So?
Well He looked suddenly concerned. I dont think that would be a good thing. Do you?
I think it should come down.
Now he looked annoyed. Better stay out of the fall line then.
I will.
I dont want anyone bringing it down without a full discussion, he told her sharply. This is important. It should be a decision made by the whole Martian community. I think we need the elevator, myself.
Except we have no way to take possession of it.
That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, its not something for you to take into your own hands. I heard what happened in Burroughs, but its different here, you understand? We decide strategy together. It needs to be discussed.
Its a group thats very good at that, Ann said bitterly. Everything was always thoroughly discussed and then always she lost. It was past time for that. Someone had to act. But again Peter looked as if he were being taken from his real work. He thought he would be making the decisions about the elevator, she could see that. Part of a more general feeling of ownership of the planet, no doubt, the birthright of the nisei, displacing the First Hundred and all the rest of the issei. If John had lived that would not have been easy, but the king was dead, long live the king her son, king of the nisei, the first true Martians.
But king or not, there was a Red army now converging on Pavonis Mons. They were the strongest military operation left on the planet, and they intended to complete the work begun when Earth had been hit by its great flood. They did not believe in consensus or compromise, and for them, knocking down the cable was killing two birds with one stone: it would destroy the last police stronghold, and it would also sever easy contact between Earth and Mars, a primary Red goal. No, knocking down the cable was the obvious thing to do.
But Peter did not seem to know this. Or perhaps he did not care. Ann tried to tell him, but he just nodded, muttering, Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So arrogant, like all the Greens, so blithe and stupid with all their prevaricating, their dealing with Earth, as if you could ever get anything from such a leviathan. No. It was going to take direct action, as in the drowning of Burroughs, as in all the acts of sabotage that had set the stage for the revolution. Without those the revolution wouldnt even have begun, or if it had it would have been crushed immediately, as in 2061.
Yeah yeah. Wed better call a meeting then Peter said, looking as annoyed at her as she felt at him.
Yeah yeah, Ann said heavily. Meetings. But they had their uses; people could assume they meant something, while the real work went on elsewhere.
Ill try to set one up, Peter said. She had got his attention at last, she saw; but there was an unpleasant look on his face, as if he had been threatened. Before things get out of hand.
Things are already out of hand, she told him, and cut the connection.
* * *
She checked the news on the various channels, Mangalavid, the Reds private nets, the Terran summaries. Though Pavonis and the elevator were now the focus of everyone on Mars, the physical convergence on the volcano was only partial. It appeared to her that there were more Red guerrilla units on Pavonis than the Green units of Free Mars and their allies; but it was hard to be sure. Kasei and the most radical wing of the Reds, called the Kakaze (fire wind), had recently occupied the north rim of Pavonis, taking over the train station and tent at Lastflow. The Reds Ann had travelled with, most of them from the old Red mainstream, discussed moving around the rim and joining the Kakaze, but decided in the end to stay in East Pavonis. Ann observed this discussion silently but was glad at the result, as she wanted to keep her distance from Kasei and Dao and their crowd. She was pleased to stay in East Pavonis.
Many Free Mars troops were staying there as well, moving out of their cars into the abandoned warehouses. East Pavonis was becoming a major concentration of revolutionary groups of all kinds; and a couple of days after her arrival, Ann went in and walked over compacted regolith to one of the biggest warehouses in the tent, to take part in a general strategy session.
The meeting went about as she expected. Nadia was at the centre of the discussion, and it was useless talking to her now. Ann just sat on a chair against the back wall, watching the rest of them circle the situation. They did not want to say what Peter had already admitted to her in private: there was no way to get UNTA off the space elevator. Before they conceded that they were going to try to talk the problem out of existence.
Late in the meeting, Sax Russell came over to sit by her side.
A space elevator, he said. It could be used.
Now, Ann was not the least bit comfortable talking to Sax. She knew that he had suffered brain damage at the hands of UNTA security, and had taken a treatment that had changed his personality; but somehow this had not helped at all; it only made things very strange, in that sometimes he seemed to her to be the same old Sax, as familiar as a much-hated brother; while at other times he did indeed seem like a completely different person, inhabiting Saxs body. These two contrary impressions oscillated rapidly, even sometimes co-existed; just before joining her, as he had talked with Nadia and Art, he had looked like a stranger, a dapper old man with a piercing glare, talking in Saxs voice and Saxs old style. Now as he sat next to her, she could see that the changes to his face were utterly superficial. But though he looked familiar the stranger was now inside him for here was a man who halted and jerked as he delved painfully after what he was trying to say, and then as often as not came out with something scarcely coherent.
The elevator is a, a device. For raising up. A a tool.
Not if we dont control it, Ann said to him carefully, as if instructing a child.
Control Sax said, thinking over the concept as if it was entirely new to him. Influence? If the elevator can be brought down by anyone who really wants to, then He trailed away, lost in his thoughts.
Then what? Ann prompted.
Then its controlled by all. Consensual existence. Its obvious?
It was as if he were translating from a foreign language. This was not Sax; Ann could only shake her head, and try gently to explain. The elevator was the conduit for the metanationals to reach Mars, she told him. It was in the possession of the metanats now, and the revolutionaries had no means to kick their police forces off of it. Clearly the thing to 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 clowns 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. Its our conduit to Terra just as much as its their conduit to Mars.
But we dont need a conduit to Terra, Ann said. Its not a physical relationship for us, dont you see? Im not saying we dont need to have an influence on Terra, Im not an isolationist like Kasei or Coyote. I agree we need to try to work on them. But its not a physical thing, dont you see? Its a matter of ideas, of talk, and perhaps a few emissaries. Its an information exchange. At least it is when its going right. Its when it gets into a physical thing a resource exchange, or mass emigration, or police control thats 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 couldnt 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 whats there, Sax. The metanat directors and the UN and the governments will look up and see whats there, and act accordingly. If the cables gone they just dont have the resources or the time to mess with us right now. If the cables here, then theyll want us. Theyll think, well, we could do it. And therell 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, Weve 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 werent 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 couldnt 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 wasnt 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. Thats what governments fear the most; mass protests in the cities. Hundreds of thousands of people going into the streets to reject the current system. Thats what Nirgal means when he says political power comes out of the look in peoples eye. And not out of the end of a gun.
And so? Ann said.
Sax gestured at the people in the warehouse. Theyre 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 cant 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 peoples eye, and the phrase is suddenly conjoined with an image: a face glowing with passionate conviction, another phrase: you cant just do what you want! And so it occurred to her (the look on that young womans face!) that it was not just the cables 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 dont 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 peoples eye. You could fight forever, but if people werent 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 isnt 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 tents operators had their task obvious before them. They mined their raw materials themselves, mostly out of the air; their solar collectors and nuclear reactors were all the power they needed. So the tents were physically fragile, but if left alone, they could very well become politically autonomous; there was no reason for them to be owned, no justification for it.
So the necessities were served. Daily life plodded on, barely perturbed by revolution.
Or so it seemed at first glance. But there in the streets also were armed groups, young natives in threes and fours and fives, standing on street corners. Revolutionary militias around their missile launchers and remote sensing dishes Green or Red, it didnt matter, though they were almost certainly Greens. People eyed them as they walked by, or stopped to chat and find out what they were doing. Keeping an eye on the Socket, the armed natives said. Though Ann could see that they were functioning as police as well. Part of the scene, accepted, supported. People grinned as they chatted; these were their police, they were fellow Martians, here to protect them, to guard Sheffield for them. People wanted them there, that was clear. If they hadnt, then every approaching questioner would have been a threat, every glance of resentment an attack; which eventually would have forced the militias from the street corners into some safer place. Peoples faces, staring in concert; this ran the world.