The surface of Mars was raked by
dust storms and baked by radiation. Pewter-eyed ravens circled the bristlecone
and yucca-studded mesas, hunting tiny desert rats and double-skinned snakes.
Rugged insects flew through the razor grasses, thrumming as they laid eggs,
killed each other and died; for them the world had not changed.
Mirror canyons scattered across the
deserts continued to reflect concentrated light onto the salt towers and the
salt towers continued to build heat, but the circuits were fried; the mirrors
had no power to follow the sun. They were as dying silver flowers, petals
frozen crookedly and gathering dust. Some heat from the salt towers still made
it underground but most of it, blocked off by the ruined circuits, wafted away
through the night in streaming tendrils of hot air.
Drones lay in fragments, half-buried
in sand. Blimps gaped and flopped over the rocks in breeze-driven distress. The
CAPS were still and dry, with no moisture or nitrogen pouring down on the
villages in New Khan and Kinlani. No white plumes rode the sky above the Ny
Hofsjökull glacier; the ice workers were quiet, like the silk lab technicians
and the astrominers in the Firestar plants. These communities sat in their
deepest, wool-cozied common room caves playing music together and rationing tea,
and hoping for news.
The cisterns and aqueducts grew
colder underground. Ice crystals crept around the edges of the water supply,
but the subground automated greenhouses and mulberry groves sustained
themselves, warming their own soil, composting their own waste, filtering water
through the fish tanks, rotating the rows of lamps. In the greenhouses life was
humid, rich, sweet, rotten and fresh. The vents still pulled fresh 02
from the greenhouses through the underground cities and released it through the
basalt flues into the atmo. The people could breathe underground, but they were
growing colder.
Eight kilometers down in Hellas
canyon, the wealthiest citizens of Mars gathered by community clusters, each of
approximately one hundred fifty, in the carved basalt halls awaiting Lady
Naserian Isikirari. She met with the entire Bowl population by the end of the
third day, making her speeches of courage and hope in her finest ironsilk
robes, her hair done up high and covered in a mesh of opals, a form of dress normally
reserved for Interworld counsels. The people of the Bowl stood in close crowds
to hear her quiet voice, stretching their hands to her so she could touch her
trembling fingertips to theirs more easily. She said the name of each person,
then touched her heart after each meeting of fingers. They touched their hearts
as they bid her farewell, knowing it might be the final time; the Lady was so
old now, and who knew when the next Lady would come to them? Many wept as they
turned to go to back to their homes. After her official addresses the Lady,
being an elder of enormous years and knowledge, sat down to dictate her last
journals. The finest scribers of the Bowl came with rolls of vellum and vials
of mineral ink to take her dictations. Bowl dramatists and poets began to write
thrillers about the coming of the Third Die Off.
Other citizens of the Bowl scrambled
to consolidate water, food and other supplies. Rescue teams made bundles for
the Tube communities, and set out to deliver them.
The Tube communities surrounding
Hellas canyon, their yurts protected only by patched layers of hydro-shields
crookedly strapped down by basalt nets, awaited supplies from the Bowl. They
complained that they had been forsaken and that they were disposable as they
plowed through their stashes of mescal and milk vodka. Many
cursed the Bowl and each other. Some worried that they should have stayed in
the Bowl, should have tried harder to comply with the Bowl's strict laws, but
Stark Freedom was the way of the Tubes. So they got drunk, held martial
tournaments and waited, resentfully, for supplies.
The engineers of Nova Petra on
Olympus Mons met with Bowl engineers and set out together to begin the rebuild.
While Olympus engineers sat and pointed, ordering their laborers about, Bowl
engineers heaved coils of wire, loaded themselves with packs of components, and
trudged alongside their workers.
The monks of Stormhorse Temple
arrived at Kinlani and New Khan in their dusty sheepskins, towing handcarts of
hydro-shielding blankets, water tanks and bundles of pemmican cakes made of
dried mutton, cactus figs and pinion nuts. They were welcomed into yurts and
hogans, fed, and stayed several days with the families. Elders also made their
rounds. The arguments between monks and elders were unavoidable but, all said,
quite minor.
And from a medpod in the Central
Grid Tower, Mano had bypassed the central drives and had reached his mind into
the fried grid circuits. He created thought loops by continually running
dialogue through his mind, “What must be built here?” and translating the
thought loops into codes, making vigorous worms. He sent them out on all the
circuits he could access. The worms hopped over circuit breaks, recorded more
codes, and returned with more data.
Hundreds of bots, responding to
Mano’s commands, began routing fiber optic cables, sleeves and panconduit
pipelines.
While Mars rebuilt its power infrastructure, Mano began to build the first shielded independent Mars communication grid.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment