Good idea, the little red people said.
Yes, the Dalai Lama agreed, but I must admit I am having a hard time finding a new body to inhabit. For one thing there are very few children anywhere. Then also it does not look as if anyone is interested. I looked in Sheffield but everyone was too busy talking. I went to Sabishii but everyone there had their heads stuck in the dirt. I went to Elysium but everyone had assumed the lotus position and could not be roused. I went to Christianopolis but everyone there had other plans. I went to Hiranyagarbha but everyone there said weve already done enough for Tibet. Ive gone everywhere on Mars, to every tent and station, and everywhere people are just too busy. No one wants to be the nineteenth Dalai Lama. And the Bardo is getting colder and colder.
Good luck, the little red people said. Weve been looking ever since John died and we havent even found anyone worth talking to, much less living inside. These big people are all messed up.
The Dalai Lama was discouraged by this response. He was getting very tired, and could not last much longer in the Bardo. So he said, What about one of you?
Well, sure, the little red people said. Wed be honoured. Only it will have to be all of us at once. We do everything like that together.
Why not, said the Dalai Lama, and he transmigrated into one of the little red specks, and that same instant he was there in all of them, all over Mars. The little red people looked up at the humans crashing around above them, a sight which before they had tended to regard as some kind of bad wide-screen movie, and now they found they were filled with all the compassion and wisdom of the eighteen previous lives of the Dalai Lama. They said to each other, Ka wow, these people really are messed up. We thought it was bad before, but look at that, its even worse than we thought. Theyre lucky they cant read each others minds or theyd kill each other. That must be why theyre killing each other they know what theyre thinking themselves, and so they suspect all the others. How ugly. How sad.
They need your help, the Dalai Lama said inside them all. Maybe you can help them.
Maybe, the little red people said. They were dubious, to tell the truth. They had been trying to help humans ever since John Boone died, they had set up whole towns in the porches of every ear on the planet, and talked continuously ever since, sounding very much like John had, trying to get people to wake up and act decently, and never with any effect at all, except to send a lot of people to ear, nose and throat specialists. Lots of people on Mars thought they had tinnitus, but no one ever understood their little red people. It was enough to discourage anyone.
But now the little red people had the compassionate spirit of the Dalai Lama infusing them, and so they decided to try one more time. Perhaps it will take more than whispering in their ears, the Dalai Lama pointed out, and they all agreed. Well have to get their attention some other way.
Have you tried your telepathy on them? the Dalai Lama asked.
Oh no, they said. No way. Too scary. The ugliness might kill us on the spot. Or at least make us real sick.
Maybe not, the Dalai Lama said. Maybe if you blocked off your reception of what they thought, and just beamed your thoughts at them, it would be all right. Just send lots of good thoughts, like an advice beam. Compassion, love, agreeableness, wisdom, even a little common sense.
Well give it a try, the little red people said. But were all going to have to shout at the top of our telepathic voices, all in chorus, because these folks just arent listening.
Ive faced that for nine centuries now, the Dalai Lama said. You get used to it. And you little ones have the advantage of numbers. So give it a try.
And so all the little red people all over Mars looked up and took a deep breath.
Art Randolph was having the time of his life.
Not during the battle for Sheffield, of course that had been a disaster, a breakdown of diplomacy, the failure of everything Art had been trying to do a miserable few days, in fact, during which he had run around sleeplessly trying to meet with every group he thought might help defuse the crisis, and always with the feeling that it was somehow his fault, that if he had done things right it would not have happened. The fight went right to the brink of torching Mars, as in 2061; for a few hours on the afternoon of the Red assault, it had teetered.
But fallen back. Something diplomacy, or the realities of battle (a defensive victory for those on the cable), common sense, sheer chance something had tipped things back from the edge.
And with that nightmare interval past, people had returned to East Pavonis in a thoughtful mood. The consequences of failure had been made clear. They needed to agree on a plan. Many of the radical Reds were dead, or escaped into the outback, and the moderate Reds left in East Pavonis, while angry, were at least there. It was a very uncomfortable and uncertain period. But there they were.
So once again Art began flogging the idea of a constitutional congress. He ran around under the big tent through warrens of industrial warehouses and storage zones and concrete dormitories, down broad streets crowded with a museums worth of heavy vehicles, and everywhere he urged the same thing: constitution. He talked to Nadia, Nirgal, Jackie, Zeyk, Maya, Peter, Ariadne, Rashid, Tariki, Nanao, Sung and H. X. Bor-azjani. He talked to Vlad and Ursula and Marina, and to the Coyote. He talked to a few score young natives he had never met before, all major players in the recent unrest; there were so many of them it began to seem like a textbook demonstration of the polycephalous nature of mass social movements. And to every head of this new hydra Art made the same case: A constitution would legitimate us to Earth, and it would give us a framework for settling disputes among ourselves. And were all gathered here, we could start right away. Some people have plans ready to look at. And with the events of the past week fresh in their minds, people would nod and say, Maybe so, and wander off thinking about it.
Art called up William Fort and told him what he was doing, and got an answer back later the same day. The old man was at a new refugee town in Costa Rica, looking just as distracted as always. Sounds good, he said. And after that Praxis people were checking with Art daily to see what they could do to help organize things. Art became busier than he had ever been, doing what the Japanese there called nema-washi, the preparations for an event: starting strategy sessions for an organizing group, revisiting everyone he had spoken to before, trying, in effect, to talk to every individual on Pavonis Mons. The John Boone method, Coyote commented with his cracked laugh. Good luck!
Sax, packing his few belongings for the diplomatic mission to Earth, said, You should invite the, the United Nations.
Saxs adventure in the storm had knocked him back a bit; he tended to stare around at things, as if stunned by a blow to the head. Art said gently, Sax, we just went to a lot of trouble to kick their butts off this planet.
Saxs adventure in the storm had knocked him back a bit; he tended to stare around at things, as if stunned by a blow to the head. Art said gently, Sax, we just went to a lot of trouble to kick their butts off this planet.
Yes, Sax said, staring at the ceiling. But now co-opt them.
Co-opt the UN! Art considered it. Co-opt the United Nations: it had a certain ring to it. It would be a challenge, diplomatically speaking.
Just before the ambassadors left for Earth, Nirgal came to the Praxis offices to say goodbye. Embracing his young friend, Art was seized with a sudden irrational fear. Off to Earth!
Nirgal was as blithe as ever, his dark brown eyes alight with anticipation. After saying goodbye to the others in the outer office, he sat with Art in an empty corner room of the warehouse.
Are you sure you want to do this? Art asked.
Very sure. I want to see Earth.
Art waggled a hand, uncertain what to say.
Besides, Nirgal added, someone has to go down there and show them who we are.
None better for that than you, my friend. But youll have to watch out for the metanats. Who knows what theyll be up to. And for bad food those areas affected by the flood are sure to have problems with sanitation. And disease vectors. And youll have to be careful about sunstroke, youll be very susceptible
Jackie Boone walked in. Art stopped his travel advisory; Nirgal was no longer listening in any case, but watching Jackie with a suddenly blank expression, as if he had put on a Nirgal mask. And of course no mask could do justice to Nirgal, because the mobility of his face was its essential characteristic; so he did not look like himself at all.
Jackie, of course, saw this instantly. Shut off from her old partner naturally she glared at him. Something had gone awry, Art saw. Both of them had forgotten Art, who would have slipped out of the room if he could have, feeling as if he was holding a lightning rod in a storm. But Jackie was still standing in the doorway, and Art did not care to disturb her at that moment.
So youre leaving us, she said to Nirgal.
Its just a visit.
But why? Why now? Earth means nothing to us now.
Its where we came from.
It is not. We came from Zygote.
Nirgal shook his head. Earth is the home planet. Were an extension of it, here. We have to deal with it.
Jackie waved a hand in disgust, or bafflement: Youre leaving just when youre needed here the most!
Think of it as an opportunity.
I will, she snapped. He had made her angry. And you wont like it.
But youll have what you want.
Fiercely she said, You dont know what I want!
The hair on the back of Arts neck had raised; lightning was about to strike. He would have said he was an eavesdropper by nature, almost a voyeur in fact; but standing right there in the room was not the same, and he found now there were some things he did not care to witness. He cleared his throat. The other two were startled by his noise. With a waggle of the hand he sidled past Jackie and out of the door. Behind him the voices went on bitter, accusatory, filled with pain and baffled fury.
Coyote stared gravely out of the windshield as he drove the ambassadors to Earth south to the elevator, with Art sitting beside him. They rolled slowly through the battered neighbourhoods that bordered the Socket, in the southwest part of Sheffield where the streets had been designed to handle enormous freight container gantries, so that things had an ominous Speeresque quality to them, inhuman and gigantic. Sax was explaining once again to Coyote that the trip to Earth would not remove the travellers from the constitutional congress, that they would contribute by vid, that they would not end up like Thomas Jefferson in Paris, missing the whole thing. Well be on Pavonis, Sax said, in all the senses that matter.
Then everyone will be on Pavonis, Coyote said ominously. He didnt like this trip to Earth for Sax and Maya and Michel and Nirgal; he didnt seem to like the constitutional congress; nothing these days pleased him, he was jumpy, uneasy, irritable. Were not out of the woods yet, he would mutter, you mark my words.
Then the Socket stood before them, the cable emerging black and glossy from the great mass of concrete, like a harpoon plunged into Mars by Earthly powers, holding it fast. After identifying themselves the travellers drove right into the complex, down a big, straight passageway to the enormous chamber at the centre where the cable came down through the Sockets collar, and hovered over a network of pistes crisscrossing the floor. The cable was so exquisitely balanced in its orbit that it never touched Mars at all, but merely hung there with its ten-metre diameter end floating in the middle of the room, the collar in the roof doing no more than stabilizing it; for the rest, its positioning was up to the rockets installed up and down the cable, and, more importantly, to the balance between centrifugal force and gravity which kept it in its areo-synchronous orbit.
A row of elevator cars floated in the air like the cable itself, though for a different reason, as they were electromagnetically suspended. One of them levitated over a piste to the cable, and latched on to the track inlaid in the cables west side, and rose up soundlessly through a valve-door in the collar.
The travellers and their escorts got out of their car. Nirgal was withdrawn, already on his way; Maya and Michel excited; Sax his usual self. One by one they hugged Art and Coyote, stretching up to Art, leaning down to Desmond. For a time they all talked at once, staring at each other, trying to comprehend the moment; it was just a trip, but it felt like more than that. Then the four travellers crossed the floor, and disappeared into a jetway leading up into the next elevator car.
After that Coyote and Art stood there, and watched the car float over to the cable and rise through the valve-door and disappear. Coyotes asymmetrical face clenched into a most uncharacteristic expression of worry, even fear. That was his son, of course, and three of his closest friends, going to a very dangerous place. Well, it was just Earth; but it felt dangerous, Art had to admit. Theyll be okay, Art said, giving the little man a squeeze on the shoulder. Theyll be stars down there. Itll go fine. No doubt true. In fact he felt better himself at his own reassurances. It was the home planet, after all. Humans were made for it. They would be fine. It was the home planet. But still
Back in East Pavonis the congress had begun.
It was Nadias doing, really. She simply started working in the main warehouse on draft passages, and people started joining her, and things snowballed. Once the meetings were going people had to attend or risk losing a say. Nadia shrugged if anyone complained that they werent ready, that things had to be regularized, that they needed to know more, etc; Come on, she said impatiently. Here we are, we might as well get to it.
So a fluctuating group of about three hundred people began meeting daily in the industrial complex of East Pavonis. The main warehouse, designed to hold piste parts and train cars, was huge, and scores of mobile-walled offices were set up against its walls, leaving the central space open, and available for a roughly circular collection of mismatched tables. Ah, Art said when he saw it, the table of tables.