Blue Mars m-3

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  Then she looked over her shoulder at Sax, who stepped up next to her to the microphones. He said, “Mars has to be protected.” The biosphere was new, its carrying capacity limited. It did not have the physical resources of Earth, and much of its empty land would of physical necessity have to stay empty. Tenons had to understand that, and not overwhelm local systems; if they did, Mars would be no use to anyone at all. Clearly there was a severe population problem on Earth, but Mars alone was not the solution. “The Earth-Mars relationship has to be renegotiated.”

  They began that renegotiation. They asked a UN representative to come up and explain the incursions. They argued and debated and expostulated; and shouted in each other’s faces. Out in the outback, locals confronted settlers, and some of them on both sides threatened violence; and others stepped in and started talking, cajoling, scolding, wrangling, negotiating; and shouting in each other’s faces. At any point in the process, in a thousand different places, things could have turned violent; many people were furious; but cooler heads prevailed. It remained, in most places, at the level of argument. Many feared this could not continue, many did not believe it possible; but it was happening, and the people in the streets saw it happening. They kept it happening. At some point, after all, the mutation of values has to express itself; and why not here, why not now? There were very few weapons on the planet, and it was hard to strike someone in the face, or stick them with a pitchfork, when they were standing there arguing with you. This was the moment of mutation, history in the making, and they could see it right before them, in the streets and on the human hillsides and on the Screens, history labile right there in their hands — and so they seized the moment, and wrenched it in a new direction. They talked themselves into it. A new government. A new treaty with Earth. A polycephalous peace. The negotiations would go on for years. Like a choir in counterpoint, singing a great fugue.

  Eventually that cable was going to come back to haunt us, that’s what I said all along. You did not, you loved the cable. The only complaint you had was that it was too slow. You can get to Earth faster than you can get to Clarke, you said. That’s true, you can, it’s ridiculous. But not the same as saying the cable was going to come back and haunt us, you have to admit. Waiter, hey waiter! We’ll have tequilas all around, and some lime wedges. We were working the Socket when they came down, the inner chamber didn’t have a chance but the Socket is a big building, I don’t know if they had a plan and it didn’t work or if they didn’t have a plan at all, but by the time their third car came down the Socket was sealed off and they were the proud masters of a 37,000-kilometer dead end. It was stupid. It was a nightmare, these foxes kept coming in and at night only, so that they looked like wolves only a lot faster. And they went right for the throat. A plague of rabid foxes, man, it was a nightmare. Like 2128 all over again, I don’t know if that’s true or not but there they were, Terran police in Sheffield, and when people heard they all came out into the streets, the streets were packed, really packed, I’m short and sometimes my face was squished right into people’s backs or women’s breasts. I heard about it from a neighbor in the next apartment only about five minutes after it happened, she had heard from a friend living out near the Socket. The response of the people to the takeover of the cable’s lower facility was rapid and tumultuous. Those UN storm troopers didn’t know what to make of us, a detachment tried to take over Hartz Plaza and we just flowed around them, moving out from in front of them but shoving in at the sides so that it was like a kind of vacuum pull. This snarling foam-toothed rabid demon at my throat, it was a fucking nightmare. Took them right out to rim park and these goddamned starship troopers couldn ‘t have moved a centimeter at that point, not without slaughtering thousands of people. People in the streets, that’s the only thing governments are afraid of. Well, or term limits. Or free elections! Or assassination. Or being laughed at, ah, ha-ha-ha! And there were hookups to all the other cities and giant street parties in every one of them. We were in Lasswitz and everyone went down to the river park and stood with candles in their hand, so that cameras could shoot down from the overlook and see this sea of candles, it was great. And Sax and Ann standing there together, it was amazing. Amazing. Unbelievable. They probably scared the UN to death saying each other’s lines like that, the UN probably thought we had brain-transfer devices all ready to zap them. • What I liked was later when Peter called for a new election for the Red party leadership, and challenged Irishka to hold it right then and there on the wrist. Those party things are basically heavyweight challenges, mano a mano, if Irishka had refused to call a vote then she would have been finished anyway, so she had to call it no matter what, you should have seen the look on her face. We were in Sabishii when we heard the call for a Red vote and when Peter won we went wild, Sabishii was an instant festival. And Senzeni Na. And Nilokeras. And Hell’s Gate. And Argyre Station, you should have seen it. Well wait a second, it was only about a sixty-forty vote, in Argyre Station it went crazy because there were so many Irishka backers spoiling for a fight. It’s Irishka who saved Argyre Basin and every dry low spot on this planet if you ask me, Peter Claybome is just an old nisei, he never did anything., Waiter, waiter! Beers all around, weiss beers, bitte. Bringing food out to these little Terrans, didn’t have any idea. Nirgal shaking hands with every one of them. So the doctor says, how do you know you’ve got the quick decline? It was a fucking nightmare. It was a surprise Ann working with Sax, that looked like a sellout. Not if you had paid attention, they been traveling together and everything, you must have been on Venus or something. Or something. The browns, the blues, it’s stupid. We shoulda done something like this a long time ago. Well, why worry so much, they’re goners, there won’t be a single one left in ten years. Don’tbe too sure about that. Don’tbe too happy about that, you’re only a few years younger than them, you idiot. Oh it was a most interesting week we have been sleeping in the parks, and everyone was most kind. Werteswandel, the Germans call it. They’ve got a word for everything. Bound to happen, that’s evolution. We’re all mutants at this point. Speak for yourself jack. Speak to the waiter. Six years! That’s great news, I’m surprised you’re sober. Oh I’m not, ah-ha-ha, I’m not! Little red people charging around on red ants, think they’re helping out, whoops, right over the edge of the rim, better hope they’re flying ants. No wonder I’ve been getting so many ants. So the man says, Well, doc — Yes, and? That’s the end of the joke, he only just gets to say Well doc and then he dies, quick decline get it? Very funny. That’s right it is funny! All right, all right, ha-ha, it’s not worth getting hot over it. Anytime you have to threaten people to get them to laugh at your joke you have to consider it less than successful, okay? Fuck you. Oh clever. So anyway there we were when the troops kind of make like they want to go back to the Socket. They go at it very gently, single file behind a little electric hotel cart they got their hands on, and everyone moves a little and lets them go, and they were passing through us looking nervous, and then people were shaking their hands like they were all Nirgal at the gates, and asking them to stay, leaving them alone if they couldn’t handle it, kissing them on the cheeks, leis piled up till they couldn’t see over them. Right hack into the Socket. And why not since they made their point and threatened us enough for the goddamned traitor government to fold without a fight? This joker doesn’t seem to understand the principles of jujitsu. Of what? What? Hey just who the hell are you? I’m a stranger in town. What? What? Excuse me miz, could you bring us another round ofkava? Well, yes, we’re still trying to get it into the parts-per-billion range, but no luck yet. Don’t give me Fassnacht, / hate Fassnacht, the worst day of the year to me, they killed Boone on Fassnacht. They firebombed Dresden on Fassnacht. No end of evil to atone for. They were sailing in Chryse when a howler picked up their boat and threw it all the way over the Cydonia Mountains. That’ll be the kind of experience that brings you closer together. Oh please, who is this guy. It’s no big deal there’s blimps every week get blown around a
bit, it’s no big deal. We got caught out in that same howler, but we were just outside Santorini, I mean to tell you the water’s surface was torn to smithereens to a depth of about ten meters, I’m not kidding. The boat we were in the Algot scared and took us under right down into another boat that was already down there, so we banged into this boat and it was like the end of the world, boom, everything dark, the AI went insane, scared it to death I swear. It probably just broke. Well I broke my collarbone. That’ll be ten sequins please. Thanks. Those howlers are dangerous. I was in one in Echus and we all had to sit down on our butts and even then we were kind of scraping along. I had to hold on to my glasses or else they would have been torn right off my ears. Cars flipping like tiddlywinks. The whole marina cleared of every single boat, it was like some kid took his toy harbor and knocked it across the room. I too experienced this storm at its utmost fury. I was visiting the township Ascension, in the North Sea near Korolev Island. Hey that’s where Will Fort surfs. Yes, here as I understand it the waves on Mars reach their greatest heights, and in this storm they towered a hundred meters from trough to crest, no, I do not jest. Waves much taller than the sides of the township, which on these dire rolling black hills appeared no larger than a lifeboat to those of us on it. We were a veritable cork. The animals were unhappy. And to compound our difficulties, we were being cast onto the south point of Korolev. The waves were breaking completely over the final cape into the sea beyond. So every time we rose up the gigantic face of each wave, the pilot of the Ascension turned the township south, and it slid across the face of the wave for some distance before losing the crest and falling back into the next trough. On each wave we moved a little faster and farther, for as we approached the point of the island the wave faces grew steeper and bigger. The very tip of the point curves off to the east, so that the waves were breaking left to right as we looked ahead, crashing onto the rocks and then onto the reef offshore. On our final wave the Ascension was pitched down the steep face of the wave. At the bottom of the face the pilot turned the township right, and the great raft made the cut at the bottom and drifted back up onto the face, moving across it at a speed we could not calculate. It was like flying. Yes — we were surfing a hundred-meter-high wave, on a raft as big as a village, just over the rocks of the reef below. For a second we flew in the tube of the breaking wave. Then we were out, onto the shoulder of the wave, which was back in deep water, and no longer breaking. And so we passed the island. So the doctor says, how do you know? How? So pretty. Yes, it was a moment to remember. I’m going to take my fund and retire, it just ain’t the same anymore. These people are thugs. Heard she went out on one of those star-ships, that’s what I heard. You really saw her? You got to get you a better translator, I did not say Never mind doctor I am feeling better. What the hell kind of machine. Waiter! Villages just like the ones back home, except no caste. If they want caste they have to carry it in their heads. Some issei try but the nisei go feral. The way I heard it is that the little red people finally got sick of all our nonsense, and they were hot to do something having recently domesticated the red ant, and they started this whole campaign so that they could come charging to the rescue when the Terrans invaded. You might think they were being overconfident, but you have to remember that the biomass of red ants on this planet is closing in on a meter thick if averaged, so much biomass they’re going to throw us out of orbit they should try ants on Mercury, and every ant has a whole tribe of the little people riding around on it in howdah cities or whatever, and so they weren’t so overconfident after all. There’s strength in numbers. So they deliberately made the government act stupid to spark this confrontation. I wondered what excuse those fools had, they need an excuse, why it is that people go to Mangala and immediately turn into rapacious corrupt morons, it’s a mystery to me. Went down for us. Why is it always the little red people, whatever happened to Big Man, I hate these little red people and their twee little folktales, if you’re going to be so stupid as to tell folktales at all, the truth being much more interesting, then at least they could be big tall tales, Titans and Gorgons duking it out with spiral galaxies like razor-edged boomerangs, zip, zip, zip! Hey watch it there, slow down, guy, slow down. Waiter, get this mo-tormouth some kava, will you? He needs to mellow. Be calm, agitated sir. Be calm. Throwing nova bombs back and forth! Boom! Kapow! KA BOOM! Hey! Hey! Calm oneself oh agitated one. I’m sick of these little people. Get your hands off me. It’s a sorry excuse for a government anyway. It always gets back to the same old thing, power suckers sucking power. I told them to stick with tents, no global government, so there wouldn’t be so much power to suck, but did they listen to me? They did not. You told them. Yeah I told them, I was there. Nirgal, sure. Nirgal and I go way back. What do you mean, honored old one, are you not the Stowaway? Why yes, I am. So you are Nirgal’s father, you should go way back as you say. Yeah well in Zygote it didn’t always work that way. I tell you that bitch pulled the wool over your eyes your whole life if you let her. Have you living in a closet for years on end. Ah come on, you’re not Coyote. Well what can I say. Not many people recognize me. And why should they? I bet he is. You can’t be. If you’re Nirgal’s dad then why is he so tall and you’re so short? I’m not short. Why are you laughing? I’m five feet five inches tall. Feet? Feet? Holy ka, here’s a man measures his height in feet! In feet! Oh my God you must be kidding, five feet? Feet? Hey you look like it would take more feet than that, just how long were these feet? A foot was about a third of a meter, a little less. This is how they measured? A little less than a third of a meter? No wonder Earth is so messed up. Hey what makes you think your precious meter is so great, it’s just some fraction of the distance from Earth’s North Pole to its equator, Napoleon chose the fraction on a whim! It’s a bar of metal in Paris France and its length was determined by the whim of a madman! Don’t you be imagining you’re more rational than the old ways. Oh stop, please, I’ll die laughing, please. You people have very little respect for your elders, I like that. Hey give the old Coyote another drin, what’re you having? Tequila, thanks. And some kava. Oh oh! This guy knows how to live. That’s right I do know how to live. These ferals got it figured out, as long as you don’t take it too far. They’re copying me but they’ve gone too far. Don’t walk, drive. Don’t hunt, buy. Sleep every night on a gel bed, and try to have two naked young native women as your blankets. Oh, oh, oh! Whoo! You old lecher! Oh honored sir. Indecent. Well, it works for me. I don’t sleep that well but I’m happy. Thanks, don’t mind if I do, thanks. I appreciate it. Cheers. Here’s to Mars.

  She woke in a silenceso still she could hear her heart. She couldn’t remember where she was. Then it came back. They were at Nadia and Art’s house, on the coast of the Hellas Sea, just west of Odes’sa. Tap tap tap. Dawn; the first nail of the day. Nadia was building outside. She and Art lived at the edge of their beach village, in their co-op’s complex of intertwined houses, pavilions, gardens, paths. A community of about a hundred people, linked to a hundred more like it. Apparently Nadia was always working on the infrastructure. Tap tap tap tap tap! Currently building a deck to surround a Zygote bamboo tower.

  In the next room someone was breathing. There was an open door between the rooms. She sat up. Drapes on the wall; she pulled them open a crack. Predawn. Grey on gray. A spare room. Sax was on a big bed in the next room, through the door. Under thick coverlets.

  She was cold. She got up and padded through the door into his room. His face slack on a broad pillow. An old man. She crawled under the coverlets into bed with him. He was warm. He was shorter than she was, short and round. She knew that, she knew him: from the sauna and pool in Un-derhill, the baths in Zygote. Another part of their communal body. Tap tap tap tap tap. He stirred and she wrapped herself around him. He snuggled back into her, still deeply asleep.

  During the memory experiment she had focused on Mars. Michel had once said it: Your task is to find the Mars that endures through all. And seeing the same hillocks and hollows around Underbill
had reminded her intensely of the early years, when over each horizon had been a new thing. The land. In her mind it endured. On Earth they would never know what it was like, never. The lightness, the tight intimacy of the horizon, everything almost within touch; then the sudden immense vistas, when one of Big Man’s neighborhoods hove into view: the vast cliffs, the canyons so deep, the continent volcanoes, the wild chaos. The giant calligraphy of areological time. The world-wrapping dunes. They would never know; it could not be imagined.

  But she had known. And during the memory experiment she had kept her mind focused on it, throughout the entirety of a day that had seemed to last ten years. Never once thought of Earth. It was a trick, a tremendous effort; don’t think of the word elephant] But she hadn’t. It was a trick she had gotten good at, the single-mindedness of the great refuser, a kind of strength. Perhaps. And then Sax had come flying over the horizon, crying Remember Earth? Remember Earth? It was almost funny.

  But that had been Antarctica. Immediately her mind, so tricky, so focused, had said That’s just Antarctica, a bit of Mars on Earth, a continent transposed. The year they had lived there, a snatched glimpse of their future. In the Dry Valleys they had been on Mars without knowing it. So that she could remember it and it did not lead back to Earth, it was only an ur-Underhill, an Underbill with ice, and a different camp, but the same people, the same situation. And thinking about it, all of it had indeed come back to her, in the magic of the anamnestic enchantment: those talks with Sax; how she had liked someone as solitary in science as she was, how she had been attracted to him. No one else had understood how far you could walk out into it. And out there in that pure distance they had argued. Night after night. About Mars. Aspects technical, aspects philosophical. They had not agreed. But they were out there together.