Blue Mars

Then the Socket stood before them, the cable emerging black and glossy from the great mass of concrete, like a harpoon plunged into Mars by Earthly powers, holding it fast. After identifying themselves the travellers drove right into the complex, down a big, straight passageway to the enormous chamber at the centre where the cable came down through the Socket’s collar, and hovered over a network of pistes crisscrossing the floor. The cable was so exquisitely balanced in its orbit that it never touched Mars at all, but merely hung there with its ten-metre diameter end floating in the middle of the room, the collar in the roof doing no more than stabilizing it; for the rest, its positioning was up to the rockets installed up and down the cable, and, more importantly, to the balance between centrifugal force and gravity which kept it in its areo-synchronous orbit.

A row of elevator cars floated in the air like the cable itself, though for a different reason, as they were electromagnetically suspended. One of them levitated over a piste to the cable, and latched on to the track inlaid in the cable’s west side, and rose up soundlessly through a valve-door in the collar.

The travellers and their escorts got out of their car. Nirgal was withdrawn, already on his way; Maya and Michel excited; Sax his usual self. One by one they hugged Art and Coyote, stretching up to Art, leaning down to Desmond. For a time they all talked at once, staring at each other, trying to comprehend the moment; it was just a trip, but it felt like more than that. Then the four travellers crossed the floor, and disappeared into a jetway leading up into the next elevator car.

After that Coyote and Art stood there, and watched the car float over to the cable and rise through the valve-door and disappear. Coyote’s asymmetrical face clenched into a most uncharacteristic expression of worry, even fear. That was his son, of course, and three of his closest friends, going to a very dangerous place. Well, it was just Earth; but it felt dangerous, Art had to admit. ‘They’ll be okay,’ Art said, giving the little man a squeeze on the shoulder. ‘They’ll be stars down there. It’ll go fine.’ No doubt true. In fact he felt better himself at his own reassurances. It was the home planet, after all. Humans were made for it. They would be fine. It was the home planet. But still …

Back in East Pavonis the congress had begun.

It was Nadia’s doing, really. She simply started working in the main warehouse on draft passages, and people started joining her, and things snowballed. Once the meetings were going people had to attend or risk losing a say. Nadia shrugged if anyone complained that they weren’t ready, that things had to be regularized, that they needed to know more, etc; ‘Come on,’ she said impatiently. ‘Here we are, we might as well get to it.’

So a fluctuating group of about three hundred people began meeting daily in the industrial complex of East Pavonis. The main warehouse, designed to hold piste parts and train cars, was huge, and scores of mobile-walled offices were set up against its walls, leaving the central space open, and available for a roughly circular collection of mismatched tables. ‘Ah,’ Art said when he saw it, ‘the table of tables.’

Of course there were people who wanted a list of delegates, so that they knew who could vote, who could speak, and so on. Nadia, who was quickly taking on the role of chairperson, suggested they accept all requests to become a delegation from any Martian group, as long as the group had had some tangible existence before the conference began. ‘We might as well be inclusive.’

The constitutional scholars from Dorsa Brevia agreed that the congress should be conducted by members of voting delegations, and the final result then voted on by the populace at large. Charlotte, who had helped to draft the Dorsa Brevia document twelve M-years before, had led a group since then in working up plans for a government, in anticipation of a successful revolution. They were not the only ones to have done this; schools in South Fossa and at the university in Sabishii had taught courses in the matter, and many of the young natives in the warehouse were well versed in the issues they were tackling. ‘It’s kind of scary,’ Art remarked to Nadia. ‘Win a revolution and a bunch of lawyers pop out of the woodwork.’

‘Always.’

Charlotte’s group had made a list of potential delegates to a constitutional congress, including all Martian settlements with populations over five hundred. Quite a few people would therefore be represented twice, Nadia pointed out, once by location and again by political affiliation. The few groups not on the list complained to a new committee, which allowed almost all petitioners to join. And Art made a call to Donald Hastings, and extended an invitation to UNTA to join as a delegation as well; the surprised Hastings got back to them a few days later, with a positive response. He would come down the cable himself.

And so after about a week’s jockeying, with many other matters being worked on at the same time, they had enough agreement to call for a vote of approval of the delegate list; and because it had been so inclusive, it passed almost unanimously. And suddenly they had a real congress. It was made up of the following delegations, with anywhere from one to ten people in each delegation:

Towns

Acheron

Nicosia

Cairo

Odessa

Harmakhis Vallis

Sabishii

Christianopolis

Bogdanov Vishniac

Hiranyagarbha

Mauss Hyde

New Clarke

Bradbury Point

Sergei Korolyov

Dumartheray Crater

South Station

Reull Vallis

southern caravanserai

Nuova Bologna

Nirgal Vallis

Montepulciano

Sheffield

Senzeni Na

Echus Overlook

Dorsa Brevia

Dao Vallis

South Fossa

Rumi

New Vanuatu

Prometheus

Gramsci

Mareotis

Burroughs refugees organization

Libya Station

Tharsis Tholus

Overhangs

Margaritifer Plinth

Great Escarpment caravanserai