“I don’t know for sure what that other way is,” she went on. “I can’t tell you that. I think . . . that’s what I think we have to start working on. It has to be something like a red areophany. The areophany has always been understood as a green thing, right from the start. I suppose because of Hiroko, because she took the lead in defining it. And in bringing it into being. So the areophany has always been mixed up with viriditas. But there’s no reason that should be. We have to change that, or we’ll never accomplish anything. There has to be a red worship of this place that people can learn to feel. The redness of the primal planet has to become a counterforce to viriditas. We have to stain that green until it turns some other color. Some color like you see in certain stones, like jasper, or ferric serpentine. You see what I mean. It will mean taking people out onto the land, maybe, up into the highlands, so they can see what it is. It will mean moving there, all over the place, and establishing tenure and stewardship rights, so that we can speak for the land and they will have to listen. Wanderers’ rights as well, areologists’ rights, nomads’ rights. That’s what areoformation might mean. Do you understand?”

She stopped. The young natives were still attentive, now looking perhaps concerned for her, or concerned at what she had said.

“We’ve talked about this kind of thing before,” one young man said. “And there are people doing it. Sometimes we do it. But we think an active resistance is a necessary part of the struggle. Otherwise we’ll just get steamrolled. They’ll green everything.”

“Not if we stain it all. Right from the inside, right from their hearts too. But sabotage, murder; it’s green that springs out of all that, believe me I’ve seen it. I’ve been fighting just as long as you and I’ve seen it. You stomp on life and it just comes back stronger.”

The young man wasn’t convinced. “They gave us the six-kilometer limit because they were scared of us, because we were the driving force behind the revolution. If it weren’t for us fighting, the metanats would still rule everything here.”

“That was a different opponent. When we fought the Terrans, then the Martian greens were impressed. When we fight the Martian greens they’re not impressed, they’re angry. And they get more green than ever.”

The group sat in silence, thoughtful, perhaps disheartened.

“But what do we do?” a gray-haired woman said.

“Go to some land that’s endangered,” Ann suggested. She gestured out the window. “Right here wouldn’t be bad. Or somewhere near the six-k border. Settle, incorporate a town, make it a primal refuge, make it a wonderful place. We’ll creep back down from the highlands.”

They considered this glumly.