so,’ Nadia said mulishly. She didn’t care about that, it was the past and didn’t matter; she waved it aside and would not be swerved from her point: ‘But will you try?’
Ann stared at her stubborn old friend, at this moment almost youthful with fear, utterly focused and alive.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Ann said grimly. ‘But from what you say, it’s already too late.’
It was indeed too late. The rover camp Ann had been staying in was deserted, and when she got on the wrist and called around, she got no answers. So she left Nadia and the rest of them stewing in the East Pavonis warehouse complex, and drove her rover around to Lastflow, hoping to find some of the Red leaders based there. But Lastflow had been abandoned by the Reds, and none of the locals knew where they had gone. People were watching TVs in the stations and cafe windows, but when Ann looked too she saw no news of the fighting, not even on Mangalavid. A feeling of desperation began to seep into her grim mood; she wanted to do something but did not know how. She tried her wristpad again, and to her surprise Kasei answered on their private band. His face in the little image looked shockingly like John Boone’s, so much so that in her confusion Ann didn’t at first hear what he said. He looked so happy, it was John to the life!
‘… had to do it,’ he was telling her. Ann wondered if she had asked him about that. ‘If we don’t do something they’ll tear this world apart. They’ll garden it right to the tops of the big four.’
This echoed Ann’s thoughts on the ledge enough to shock her again, but she collected herself and said, ‘We’ve got to work within the framework of the discussions, Kasei, or else we’ll start a civil war.’
‘We’re a minority, Ann. The framework doesn’t care about minorities.’
‘I’m not so sure. That’s what we have to work on. And even if we do decide on active resistance, it doesn’t have to be here and now. It doesn’t have to be Martians killing Martians.’
‘They’re not Martian.’ There was a glint in his eye, his expression was Hirokolike in its distance from the ordinary world. In that sense he was not like John at all. The worst of both parents; and so they had another prophet, speaking a new language.
‘Where are you now?’
‘West Sheffield.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Take the Socket, and then bring down the cable. We’re the ones with the weapons and the experience. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble.’
‘You didn’t bring it down first try.’
‘Too fancy. We’ll just chop it down this time.’
‘I thought that wasn’t the way to do it.’
‘It’ll work.’
‘Kasei, I think we need to negotiate with the Greens.’
He shook his head, impatient with her, disgusted that she had lost her nerve when push came to shove. ‘After the cable is down we’ll negotiate. Look Ann, I’ve gotta go. Stay out of the fall line.’
‘Kasei!’
But he was gone. No one listened to her – not her enemies, not her friends, not her family – though she would have to call Peter. She would have to try Kasei again. She needed to be there in person, to get his attention as she had Nadia’s – yes, it had come to that: to get their attention she had to shout right in their faces.
The possibility of getting blocked around East Pavonis kept her going west from Lastflow, circling counterclockwise as she had the day before, to come on the Red force from its rear, no doubt the best approach anyway. It was about a hundred and fifty kilometre drive from Lastflow to the western edge of Sheffield, and as she sped around the summit, just outside the piste, she spent the time trying to call the various forces on the mountain, with no success. Explosive static marked the fight for Sheffield, and memories of ’61 erupted with these brutal bursts of white noise, frightening her; she drove the rover as fast as it would go, keeping it on the piste’s narrow outside apron to make the ride smoother and faster – a hundred kilometres per hour, then faster – racing, really, to try to stave off the disaster of a civil war – there was a terrible dreamlike quality to it. And especially in that it was too late, too late. In moments like these she was always too late. In the sky over the caldera, starred clouds appeared instantaneously – explosions, without a doubt missiles fired at the cable and shot down in midflight, in white puffs like incompetent fireworks, clustered over Sheffield and peaking in the region of the cable, but puffing into existence all over the vast summit, then drifting off east on the Jetstream. Some of those rockets were getting nailed a long way from their target.
Looking up at the battle overhead she almost drove into the first tent of west Sheffield, which was already punctured. As the town had grown westward new tents had attached to the previous ones like lobes of pillow lava; now the construction moraines outside the latest tent were littered with bits of framework, like shards of glass, and the tent fabric was missing in the remaining soccer-ball shapes. Her rover bounced wildly over a mound of basalt rubble; she braked, drove slowly up to the wall. The vehicle lock doors were stuck shut. She put on her suit and helmet, ducked into the rover’s own lock, left the car. Heart pounding hard, she walked up to the city wall and climbed over it into Sheffield.
The streets were deserted. Glass and bricks and bamboo shards and twisted magnesium beams lay scattered on the streetgrass. At this elevation, tent failure caused flawed buildings to pop like balloons; windows gaped empty and dark, and here and there complete rectangles of unbroken windows lay scattered, like great clear shields. And there was a body, face frosted or dusted. There would be a lot of dead, people weren’t used to thinking about decompression any more, it was an old settlers’ worry. But not today.
Ann kept walking east. ‘Look for Kasei or Dao or Marion or Peter,’ she said to her wrist again and again. But no one replied.
She followed a narrow street just inside the southern wall of the tent. Harsh sunlight, sharp-edged black shadows. Some buildings had held, their windows in place, their lights on inside. No one to be seen in them, of course. Ahead, the cable was just visible, a black vertical stroke rising into the sky out of east Sheffield, like a geometric line become visible in their reality.
The Red emergency band was a signal transmitted in a rapidly varying wavelength, synchronized for everyone who had the current encryption. This system cut through some kinds of radio jamming very well; nevertheless Ann was surprised when a crow voice cawed from her wrist, ‘Ann, it’s Dao. Up here.’
He was actually in sight, waving at her from a doorway into a building’s little emergency lock. He and a group of some twenty people were working with a trio of mobile rocket-launchers out in the street. Ann ran over to them, ducked into the doorway beside Dao. ‘This has to stop!’ she cried.
Dao looked surprised. ‘We’ve almost got the Socket.’
‘But what then?’
Talk to Kasei about that. He’s up ahead, going for Arsiaview.’
One of their rockets whooshed away, its noise faint in the thin air. Dao was back at it. Ann ran forward up the street, keeping as close as she could to the buildings siding it. It was obviously dangerous, but at that moment she didn’t care if she were killed or not, so she had no fear. Peter was somewhere in Sheffield, in command of the Green revolutionaries
