do in such a situation was to bring it down. Warn people, give them a schedule, and then do it. ‘Loss of life would be minimal, and what there was would be pretty much the fault of anyone so stupid as to stay on the cable, or the equator.’
Unfortunately Nadia heard this from the middle of the room, and she shook her head so violently that her cropped grey locks flew out like a clown’s ruff. She was still very angry with Ann over Burroughs, for no good reason at all, and so Ann glared at her as she walked over to them and said curtly, ‘We need the elevator. It’s our conduit to Terra just as much as it’s their conduit to Mars.’
‘But we don’t need a conduit to Terra,’ Ann said. ‘It’s not a physical relationship for us, don’t you see? I’m not saying we don’t need to have an influence on Terra, I’m not an isolationist like Kasei or Coyote. I agree we need to try to work on them. But it’s not a physical thing, don’t you see? It’s a matter of ideas, of talk, and perhaps a few emissaries. It’s an information exchange. At least it is when it’s going right. It’s when it gets into a physical thing – a resource exchange, or mass emigration, or police control – that’s when the elevator becomes useful, even necessary. So if we took it down we would be saying, we will deal with you on our terms, and not yours.’
It was so obvious. But Nadia shook her head, at what Ann couldn’t imagine.
Sax cleared his throat, and in his old periodic table style said, ‘If we can bring it down, then in effect it is as if it already were down,’ blinking and everything. Like a ghost suddenly there at her side, the voice of the terraforming, the enemy she had lost to time and time again – Saxifrage Russell his own self, same as ever. And all she could do was make the same arguments she always had, the losing arguments, feeling the words’ inadequacy right in her mouth.
Still she tried. ‘People act on what’s there, Sax. The metanat directors and the UN and the governments will look up and see what’s there, and act accordingly. If the cable’s gone they just don’t have the resources or the time to mess with us right now. If the cable’s here, then they’ll want us. They’ll think, well, we could do it. And there’ll be people screaming to try.’ ‘They can always come. The cable is only a fuel-saver.’ ‘A fuel-saver which makes mass transfers possible.’ But now Sax was distracted, and turning back into a stranger. No one would pay attention to her for long enough. Nadia was going on about control of orbit and safe conduct passes and the like.
The strange Sax interrupted Nadia, having never heard her, and said, ‘We’ve promised to … help them out.’
‘By sending them more metals?’ Ann said. ‘Do they really need those?’
‘We could … take people. It might help.’
Ann shook her head. ‘We could never take enough.’ He frowned. Nadia saw they weren’t listening to her, returned to the table. Sax and Ann fell into silence.
Always they argued. Neither conceded anything, no compromises were made, nothing was ever accomplished. They argued using the same words to mean different things, and scarcely even spoke to one another. Once it had been different, very long ago, when they had argued in the same language, and understood each other. But that had been so long ago she couldn’t even remember when exactly it was. In Antarctica? Somewhere. But not on Mars.
‘You know,’ Sax said in a conversational tone, again very unSaxlike but in a different way, ‘it wasn’t the Red militia that caused the Transitional Authority to evacuate Burroughs and the rest of the planet. If guerrillas had been the only factor then the Terrans would have gone after us, and they might well have succeeded. But those mass demonstrations in the tents made it clear that almost everyone on the planet was against them. That’s what governments fear the most; mass protests in the cities. Hundreds of thousands of people going into the streets to reject the current system. That’s what Nirgal means when he says political power comes out of the look in people’s eye. And not out of the end of a gun.’
‘And so?’ Ann said.
Sax gestured at the people in the warehouse. ‘They’re all Greens.’
The others continued debating. Sax watched her like a bird.
Ann got up and walked out of the meeting, into the strangely unbusy streets of East Pavonis. Here and there militia bands held posts on street corners, keeping an eye to the south, toward Sheffield and the cable terminal. Happy, hopeful, serious young natives. There on one corner a group was in an animated discussion, and as Ann passed them a young woman, her face utterly intent, flushed with passionate conviction, cried out, ‘You can’t just do what you want!’
Ann walked on. As she walked she felt more and more uneasy, without knowing why. This is how people change – in little quantum jumps when struck by outer events – no intention, no plan. Someone says ‘the look in people’s eye’, and the phrase is suddenly conjoined with an image: a face glowing with passionate conviction, another phrase: you can’t just do what you want! And so it occurred to her (the look on that young woman’s face!) that it was not just the cable’s fate they were deciding – not just ‘should the cable come down’, but ‘how do we decide things?’ That was the critical postrevolutionary question, perhaps more important than any single issue being debated, even the fate of the cable. Up until now, most people in the underground had operated by a working method which said if we don’t agree with you we will fight you. That attitude was what had drawn people into the underground in the first place, Ann included. And once used to that method, it was hard to get away from it. After all, they had just proved that it worked. And so there was the inclination to continue to use it. She felt that herself.
But political power … say it did come out of the look in people’s eye. You could fight forever, but if people weren’t behind you …
Ann continued to think about that as she drove down into Sheffield, having decided to skip the farce of the afternoon strategy session in East Pavonis. She wanted to have a look at the seat of the action.
It was curious how little seemed to have changed in the day-to-day life of Sheffield. People still went to work, ate in restaurants, talked on the grass of the parks, gathered in the public spaces in this most crowded of tent towns. The shops and restaurants were jammed. Most businesses in Sheffield had belonged to the metanats, and now people read on their screens long arguments over what to do – what the employees’ new relationship to their old owners should be – where they should buy their raw materials, where they should sell – whose regulations they ought to obey, whose taxes they ought to pay. All very confusing, as the screen debates and nightly news vids and wrist nets indicated.
In the plaza devoted to the food market, however, things looked as they always did. Food was already mostly grown and distributed by co-ops; ag networks were in place, the greenhouses on Pavonis were still producing, and so in the market things ran as usual, goods paid for with UNTA dollars or with credit. Except once or twice Ann saw sellers in their aprons shouting red-faced at customers, who shouted right back, arguing over some point of government policy. As Ann passed by one of these arguments, which were no different than those going on among the leaders in East Pavonis, the disputants all stopped and stared at her. She had been recognized. The vegetable seller said loudly, ‘If you Reds would lay off they would just go away!’
‘Ah come on,’ someone retorted. ‘It isn’t her doing it.’
So true, Ann thought as she walked on.
A crowd stood waiting for a tram to come. The transport systems were still running, ready for autonomy. The tent itself was functioning, which was not something to be taken for granted, though clearly most people did; but every tent’s operators
