Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) - Kim Stanley Robinson Page 0,225

heard of again, it had happened hundreds of times, so many that it was clear there was some system there, of contact and transmission, an underground railroad kind of thing that no undercover agent had yet been able to penetrate, or at least to return from. “Let’s go down there and talk to him,” Frank said to Maya when he heard. “I really want to confront him in person.”

“It won’t do any good,” Maya said darkly. But Nadia was supposed to be there as well, and so she came along.

All down the slope of Tharsis they rode in silence, watching the frosted rock fly by. At Nicosia the station opened for their train as if there was not even a question of refusing them. But Arkady and Nadia were not in the small crowd that greeted them; instead it was Alexander Zhalin. Back at the city manager’s offices, they called up Arkady on a vidlink; judging by the sunlight behind him, he was already many kilometers to the east. And Nadia, they said, had never been in Nicosia at all.

Arkady looked the same as ever, expansive and relaxed. “This is madness,” Frank said to him, furious that he had not gotten him in person. “You can’t hope to succeed.”

“But we can,” Arkady said. “We do.” His luxuriant red-and-white beard was an obvious revolutionary badge, as if he were the young Fidel about to enter Havana. “Of course it would be easier with your help, Frank. Think about it!”

Then before Frank could say more, someone off-screen got Arkady’s attention. A muttered conversation in Russian, and then Arkady faced him again. “Sorry, Frank,” he said. “I must attend to something. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

“Don’t you go!” Frank shouted, but the connection was gone. “God damn it!”

Nadia came on the line. She was in Burroughs, but had been linked into the exchange, such as it was. In contrast to Arkady she was taut, brusque, unhappy. “You can’t support what he’s doing!” Frank cried.

“No,” Nadia said grimly. “We aren’t talking. We still have this phone contact, which is how I knew where you were, but we don’t use it direct anymore. No point.”

“You can’t influence him?” Maya said.

“No.”

Frank could see that this was hard for Maya to believe, and it almost made him laugh: not influence a man, not manipulate him? What was Nadia’s problem?

That night they stayed at a dorm near the station. After supper Maya went back to the city manager’s office, to talk to Alexander and Dmitri and Elena. Frank wasn’t interested, it was a waste of time. Restlessly he walked the circumference of the old town, through alleys running against the tent wall, remembering that night so long ago. Only nine years, in fact, though it felt like a hundred. Nicosia looked little these days. The park at the western apex still had a good view of the whole, but a blackness filled things so that he could scarcely see.

In the sycamore grove, now mature, he passed a short man hurrying the other way. The man stopped and stared at Frank, who was under a street lamp. “Chalmers!” the man exclaimed.

Frank turned. The man had a thin face, long tangled dreadlocks, dark skin. No one he knew. But seeing him, he felt a chill. “Yes?” he snapped.

The man regarded him. He said, “You don’t know me, do you.”

“No I don’t. Who are you?”

The man’s grin was asymmetrical, as if his face had been cracked at the point of the jaw. Underneath the streetlight it looked warped, half-crazed.

“Who are you?” Frank said again.

The man raised a finger. “The last time we met, you were bringing down the town. Tonight it’s my turn. Ha!” He strode off laughing, each sharp “Ha!” higher than the last.

Back at the city manager’s, Maya clutched his arm. “I was worried, you shouldn’t be walking around alone in this town!”

“Shut up.” He went to a phone and called the physical plant. Everything was normal. He called the UNOMA police, and told them to mount an armed guard at the plant and the train station. He was still repeating the order to someone higher up the chain of command, and it seemed likely it would go all the way up to the new factor for final confirmation, when the screen went blank. There was a tremor underfoot, and every alarm bell in town went off at once. A concerted, adrenal brinnnnng!

Then there was a sharp jolt. The doors all hissed shut; the building