“Yes, but they have no great stake beyond that,” Nadia said, thinking it out as she spoke. “Without nationalism or ethnicity, or some other kind of home feeling involved, I don’t think these people will fight to the death. They know they’re being ordered around to protect the powerful. Some more egalitarian system makes an appearance, and they might feel a conflict of loyalties.”

“Retirement benefits,” Maya mocked, and people laughed again.

But from the back Art said, “Why not put it in those terms? If you don’t want revolution conceptualized as war, you need something else to replace it, so why not economics? Call it a change in practice. This is what the people in Praxis are doing when they talk about human capital, or bioinfrastructure— modeling everything in economic terms. It’s ludicrous in a way, but it does speak to those for whom economics is the most important paradigm. That certainly includes the transnationals.”

“So,” Nirgal said with a grin, “we disemploy the local leadership, and give their police a raise while job-retraining them.”

“Yeah, like that.”

Sax was shaking his head. “Can’t reach them,” he said. “Need force.”

“Something has to be changed to avoid another sixty-one!” Nadia insisted. “It has to be rethought. Maybe there are historical models, but not the ones you’ve been mentioning. Something more like the velvet revolutions that ended the Soviet era, for instance.”

“But those involved unhappy populations,” Coyote said from the back, “and took place in a system that was falling apart. The same conditions don’t obtain here. People are pretty well off. They feel lucky to be here.”

“But Earth— in trouble,” Sax pointed out. “Falling apart.”

“Hmm,” Coyote said, and he sat down by Sax to talk about it. Talking with Sax was still frustrating, but as a result of all his work with Michel, it could be done. It made Nadia happy to see Coyote conferring with him.

The discussion went on around them. People argued theories of revolution, and when they tried to talk about ‘61 itself, they were hampered by old grievances, and a basic lack of understanding of what had happened in those nightmare months. At one point this became especially clear, as Mikhail and some ex-Korolyov inmates began arguing about who had murdered the guards.

Sax stood and waved his AI over his head.

“Need facts—first,” he croaked. “Then the dialysis— the analysis.”

“Good idea,” Art said instantly. “If this group can put together a brief history of the war to give to the congress at large, that would be really useful. We can save the discussion of revolutionary methodology for the general meetings, okay?”