Silence followed this remark.

Ann Clayborne said, "This treaty also says we have to take measures to prevent the disruption of planetary environments, I think is how they put it. It's in Article Seven. That seems to me to expressly forbid the terraforming that so many of you are talking about."

"I would say that we should ignore that provision as well," Arkady said quickly. "Our own well-being depends on ignoring it."

This view was more popular than his others, and several people said so.

"But if you're willing to disregard one article," Arkady pointed out, "you should be willing to disregard the rest. Right?"

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"All these changes will happen inevitably," Sax Russell said with a shrug. "Being on Mars will change us in an evolutionary way."

Arkady shook his head vehemently, causing him to spin a little in the air over the table. "No, no, no, no! History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. But history is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years, or months, or days! History is Lamarckian! So that if we choose to establish certain institutions on Mars, there they will be! And if we choose others, there they will be!" A wave of his hand encompassed them all, the people seated at the tables, the people floating among the vines: "I say we should make those choices ourselves, rather than having them made for us by people back on Earth. By people long dead, really."

Phyllis said sharply, "You want some kind of communal utopia, and it's not possible. I should think Russian history would have taught you something about that."

"It has," Arkady said. "Now I put to use what it has taught me."

"Advocating an ill-defined revolution? Formenting a crisis situation? Getting everyone upset and at odds with each other?"

A lot of people nodded at this, but Arkady waved them away. "I decline to accept blame for everyone's problems at this point in the trip. I have only said what I think, which is my right. If I make some of you uncomfortable, that is your problem. It is because you don't like the implications of what I say, but can't find grounds to deny them."

"Some of us can't understand what you say," Mary exclaimed.

"I say only this!" Arkady said, staring at her bug-eyed: "We have come to Mars for good. We are going to make not only our homes and our food, but also our water and the very air we breathe-all on a planet that has none of these things. We can do this because we have technology to manipulate matter right down to the molecular level. This is an extraordinary ability, think of it! And yet some of us here can accept transforming the entire physical reality of this planet, without doing a single thing to change our selves, or the way we live. To be twenty-first century scientists on Mars, in fact, but at the same time living within nineteenth century social systems, based on seventeenth century ideologies. It's absurd, it's crazy, it's-it's-" he seized his head in his hands, tugged at his hair, roared "It's unscientific! And so I say that among all the many things we transform on Mars, ourselves and our social reality should be among them. We must terraform not only Mars, but ourselves."