Kim Robinson - Blue Mars

The plaza devoted to the food market, however, looked as it always had. Most food was 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;Tjut every tent’s 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 didn’t 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 hadn’t, 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. People’s faces, staring in concert; this ran the world.

So Ann brooded over the next few days. And even more so after she took a rim train in the direction opposite to Sheffield, counterclockwise to the north arc of the rim. There Kasei and Dao and the Kakaze were occupying apartments in the little tent at Lastflow. Apparently they had forcibly evicted some noncombatant residents, who naturally had trained down to Sheffield in fury, demanding to be reinstated in their homes, and reporting to Peter and the rest of the green leaders that the Reds had set up truck-drawn rocket launchers on the north rim, with the rockets aimed at the elevator and Sheffield more generally.

So Ann walked out into Lastflow’s little station in a bad mood, angry at the Kakaze’s arrogance, as stupid in its way as the greens’. They had done well in the Burroughs campaign, seizing the dike very visibly to give everyone a warning, then taking it on themselves to breach the dike after all the other revolutionary factions had gathered on the heights to the south, ready to rescue the city’s civilian population while the metanat security were forced to retreat. The Kakaze had seen what had been needed and they had done it, without getting bogged down in debate. Without their decisiveness everyone would still be gathered around Burroughs, and the metanats no doubt organizing a Terran expeditionary force to relieve it. It had been a perfectly delivered coup.

Now it seemed that success had gone to their head.

Lastflow had been named after the depression it occupied, a fan-shaped lava flow extending more than a hundred kilometers down the northeast flank of the mountain. It was the only blemish in what was otherwise a flawlessly circular summit cone and caldera, and clearly it had come very late in the volcano’s history of eruptions. Standing down in the depression, one’s view of the rest of the summit was cut off — it was like being in a shallow hanging valley, with little visible in any direction — until one walked out to the drop-off at rim’s edge, and saw the huge cylinder of the caldera coring the planet, and on the far rim the skyline of Sheffield, looking like a tiny Manhattan over forty kilometers away.

The curtailed view perhaps explained why the depression had been one of the last parts of the rim to be developed. But now it was filled by a fair-sized tent, six kilometers in diameter and a hundred meters high, heavily reinforced as all tents up here had to be. The settlement had been home mostly to commuter laborers in the rim’s many industries. Now the rimfront district had been taken over by the Kakaze, and just outside the tent stood a fleet of large rovers, no doubt the ones that had caused the rumors about rocket launchers.

As Ann was led to the restaurant that Kasei had made his headquarters, she was assured by her guides that this was indeed the case; the rovers did haul rocket launchers, which were ready to flatten UNTA’s last refuge on Mars. Her guides were obviously happy about this, and happy also to be able to tell her about it, happy to meet her and guide her around. A varied bunch — mostly natives, with some Terran newcomers and old-timers, of all ethnic backgrounds. Among them were a few faces Ann recognized: Etsu Okakura, al-Khan, Yussuf. A lot of young natives unknown to her stopped them at the restaurant door to shake her hand, grinning enthusiastically. The Kakaze: they were, she had to admit to herself, the wing of the Reds for which she felt the least sympathy. Angry ex-Terrans or idealistic young natives from the tents, their stone eyeteeth dark in their smiles, their eyes glittering as they got this chance to meet her, as they spoke of kami, the need for purity, the intrinsic value of rock, the rights of the planet, and so on. In short, fanatics. She shook their hands and nodded, trying not to let her discomfort show.

Inside the restaurant Kasei and Dao were sitting by a window, drinking dark beer. Everything in the room stopped on Ann’s entrance, and it took a while for people to be introduced, for Kasei and Dao to welcome her with hugs, for meals and conversations to resume. They got her something to eat from the kitchen. The restaurant workers came out to meet her; they were Kakaze as well. Ann waited until they were gone and people had gone back to their tables, feeling impatient and awkward. These were her spiritual children, the media always were saying; she was the original Red; but in truth they made her uncomfortable.

Kasei, in excellent spirits, as he had been ever since the revolution began, said “We’re going to bring down the cable in about a week.”

“Oh you are!” Ann said. “Why wait so long?”

Dao missed her sarcasm. “It’s a matter of warning people, so they have time to get off the equator.” Though normally a sour man, today he was as cheery as Kasei.

“And off the cable too?”

“If they feel like it. But even if they evacuate it and give it to us, it’s still coming down.”

“How? Are those really rocket launchers out there?”

“Yes. But those are there in case they come down and try to retake Sheffield. As for bringing down the cable, breaking it here at the base isn’t the way to do it.”

“The control rockets might be able to adjust to disruptions at the bottom,” Kasei explained. “Hard to say what would happen, really. But a break just above the areosynchronous point would decrease damage to the equator, and keep New Clarke from flying off as fast as the first one did. We want to minimize the drama of this, you know, avoid any martyrs we can. Just the demolition of a building, you know. Like a building past its usefulness.”