Green mars (66 page)

Frank was being erased by books. And by time. The years had passed, and for her, even for her, Frank Chalmers was becoming nothing but one tiny historical figure among many others, standing out there like a person seen through the wrong end of the telescope. A name in a book. Someone to read about, along with Bismarck, Talleyrand, Machiavelli. And her Frank ... gone.

She spent a few hours of most days going over the Praxis reports with Art, trying to find patterns and comprehend them. They were getting such great amounts of data through Praxis that they had the reverse of the problem they had had in the pre-’61 crisis—not too little information, but too much. Every day the screws tightened in a multitude of crises, and Maya often ended up near despair. Several countries attending the UN, all of them Consolidated or Subarashii clients, requested that the World Court be abolished, as its functions were redundant. Most of the metanats immediately declared their support for this idea, and as the World Court had long ago begun as an agency of the UN, there were those who claimed the action would be legal and have some historical reason for being—but the first result was to disrupt some of the arbitrations in process, leading to fighting in Ukraine and Greece. “Who’s responsible?” Maya exclaimed to Art. “Is there anyone doing this stuff?”

“Of course. Some metanats have presidents, and they all have executive boards, and they get together and talk things over, and decide what orders to give. It’s like Fort and the eighteen immortals in Praxis, although Praxis is more democratic than most. And then the metanat boards appoint the executive committee for the Transitional Authority, and the Authority makes some local decisions, and I could give you their names, but I don’t think they’re as powerful as the folks back home.”

“Never mind.” Of course people were responsible. But no one was in control. It was the same on both sides, no doubt. Certainly it was true in the resistance. Sabotage, against the Vastitas ocean platforms particularly, was now pandemic, and she knew whose idea that was. She talked with Nadia about getting in touch with Ann, but Nadia just shook her head. “Not a chance. I haven’t been able to talk to Ann since Dorsa Brevia. She’s one of the most radical Reds there is.” “As always.”

“Well, I don’t think she used to be. But it doesn’t matter now.” Maya shook her head and went back to work. She spent more and more time working with Nirgal, taking his instruction and advising him in turn. More than ever he was her best contact among the young, and the most powerful, and a moderate to boot; he wanted to wait for a trigger and then organize a concerted action just like she did, and this of course was one of the reasons she gravitated to him. But it was also just a matter of his character, his warmth and high spirits, his regard for her. He couldn’t have been more different than Jackie, although Maya knew the two of them had a very close complex relationship, going right back into their childhoods. But they appeared to be estranged these days, which she was not at all unhappy to see, and very much at odds politically. Jackie, like Nirgal, was a charismatic leader, and recruiting big new crowds into her “Boonean” wing of Marsfirst^ which advocated immediate action, and thus aligned her much more with Dao than Nirgal, politically in any case. Maya did everything she could to back Nirgal in this split among the natives: in every meeting she argued for policies and actions that were green, moderate, nonviolent, and coordinated from a center. But she could see that the majority of the newly politicized natives in the cities were attracted to Jackie and Marsfirst, which was generally Red, radical, violent, and anarchic—or so she saw it. And the increasing strikes, demonstrations, street fights, sabotage, and ecotage tended to support her analysis.

And it wasn’t just most of the new native recruits going to Jackie, but also great numbers of disaffected emigrants, the most recent arrivals. This tendency baffled her, and she complained about it to Art one day after they had gone through the Praxis report.

“Well,” he said diplomatically, “it’s good to have as many emigrants on our side as possible.”

Of course when he wasn’t on-line to Earth he was spending much of his time shuttling around between resistance groups trying to get them to agree, so this was his party line. “But why are they joining her?” Maya demanded.

“Well...” Art said, waggling a hand, “you know, these emigrants arrive, and some of them hear about the demonstrations, or they see one, and they ask around and hear stories, and some hear that if they go out and join in a demonstration then the natives will really like them for it, you know? Some of the young native women maybe, who they hear can be friendly, right? Very friendly. So they go out there thinking that maybe if they help out, one of these big girls will take them home at the end of the day.”

“Come on,” Maya said.

“Well, you know,” Art said. “It does happen to some of them.”

“And so of course our Jackie gets all the new recruits.”

“Well, I’m not sure it isn’t a factor for Nirgal as well. And I don’t know that people are making that much of a party distinction between them. That’s a fine point, something you’re more aware of than them.”

“Hmm.”

She remembered Michel, telling her it was important to argue for what she loved, as well as against what she hated. And she loved Nirgal, it was true. He was a wonderful young man, the finest native of them all. Certainly it was not right to scorn those kinds of motivations, that erotic energy taking people into the streets... . Still, if only people would be more sensible. Jackie was doing her damnedest to lead them into yet another spastic unplanned revolt, and the results of that could be disastrous.

“It’s part of why people follow you too, Maya.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Come on. Don’t be a fool.”

Although it was nice to think so. Perhaps she could extend the struggle for control to that level too. Although she would be at a disadvantage. Create a party of the old. Well, in effect that’s what they were already. That had been her whole idea, back in Sabi-shii—that the issei would take over the resistance, and guide it on the right course. And a good number of them had devoted many years of their life to doing just that. But in fact it hadn’t worked. They were outnumbered. And the new majority was a new species, with new minds of their own. The issei could only ride the tiger. Do the best they could. She sighed.

“Tired?”

“Exhausted. This work is going to kill me.”

“Get some rest.”

“Sometimes when I talk to these people I feel like such a cautious conservative coward of a naysayer. Always don’t do this, don’t do that. I get so sick of it. I wonder sometimes if Jackie isn’t right.”

“Are you kidding?” Art said, eyes wide. “You’re the one holding this show together, Maya. You and Nadia and Nirgal. And me. But you’re the one with the, the aura.” The reputation as a murderer, he meant. “You’re just tired. Get some rest. It’s almost the timeslip.”

Michel woke her up some other night: on the other side of the planet Armscor security units supposedly integrated into Subara-shii had taken control of the elevator from regular Subarashii police, and .in the hour of uncertainty a group of Marsfirsters had tried to seize the new Socket outside Sheffield. The attempt had failed, and most of the assault group had been killed, and Subarashii had ended up back in control of Sheffield and Clarke and everything in between, and most of Tharsis as well. Now it was late afternoon there, and a huge crowd had appeared on the streets of Sheffield to demonstrate against the violence, or the takeover, it was impossible to say; it had no purpose; groggily Maya watched with Michel as police units in walkers and helmets cut the demonstrating groups into segments, and drove them off with tear gas and rubber batons. “Fools!” Maya cried. “Why are they doing this! They’ll bring down the whole Terran military on our heads!”

“It looks like they’re dispersing,” Michel said as he stared into the little screen. “Who knows, Maya. Images like this may galvanize people. They win this battle, but they lose support everywhere.”

Maya splayed out over a couch in front of the screen, not yet awake enough to think. “Maybe,” she said. “But it’s going to be harder than ever to hold people back as long as Sax wants.”

Michel waved this off, face to the screen. “How long can he expect you to manage that?”

“I don’t know.”

They watched as the Mangalavid reporters described the riots as terrorist-sponsored violence. Maya groaned. Spencer was at another AI screen, talking to Nanao in Sabishii. “Oxygen is rising so fast, there has to be something out there without suicide genes.

Carbon dioxide levels? Yeah, dropping fast as well. ... A bunch of really good carbon-fixing bacteria out there, proliferating like a weed. I’ve asked Sax about it and he just blinks... . Yeah, he’s as out of control as Ann. And she’s out there sabotaging every project she can get her hands on.”

When Spencer got off, Maya said to him, “Just how long is Sax going to want us to hold out?”

Spencer shrugged. “Until we get something he thinks is a trigger, I guess. Or a coherent strategy. But if we can’t stop the Reds and the Marsfirsters, it won’t matter what Sax wants.”

So the weeks crept by. A campaign of regular street demonstrations began in Sheffield and South Fossa. Maya thought this would only bring more security down on them, but Art argued in their favor. “We’ve got to let the Transitional Authority know how widespread the resistance is, so that when the moment comes, they don’t try to crush us out of ignorance, see what I mean? At this point we need them to feel disliked and outnumbered. Hell, mass numbers of people in the streets are about the only thing that scare governments, if you ask me.”

And whether Maya agreed or not, there was nothing she could do about it; every day passed and she could only work as hard as possible, traveling and meeting group after group, while inside her body her muscles were turning to wire with the tension, and she could barely sleep at night, nothing more than an exhausted hour or two near dawn.

One morning in the northern spring of M-52, year 2127, she woke feeling more refreshed than usual. Michel was still sleeping, and she dressed and went out alone, and walked across the great central promenade to the cafes by the canal. This was the wonderful thing about Burroughs; despite tightened security at the gates and stations, one could still walk around freely inside the city at some hours, and among the throngs there was very little danger of being picked out. So she sat and drank coffee and ate pastries and looked at the low gray clouds rolling overhead, down the slope of Syrtis and toward the dike to the east. Air circulation under the tent was high, to give some kinetic match to the visuals overhead. That was strange, that; how used she had gotten to the sky visuals not matching the feel of the wind under the tents. The long slender arched tube of the bridge from Ellis Butte to Hunt Mesa was filled with the colorful ant-figures of people, hurrying about their morning’s work. Living normal lives; abruptly she got up and paid her bill, and went for a long walk herself. She strolled along the rows of white Bareiss columns, up through Princess Park to the new tents, around the pingo hills where the currently fashionable apartments were located. Here in the high western district one could look back down and see the whole spread of the city, the trees and rooftops split by the promenade and its canals, the mesas huge and widely spaced, resembling vast cathedrals. Their sheer rock sides’were cracked and furrowed, horizontal lines of twinkling windows the only clue that they were hollowed out inside, each of them a city of its own, a little world, living together on the red sand plain, under the immense invisible tent, connected by soaring footbridges that glinted like the visible sheen of soap bubbles. Ah, Burroughs!

So she walked back with the clouds, through narrow streets walled by apartment blocks and gardens, to Hunt Mesa and their home under the dance studio. Michel and Spencer were out, and for a long time she just stood in the window and looked at the clouds racing over the city, trying to do Michel’s job for him, to lasso her moods and pull them back to some kind of stable center. From the ceiling came little uncoordinated thump thump thumps. Another class beginning. Then the thumps were in the hall before the door, and there was a hard knock. She went to answer it, heart pounding like the ceiling.

It was Jackie and Antar, and Art and Nirgal, and Rachel and Frantz and the rest of the Zygote ectogenes, pouring in and talking at the speed of sound, so that she couldn’t quite understand them. She greeted them as cordially as she could, given Jackie’s presence among them, and then collected herself and removed all hatred from her eyes, and talked with all of them, even Jackie, about their plans. They had come to Burroughs to help organize a demonstration down in the canal park. Word had been sent out through the cells, and they were hoping that a lot of the unaligned citizenry would join them as well. “I hope it doesn’t precipitate any crackdowns,” Maya said.

Jackie smiled at her, in triumph of course. “Remember, you can never go back,” she said.

Maya rolled her eyes and went to put water on the stove, trying to quell her bitterness. They would meet with all the cell leaders in the city, and Jackie would take over the meeting, and exhort them to: immediate rebellion, no sense or strategy involved. And there was nothing Maya could do about it—the time for beating the shit out of her had passed, unfortunately.

So she went around taking off people’s coats and giving them bananas and kicking their feet off the couch cushions, feeling like a dinosaur among the mammals, a dinosaur in a new climate, among quick hot creatures who disdained her gallumphing around, who dodged her slow blows and ran end runs behind her dragging tail.