Part 25 (1/2)
Ann and Sax sat back down. Nadia made her way out of the crowd, shaking her head. On the edge of the meeting she ran into Art, who shook his head soberly. ”Unbelievable,” he said.
”Believe it.”
The days of the congress unfolded much as the first few had, with workshops good or bad leading to dinner, and then long evenings of talk or partying. Nadia noticed that while the old emigrants were likely to go back to work after dinner, the young natives tended to regard the conferences as daytime work only, with the nights given over to celebration, often around the big warm pond in Phaistos. Once again this was only a matter of tendencies, with many exceptions either way, but she found it interesting.
She herself spent most of her evenings on the Zakros dining patios, making notes on the day's meetings, talking to people, thinking things over. Nirgal often worked with her, and Art too, when he was not getting people who had been arguing during the day to drink kava together, and then go up to party in Phaistos.
In the second week she got in the habit of taking an evening walk up the tube, often all the way to Falasarna, after which she would walk back and join Nirgal and Art for their final postmortem on the day, which they convened on a patio set on a little lava k.n.o.b in Lato. The two men had become good friends during their long trek home from Kasei Vallis, and under the pressure of the congress they were becoming like brothers, talking over everything, comparing impressions, testing theories, laying out plans for Nadia's judgment, and deciding to take on the task of writing some kind of congress doc.u.ment. She was part of it- the elder sister perhaps, or maybe just the babushka- and once when they shut down and staggered off to bed Art spoke of ”the triumvirate.” With her as Pompey, no doubt. But she did her best to sway them with her a.n.a.lyses of the larger picture.
There were many different kinds of disagreements among the groups there, she told them, but some were basic. There were those for and against terraforming. There were those for and against revolutionary violence. There were those who had gone underground to hold on to cultures under a.s.sault, and those who had disappeared in order to create radical new social orders. And it seemed more and more evident to Nadia that there were also significant differences between those who had immigrated from Earth, and those who had been born on Mars.
There were all kinds of disagreements, then, and no obvious alignments to be found among them. One night Michel Duval joined the three of them for a drink, and as Nadia described to him the problem he got out his AI, and began to make diagrams based on what he called the ”semantic rectangle.” Using this schema they made a hundred different sketches of the various dichotomies, trying to find a mapping that would help them to understand what alignments and oppositions might exist among them. They made some interesting patterns, but it could not be said that any blinding insights jumped off the screen at them- although one particularly messy semantic rectangle seemed suggestive, at least to Michel: violence and nonviolence, terraforming and ant.i.terraforming formed the initial four corners, and in the secondary combination around this first rectangle he had located Bogdanovists, Reds, Hiroko's areophany, and the Muslims and other cultural conservatives. But what this combinatoire combinatoire indicated in terms of action was not clear. indicated in terms of action was not clear.
Nadia began to attend the daily meetings devoted to general questions concerning a possible Martian government. These were just as disorganized as the discussions of revolutionary methods, but less emotional, and often more substantive. They took place every day in a small amphitheater which the Minoans had cut into the side of the tunnel in Malia. From this rising arc of benches the partic.i.p.ants looked out over bamboo and pine trees and terra-cotta rooftops all the way up and down the tunnel, from Zakros to Falasarna.
The talks were attended by a somewhat different crowd than the revolutionary debates. A report would come in from the smaller workshops for discussion, and then most of the people who had attended that workshop would join the larger meeting, to see what comments were made on the report. The Swiss had set up workshops for all aspects of politics, economics, and culture generally, and so the general discussions were very wide-ranging indeed.
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 k.n.o.b 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 h.o.a.rding, 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 a.s.serts 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 really have to go through all this?” he asked again and again. ”None of this should obtain, none of it!” 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 slaves. 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? inheritance law?”
”Sure, why not? This is critical stuff! I say there should be no inheritance at all, except for a few personal objects pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 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 really part of a const.i.tutional process?” he said, looking at the list. ”Zoning codes, energy production, part of a const.i.tutional process?” he said, looking at the list. ”Zoning codes, energy production, waste disposal 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!” I mean I've heard of micropolitics, but this is ridiculous!”
”Nanopolitics,” Art said.
”No, picopolitics! Femtopolitics!”