Red Mars Read Free Page A

seven main boulevards. Most were paved with cobblestones or streetgrass, but this one was rough blond concrete. He slowed by a recessed doorway, looked in the window of a closed boot manufactory. His faint reflection appeared in a pair of bulky walker boots.
    Selim el-Hayil’s reflection appeared among the boots.
    “Is it true?” he demanded.
    “Is what true?” said Frank crossly.
    “Is Boone anti-Arab?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Was he the one who blocked permission to build the mosque on Phobos?”
    “He’s a powerful man.”
    The young Saudi’s face twisted. “The most powerful man on Mars, and he only wants more! He wants to be king!” Selim made a fist and struck his other hand. He was slimmer than the other Arabs, weak-chinned, his moustache covering a small mouth. A bit of a rabbit, but with sharp teeth.
    “The treaty comes up for renewal soon,” Frank said. “And Boone’s coalition is bypassing me.” He ground his teeth. “I don’t know what their plans are, but I’m going to find out tonight. You can imagine what they’ll be, anyway. Western biases, certainly. He may withhold his approval of a new treaty unless it contains guarantees that all settlements will be made only by the original treaty signatories.” Selim shivered, and Frank pressed; “It’s what he wants, and it’s very possible he could get it, because his new coalition makes him more powerful than ever. It could mean an end to settlement by nonsignatories. You’ll become guest scientists. Or get sent back.”
    In the window the reflection of Selim’s face appeared a kind of mask, signifying rage. “ Battal, battal ,” he was muttering. Very bad, very bad. His hands twisted as if out of his control, and he muttered about the Koran or Camus, Persepolis or the Peacock Throne, references scattered nervously among non sequiturs. Babbling.
    “Talk means nothing,” Chalmers said harshly. “When it comes down to it, nothing matters but action.”
    That gave the young Arab pause. “I can’t be sure,” he said at last.
    Frank poked him in the arm, watched a shock run through the man. “It’s your people we’re talking about. It’s this planet we’re talking about.”
    Selim’s mouth disappeared under his moustache. After a time he said, “It’s true.”
    Frank said nothing. They looked in the window together, as if judging boots.
    Finally Frank raised a hand. “I’ll talk to Boone again,” he said quietly. “Tonight. He leaves tomorrow. I’ll try to talk to him, to reason with him. I doubt it will matter. It never has before. But I’ll try. Afterward . . . we should meet.”
    “Yes.”
    “In the park, then, the southernmost path. Around eleven.”
    Selim nodded.
    Chalmers transfixed him with a stare. “Talk means nothing,” he said brusquely, and walked away.

    • • •
    The next boulevard Chalmers came to was crowded with people clumped outside open-front bars, or kiosks selling couscous and bratwurst. Arab and Swiss. It seemed an odd combination, but they meshed well.
    Tonight some of the Swiss were distributing face masks from the door of an apartment. Apparently they were celebrating this stadtfest as a kind of Mardi Gras, Fassnacht as they called it, with masks and music and every manner of social inversion, just as it was back home on those wild February nights in Basel and Zürich and Luzern. . . . On an impulse Frank joined the line. “Around every profound spirit a mask is always growing,” he said to two young women in front of him. They nodded politely and then resumed conversation in guttural Schwyzerdüütsch, a dialect never written down, a private code, incomprehensible even to Germans. It was another impenetrable culture, the Swiss, in some ways even more so than the Arabs. That was it, Frank thought; they worked well together because they were both so insular that they never made any real contact. He laughed out loud as he took a mask, a black face studded with red paste gems. He