“Court costs, in some cases.”
“See if you can lay that on her then.”
“First let’s see if we can win.”
The meetings went on for another week. Nadia left the talking to Charlotte and Art. She spent the meetings looking out the windows at the canyon below, and in rubbing the stump of her finger, which now had a noticeable new bump on it. So strange; despite paying close attention, she could not recall when the bump had first appeared. It was warm and pink, a delicate pink, like a child’s lips. There seemed to be a bone in the middle of it; she was afraid to squeeze it very hard. Surely lobsters didn’t pinch their returning limbs. All that cell proliferation was disturbing — like a cancer, only controlled, directed — the miracle of DNA’s instructional abilities made manifest. Life itself, flourishing in all its emergent complexity. And a little finger was nothing compared to an eye, or an embryo. It was a strange business. With that going on, the political meetings looked really dreadful. Nadia walked out of one having heard almost none of it, though she was sure nothing significant had happened, and she went for a long walk, out to an overlook bulging out of the western end of the tent wall. She called Sax. The four travelers were getting closer to Mars; transmission delays were down to a few minutes. Nirgal appeared to be healthy again. He was in good spirits. Michel actually looked more drained than Nirgal; it seemed that the visit to Earth had been hard on him. Nadia held up her finger to the screen to cheer him up, and it worked. “A pinky, don’t they call it that?” “I guess so.”
“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 we
re — 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 presidentof 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.
Nadia dealt with all these issues in half-hour increments scheduled by Art, and so the days passed in a blur. It got very difficult to stay aware that some of these matters were much more important than others. The Chinese, for instance, would flood Mars with immigrants if they got half a chance… and the Red ecoteurs were getting more outrageous; there had even been death threats made against Nadia herself. She now had escorts when she left her apart> ment, and the apartment was discreetly guarded. Nadia ignored that, and continued to work on the issues, and to work the council to keep a majority on her side in the votes that mattered to her. She established good working relations with Zeyk and Mikhail, and even with Marion. Things never went quite right with Ariadne again, however, which was a lesson learned twice; but learned well because of that.
So she did the job. But all the time she wanted off Pa-vonis. Art saw her patience get shorter by the day; she knew by his look that she was becoming crochety, crabby, dictatorial; she knew it, but could not help it. After meetings with frivolous or obstructionist people she often unleashed a torrent of vicious abuse, in a steady low cursing voice that Art obviously
found unnerving. Delegations would come in demanding an end to the death penalty, or the right to build in the Olympus Mons caldera, or a free eighth spot on the executive council, and as soon as the door closed Nadia would say, “Well there’s a bunch of fucking idiots for you, stupid fools never even thought about tie votes, never occurred to them that taking someone else’s life abrogates your own right to live,” and so on. The new police captured a group of Red ecoteurs who had tried to blow up the Socket again, and in the process killed a security guard out of his position, and she was the hardest judge they had: “Execute them!” she exclaimed. “Look, you kill someone, you lose your right to live. Execute them or else exile them from Mars for life — make them pay in a way that really gets the rest of the Reds’ attention.”
“Well,” Art said uneasily. “Well, after all.” But on she raged. She couldn’t stop until she felt less angry. And Art could see that it was getting harder every time.
Flailing a bit himself, he recommended she start another conference, like the one in Sabishii she had missed; and make sure she made this one. Organizing the efforts of different organizations for a single cause; this was not really building, Nadia thought, but it looked like it would have to do.
The fight in Cairo had gotten her thinking about the hy-drological cycle, and what would happen when the ice began to melt. If they could set up some kind of plan for a water cycle, even only an approximation, then it might go far toward reducing conflicts over water. So she decided to see what could be done.
As often happened these days when she thought about global issues, she found herself wanting to talk to Sax about it. The travelers to Earth were almost back now, close enough that transmission delay was insignificant, it was almost like having a normal wrist conversation. So Nadia spent evenings talking with Sax about terraforming. More than once he surprised her utterly; he did not hold the opinions she had imagined he would hold, he seemed always to be changing. “I want to keep things wild,” he said one night.
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