Kim Stanley Robinson - Blue Mars

But they were few; she could almost name them individually. The regular contributors to the Journal more or less. As for the rest of the Reds, the Kakaze and the other radicals, what they advocated was a kind of metaphysical position, a cult – they were religious fanatics, the equivalent of Hiroko’s Greens, members of some kind of rock-worshipping sect. Ann had very little in common with them, when it came down to it; they formulated their Redness from a completely different worldview.

And given that there was that kind of fractionization among the Reds themselves, then what could one say about the Martian independence movement as a whole? Well. They were going to fall out. It was happening already.

Ann sat down carefully on the edge of the final bench. A good view. It appeared there was a station of some kind down there on the caldera floor, though from five thousand metres up, it was hard to be sure. Even the ruins of old Sheffield were scarcely visible – ah – there they were, on the floor under the new town, a tiny pile of rubble with some straight lines and plane surfaces in it. Faint vertical scorings on the wall above might have been caused by the fall of the city in ’61. It was hard to say.

The tented settlements still on the rim were like toy villages in paperweights. Sheffield with its skyline, the low warehouses across from her to the east, Lastflow, the various smaller tents all around the rim … many of them had merged, to become a kind of greater Sheffield, covering almost 180° of the rim, from Lastflow around to the southwest, where pistes followed the fallen cable down the long slope of west Tharsis to Amazonis Planitia. All the towns and stations would always be tented, because at twenty-seven kilometres high the air would always be a tenth as thick as it was at the datum – or sea level, one could now call it. Meaning the atmosphere up here was still only thirty or forty millibars thick.

Tent cities forever; but with the cable (she could not see it) spearing Sheffield, development would certainly continue, until they had built a tent city entirely ringing the caldera, looking down into it. No doubt they would then tent the caldera itself, and occupy the round floor – add about fifteen hundred square kilometres to the city, though it was a question who would want to live at the bottom of such a hole, like living at the bottom of a mohole, rock walls rising up around you as if you were in some circular roofless cathedral … perhaps it would appeal to some. The Bogdanovists had lived in moholes for years, after all. Grow forests, build climbers’ huts or rather millionaires’ penthouses on the arcuate balcony ledges, cut staircases into the sides of the rock, install glass elevators that took all day to go up or down … rooftops, terraces, skyscrapers reaching up toward the rim, heliports on their flat round roofs, pistes, flying freeways … oh yes, the whole summit of Pavonis Mons, caldera and all, could be covered by the great world city, which was always growing, growing like a fungus over every rock in the solar system. Billions of people, trillions of people, quadrillions of people, all as close to immortal as they could make themselves …

She shook her head, in a great confusion of spirits. The radicals in Lastflow were not her people, not really, but unless they succeeded, the summit of Pavonis and everywhere else on Mars would become part of the great world city. She tried to concentrate on the view, she tried to feel it, the awe of the symmetrical formation, the love of rock hard under her bottom. Her feet hung over the edge of the bench, she kicked her heels against basalt; she could throw a pebble and it would fall five thousand metres. But she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t feel it. Petrification. So numb, for so long … She sniffed, shook her head, pulled her feet in over the edge. Walked back up to her rover.

She dreamed of the long run-out.The landslide was rolling across the floor of Melas Chasma, about to strike her. Everything visible with surreal clarity. Again she remembered Simon, again she groaned and got off the little dyke, going through the motions, appeasing a dead man inside her, feeling awful. The ground was vibrating—

She woke, by her own volition she thought – escaping, running away – but there was a hand, pulling hard on her arm.

‘Ann, Ann, Ann.’

It was Nadia. Another surprise. Ann struggled up, disoriented. ‘Where are we?’

‘Pavonis, Ann. The revolution. I came over and woke you because a fight has broken out between Kasei’s Reds and the Greens in Sheffield.’

The present rolled over her like the landslide in her dream. She jerked out of Nadia’s grasp, groped for her shirt. ‘Wasn’t my rover locked?’

‘I broke in.’

‘Ah.’ Ann stood up, still foggy, getting more annoyed the more she understood the situation. ‘Now what happened?’

‘They launched missiles at the cable.’

‘They did!’ Another jolt, further clearing away the fog. ‘And?’

‘It didn’t work. The cable’s defence systems shot them down. They’ve got a lot of hardware up there now, and they’re happy to be able to use it at last. But now the Reds are moving into Sheffield from the west, firing more rockets, and the UN forces on Clarke are bombing the first launch sites, over on Ascraeus, and they’re threatening to bomb every armed force down here. This is just what they wanted. And the Reds think it’s going to be like Burroughs, obviously, they’re trying to force the action. So I came to you. Look, Ann, I know we’ve been fighting a lot. I haven’t been very, you know, patient, but look, this is just too much . Everything could fall apart at the last minute – the UN could decide the situation here is anarchy, and come up from Earth and try to take over again.’

‘Where are they?’ Ann croaked. She pulled on pants, went to the bathroom. Nadia followed her right in. This too was a surprise; in Underhill it might have been normal between them, but it had been a long long time since Nadia had followed her into a bathroom talking obsessively while Ann washed her face and sat down and peed. ‘They’re still based in Lastflow, but now they’ve cut the rim piste and the one to Cairo, and they’re fighting in west Sheffield, and around the Socket. Reds fighting Greens.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘So will you talk to the Reds, will you stop them?’

A sudden fury swept through Ann. ‘You drove them to this,’ she shouted in Nadia’s face, causing Nadia to crash back into the door. Ann got up and took a step toward Nadia and yanked her trousers up, shouting still: ‘You and your smug, stupid terraforming, it’s all green green green green, with never a hint of compromise! It’s just as much your fault as theirs, since they have no hope!’

‘Maybe 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!