LITMIR.BIZ

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you build walls that are all mosaics. It’s beautiful to do it. Everyone can have their own wall or building, whatever they want. All the factories in the Alchemists’ Quarter look like outhouses or discarded sardine tins. Brick around them would help insulate them, so there is a good scientific reason for it, but truthfully it’s just as important that they look good, that it looks like home here. I’ve already lived too long in a country that thought only of utility. We must show that we value more than that here, yes?”

      “No matter what we do to the buildings,” Maya pointed out sharply, “the ground around them will still be all ripped up.”

      “But not necessarily! Look, when construction is over, it would be very possible to grade the ground right back to its original configuration, and then cast loose rock over the surface in a way that would imitate the aboriginal plain. Dust storms would deposit the required fines soon enough, and then if people walked on pathways, and vehicles ran on roads or tracks, soon it would have the look of the original ground, occupied here and there by colorful mosaic buildings, and glass domes stuffed with greenery, and yellow brick roads or whatnot. Of course we must do it! It is a matter of spirit! And that’s not to say it could have been done earlier, the infrastructure had to be installed, that’s always messy, but now we are ready for the art of architecture, the spirit of it.”

      He waved his hands around, stopped suddenly, popped his eyes at the dubious expressions framed in the faceplates around him. “Well, it’s an idea, yes?”

      Yes, Nadia thought, looking around with interest, trying to visualize it. Perhaps that kind of process would bring back her pleasure in the work? Perhaps it would look different to Ann then? She wasn’t sure.

      “More ideas from Arkady,” as Maya put it in the pool that night, looking sour. “Just what we need.”

      “But they’re good ideas,” Nadia said. She got out, showered, put on a jumper.

      Later that night she met Arkady again, and took him to see the northwest corner chamber of Underhill, which she had left bare-walled so she could show him the structural detail.

      “It’s very elegant,” he said, rubbing a hand over the bricks. “Really, Nadia, all of Underhill is magnificent. I can see your hand everywhere on it.”

      Pleased, she went to a screen and called up the plans she had been working on for a larger habitat. Three rows of vaulted chambers stacked underground, in one wall of a very deep trench; mirrors on the opposite wall of the trench, to direct sunlight down into the rooms … Arkady nodded and grinned and pointed at the screen, asking questions and making suggestions: “An arcade between the rooms and the wall of the trench, open space; and each story laid back a bit from the one below it, so each has a balcony overlooking the arcade …”

      “Yes, that should be possible …” And they tapped at the computer screen, altering the architectural sketch as they spoke.

      Later they walked in the domed atrium. They stood under tall clusters of black bamboo leaves, the plants still in pots while the ground was prepared. It was quiet and dark.

      “We could perhaps lower this area one story,” Arkady said softly. “Cut windows and doors into your vaults, and lighten them up.”

      Nadia nodded. “We thought of that, and we’re going to do it, but it’s slow getting so much dirt out through locks.” She looked at him. “But what about us, Arkady? So far you’ve only talked about the infrastructure. I should have thought that beautifying buildings would be pretty low down on your list of things to do.”

      Arkady grinned. “Well, maybe all the things higher on the list are already done.”

      “What? Did I hear Arkady Nikelyovich say that?”

      “Well, you know – I don’t complain just to complain, Ms. Nine Fingers. And the way things have been going down here, it’s very close to what I was calling for during the voyage out. Close enough that it would be stupid to complain.”

      “I must admit you surprise me.”

      “Do I? But think about how you all have been working together here, this last year.”

      “Half a year.”

      He laughed. “Half a year. And for all that time we have had no leaders, really. Those nightly meetings when everyone has their say, and the group decides what needs doing most; that’s how it should be. And no one is wasting time buying or selling, because there is no market. Everything here belongs to all equally. And yet none of us can exploit anything that we own, for there’s no one outside us to sell it to. It’s been a very communal society, a democratic group. All for one and one for all.”

      Nadia sighed. “Things have changed, Arkady. It’s not like that anymore. And it’s changing more all the time. So it won’t last.”

      “Why do you say that?” he cried. “It will last if we decide that it will.”

      She glanced at him skeptically. “You know it isn’t so simple.”

      “Well, no. Not simple. But within our power!”

      “Maybe.” She sighed, thinking of Maya and Frank, of Phyllis and Sax and Ann. “There’s an awful lot of fighting going on.”

      “That’s all right, as long as we agree on certain basic things.”

      She shook her head, rubbed her scar with the fingers of her other hand. Her absent finger was itching, and suddenly she felt depressed. Overhead the long bamboo leaves were defined by occluded stars; they looked like sprays of a giant bacillus. They walked along the path between crop trays. Arkady picked up her maimed hand and peered at the scar, until it made her uncomfortable and she tried to pull it back. He drew it up, gave the newly exposed knuckle at the base of the ring finger a kiss. “You’ve got strong hands, Ms. Nine Fingers.”

      “I did before this,” she said, making a fist and holding it up.

      “Someday Vlad will grow you a new finger,” he said, and took the fist and opened it, then held the hand as they continued to walk. “This reminds me of the arboretum in Sebastopol,” he said.

      “Mmm,” Nadia said, not really listening, intent on the warm heft of his hand in hers, in the tight intermingling of their fingers. He had strong hands too. She was fifty-one years old, a round little Russian woman with gray hair, a construction worker with a missing finger. So nice to feel the warmth of another body; it had been too long, and her hand soaked up the feeling like a sponge, until the poor thing tingled, full and warm. It must feel odd to him, she thought, then gave up on it. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

      Having Arkady at Underhill made it like the hour before a thunderstorm. He made people think about what they were doing; habits that they had fallen into without thought came under scrutiny, and under this new pressure some became defensive, others aggressive. All the standing arguments got a bit more intense. Naturally this included the terraforming debate.

      Now this debate was in no sense a single event but was rather an ongoing process, a topic that kept coming up, a matter of casual exchanges between individuals, out working, eating meals, falling asleep. Any number of things could bring it up: the sight of the white frost plume over Chernobyl; the arrival of a robot-driven rover, laden with water ice from the polar station; clouds in the dawn sky. Seeing these or many other phenomena someone would say, “That’ll add some BTUs to the system,” or, “Isn’t that a good greenhouse gas,” and perhaps a discussion of the technical aspects of the problem would follow. Sometimes the subject would come back up in the evenings back in Underhill, leading from the technical to the philosophical; and sometimes this led to long and heated arguments.

      The debate was not, of course, confined to Mars. Position papers were being churned out by policy centers in Houston, Baikonur, Moscow, Washington, and the UN Office for Martian Affairs in New York, as well as in government bureaus, newspaper editorial offices, corporate board rooms, university campuses, and bars and homes all over the world. In the arguments on Earth, many people began to use the colonists’ names as a kind of shorthand for

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