But others more than compensated for their thoughtfulness, and the younger hotheads went at it hammer and tongs. The younger Reds regarded terraforming as nothing more than part of the imperial process; Ann was a moderate compared to them, they raged even at Hiroko in their fury—”Don’t call it areoforming,” one of them shouted at her, and Hiroko stared nonplussed at this tall young woman, a blond Valkyrie made nearly rabid by the use of the word—”it’s terraforming you mean and terraforming you’re doing. Calling it areoforming is a sickening lie.”

“We terraform the planet,” Jackie said to the woman, “but the planet areoforms us.”

“And that’s a lie too!”

Ann stared grimly at Jackie. “Your grandfather said that to me,” she said, “a long time ago. As you may know. But I’m still waiting to see what areoforming is supposed to mean.”

“It’s happened to everyone born here,” Jackie said confidently.

“How so? You were born on Mars— how are you any different?”

Jackie glowered. “Like the rest of the natives, Mars is all I know, and all I care about. I was brought up in a culture made of strands from many different Terran predecessors, mixed to a new Martian thing.”

Ann shrugged. “I don’t see how you’re so different. You remind me of Maya.”

“To hell with you!”

“As Maya would say. And that’s your areoforming. We’re human and human we remain, no matter what John Boone said. He said a lot of things, but none of them ever came true.”

“Not yet,” Jackie said. “But the process is slowed when it’s in the hands of people who haven’t had a new thought for fifty years.” A lot of the younger ones laughed at this. “And who are in the habit of introducing gratuitous personal insults into a political argument.”

And she stood there watching Ann, looking calm and relaxed, except for the flash in her eye, which reminded Nadia again of what a power Jackie was. Almost all the natives there were behind her, no doubt about it.

“If we have not changed here,” Hiroko said to Ann, “how do you explain your Reds? How do you explain the areophany?”

Ann shrugged. “They are the exceptions.”

Hiroko shook her head. “There is a spirit of place in us. Landscape has profound effects on the human psyche. You are a student of landscapes, and a Red. You must acknowledge this to be true.”

“True for some,” Ann replied, “but not for all. Most people obviously don’t feel that spirit of place. One city is much like another— in fact they’re interchangeable in all the important ways. So people come to a city on Mars, and what’s the difference? There isn’t any. So they think no more of destroying the land outside the city than they did back on Earth.”

“These people can be taught to think differently.”