And crossroads or not, they wanted more water. The Compton Aquifer, underlying lower Noctis and upper Marineris, had been breached in ‘61, and its water had poured down the entire length of the Marineris canyons. This was the flood that had almost killed Nadia and her companions during the flight down the canyons, after Cairo was taken. Most of the floodwater had either frozen in the canyons, creating a long irregular glacier, or had pooled and frozen in the chaoses at the bottom of Marineris. And some water had of course remained in the aquifer. In the years since, the water in the aquifer had been pumped out for use in cities all over east Tharsis. And the Marineris Glacier had slowly dropped downcanyon, receding at its upper end where there was no source to replenish it, leaving behind only devastated land and a string of very shallow ice lakes. Cairo was therefore running out of a ready supply of water. Its hydrology office had responded by laying a pipeline to the northern sea’s big southern arm in the Chryse depression, and pumping water up to Cairo. So far, no problem; every tent town got its water from somewhere. But the Cairenes had lately started pouring water into a reservoir in the Noctis canyon under them, and letting a stream out from this reservoir to run down into lus Chasma, where eventually it pooled behind the upper end of the Marineris Glacier, or ran by it. Essentially they had created a new river running right down the big canyon system, far away from their town; and now they were establishing a number of riverside settlements and farming communities downstream from the city. A Red legal group had gone to the Global Environmental Court to challenge this action, asserting that Valles Marineris had legal consideration as a natural wonder, being the largest canyon in the solar system; if left alone the breakout glacier would eventually have slid down into the chaos, leaving the canyons again open-floored. This was what they thought should happen, and the GEC had agreed with them, and issued an order (Charlotte called this a “gecko”) against Cairo, requiring them to halt the release of water out of the town reservoir. Cairo had refused to desist, claiming that the global government had no jurisdiction over what they called “vital town life-support issues.” Meanwhile building new downstream settlements as fast as they could.

Clearly it was a provocation, a challenge to the new system. “This is a test,” Art muttered as they walked across the plaza, “this is only a test. If this were a true constitutional crisis, you would hear a beep all over the planet.”

A test; exactly the kind of thing for which Nadia had lost all patience. So she crossed the city in a foul mood. No doubt it did not help that the awful days of ‘61 were called back so vividly to mind by the plaza, the boulevards, the city wall at the canyon rim, all just as they had been back then. They said one’s memory was weakest from one’s middle years, but she would have lost those memories happily if she could have; fear and rage, however, seemed to function as some kind of nightmare fixative. For it was all still there — Frank tapping madly away at his monitors, Sasha eating pizza, Maya shouting angrily at something or other, the fraught hours of waiting to see if they would be passed over by the falling pieces of Phobos. Seeing Sasha’s body, bloody at the ears. Clicking over the transmitter that had brought Phobos down.

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.”