Blue Mars (36 page)

“You don’t seem to believe it’s going to work.” “No. I guess I
don’t.”

“We’re in a transitional period, I think,” Michel said. “At our
age we can’t really believe that we’re still alive, so we act as if it will end
at any minute.”

“Which it could.” Thinking of Simon. Or Tatiana Durova. Or Arkady.

“Of course. But then again it might go on for decades more, or
even centuries. After a while we’ll have to start believing in it.” He sounded
like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. “You’ll look at your
whole hand and then you’ll believe it. And that will be very interesting.”
Nadia wiggled the pink nub at the end of her hand. No fingerprint yet in the
fresh translucent skin. No doubt when it came it would be the same fingerprint
as the one on the other little finger. Very strange.

Art came back from one meeting looking concerned. “I’ve been
asking around about this,” he said, “trying to figure out why they’re doing it.
I put some Praxis operatives on the case, down in the canyon and back on Earth,
and inside the Free Mars leadership.”

Spies, Nadia thought. Now we have spies.

“—appears that they are making private arrangements with Terran
governments concerning immigration. Building settlements and giving places to
people from Egypt, definitely, and probably China too. It’s got to be a quid
pro quo, but we don’t know what they’re getting in return from these countries.
Money, possibly.”

Nadia growled.

In the next couple of days she met on-screen or in person with all
the other members of the executive council. Marion was of course against
pumping any more water into Mari-neris, and so Nadia needed only two more
votes. But Mik-hail and Ariadne and Peter were unwilling to bring the police to
bear if it could be avoided in any other way; and Nadia suspected they were not
much happier than Jackie at the relative weakness of the council. They seemed
willing to make concessions, to avoid an awkward enforcement of a court
judgment they weren’t adamantly behind.

Zeyk clearly wanted to vote against Jackie, but felt constrained
by the Arab constituency in Cairo, and the eyes of the Arab community on him;
control of land and water were both important to them. But the Bedouin were
nomadic, and besides, Zeyk was a strong supporter of the constitution. Nadia
thought he would support her. That left one more to be convinced.

The relationship with Mikhail had never improved, it was as if he
wanted to be closer to Arkady’s memory than she was. Peter she didn’t feel she
understood. Ariadne she didn’t like, but in a way that made it easier; and
Ariadne had come to Cairo as well. So Nadia decided to work on her first.

Ariadne was as committed to the constitution as most of the Dorsa
Brevians, but they were localists as well, and were no doubt thinking about
keeping some independence of their own from the global government. And they too
were far from any water supply. So Ariadne had been wavering.

“Look,” Nadia said to her in a little room across the plaza from
the city offices, “You’ve got to forget about Dorsa Brevia and think about
Mars.” “I am, of course.”

She was irritated that this meeting was taking place; she would
rather have dismissed Nadia out of hand. The merits of the case weren’t what
mattered to her, it was just a matter of precedence, of not having to listen to
any issei. It was power politics and hierarchy to these people now, they had
forgotten the real issues involved. And in this damned city; suddenly Nadia
lost her patience, and she almost shouted, “You’re not! You’re not thinking at
all! This is the first challenge to the constitution, and you’re looking around
for what you can get out of it! I won’t have it!” She waved a finger under
Ariadne’s surprised face: “If you don’t vote to enforce the court ruling, then
the next time something you really want comes up for a council vote you’ll see
reprisals, from me. Do you understand?”

Ariadne’s eyes were like billboards: first shocked, then a moment
of pure fear. Then anger. She said, “I never said I wasn’t going to vote for
enforcement! What are you going ballistic for?”

Nadia returned to a more ordinary argument mode, although still hard
and tense and unrelenting. Finally Ariadne threw up her hands: “It’s what most
of the Dorsa Brevia council wants to do, I was going to vote for it anyway. You
don’t have to be so frantic about it.” And she hurried out of the room, very
upset.

First Nadia felt a surge of triumph. But that look of fear in the
young woman’s eyes—it stuck with her, until she began to feel slightly sick to
her stomach. She remembered Coyote on Pavonis, saying “Power corrupts.” That
was the sick feeling—that first hit of power used, or misused.

Much later that night she was still sick with repulsion, and
almost weeping, she told Art about the confrontation. “That sounds bad,” he
said gravely. “That sounds like a mistake. You still have to deal with her.
When that’s the case, you have to just tweak people.”

“I know I know. God I hate this,” she said. “I want to get away, I
want to do something real.”

He nodded heavily, patted her shoulder.

Before the next meeting, Nadia went over to Jackie and told her
quietly that she had the council votes to put police down at the dam to stop
any further release of water. Then in the meeting itself, she reminded everyone
in an offhand remark that Nirgal would be back among them very soon, along with
Maya and Sax and Michel. This caused several of the Free Mars group on hand to
look thoughtful, though Jackie of course showed no reaction. As they nattered
on after that, Nadia rubbed her finger, distracted, still upset with herself
about the meeting with Ariadne.

The next day the Cairenes agreed to accept the judgment of the
Global Environmental Court. They would cease releasing water from their
reservoir, and the settlements downcanyon would have to exist on piped water,
which would certainly pinch their growth.

“Good,” Nadia said, still bitter. “All that just to obey the law.”

“They’re going to appeal,” Art pointed out.

“I don’t care. They’re done for. And even if they aren’t, they’ve
submitted to the process. Hell, they can win for all I care. It’s the process
that counts, so we win no matter what.”

Art smiled to hear this. A step in her political education, no
doubt, a step Art and Charlotte seemed to have taken long ago. What mattered to
them was not the result of any single disagreement, but the successful use of
the process. If Free Mars represented the majority now—and apparently it did,
as it had the allegiance of almost all the natives, young fools that they
were—then submitting to the constitution meant that they could not simply push
around minority groups by force of numbers. So when Free Mars won something, it
would have to be on the merits of the case, judged by the full array of court
justices, who came from all factions. That was quite satisfying, actually; like
seeing a wall made of delicate materials bear more weight than it looked like
it could, because of a cleverly built framework.

But she had used threats to shore up one beam, and so the whole
thing left a bad taste in her mouth. “I want to do something real.”

“Like plumbing?”

She nodded, not even close to a smile. “Yes. Hydrology.”

“Can I come along?”

“Be a plumber’s helper?”

He laughed. “I’ve done it before.”

Nadia regarded him. He was making her feel better. It was
peculiar, old-fashioned: to go somewhere just to be with someone. It didn’t
happen much anymore. People went where they needed to go, and hung out with
whatever friends they found there, or made new friends. It was the Martian way.
Or maybe just the First Hundred’s way. Or her way.

Anyway, it was clear that doing this, traveling together, was more
than just a friendship, more even perhaps than an affair. But that was not so
bad, she decided. In fact not bad at all. Something to get used to, perhaps.
But there was always something to get used to.

A new finger, for instance. Art was holding her hand, lightly
massaging the new digit. “Does it hurt? Can you bend it?”

It did hurt, a little; and she could bend it, a little. They had
injected some knuckle zone cells, and now it was just longer than the first
joint of her other little finger, the skin still baby pink, unmarred by callus
or scar. Every day a little bigger.

Art squeezed the tip of it ever so gently, feeling the bone
inside. His eyes were round. “You can feel that?”

“Oh yes. It’s like the other fingers, only a bit more sensitive
maybe.”

“Because it’s new.”

“I suppose.”

Only the old lost finger was implicated, somehow; the ghost was
calling again, now that there were signals coming from that end of the hand.
The finger in the brain, Art called it. And no doubt there really was a cluster
of brain cells devoted to that finger, which had been the ghost all along. It
had faded over the years from lack of stimulus, but now it too was growing
back, or being restimulated or reinforced; Vlad’s explanations of the
phenomenon were complex. But these days when she felt the finger, it sometimes
felt just as large as the one on the other hand, even when she was looking
right at it. Like feeling an invisible shell over the new one. Other times she
felt the little thing at its proper size, short and skinny and weak. She could
bend it at the hand knuckle, and just a little at the middle knuckle. The last
kuckle, behind the fingernail, wasn’t there yet. But it was on its way.
Growing. Again Nadia joked about it growing on and on, though it was a creepy
thought. “That would be good,” Art said. “You’d have to get a dog.”

But now she felt confident that wouldn’t happen. The finger seemed
to know what it was doing. It would be all right. It looked normal. Art was
fascinated by it. But not just by it. He massaged her hand, which was a bit
sore, and then her arm and shoulders too. He would massage all of her if she
let him. And judging by how her finger and arm and shoulders felt, she
certainly ought to. He was so relaxed. Life for him was still a daily
adventure, full of marvels and hilarity. People made him laugh every day; that
was a great gift. Big, round-faced, round-bodied, somewhat like Nadia herself
in certain aspects of appearance; balding, unpretentious, graceful on his feet.
Her friend.

Well, she loved Art, of course. She had since Dorsa Brevia at
least. Something like her feeling for Nirgal, who was a most beloved nephew or
student or godchild or grandchild or child; and Art, therefore, one of her
child’s friends. Actually he was a bit older than Nirgal, but still, those two
were like brothers. That was the problem. But all these calculations were being
progressively thrown off by their increasing longevity. When he was only five
percent younger than her, would it matter anymore? When they had gone through
thirty years of intense experience together, as they already had, as equals and
collaborators, architects of a proclamation, a constitution, and a government;
close friends, confidants, helpers, massage partners; did it matter, the
different number of years past their youths they were? No it did not. It was
obvious, one only had to think about it. And then try to feel it too.

They didn’t need her in Cairo anymore, they didn’t need her in
Sheffield right that second. Nirgal would be back soon, and he would help to
keep Jackie in check; not a fun job, but that was his problem, no one could
help him there. It was hard when you fixed all your love on one person. As she
had with Arkady, for so many years, even though he had been dead for most of
them. It made no sense; but she missed him. And she still got angry at him. He
had not even lived long enough to realize how much he had missed. The happy
fool. Art was happy too, but he was no fool. Or not much. To Nadia all happy
people were a bit foolish by definition, otherwise how could they be so happy?
But she liked them anyway, she needed them. They were like her beloved
Satchmo’s music; and given the world, and all that it held, that happiness was
a very courageous way to live—not a set of circumstances, but a set of
attitudes. “Yes, come plumbing with me,” she said to Art, and hugged him hard,
hard, as if you could capture happiness by squeezing it hard enough. She pulled
back and he was bug-eyed with surprise, as when holding her little finger.

But she was still president
of the executive council, and despite her resolve, every day they
bound her to the job a little more tightly, with “developments” of all kinds.
German immigrants wanted to build a new harbor town called Blochs Hoffnung on
the peninsula that cut the North Sea in half, and then dig a broad canal
through the peninsula. Red eco-teurs objected to this plan, and blew up the
piste running down the peninsula. They blew up the piste leading to the top of
Biblis Patera as well, to indicate they objected to that as well. Ecopoets in
Amazonia wanted to start massive forest fires. Other ecopoets in Kasei wanted
to remove the fire-dependent forest that Sax had planted in the great curve of
the valley (this petition was the first to receive unanimous approval from the
GEC). Reds living around White Rock, an eighteen-kilometer-wide pure white
mesa, wanted it declared a “kami site” forbidden to human access. A Sabishii
design team was recommending that they build a new capital city on the
North-Sea coast at 0 longitude, where there was a deep bay. New Clarke was
getting crowded with what looked suspiciously like metanat security
snoopertroopers. The Da Vinci techs wanted to give control of Martian space
over to an agency of the global government that didn’t exist. Senzeni Na wanted
to fill their mohole. The Chinese were requesting permission to build an
entirely new space elevator tethered near Schiaparelli Crater, to accommodate
their own emigration, and contract out to others. Immigration was growing every
month.