Green Mars(266)

Nadia found the remark depressing. She was truly weary now, she couldn’t remember when she had last slept. She had liked Burroughs, and a huge number of construction hours had been poured into it. . . . She remembered what Nanao had said about Sabishii. Burroughs too was in their minds. Perhaps when the shoreline of the new ocean stabilized, they could build another one, somewhere else.

As for now, Ann was sitting on the other side of the car, and Coyote was coming down the aisle to them, stopping to press his face to the window glass, and give a thumbs-up to Nirgal and Jackie, still outside. Those two got on board the train, several cars ahead of the last one. Michel was laughing at something Maya had said, and Ursula, Marina, Vlad, Spencer— these members of Nadia’s family were around her and safe, at least for the moment. And as the moment was all they ever had . . . she felt herself melting into her seat. She would be asleep in minutes, she could feel it in her dry burning eyes. The train began to move.





Sax was inspecting his wristpad, and Nadia said to him drowsily, “What’s happening on Earth?”“Sea level is still rising. It’s gone up four meters. It looks like the metanationals have stopped fighting, for the time being. The World Court has brokered a cease-fire. Praxis has put all its resources into flood relief. Some of the other metanats look like they might go the same way. The UN General Assembly has convened in Mexico City. India has agreed that it has a treaty with an independent Martian government.”

“That’s a devil’s bargain,” Coyote said from across the compartment. “India and China, they’re too big for us to handle. You wait and see.”

“So the fighting down there has ended?” Nadia said.

“It’s not clear if that’s permanent or not,” Sax said.

Maya snorted. “No way it’s permanent.”

Sax shrugged.

“We need to set up a government,” Maya said. “We have to set it up fast, and present Earth with a united front. The more established we seem, the less likely they’ll be to come hard to root us out.”

“They’ll come,” Coyote said from the window.

“Not if we prove to them that they’ll get everything from us they would have gotten on their own,” Maya said, irritated at Coyote. “That will slow them down.”

“They’ll come anyway.”

Sax said, “We will never be out of danger until Earth is calm. Is stabilized.”

“Earth will never be stabilized,” Coyote said.

Sax shrugged.

“It’s we who have to stabilize it!” Maya exclaimed, shaking a finger at Coyote. “For our own sakes!”

“Areoforming Earth,” Michel said with his ironic smile.

“Sure, why not?” Maya said. “If that’s what it takes.”

Michel leaned over and gave Maya a kiss on her dusty cheek.

Coyote was shaking his head. “It’s moving the world without a fulcrum,” he said.

“The fulcrum is in our minds,” Maya said, startling Nadia.

Marina also was watching her wrist, and now she said, “Security still has Clarke, and the cable. Peter says they’ve left all of Sheffield but the Socket. And someone— hey— someone has reported seeing Hiroko in Hiranyagarbha.”

They went silent at this, thinking their own thoughts.

“I got into the UNTA records of that first takeover of Sabishii,” Coyote said after a while, “and there was no mention at all of Hiroko, or any of her group. I don’t think they got them.”

Maya said darkly, “What’s written down has nothing to do with what happened.”

“In Sanskrit,” Marina said, “Hiranyagarbha means ‘The Golden Embryo.’ ”

Nadia’s heart squeezed. Come out, Hiroko, she thought. Come out, damn you, please, please, damn you, come out. The look on Michel’s face was painful to see. His whole family, disappeared. . . .

“We can’t be sure we’ve got Mars together yet,” Nadia said, to distract him. She caught his eye. “We couldn’t agree in Dorsa Brevia— why should we now?”

“Because we are free,” Michel replied, rallying. “It’s real now. We are free to try. And you only put your full effort into a thing when there is no going back.”

The train slowed to cross the equatorial piste, and they rocked back and forth with it.

“There are Reds blowing up all the pumping stations on Vastitas,” Coyote said. “I don’t think you’re going to get any easy consensus on the terraforming.”

“That’s for sure,” Ann said hoarsely. She cleared her throat. “We want the soletta gone too.”