Once again it was Maya who pulled them into action, playing the wrist like Frank used to, calling everyone in the open Mars coalition and many others besides, orchestrating the general response. Come on, she said to Nadia. One more time. And so through the cities and villages the word spread, and people went down into the streets, or got on trains to Mangala.
On the coast of Tempe, the new Kampuchean settlers got out of their landers and went to the little shelters that had been dropped with them, just as the First Hundreds had two centuries before. And out of the hills came people wearing furs, and carrying bows and arrows. They had red stone eyeteeth, and their hair was tied in topknots. Here, they said to the settlers, who had bunched before one of their shelters. Let us help you. Put those guns down. We’ll show you where you are. You don’t need that kind of shelter, it’s an old design. That hill you see to the west is Perepelkin Crater. There’s already apple and cherry orchards on the apron, you can take what you need. Look, here are the plans for a disk house, that’s the best design for this coast. Then you’ll need a marina, and some fishing boats. If you let us use your harbor we’ll show you where the truffles grow. Yes, a disk house, see, a Sattelmeier disk house. It’s lovely to live out in the open air. You’ll see.
All branches of the Martian government had met in the assembly hall in Mangala, to deal with the crisis. The Free Mars majority in the senate, and the executive council, and the Global Environmental Court, all agreed that the illegal incursion of Terrans was an act of aggression the equivalent of war, which had to be responded to in kind. There were suggestions from the floor of the senate that asteroids could be directed at Terra, as bombs that would be diverted only if the immigrants returned home and the elevator went back to a system of dual supervision. It would only take one strike to have a KT event, and so on. UN diplomats on the scene pointed out that this was a sword that could cut both ways.
In these tense days there came a knock on the door of the assembly hall in Mangala, and in walked Maya Toitovna. She said, “We want to speak.” Then she ushered in a crowd waiting outside, pushing them up onto the stage like an impatient sheep-dog: first Sax and Ann, walking side by side; then Nadia and Art, Tariki and Nanao, Zeyk and Nazik, Mikhail, Vasili, Ursula and Marina, even Coyote. The ancient issei, come back to haunt the present moment, come back to take the stage and say what they thought. Maya pointed to the room’s screens, which showed images of the outside of the building; the group on the stage now extended in an unbroken line through the halls of the building out onto the big central plaza facing the sea, where some half-million people were assembled. The city streets were also stuffed with people, watching screens to see what was happening in the assembly hall. And out in Chalmers Bay there sailed a fleet of townships like a startling new archipelago, with flags and banners waving from their masts. And in every Martian city the crowds were out, the screens were on. Everyone could see everyone else.
Ann went to the podium and said quietly that the government of Mars in recent years had broken both the law and the spirit of human compassion, by forbidding immigration from Earth to Mars. The people of Mars did not want that. They needed a new government. This was a vote of no confidence. The new incursions of Terran settlers were also illegal, and unacceptable, but understandable; the government of Mars had broken the law first. And the number of new settlers in these incursions was no greater than the number of legitimate settlers who had been illegally barred from coming by the current government. Mars, Ann said, had to be open to Terran immigration as much as could be, given the physical constraints, for as long as the population-surge years might last. The surge years would not last much longer. Their duty now to their descendants was to get through the last of these packed years in peace. “Nothing on the table now is worth war. We have seen it, and we know.”
Then she looked over her shoulder at Sax, who stepped up next to her to the microphones. He said, “Mars has to be protected.” The biosphere was new, its carrying capacity limited. It did not have the physical resources of Earth, and much of its empty land would of physical necessity have to stay empty. Terrans had to understand that, and not overwhelm local systems; if they did, Mars would be no use to anyone at all. Clearly there was a severe population problem on Earth, but Mars alone was not the solution. “The Earth— Mars relationship has to be renegotiated.”
They began that renegotiation. They asked a UN representative to come up and explain the incursions. They argued and debated and expostulated; and shouted in each other’s faces. Out in the outback, locals confronted settlers, and some of them on both sides threatened violence; and others stepped in and started talking, cajoling, scolding, wrangling, negotiating; and shouting in each other’s faces. At any point in the process, in a thousand different places, things could have turned violent; many people were furious; but cooler heads prevailed. It remained, in most places, at the level of argument. Many feared this could not continue, many did not believe it possible; but it was happening, and the people in the streets saw it happening. They kept it happening. At some point, after all, the mutation of values has to express itself; and why not here, why not now? There were very few weapons on the planet, and it was hard to strike someone in the face, or stick them with a pitchfork, when they were standing there arguing with you. This was the moment of mutation, history in the making, and they could see it right before them, in the streets and on the human hillsides and on the screens, history labile right there in their hands— and so they seized the moment, and wrenched it in a new direction. They talked themselves into it. A new government. A new treaty with Earth. A polycephalous peace. The negotiations would go on for years. Like a choir in counterpoint, singing a great fugue.