It might work or it might not, but either way it was a declaration of war, a very serious break in the rough strategy that had held ever since Spencer had managed to stop Sax from knocking things out of the sky. The strategy consisted of simply disappearing from the face of Mars— no reprisals, no sabotage, nobody home in whatever sanctuaries they happened to stumble on. . . . Even Ann seemed to be paying at least some attention to this plan. Maya reminded Kasei of this while praising his idea highly, and encouraging him to use it when the proper time came.
“But we won’t necessarily be able to break the codes then,” Kasei complained. “It’s a one-time opportunity. And it’s not as if they don’t know we’re out here, after what Sax and Peter did to the aerial lens, and Deimos. They probably think we’re even bigger than we are!”
“But they don’t know. And we want to keep that sense of mystery, that invisibility. Invisible is invincible, as Hiroko says. But remember how much they increased their security presence after Sax went on his rampage? And if they lose Kasei Vallis, they might bring up a huge replacement force. And that only makes it harder to take over in the end.”
Stubbornly Kasei shook his head. Jackie interrupted from across the room and said cheerily, “Don’t worry, Maya, we know what we’re doing.”
“Something you can be proud of! The question is, do any of the rest of us? Or are you princess of Mars now?”
“Nadia is the princess of Mars,” Jackie said, and went to the kitchen nook. Maya scowled at her back, and noticed Art watching her curiously. He did not flinch when she stared at him, and she went to her room to change clothes. Michel was in there cleaning up, making room for people to sleep on the floor. It was going to be an irritating evening.
The next morning when she got up early to go to the bathroom, feeling hung over, Art was already up. Over the sleeping bodies on the floor he whispered, “Want to go out and get breakfast?”
Maya nodded. When she was dressed they walked down the stairs and out, through the park and along the corniche, which was lurid in the horizontal beams of dawn sunlight.
They stopped in a café that had just washed down its section of sidewalk. On the dawn-stained white wall of the
building, a sentence had been painted with the help of a stencil, so that it was neat and small, and brilliantly red:
YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK
“My God,” Maya exclaimed.
“What?”
She pointed at the graffito.
“Oh, yeah,” Art said. “You see that painted all over Sheffield and Burroughs these days. Pithy, eh?”
“Ka wow.”
They sat in the chill air by a small round table, and ate pastries and drank Turkish coffee. The ice on the horizon blinked like diamonds, revealing some movement under the ice. “What a fantastic sight,” Art said.
Maya looked at the bulky Terran closely, pleased at his response. He was an optimist like Michel, but more canny about it, more natural; with Michel it was policy, with Art, temperament. She had always considered him to be a spy, from the first moment they had rescued him from his too-convenient breakdown out in their path: a spy for William Fort, for Praxis, perhaps for the Transitional Authority, perhaps for others as well. But now he had been among them for so long— a close friend of Nirgal, of Jackie, of Nadia as well . . . and they were in fact working with Praxis now, depending on it for supplies, and protection, and information about Earth. So she was no longer so sure— not only whether Art was a spy, but what, in this case, a spy was.
“You’ve got to stop them from making this assault on Kasei Vallis,” she said.
“I don’t think they’re waiting on my permission.”
“You know what I mean. You can talk them out of it.”
Art looked surprised. “If I could talk people out of things that well, we’d be free already.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well,” Art said. “I suppose they’re afraid they won’t be able to break the code again. But Coyote seems pretty confident he has the protocol. And it was Sax helped him work it out.”
“Tell them that.”
“For what it’s worth. They listen to you more than me.”
“Right.”
“We could have a contest— who does Jackie listen to least?”
Maya laughed out loud. “Everyone would win.”
Art grinned. “You should slip your recommendations into Pauline. Get it to imitate Boone’s voice.”
Maya laughed again. “Good idea!”
They talked about the Hellas project, and she described the import of the new discovery west of Hellespontus. Art had been in contact with Fort, and he described the intricacies of the latest World Court decision, of which Maya had not heard. Praxis had brought a suit against Consolidated for arranging to tether their Terran space elevator in Colombia, which was so close to the site in Ecuador that Praxis had planned to use that both sites would be endangered. The court had decided in favor of Praxis, but had been ignored by Consolidated, who had gone ahead and built a base in their new client country, and were already prepared to maneuver their elevator cable down onto it. The other metanats were happy to see the World Court defied, and they were backing Consolidated in every way possible, which was creating trouble for Praxis.