Blue Mars Part 8

Coyote stared gravely out the winds.h.i.+eld as he drove the amba.s.sadors to Earth south to the elevator, with Art sitting beside him. They rolled slowly through the battered neighborhoods 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 travelers from the const.i.tutional congress, that they would contribute by vid, that they would not end up like Thomas Jefferson in Paris, missing the whole thing. "We'll be on Pavonis," Sax said, "in all the senses that matter."

"Then everyone will be on Pavonis," Coyote said ominously. He didn't like this trip to Earth for Sax and Maya and Michel and Nirgal; he didn't seem to like the const.i.tutional congress; nothing these days pleased him, he was jumpy, uneasy, irritable. "We're 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 ma.s.s of concrete, like a harpoon plunged into Mars by Earthly powers, holding it fast. After identifying themselves the travelers drove right into the complex, down a big straight pa.s.sageway to the enormous chamber at the center, where the cable came down through the socket's collar, and hovered over a network of pistes crisscrossing the floor. The cable was so exquisitely balanced in its...o...b..t that it never touched Mars at all, but merely hung there with its ten-meter 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 areosynchronous...o...b..t.

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 onto the track inlaid in the cable's west side, and rose up soundlessly through a valve door in the collar.

The travelers 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 Nirgal was withdrawn, already on his way; Maya and Michel excited; Sax his usual self.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 travelers 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. Coyote's 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. "They'll be okay," Art said, giving the little man a squeeze on the shoulder. "They'll be stars down there. It'll go fine." No doubt true. In fact he felt better himself at his own rea.s.surances. 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 Nadia's doing, really. She simply started working in the main warehouse on draft pa.s.sages, and people started joining her, and things s...o...b..lled. Once the meetings were going people had to attend or risk losing a say. Nadia shrugged if anyone complained that they weren't 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 s.p.a.ce open, and available for a roughly circular collection of mismatched tables. "Ah," Art said when he saw it, "the table of tables."

Of course there were people who wanted a list of delegates, so that they knew who could vote, who could speak, and so on. Nadia, who was quickly taking on the role of chairperson, suggested they accept all requests to become a delegation from any Martian group, as long as the group had had some tangible existence before the conference began. "We might as well be inclusive."

The const.i.tutional scholars from Dorsa Brevia agreed that the congress should be conducted by members of voting delegations, and the final result then voted on by the populace at large. Charlotte, who had helped to draft the Dorsa Brevia doc.u.ment twelve m-years before, had led a group since then in working up plans for a government, in antic.i.p.ation of a successful revolution. They were not the only ones to have done this; schools in South Fossa and at the university in Sabis.h.i.+ had taught courses in the matter, and many of the young natives in the warehouse were well versed in the issues they were tackling. "It's kind of scary," Art remarked to Nadia. "Win a revolution and a bunch of lawyers pop out of the woodwork."

"Always."

Charlotte's group had made a list of potential delegates to a const.i.tutional congress, including all Martian settlements with populations over five hundred. Quite a few people would therefore be represented twice, Nadia pointed out, once by location and again by political affiliation. The few groups not on the list complained to a new committee, which allowed almost all pet.i.tioners to join. And Art made a call to Derek Hastings, and extended an invitation to UNTA to join as a delegation as well; the surprised Hastings got back to them a few days later, with a positive response. He would come down the cable himself.

And so after about a week's jockeying, with many other matters being worked on at the same time, they had enough agreement to call for a vote of approval of the delegate list; and because it had been so inclusive, it pa.s.sed almost unanimously. And suddenly they had a real congress. It was made up of the following delegations, with anywhere from one to ten people in each delegation: Towns: Acheron Nicosia Cairo Odessa Harmakhis Vallis Sabis.h.i.+ Christianopolis Bogdanov Vishniac Hiranyagarba Mauss Hyde New Clarke Bradbury Point Sergei Korolyov DuMartheray Crater South Station Sheffield Senzeni Na Echus Overlook Dorsa Brevia Dao Vallis South Fossa Rumi New Vanuatu Prometheus Gramsci Mareotis Burroughs refugees organization Libya Station Tharsis Tholus Overhangs Reull Vallis southern caravanserai Nuova Bologna Nirgal Vallis Montepulciano Margaritifer Plinth Great Escarpment caravanserai Da Vinci The Elysian League h.e.l.l's Gate Political Parties and Other Organizations: Booneans Reds Bogdanovists Schnellingistas Marsfirst Free Mars The Ka Praxis Qahiran Mahjari League Green Mars United Nations Transitional Authority Kakaze Editorial Board of The Journal of Areological Studies The Journal of Areological Studies s.p.a.ce Elevator Authority Christian Democrats The Metanational Economic Activity Coordination Committee Bolognan Neomarxists Friends of the Earth Biotique Separation de l'Atmosphere General meetings began in the morning around the table of tables, then moved out in many small working groups to offices in the warehouse, or buildings nearby. Every morning Art showed up early and brewed great pots of coffee, kava, and kavajava, his favorite. It perhaps was not much of a job, given the significance of the enterprise, but Art was happy doing it. Every day he was surprised to see a congress convening at all; and observing the size of it, he felt that helping to get it started was probably going to be his princ.i.p.al contribution. He was not a scholar, and he had few ideas about what a Martian const.i.tution ought to include. Getting people together was what he was good at, and he had done that. Or rather he and Nadia had, for Nadia had stepped in and taken the lead just when they had needed her. She was the only one of the First Hundred on hand who had everyones trust; this gave her a bit of genuine natural authority. Now, without any fuss, without seeming to notice she was doing it, she was exerting that power.

And so now it was Art's great pleasure to become, in effect, Nadia's personal a.s.sistant. He arranged her days, and did everything he could to make sure they ran smoothly. This included making a good pot of kavajava first thing every morning, for Nadia was one of many of them fond of that initial jolt toward alertness and general goodwill. Yes, Art thought, personal a.s.sistant and drug dispenser, that was his destiny at this point in history. And he was happy. Just watching people look at Nadia was a pleasure in itself. And the way she looked back: interested, sympathetic, skeptical, an edge developing quickly if she thought someone was wasting her time, a warmth kindling if she was impressed by their contribution. And people knew this, they wanted to please her. They tried to keep to the point, to make a contribution. They wanted that particular warm look in her eye. Very strange eyes they were, really, when you looked close: hazel, basically, but flecked with innumerable tiny patches of other colors, yellow, black, green, blue. A mesmerizing quality to them. Nadia focused her full attention on people- she was willing to believe you, to take your side, to make sure your case didn't get lost in the shuffle; even the Reds, who knew she had been fighting with Ann, trusted her to make sure they were heard. So the work coalesced around her; and all Art really had to do was watch her at work, and enjoy it, and help where he could.

And so the debates began.

In the first week many arguments concerned simply what a const.i.tution was, what form it should take, and whether they should have one at all. Charlotte called this the meta-conflict, the argument about what the argument was about- a very important matter, she said when she saw Nadia squint unhappily, "because in settling it, we set the limits on what we can decide. If we decide to include economic and social issues in the const.i.tution, for instance, then this is a very different kind of thing than if we stick to purely political or legal matters, or to a very general statement of principles."

To help structure even this debate, she and the Dorsa Brevia scholars had come with a number of different "blank const.i.tutions," which blocked out different kinds of const.i.tutions without actually filling in their contents. These blanks did little, however, to stop the objections of those who maintained that most aspects of social and economic life ought not to be regulated at all. Support for such a "minimal state" came from a variety of viewpoints that otherwise made strange bedfellows: anarchists, libertarians, neotraditional capitalists, certain greens, and so on. To the most extreme of these antistatists, writing up any government at all was a kind of defeat, and they conceived of their role in the congress as making the new government as small as possible.

Sax heard about this argument in one of the nightly calls from Nadia and Art, and he was as willing to think about it seriously as he was anything else. "It's been found that a few simple rules can regulate very complex behavior. There's a cla.s.sic computer model for flocking birds, for instance, which only has three rules- keep an equal distance from everyone around you- don't change speed too fast- avoid stationary objects. Those will model the flight of a flock quite nicely."

"A computer flock maybe," Nadia scoffed. "Have you ever seen chimney swifts at dusk?"

After a moment Sax's reply arrived: "No."

"Well, take a look when you get to Earth. Meanwhile we can't be having a const.i.tution that says only 'don't change speed too fast.'"

Art thought this was funny, but Nadia was not amused. In general she had little patience for the minimalist arguments. "Isn't it the equivalent of letting the metanats run things?" she would say. "Letting might be right?"

"No, no," Mikhail would protest. "That's not what we mean at all!"

"It seems very like what you are saying. And for some it's obviously a kind of cover- a pretend principle that is really about keeping the rules that protect their property and privileges, and letting the rest go to h.e.l.l."

"No, not at all."

"Then you must prove it at the table. Everything that government might involve itself in, you have to make the case against. You have to argue it point by point."

And she was so insistent about this, not scolding like Maya would have but simply adamant, that they had to agree: everything was at least on the table for discussion. Therefore the various blank const.i.tutions made sense, as starting points; and therefore they should get on with it. A vote on it was taken, and the majority agreed to give it a try.

And so there they were, the first hurdle jumped. Everyone had agreed to work according to the same plan. It was amazing, Art thought, zooming from meeting to meeting, filled with admiration for Nadia. She was not your ordinary diplomat, she by no means followed the empty vessel model that Art aspired to; but things got done nevertheless. She had the charisma of the sensible. He hugged her every time he pa.s.sed her, he kissed the top of her head; he loved her. He ran around with that wealth of good feeling, and dropped in on all the sessions he could, watching to see how he could help keep things going. Often it was just a matter of supplying people with food and drink, so that they could continue through the day without getting irritable.

At all hours the table of tables was crowded; fresh-faced young Valkyries towering over sunbaked old vets; all races, all types; this was Mars, m-year 52, a kind of de facto united nations all on its own. With all the potential fractiousness of that notoriously fractious body; so that sometimes, looking at all their disparate faces and listening to the melange of languages, English augmented by Babel, Art was nearly overwhelmed by their variety. "Ka, Nadia," he said as they sat eating sandwiches and going over their notes for the day, "we're trying to write a const.i.tution that every Terran culture could agree to!"

She waved the problem away, swallowed. "About time," she said.

Charlotte suggested that the Dorsa Brevia declaration made a logical starting point for discussing the content that would fill the const.i.tutional forms. This suggestion caused more trouble than even the blanks had, for the Reds and several other delegations disliked various points of the old declaration, and they argued that using it was a way of pisting the congress from the start.

"So what?" Nadia said. "We can change every word of it if we want, but we have to start with something."

This view was popular among most of the old underground groups, many of whom had been at Dorsa Brevia in m-39. The declaration that had resulted remained the underground's best effort to write down what they had agreed on back when they were out of power, so it made sense to start with it; it gave them some precedent, some historical continuity.

When they pulled it out and looked at it, however, they found that the old declaration had become frighteningly radical. No private property? No appropriation of surplus value? Had they really said such things? How were things supposed to work? People pored over the bare uncompromising sentences, shaking their heads. The declaration had not bothered to say how its lofty goals were to be enacted, it had only stated them. "The stone-tablet routine," as Art characterized it. But now the revolution had succeeded, and the time had come to do something in the real world. Could they really stick to concepts as radical as those in the Dorsa Brevia declaration?

Hard to say. "At least the points are there to discuss," Nadia said. And along with them, on everyone's screen, were the blank const.i.tutions with their section headings, suggesting all by themselves the many problems they were going to have to come to grips with: "Structure of Government, Executive; Structure of Government, Legislative; Structure of Government, Judicial; Rights of Citizens; Military and Police; Taxation; Election Procedures; Property Law; Economic Systems; Environmental Law; Amendment Procedures," and so on, in some blanks for pages on end- all being juggled on everyone's screens, scrambled, formatted, endlessly debated. "Just filling in the blanks," as Art sang one night, looking over Nadia's shoulder at one particularly forbidding flowchart pattern, like something out of Michel's alchemical combinatoires combinatoires. And Nadia laughed.

The working groups focused on different parts of government as outlined in a new composite blank const.i.tution, now being called the blank of blanks. Political parties and interest groups gravitated to the issues that most concerned them, and the many tent-town delegations chose or were a.s.signed to remaining areas. After that it was a matter of work.

For the moment, the Da Vinci Crater technical group was in control of Martian s.p.a.ce. They were keeping all s.p.a.ce shuttles from docking at Clarke, or aerobraking into Martian orbit. No one believed that this alone made them truly free, but it did give them a certain amount of physical and psychic s.p.a.ce to work in- this was the gift of the revolution. They were also driven by the memory of the battle for Sheffield; the fear of civil war was strong among them. Ann was in exile with the Kakaze, and sabotage in the outback was a daily occurrence. There were also tents that had declared independence from anyone, and a few metanat holdouts; there was turmoil generally, and a sense of barely contained confusion. They were in a bubble in history, a moment only; it could collapse anytime, and if they didn't act soon, it would collapse. It was, simply put, time to act.

This was the one thing everyone agreed on, but it was a very important thing. As the days pa.s.sed a core group of workers slowly emerged, people who recognized each other for their willingness to get the job done, for their desire to finish paragraphs rather than posture. Inside all the rest of the debate these people went at it, guided by Nadia, who was very quick to recognize such people and give them all the help she could.

Art meanwhile ran around in his usual manner. Up early, supply drinks and food, and information concerning the work ongoing in other rooms. It seemed to him that things were going pretty well. Most of the subgroups took the responsibility to fill in their blank seriously, writing and rewriting drafts, hammering them out concept by concept, phrase by phrase. They were happy to see Art when he came by in the course of the day, as he represented a break, some food, some jokes. One judicial group tacked foam wings on his shoes, and sent him with a caustic message along to an executive group with whom they were fighting. Pleased, Art kept the wings on; why not? What they were doing had a kind of ludicrous majesty, or majestic ludicrousness- they were rewriting the rules, he was flying around like Hermes or Puck, it was perfectly appropriate. And so he flew, through the long hours into the night, every night. And after all the sessions had closed down for the evening, he went back to the Praxis offices he shared with Nadia, and they would eat, and talk over the day's progress, and make a call to the travelers to Earth, and talk with Nirgal and Sax and Maya and Michel. And after that Nadia would go back to work at her screens, usually falling asleep there in her chair. Then Art would often go back out into the warehouse, and the buildings and rovers cl.u.s.tered around it. Because they were holding the congress in a warehouse tent, there was not the same party scene that had existed after hours in Dorsa Brevia; but the delegates often stayed up, sitting on the floors of their rooms drinking and talking about the day's work, or the revolution just past. Many of the people there had never met before, and they were getting to know each other. Relations.h.i.+ps were forming, romances, friends.h.i.+ps, feuds. It was a good time to talk, and learn more about what was going on during the daytime congress; it was the underside of the congress, the social hour, out there scattered in concrete rooms. Art enjoyed it. And then the moment would come when he would suddenly hit the wall, a wave of sleepiness would roll over him and sometimes he wouldn't even have time to stagger back to his offices, to the couch next to Nadia's; he would simply roll over on the floor and sleep there, waking cold and stiff to hurry off to their bathroom, a shower, and back to the kitchens to start up that day's kava and java. Round and round, his days a blur; it was glorious.

In sessions on many different subjects people were having to grapple with questions of scale. Without any nations, without any natural or traditional political units, who governed what? And how were they to balance the local against the global, and past versus future- the many ancestral cultures against the one Martian culture?

Sax, observing this recurring problem from the rocket s.h.i.+p to Earth, sent back a message proposing that the tent towns and covered canyons become the princ.i.p.al political units: city-states, basically, with no larger political units except for the global government itself, which would regulate only truly global concerns. Thus there would be local and global, but no nation-states in between.

The reaction to this proposal was fairly positive. For one thing it had the advantage of conforming to the situation that already existed. Mikhail, leader of the Bogdanovist party, noted that it was a variant of the old commune of communes, and because Sax had been the source of the suggestion, this quickly got it called the "lab of labs" plan. But the underlying problem still remained, as Nadia quickly pointed out; all Sax had done was define their particular local and global. They still had to decide just how much power the proposed global confederation was going to have over the proposed semiautonomous city-states. Too much, and it was back to a big centralized state, Mars itself as a nation, a thought which many delegations abhorred. "But too little," Jackie said emphatically in the human-rights workshop, "and there could be tents out there deciding slavery is okay, or female genital mutilation is okay, or any other crime based on some Terran barbarism is okay, excused in the name of 'cultural values.' And that is just not acceptable."

"Jackie is right," Nadia said, which was unusual enough to get people's attention. "People claiming that some fundamental right is foreign to their culture- that stinks no matter who says it, fundamentalists, patriarchs, Leninists, metanats, I don't care who. They aren't going to get away with it here, not if I can help it."

Art noticed more than a few delegates frowning at this sentiment, which no doubt struck them as a version of Western secular relativism, or perhaps John Boone's hyperamericanism. Opposition to the metanats had included many people trying to hold on to older cultures, and these often had their hierarchies pretty well intact; the ones at the top end of the hierarchies liked them that way, and so did a surprisingly large number of people farther down the ladder.

The young Martian natives, however, looked surprised that this was even considered an issue. To them the fundamental rights were innate and irrevocable, and any challenge to that struck them as just one more of the many emotional scars that the issei were always revealing, as a result of their traumatic dysfunctional Terran upbringings. Ariadne, one of the most prominent of the young natives, stood up to say that the Dorsa Brevia group had studied many Terran human-rights doc.u.ments, and had written a comprehensive list of their own. The new master list of fundamental individual rights was available for discussion and, she implied, adoption wholesale. Some argued about one point or another; but it was generally agreed that a global bill of rights of some kind should be on the table. So Martian values as they existed in m-year 52 were about to be codified, and made a princ.i.p.al component of the const.i.tution.

The exact nature of these rights was still a matter of controversy. The so-called political rights were generally agreed to be "self-evident"- things citizens were free to do, things governments were forbidden to do- habeus corpus, freedom of movement, of speech, of a.s.sociation, of religion, a ban on weapons- all these were approved by a vast majority of Martian natives, though there were some issei from places like Singapore, Cuba, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and so on, who looked askance at so much emphasis on individual liberty. Other delegates had reservations about a different kind of right, the so-called social or economic rights, such as the right to housing, health care, education, employment, a share of the value generated by natural-resource use, etc. Many issei delegates with actual experience in Terran government were quite worried about these, pointing out that it was dangerous to enshrine such things in the const.i.tution; it had been done on Earth, they said, and then when it was found impossible to meet such promises, the const.i.tution guaranteeing them was seen as a propaganda device, and flouted in other areas as well, until it became a bad joke.

"Even so," Mikhail said sharply, "if you can't afford housing, then it is your right to vote that is the bad joke."

The young natives agreed, as did many others there. So economic or social rights were on the table too, and arguments over how actually to guarantee these rights in practice continued through many a long session. "Political, social, it's all one," Nadia said. "Let's make all the rights work."

So the work went on, both around the big table and in the offices where the subgroups were meeting. Even the UN was there, in the person of UNTA chief Derek Hastings himself, who had come down the elevator and was partic.i.p.ating vigorously in the debates, his opinion always carrying a peculiar kind of weight. He even began to exhibit symptoms of hostage syndrome, Art thought, becoming more and more sympathetic the more he stood around in the warehouse arguing with people. And this might affect his superiors on Earth as well.

Comments and suggestions were also pouring in from all over Mars, and from Earth as well, filling several screens covering one wall of the big room. Interest in the congress was high everywhere, rivaling even Earth's great flood in the public's attention. "The soap opera of the moment," Art said to Nadia. Every night the two of them met in their little office suite, and put in their call to Nirgal and the rest. The delays in the travelers' responses got longer and longer, but Art and Nadia didn't really mind; there was a lot to think about while waiting for Sax and the others' part of the conversation to arrive.

"This global versus local problem is going to be hard," Art said one night. "It's a real contradiction, I think. I mean it's not just the result of confused thinking. We truly want some global control, and yet we want freedom for the tents as well. Two of our most essential values are in contradiction."

"Maybe the Swiss system," Nirgal suggested a few minutes later. "That's what John Boone always used to say."

But the Swiss on Pavonis were not encouraging about this idea. "A countermodel rather," Jurgen said, making a face. "The reason I'm on Mars is the Swiss federal government. It stifles everything. You need a license to breathe."

"And the cantons have no power anymore," Priska said. "The federal government took it away."

"In some of the cantons," Jurgen added, "this was a good thing."

Priska said, "More interesting than Berne might be the Graubunden. That means Gray League. They were a loose confederation of towns in southeast Switzerland, for hundreds of years. A very successful organization."

"Could you call up whatever you can get on that?" Art said.

The next night he and Nadia looked over descriptions of the Graubunden that Priska had sent over. Well... there was a certain simplicity to affairs during the Renaissance, Art thought. Maybe that was wrong, but somehow the extremely loose agreements of the little Swiss mountain towns did not seem to translate well to the densely interpenetrated economies of the Martian settlements. The Graubunden hadn't had to worry about generating unwanted changes in atmospheric pressure, for instance. No- the truth was, they were in a new situation. There was no historical a.n.a.logy that would be much help to them now.

"Speaking of global versus local," Irishka said, "what about the land outside the tents and covered canyons?" She was emerging as the leading Red remaining on Pavonis, a moderate who could speak for almost all wings of the Red movement, therefore becoming quite a power as the weeks pa.s.sed. "That's most of the land on Mars, and all we said at Dorsa Brevia is that no individual can own it, that we are all stewards of it together. That's good as far as it goes, but as the population rises and new towns are built, it's going to be more and more of a problem figuring out who controls it."

Art sighed. This was true, but too difficult to be welcome. Recently he had made a resolution to devote the bulk of his daily efforts to attacking what he and Nadia judged to be the worst outstanding problem they were facing, and so in theory he was happy to recognize them. But sometimes they were just too hard.

As in this case. Land use, the Red objection: more aspects of the global-local problem, but distinctively Martian. Again there was no precedent. Still, as it was probably the worst outstanding problem....

Art went to the Reds. The three who met with him were Marion, Irishka, and Tiu, one of Nirgal and Jackie's creche mates from Zygote. They took Art out to their rover camp, which made him happy; it meant that despite his Praxis background he was now seen as a neutral or impartial figure, as he wanted to be. A big empty vessel, stuffed with messages and pa.s.sed along.

The Reds' encampment was west of the warehouses, on the rim of the caldera. They sat down with Art in one of their big upper-level compartments, in the glare of a late-afternoon sun, talking and looking down into the giant silhouetted country of the caldera.

"So what would you like to see in this const.i.tution?" Art said.

He sipped the tea they had given him. His hosts looked at each other, somewhat taken aback. "Ideally," Marion said after a while, "we'd like to be living on the primal planet, in caves and cliff dwellings, or excavated crater rings. No big cities, no terraforming."

"You'd have to stay suited all the time."

"That's right. We don't mind that."

"Well." Art thought it over. "Okay, but let's start from now. Given the situation at this moment, what would you like to see happen next?"

"No further terraforming."

"The cable gone, and no more immigration."

"In fact it would be nice if some people went back to Earth."

They stopped speaking, stared at him. Art tried not to let his consternation show.

He said, "Isn't the biosphere likely to grow on its own at this point?"

"It's not clear," Tiu said. "But if you stopped the industrial pumping, any further growth would certainly be very slow. It might even lose ground, as with this ice age that's starting."

"Isn't that what some people call ecopoesis?"

"No. The ecopoets just use biological methods to create changes in the atmosphere and on the surface, but they're very intensive with them. We think they all should stop, ecopoets or industrialists or whatever."

"But especially the heavy industrial methods," Marion said. "And most especially the inundation of the north. That's simply criminal. We'll blow up those stations no matter what happens here, if they don't stop."

Art gestured out at the huge stony caldera. "The higher elevations look pretty much the same, right?"

They weren't willing to admit that. Irishka said, "Even the high ground shows ice deposition and plant life. The atmosphere lofts high here, remember. No place escapes when the winds are strong."

"What if we tented the four big calderas?" Art said. "Kept them sterile underneath, with the original atmospheric pressure and mix? Those would be huge wilderness parks, preserved in the true primal state."

"Parks are just what they would be."

"I know. But we have to work with what we have now, right? We can't go back to m-1 and rerun the whole thing. And given the current situation, it might be good to preserve three or four big places in the original state, or close to it."

"It would be nice to have some canyons protected as well," Tiu said tentatively. Clearly they had not considered this kind of possibility before; and it was not really satisfactory to them, Art could see. But the current situation could not be wished away, they had to start from there.

"Or Argyre Basin."

"At the very least, keep Argyre dry."

Art nodded encouragingly. "Combine that kind of preservation with the atmosphere limits set in the Dorsa Brevia doc.u.ment. That's a five-kilometer breathable ceiling, and there's a h.e.l.l of a lot of land above five kilometers that would remain relatively pristine. It won't take the northern ocean away, but nothing's going to do that now. Some form of slow ecopoesis is about the best you can hope for at this point, right?"

Perhaps that was putting it too baldly. The Reds stared down into Pavonis caldera unhappily, thinking their own thoughts.