“ ‘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 UN police.”
“That’s right,” Frank said. “It took the UN 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, 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, prinicipally 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 a transnational.” He turned off the sound.
Behind him Nadia and Yeli leaned forward instinctively on the bamboo couch, as if that might help them to hear the silent clip better. Their two weeks of being cut off from outside news had seemed like a year, and now they watched the screen helplessly, soaking in whatever information they could. Yeli even stood to turn the sound back up, but a view of Frank from the side stopped him; Frank was asleep in his chair, his chin on his chest. When a message from the State Department came in he jerked awake, turned up the sound, stared at the tiny faces on the screen, snapped out a reply in a hoarse rasp. Then he closed his eyes and slept again.
At the end of the second night of the Vega link, he had gotten Secretary Wu to promise to press the UN in New York to restore communications, and halt all police action until the situation could be assessed. Wu was also going to try to get transnational forces ordered back to Earth, though that, Frank noted, would be impossible.
The sun had been up for a couple of hours when Frank sent a final acknowledgment to Vega, and shut down. Yeli was asleep on the floor. Nadia stood up stiffly and went for a walk around the park, taking advantage of the light to have a look around. She had to step over bodies sleeping in the grass, in groups of three or four spooned together for warmth. The Swiss had set up big kitchens, and rows of outhouses lining the city wall; it looked like a construction site, and suddenly she found tears running down her face. On she walked. It was nice to be able to walk around in the open light of day.
Eventually she returned to the city offices. Frank was standing over Maya, who was asleep on a couch. He stared down at her with a blank expression, then looked up bleary-eyed at Nadia. “She’s really out.”
“Everyone’s tired.”
“Hmph. What was it like at Hellas?”
“Under water.”
He shook his head. “Sax must be loving it.”
“That’s what I kept saying. But I think it’s too out of control for him.”
“Ah yes.” He closed his eyes, appeared to sleep for a second or two. “I’m sorry about Arkady.”
“Yes.”
Another silence. “She looks like a girl.”
“A little.” Actually Nadia had never seen Maya look older. They were all pushing eighty, they couldn’t keep the pace, treatments or not. In their minds they were old.
“The folks on Vega told me that Phyllis and the rest of the people on Clarke are going to try to get across to them in an emergency rocket.”
“Aren’t they out of the plane of the ecliptic?”
“They are now, but they’re going to try to push down to Jupiter, and use it to swing back downsystem.”
“That’ll take a year or two, won’t it?”
“About a year. Hopefully they’ll miss entirely, or fall into Jupiter. Or run out of food.”
“I take it you’re not happy with Phyllis.”
“That bitch. She’s responsible for a lot of this. Pulling in all those transnats with promises of every metal ever put to use-she figured she would be queen of Mars with all those folks backing her, you should have seen her up there on Clarke, looking down at the planet like a little tin god. I could have strangled her. How I wish I could have seen her face when Clarke took off and went flying!” He laughed harshly.
Maya stirred at the sound, woke. They pulled her up and went out into the park in search of a meal. They got in a line of people huddled in their walkers, coughing, rubbing their hands together, blowing out plumes of frost like white cotton balls. Very few talked. Frank surveyed the scene with a disgusted look, and when they got their trays of roshti and tabouli he devoured his and began conversing to his wristpad in Arabic. “They say Alex and Evgenia and Samantha are coming up Noctis with some Bedouin friends of mine,” he told them when he shut down.
That was good news; Alex and Evgenia had been heard from last in Aureum Overlook, a rebel bastion that had destroyed a number of orbiting UN ships before being incinerated by missile fire from Phobos. And no one had heard from Samantha the whole month of the war.
So all the first hundred in town went to the north gate of Cairo that afternoon to greet them. Cairo’s north gate looked down a long natural ramp that ran into one of the southernmost canyons of Noctis; the road rose up from the canyon floor on this ramp, and they could see all the way down it to the canyon bottom. There, in the early afternoon, came a rover caravan, churning up a small dust cloud and moving slowly.