Green Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  But that was life on Mars. They could be dead within minutes of any number of untoward events, as always. She dismissed the thought, and went downstairs with Sax.

  She wanted to go into Burroughs and see things, to be on the scene and judge for herself: walk around and observe the citizens of the town, see what they were doing and saying. Late on Thursday she said to Sax, “Let’s go in and have a look.”

  But it seemed to be impossible. “Security is heavy at all the gates,” Maya told her over the wrist. “And the trains coming in are checked at the stations very closely. Same with the subway to the spaceport. The city is closed. In effect we’re hostages.”

  “We can see what’s happening on-screen,” Sax pointed out. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Unhappily Nadia agreed. Shikata ga nai, apparently. But she didn’t like the situation, which seemed to her to be rapidly approaching a stalemate, at least locally. And she was intensely curious about conditions in Burroughs. “Tell me what it’s like,” she asked Maya over their phone link.

  “Well, they’ve got control of the infrastructure,” Maya said. “Physical plant, gates, and so on. But there aren’t enough of them to force people to stay indoors, or go to work of course, or anything else. So they don’t seem to know what to do next.”

  Nadia could understand that, as she too felt at a loss. More security forces were coming into the city every hour, on trains from tent towns they had given up on. These new arrivals joined their fellow troops, and stayed near the physical plant and the city offices, getting around in heavily armed groups, unmolested. They were housed in residential quarters in Branch Mesa, Double Decker Butte, and Black Syrtis Mesa, and their leaders were meeting more or less continuously at the UNTA headquarters in Table Mountain. But the leaders were issuing no orders.

  So things were in an uneasy suspension. The Biotique and Praxis offices in Hunt Mesa were still serving as an information center for all of them, disseminating news from Earth and the rest of the Mars, spreading it through the city on bulletin boards and computer postings. These media, along with Mangalavid and other private channels, meant that everyone was well informed concerning the latest developments. On the great boulevards, and in the parks, some big crowds congregated from time to time, but more often people were scattered in scores of small groups, milling around in a kind of active paralysis, something between a general strike and a hostage crisis. Everyone was waiting to see what would happen next. People seemed in good spirits, many shops and restaurants were still open, and video interviews taped in them were friendly.

  Watching them while jamming down a meal, Nadia felt an aching desire to be in there, to talk to people herself. Around ten that night, realizing she was hours from sleep, she called Maya again, and asked her if she would don vidcam glasses, and go on a walk for her around the city. Maya, just as antsy as Nadia if not more so, was happy to oblige.

  Soon Maya was out of the safe house, wearing vidspecs and transmitting images of what she looked at to Nadia, who sat apprehensively in a chair before a screen, in the Du Martheray refuge common room. Sax and several others ended up looking over Nadia’s shoulders, and together they watched the bouncing image Maya got with her vidcam, and listened to her running commentary.

  She walked swiftly down Great Escarpment Boulevard, toward the central valley. Once down among the cart vendors in the upper end of Canal Park, she slowed her pace, and looked around slowly to give Nadia a panning shot of the scene. People were out and about everywhere, talking in groups, enjoying a kind of festival atmosphere. Two women next to Maya struck up an animated conversation about Sheffield. A group of newcomers came right up to Maya and asked her what was going to happen next, apparently confident that she would know, “Simply because I am so old!” Maya noted with disgust when they had left. It almost made Nadia smile. But then some young people recognized Maya as herself, and came over to greet her happily. Nadia watched this encounter from Maya’s point of view, noting how starstruck the people seemed. So this is what the world looked like to Maya! No wonder she thought she was so special, with people looking at her like that, as if she were a dangerous goddess, just stepped out of a myth. . . .

  It was disturbing in more senses than one. It seemed to Nadia that her old companion was in danger of being arrested by security, and she said as much over the wrist. But the view on-screen waggled from side to side as Maya shook her head. “See how there aren’t any cops in sight?” Maya said. “Security is all concentrated around the gates and the train stations, and I stay away from them. Besides, why should they bother to arrest me? In effect they have this whole city arrested.”

  She tracked an armored vehicle as it drove down the grassy boulevard and passed without slowing down, as if to illustrate her point. “That’s so everyone can see the guns,” Maya said darkly.

  She walked down to Canal Park, then turned around and went up the path toward Table Mountain. It was cold in the city that night; lights reflecting off the canal showed that the water in it was icing over. But if security had hoped to discourage crowds, it hadn’t worked; the park was crowded, and becoming more crowded all the time. People were clumped around gazebos, or cafés, or big orange heating coils; and everywhere Maya looked more people were coming down into the park. Some listened to musicians, or people speaking with the help of little shoulder amplifiers; others watched the news on their wrists, or on lectern screens. “Rally at midnight!” someone cried. “Rally in the timeslip!”

  “I haven’t heard anything about this,” Maya said apprehensively. “This must be Jackie’s doing.”

  She looked around so fast that the view on Nadia’s screen was dizzying. People everywhere. Sax went to another screen and called the safe house in Hunt Mesa. Art answered there, but other than him, the safe house was nearly empty. Jackie had indeed called for a mass demonstration in the timeslip, and word had gone out over all the city media. Nirgal was out there with her.

  Nadia told Maya about this, and Maya cursed viciously. “It’s much too volatile for this kind of thing! Goddamn her.”

  But there was nothing they could do about it now. Thousands of people were pouring down the boulevards into Canal Park and Princess Park, and when Maya looked around, tiny figures could be seen on the rims of the mesas, and crowding the walktube bridges that spanned Canal Park. “The speakers are going to be up in Princess Park,” Art said from Sax’s screen.

  Nadia said to Maya: “You should get up there, Maya, and fast. You might be able to help keep the situation under control.”

  Maya took off, and as she made her way through the crowd, Nadia kept talking to her, giving her suggestions for what she should say if she got a chance to speak. The words tumbled out of her, and when she paused for thought, Art passed along ideas of his own, until Maya said, “But wait, wait, is any of this true?”

  “Don’t worry if it’s true,” Nadia said.

  “Don’t worry if it’s true!” Maya shouted into her wristpad. “Don’t worry if what I say to a hundred thousand people, what I say to everyone on two worlds, is true or not?”

  “We’ll make it true,” Nadia said. “Just give it a try.”

  Maya began to run. Others were walking in the same direction as she was, up through Canal Park, toward the high ground between Ellis Butte and Table Mountain, and her camera gave them bobbing images of the backs of heads and the occasional excited face, turned to look at her as she shouted for clearance. Great roars and cheers were rippling through the crowd ahead, which became denser and denser, until Maya had to slow down, and then to shove and twist through gaps between groups. Most of these people were young, and much taller than Maya, and Nadia went to Sax’s screen to watch the Managalavid cameras’ images, which were cutting back and forth between a camera on the speakers’ platform, set on the rim of an old pingo over Princess Park, and a camera up in one of the walktube bridges. Both angles showed that the crowd was getting immense—maybe eighty thousand people, Sax guessed, his nose a centimeter from the scre
en, as if he were counting them individually. Art managed to link up to Maya along with Nadia, and he and Nadia continued to talk to her as she fought her way forward through the crowd.

  Antar had finished a short incendiary speech in Arabic while Maya was making her final push through the crowd, and Jackie was now up on the speakers’ platform before a bank of microphones, making a speech that was amplified through big speakers on the pingo, and then reamplified by radio to auxiliary speakers placed all over Princess Park, and also to shoulder speakers, and lecterns, and wristpads, until her voice was everywhere—and yet, as every phrase echoed a bit off Table Mountain and Ellis Butte, and was welcomed by cheers, she could still only be heard part of the time. “. . . Will not allow Mars to be used as a replacement world . . . an executive ruling class who are primarily responsible for the destruction of Terra . . . rats trying to leave a sinking ship . . . make the same mess of things on Mars if we let them! . . . not going to happen! Because this is now a free Mars! Free Mars! Free Mars!”

  And she punched a finger at the sky and the crowd roared the words out, louder and louder with each repetition, falling quickly into a rhythm that allowed them to shout together—“Free Mars! Free Mars! Free Mars! Free Mars!”

  While the huge and still growing crowd was chanting this, Nirgal made his way up the pingo and onto the platform, and when people saw him, many of them began shouting “Mr-gal,” either in time with “Free Mars” or in the pauses between, so that it became “Free Mars (Nir-gal) Free Mars (Nir-gal),” in an enormous choral counterpoint.

  When he reached the microphone, Nirgal waved a hand for quiet. The chanting, however, did not stop, but changed over entirely to “Nir-gal, Nir-gal, Nir-gal, Nir-gal,” with an enthusiasm that was palpable, vibrating in the sound of that great collective voice, as if every single person out there was one of his friends, and enormously pleased at his appearance—and, Nadia thought, he had been traveling for so much of his life that this might not be all that far from the truth.

  The chanting slowly diminished, until the crowd noise was a general buzz, quite loud, above which Nirgal’s amplified greeting could be heard pretty well. As he spoke, Maya continued to make her way through the crowd toward the pingo, and as people stilled, it became easier for her. Then when Nirgal began to speak, she stopped as well and just watched him, sometimes remembering to move forward during the cheers and applause that ended many sentences.

  His speaking style was low-key, calm, friendly, slow. It was easier to hear him. “For those of us born on Mars,” he said, “this is our home.”

  He had to pause for most of a minute as the crowd cheered. They were mostly natives, Nadia saw again; Maya was shorter than almost everyone out there.

  “Our bodies are made of atoms that until recently were part of the regolith,” Nirgal went on. “We are Martian through and through. We are living pieces of Mars. We are human beings who have made a permanent, biological commitment to this planet. It is our home. And we can never go back.” More cheers at this very well-known slogan.

  “Now, as for those of us who were born on Earth—well, there are all different kinds, aren’t there When people move to a new place, some intend to stay and make it their new home, and we call those settlers. Others come to work for a while and then go back where they came from, and those we call visitors, or colonialists.

  “Now natives and settlers are natural allies. After all, natives are no more than the children of earlier settlers. This is home to all of us together. As for visitors—there is room on Mars for them too When we say that Mars is free, we are not saying Terrans can no longer come here. Not at all! We are all children of Earth, one way or another. It is our mother world, and we are happy to help it in every way we can.”

  The noise diminished, the crowd seeming somewhat surprised by this assertion.

  “But the obvious fact,” Nirgal went on, “is that what happens here on Mars should not be decided by colonialists, or by anyone back on Earth.” Cheers began, drowning out some of what he said. “—A simple statement of our desire for self-determination . . . our natural right . . . the driving force of human history. We are not a colony, and we won’t be treated as one. There is no such thing as a colony anymore. We are a free Mars.”

  More cheers, louder than ever, flowing into more chanting of “Free Mars! Free Mars!”

  Nirgal interrupted the chanting. “What we intend to do now, as free Martians, is to welcome every Terran who wants to come to us. Whether to live here for a time and then go back, or else to settle here permanently. And we intend also to do everything we can to help Earth in its current environmental crisis. We have some expertise with flooding” (cheers) “and we can help. But this help, from now on, will no longer come mediated by metanationals, exacting their profits from the exchange. It will come as a free gift. It will benefit the people of Earth more than anything that could be extracted from us as a colony. This is true in the strict literal sense of the amount of resources and work that will be transferred from Mars to Earth. And so we hope and trust that everyone on both worlds will welcome the emergence of a free Mars.”

  And he stepped back and waved a hand, and the cheering and chanting erupted again. Nirgal stood on the platform, smiling and waving, looking pleased, but somewhat at a loss concerning what to do next.

  All through his speech Maya had continued to inch forward during the cheering, and now Nadia could see by her vidcam image that she was at the platform’s edge, standing in the first row of people. Her arms blocked the image again and again, and Nirgal caught sight of the waving, and looked at her.

  When he saw who she was, he smiled and came right over, and helped boost her onto the platform. He led her over to the microphones, and Nadia caught a final image of a surprised and displeased Jackie Boone before Maya whipped off her vidcam spectacles. The image on Nadia’s screen swung wildly, and ended up showing the planks of the platform. Nadia cursed and hurried over to Sax’s screen, her heart in her throat.

  Sax still had the Mangalavid image, now taken from the camera on the walktube arching from Ellis Butte to Table Mountain. From this angle they could see the sea of people surrounding the pingo, and filling the city’s central valley far down into Canal Park; it had to be most of the people in Burroughs, surely. On the makeshift stage Jackie appeared to be shouting into Nirgal’s ear. Nirgal did not respond to her, and in the middle of her exhortation he went up to the mikes. Maya looked small and old next to Jackie, but she was drawn up like an eagle, and when Nirgal said into the mikes, “We have Maya Toitovna,” the cheers were huge.

  Maya made chopping motions as she walked forward, and said into the mikes, “Quiet! Quiet! Thank you! Thank you. Be quiet! We have some serious announcements to make here as well.”

  “Jesus, Maya,” Nadia said, clutching the back of Sax’s chair.

  “Mars is now independent, yes. Quiet! But as Nirgal just said, this does not mean we exist in isolation from Earth. This is impossible. We are claiming sovereignty according to international law, and we appeal to the World Court to confirm this legal status immediately. We have signed preliminary treaties affirming this independence, and establishing diplomatic relations, with Switzerland, India, and China. We have also initiated a nonexclusive economic partnership with the organization Praxis. This, like all arrangements we will make, will be not-for-profit, and designed to maximally benefit both worlds. All these treaties taken together begin the creation of our formal, legal, semiautonomous relationship with the various legal bodies of Earth. We fully expect immediate confirmation and ratification of all these agreements, by the World Court, the United Nations, and all other relevant bodies.”

  Cheers followed this announcement, and though they were not as loud as they had been for Nirgal, Maya allowed them to go on. When they had died down a bit, she continued.

  “As for the situation here on Mars, our intentions are to meet here in Burroughs immediately, and use the Dorsa Brevia Declaration as the starting point for the es
tablishment of a free Martian government.”

  Cheers again, much more enthusiastic. “Yes yes,” Maya said impatiently, trying to cut them off again. “Quiet! Listen! Before any of that, we must address the problem of opposition. As you know, we are meeting here in front of the headquarters of the United Nations Transitional Authority security forces, who are this very moment listening along with the rest of us, there inside Table Mountain.” She pointed. “Unless they have come out to join us.” Cheers, shouting, chanting. “. . . I want to say to them now that we mean them no harm. It is the Transitional Authority’s job, now, to see that the transition has taken on a new form. And to order its security forces to stop trying to control us. You cannot control us!” Mad cheers. “. . . mean you no harm. And we assure you that you have free access to the spaceport, where there are planes that can take all of you to Sheffield, and from there up to Clarke, if you do not care to join us in this new endeavor. This is not a siege or a blockade. This is, simply enough—”

  And she stopped, and put out both hands: and the crowd told her.

  Over the sound of the chanting Nadia tried to get through to Maya, still up on the stage, but it was obviously impossible for her to hear. Finally, however, Maya looked down at her wristpad. The image trembled; her arm was shaking.

  “That was great, Maya! I am so proud of you!”

  “Yes, well, anyone can make up stories!”

  Art said loudly, “See if you can get them to disperse!”

  “Right,” Maya said.

  “Talk to Nirgal,” Nadia said. “Get him and Jackie to do it. Tell them to make sure there isn’t any rush on Table Mountain, or anything like. Let them do it.”

  “Ha,” Maya exclaimed. “Yes. We will let Jackie do it, won’t we.”

  After that her wristpad’s little camera image swung everywhere, and the noise was too great for the linked observers to make anything out. The Mangalavid cameras showed a big clump of people onstage conferring.