So the work went on, both around the big table and in the offices where the subgroups were meeting. Even the UN was there, in the person of UNTA chief Derek Hastings himself, who had come down the elevator and was participating vigorously in the debates, his opinion always carrying a peculiar kind of weight. He even began to exhibit symptoms of hostage syndrome, Art thought, becoming more and more sympathetic the more he stood around in the warehouse arguing with people. And this might affect his superiors on Earth as well.

Comments and suggestions were also pouring in from all over Mars, and from Earth as well, filling several screens covering one wall of the big room. Interest in the congress was high everywhere, rivaling even Earth’s great flood in the public’s attention. “The soap opera of the moment,” Art said to Nadia. Every night the two of them met in their little office suite, and put in their call to Nirgal and the rest. The delays in the travelers’ responses got longer and longer, but Art and Nadia didn’t really mind; there was a lot to think about while waiting for Sax and the others’ part of the conversation to arrive.

“This global versus local problem is going to be hard,” Art said one night. “It’s a real contradiction, I think. I mean it’s not just the result of confused thinking. We truly want some global control, and yet we want freedom for the tents as well. Two of our most essential values are in contradiction.”

“Maybe the Swiss system,” Nirgal suggested a few minutes later. “That’s what John Boone always used to say.”

But the Swiss on Pavonis were not encouraging about this idea. “A countermodel rather,” Jurgen said, making a face. “The reason I’m on Mars is the Swiss federal government. It stifles everything. You need a license to breathe.”

“And the cantons have no power anymore,” Priska said. “The federal government took it away.”

“In some of the cantons,” Jurgen added, “this was a good thing.”

Priska said, “More interesting than Berne might be the Graubunden. That means Gray League. They were a loose confederation of towns in southeast Switzerland, for hundreds of years. A very successful organization.”

“Could you call up whatever you can get on that?” Art said.

The next night he and Nadia looked over descriptions of the Graubunden that Priska had sent over. Well . . . there was a certain simplicity to affairs during the Renaissance, Art thought. Maybe that was wrong, but somehow the extremely loose agreements of the little Swiss mountain towns did not seem to translate well to the densely interpenetrated economies of the Martian settlements. The Graubunden hadn’t had to worry about generating unwanted changes in atmospheric pressure, for instance. No— the truth was, they were in a new situation. There was no historical analogy that would be much help to them now.