LITMIR.BIZ

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system. Billions of people, trillions of people, quadrillions of people, all as close to immortal as they could make themselves …

      She shook her head, in a great confusion of spirits. The radicals in Lastflow were not her people, not really, but unless they succeeded, the summit of Pavonis and everywhere else on Mars would become part of the great world city. She tried to concentrate on the view, she tried to feel it, the awe of the symmetrical formation, the love of rock hard under her bottom. Her feet hung over the edge of the bench, she kicked her heels against basalt; she could throw a pebble and it would fall five thousand metres. But she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t feel it. Petrification. So numb, for so long … She sniffed, shook her head, pulled her feet in over the edge. Walked back up to her rover.

      She dreamed of the long run-out. The landslide was rolling across the floor of Melas Chasma, about to strike her. Everything visible with surreal clarity. Again she remembered Simon, again she groaned and got off the little dyke, going through the motions, appeasing a dead man inside her, feeling awful. The ground was vibrating—

      She woke, by her own volition she thought – escaping, running away – but there was a hand, pulling hard on her arm.

      ‘Ann, Ann, Ann.’

      It was Nadia. Another surprise. Ann struggled up, disoriented. ‘Where are we?’

      ‘Pavonis, Ann. The revolution. I came over and woke you because a fight has broken out between Kasei’s Reds and the Greens in Sheffield.’

      The present rolled over her like the landslide in her dream. She jerked out of Nadia’s grasp, groped for her shirt. ‘Wasn’t my rover locked?’

      ‘I broke in.’

      ‘Ah.’ Ann stood up, still foggy, getting more annoyed the more she understood the situation. ‘Now what happened?’

      ‘They launched missiles at the cable.’

      ‘They did!’ Another jolt, further clearing away the fog. ‘And?’

      ‘It didn’t work. The cable’s defence systems shot them down. They’ve got a lot of hardware up there now, and they’re happy to be able to use it at last. But now the Reds are moving into Sheffield from the west, firing more rockets, and the UN forces on Clarke are bombing the first launch sites, over on Ascraeus, and they’re threatening to bomb every armed force down here. This is just what they wanted. And the Reds think it’s going to be like Burroughs, obviously, they’re trying to force the action. So I came to you. Look, Ann, I know we’ve been fighting a lot. I haven’t been very, you know, patient, but look, this is just too much. Everything could fall apart at the last minute – the UN could decide the situation here is anarchy, and come up from Earth and try to take over again.’

      ‘Where are they?’ Ann croaked. She pulled on pants, went to the bathroom. Nadia followed her right in. This too was a surprise; in Underhill it might have been normal between them, but it had been a long long time since Nadia had followed her into a bathroom talking obsessively while Ann washed her face and sat down and peed. ‘They’re still based in Lastflow, but now they’ve cut the rim piste and the one to Cairo, and they’re fighting in west Sheffield, and around the Socket. Reds fighting Greens.’

      ‘Yes, yes.’

      ‘So will you talk to the Reds, will you stop them?’

      A sudden fury swept through Ann. ‘You drove them to this,’ she shouted in Nadia’s face, causing Nadia to crash back into the door. Ann got up and took a step toward Nadia and yanked her trousers up, shouting still: ‘You and your smug, stupid terraforming, it’s all green green green green, with never a hint of compromise! It’s just as much your fault as theirs, since they have no hope!’

      ‘Maybe so,’ Nadia said mulishly. She didn’t care about that, it was the past and didn’t matter; she waved it aside and would not be swerved from her point: ‘But will you try?’

      Ann stared at her stubborn old friend, at this moment almost youthful with fear, utterly focused and alive.

      ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Ann said grimly. ‘But from what you say, it’s already too late.’

      It was indeed too late. The rover camp Ann had been staying in was deserted, and when she got on the wrist and called around, she got no answers. So she left Nadia and the rest of them stewing in the East Pavonis warehouse complex, and drove her rover around to Lastflow, hoping to find some of the Red leaders based there. But Lastflow had been abandoned by the Reds, and none of the locals knew where they had gone. People were watching TVs in the stations and cafe windows, but when Ann looked too she saw no news of the fighting, not even on Mangalavid. A feeling of desperation began to seep into her grim mood; she wanted to do something but did not know how. She tried her wristpad again, and to her surprise Kasei answered on their private band. His face in the little image looked shockingly like John Boone’s, so much so that in her confusion Ann didn’t at first hear what he said. He looked so happy, it was John to the life!

      ‘… had to do it,’ he was telling her. Ann wondered if she had asked him about that. ‘If we don’t do something they’ll tear this world apart. They’ll garden it right to the tops of the big four.’

      This echoed Ann’s thoughts on the ledge enough to shock her again, but she collected herself and said, ‘We’ve got to work within the framework of the discussions, Kasei, or else we’ll start a civil war.’

      ‘We’re a minority, Ann. The framework doesn’t care about minorities.’

      ‘I’m not so sure. That’s what we have to work on. And even if we do decide on active resistance, it doesn’t have to be here and now. It doesn’t have to be Martians killing Martians.’

      ‘They’re not Martian.’ There was a glint in his eye, his expression was Hirokolike in its distance from the ordinary world. In that sense he was not like John at all. The worst of both parents; and so they had another prophet, speaking a new language.

      ‘Where are you now?’

      ‘West Sheffield.’

      ‘What are you going to do?’

      ‘Take the Socket, and then bring down the cable. We’re the ones with the weapons and the experience. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble.’

      ‘You didn’t bring it down first try.’

      ‘Too fancy. We’ll just chop it down this time.’

      ‘I thought that wasn’t the way to do it.’

      ‘It’ll work.’

      ‘Kasei, I think we need to negotiate with the Greens.’

      He shook his head, impatient with her, disgusted that she had lost her nerve when push came to shove. ‘After the cable is down we’ll negotiate. Look Ann, I’ve gotta go. Stay out of the fall line.’

      ‘Kasei!’

      But he was gone. No one listened to her – not her enemies, not her friends, not her family – though she would have to call Peter. She would have to try Kasei again. She needed to be there in person, to get his attention as she had Nadia’s – yes, it had come to that: to get their attention she had to shout right in their faces.

      The possibility of getting blocked around East Pavonis kept her going west from Lastflow, circling counterclockwise as she had the day before, to come on the Red force from its rear, no doubt the best approach anyway. It was about a hundred and fifty kilometre drive from Lastflow to the western edge of Sheffield, and as she sped around the summit, just outside the piste, she spent the time trying to call the various forces on the mountain, with no success. Explosive static marked the fight for Sheffield, and memories of ’61 erupted with these brutal bursts of white noise, frightening her; she drove the rover as fast as it would go, keeping it on the piste’s narrow outside apron to make the ride smoother and faster – a hundred kilometres per hour, then faster – racing, really,

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