As they drove Nirgal thought hard about the Sufis, and what their influential presence said about the underground and the demimonde. People had left the surface world for many different reasons, and that was important to remember. All of them had thrown everything away, and risked their lives, but they had done so intent on very different goals. Some hoped to establish radically new cultures, as in Zygote, or Dorsa Brevia, or in the Bogdanovist sanctuaries. Others, like the Sufis, wanted to hold on to ancient cultures they felt were under assault in the Terran global order. Now all these parts of the resistance were scattered in the southern highlands, mixed but still separate. There was no obvious reason why they should all want to become one single thing. Many of them had been trying specifically to get away from dominant powers— transnationals, the West, America, capitalism— all the totalizing systems of power. A central system was just what they had gone to great lengths to get away from. That did not bode well for Art’s plan, and when Nirgal expressed this worry, Nadia agreed. “You are American, this is trouble for us.” Which made Art go cross-eyed. But then Nadia added, “Well, America also stands for the melting pot. The idea of the melting pot. It was the place where people could come from anywhere and be a part of it. Such was the theory. There are lessons there for us.”

Jackie said, “What Boone finally concluded was that it wasn’t possible to invent a Martian culture from scratch. He said it should be a mix of the best of everyone that came here. That’s the difference between Booneans and Bogdanovists.”

“Yes,” Nadia said, frowning, “but I think they were both wrong. I don’t think we can invent it from scratch, and I don’t think there will be a mix. At least not for a very long time. In the meantime, it will be a matter of a lot of different cultures coexisting, I think. But whether such a thing is possible . . .” She shrugged.

• • •

The problems they were going to face in any congress were made flesh during their visit to the Bedouin caravanserai. These Bedouin were mining the region of the far south between Dana Crater, Lyell Crater, the Sisyphi Cavi, and Dorsa Argentea. They were traveling about in mobile mining rigs, in the style honed on the Great Escarpment, now traditional— harvesting surface deposits, and then moving on. The caravanserai was just a small tent, left in place like an oasis, for people to use in emergencies, or when they wanted to stretch out a little.