Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [203]
Or so Fort’s mild expression of pleasure seemed to say to Nadia, somehow, as Jackie Boone in all her Valkyrie glory came shooting down the tunnel wall, and flew out over them as if shot from a circus cannon.
• • •
The program devised by the Swiss came to its end. The organizers quickly called for a three-day rest, to be followed by a general meeting.
Art and Nirgal spent these days in their little conference room, going over videotapes twenty hours a days, talking endlessly and typing at their AIs in a kind of hammering desperation. Nadia kept them going, and broke ties when they disagreed, and wrote the sections they deemed too hard. Often when she walked in one of them would be asleep in his chair, the other staring transfixed by his screen. “Look,” he would croak, “what do you think of this?” Nadia would read the screen and make comments while putting food under their noses, which often woke the sleeping one. “Looks promising. Let’s get back to work.”
• • •
And so on the morning of the general meeting Art and Nirgal and Nadia walked out onto the stage of the amphitheater together, and Art took his AI with him to the proscenium. He stood looking out at the assembled crowd, as if stunned by the sight of it, and after a long pause said, “We actually agree on many things.”
This got a laugh. But Art held his AI overhead like the stone tablets, then read aloud from the screen: “Work points for a Martian government!”
He peered over the screen at the crowd, and they subsided into an attentive silence.
“One. Martian society will be composed of many different cultures. It is better to think of it as a world rather than a nation. Freedom of religion and cultural practice must be guaranteed. No one culture or group of cultures should be able to dominate the rest.
“Two. Within this framework of diversity, it still must be guaranteed that all individuals on Mars have certain inalienable rights, including the material basics of existence, health care, education, and legal equality.
“Three. The land, air, and water of Mars are in the common stewardship of the human family, and cannot be owned by any individual or group.
“Four. The fruits of an individual’s labor belong to the individual, and cannot be appropriated by another individual or group. At the same time, human labor on Mars is part of a communal enterprise, given to the common good. The Martian economic system must reflect both these facts, balancing self-interest with the interests of society at large.
“Five. The metanational order ruling Earth is currently incapable of incorporating the previous two principles, and cannot be applied here. In its place we must enact an economics based on ecologic science. The goal of Martian economics is not ‘sustainable development’ but a sustainable prosperity for its entire biosphere.
“Six. The Martian landscape itself has certain ‘rights of place’ which must be honored. The goal of our environmental alterations should therefore be minimalist and ecopoetic, reflecting the values of the areophany. It is suggested that the goal of environmental alterations be to make only that portion of Mars lower than the five-kilometer contour human-viable. Higher elevations, constituting some thirty percent of the planet, would then remain in something resembling their primeval conditions, existing as natural wilderness zones.
“Seven. The habitation of Mars is a unique historical process, as it is the first inhabitation of another planet by humanity. As such it should be undertaken in a spirit of reverence for this planet and for the scarcity of life in the universe. What we do here will set precedents for further human habitation of the solar system, and will suggest models for the human