Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [261]
Now, however, the six travelers were not the only refugees arriving. A flood of them had just come down Tharsis from the devastation in Sheffield and the rest of Pavonis; others were driving up from Marineris, through the maze of Noctis. The city was at quadruple capacity, with crowds living and sleeping in the streets and parks, the physical plant strained to the breaking point, and food and gases running out.
The six travelers were told this by an airstrip worker who was still stubbornly doing her job, although none of the strip shuttles were running anymore. After guiding them into parking places among a great fleet of planes at one end of the strip, she told them to suit up and walk the kilometer to the city wall. It made Nadia unreasonably nervous to leave the two 16Ds behind and walk into a city; and she was not reassured once through the lock, when she saw that most people inside were wearing their walkers and carrying their helmets with them, ready for depressurization if it came.
They went to the city offices, and there found Frank and Maya, as well as Mary Dunkel and Spencer Jackson. They all greeted each other with relief, but there was no time for catching up on their various adventures. Frank was busy before a screen, talking to someone in orbit by the sound of it, and he shrugged off their hugs and kept talking, waving once later to acknowledge their appearance. Apparently he was hooked into a functioning communications system, or even more than one, because he stayed in front of the screen talking to one face or another for the next six hours straight, pausing only to sip water or make another call, not sparing another glance for his old compatriots. He seemed to be in a permanent fury, his jaw muscles bunching and unbunching rhythmically; other than that he was in his element, explaining and lecturing, wheedling and threatening, inquiring and then commenting impatiently on the answers he got. Wheeling and dealing in his old style, in other words, but with an angry, bitter, even frightened edge, as if he had walked off a cliff and was trying to argue his way back to ground.
When he finally clicked off, he leaned back in his seat and sighed histrionically, then rose stiffly from his seat and came over to greet them, putting a hand briefly on Nadia’s shoulder. Aside from that he was brusque with all of them, and completely uninterested in how they had managed to make it to Cairo. He only wanted to know whom they had met, and where, and how well these scattered parties were doing, and what they intended. Once or twice he went back to his screen and contacted these groups immediately upon being informed of their location, an ability that stunned the travelers, who had assumed that everyone was as cut off as they had been. “UNOMA links,” Frank explained, running a hand over his swarthy jaw. “They’re keeping some channels open for me.”
“Why?” Sax said.
“Because I’m trying to stop this. I’m trying for a cease-fire, then a general amnesty, then a reconstruction joined by all.”
“But under whose direction?”
“UNOMA’s, of course. And the national offices.”
“But UNOMA agrees only to the cease-fire?” Sax ventured. “While the rebels only agree to the general amnesty?”
Frank nodded curtly. “And neither like the reconstruction joined by all. But the current situation is so bad they may go for it. Four more aquifers have blown since the cable came down. They’re all equatorial, and some people are saying it’s cause and effect.”
Ann shook her head at this, and Frank looked pleased to see it. “They were broken open, I was pretty sure. They broke one at the mouth of Chasma Borealis, it’s pouring out onto the Borealis dunes.”
“The weight of the polar cap probably puts that one under a good bit of pressure,” Ann said.
“Do you know what happened to the Acheron group?” Sax asked Frank.
“No. They’ve disappeared. It might be like with Arkady, I’m afraid.” He glanced at Nadia, pursed his lips unhappily. “I should get back to work.”
“But what’s happening on Earth?” Ann demanded. “What does the U.N. have to say about all this?