Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [316]
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A couple of hours later Sax woke her up in her chair, and she found out what Hastings had been so worried about. “The UNTA unit that burned Sabishii went out in armored cars and tried to— to take the dike away from the Reds,” Sax told her, looking grave. “Apparently there’s been a fight over the section of the dike nearest the city. And we’ve just heard from some Red units up there that the dike has been broached.”
“What?”
“Blown up. They had drilled holes and set charges to use as a— as a threat. And in the fighting they ended up setting them off. That’s what they said.”
“Oh my God.” Her drowsiness was gone in a flash, blown away in her own internal explosion, a great blast of adrenaline racing all through her. “Have you got any confirmation?”
“We can see a dustcloud blocking the stars. A big one.”
“Oh my God.” She went to the nearest screen, her heart thudding in her chest. It was three A.M. “Is there a chance ice will choke the gap, and serve as a dam?”
Sax squinted. “I don’t think so. Depends on how big the gap is.”
“Can we set counterexplosions and close the gap?”
“I don’t think so. Look, here’s video sent from some Reds south of the break on the dike.” He pointed at a screen, which displayed an IR image with black to the left and blackish green to the right, and a forest-green spill across the middle. “That’s the blast zone there in the middle, warmer than the regolith. The explosion appears to have been set next to a pod of liquid water. Or else there was an explosion set to liquefy the ice behind the break. Anyway, that’s a lot of water coming through. And that will widen the break. No, we’ve got a problem.”
“Sax,” she exclaimed, and held on to his shoulder as she stared at the screen. “The people in Burroughs, what are they supposed to do? God damn it, what could Ann be thinking?”
“It might not have been Ann.”
“Ann or any of the Reds!”
“They were attacked. It could have been an accident. Or someone on the dike must have thought they were going to get forced away from the explosives. In which case it was a use-it-or-lose-it situation.” He shook his head. “Those are always bad.”
“Damn them.” Nadia shook her head hard, trying to clear it. “We have to do something!” She thought frantically. “Are the mesa tops high enough to stay above the flood?”
“For a while. But Burroughs is at about the lowest point in that little depression. That’s why it was sited there. Because the sides of the bowl gave it long horizons. No. The mesa tops will get covered too. I can’t be sure how long it will take, because I’m not sure of the flow rate. But let’s see, the volume to be filled is about . . .” He tapped away madly, but his eyes were blank, and suddenly Nadia saw that there was another part of his mind doing the calculation faster than the AI, a gestalt envisioning of the situation, staring at infinity, shaking his head back and forth like a blind man. “It could be pretty fast,” he whispered before he was done typing. “If the melt pod is big enough.”
“We have to assume it is.”
He nodded.
They sat there beside each other, staring at Sax’s AI.
Sax said hesitantly, “When I was working in Da Vinci, I tried to think out the possible scenarios. The shapes of things to come. You know? And I worried that something like this might happen. Broken cities. Tents, I thought it would be. Or fires.”
“Yes?” Nadia said, looking at him.
“I thought of an experiment— a plan.”
“Tell me,” Nadia said evenly.
But Sax was reading what looked like a weather update, which had just appeared over the figures scrolling on his screen. Nadia patiently waited him out, and when he looked up from his AI again, she said, “Well?”
“There’s a high-pressure cell, coming down Syrtis from Xanthe. It should be here today. Tomorrow. On Isidis Planitia the air pressure will be about three