Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Page A

without
incident, got in and drove to the train terminal at the west end of Sheffield.
There a piste ran down the south slope of Pavonis, into the saddle between
Pavonis and Arsia. Seeing it she conceived a plan, very simple and basic, but
workable because of that. She got on the Kakaze band and made her
recommendations as though they were orders. Run away, disappear. Go down into
South Saddle, then around Arsia on the western slope above the snowline, there
to slip into the upper end of Aganippe Fossa, a long straight canyon that
contained a hidden Red refuge, a cliff dwelling in the northern wall. There
they could hide and hide and start another long underground campaign, against
the new masters of the planet. UNOMA, UNTA, metanat, Dorsa Brevia— they were
all green.
    She tried calling Coyote, and was somewhat surprised when he
answered. He was somewhere in Sheffield as well, she could tell; lucky to be
alive no doubt, a bitter furious expression on his cracked face.
    Ann told him her plan; he nodded.
    “After a time they’ll need to get farther away,” he said.
    Ann couldn’t help it: “It was stupid to attack the cable!”
    “I know,” Coyote said wearily.
    “Didn’t you try to talk them out of it?”
    “I did.” His expression grew blacker. “Kasei’s dead?”
    “Yes.”
    Coyote’s face twisted with grief. “Ah, God. Those bastards.”
    Ann had nothing to say. She had not known Kasei well, or liked him
much. Coyote on the other hand had known him from birth, back in Hiroko’s
hidden colony, and from boyhood had taken him along on his furtive expeditions
all over Mars. Now tears coursed down the deep wrinkles on Coyote’s cheeks, and
Ann clenched her teeth.
    “Can you get them down to Aganippe?” she asked. “I’ll stay and
deal with the people in east Pavonis.”
    Coyote nodded. “I’ll get them down as fast as I can. Meet at west
station.”
    “I’ll tell them that.”
    “The greens will be mad at you.”
    “Fuck the greens.”
     
    Some part of the Kakaze snuck into the west terminal of Sheffield,
in the light of a smoky dull sunset: small groups wearing blackened dirty
walkers, their faces white and frightened, angry, disoriented, in shock.
Wasted. Eventually there were three or four hundred of them, sharing the day’s
bad news. When Coyote slipped in the back, Ann rose and spoke in a voice just
loud enough to carry to all of them, aware as she never had been in her life of
her position as the first Red; of what that meant, now. These people had taken
her seriously and here they were, beaten and lucky to be alive, with dead
friends everywhere in the town east of them.
    “A direct assault was a bad idea,” she said, unable to help
herself. “It worked in Burroughs, but that was a different kind of situation.
Here it failed. People who might have lived a thousand years are dead. The
cable wasn’t worth that. We’re going to go into hiding and wait for our next
chance, our next real chance.”
    There were hoarse objections to this, angry shouts: “No! No!
Never! Bring down the cable!”
    Ann waited them out. Finally she raised a hand, and slowly they
went silent again.
    “It could backfire all too easily if we fight the greens now. It
could give the metanats an excuse to come in again. That would be far worse
than dealing with a native government. With Martians we can at least talk. The
environmental part of the Dorsa Brevia agreement gives us some leverage. We’ll
just have to keep working as best we can. Start somewhere else. Do you
understand?”
    This morning they wouldn’t have. Now they still didn’t want to.
She waited out the protesting voices, stared them down. The intense, cross-eyed
glare of Ann Clayborne.... A lot of them had joined the fight because of her,
back in the days when the enemy was the enemy, and the underground an actual
working alliance, loose and fractured but with all its elements more or less on
the same side....
    They bowed their heads, reluctantly