Blue Mars (15 page)

Art Randolph was having the time of his life.

Not during the battle for Sheffield, of course—that had been a
disaster, a breakdown of diplomacy, the failure of everything Art had been
trying to do—a miserable few days, in fact, during which he had run around
sleeplessly trying to meet with every group he thought might help defuse the
crisis, and always with the feeling that it was somehow his fault, that if he
had done things right it would not have happened. The fight went right to the
brink of torching Mars, as in 2061; for a few hours on the afternoon of the Red
assault, it had teetered.

But fallen back. Something—diplomacy, or the realities of battle
(a defensive victory for those on the cable), common sense, sheer
chance—something had tipped things back from the edge.

And with that nightmare interval past, people had returned to east
Pavonis in a thoughtful mood. The consequences of failure had been made clear.
They needed to agree on a plan. Many of the radical Reds were dead, or escaped
into the outback, and the moderate Reds left in east Pavonis, while angry, were
at least there. It was a very uncomfortable and uncertain period. But there
they were.

So once again Art began flogging the idea of a constitutional
congress. He ran around under the big tent through warrens of industrial
warehouses and storage zones and concrete dormitories, down broad streets
crowded with a museum’s worth of heavy vehicles, and everywhere he urged the
same thing: constitution. He talked to Nadia, Nir-gal, Jackie, Zeyk, Maya,
Peter, Ariadne, Rashid, Tariki, Na-nao, Sung, and H. X. Borazjani. He talked to
Vlad and Ursula and Marina, and to the Coyote. He talked to a few-score young
natives he had never met before, all major players in the recent unrest; there
were so many of them it began to seem like a textbook demonstration of the
polycephalous nature of mass social movements. And to every head of this new
hydra Art made the same case: “A constitution would legitimate us to Earth, and
it would give us a framework for settling disputes among ourselves. And we’re
all gathered here, we could start right away. Some people have plans ready to
look at.” And with the events of the past week fresh in their minds, people
would nod and say “Maybe so,” and wander off thinking about it.

Art called up William Fort and told him what he was doing, and got
an answer back later the same day. The old man was at a new refugee town in
Costa Rica, looking just as distracted as always. “Sounds good,” he said. And
after that Praxis people were checking with Art daily to see what they could do
to help organize things. Art became busier than he had ever been, doing what
the Japanese there called nema-washi, the preparations for an event: starting
strategy sessions for an organizing group, revisiting everyone he had spoken to
before, trying, in effect, to talk to every individual on Pavonis Mons. “The
John Boone method,” Coyote commented with his cracked laugh. “Good luck!”

Sax, packing his few belongings for the diplomatic mission to
Earth, said, “You should invite the, the United Nations.”

Sax’s adventure in the storm had knocked him back a bit; he tended
to stare around at things, as if stunned by a blow to the head. Art said
gently, “Sax, we just went to a lot of trouble to kick their butts off this
planet.”

“Yes,” Sax said, staring at the ceiling. “But now co-opt them.”

“Co-opt the UN!” Art considered it. Co-opt the United Nations: it
had a certain ring to it. It would be a challenge, diplomatically speaking.

*
     
*
       
*

Just before the ambassadors left for Earth, Nirgal came by the
Praxis offices to say good-bye. Embracing his young friend, Art was seized with
a sudden irrational fear. Off to Earth!

Nirgal was as blithe as ever, his dark brown eyes alight with
anticipation. After saying good-bye to the others in the outer office, he sat
with Art in an empty corner room of the warehouse.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Art asked.

“Very sure. I want to see Earth.”

Art waggled a hand, uncertain what to say.

“Besides,” Nirgal added, “someone has to go down there and show
them who we are.”

“None better for that than you, my friend. But you’ll have to
watch out for the metanats. Who knows what they’ll be up to. And for bad
food—those areas affected by the flood are sure to have problems with
sanitation. And disease vectors. And you’ll have to be careful about sunstroke,
you’ll be very susceptible—”

Jackie Boone walked in. Art stopped his travel advisory; Nirgal
was no longer listening in any case, but watching Jackie with a suddenly blank
expression, as if he had put on a Nirgal mask. And of course no mask could do
justice to Nirgal, because the mobility of his face was its essential
characteristic; so he did not look like himself at-all.

Jackie, of course, saw this instantly. Shut off from her old
partner... naturally she glared at him. Something had gone awry, Art saw. Both
of them had forgotten Art, who would have slipped out of the room if he could
have, feeling like he was holding a lightning rod in a storm. But Jackie was
still standing in the doorway, and Art did not care to disturb her at that
moment.

“So you’re leaving us,” she said to Nirgal.

“It’s just a visit.”

“But why? Why now? Earth means nothing to us now.”

“It’s where we came from.”

“It is not. We came from Zygote.”

Nirgal shook his head. “Earth is the home planet. We’re an
extension of it, here. We have to deal with it.”

Jackie waved a hand in disgust, or bafflement: “You’re leaving
just when you’re needed here the most!”

“Think of it as an opportunity.”

“I will,” she snapped. He had made her angry. “And you won’t like
it.”

“But you’ll have what you want.”

Fiercely she said, “You don’t know what I want!”

The hair on the back of Art’s neck had raised; lightning was about
to strike. He would have said he was an eavesdropper by nature, almost a voyeur
in fact; but standing right there in the room was not the same, and he found now
there were some things he did not care to witness. He cleared his throat. The
other two were startled by his noise. With a waggle of the hand he sidled past
Jackie and out the door. Behind him the voices went on—bitter, accusatory,
filled with pain and baffled fury.

Coyote stared gravely out the windshield as he drove the
ambassadors 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 constitutional
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 constitutional 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 mass 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 passageway 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 orbit 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 orbit.

A row of elevator cars floated in the air like the cable itself,
though for a different reason, as they were electromagnet-ically 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 reassurances. 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 passages, and people started joining her, and things
snowballed. 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 space 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 constitutional 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 document twelve m-years before, had led a group since
then in working up plans for a government, in anticipation of a successful
revolution. They were not the only ones to have done this; schools in South
Fossa and at the university in Sabishii 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
constitutional 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
petitioners 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
passed 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:

Political Parties and Other Organizations:

Booneans

Reds

Bogdanovists

Schnellingistas

Marsfirst

Free Mars

TheKa

Praxis

Qahiran Mahjari League

Green Mars

United Nations Transitional Authority

Kakaze

Editorial Board of
The Journal ofAreological Studies

Space 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
principal contribution. He was not a scholar, and he had few ideas about what a
Martian constitution 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 everyone’s 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 assistant. 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
assistant 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
constitution 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 constitution, 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 constitutions,” which
blocked out different kinds of constitutions 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 classic 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 constitution 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
hell.”

“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 constitutions 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 passed 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 constitution that every Terran culture could
agree to!”

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