He sighed. “Perhaps that’s just a value speaking. Favoring living systems over nonliving systems. I suppose we can’t escape values, like you say. It’s strange . . . I mostly feel like I just want to figure things out. Why they work the way they do. But if you ask me why I want that— or what I would want to have happen, what I work toward . . .” He shrugged, struggling to understand himself. “It’s hard to express. Something like a net gain in information. A net gain in order.” For Sax this was a good functional description of life itself, of its holding action against entropy. He held out a hand to Ann, hoping to get her to understand that, to agree at least to the paradigm of their debate, to a definition of science’s ultimate goal. They were both scientists after all, it was their shared enterprise. . . .

But she only said, “So you destroy the face of an entire planet. A planet with a clear record nearly four billion years old. It’s not science. It’s making a theme park.”

“It’s using science for a particular value. One I believe in.”

“As do the transnationals.”

“I guess.”

“It certainly helps them.”

“It helps everything alive.”

“Unless it kills them. The terrain is destabilized; there are landslides every day.”

“True.”

“And they kill. Plants, people. It’s happened already.”

Sax waggled a hand, and Ann jerked her head up to glare at him.

“What’s this, the necessary murder? What kind of value is that?”

“No, no. They’re accidents, Ann. People need to stay on bedrock, out of the slide zones, that kind of thing. For a while.”

“But vast regions will turn to mud, or be drowned entirely. We’re talking about half the planet.”

“The water will drain downhill. Create watersheds.”

“Drowned land, you mean. And a completely different planet. Oh, that’s a value all right! And the people who hold the value of Mars as it is . . . we will fight you, every step of the way.”

He sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t. At this point a biosphere would help us more than the transnationals. The transnats can operate from the tent cities, and mine the surface robotically, while we hide and concentrate most of our efforts on concealment and survival. If we could live everywhere on the surface, it would be a lot easier for all kinds of resistance.”

“All but Red resistance.”

“Yes, but what’s the point of that, now?”

“Mars. Just Mars. The place you’ve never known.”

Sax looked up at the white dome over them, feeling distress like a sudden attack of arthritis. It was useless to argue with her.