Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [168]
“I guess you wish you had these bamboo in Underhill, eh?”
“The spaces we had were too small. Maybe in the arcades. Anyway this species wasn’t developed until recently.”
She turned the interrogation on him, and asked him scores of questions about Earth. What did they use for housing materials now? Were they going to use fusion power commercially? Was the UN irrevocably damaged by the war of ‘61? Were they trying to build a space elevator for Earth? How much of the population had gotten the aging treatments? Which of the big transnationals were the most powerful? Were they fighting among themselves for preeminence?
Art answered these questions as fully as he could, and though he shook his head at the inadequacy of his answers, Nirgal for one learned a lot from them, and Nadia seemed to feel the same. And they both found themselves laughing fairly often.
When Art asked Nadia questions in turn, her answers were friendly, but varied greatly in length. Talking about her current projects she went on in detail, happy to describe the scores of construction sites she was working on in the southern hemisphere. But when he asked her questions about the early years in Underhill, in that bold direct way of his, she usually just shrugged, even if he asked about building details. “I don’t really remember it very well,” she would say.
“Oh come on.”
“No, I’m telling the truth. It’s a problem, actually. How old are you?”
“Fifty. Or fifty-one, I guess. I’ve lost track of the date.”
“Well, I am one hundred and twenty. Don’t look so shocked! With the treatments it’s not so old— you’ll see! I just had the treatment again two years ago, and I’m not exactly like a teenager, but I feel pretty good. Very good in fact. But I think memory may be the weak link. It may be the brain just won’t hold that much. Or maybe I just don’t try. But I’m not the only one having the problem. Maya is even worse than me. And everyone my age complains about it. Vlad and Ursula are getting concerned. I’m surprised they didn’t think of this back when they developed the treatments.”
“Maybe they did and then forgot.”
Her laugh seemed to take her by surprise.
Later at dinner, after talking about her construction projects again, Art said to her, “You really ought to try to convene a meeting of all these underground groups.”
Maya was at their table, and she looked at Art as suspiciously as she had in Echus Chasma. “It isn’t possible,” she declared. She looked much better than she had when they had parted, Nirgal thought— rested, tall, rangy, graceful, glamorous. She seemed to have shrugged off the guilt of murder as if it were a coat she didn’t like.
“Why not?” Art asked her. “You’d be a lot better off if you could live on the surface.”
“This is obvious. And we could move into the demimonde, if it were just that simple. But there is a large police force on the surface and in orbit, and the last time they saw us they were trying to kill us as quickly as possible. And the way they treated Sax does not give me any confidence that things have changed.”
“I’m not saying they have. But I think there are things you could do to oppose them more effectively. Getting together, for instance, and making a plan. Making contact with surface organizations that would help you. That kind of thing.”
“We have such contacts,” Maya said coldly. But Nadia was nodding. And Nirgal’s mind was racing with images of his years in Sabishii. A meeting of the underground. . . .
“The Sabishiians would come for sure,” he said. “They’re already doing stuff like this all the time. That’s what the demimonde is, in effect.”
Art said,