“It’s not clear,” Tiu said. “But if you stopped the industrial pumping, any further growth would certainly be very slow. It might even lose ground, as with this ice age that’s starting.”

“Isn’t that what some people call ecopoesis?”

“No. The ecopoets just use biological methods to create changes in the atmosphere and on the surface, but they’re very intensive with them. We think they all should stop, ecopoets or industrialists or whatever.”

“But especially the heavy industrial methods,” Marion said. “And most especially the inundation of the north. That’s simply criminal. We’ll blow up those stations no matter what happens here, if they don’t stop.”

Art gestured out at the huge stony caldera. “The higher elevations look pretty much the same, right?”

They weren’t willing to admit that. Irishka said, “Even the high ground shows ice deposition and plant life. The atmosphere lofts high here, remember. No place escapes when the winds are strong.”

“What if we tented the four big calderas?” Art said. “Kept them sterile underneath, with the original atmospheric pressure and mix? Those would be huge wilderness parks, preserved in the true primal state.”

“Parks are just what they would be.”

“I know. But we have to work with what we have now, right? We can’t go back to m-1 and rerun the whole thing. And given the current situation, it might be good to preserve three or four big places in the original state, or close to it.”

“It would be nice to have some canyons protected as well,” Tiu said tentatively. Clearly they had not considered this kind of possibility before; and it was not really satisfactory to them, Art could see. But the current situation could not be wished away, they had to start from there.

“Or Argyre Basin.”

“At the very least, keep Argyre dry.”

Art nodded encouragingly. “Combine that kind of preservation with the atmosphere limits set in the Dorsa Brevia document. That’s a five-kilometer breathable ceiling, and there’s a hell of a lot of land above five kilometers that would remain relatively pristine. It won’t take the northern ocean away, but nothing’s going to do that now. Some form of slow ecopoesis is about the best you can hope for at this point, right?”

Perhaps that was putting it too baldly. The Reds stared down into Pavonis caldera unhappily, thinking their own thoughts.

• • •

“Say the Reds come on board,” Art said to Nadia. “What do you think the next worst problem is?”