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By Root 2196 0

pushing them up onto the stage like an impatient sheep-dog: first Sax and Ann, walking side by side; then Nadia and Art, Tariki and Nanao, Zeyk and Nazik, Mikhail, Vasili, Ursula and Marina, even Coyote. The ancient issei, come back to haunt the present moment, come back to take the stage and say what they thought. Maya pointed to the room’s screens, which showed images of the outside of the building; the group on the stage now extended in an unbroken line through the halls of the building out onto the big central plaza facing the sea, where some half-million people were assembled. The city streets were also stuffed with people, watching screens to see what was happening in the assembly hall. And out in Chalmers Bay there sailed a fleet of townships like a startling new archipelago, with flags and banners waving from their masts. And in every Martian city the crowds were out, the screens were on. Everyone could see everyone else.

Ann went to the podium and said quietly that the government of Mars in recent years had broken both the law and the spirit of human compassion, by forbidding immigration from Earth to Mars. The people of Mars did not want that. They needed a new government. This was a vote of no confidence. The new incursions of Terran settlers were also illegal, and unacceptable, but understandable; the government of Mars had broken the law first. And the number of new settlers in these incursions was no greater than the number of legitimate settlers who had been illegally barred from coming by the current government. Mars, Ann said, had to be open to Terran immigration as much as could be, given the physical constraints, for as long as the population-surge years might last. The surge years would not last much longer. Their duty now to their descendants was to get through the last of these packed years in peace. “Nothing on the table now is worth war. We have seen it, and we know.”

Then she looked over her shoulder at Sax, who stepped up next to her to the microphones. He said, “Mars has to be protected.” The biosphere was new, its carrying capacity limited. It did not have the physical resources of Earth, and much of its empty land would of physical necessity have to stay empty. Terrans had to understand that, and not overwhelm local systems; if they did, Mars would be no use to anyone at all. Clearly there was a severe population problem on Earth, but Mars alone was not the solution. “The Earth— Mars relationship has to be renegotiated.”

They began that renegotiation. They asked a UN representative to come up and explain the incursions. They argued and debated and expostulated; and shouted in each other’s faces. Out in the outback, locals confronted settlers, and some of them on both sides threatened violence; and others stepped in and started talking, cajoling, scolding, wrangling, negotiating; and shouting in each other’s faces. At any point in the process, in a thousand different places, things could have turned violent; many people were furious; but cooler heads prevailed. It remained, in most places, at the level of argument. Many feared this could not continue, many did not believe it possible; but it was happening, and the people in the streets saw it happening. They kept it happening. At some point, after all, the mutation of values has to express itself; and why not here, why not now? There were very few weapons on the planet, and it was hard to strike someone in the face, or stick them with a pitchfork, when they were standing there arguing with you. This was the moment of mutation, history in the making, and they could see it right before them, in the streets and on the human hillsides and on the screens, history labile right there in their hands— and so they seized the moment, and wrenched it in a new direction. They talked themselves into it. A new government. A new treaty with Earth. A polycephalous peace. The negotiations would go on for years. Like a choir in counterpoint, singing a great fugue.

Eventually that cable was going to come back to haunt us, that’s what I said all along. You did