“We’ve talked about this kind of thing before,” one young man said. “And there are people doing it. Sometimes we do it. But we think an active resistance is a necessary part of the struggle. Otherwise we’ll just get steamrolled. They’ll green everything.”
“Not if we stain it all. Right from the inside, right from their hearts too. But sabotage, murder; it’s green that springs out of all that, believe me I’ve seen it. I’ve been fighting just as long as you and I’ve seen it. You stomp on life and it just comes back stronger.”
The young man wasn’t convinced. “They gave us the six-kilometer limit because they were scared of us, because we were the driving force behind the revolution. If it weren’t for us fighting, the metanats would still rule everything here.”
“That was a different opponent. When we fought the Terrans, then the Martian greens were impressed. When we fight the Martian greens they’re not impressed, they’re angry. And they get more green than ever.”
The group sat in silence, thoughtful, perhaps disheartened.
“But what do we do?” a gray-haired woman said.
“Go to some land that’s endangered,” Ann suggested. She gestured out the window. “Right here wouldn’t be bad. Or somewhere near the six-k border. Settle, incorporate a town, make it a primal refuge, make it a wonderful place. We’ll creep back down from the highlands.”
They considered this glumly.
“Or go into the cities and start a tour group, and a legal fund. Show people the land. Sue every change they propose.”
“Shit,” the young man said, shaking his head. “That sounds awful.”
“Yes it does,” Ann said. “There’s ugly work to be done. But we have to get them from the inside too. And that’s where they live.”
Long faces. They sat around and talked about it some more; the way they lived now, the way they wanted to live. What they might do to get from one to the other. The impossibility of the guerrilla life after the war was over. And so on. There were lots of big sighs, some tears, recriminations, encouragements.
“Come with me tomorrow and take a straight look at this ice sea,” Ann suggested.
• • •
The next day the guerrilla group traveled south with her along the sixtieth longitude, kilometer by difficult kilometer. Khala, the Arabs called it; the empty land. On the one hand it was beautiful, a Noachian desolation of rockscapes, and their hearts were full. On the other hand the ecoteurs were quiet, subdued, as if on a pilgrimage in some uncertain funereal mode. Together they came to the big canyon called Nilokeras Scopulus, and dropped into it on a broad rough natural ramp. To the east lay Chryse Planitia, covered by ice: another arm of the northern sea. They had not escaped it. Ahead to the south lay the Nilokeras Fossae, the terminal end of a canyon complex that began far to the south, in the enormous pit of Hebes Chasma. Hebes Chasma had no exit, but its subsidence was now understood to have been caused by the aquifer outbreak just to the west, at the top of Echus Chasma. A very great amount of water had gushed down Echus against the hard western side of Lunae Planum, carving the steep high cliff at Echus Overlook; then it had come to a break in that stupendous cliff, and had rushed down and through, tearing the big bend of Kasei Vallis, and cutting a deep channel out onto the lowlands of Chryse. It had been one of the biggest aquifer outbreaks in Martian history.
Now the northern sea had flowed back into Chryse, and water was filling back into the lower end of Nilokeras and Kasei. The flat-topped hill that was Sharanov Crater stood like a giant castle keep on the high promontory over the mouth of this new fjord. Out in the middle of the fjord lay a long narrow island, one of the lemniscate islands of the ancient flood, now islanded again, stubbornly red in the sea of white ice. Eventually this fjord would make an even better harbor than Botany Bay: it was steep-walled, but there were benches tucked here and there that could become harbor towns. There would of course be the west wind funneling down Kasei to worry about, katabatic onslaughts holding the sailing ships out in the Chryse Gulf. . . .
So strange. She led the group of silent Reds to a ramp that got them down onto a broad bench to the west of the ice fjord. By then it was evening, and she led them out of the rovers and down to the shore for a sunset walk.
At the moment of sunset itself, they found themselves standing in a tight unhappy cluster before a solitary ice block some four meters tall, its melted convexities as smooth as muscle. They stood so that the sun was behind the ice block and shining through it. To both sides of the block brilliant light gleamed off the glassy wet sand. An admonition of light. Undeniable, blazingly real; what were they to make of it? They stood and stared in silence.