Three designs for flags were rejected. A fourth was tentatively agreed to and a sample was sewn together, by hand, and submitted for final approvaclass="underline" red Mars and two moons in blue field above a diagonal, white below, signifying how much we had to grow.
One by one, the delegates — syndics and advocates and governors, assistants and aides, private citizens — gathered in the debating chamber, signing the instruments of federation, abolishing the Council of BMs, rule by Charter, and relinquishing the independence of a century. Ti Sandra stood beside me at the lectern, hand on my shoulder, smiling broadly.
As each of the signers placed his or her signature on the papers, I began to believe. The crucial first steps had been taken, the majority of BMs supported us, and there had been no extreme interference.
We heard of Cailetet trying to arrange an alternate assembly, but it never came off. A rumor circulated during the hours before the signing that Achmed Crown Niger would send an advocate to begin talks with the interim government, but no advocate arrived.
Ti Sandra’s husband, Paul, accompanied Ilya into the chamber as the ceremony was concluded, and we shook hands and hugged all around. LitVid reporters from across the Triple recorded the signatures, and our embrace.
“Fossil Mars comes to life again,” Ilya whispered in my ear. We followed the crowd to dinner in the same room where I had once been held prisoner by Statist guards. “I’m proud of you,” he added, squeezing my hand.
“You’re talking as if it’s over,” I said ruefully.
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I know what happens now. I no longer have a wife. We’ll see each other once a month… by appointment.”
“Not that bad, I hope.”
We sat in the middle of a long refectory table with the district governors and accepted the toasts of the delegates and syndics. Ti Sandra made a brief speech, humble and stirring, ringing with just the right note of new patriotism, and we ate.
I looked at the delegates and syndics, the governors, faces weary but relaxed, talking and nodding as they ate, and knew something I had never known before, at least not so intensely.
Time seemed to slow, and all my attentions focused on these singular seconds: on hands carrying forkfuls of food to questing mouths, on glittering eyes watching the faces of others, the sounds of laughter, protests of dismay at some jesting accusation, protests at credit given too liberally, an earnest woman expressing her own emotions at the signing, frowning ever so slightly as she framed her words; all colleagues, the moment having arrived, their time in history, the organic political process having flowed and carried them along…
I felt for them, in that suspended time, as I had felt before only for family or husband. And for those who stood outside our process, who opposed it, I felt as a mother bird must feel about the egg-stealing snake.
Love and suspicion, mellow accomplishment against gnawing anxiety for what might come…
I turned to look at the corner of the dining hall where I had stood years before with Charles and Diane, Sean and Gretyl, and vowed that sort of injustice would never happen again.
The delegates spread across Mars to bring word to their people about the proposed constitution. In district assemblies from pole to pole, Martians closely examined the document, and studied the charts and Legal Logic analyses.
There were incidents. A delegate was stormed by a mob of dissident water miners in Lowell Crater in Aonia. Three delegate aides were exiled from their families. Lawsuits were filed under the old rules of the Council court system, not yet disbanded; and all the while, Cailetet entrenched its district holdings, gathering dissident BMs under its protective wing, and making overtures to Earth that were, for a time, politely ignored.
Earth was patient.
I saw Ilya perhaps one day in five, and when he was in the field, less often than that.
Ilya had been called to head studies of cyst reproduction at Olympia , working with Professor Jordan-Erzul and Dr. Schovinski. During one memorable day away from my duties, he showed me a broad canyon in Cyane Sulci chosen for a major mother cyst experiment. The finest specimen known would be exposed to the Martian atmosphere, showered with ice and mineral dust, heated by infrared lamps, and then covered with a dome and subjected to a tenth of a bar of pressure. After months of preparation, biologists from Rubicon City were optimistic they would see results.
Whenever we met, we slept away from home, in guest suites, inns, subjected to the creativity of regional cuisine… All through the long months of traveling to district assemblies, training or shuttling from station to station, persuading, cajoling, browbeating, explaining the elements of Mars’s future government.
In the early spring of M.Y. 58, the citizens of Mars voted on ratification. Our patient work and preparation had the desired results: the constitution was ratified, sixty-six percent for, thirty against, four abstaining.
Seven Binding Multiples refused to participate, including Cailetet, leaving three large districts and portions of four others in an uncertain condition, outside of the process for the time being.
The interim government would continue for five more months, as candidates for the new offices were nominated and elected. A capital had to be chosen, or a new one built; the districts would have to submit to an official federal census; the flood of volunteers for appointed government positions had to be dealt with, and plans made for folding the structures of the interim government into the forthcoming elected government; the conflicting laws of different districts and BMs had to be reconciled.
The economic alliances of Earth transmitted their congratulations, and promised to send ambassadors to the new Federal Republic . The Moon and Belt BMs did the same.
For a time, it seemed possible we could simply ignore Cailetet and the other dissidents.
Coming full circle, a celebration dinner was held at the University of Mars one week after ratification. All the governors, the former delegates and syndics and advocates and assistants, as well as new appointees and ambassadors, gathered in the old UMS dining hall, five hundred strong, to celebrate the victory.
Ilya sat patiently beside me as vid after congratulatory vid was played. I held his hand, and he surreptitiously passed me his slate showing results from the first cyst experiment. I scrolled through photos and chemical results. Snail slime? I mouthed.
He grinned. Still growing, he wrote on the slate. Ti Sandra glanced at me as Earth’s new ambassador began his speech, and I devoted my full attention — or at least pretended to. Ilya stroked my thigh, and I was anticipating a long evening alone with him — in yet another inn room — after the dinner.
As the meal ended, an advocate from Yamaguchi — the old affiliations and descriptions still lingered — drew Ti Sandra aside in the tunnel outside the dining hall and whispered in her ear. Ti Sandra nodded and spoke to me in an undertone.
“Tell Ilya to keep your bed warm,” she said. “You’ll be back in a few hours. They tell me it’s important.”
I kissed Ilya. He grasped my hand, worried that something had gone wrong.
Ti Sandra embraced Paul and they exchanged long-suffering grimaces. The district governor of Syria-Sinai, the advocate from Yamaguchi, and two male armed guards, escorted Ti Sandra and me deep into the sciences complex of UMS.
The guards wore the uniforms of Sinai public defense, with hastily applied patches showing the flag of the Republic. Ti Sandra calmly ignored them.
Along the way, we were introduced to a man I recognized as an advocate from Cailetet, Ira Winkleman. Neither Ti Sandra nor I knew precisely what we were being led into. Vague notions of a coup or some show of force from Cailetet flitted through my head. After our heady celebration dinner, the mystery made me a touch queasy.