitter that had brought Phobos down.

Thus it was very hard to keep her irritation in check as she went
into the first meeting with the Cairenes, and found Jackie there among them,
supporting their position. Jackie was pregnant now as well, and had been for
some time; she was flushed, glossy, beautiful. No one knew who the father was,
it was something she was doing on her own. A Dorsa Brevia tradition, by way of
Hiroko—and just one more irritant to Nadia.

The meeting took place in a building next to the city wall,
overlooking the U-shaped canyon below, called Nilus Noctis. The water in
dispute was actually visible downcanyon, a broad ice-sheeted reservoir stopped
by a dam not visible from up here, stopped just before the Illyrian Gate and
the new chaos of the Compton Break.

Charlotte stood with her back to the window, asking the Cairene
officials just the questions Nadia would have asked, but without the slightest
trace of Nadia’s annoyance. “You will always be in a tent. Opportunities for
growth will be limited. Why flood Marineris when you won’t benefit from it?”

No one seemed to care to answer this. Finally Jackie said, “The
people living down there will benefit, and they’re part of greater Cairo. Water
in any form is a resource at these altitudes.”

“Water running freely down Marineris is no resource at all,”
Charlotte said.

The Cairenes argued for the utility of water in Marineris. There
were also representatives of the downstream settlers, many of them Egyptians,
claiming that they had been in Marineris for generations, that it was their
right to live there, that it was the best farming land on Mars, that they would
fight before they would leave, and so on. Sometimes the Cairenes and Jackie
seemed to be defending these neighbors, at other times their own right to use
Marineris as a reservoir. Mostly they seemed to be defending their right to do
whatever they wanted. Slowly Nadia got angrier and angrier.

“The court made its judgment,” she said. “We’re not here to argue
it again. We’re here to see it enacted.” And she left the meeting before she
said anything inexcusable.

That night she sat with Charlotte and Art, so irritated that she
could not focus on a delicious Ethiopian meal in the train-station restaurant.
“What do they want?” she asked Charlotte.

Charlotte shrugged, mouth full. After swallowing: “Have you been
noticing that being president of Mars is not a particularly powerful position?”

“Hell yes. It would be hard to miss.”

“Yes. Well, the whole executive council is the same, of course.
It’s looking like the real power in this government is in the environmental
court. Irishka was put in charge there as part of the grand gesture, and she’s
done a lot to legitimate moderate redness by staking out a middle ground. It
allows for a lot of development under the six-k limit, but above that, they’re
very strict. That’s all backed by the constitution, so they’ve been able to
make everything stand—the legislature is laying off, they haven’t overturned
any judgments yet. So it’s been an impressive first session for Irishka and
that whole group of justices.”

“So Jackie is jealous,” Nadia said.

Charlotte shrugged. “It’s possible.”

“More than possible,” Nadia said grimly.

“And then there’s the matter of the council itself. Jackie may
think this is something she can get three of the others to back her on, and
then the council becomes that much more hers. Cairo is an arena where she might
hope that Zeyk will vote with her because of the Arab part of town. Then only
two more. And both Mikhail and Ariadne are strong localists.”

“But the council can’t overturn court decisions,” Nadia said,
“only the legislature, right? By legislating new laws.”

“Right, but if Cairo continues to defy the court, then it would be
up to the council to order the police to go down there and physically stop
them. That’s what the executive branch is supposed to do. If the council didn’t
do that, then the court would be undermined, and Jackie would take effective
control of the council. Two birds with one stone.”

Nadia threw down her bit of spongy bread. “I’ll be damned if that
happens,” she said.

They sat in silence.

“I hate this stuff,” Nadia said.

Charlotte said, “In a few years there will be a body of practices,
institutions, laws, amendments to the constitution, all that. Things that the
constitution never addressed, which translate it into action. Like the proper
role of political parties. Right now we’re in the process of working all these
things out.”

“Maybe so, but I still hate it.”

“Think of it as meta-architecture. Building the culture that
allows architecture to exist. Then it’ll be less frustrating for you.”

Nadia snorted.

“This one should be a clear case,” Charlotte said. “The judgment
has been made, they only have to abide by it.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Time for the police.”

“Civil war, in other words!”

“They won’t push it that far. They signed the constitution just
like everyone else, and if everyone else is abiding by it, then they become
outlaws, like the Red ecoteurs. I don’t think they’ll go that far. They’re just
testing the limits.”

She did not seem annoyed by this. That was the way people were,
her expression seemed to say. She did not blame anyone, she was not frustrated.
A very calm woman, this Charlotte—relaxed, confident, capable. With her
coordinating it, the executive council’s work had so far.been well organized,
if not easy. If that competence was what growing up in a matriarchy like Dorsa
Brevia did for you, Nadia thought, then more power to them. She couldn’t help
but compare Charlotte to Maya, with all Maya’s mood shifts, her angst and
self-dramatization. Well, it was probably an individual thing in any culture.
But it was going to be interesting to have more Dorsa Brevia women around to take
on these jobs.

At the next morning’s meeting Nadia stood and said, “An order
against dumping water in Marineris has been issued already. If you persist in
the dumping, the new police powers of the global community will be exerted. I
don’t think anyone wants that.”

“I don’t think you can speak for the executive council,” Jackie
said.

“I can,” Nadia said shortly.

“No you can’t,” Jackie said. “You’re only one of seven. And this
isn’t a council matter anyway.”

“We’ll see about that,” Nadia said.

The meeting dragged on. The Cairenes were stonewalling. The more
Nadia understood what they were doing the less she liked it. Their leaders were
important in Free Mars; and even if this challenge failed, it might result in
concessions to Free Mars in other areas; so the party would have gained more
power. Charlotte agreed that this could be their ultimate motive. The cynicism
of this disgusted Nadia, and she found it very hard to be civil to Jackie when
Jackie spoke to her, with her easy cheerfulness, the pregnant queen cruising
around among her minions like a battleship among row-boats: “Aunt Nadia, so
sorry you felt you needed to take time for such a thing as this....”

That night Nadia said to Charlotte, “I want a ruling where Free
Mars gets nothing at all out of this.”

Charlotte laughed briefly. “Been talking to Jackie, have you?”

“Yes. Why is she so popular? I don’t understand it, but she is!”

“She’s nice to a lot of people. She thinks she’s nice to
everyone.”

“She reminds me of Phyllis,” Nadia said. The First Hundred again.
. . .”Maybe not. Anyway, isn’t there some sort of penalty we can invoke against
frivolous suits and challenges?”

“Court costs, in some cases.”

“See if you can lay that on her then.”

“First let’s see if we can win.”

The meetings went on for another week. Nadia left the talking to
Charlotte and Art. She spent the meetings looking out the windows at the canyon
below, and in rubbing the stump of her finger, which now had a noticeable new
bump on it. So strange; despite paying close attention, she could not recall
when the bump had first appeared. It was warm and pink, a delicate pink, like a
child’s lips. There seemed to be a bone in the middle of it; she was afraid to
squeeze it very hard. Surely lobsters didn’t pinch their returning limbs. All
that cell proliferation was disturbing—like a cancer, only controlled,
directed—the miracle of DNA’s instructional abilities made manifest. Life
itself, flourishing in all its emergent complexity. And a little finger was
nothing compared to an eye, or an embryo. It was a strange business. With that
going on, the political meetings looked really dreadful. Nadia walked out of
one having heard almost none of it, though she was sure nothing significant had
happened, and she went for a long walk, out to an overlook bulging out of the
western end of the tent wall. She called Sax. The four travelers were getting
closer to Mars; transmission delays were down to a few minutes. Nirgal appeared
to be healthy again. He was in good spirits. Michel actually looked more
drained than Nirgal; it seemed that the visit to Earth had been hard on him.
Nadia held up her finger to the screen to cheer him up, and it worked. “A
pinky, don’t they call it that?” “I guess so.”