Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [257]
“That means world war,” Nadia said sharply. “And if the pattern holds, it would be the worst one yet.” She shook her head. “There has to be a better way.”
“It will not take our meddling for it to start,” Zeyk said. “They’re on the spiral down into it now.”
“Do you think so?” Nadia said. “Well, if it happens . . . then we’ll have our chance for a coup here, I guess.”
Zeyk shook his head. “This is their escape hatch. It will take a lot of coercion to make the powerful give up a place like this.”
“There are different kinds of coercion,” Nadia said. “On a planet where the surface is still deadly, we should be able to find some kinds that don’t involve shooting people. There should be a whole new technology for waging war. I’ve talked with Sax about this, and he agrees.”
Maya snorted, and Zeyk grinned. “His new ways resemble the old ones, as far as I can tell! Bringing down that aerial lens— we loved that! As for firing Deimos out of orbit, well. But I can see his point, to an extent. When the cruise missiles come out . . .”
“We have to make sure it doesn’t come to that.” Nadia had the mulish expression she got when her ideas were set in concrete, and Maya regarded her with surprise. Nadia, revolutionary strategist— Maya wouldn’t have believed it possible. Well, she no doubt thought of it as protecting her construction projects. Or a construction project itself, in a different medium.
“You should come talk to the communes in Odessa,” Maya suggested to her. “They’re followers of Nirgal, basically.”
Nadia agreed, and leaned forward with a miniature poker to tap one of the coals back into the center of the brazier. They watched the fire burn; a rare sight on Mars, but Zeyk liked fires enough to take the trouble. Films of gray ash fluttered over the Martian orange of hot coals. Zeyk and Nazik talked in low voices, describing the Arab situation on the planet, which was complex as usual. The radicals among them were almost all out in caravans, prospecting for metals and water and areothermal sites, looking innocuous and never doing a thing to reveal that they were not part of the metanat order. But they were out there, waiting, ready to act.
Nadia got up to go to bed, and when she had gone, Maya said hesitantly, “Tell me about Chalmers.”
Zeyk stared at her, calm and impassive. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how he was involved with Boone’s murder.”
Zeyk squinted uncomfortably. “That was a very complicated night in Nicosia,” he complained. “The talk about it among Arabs is endless. It gets tiresome.”
“So what do they say?”
Zeyk glanced at Nazik, who said. “The problem is they all say different things. No one knows what really happened.”
“But you were there. You saw some of it. Tell me first what you saw.”
At this Zeyk eyed her closely, then nodded. “Very well.” He took a breath, composed himself. Solemnly, as if giving witness, he said, “We were gathered at the Hajr el-kra Meshab, after the speeches you gave. People were angry at Boone because of a rumor that he had stopped a plan to build a mosque on Phobos, and his speech hadn’t helped. We never liked that new Martian society he talked about. So we were there grumbling when Frank came by. I must say, it was an encouraging sight to see him at that moment. It seemed to us that he was the only one with a chance to counter Boone. So we looked to him, and he encouraged us to— he slighted Boone in subtle ways, made jokes that made us angrier at Boone while making Frank seem the only bastion against him. I was actually annoyed with Frank for stirring up