Landing was therefore out of the question for much of their flight. Nadia watched the instruments nervously, all too aware of the many things that could go wrong in a new machine during a crisis, when maintenance was down and human error up.

Then billows of white and black smoke appeared on the horizon to the southwest, pouring east in what was clearly a high wind. “What’s that?” Nadia asked, moving to the left side of the plane to look.

“Kasei Vallis,” Sax said from the pilot’s seat.

“What’s happened to it?”

“It’s burning.”

Nadia stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Heavy vegetation there in the valley. And along the foot of the Great Escarpment. Resinated trees and shrubs, for the most part. Also fireseed trees — you know. Species that require fire to propagate. Engineered at Biotique. Thorny resin manzanita, blackthorn, giant sequoia, some others.”

“How do you know this?”

“I planted them.”

“And now you’ve set them on fire?”

Sax nodded. He glanced down at the smoke.

“But Sax, isn’t the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere really high now?”

“Forty percent.”

She stared at him some more, suddenly suspicious. “You jacked that up too, didn’t you! Jesus, Sax — you might have set the whole world on fire!”

She stared down at the bottom of the column of smoke. There in the big trough of Kasei Vallis was a line of flame, the leading edge of the fire, burning brilliant white rather than yellow — it looked like molten magnesium. “Nothing will put that out!” she cried. “You’ve set the world on fire!”

“The ice,” Sax said. “There’s nothing downwind but the ice covering Chryse. It should only burn a few thousand square kilometers.”

Nadia stared at him, amazed and appalled. Sax was still glancing down at the fire, but most of the time he watched the plane’s instruments, his face set in a curious expression: reptilian, stony — utterly inhuman.

The metanat security compounds in the curve of Kasei Vallis came over the horizon. The tents were all burning furiously, like torches of pitch, the craters on the inner bank like beach firepits, spurting white flame into the air. Clearly there was a strong wind pouring down Echus Chasma and funneling through Kasei Vallis, fanning the flames. A firestorm. And Sax stared down at it unblinking, his jaw muscles bunched under the skin.

“Fly north,” Nadia ordered him. “Get clear of that.”

He banked the plane, and she shook her head. Thousands of square kilometers, burned — all that vegetation, so painstakingly introduced — global oxygen levels raised by a significant percentage… She regarded the strange creature sitting beside her warily.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I didn’t want you to stop it.”

As simple as that.

“So I have that power?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Meaning I’m kept ignorant of things?”

“Only of this,” Sax said. His jaw muscles were bunching and relaxing, in a rhythm that reminded her suddenly of Frank Chal-mers. “The prisoners were all moved out into asteroid mining. This was the training site for all their secret police. The ones who would never give up. The torturers.” He turned that lizard gaze on her. “We’re better off without them.” And he returned to his piloting.

Nadia was still looking back at the fierce white line of the firestorm when the plane’s radio beeped her code. This time it was Art, cross-eyed with worry. “I need your help,” he said. “Ann’s people have retaken Sabishii, and a lot of the Sabishiians have come up out of the maze to reoccupy it, and the Reds in control there are telling them to go away.”

“What?”

“I know, well, I don’t think Ann knows about this yet, and she isn’t answering my calls. There are Reds out there that make her look like a Boonean, I swear. But I reached Ivana and Raul, and got them to stop the Reds in Sabishii till they heard from you. That’s the best I could do.”

“Why me?”

“I think Ann told them to listen to you.”

“Shit.”

“Well, who else is going to do it? Maya’s made too many enemies holding things together the last few years.”

“I thought you were the big diplomat here.”

“I am! But what I got was everyone agreeing to defer to your judgment. That was the best I could do. Sorry, Nadia. I’ll help you anyway you want me to.”

“You’d damn well better, after setting me up like this!”

He grinned. “It’s not my fault everyone trusts you.”

Nadia clicked off and tried the various Red radio channels. At first she couldn’t find Ann. But while she was running through their channels she heard enough messages to realize that there were young Red radicals whom Ann would certainly condemn, or so she hoped — people who, with the revolt still in the balance, were busy blowing up platforms in Vastitas, slashing tents, breaking pistes, threatening to end their cooperation with the other rebels unless they were joined in their ecotage and all their demands were met, etc., etc.

Finally Ann answered Nadia’s call. She looked like an avenging Fury, righteous and slightly mad. “Look,” Nadia said to her without preamble, “an independent Mars is the best chance you’ll ever have to get what you want. You try holding the revolution hostage to your concerns and people will remember, I’m warning you! You can argue all you want once we’ve gotten the situation under control, but until then it’s just blackmail as far as I’m concerned. It’s a stab in the back. You get those Reds in Sabishii to turn the city back over to its residents.”

Ann said angrily, “What makes you think I can tell them what to do?”

“Who else if not you?”

“What makes you think I disagree with what they’re doing?”

“My impression that you are a sane person, that’s what!”

“I don’t presume to order people about.”

“Reason with them if you can’t order them! Tell them stronger revolts than ours have failed because of this kind of stupidity. Tell them to get a grip.”

Ann cut the connection without a reply.

“Shit,” Nadia said.

Her AI continued to pour out news. The UNTA expeditionary force was coming back up from the southern highlands, and appeared to be on its way to Hellas, or Sabishii. Sheffield was still in the control of Subarashii. Burroughs was an open situation, with security forces seemingly in control; but refugees were pouring into the city from Syrtis and elsewhere, and there was a general strike going on as well. The vids made it look like most of the populace was spending the day*out on the boulevards and in the parks, demonstrating against the Transitional Authority, or merely trying to watch what was going on.

“We’ll have to do something about Burroughs,” Sax said.

“I know.”

They flew southward again, past the bump of Hecates Tholus on the northern end of the Elysium massif, to the South Fossa spaceport. Their flight had taken twelve hours, but they had gone west through nine time zones, and crossed the date line at 180° longitude, so it was midday Sunday when their airport bus drove to the rim of South Fossa, and through the roof lock.

South Fossa and the other Elysium towns, Hephaestus and Elysium Fossa, had all come out for Free Mars in a big way. They made a kind of geographical unit; a southern arm of the Vastitas ice now ran between the Elysium massif and the Great Escarpment, and though the ice had already been spanned by pistes on pontoon bridges, Elysium was in the process of becoming an island continent. In all three of its big towns crowds had poured into the streets, and occupied the city offices and the physical plants. Without the threat of attacks from orbit to back them up, the few Transitional Authority police in, the towns had either changed into civilian clothes and melted into the crowds, or else gotten on the train to Burroughs. Elysium was uncontestedly part of Free Mars.

Down at the Mangalavid offices Nadia and Sax found that a large armed group of rebels had taken over the station, and were now busy churning out twenty-four and a half hours a day of video reports on all four channels, all sympathetic to the revolt, with long interviews from people in all the independent towns and stations. The timeslip was going to be devoted to a montage of the previous day’s events.