Blue Mars. Kim Stanley Robinson

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      The compound they were in, she explained, was one of scores of relief hospitals that had been built on the two islands since the flood. Their construction had been the major project of the islanders in response to their new freedom; they had created relief centres that aided flood victims, giving them all at once housing, work, and medical care, including the longevity treatment.

      ‘Everyone gets the treatment?’ Nirgal asked.

      ‘Yes,’ the woman said.

      ‘Good!’ Nirgal said, surprised; he had heard it was a rare thing on Earth.

      ‘You think so!’ the Prime Minister said. ‘People are saying it will create all kinds of problems.’

      ‘Yes. It will, in fact. But I think we should do it anyway. Give everyone the treatment and then figure out what to do.’

      It was a minute or two before anything more could be heard over the cheering of the crowd. The Prime Minister was trying to quieten them, but a short man dressed in a fashionable brown suit came out of the group behind the Prime Minister and proclaimed into the mike, to an uproar of cheers at every sentence, ‘This Marsman Nirgal is a son of Trinidad! His papa, Desmond Hawkins the Stowaway, the Coyote of Mars, is from Port of Spain, and he still has a lot of people there! That Armscor bought the oil company and they tried to buy the island too, but they picked the wrong island to try! Your Coyote didn’t get his spirit from out of the air, Maistro Nirgal, he got it from T and T! He’s been wandering around up there teaching everyone the T and T way, and they’re all up there dugla anyway, they understand the dugla way, and they have taken over all Mars with it! Mars is one great big Trinidad Tobago!’

      The crowd went into transports at this, and impulsively Nirgal walked over to the man and hugged him, such a smile, then found the stairs and got down and walked out into the crowd, which clumped around him. A miasma of fragrances. Too loud to think. He touched people, shook hands. People touched him. The look in their eyes! Everyone was shorter than he was, they laughed at that; and every face was an entire world. Black dots swam in his vision, things went darker very abruptly – he looked around, startled – a bank of clouds had massed over a dark strip of sea to the west, and the lead edge had cut off the sun. Now, as he continued to mingle, the cloudbank came rolling over the island. The crowd broke up as people moved under the shelter of trees, or verandas, or a big tin-roofed bus stop. Maya and Sax and Michel were lost in their own crowds. The clouds were dark grey at their bases, rearing up in white roils as solid as rock but mutable, flowing continuously. A cool wind struck hard, and then big raindrops starred the dirt, and the four Martians were hustled under an open pavilion roof, where room was made for them.

      Then the rain poured down like nothing Nirgal had ever seen – rain sheeting down, roaring, slamming into sudden broad rivering puddles, all starred with a million white droplet explosions, the whole world outside the pavilion blurred by falling water into patches of colour, green and brown all mixed in a wash. Maya was grinning: ‘It’s like the ocean is falling on us!’

      ‘So much water!’ Nirgal said.

      The Prime Minister shrugged. ‘It happens every day during monsoon. It’s more rain than before, and we already got a lot.’

      Nirgal shook his head and felt a stabbing at his temples. The pain of breathing in wet air. Half drowning.

      The Prime Minister was explaining something to them, but Nirgal could barely follow, his head hurt so. Anyone in the independence movement could join a Praxis affiliate, and during their first year’s work they were building relief centres like this one. The longevity treatment was an automatic part of every person’s joining, administered in the newly built centres. Birth control implants could be had at the same time, reversible but permanent if left in; many took them as their contribution to the cause. ‘Babies later, we say. There will be time.’ People wanted to join anyway, almost everyone had. Armscor had been forced to match the Praxis arrangement to keep some of their people, and so it made little difference now which organization one was part of; on Trinidad they were all much the same. The newly treated went on to build more housing, or work in agriculture, or make more hospital equipment. Trinidad had been fairly prosperous before the flood, the combined result of vast oil reserves and metanat investment in the cable socket. There had been a progressive tradition which had formed the basis of the resistance, in the years after the unwelcome metanat arrival. Now there was a growing infrastructure dedicated to the longevity project. It was a promising situation. Every camp was a waiting list for the treatment, working on its own construction. Of course people were absolutely firm in the defence of such places. Even if Armscor had wanted to, it would be very difficult for its security forces to take over the camps. And if they did they would find nothing of value to them anyway; they already had the treatment. So they could try genocide if they wanted to, but other than that, they had few options for taking back control of the situation.

      The island just walked away from them,’ the Prime Minister concluded. ‘No army can stop that. It is an end to economic caste, caste of all kind. This is something new, a new dugla thing in history, like you said in your speech. Like a little Mars. So to have you here to see us, you a grandchild of the island, you who have taught us so much in your beautiful new world – oh, it is a special thing. A festival for real.’ That radiant smile.

      ‘Who was the man who spoke?’

      ‘Oh, that was James.’

      Abruptly the rain let up. The sun broke through, and the world steamed. Sweat poured down Nirgal in the white air. He could not catch his breath. White air, black spots swimming.

      ‘I think I need to lie down.’

      ‘Oh yes, yes, of course. You must be exhausted, overwhelmed. Come with us.’

      They took him to a small outbuilding of the compound, into a bright room walled with bamboo strips, empty except for a mattress on the floor.

      ‘I’m afraid the mattress is not long enough for you.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      He was left alone. Something about the room reminded him of the interior of Hiroko’s cottage, in the grove on the far side of the lake in Zygote. Not just the bamboo, but the room’s size and shape – and something elusive, the green light streaming in perhaps. The sensation of Hiroko’s presence was so strong and so unexpected that when the others had left the room, Nirgal threw himself down on the mattress, his feet hanging far off the bottom edge, and cried. A complete confusion of feeling. His whole body hurt, but especially his head. He stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep.

      

      He woke in a small black chamber. It smelled green. He couldn’t remember where he was. He rolled onto his back and it came to him: Earth. Whispers – he sat up, frightened. A muffled laugh. Hands caught at him and pressed him down, but they were friendly hands, he could feel that immediately. ‘Shh,’ someone said, and then kissed him. Someone else was fumbling at his belt, his buttons. Women, two, three, no two, scented overpoweringly СКАЧАТЬ