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Pavonis warehouse
complex, and drove her rover around to Lastflow, hoping to find some of the Red
leaders based there. But Lastflow had been abandoned by the Reds, and none of
the locals knew where they had gone. People were watching TVs in the stations
and cafe windows, but when Ann looked too she saw no news of the fighting, not
even on Mangalavid. A feeling of desperation began to seep into her grim mood;
she wanted to do something but did not know how. She tried her wrist-pad again,
and to her surprise Kasei answered on their private band. His face in the
little image looked shockingly like John Boone’s, so much so that in her
confusion Ann didn’t at first hear what he said. He looked so happy, it was John
to the life!
    “. . . had to do it,” he was telling her. Ann wondered if she had
asked him about that. “If we don’t do something they’ll tear this world apart.
They’ll garden it right to the tops of the big four.”
    This echoed Ann’s thoughts on the ledge enough to shock her again,
but she collected herself and said, “We’ve got to work within the framework of
the discussions, Kasei, or else we’ll start a civil war.”
    “We’re a minority, Ann. The framework doesn’t care about
minorities.”
    “I’m not so sure. That’s what we have to work on. And even if we
do decide on active resistance, it doesn’t have to be here and now. It doesn’t
have to be Martians killing Martians.”
    “They’re not Martian.” There was a glint in his eye, his
expression was Hiroko-like in its distance from the ordinary world. In that
sense he was not like John at all. The worst of both parents; and so they had
another prophet, speaking a new language.
    “Where are you now?”
    “West Sheffield.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Take the Socket, and then bring down the cable. We’re the ones
with the weapons and the experience. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble.”
    “You didn’t bring it down first try.”
    “Too fancy. We’ll just chop it down this time.”
    “I thought that wasn’t the way to do it.”
    “It’ll work.”
    “Kasei, I think we need to negotiate with the greens.”
    He shook his head, impatient with her, disgusted that she had lost
her nerve when push came to shove. “After the cable is down we’ll negotiate.
Look Ann, I’ve gotta go. Stay out of the fall line.”
    “Kasei!”
    But he was gone. No one listened to her—not her enemies, not her
friends, not her family—though she would have to call Peter. She would have to
try Kasei again. She needed to be there in person, to get his attention as she
had Nadia’s—yes, it had come to that: to get their attention she had to shout
right in their faces.
     
    The possibility of getting blocked around east Pavonis kept her
going west from Lastflow, circling counterclockwise as she had the day before,
to come on the Red force from its rear, no doubt the best approach anyway. It
was about a 150-kilometer drive from Lastflow to the western edge of Sheffield,
and as she sped around the summit, just outside the piste, she spent the time
trying to call the various forces on the mountain, with no success. Explosive
static marked the fight for Sheffield, and memories of ‘61 erupted with these
brutal bursts of white noise, frightening her; she drove the rover as fast as
it would go, keeping it on the piste’s narrow outside apron to make the ride
smoother and faster—a hundred kilometers per hour, then faster— racing, really,
to try to stave off the disaster of a civil war— there was a terrible dreamlike
quality to it. And especially in that it was too late, too late. In moments
like these she was always too late. In the sky over the caldera, starred clouds
appeared instantaneously—explosions, without a doubt missiles fired at the
cable and shot down in midflight, in white puffs like incompetent fireworks,
clustered over Sheffield and peaking in the region of the cable, but puffing
into existence all over the