Vlad and Marina sent over frequent reports from their workshop on finances, each report sharpening and expanding their evolving concept of eco-economics. “It’s very interesting,” Nadia reported to Nirgal and Art in their nightly gathering on the knob patio. “A lot of people are critiquing Vlad and Marina’s original system, including the Swiss and the Bolognese, and they’re basically coming around to the conclusion that the gift system that we first used in the underground is not sufficient by itself, because it’s too hard to keep balanced. There are problems of scarcity and hoarding, and when you start to set standards it’s like compelling gifts from people, which is a contradiction. This is what Coyote always said, and why he set up his barter network. So they’re working toward a more rationalized system, in which basic necessities are distributed in a regulated hydrogen peroxide economy, where things are priced by calculations of their caloric value. Then when you get past the necessities, the gift economy comes into play, using a nitrogen standard. So there are two planes, the need and the gift, or what the Sufis in the workshop call the animal and the human, expressed by the different standards.”

“The green and the white,” Nirgal said to himself.

“And are the Sufis pleased with this dual system?” Art asked.

Nadia nodded. “Today after Marina described the relationship of the two planes, Dhu el-Nun said to her, The Mevlana could not have put it any better.’ “

“A good sign,” Art said cheerfully.

Other workshops were less specific, and therefore less fruitful. One, working on a prospective bill of rights, was surprisingly ill-natured; but Nadia quickly saw that this topic tapped into a huge well of cultural concerns. Many obviously considered the topic an opportunity for one culture to dominate the rest. “I’ve said it ever since Boone,” Zeyk exclaimed. “An attempt to impose one set of values on all of us is nothing but Ataturkism. Everyone must be allowed their own way.”

“But this can only be true up to a point,” said Ariadne. “What if one group here asserts its right to own slaves?”

Zeyk shrugged. “This would be beyond the pale.”

“So you agree there should be some basic bill of human rights?”

“This is obvious,” Zeyk replied coldly.

Mikhail spoke for the Bogdanovists: “All social hierarchy is a kind of slavery,” he said. “Everyone should be completely equal under the law.”

“Hierarchy is a natural fact,” Zeyk said. “It cannot be avoided.”

“Spoken like an Arab man,” Ariadne said. “But we are not natural here, we are Martian. And where hierarchy leads to oppression, it must be abolished.”

“The hierarchy of the right-minded,” Zeyk said.

“Or the primacy of equality and freedom.”

“Enforced if necessary.”

“Yes!”

“Enforced freedom, then.” Zeyk waved a hand, disgusted.

Art rolled a drink cart onto the stage. “Maybe we should focus on some actual rights,” he suggested. “Maybe look at the various declarations of human rights from Earth, and see if they can be adapted to suit us here.”

Nadia moved on to check out some of the other meetings. Land use, property law, criminal law, inheritance … the Swiss had broken down the matter of government into an amazing number of subcategories. The anarchists were irritated, Mikhail chief among them: “Do we really have to go through all this?” he asked again and again. “None of this should obtain, none of it!”

Nadia would have expected Coyote to be among those arguing with him, but in fact he said, “We have to argue all of it! Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have to argue it point by point. Especially since most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That’s libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their sla\es. No! If you want to make the minimum-state case, you have to argue it from the ground up.”

“But,” Mikhail said, “I mean, inheritance law?”

“Sure, why not? This is critical stuff! I say there should be no inheritance at all, except for a few personal objects passed on, perhaps. But all the rest should go back to Mars. It’s part of the gift, right?”

“All the rest?” Vlad inquired with interest. “But what would that consist of, exactly? No one will own any of the land, water, air, the infrastructure, the gene stock, the information pool — what’s left to pass on?”

Coyote shrugged. “Your house? Your savings account? I mean, won’t we have money? And won’t people stockpile surpluses of it if they can?”

“You have to come to the finance sessions,” Marina said to Coyote. “We are hoping to base money on units of hydrogen peroxide, and price things by energy values.”

“But money will still exist, right?”

“Yes, but we are considering reverse interest on savings accounts, for instance, so that if you don’t put what you’ve earned back into use, it will be released to the atmosphere as nitrogen. You’d be surprised how hard it is to keep a positive personal balance in this system.”

“But if you did it?”

“Well, then I agree with you — on death it should pass back to Mars, be used for some public purpose.”

Sax haltingly objected that this contradicted the bioethical theory that human beings, like all animals, were powerfully motivated to provide for their own offspring. This urge could be observed throughout nature and in all human cultures, explaining much behavior both self-interested and altruistic. “Try to change the baby logical — the biological — basis of culture — by decree … Asking for trouble.”

“Maybe there should be a minimal inheritance allowed,” Coyote said. “Enough to satisfy that animal instinct, but not enough to perpetuate a wealthy elite.”

Marina and Vlad clearly found this intriguing, and they began to tap new formulas into their AIs. But Mikhail, sitting by Nadia and flipping through his program for the day, was still frustrated. “Is this really part of a constitutional process?” he said, looking at the list. “Zoning codes, energy production, waste disposal, transport systems — pest management, property law, grievance systems, criminal law — arbitration — health codes?”

Nadia sighed. “I guess so. Remember how Arkady worked so hard on architecture.”

“School schedules? I mean I’ve heard of micropolitics, but this is ridiculous!”

“Nanopolitics,” Art said.

“No, picopolitics! Femtopolitics!”

Nadia got up to help Art push the drink cart to the workshops in the village below the amphitheater. Art was still running from one meeting to the next, wheeling in food and drink, then catching a few minutes of the talk before moving on. There were eight to ten meetings per day, and Art was still dropping in on all of them. In the evenings, while more and more of the delegates spent their time partying, or going for walks up and down the tunnel, Art continued to meet with Nirgal, and they watched tapes at a, moderate fast forward so that everyone spoke like a bird, only slowing them down to take notes, or talk over some point or other. Getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, Nadia would pass the dim lounge where the two of them worked on their write-ups, and see the two of them asleep in their chairs, their slack open-mouthed faces flickering under the light of the Keystone Kops debate on the screen.

But in the mornings Art was up with the Swiss, getting things started. Nadia tried to keep pace with him for a few days, but found that the breakfast workshops were chancy. Sometimes people sat around tables sipping coffee and eating fruit and muffins, staring at each other like zombies: Who are you? their bleary gazes said. What am I doing here? Where are we? Why aren’t I asleep in my bed?

But it could be just the opposite: some mornings people came in showered and refreshed, alert with coffee or kavajava, full of new ideas and ready to work hard, to make progress. If the others there were of like mind, things could really fly. One of the sessions on property went like that, and for an hour it seemed as though they had solved all the problems of reconciling self and society, private opportunity and the common good, selfishness and altruism… At the end of the session, however, their notes looked just about as vague and contradictory as those taken at any of the more fractious meetings. “It’s the tape of the whole session that will have to represent it,” Art said, after trying to write down a summary.