The room was filled with a charged silence. It was the first and only time in the congress that one of the issei had stood up and trounced one of the nisei in public debate. Most of the issei liked to take a more subtle line. But now one of the ancient radicals had gotten mad and risen up to smite one of the neoconservative young power mongers— who now looked like they were advocating a new version of an old hierarchy, for purposes of their own. A thought which was conveyed very well indeed by Vlad’s long look across the table at Antar, full of disgust at his reactionary selfishness, his cowardice in the face of change. Vlad sat down; Antar was dismissed.

6

But still they argued. Conflict, metaconflict, details, fundamentals; everything was on the table, including a magnesium kitchen sink that someone had placed on one segment of the table of tables, some three weeks into the process.

And really the delegates in the warehouse were only the tip of the iceberg, the most visible part of a gigantic two-world debate. Live transmission of every minute of the conference was available everywhere on Mars and in most places on Earth, and although the actual realtime tape had a certain documentary tediousness to it, Mangalavid concocted a daily highlights film that was shown during the timeslip every night, and sent to Earth for very wide distribution. It became “the greatest show on Earth” as one American program rather oddly dubbed it. “Maybe people are tired of the same old crap on TV,” Art said to Nadia one night as they watched a brief, weirdly distorted account of the day’s negotiations on American TV.

“Or in the world.”

“Yeah true. They want something else to think about.”

“Or else they’re thinking about what they might do,” Nadia suggested. “So that we’re a small-scale model. Easier to understand.”

“Maybe so.”