Red Mars(157)

But his own bacteria ate him, naturally, and they crawled all around down on the bedrock and under the megaregolith, down there going everywhere, sucking up the mantle heat, and eating the sulfides, and melting down the permafrost. And everywhere they went down there, every one of those little bacteria said I am Paul Bunyan.





It’s a matter of will, Frank Chalmers said to his face in the mirror. The phrase was the only residue of the dream he had been having when he awoke. He shaved with quick decisive strokes, feeling tense, crammed with energy ready to be unleashed, wanting to get to work. More residue: Whoever wants it the most wins!He showered and dressed, padded down to the dining hall. It was just after dawn. Sunlight flooded Isidis with horizontal beams of red-bronze light, and high in the eastern sky cirrus clouds looked like copper shavings.

Rashid Niazi, the Syrian representative to the conference, passed by and gave Chalmers a cool nod. Frank returned it and walked on. Because of Selim el-Hayil, the Ahad wing of the Moslem Brotherhood had gotten blamed for Boone’s assassination, and Chalmers had always been quick and public in defending them from all such accusations. Selim had been a lone assassin, he always asserted, a mad murder-suicide. This underlined the Ahads’ guilt while at the same time commanding their gratitude. Naturally Niazi, an Ahad leader, was a bit frustrated.

Maya came into the dining room and Frank greeted her cordially, automatically covering the discomfort he always felt in her presence.

“May I join you?” she said, watching him.

“Of course.”

Maya was perceptive, in her way; Frank concentrated on the moment. They chatted. The subject of the treaty began to come up, and so Frank said, “How I wish John were here now. We could use him.” And then: “I miss him.” This kind of thing would distract Maya instantly. She put her hand over his; Frank scarcely felt it. She was smiling, her arresting gaze full on him. Despite himself he had to look away.

The TV wall was showing the news package beamed up from Earth, and he tapped on the table console and turned up the sound. Earth was in bad shape. The video was of a massive protest march in Manhattan, the whole island packed with a crowd the protesters would call ten million and the police five hundred thousand. The helicopter images were quite arresting, but there were a lot of places these days that, although less visual, were much more dangerous. In the advanced nations people were marching because of draconian birth reduction acts, laws that made the Chinese look like anarchists, and the young had erupted in fury and dismay, feeling their lives pulled out of their hands by a great crowd of ancient unnatural undead, by history itself come alive. That was bad, sure. But in the developing countries they were rioting over “inadequate access” to the treatments themselves, and that was far worse. Governments were falling; people were dying by the thousands. Really these images of Manhattan were probably meant to reassure; everything’s still orderly! they said. People conducting themselves in a civil manner, even if it be civil disobedience. But Mexico City and São Paulo and New Delhi and Manila were in flames.

Maya looked at the screen and read aloud one of the Manhattan banners: send the old to mars.

“That’s the essence of a bill someone’s introduced in Congress. Reach a hundred and you’re off, to retirement orbitals, the moon, or here.”

“Especially here.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I suppose that explains their stubbornness about emigration quotas.”

Frank nodded. “We’ll never get those. They’re under too much pressure down there, and we’re seen as one of the few escape valves. Did you see that program aired on Eurovid about all the open land on Mars?” Maya shook her head. “It was like a real estate ad. No. If the U.N. delegates gave us any say in emigration, they’d be crucified.”

“So what do we do?”

He shrugged. “Insist on the old treaty at every point. Act like every change is the end of the world.”

“So that’s why you were so crazy about the preface material.”

“Sure. That stuff may not be all that important, but we’re like the British at Waterloo. If we give at any point the whole line collapses.”

She laughed. She was pleased with him, she admired his strategy. And it was a good strategy, although it was not the one he was pursuing. For they were not like the British at Waterloo; they were if anything like the French, making a last-ditch assault which they had to win if they wanted to survive. And so he had been very busy giving in on many points in the treaty, hoping to thrust forward and hold on to what he really wanted in other areas. Which certainly included some remaining role for the American Martian Department, and its Secretary; after all, he needed a base from which to work.