I told myself I simply wanted to work at a job that kept me near Ilya and let me live the emotionally rich life of a lawbonded woman, and stay out of the LitVid glare wherever possible (something we had certainly failed at). Looking back, however, I see clearly that my surface wishes and my deep needs did not coincide. The lull after our crisis on Earth was just that — not a permanent state of affairs, but a respite, and no one could know how long it would last. If Mars was going to stand up against Mother Earth, no capable Martian could step aside and live a disengaged private life.
Ti Sandra kept hinting of larger plans.
I had learned on Earth that I had some small ability in politics; my nightmares were caused by the growing in me of a sense of responsibility. That new sense was, certainly nurtured by Ti Sandra, but it was not planted by her.
Ilya would have been happy to have me share his trips and researches for the rest of our days, but I had already resisted…
Not that Ilya himself bored me. I loved him so much I was sometimes afraid. How would I live if I should lose him? I thought of my father after my mother’s death, half his life drained, of his long quiet lapses into reverie when Stan and Stan’s wife Jane and I visited, and his conversations always leading back to Mother…
There were hideous risks in love, but Ilya did not feel them. He focused so intently on his work that a long tractor ride through untraveled territory to reach a possible ancient aquifer (and, coincidentally, fossil site) caused him not a femto of personal worry. To be left alone, helping manage the Erzul businesses, while he went on such trips was more than I could stand. So more and more I distracted myself by taking consulting jobs away from Olympus Station, meeting with syndics and managers from other BMs, trading vague probes of intent with regard to the future shape of Martian economics and politics. Once again, members of the Council were trying to get the syndics to talk about unification. The air was rich with speculation.
Ilya did not worry about me when I was gone. When I accused him of not caring, he told me, “I enjoy your absences!” and when I pouted melodramatically, he said, “Because our reunions ars so fierce.”
And they were.
Legend surrounds many of these people now, but of all of them, Ti Sandra seemed most suited to be legendary, even then.
I saw her frequently in meetings held to vet the family business deals. We worked together well, and her husband Paul, Ilya, and I often dined together. Paul and Ilya could spend hours speculating about ancient Mars, Paul making wild and unfounded assertions — -intelligent life, legends of buried pyramids, underground cities — and Ilya laughingly following a middle course.
Ti Sandra and I talked of a new Mars.
Ti Sandra promoted me to be her assistant — a move which made me very nervous — and then appointed me as ambassador for Erzul to the five largest BMs.
“You’re famous,” she told me over strong jasmine tea in her office at Olympus Station. “You stand for something special about Mars, something our own that we all have in common. You’re well connected, from Majumdar, with close relatives transferred to Cailetet.” She was referring to Stan. “You have management arid political skills. You’ve been to Earth — I never have.”
“It was a disaster,” I reminded her.
“It was a step in a long process,” she rejoined. She spoke precisely, carefully considering her words, keeping direct eye contact. She had never been so serious before. “You seem happily married.”
“Very,” I said.
“And you seem to be able to spend some time apart from Ilya… working separately.”
“I miss him,” I said.
“I will be frank,” Ti Sandra said. “Because of your fame, you can help me… and help Erzul. You might have noticed I am an ambitious woman.”
I laughed. “You might have noticed I’m not,” I said.
“You are very capable. And you do not always know yourself. There is a person inside you who wants out, and who wants to do things that are important. But the right occasion, the proper colleagues, have eluded you… have they not?”
I looked away, nervous at being so analyzed.
“I’ve read the reports from Majumdar about the trip to Earth. You did well. Bithras did not do so badly — but he had his weaknesses, and he stumbled, and that was all it took. If Earth had wanted to make an agreement with him, they would have regardless. So don’t chastise yourself about what happened there.”
“I stopped doing that a long time ago,” I said.
Ti Sandra nodded. “Erzul is ready to do its job, as the circumstances seem right, and time will not wait for cowards to move. We are respected and conservative, Martian through and through. We are in a perfect position to act as catalyst; the district governors are in agreement on compromises with the BMs, we are all worried by overtures from Earth toward Cailetet and other BMs…”
“You want to urge unification?”
She smiled broadly. “We can do it right this time. No back-office deals, advocates arguing only with each other. There should be a constitutional assembly, and all the people should participate… through delegates.”
“Sounds very Earthly,” I said. “BMs aren’t used to airing family disputes.”
“Then we should learn.”
She described my duties. Most important, I would visit the syndics of the largest BMs on an informal basis and sound out their positions, build a base for a better designed and more widely acceptable constitution.
Erzul had nothing to lose by sponsoring a constitutional assembly — with all BMs invited, even those strongly connected to Earth. Earth, she was sure, would bide its time while we worked, exerting its pressures where it thought necessary to make the constitution acceptable…
“But we’ll deal with those fingers when they poke,” she said. She smiled broadly. “Two strong women, a stubborn and willful planet, and much impossible work between here and teatime. Are you with me?”
How could I not be? “We’re crazy as sizzle,” I said.
“Fickle as flop,” she returned.
We laughed and shook hands firmly.
We would have been stupid to believe Erzul would be the only player in the game of arranging a constitutional assembly. Others had been working for some time. And, as always in human politics, some of these players were caught up in old theories, old ideals, old and pernicious doctrines. What political clothing Earth had outgrown was now being taken up by Martians and tried on for size.
The year we worked toward a constitutional assembly was a dangerous time. Elitists — some rehashing the politics of the Statists, others wrapping themselves in even more deeply stained robes of theory — believed fervently that the privileges of this faction or that, arrived at by historic and organic process — without plan — should be fixed in stone tablets, these tablets to be carried down from the mountain and announced to the people. Populists believed the people should dictate their needs to any individual who rose above the herd, and bring them low again — except of course for the leaders of whatever populist government took power, who, as political messiahs, would earn specific privileges themselves.
Religion raised its head, as Christians and Moslems and Hindu factions — long a polite undercurrent in Martian life, even within Majumdar BM — saw historic opportunity, and made a rush to the political high ground.
What we were working toward, of course, was the end of the business families as landholders and exploiters of natural wealth by squatter’s rights. The imposition of the district governors and the weak Council had begun the process, decades before, but finishing it was horribly difficult. Institutions, like any organism, hate to die.
For six long and grueling months, Ti Sandra and I and half a dozen like-minded colleagues from a loose alliance of Erzul, Majumdar, and Yamaguchi, traveled across Mars, attending BM syndic meetings, trying to persuade, to deflect outrageous demands, to assuage wounded political and family pride, to assure that all would suffer equally and benefit hugely.