Green mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Page A

plateau north of Pro-methei Rupes, some hidden in escarpment walls and crater rims, like Nadia’s tunneling project outside Zygote; but others simply sitting in craters under clear tent domes, there for any sky police to see. The first time Coyote drove up to the rim of one of these and they looked down through the clear tent dome onto a village under the stars, Nirgal had been once again amazed, though it was amazement of a lesser order than that engendered by the landscape. Buildings like the school, and the bathhouse and the kitchen, trees, greenhouses—it was all basically familiar, but how could they get away with it, out in the open like this? It was disconcerting.
    And so full of people, of strangers. Nirgal had known in theory that there were a lot of people in the southern sanctuaries, five thousand as they said, all defeated rebels of the 2061 war—but it was something else again to meet so many of them so fast, and see that it was really true. And staying in the unhidden settlements made him extremely nervous. “How can they do it?” he asked Coyote. “Why aren’t they arrested and taken away?”
    “You got me, boy. It’s possible they could be. But they haven’t been yet, and so they don’t think it’s worth the trouble to hide. You know it takes a tremendous effort to hide—you got to do all that thermal disposal engineering, and electronic hardening, and you got to keep out of sight all the time—it’s a pain in the ass. And some people down here just don’t want to do it. They call themselves the demimonde. They have plans for if they’re ever investigated or invaded—most of them have escape tunnels like ours, and some even have some weapons stashed away. But they figure that if they’re out on the surface, there’s no reason to be checked out in the first place. The folks in Christianopolis just told the UN straight out that they came down here to get out of the net. But ... I agree with Hiroko on this one. That some of us have to be a little more careful than that. The UN is out to get the First Hundred, if you ask me. And its family too, unfortunately for you kids. Anyway, now the resistance includes the underground and the demimonde, and having the open towns is a big help to the hidden sanctuaries, so I’m glad they’re here. At this point we depend on them.”
    Coyote was welcomed effusively in this town as he was everywhere, whether the settlement was hidden or exposed. He settled into a corner of a big garage on the crater rim, and conducted a continuous brisk exchange of goods, including seed stocks, software, light bulbs, spare parts, and small machines. These he gave out after long consultations with their hosts, in bargaining sessions that Nirgal couldn’t understand. And then, after a brief tour of the crater floor, where the village looked surprisingly like Zygote under a brilliant purple dome, they were off again.
    On the drives between sanctuaries Coyote did not explain his bargaining sessions very effectively. “I’m saving these people from their own ridiculous notion of economics, that’s what I’m doing! A gift economy is all very well, but it isn’t organized enough for our situation. There are critical items that everyone has to have, so people have to give, which is a contradiction, right? So I am trying to work out a rational system. Actually Vlad and Marina are working it out, and I am trying to implement it, which means I get all the grief.” ‘
    “And this system ...”
    “Well, it’s a sort of two-track thing, where they can still give all they want, but the necessities are given values and distributed properly. And good God you wouldn’t believe some of the arguments I get in. People can be such fools. I try to make sure it all adds up to a stable ecology, like one of Hiroko’s systems, with every sanctuary filling its niche and providing its specialty, and what do I get for it? Abuse, that’s what I get! Radical abuse. I try to stop potlatching