Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [7]
Now it seemed that success had gone to their head.
Lastflow had been named after the depression it occupied, a fan-shaped lava flow extending more than a hundred kilometers down the northeast flank of the mountain. It was the only blemish in what was otherwise a flawlessly circular summit cone and caldera, and clearly it had come very late in the volcano’s history of eruptions. Standing down in the depression, one’s view of the rest of the summit was cut off— it was like being in a shallow hanging valley, with little visible in any direction— until one walked out to the drop-off at rim’s edge, and saw the huge cylinder of the caldera coring the planet, and on the far rim the skyline of Sheffield, looking like a tiny Manhattan over forty kilometers away.
The curtailed view perhaps explained why the depression had been one of the last parts of the rim to be developed. But now it was filled by a fair-sized tent, six kilometers in diameter and a hundred meters high, heavily reinforced as all tents up here had to be. The settlement had been home mostly to commuter laborers in the rim’s many industries. Now the rimfront district had been taken over by the Kakaze, and just outside the tent stood a fleet of large rovers, no doubt the ones that had caused the rumors about rocket launchers.
As Ann was led to the restaurant that Kasei had made his headquarters, she was assured by her guides that this was indeed the case; the rovers did haul rocket launchers, which were ready to flatten UNTA’s last refuge on Mars. Her guides were obviously happy about this, and happy also to be able to tell her about it, happy to meet her and guide her around. A varied bunch— mostly natives, with some Terran newcomers and old-timers, of all ethnic backgrounds. Among them were a few faces Ann recognized: Etsu Okakura, al-Khan, Yussuf. A lot of young natives unknown to her stopped them at the restaurant door to shake her hand, grinning enthusiastically. The Kakaze: they were, she had to admit to herself, the wing of the Reds for which she felt the least sympathy. Angry ex-Terrans or idealistic young natives from the tents, their stone eyeteeth dark in their smiles, their eyes glittering as they got this chance to meet her, as they spoke of kami, the need for purity, the intrinsic value of rock, the rights of the planet, and so on. In short, fanatics. She shook their hands and nodded, trying not to let her discomfort show.
Inside the restaurant Kasei and Dao were sitting by a window, drinking dark beer. Everything in the room stopped on Ann’s entrance, and it took a while for people to be introduced, for Kasei and Dao to welcome her with hugs, for meals and conversations to resume. They got her something to eat from the kitchen. The restaurant workers came out to meet her; they were Kakaze as well. Ann waited until they were gone and people had gone back to their tables, feeling impatient and awkward. These were her spiritual children, the media always were saying; she was the original Red; but in truth they made her uncomfortable.
Kasei, in excellent spirits, as he had been ever since the revolution began, said “We’re going to bring down the cable in about a week.”
“Oh you are!” Ann said. “Why wait so long?”
Dao missed her sarcasm. “It’s a matter of warning people, so they have time to get off the equator.” Though normally a sour man, today he was as cheery as Kasei.
“And off the cable too?”
“If they feel like it. But even if they evacuate it and give it to us, it’s still coming down.”
“How? Are those really rocket launchers out there?”
“Yes. But those are there in case they come down and try to retake Sheffield. As for bringing down the cable, breaking it here at the base isn’t the way to do it.”
“The control rockets might be able to adjust to disruptions at the bottom,” Kasei explained. “Hard to say what would happen, really. But a break just above the areosynchronous point would decrease damage to the equator, and keep New Clarke from flying off as fast as the first one did.