Red Mars(211)

When he finally clicked off, he leaned back in his seat and sighed histrionically, then rose stiffly from his seat and came over to greet them, putting a hand briefly on Nadia’s shoulder. Aside from that he was brusque with all of them, and completely uninterested in how they had managed to make it to Cairo. He only wanted to know whom they had met, and where, and how well these scattered parties were doing, and what they intended. Once or twice he went back to his screen and contacted these groups immediately upon being informed of their location, an ability that stunned the travelers, who had assumed that everyone was as cut off as they had been. “UNOMA links,” Frank explained, running a hand over his swarthy jaw. “They’re keeping some channels open for me.”

“Why?” Sax said.

“Because I’m trying to stop this. I’m trying for a cease-fire, then a general amnesty, then a reconstruction joined by all.”

“But under whose direction?”

“UNOMA’s, of course. And the national offices.”

“But UNOMA agrees only to the cease-fire?” Sax ventured. “While the rebels only agree to the general amnesty?”

Frank nodded curtly. “And neither like the reconstruction joined by all. But the current situation is so bad they may go for it. Four more aquifers have blown since the cable came down. They’re all equatorial, and some people are saying it’s cause and effect.”

Ann shook her head at this, and Frank looked pleased to see it. “They were broken open, I was pretty sure. They broke one at the mouth of Chasma Borealis, it’s pouring out onto the Borealis dunes.”

“The weight of the polar cap probably puts that one under a good bit of pressure,” Ann said.

“Do you know what happened to the Acheron group?” Sax asked Frank.

“No. They’ve disappeared. It might be like with Arkady, I’m afraid.” He glanced at Nadia, pursed his lips unhappily. “I should get back to work.”

“But what’s happening on Earth?” Ann demanded. “What does the U.N. have to say about all this?”

“

‘Mars is not a nation but a world resource,’

” Frank quoted heavily. “They’re saying that the tiny fraction of humanity that lives here can’t be allowed to control the resources, when the human material base as a whole is so deeply stressed.”

“That’s probably true,” Nadia heard herself say. Her voice was harsh, a croak. It felt like she hadn’t spoken in days.

Frank shrugged.

Sax said, “I suppose that’s why they’ve given the transnationals such a free hand. It seems to me there’s more of their security here than U.N. police.”

“That’s right,” Frank said. “It took the U.N. a while to agree to deploy their peacekeepers.”

“They don’t mind having the dirty work done by someone else.”

“Of course not.”

“And Earth itself?” Ann asked again.

Frank shrugged. “The Group of Seven seems to be getting things under control.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to say from here, it really is.”

He went to his screen to make more calls. The others went off to eat, to clean up, to sleep, to catch up on friends and acquaintances, on the rest of the first hundred, on what news there was from Earth. The flags of convenience had been destroyed by attacks from the have-nots in the south, but apparently the transnationals had fled to the Group of Seven, and had been taken in and defended by the seven’s giant militaries. The twelfth attempt at a cease-fire had held for several days now.

So they had a bit of time to try and recover. But when they went through the comm room, Frank would still be there, shifting ever more surely into a bitter black fury, snapping his way through what seemed an endless nightmare of screen diplomacy, talking on and on in an urgent, scornful, biting tone. He was past cajoling anyone into anything now, it was purely an exertion of will. Trying to move the world without a fulcrum, or with the weakest of fulcrums, his leverage consisting mainly of his old American connections and his current personal standing with a variety of insurrection leaders, both nearly severed by events and the TV blackouts. And both becoming less important daily on Mars itself, as UNOMA and the transnational forces took over town after town. It seemed to Nadia that Frank was now trying to muscle the process along by the sheer force of his anger at his lack of influence. She found she could not stand to be around him; things were bad enough without his black bile.

But with Sax’s help he got an independent signal to Earth, by contacting Vega and getting the technicians there to transmit messages back and forth. That meant a few hours between transmission and reception, but in a long couple of days after that, he got in five coded exchanges with Secretary of State Wu, and while waiting through the night for return messages, the people on Vega filled the gaps with tapes of Terran news programs that they had not seen. All these reports, when they referred to the Martian situation at all, portrayed the insurrection as a minor disruption caused by criminal elements, principally by escaped prisoners from Korolyov, who had gone on a rampage of senseless property damage, in the process killing great numbers of innocent civilians. Clips of the frozen naked guards outside Korolyov were featured prominently in these reports, as were satellite telephotos of the aquifer outbursts. The most skeptical programs mentioned that these and all other clips from Mars were provided by UNOMA, and some stations in China and the Netherlands even questioned the accuracy of the UNOMA accounts. But they provided no alternative explanation of events, and for the most part, the Terran media disseminated the transnationals’ version of things. When Nadia pointed this out, Frank snorted. “Of course,” he said contemptuously. “Terran news is transnational.” He turned off the sound.