Frank asked them what they did. Stevedores in Sheffield, most replied; offloading the elevator cars and getting the stuff on trains. Robots were supposed to do it, but it was surprising how much labor remained in the process for human muscle. Heavy-equipment operators, robot programmers, machine repairmen, waldo dwarves, construction workers. Most of them had rarely gotten out onto the surface; some of them never had. They had done similar kinds of work back home, or had been unemployed. This was their chance. Most wanted to return to Earth someday, but the gyms were crowded and expensive and time-consuming, and they were all losing their tone. They had southern accents that Frank hadn’t heard since childhood; it was like hearing voices from a previous century, like listening to Elizabethans. Did people still talk that way? TV never revealed it. “Y’all been here so long you don’t mind being indoors, but I can’t stand it.” Ah caint stayun det.
Frank glared into a kitchen. “What do you eat?” he demanded.
Fish, vegetables, rice, tofu. It all came in bulk packages. They had no complaints, they thought it was good. Americans, the most degraded palates in history. Somebody gimme a cheeseburger! No, what they minded was the confinement, the lack of privacy, the teleoperation, the crowding together. And the resulting problems: “All my stuff got stole the day after I got here.” “Me too.” “Me too.” Theft, assault, extortion. The criminals all came from other tent towns, they said. Russians, they said. White folks with strange talk. Some black folks too, but not so many here as at home. A woman had been raped the previous week. “You’re kidding!” Frank said.
“What do you mean you’re kidding,” one woman said, disgusted with him.
Eventually they led him back to the station. Pausing in the door, Frank didn’t know what to say to them. Quite a crowd had gathered, as people had recognized him or been called or drawn to the group. “I’ll see what I can do,” he muttered, and ducked through the passage lock.
Thoughtlessly he stared into tents as he rode a train back up. There was one fitted with coffin hotels, Tokyo style. That would be much more crowded than El Paso, but did its occupants care about that? Some people were used to being treated like ball bearings. A lot of people, in fact. But on Mars it was supposed to be different!
Back in Sheffield he stalked the rim concourse, staring out at the thin vertical line of the elevator, ignoring other people and forcing some of them to jump out of his way as he paced. Once he stopped and looked around at the crowd; there were perhaps 500 people in view at that moment, living their lives. When had it gotten like this? They had been a scientific outpost, a handful of researchers, scattered over a world with as much land surface as the Earth: a whole Eurasia, Africa, America, Australia, and Antarctica, all for them. All that land was still out there, but what percentage of it was under tents and habitable? Much less than 1 percent. And yet what was UNOMA saying? A million people here already, with more on the way. And no police, and crime— or rather, crime without police. A million people and no law, no law but corporate law. The bottom line. Minimize expenses, maximize profits. Run smoothly on ball bearings.
• • •
The next week the people in a set of tents on the south slope went on strike. Chalmers heard about it on his way to the office, Slusinski actually breaking in on his walk with a call. The striking tents were mostly American, and his staff was in a panic. “They’ve closed the stations and aren’t allowing anyone off the trains, so they can’t be controlled unless their emergency locks are stormed—”
“Shut up.”
Frank went down the south piste to the striking tents, ignoring Slusinski’s objections. In fact he ordered several of the staff down to join him.
A team from Sheffield security was standing in the station, but he ordered them to get on the train and leave, and after a consultation with the Sheffield administrators, they did. At the passage lock he identified himself, and asked to come in alone. They let him through.
He emerged in the main square of another tent, surrounded by a sea of angry faces. “Kill the TVs,” he suggested. “Let’s talk in private.”
They killed the TVs. It was the same as in El Paso, different accents but the same complaints. His earlier visit gave him the ability to anticipate what they were going to say, to say it before they did. He watched grimly as their faces revealed how impressed they were by this ability. They were young.
“Look, it’s a bad situation,” he said after they had talked for an hour. “But if you strike for long, you’ll only make it worse. They’ll send in security and it won’t be like living with gangs and police among you, it’ll be like living in prison. You’ve made your point already, and now you’ve got to know when to let off and negotiate. Form a committee to represent you, and make a list of complaints and demands. Document all the incidents of crime, just write them down and get the victims to sign the statements. I’ll make good use of them. It’s going to take work at UNOMA and back home, because they’re breaking the treaty.”