Blue Mars Part 19

So Art would bring in breakfasts, singing "All of Me" in a pretty good voice, and with Satchmo's basic insight that American song lyrics could only be treated as silly jokes: "All of me, why not take all of me, Can't you see, I'm no good without you." And call up some music, and sit with his back to the window; and the mornings were fun.

But no matter how well the days began, the council was eating her life. Nadia got more and more sick of it- the bickering, negotiating, compromising, conciliating- the dealing with people, minute after minute. She was beginning to hate it.

Art saw this, of course, and began to look worried. And one day after work he brought over Ursula and Vlad. The four of them had dinner together in her apartment, Art cooking. Nadia enjoyed her old friends' company; they were in town on business, but getting them over for dinner there had been Art's idea, and a good one. He was a sweet man, Nadia thought as she watched him moving about the kitchen. Canny diplomat as guileless simpleton, or vice versa. Like a benign Frank. Or a mix of Frank's skill and Arkady's happiness. She laughed at herself, always thinking of people in terms of the First Hundred- as if everyone was somehow a recombination of the traits of that original family. It was a bad habit of hers.

Vlad and Art were talking about Ann. Sax had apparently called Vlad from the shuttle rocket on its return to Mars, shaken by a conversation with Ann. He was wondering if Vlad and Ursula would consider offering Ann the same brain plasticity treatment that they had given him after his stroke.

"Ann would never do it," Ursula said.

"I'm glad she won't," Vlad said. "That would be too much. Her brain wasn't injured. We don't know what that treatment would do in a healthy brain. And you should only undertake what you can understand, unless you are desperate."

"Maybe Ann is desperate," Nadia said.

"No. Sax is desperate." Vlad smiled briefly. "He wants a different Ann before he gets back."

Ursula said to him, "You didn't want Sax to try that treatment either."

"It's true. I wouldn't have done it to myself. But Sax is a bold man. An impulsive man." Now Vlad looked at Nadia: "We should stick to things like your finger, Nadia. Now that we can fix."

Surprised, Nadia said, "What's wrong with it?"

They laughed at her. "The one that's missing!" Ursula said. "We could grow it back, if you wanted."

"Ka," Nadia exclaimed. She sat back, looked at her thin left hand, the stump of the missing little finger. "Well. I don't need it, really."

They laughed again. "You could have fooled us," Ursula said. "You're always complaining about it when you're working."

"I am?"

They all nodded.

"It'll help your swimming," Ursula said.

"I don't swim much anymore."

"Maybe you stopped because of your hand."

Nadia stared at it again. "Ka. I don't know what to say. Are you sure it will work?"

"It might grow into an entire other hand," Art suggested. "Then into another Nadia. You'll be a Siamese twin."

Nadia pushed him sideways in his chair. Ursula was shaking her head. "No no. We've done it for some other amputees already, and a great number of experimental animals. Hands, arms, legs. We learned it from frogs. Quite wonderful, really. The cells differentiate just like the first time the finger grew."

"A very literal demonstration of emergence theory," Vlad said with a small smile. Nadia saw by that smile that he had been instrumental in designing the procedure.

"It works?" she asked him directly.

"It works. We make what is in effect a new finger bud over your stump. It's a combination of embryonic stem cells with some cells from the base of your other little finger. The combination functions as the equivalent of the homeobox genes you had when you were a fetus. So you've got the developmental determiners there to make the new stem cells differentiate properly. Then you ultrasonically inject a weekly dose of fibroblast growth factor, plus a few cells from the knuckle and the nail, at the appropriate times... and it works."

As he explained Nadia felt a little glow of interest spread through her. A whole person. Art was watching her with his friendly curiosity.

"Well, sure," she said at last. "Why not."

So in the following week they took some biopsies from her remaining little finger, and gave her some ultrasonic shots in the stump of the missing finger, and in her arm, and gave her some pills; and that was it. After that it was only a matter of weekly shots, and waiting.

Then she forgot about it, because Charlotte called with a problem; Cairo was ignoring a GEC order concerning water pumping. "You'd better come check it out in person. I think the Cairenes are testing the court, for a faction of Free Mars that wants to challenge the global government."

"Jackie?" Nadia said.

"I think so."

Cairo stood on its plateau edge, overlooking the northwestern-most U-valley of Noctis Labyrinthus. Nadia walked out of the train station with Art onto a plaza flanked by tall palm trees. She glared at the scene; some of the worst moments of her life had occurred in this city, during the a.s.sault on it in 2061. Sasha had been killed, among many others, and Nadia had blown up Phobos, she herself!- and all just a few days after finding Arkady's burned remains. She had never returned; she hated this town.

Now she saw that it had been damaged again in the recent unrest. Parts of the tent had been blown, and the physical plant heavily damaged. It was being rebuilt, and new tent segments were being tacked onto the old town, extending west and east far along the plateau's edge. It looked like a boomtown, which Nadia found peculiar given its alt.i.tude, ten kilometers above the datum. They would never be able to take down the tents, or go outside without walkers on, and so Nadia had a.s.sumed it would therefore go into decline. But it lay at the intersection of the equatorial piste and the Tharsis piste running north and south, the last place one could cross the equator between here and the chaoses, a full quarter of the planet away. So unless a Transmarineris bridge were built somewhere, Cairo would always be at a strategic crossroads.

And crossroads or not, they wanted more water. The Compton Aquifer, underlying lower Noctis and upper Marineris, had been breached in '61, and its water had poured down the entire length of the Marineris canyons. This was the flood that had almost killed Nadia and her companions during the flight down the canyons, after Cairo was taken. Most of the floodwater had either frozen in the canyons, creating a long irregular glacier, or had pooled and frozen in the chaoses at the bottom of Marineris. And some water had of course remained in the aquifer. In the years since, the water in the aquifer had been pumped out for use in cities all over east Tharsis. And the Marineris Glacier had slowly dropped downcanyon, receding at its upper end where there was no source to replenish it, leaving behind only devastated land and a string of very shallow ice lakes. Cairo was therefore running out of a ready supply of water. Its hydrology office had responded by laying a pipeline to the northern sea's big southern arm in the Chryse depression, and pumping water up to Cairo. So far, no problem; every tent town got its water from somewhere. But the Cairenes had lately started pouring water into a reservoir in the Noctis canyon under them, and letting a stream out from this reservoir to run down into Ius Chasma, where eventually it pooled behind the upper end of the Marineris Glacier, or ran by it. Essentially they had created a new river running right down the big canyon system, far away from their town; and now they were establis.h.i.+ng a number of riverside settlements and farming communities downstream from the city. A Red legal group had gone to the Global Environmental Court to challenge this action, a.s.serting that Valles Marineris had legal consideration as a natural wonder, being the largest canyon in the solar system; if left alone the breakout glacier would eventually have slid down into the chaos, leaving the canyons again open-floored. This was what they thought should happen, and the GEC had agreed with them, and issued an order (Charlotte called this a "gecko") against Cairo, requiring them to halt the release of water out of the town reservoir. Cairo had refused to desist, claiming that the global government had no jurisdiction over what they called "vital town life-support issues." Meanwhile building new downstream settlements as fast as they could.

Clearly it was a provocation, a challenge to the new system. "This is a test," Art muttered as they walked across the plaza, "this is only a test. If this were a true const.i.tutional crisis, you would hear a beep all over the planet."

A test; exactly the kind of thing for which Nadia had lost all patience. So she crossed the city in a foul mood. No doubt it did not help that the awful days of '61 were called back so vividly to mind by the plaza, the boulevards, the city wall at the canyon rim, all just as they had been back then. They said one's memory was weakest from one's middle years, but she would have lost those memories happily if she could have; fear and rage, however, seemed to function as some kind of nightmare fixative. For it was all still there- Frank tapping madly away at his monitors, Sasha eating pizza, Maya shouting angrily at something or other, the fraught hours of waiting to see if they would be pa.s.sed over by the falling pieces of Phobos. Seeing Sasha's body, b.l.o.o.d.y at the ears. Clicking over the transmitter that had brought Phobos down.

Thus it was very hard to keep her irritation in check as she went into the first meeting with the Cairenes, and found Jackie there among them, supporting their position. Jackie was pregnant now as well, and had been for some time; she was flushed, glossy, beautiful. No one knew who the father was, it was something she was doing on her own. A Dorsa Brevia tradition, by way of Hiroko- and just one more irritant to Nadia.

The meeting took place in a building next to the city wall, overlooking the U-shaped canyon below, called Nilus Noctis. The water in dispute was actually visible downcanyon, a broad ice-sheeted reservoir stopped by a dam not visible from up here, stopped just before the Illyrian Gate and the new chaos of the Compton Break.

Charlotte stood with her back to the window, asking the Cairene officials just the questions Nadia would have asked, but without the slightest trace of Nadia's annoyance. "You will always be in a tent. Opportunities for growth will be limited. Why flood Marineris when you won't benefit from it?"

No one seemed to care to answer this. Finally Jackie said, "The people living down there will benefit, and they're part of greater Cairo. Water in any form is a resource at these alt.i.tudes."

"Water running freely down Marineris is no resource at all," Charlotte said.

The Cairenes argued for the utility of water in Marineris. There were also representatives of the downstream settlers, many of them Egyptians, claiming that they had been in Marineris for generations, that it was their right to live there, that it was the best farming land on Mars, that they would fight before they would leave, and so on. Sometimes the Cairenes and Jackie seemed to be defending these neighbors, at other times their own right to use Marineris as a reservoir. Mostly they seemed to be defending their right to do whatever they wanted. Slowly Nadia got angrier and angrier.

"The court made its judgment," she said. "We're not here to argue it again. We're here to see it enacted." And she left the meeting before she said anything inexcusable.

That night she sat with Charlotte and Art, so irritated that she could not focus on a delicious Ethiopian meal in the train-station restaurant. "What do they want?" she asked Charlotte.

Charlotte shrugged, mouth full. After swallowing: "Have you been noticing that being president of Mars is not a particularly powerful position?"

"h.e.l.l yes. It would be hard to miss."

"Yes. Well, the whole executive council is the same, of course. It's looking like the real power in this government is in the environmental court. Irishka was put in charge there as part of the grand gesture, and she's done a lot to legitimate moderate redness by staking out a middle ground. It allows for a lot of development under the six-k limit, but above that, they're very strict. That's all backed by the const.i.tution, so they've been able to make everything stand- the legislature is laying off, they haven't overturned any judgments yet. So it's been an impressive first session for Irishka and that whole group of justices."

"So Jackie is jealous," Nadia said.

Charlotte shrugged. "It's possible."

"More than possible," Nadia said grimly.

"And then there's the matter of the council itself. Jackie may think this is something she can get three of the others to back her on, and then the council becomes that much more hers. Cairo is an arena where she might hope that Zeyk will vote with her because of the Arab part of town. Then only two more. And both Mikhail and Ariadne are strong localists."

"But the council can't overturn court decisions," Nadia said, "only the legislature, right? By legislating new laws."

"Right, but if Cairo continues to defy the court, then it would be up to the council to order the police to go down there and physically stop them. That's what the executive branch is supposed to do. If the council didn't do that, then the court would be undermined, and Jackie would take effective control of the council. Two birds with one stone."

Nadia threw down her bit of spongy bread. "I'll be d.a.m.ned if that happens," she said.

They sat in silence.

"I hate this stuff," Nadia said.

Charlotte said, "In a few years there will be a body of practices, inst.i.tutions, laws, amendments to the const.i.tution, all that. Things that the const.i.tution never addressed, which translate it into action. Like the proper role of political parties. Right now we're in the process of working all these things out."

"Maybe so, but I still hate it."

"Think of it as meta-architecture. Building the culture that allows architecture to exist. Then it'll be less frustrating for you."

Nadia snorted.

"This one should be a clear case," Charlotte said. "The judgment has been made, they only have to abide by it."

"What if they don't?"

"Time for the police."

"Civil war, in other words!"

"They won't push it that far. They signed the const.i.tution just like everyone else, and if everyone else is abiding by it, then they become outlaws, like the Red ecoteurs. I don't think they'll go that far. They're just testing the limits."

She did not seem annoyed by this. That was the way people were, her expression seemed to say. She did not blame anyone, she was not frustrated. A very calm woman, this Charlotte- relaxed, confident, capable. With her coordinating it, the executive council's work had so far been well organized, if not easy. If that competence was what growing up in a matriarchy like Dorsa Brevia did for you, Nadia thought, then more power to them. She couldn't help but compare Charlotte to Maya, with all Maya's mood s.h.i.+fts, her angst and self-dramatization. Well, it was probably an individual thing in any culture. But it was going to be interesting to have more Dorsa Brevia women around to take on these jobs.

At the next morning's meeting Nadia stood and said, "An order against dumping water in Marineris has been issued already. If you persist in the dumping, the new police powers of the global community will be exerted. I don't think anyone wants that."

"I don't think you can speak for the executive council," Jackie said.

"I can," Nadia said shortly.

"No you can't," Jackie said. "You're only one of seven. And this isn't a council matter anyway."

"We'll see about that," Nadia said.

The meeting dragged on. The Cairenes were stonewalling. The more Nadia understood what they were doing the less she liked it. Their leaders were important in Free Mars; and even if this challenge failed, it might result in concessions to Free Mars in other areas; so the party would have gained more power. Charlotte agreed that this could be their ultimate motive. The cynicism of this disgusted Nadia, and she found it very hard to be civil to Jackie when Jackie spoke to her, with her easy cheerfulness, the pregnant queen cruising around among her minions like a battles.h.i.+p among rowboats: "Aunt Nadia, so sorry you felt you needed to take time for such a thing as this...."

That night Nadia said to Charlotte, "I want a ruling where Free Mars gets nothing at all out of this."

Charlotte laughed briefly. "Been talking to Jackie, have you?"

"Yes. Why is she so popular? I don't understand it, but she is!"

"She's nice to a lot of people. She thinks she's nice to everyone."

"She reminds me of Phyllis," Nadia said. The First Hundred again.... "Maybe not. Anyway, isn't there some sort of penalty we can invoke against frivolous suits and challenges?"

"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 b.u.mp on it. So strange; despite paying close attention, she could not recall when the b.u.mp 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, flouris.h.i.+ng 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 leaders.h.i.+p."

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 Marineris, and so Nadia needed only two more votes. But Mikhail 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 const.i.tuency 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 const.i.tution. Nadia thought he would support her. That left one more to be convinced.