Their speeches were all about beautiful wonderful Mars and how it was going to be ruined by overpopulation, unless they closed it to further Terran immigration. There was a strong case to be made for that point of view, actually, as could be told by the cheers and applause from the crowd. Their attitude was deeply hypocritical, as most of those applauding made their living from Terran tourists, and all of them were immigrants or the children of immigrants; but they cheered anyway. It was a good election issue. Especially if you ignored the risk of war, if you ignored the sheer immensity of Earth, and its primacy in human civilization. Defying it in this way. . . . Well, it didn’t matter; these people didn’t give a damn about Earth, and they didn’t understand it either. So defiance only made Jackie look more brave and beautiful, standing up for a free Mars. The ovation for her was loud and sustained; she had learned a lot since her maladroit speeches during the second revolution, she had gotten quite good. Very good.
When the Green speakers got up to take their turn, and argue for an open Mars, they tried to talk about the danger of a closed-Mars policy, but the response was of course much less enthusiastic than it had been for Jackie— their position sounded like cowardice, to tell the truth, and the desirability of an open Mars, naive. Before arriving in Banks Vendana had offered Maya a chance to speak, but she had declined, and now she was confirmed in her judgment; she did not envy these speakers their unpopular stance before a dwindling crowd.
Afterward the Greens held a small party/postmortem, and Maya critiqued their performance with some severity. “I’ve never seen such incompetence. You’re trying to scare them, but you only sound fearful. The stick is necessary, but you need a carrot as well. The possibility of war is the stick, but you have to tell them why it would be good to keep Terrans coming up, without sounding like idiots. You have to remind them that we all have Terran origins, we are always immigrants here. For you can never leave Earth.”
They nodded at this, Athos among them looking thoughtful. After that Maya got Vendana to one side, and grilled her about Jackie’s recent liaisons. Mikka was indeed a recent partner, and probably still was. MarsFirst was if anything more anti-immigration than the larger party. Maya nodded; she had begun to see the outlines of a plan.
When the postmortem was over, Maya wandered downtown with Vendana and Athos and the rest, until they passed a large band playing what they called Sheffield sound. This music was only noise to Maya: twenty different drum rhythms at once, on instruments not intended for percussion or even for musical use. But it suited her purposes, as under the clatter and pounding she was able to guide the young Greens unobtrusively toward Antar, whom she had spotted across the dance floor. When they were nearer to him she could say, “Oh, there’s Antar— hello, An-tar! These are the people I’m sailing with. We’re right behind you, apparently, headed to Hell’s Gate and then Odessa. How’s the campaign going?”
And Antar was his usual gracious princely self, a man hard to object to even when you knew how reactionary he was, how much he had been in the pocket of Earth’s Arab nations. Now he must be turning on those old allies, another dangerous part of this anti-immigrant strategy. It was curious the way the Free Mars leadership had decided to defy the Terran powers, and at the same time to try to dominate all the new settlements in the outer solar system. Hubris. Or perhaps they just felt threatened; Free Mars had always been the young natives’ party, and if unrestricted immigration brought in millions of new issei, then Free Mars’s status would be endangered, not only its supermajority but its simple majority as well. These new hordes with all their old fanaticisms intact— churches and mosques, flags, hidden firearms, open feuds— there was definitely a case for the Free Mars position to be made, for during the intensive immigration of the past decade, the new arrivals had clearly begun to construct another Earth, just as stupid as the first one. John would have gone crazy, Frank would have laughed. Arkady would have said I told you so, and suggested yet another revolution.
But Earth had to be dealt with more realistically than that, it could not be banished or wished away. And here in the moment, Antar was being gracious, extra gracious, as if he thought Maya might be useful for something. And as he always followed Jackie around, Maya was not surprised at all when suddenly Jackie and some others were at his side, and everyone saying hello. Maya nodded to Jackie, who smiled back flawlessly. Maya gestured to her new companions, carefully introduced them one by one. When she came to Athos she saw Jackie watching him, and Athos, as he was introduced, gave a friendly glance to her. Swiftly but very casually Maya started asking Antar about Zeyk and Nazik, who were living on the coast of Acheron Bay, apparently. The two groups were moving slowly toward the music, and soon, if they kept going, they would be thoroughly mingled, and it would be too loud to hear any conversation but one’s own. “I like this Sheffield sound,” Maya said to Antar. “Help me get through to the dance floor?”