The tented settlements still on the rim were like toy villages in paperweights. Sheffield with its skyline, the low warehouses across from her to the east, Lastflow, the various smaller tents all around the rim . . . many of them had merged, to become a kind of greater Sheffield, covering almost 180 degrees of the rim, from Lastflow around to the southwest, where pistes followed the fallen cable down the long slope of west Tharsis to Amazonis Planitia. All the towns and stations would always be tented, because at twenty-seven kilometers high the air would always be a tenth as thick as it was at the datum— or sea level, one could now call it. Meaning the atmosphere up here was still only thirty or forty millibars thick.
Tent cities forever; but with the cable (she could not see it) spearing Sheffield, development would certainly continue, until they had built a tent city entirely ringing the caldera, looking down into it. No doubt they would then tent the caldera itself, and occupy the round floor— add about 1,500 square kilometers to the city, though it was a question who would want to live at the bottom of such a hole, like living at the bottom of a mohole, rock walls rising up around you as if you were in some circular roofless cathedral . . . perhaps it would appeal to some. The Bogdanovists had lived in moholes for years, after all. Grow forests, build climber’s huts or rather millionaires’ penthouses on the arcuate balcony ledges, cut staircases into the sides of the rock, install glass elevators that took all day to go up or down . . . rooftops, row houses, skyscrapers reaching up toward the rim, heliports on their flat round roofs, pistes, flying freeways . . . oh yes, the whole summit of Pavonis Mons, caldera and all, could be covered by the great world city, which was always growing, growing like a fungus over every rock in the solar system. Billions of people, trillions of people, quadrillions of people, all as close to immortal as they could make themselves. . . .
She shook her head, in a great confusion of spirits. The radicals in Lastflow were not her people, not really, but unless they succeeded, the summit of Pavonis and everywhere else on Mars would become part of the great world city. She tried to concentrate on the view, she tried to feel it, the awe of the symmetrical formation, the love of rock hard under her bottom. Her feet hung over the edge of the bench, she kicked her heels against basalt; she could throw a pebble and it would fall five thousand meters. But she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t feel it. Petrification. So numb, for so long. . . . She sniffed, shook her head, pulled her feet in over the edge. Walked back up to her rover.
She dreamed of the long run-out. The landslide was rolling across the floor of Melas Chasma, about to strike her. Everything visible with surreal clarity. Again she remembered Simon, again she groaned and got off the little dike, going through the motions, appeasing a dead man inside her, feeling awful. The ground was vibrating—She woke, by her own volition she thought— escaping, running away— but there was a hand, pulling hard on her arm.
“Ann, Ann, Ann.”
It was Nadia. Another surprise. Ann struggled up, disoriented. “Where are we?”
“Pavonis, Ann. The revolution. I came over and woke you because a fight has broken out between Kasei’s Reds and the greens in Sheffield.”
The present rolled over her like the landslide in her dream. She jerked out of Nadia’s grasp, groped for her shirt. “Wasn’t my rover locked?”
“I broke in.”
“Ah.” Ann stood up, still foggy, getting more annoyed the more she understood the situation. “Now what happened?”
“They launched missiles at the cable.”
“They did!” Another jolt, further clearing away the fog. “And?”
“It didn’t work. The cable’s defense systems shot them down. They’ve got a lot of hardware up there now, and they’re happy to be able to use it at last. But now the Reds are moving into Sheffield from the west, firing more rockets, and the UN forces on Clarke are bombing the first launch sites, over on Ascraeus, and they’re threatening to bomb every armed force down here. This is just what they wanted. And the Reds think it’s going to be like Burroughs, obviously, they’re trying to force the action. So I came to you. Look, Ann, I know we’ve been fighting a lot, I haven’t been very, you know, patient, but look, this is just too much. Everything could fall apart at the last minute— the UN could decide the situation here is anarchy, and come up from Earth and try to take over again.”
“Where are they?” Ann croaked. She pulled on pants, went to the bathroom. Nadia followed her right in. This too was a surprise; in Underhill it might have been normal between them, but it had been a long long time since Nadia had followed her into a bathroom talking obsessively while Ann washed her face and sat down and peed. “They’re still based in Lastflow, but now they’ve cut the rim piste and the one to Cairo, and they’re fighting in west Sheffield, and around the Socket. Reds fighting greens.”