The Swiss’s program was to begin with a series of workshops on specific topics and problems, working in open rooms scattered through Zakros, Gournia, Lato, and Malta. All of the workshops were to be recorded. Conclusions, recommendations, and questions from the workshops were to serve as the basis for a subsequent day’s discussion at one of the two general ongoing meetings. One of these would focus roughly on the problems of achieving independence, the other on what came after — the means and ends meetings, as Art noted when he stopped briefly at Nadia’s side.

When the Swiss were done describing the program, they were ready to start; it had not occurred to them to have any ceremonial opening. Werner, speaking last, reminded people that the first workshops would begin in an hour, and that was that. They were done.

But before the crowd dispersed, Hiroko stood at the back of the Zygote crowd, and walked slowly into the center of the circle. She wore a bamboo-green jumper, and no jewelry — a tall slight figure, white-haired, unprepossessing — and yet every eye there was locked onto her. And when she lifted her hands, everyone seated got to their feet. In the silence that followed, Nadia’s breath caught in her throat. We should stop now, she thought. No meetings — this is it right here, our presence together, our shared reverence for this single person.

“We are children of Earth,” Hiroko said, loud enough for all to hear. “And yet here we stand, in a lava tunnel on the planet Mars. We should not forget how strange a fate that is. Life anywhere is an enigma and a precious miracle, but here we see even better its sacred power. Let’s remember that now, and make our work our worship.”

She spread her hands wide, and her closest associates walked humming into the center of the circle. Others followed suit, until the space around the Swiss was full of a milling horde of friends, acquaintances, strangers.

The workshops were held in gazebos scattered through the parks, or in three-walled rooms in the public buildings that edged these parks. The Swiss had assigned small groups to run the workshops, and the rest of the conferees attended whichever meetings interested them the most, so that some involved five people, others fifty.

Nadia spent the first day wandering from workshop to workshop, up and down the four southernmost segments of the tunnel.

She found that quite a few people were doing the same, none more so than Art, who appeared to be trying to observe all the workshops, so that he caught only a sentence or two at each site.

She dropped in on a workshop discussing the events of 2061. She was interested, although not surprised, to find in attendance Maya, Ann, Sax, Spencer, and even Coyote, as well as Jackie Boone and Nirgal, and many others. The room was packed. First things first, she supposed, and there were so many nagging questions about ‘61: What had happened? What had gone wrong, and why?

Ten minutes’ listening, however, arid her heart sank. People were upset, their recriminations heartfelt and bitter. Nadia’s stomach knotted in a way it hadn’t in years, as memories of the failed revolt flooded into her.

She looked around the room, trying to concentrate on the faces, to distract herself from the ghosts within. Sax was watching birdlike as he sat next to Spencer; he nodded as Spencer asserted that 2061 taught them that they needed a complete assessment of all the military forces in the Martian system. “This is a necessary precondition for any successful action,” Spencer said.

But this bit of common sense was shouted down by someone who seemed to consider it an excuse to avoid action — a Marsfirster, apparently, who advocated immediate mass ecotage, and armed assault on the cities.

Quite vividly Nadia recalled an argument with Arkady about this very matter, and suddenly she couldn’t stand it. She walked down to the center of the room.

After a while everyone went silent, stilled by the sight of her. “I’m tired of this matter being discussed in purely military terms,” she said. “The whole model of revolution has to be rethought. This is what Arkady failed to do in sixty-one, and this is why sixty-one was such a bloody mess. Listen to me, now — there can be no such thing as a successful armed revolution on Mars. The life-support systems are too vulnerable.”

Sax croaked, “But if the surface is vivable — is viable — then the support systems not so — so …”

Nadia shook her head. “The surface is not viable, and won’t be for many years. And even when it is, revolution has to be rethought. Look, even when ‘revolutions have been successful, they have caused so much destruction and hatred that there is always some kind of horrible backlash. It’s inherent in the method. If you choose violence, then you create enemies who will resist you forever. And ruthless men become your revolutionary leaders, so when the war is over they’re in power, and likely to be as bad as what they replaced.”

“Not in — American,” Sax said, cross-eyed with the effort to force the right words out in a timely manner.

“I don’t know about that. But mostly it’s been true. Violence breeds hatred, and eventually there is a backlash. It’s unavoidable.”

“Yes,” said Nirgal with his usual intent look, not all that different from Sax’s grimace. “But if people are attacking the sanctuaries and destroying them, then we don’t have much choice.”

Nadia said, “The question is, who’s sending those forces out? And who are the people actually in these forces? I doubt that those individuals bear us any ill will. At this point they might just as easily be on our side as against us. It’s their commanders and owners we should focus on.”

“De-cap-i-ta-tion,” Sax said.

“I don’t like the sound of that. You need a different term.”

“Mandatory retirement?” Maya suggested acidly. People laughed, and Nadia glared at her old friend.

“Forced disemployment,” Art said loudly from the back, where he had just appeared.

“You mean a coup,” Maya said. “Not to fight the entire population on the surface, but just the leadership and their bodyguards.”

“And maybe their armies,” Nirgal insisted. “We have no sign that they are disaffected, or even apathetic.”

“No. But would they fight without orders from their leaders?”

“Some might. It’s their job, after all.”

“Yes, but they have no great stake beyond that,” Nadia said, thinking it out as she spoke. “Without nationalism or ethnicity, or some other kind of home feeling involved, I don’t think these people will fight to the death. They know they’re being ordered around to protect the powerful. Some more egalitarian system makes an appearance, and they might feel a conflict of loyalties.”

“Retirement benefits,” Maya mocked, and people laughed again.

But from the back Art said, “Why not put it in those terms? If you don’t want revolution conceptualized as war, you need something else to replace it, so why not economics? Call it a change in practice. This is what the people in Praxis are doing when they talk about human capital, or bioinfrastructure — modeling everything in economic terms. It’s ludicrous in a way, but it does speak to those for whom economics is the most important paradigm. That certainly includes the transnational.”

“So,” Nirgal said with a grin, “we disemploy the local leadership, and give their police a raise while job-retraining them.”

“Yeah, like that.”

Sax was shaking his head. “Can’t reach them,” he said. “Need force.”

“Something has to be changed to avoid another sixty-one!” Nadia insisted. “It has to be rethought. Maybe there are historical models, but not the ones you’ve been mentioning. Something more like the velvet revolutions that ended the Soviet era, for instance.”

“But those involved unhappy populations,” Coyote said from the back, “and took place in a system that was falling apart. The same conditions don’t obtain here. People are pretty well off. They feel lucky to be here.”