Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [95]
4
Phyllis stayed with him that afternoon, as she had one or two times before, and they walked back together, Sax trying at first to play the role of native guide, pointing out plants he had just learned the previous week. But Phyllis asked no questions about them, and did not appear even to listen when he spoke. It seemed she only wanted him to be an audience to her, a witness to her life. So he gave up on the plants and asked questions, and listened and then asked more. It was a good opportunity to learn more about the current Martian power structure, after all. Even if she exaggerated her own role in it, it was still informative. “I was amazed how fast Subarashii got the new elevator built and into position,” she said.
“Subarashii?”
“They were the principal contractor.”
“Who awarded the contract, UNOMA?”
“Oh no. UNOMA has been replaced by the UN Transitional Authority.”
“So when you were president of the Transitional Authority, you were in effect president of Mars.”
“Well, the presidency just rotates among the members, it doesn’t confer much more power than any other members have. It’s just for media consumption, and to run the meetings. Scut work.”
“Still . . .”
“Oh, I know.” She laughed. “It’s a position a lot of my old colleagues wanted but never got. Chalmers, Bogdanov, Boone, Toitovna— I wonder what they would have thought if they had seen it. But they backed the wrong horse.”
Sax looked away from her. “So why did Subarashii get the new elevator?”
“The steering committee of the TA voted that way. Praxis had made a bid for it, and no one likes Praxis.”
“Now that the elevator is back, do you think things will change again?”
“Oh certainly! Certainly! A lot of things have been on hold since the unrest. Emigration, building, terraforming, commerce— they’ve all been slowed down. We’ve barely managed to rebuild some of the damaged towns. It’s been a kind of martial law, necessary of course, given what happened.”
“Of course.”
“But now! All the stockpiled metals from the last forty years are ready to enter the Terran market, and that’s going to stimulate the entire two-world economy unbelievably. We’ll see more production out of Earth now, and more investment here, more emigration too. We’re finally ready to get on with things.”
“Like the soletta?”
“Exactly! That’s a perfect example of what I mean. There’s all kinds of plans for major investment here.”
“Glass-sided canals,” Sax said. It would make the moholes look trivial.
Phyllis was saying something about how bright things looked for Earth, and he shook his head to clear it of joules per square centimeter. He said, “But I thought Earth had some serious difficulties.”
“Oh, Earth always has serious difficulties. We’re going to have to get used to that. No, I’m very optimistic. I mean this recession has hit them hard down there, especially the little tigers and the baby tigers, and of course the less developed countries. But the influx of industrial metals from here will stimulate the economy for everyone, including the environment-control industries. And, unfortunately, it looks like the diebacks will solve a lot of their other problems for them.”
Sax focused on the section of moraine they were climbing. Here solifluction, the daily melting of ground ice on a tilt, had caused the loose regolith to slide down in a series of dips and rims, and although it all looked gray and lifeless, a faint pattern like minuscule tiling revealed that it was actually covered with blue-gray flake lichen. In the dips there were clumps of what looked like gray ash, and Sax stooped to pluck a small sample. “Look,” he said brusquely to Phyllis, “snow liverwort.”
“It looks like dirt.”
“That’s a parasitic fungus that grows on it. The plant is actually green, see those little leaves? That’s new growth that the fungus hasn’t covered yet.” Under magnification the new leaves looked like green glass.
But Phyllis didn’t bother to look. “Who designed that one?” she asked, her tone of voice implying that the designer had poor taste.
“I don’t know.