“We don’t use anything but wind and sunlight, and some fish. The environmental courts like us, they agree we’re minimum impact. The population of the North Sea’s area might be even higher now than if it had stayed land. There are hundreds of townships now.”
“Thousands. And the harbor towns with the shipyards, and the seaports we visit to do business, they’re doing very well indeed.”
Ann said, “And you think this is one way we can take on some of Earth’s surplus population.”
“Yes, we do. One of the best ways. It’s a big ocean, it could take a lot more ships like this.”
“As long as they didn’t rely too much on fishing.”
As they walked on, Sax said to Ann, “That’s another reason that it just isn’t worth it to force a crisis over the immigration issue.”
Ann didn’t reply. She was staring down at the sun-burnished water, then up at one of the couple dozen masts, each with its single schooner sail. The town looked like a tabular iceberg with its surface entirely claimed by earth. A floating island.
“So many different kinds of nomads,” Sax commented.
“It seems that very few of the natives feel impelled to settle in a single place.”
“Unlike us.”
“Point taken. But I wonder if this tendency means they are inclined to a certain redness. If you know what I mean.”
“I do not.”
Sax tried to explain. “It seems to me that nomads in general tend to make use of the land as they find it. They move around with the seasons, and live off what they find growing at that time. And seafaring nomads of course even more so, given that the sea is impervious to most human attempts to change it.”
“Except for the people trying to regulate sea level, or salt content. Have you heard about them?”
“Yes. But they’re not going to have much luck with that, I would guess. The mechanics of saltification are still very poorly understood.”
“If they succeed it will kill a lot of freshwater species.”
“True. But the saltwater species will be happy.”
They walked across the middle of the township toward the plaza over the dock, passing between long rows of grapevines pruned to the shape of waist-high T’s, the intermingled horizontal vines heavy with grape clusters of dusty indigo, and bracken, and clear viridine. Beyond the vineyards the ground was covered with a mix of plants, like a kind of prairie, with narrow foot trails cutting through it.
At a restaurant fronting the plaza they were treated to a meal of pasta and shrimp. The conversation ranged everywhere. But then someone came rushing out of the kitchen, pointing at his wrist: news had just come in of trouble on the space elevator. The UN troops who had been sharing the customs duties on New Clarke had taken over the whole station, and sent all the Martian police down, charging them with corruption and declaring that the UN would administer the upper end of the elevator by itself from now on. The UN’s Security Council was now saying that their local officers had overstepped their instructions, but this backpedaling did not include an invitation to the Martians to come back up the cable again, so it looked like a smoke screen to Sax. “Oh my,” he said. “Maya will be very angry, I fear.”
Ann rolled her eyes. “That isn’t really the most important ramification, if you ask me.” She looked shocked, and for the first time since Sax had found her in Olympus caldera, fully engaged in the current situation. Drawn out of her distance. It was fairly shocking, now that he thought of it. Even these seafarers were visibly shaken, though before they like Ann had seem distanced from whatever circumstances obtained on land. He could see the news tearing through the restaurant’s conversations, and throwing them all into the same space: upheaval, crisis, the threat of war. Voices were incredulous, faces were angry.
The people at their table were also watching Sax and Ann, curious as to their reaction. “You’ll have to do something about this,” one of their guides noted.
“Why us?” Ann replied tartly. “It’s you who will have to do something about it, if you ask me. You’re the ones responsible now. We’re just a couple of old issei.”
Their dinner companions looked startled, uncertain how to take her. One laughed. The host who had spoken shook his head. “That’s not true. But you’re right, we will be watching, and talking with the other townships about how to respond. We’ll do our part. I was just saying that people will be looking to you, to both of you, to see what you do. That isn’t so true for us.”
Ann was silenced by this. Sax returned to his meal, thinking furiously. He found he wanter! to talk to Maya.
The evening continued, the sun fell; the dinner limped on, as they all tried to return to some sense of normality. Sax repressed a little smile; there might be an interplanetary crisis and there might not, but meanwhile dinner had to be gotten through in style. And these seafarers were not the kind of people who looked inclined to worry about the solar system at large. So the mood rallied, and they partied over their dessert, still very pleased to have Clayborne and Russell visiting them. And then in the last light the two of them made their excuses, and were escorted down to sea level and their boat. The waves on Chryse Gulf were a lot larger than they had seemed from up above.
Sax and Ann sailed off in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts. Sax looked back up at the township, thinking about what they had seen that day. It looked like a good life. But something about… he chased the thought, and then at the end of the rapid steeplechase he caught it, and still held it all: no blank-cuts these days. Which was a great satisfaction, although the content of this particular train of thought was quite melancholy. Should he even try to share it with Ann? Was it possible to say it?
He said, “Sometimes I regret — when I see those seafarers, and the lives they lead — it seems ironic that we — that we stand on the brink of a — of a kind of golden age — ” There, he had said it; and felt foolish; “ — which will only come to pass when our generation has died. We’ve worked for it all our lives, and then we have to die before it will come.”
“Like Moses outside Israel.”
“Yes? Did he not get to go in?” Sax shook his head. “These old stories — ” Such a throwing together, like science at its heart, like the flashes of insight one got into an experiment when everything about it clarified, and one understood something. “Well, I can imagine how he felt. It’s — it’s frustrating. I would rather see what happens then. Sometimes I get so curious. About the history we’ll never know. The future after our death. And all the rest of it. Do you know what I mean?”
Ann was looking at him closely. Finally she said, “Everything dies someday. Better to die thinking that you’re going to miss a golden age, than to go out thinking that you had taken down your children’s chances with you. That you’d left your descendants with all kinds of toxic long-term debts. Now that would be depressing. As it is, we only have to feel bad for ourselves.”
“True.”
And this was Ann Clayborne talking. Sax felt that his face was glowing. That capillary action could be quite a pleasant sensation.
They returned to the Oxia archipelago and sailed through the islands, talking about them. It was possible to talk. They ate in the cockpit, and slept each in their own hull cabin, port and starboard. One fresh morning, with the wind wafting offshore cool and fragrant, Sax said, “I still wonder about the possibility of some kind of browns.” Ann glanced at him. “And where’s the red in it?” “Well, in the desire to hold things steady. To keep a lot of the land untouched. The areophany.”
“That’s always been green. It sounds like green with just a little touch of red, if you ask me. The khakis.”
“Yes, I suppose. That would be Irishka and the Free Mars coalition, right? But also burnt umbers, siennas, madder alizarins, Indian reds.”