When the congress endedNadia made plans to get off Pavonis Mons immediately. She was sick of the bickering in the warehouse, of arguments, of politics; sick of violence and the threat of violence; sick of revolution, sabotage, the constitution, the elevator, Earth, and the threat of war. Earth and death, that was Pavonis Mons — Peacock Mountain, with all the peacocks preening and strutting and crying Me Me Me. It was the last place on Mars Nadia wanted to be.
She wanted to get off the mountain and breathe the open air. She wanted to work on tangible things; she wanted to build, with her nine fingers and her back and her mind, build anything and everything, not just structures, although those would be wonderful of course, but also things like air or dirt, parts of a construction project new to her, which was simply terraforming itself. Ever since her first walk in the open air down at DuMartheray Crater, free of everything but a little CO2 filter mask, Sax’s obsession had finally made sense to her. She was ready to join him and the rest of them in that project, and more than ever now, as the removal of the orbiting mirrors had kicked off a long winter and threatened a full ice age. Build air, build dirt, move water, introduce plants and animals: all that kind of work sounded fascinating to her now. And of course the more conventional construction projects beckoned as well.
When the new North Sea melted and its shoreline stabilized, there would be harbor towns to be inlaid everywhere, scores of them no doubt, each with jetties and seafronts, channels, wharves and docks, and the towns behind them rising into the hills. At the higher altitudes there would be more tent towns to be erected, and covered canyons. There was even talk of covering some of the big calderas, and of running cable cars between the three prince volcanoes, or bridging the narrows south of Elysium; there was talk of inhabiting the polar island continent; there were new concepts in biohousing, plans to grow homes and buildings directly out of engineered trees, as Hiroko has used bamboo, but on a bigger scale. Yes, a builder ready to learn some of the latest techniques had a thousand years of lovely projects ahead of her. It was a dream come true.
Then a small group came to her and said they were exploring possibilities for the first executive council of the new global government.
Nadia stared at them. She could see their import like a big slow-moving trap, and she tried her best to run out of it before it snapped shut. “There are lots of possibilities,” she said. “About ten times more good people than council positions.”
Yes, they said, looking thoughtful. But we were wondering if you had ever thought about it.
“No,” she said.
Art was grinning, and seeing that she began to get worried. “I plan to build things,” she said firmly.
“You could do that too,” Art said. “The council is a part-time job.”
“The hell it is.”
“No, really.”
It was true that the concept of citizen government was written everywhere into the new constitution, from the global legislature to the courts to the tents. People would presumably do a good deal of this work part-time. Nadia was quite sure, however, that the executive council was not going to be in that category. “Don’t executive council members have to be elected out of the legislature?” she asked.
Elected by the legislature, they told her happily. Usually fellow legislators would be elected, but not necessarily.
“Well there’s a mistake in the constitution for you!” Nadia said. “Good thing that you caught it so soon. Restrict it to elected legislators and you’ll cut your pool way down — ” Way down —
“And still have lots of good people,” she backpedaled.
But they were persistent. They kept coming back, in different combinations, and Nadia kept running toward that narrowing gap between the teeth of the trap. In the end they begged. A whole little delegation of them. This was the crucial time for the new government, they needed an executive council trusted by all, it would be the one to get things started, etc. etc. The senate had been elected, the duma had been drafted. Now the two houses were electing the seven executive council members. People mentioned as candidates included Mikhail, Zeyk, Peter, Marina, Etsu, Na-nao, Ariadne, Marion, Irishka, Antar, Rashid, Jackie, Charlotte, the four ambassadors to Earth, and several others Nadia had first met in the warehouse. “Lots of good people,” Nadia reminded them. This was the polycephalous revolution.
But people were uneasy at the list, they told Nadia repeatedly. They had become used to her providing a balanced center, both during the congress and during the revolution, and before that at Dorsa Brevia, and for that matter throughout the underground years, and right back to the beginning. People wanted her on the council as a moderating influence, a calm head, a neutral party, etc. etc.
“Get out,” she said, suddenly angry, though she did not know why. They were concerned to see her anger, upset by it. “I’ll think about it,” she said as she shooed them out, to keep them moving.
Eventually only Charlotte and Art were left, looking serious, looking as if they had not conspired to bring all this about.
“They seem to want you on the executive council,” Art said.
“Oh shut up.”
“But they do. They want someone they can trust.”
“They want someone they’re not afraid of, you mean. They want an old babushka who won’t try to do anything, so they can keep their opponents off the council and pursue their own agendas.”
Art frowned; he had not considered this, he was too naive.
“You know a constitution is kind of like a blueprint,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “Getting a real working government out of it is the true act of construction.”
“Out,” Nadia said.
But in the end she agreed to stand. They were relentless, there were a surprisingly large number of them, and they would not give up. She didn’t want to seem like a shirker. And so she let the trap close down on her leg.
The legislatures met, the ballots were cast. Nadia was elected one of the seven, along with Zeyk, Ariadne, Marion, Peter, Mikhail, and Jackie. That same day Irishka was elected the first chief justice of the Global Environmental Court, a real coup for her personally and the Reds generally; this was part of the “grand gesture” Art had brokered at the congress’s end, to gain the Reds’ support. About half the new justices were Reds of one shade or another, making for a gesture just a bit too grand, in Nadia’s opinion.
Immediately after these elections another delegation came to her, led this time by her fellow councillors. She had gotten the highest ballot total in the two houses, they told her, and so the others wanted to elect her president of the council.
“Oh no,” she said.
They nodded gravely. The president was just another member of the council, they told her, one among equals. A ceremonial position only. This arm of the government was modeled on Switzerland’s, and the Swiss didn’t usually even know who their president was. And so on. Though of course they would need her permission (Jackie’s eyes glittered slightly at this), her acceptance of the post.
“Out,” she said.
After they had left Nadia sat slumped in her chair, feeling stunned.
“You’re the only one on Mars that everyone trusts,” Art said gently. He shrugged, as if to say he hadn’t been involved, which she knew was a lie. “What can you do?” he said, rolling his eyes with a child’s exaggerated theatricality. “Give it three years and then things’ll be on track, and you can say you did your part and retire. Besides, the first president of Mars! How could you resist?”
“Easy.”
Art waited. Nadia glared at him.
Finally he said, “But you’ll do it anyway, right?”
“You’ll help me?”
“Oh yes.” He put a hand on her clenched fist. “All you want. I mean — I’m at your disposal.”