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puffy clouds. Washington DC a tiny village, its monuments and ancient domed
Capitol visible only as grains of rice in the general green and brown.
Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic ...
A fatuous grin spread across my face. I was a Martian, come to invade Earth.
Alice presented her report. We sat in the living room of our suite and scanned
the highlights. Bithras dug deeper on several key points. "It's not
encouraging," he said.
"The need for central control of all solar resources may be acute within
fifteen Earth years," Alice said. "It is generally recognized that Earth needs
a major endeavor to keep up its overall psychological and economic vigor, and
that
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Bear, Greg - Moving Mars UC FR.htm endeavor that social focus must be
interstellar exploration on a grand scale."
Allen found that puzzling. "The whole
Earth recognizes this? Everybody agrees?"
"Agreement is strong among those groups who make the crucial decisions about
the Triple," Alice said.
"Especially the executives of the major alliances."
"We'll be pressured to join in the endeavor, whether or not it directly
benefits Mars," Bithras said.
"Such a conclusion is overdetermined by the evidence," Alice said.
Bithras leaned back on the couch. "Nothing we can't roll with." But he seemed
troubled. "It's a bit obvious, don't you think?"
"Evidence for other conclusions is not clear," Alice said.
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"It's what some of our fellow passengers were saying," I said.
"Cut and dried, though, isn't it?" Bithras said, biting his upper lip. He
resembled a bulldog when he did that. "Tomorrow I'll open the proposals and
share them with you. I need you to fully understand what we're allowed to say,
and what we're allowed to give, at each stage of negotiation." He sat up.
"From now, you are more than apprentices," he said. "You represent a Mars yet
to be born. You are diplomats."
And we acted the part. We attended receptions and parties, hosted two of our
own, visited the offices of major corporations and temp agencies, attended
dinners arranged by Mars appreciation societies ...
Miriam hosted our private reception in the hotel. I spent hours talking to
explanetaries, listening to their stories of old Mars, answering their
questions as best I could about the new Mars.
Did Mackenzie Frazier ever unite the Canadian BMs in Syrtis? Whatever became
of the Prescott and Ware families in Hellas?
My sister still lives on Mars, Mariner Valley South, but she never answers my
letters do you know why?
All too often, I could only smile and plead ignorance. There was no
Pan-Martian family message center or database
MOVING MARS 191
easily accessible from Earth. I took a note on my slate to have Majumdar set
one up; good for PR. Ex-
Martians on Earth could be valuable allies, I thought, and Miriam ex-cepted,
we didn't use them very often.
During a break at the reception, I asked Miriam how often Martian BMs
approached her, directly from
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Mars. "About once a year," she said, smiling. I said that was deplorable, and
she patted my shoulder. "We are such trusting and insular creatures," she
said. "By the time you leave here, you'll know only too well what we're up
against, and how far we have to go to get in the spin ..."
I made a note on my slate that we should sign Miriam to Majumdar
exclusively but didn't that contradict the spirit of unity we were working so
hard to demonstrate?
Visiting offices of members of Congress, I quickly noticed a remarkable lack
of attention to Bithras's hints at what our proposals might be. Bithras fell
into a dark and snappish mood at the end of a grueling day of office-hopping.
"They don't much care," he said, accepting a glass of wine from Allen as we
rested in our suite. "That is very puzzling."
Mornings, ex net and LitVid interviews, conducted from a studio in the
Capitol; afternoons, more interviews from a studio in the hotel; then lunches
with major financiers who listened and smiled, but promised nothing; finally,
dinners with congressional staffers, full of curiosity and enthusiasm, but who
also revealed little and promised nothing.
Visits to schools in Washington and Virginia, usually over ed-nets from our
hotel room ... A quick train journey to Pennsylvania to meet with Amish
Friends of Sylvan Earth, who had finally accepted the use of computers, but
not thinkers. Back to Washington ... A guided tour of the Library of Congress
and the
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
The original Library of Congress had been sealed in helium and was accessible
now only in pressure suits. We were not offered the chance to go in. Arbeiters
roamed its halls, guarding and tracking its countless billions of paper books
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Greg Bear and periodicals. It had stopped accepting paper copies in 2049; most
research was now conducted out of the electronic archives, which filled a
small chamber several hundred feet beneath the old library. Alice absorbed as
much of the library as she needed, but even her immense reserves of memory
would have been taxed by absorbing all.
At the Air and Space Museum, we stood for pictures at the foot of a full-size
replica of the first Mars lander, the
Captain James Cook.
I had seen the original as a preform schoolgirl. To me, the replica seemed
larger beneath its dome than the original, sitting in the open air of Elysium.
Earth had too much to show us. We were in danger of becoming exhausted before
our most important day
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Bear, Greg - Moving Mars UC FR.htm arrived ...
We entered the hearing chamber, stately stone and warm dark wood, seats
upholstered in dark faux leather; Bithras, Allen, and myself, deliberately
dressed in conservative Martian fashions, Alice on her freshly polished
carriage.
With our synthetic clothing and unaltered physiques, we must have resembled
hicks in a LitVid comedy.
But we were greeted respectfully by five senators from the Standing Committee
on Solar System and
Near-Earth Space Affairs. For a few minutes, we gathered in light conversation
with the senators and a few of their staff. The air was polite but formal.
Again, I sensed something amiss, as did Bithras, whose nostrils flared as he
took his seat behind a long maple table. Allen leaned over and asked me, "Why
aren't we testifying before the whole committee?" I did not know.
I sat to the left of Bithras in a hard wooden chair; Allen sat to his right.
Alice was connected to the Senate thinker, Harold S., who had served the
Senate for sixty years.
The gallery was empty. Obviously, this would be a closed hearing.
Senator Kay Juarez Sommers of New Mexico, chair of the committee, gaveled the
hearing into order. "I
welcome our distinguished guests from Mars. You don't know how odd that is for
an old Terrie like myself to say, even today. Maybe
MOVING MARS 193
I need some enhancements to the imagination.
Certainly some of my colleagues think so .. ." She was in her mid-seventies,
if I could judge age when appearance seemed an arbitrary choice; small and
wiry, clean simple features, smooth-voiced, dressing hard in blacks and grays.
Senator Juarez Sommers had not chosen any easy roads in her life, and she had
eschewed obvious transform designs.
Also attending the hearing today were Senators John Men-doza of Utah, tall,
chocolate-skinned, severely handsome and stocky; Senator David Wang of
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