Green Mars(234)
Michel waved this off, face to the screen. “How long can he expect you to manage that?”
“I don’t know.”
They watched as the Mangalavid reporters described the riots as terrorist-sponsored violence. Maya groaned. Spencer was at another AI screen, talking to Nanao in Sabishii. “Oxygen is rising so fast, there has to be something out there without suicide genes. Carbon dioxide levels? Yeah, dropping fast as well. . . . A bunch of really good carbon-fixing bacteria out there, proliferating like a weed. I’ve asked Sax about it and he just blinks. . . . Yeah, he’s as out of control as Ann. And she’s out there sabotaging every project she can get her hands on.”
When Spencer got off, Maya said to him, “Just how long is Sax going to want us to hold out?”
Spencer shrugged. “Until we get something he thinks is a trigger, I guess. Or a coherent strategy. But if we can’t stop the Reds and the Marsfirsters, it won’t matter what Sax wants.”
• • •
So the weeks crept by. A campaign of regular street demonstrations began in Sheffield and South Fossa. Maya thought this would only bring more security down on them, but Art argued in their favor. “We’ve got to let the Transitional Authority know how widespread the resistance is, so that when the moment comes, they don’t try to crush us out of ignorance, see what I mean? At this point we need them to feel disliked and outnumbered. Hell, mass numbers of people in the streets are about the only thing that scare governments, if you ask me.”
And whether Maya agreed or not, there was nothing she could do about it; every day passed and she could only work as hard as possible, traveling and meeting group after group, while inside her body her muscles were turning to wire with the tension, and she could barely sleep at night, nothing more than an exhausted hour or two near dawn.
• • •
One morning in the northern spring of M-52, year 2127, she woke feeling more refreshed than usual. Michel was still sleeping, and she dressed and went out alone, and walked across the great central promenade to the cafés by the canal. This was the wonderful thing about Burroughs; despite tightened security at the gates and stations, one could still walk around freely inside the city at some hours, and among the throngs there was very little danger of being picked out. So she sat and drank coffee and ate pastries and looked at the low gray clouds rolling overhead, down the slope of Syrtis and toward the dike to the east. Air circulation under the tent was high, to give some kinetic match to the visuals overhead. That was strange, that; how used she had gotten to the sky visuals not matching the feel of the wind under the tents. The long slender arched tube of the bridge from Ellis Butte to Hunt Mesa was filled with the colorful ant-figures of people, hurrying about their morning’s work. Living normal lives; abruptly she got up and paid her bill, and went for a long walk herself. She strolled along the rows of white Bareiss columns, up through Princess Park to the new tents, around the pingo hills where the currently fashionable apartments were located. Here in the high western district one could look back down and see the whole spread of the city, the trees and rooftops split by the promenade and its canals, the mesas huge and widely spaced, resembling vast cathedrals. Their sheer rock sides were cracked and furrowed, horizontal lines of twinkling windows the only clue that they were hollowed out inside, each of them a city of its own, a little world, living together on the red sand plain, under the immense invisible tent, connected by soaring footbridges that glinted like the visible sheen of soap bubbles. Ah, Burroughs!
So she walked back with the clouds, through narrow streets walled by apartment blocks and gardens, to Hunt Mesa and their home under the dance studio. Michel and Spencer were out, and for a long time she just stood in the window and looked at the clouds racing over the city, trying to do Michel’s job for him, to lasso her moods and pull them back to some kind of stable center. From the ceiling came little uncoordinated thump thump thumps. Another class beginning. Then the thumps were in the hall before the door, and there was a hard knock. She went to answer it, heart pounding like the ceiling.
It was Jackie and Antar, and Art and Nirgal, and Rachel and Frantz and the rest of the Zygote ectogenes, pouring in and talking at the speed of sound, so that she couldn’t quite understand them. She greeted them as cordially as she could, given Jackie’s presence among them, and then collected herself and removed all hatred from her eyes, and talked with all of them, even Jackie, about their plans. They had come to Burroughs to help organize a demonstration down in the canal park. Word had been sent out through the cells, and they were hoping that a lot of the unaligned citizenry would join them as well. “I hope it doesn’t precipitate any crackdowns,” Maya said.