Thus it was very hard to keep her irritation in check as she went into the first meeting with the Cairenes, and found Jackie there among them, supporting their position. Jackie was pregnant now as well, and had been for some time; she was flushed, glossy, beautiful. No one knew who the father was, it was something she was doing on her own. A Dorsa Brevia tradition, by way of Hiroko — and just one more irritant to Nadia.
The meeting took place in a building next to the city wall, overlooking the U-shaped canyon below, called Nilus Noctis. The water in dispute was actually visible downcanyon, a broad ice-sheeted reservoir stopped by a dam not visible from up here, stopped just before the Illyrian Gate and the new chaos of the Compton Break.
Charlotte stood with her back to the window, asking the Cairene officials just the questions Nadia would have asked, but without the slightest trace of Nadia’s annoyance. “You will always be in a tent. Opportunities for growth will be limited. Why flood Marineris when you won’t benefit from it?”
No one seemed to care to answer this. Finally Jackie said, “The people living down there will benefit, and they’re part of greater Cairo. Water in any form is a resource at these altitudes.”
“Water running freely down Marineris is no resource at all,” Charlotte said.
The Cairenes argued for the utility of water in Marineris. There were also representatives of the downstream settlers, many of them Egyptians, claiming that they had been in Marineris for generations, that it was their right to live there, that it was the best farming land on Mars, that they would fight before they would leave, and so on. Sometimes the Cairenes and Jackie seemed to be defending these neighbors, at other times their own right to use Marineris as a reservoir. Mostly they seemed to be defending their right to do whatever they wanted. Slowly Nadia got angrier and angrier.
“The court made its judgment,” she said. “We’re not here to argue it again. We’re here to see it enacted.” And she left the meeting before she said anything inexcusable.
That night she sat with Charlotte and Art, so irritated that she could not focus on a delicious Ethiopian meal in the train-station restaurant. “What do they want?” she asked Charlotte.
Charlotte shrugged, mouth full. After swallowing: “Have you been noticing that being president of Mars is not a particularly powerful position?”
“Hell yes. It would be hard to miss.”
“Yes. Well, the whole executive council is the same, of course. It’s looking like the real power in this government is in the environmental court. Irishka was put in charge there as part of the grand gesture, and she’s done a lot to legitimate moderate redness by staking out a middle ground. It allows for a lot of development under the six-k limit, but above that, they’re very strict. That’s all backed by the constitution, so they’ve been able to make everything stand — the legislature is laying off, they haven’t overturned any judgments yet. So it’s been an impressive first session for Irishka and that whole group of justices.”
“So Jackie is jealous,” Nadia said.
Charlotte shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“More than possible,” Nadia said grimly.
“And then there’s the matter of the council itself. Jackie may think this is something she can get three of the others to back her on, and then the council becomes that much more hers. Cairo is an arena where she might hope that Zeyk will vote with her because of the Arab part of town. Then only two more. And both Mikhail and Ariadne are strong localists.”
“But the council can’t overturn court decisions,” Nadia said, “only the legislature, right? By legislating new laws.”
“Right, but if Cairo continues to defy the court, then it would be up to the council to order the police to go down there and physically stop them. That’s what the executive branch is supposed to do. If the council didn’t do that, then the court would be undermined, and Jackie would take effective control of the council. Two birds with one stone.”
Nadia threw down her bit of spongy bread. “I’ll be damned if that happens,” she said.
They sat in silence.
“I hate this stuff,” Nadia said.
Charlotte said, “In a few years there will be a body of practices, institutions, laws, amendments to the constitution, all that. Things that the constitution never addressed, which translate it into action. Like the proper role of political parties. Right now we’re in the process of working all these things out.”
“Maybe so, but I still hate it.”
“Think of it as meta-architecture. Building the culture that allows architecture to exist. Then it’ll be less frustrating for you.”
Nadia snorted.
“This one should be a clear case,” Charlotte said. “The judgment has been made, they only have to abide by it.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Time for the police.”
“Civil war, in other words!”
“They won’t push it that far. They signed the constitution just like everyone else, and if everyone else is abiding by it, then they become outlaws, like the Red ecoteurs. I don’t think they’ll go that far. They’re just testing the limits.”
She did not seem annoyed by this. That was the way people were, her expression seemed to say. She did not blame anyone, she was not frustrated. A very calm woman, this Charlotte — relaxed, confident, capable. With her coordinating it, the executive council’s work had so far.been well organized, if not easy. If that competence was what growing up in a matriarchy like Dorsa Brevia did for you, Nadia thought, then more power to them. She couldn’t help but compare Charlotte to Maya, with all Maya’s mood shifts, her angst and self-dramatization. Well, it was probably an individual thing in any culture. But it was going to be interesting to have more Dorsa Brevia women around to take on these jobs.
At the next morning’s meeting Nadia stood and said, “An order against dumping water in Marineris has been issued already. If you persist in the dumping, the new police powers of the global community will be exerted. I don’t think anyone wants that.”
“I don’t think you can speak for the executive council,” Jackie said.
“I can,” Nadia said shortly.
“No you can’t,” Jackie said. “You’re only one of seven. And this isn’t a council matter anyway.”
“We’ll see about that,” Nadia said.
The meeting dragged on. The Cairenes were stonewalling. The more Nadia understood what they were doing the less she liked it. Their leaders were important in Free Mars; and even if this challenge failed, it might result in concessions to Free Mars in other areas; so the party would have gained more power. Charlotte agreed that this could be their ultimate motive. The cynicism of this disgusted Nadia, and she found it very hard to be civil to Jackie when Jackie spoke to her, with her easy cheerfulness, the pregnant queen cruising around among her minions like a battleship among row-boats: “Aunt Nadia, so sorry you felt you needed to take time for such a thing as this…”
That night Nadia said to Charlotte, “I want a ruling where Free Mars gets nothing at all out of this.”
Charlotte laughed briefly. “Been talking to Jackie, have you?”
“Yes. Why is she so popular? I don’t understand it, but she is!”
“She’s nice to a lot of people. She thinks she’s nice to everyone.”
“She reminds me of Phyllis,” Nadia said. The First Hundred again…“Maybe not. Anyway, isn’t there some sort of penalty we can invoke against frivolous suits and challenges?”
“Court costs, in some cases.”
“See if you can lay that on her then.”
“First let’s see if we can win.”
The meetings went on for another week. Nadia left the talking to Charlotte and Art. She spent the meetings looking out the windows at the canyon below, and in rubbing the stump of her finger, which now had a noticeable new bump on it. So strange; despite paying close attention, she could not recall when the bump had first appeared. It was warm and pink, a delicate pink, like a child’s lips. There seemed to be a bone in the middle of it; she was afraid to squeeze it very hard. Surely lobsters didn’t pinch their returning limbs. All that cell proliferation was disturbing — like a cancer, only controlled, directed — the miracle of DNA’s instructional abilities made manifest. Life itself, flourishing in all its emergent complexity. And a little finger was nothing compared to an eye, or an embryo. It was a strange business. With that going on, the political meetings looked really dreadful. Nadia walked out of one having heard almost none of it, though she was sure nothing significant had happened, and she went for a long walk, out to an overlook bulging out of the western end of the tent wall. She called Sax. The four travelers were getting closer to Mars; transmission delays were down to a few minutes. Nirgal appeared to be healthy again. He was in good spirits. Michel actually looked more drained than Nirgal; it seemed that the visit to Earth had been hard on him. Nadia held up her finger to the screen to cheer him up, and it worked. “A pinky, don’t they call it that?” “I guess so.”