Nadia’s concentration on the screens was broken by the appearance of one of the big round-the-world trains on the piste beside them. One second they were gliding smoothly over the bumpy plateau of Ophir Planum, and the next a big fifty-car express was whooshing by them. But it didn’t slow down, and there was no way of telling who, if anyone, sat behind its darkened windows. Then it was past them, and soon after that over the horizon ahead, and gone.
The news shows continued at their manic pace, the reporters obviously astonished by the developments of the day. Riots in Sheffield, work stoppages in South Fossa and Hephaestus— the accounts overlapped each other in such rapid succession that Nadia found it hard to believe they were real.
When they came into Underhill Nadia’s feeling of unreality persisted, for the sleepy semiabandoned old settlement was now abuzz with activity, as in M-year 1. Resistance sympathizers had been pouring in all day from small stations around Ganges Catena and Hebes Chasma, and the north wall of Ophir Chasma. The local Bogdanovists had apparently organized them into a march on the little unit of UNTA security personnel at the train station. This had led to a standoff just outside the station itself, under the tent that covered the old arcade and the original quadrant of barrel vaults, now looking very small and quaint.
So when Nadia’s train pulled in, there was a loud argument going on between a man with a bullhorn surrounded by about twenty bodyguards, and the unruly crowd facing them. Nadia got off the train as soon as it stopped, and went over to the edge of the group hemming in the stationmaster and his troops. She commandeered a bullhorn from a surprised-looking young woman and began shouting through it. “Stationmaster! Stationmaster! Stationmaster!” She repeated this in English and Russian, until everyone had gone quiet to find out who she was. Her construction team had filtered out through the crowd, and when she saw that they were positioned, she walked right up to the cluster of men and women in their flak jackets. The stationmaster appeared to be a Mars old-timer, his face weathered and scarred across the forehead. His young team wore the Transitional Authority insignia, and looked scared. Nadia let the bullhorn fall to her side and said, “I’m Nadia Cherneshevsky. I built this town. And now we’re taking control of it. Who do you work for?”
“The United Nations Transitional Authority,” the stationmaster said firmly, staring at her as if she had stepped out of the grave.
“But what unit? Which metanational?”
“We’re a Mahjari unit.”
“Mahjari unit.”
“Mahjari is working with China now, and China with Praxis, and Praxis with us. We’re on the same side, and you don’t know it yet. And no matter what you think about that, we’ve got you outgunned here.” She shouted out to the crowd, “Everyone armed raise their hand!”
Everyone in the crowd raised their hand, and all of her crew had stun guns or nail guns or soldering-beam guns in hand.
“We don’t want bloodshed,” Nadia said to the ever-tighter knot of bodyguards before her. “We don’t even want to take you prisoner. There’s our train right there; you can take it, and go to Sheffield and join the rest of your team. There you’ll find out the new status of things. It’s that or else we’ll all leave the station here, and blow it up. We’re taking over one way or another, and it would be stupid for anyone to get killed when this revolt is already a done deal. So take the train. I’d advise going to Sheffield, where you can get a ride out on the elevator if you want. Or if you want to work for a free Mars, you can join us right now.”
She stared calmly at the man, feeling more relaxed than she had all day. Action was such a relief. The man ducked his head to confer with his team, and they talked in whispers for most of five minutes.
The man looked at her again. “We’ll take your train.”
And so Underhill was the first town freed.
• • •
That night Nadia went out to the trailer park, which was near the new tent coping wall. The two habitats that had not been turned into labs were still outfitted with the original living quarters equipment, and after inspecting them, and then going back out and walking around the barrel vaults, and the Alchemists’ Quarter, she finally returned to the one she had lived in at the very start, and lay down on one of the floor mattresses, feeling exhausted.
It was strange indeed to lie by herself among all the ghosts, trying to feel again the presence of that distant time in her. Too strange; despite her exhaustion she could not sleep, and near dawn she had a hazy vision, of worrying about uncrating goods from freight rockets, and programming robot bricklayers, and taking a call from Arkady on Phobos. She even slept a while in this state, dozing uneasily, until a tingling in her ghost finger woke her up.