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We’ve got to be part of all that. As the original settlement, we’re
the natural leader. An unbridged gravity well is just an obstruction to all
that—a reduction in our ability to act, a reduction in our power.”
    “Getting in the way of progress,” Ann said bitterly. “Think what Arkady
would have said to that. No, look. We had a chance here to make something
different. That was the whole point. We still have that chance. Everything that
increases the space within which we can create a new society is a good thing.
Everything that reduces our space is a bad thing. Think about it!”
    Perhaps they did. But it made no difference. Any number of
elements on Earth were sending up their arguments for the cable—arguments,
threats, entreaties. They needed help down there. Any help. Art Randolph continued
energetically lobbying for the cable on behalf of Praxis, which was looking to
Ann like it would become the next transitional authority, metanationalism in
its latest manifestation or disguise.
    But the natives were being slowly won over by them, intrigued by
the possibility of “conquering Earth,” unaware of how impossible this was,
incapable of imagining Earth’s vastness and immobility. One could tell them and
tell them, but they would never be able to imagine it.
    Finally it came time for an informal vote. It was representative
voting, they had decided, one vote for each of the signatory groups to the
Dorsa Brevia document, one vote also to all the interested parties that had
arisen since then— new settlements in the outback, new political parties,
associations, labs, companies, guerrilla bands, the several red splinter
groups. Before they started some generous naive soul even offered the First
Hundred a vote, and everyone there laughed at the idea that the First Hundred
might be able to vote the same way on anything. The generous soul, a young
woman from Dorsa Brevia, then proposed that each of the First Hundred be given
an individual vote, but this was turned down as endangering the tenuous grasp
they had on representative governance. It would have made no difference anyway.
    So they voted to allow the space elevator to remain standing, for
the time being—and in the possession of UNTA, down to and including the Socket,
without contestation. It was like King Canute deciding to declare the tide
legal after all, but no one laughed except Ann. The other Reds were furious.
Ownership of the Socket was still being actively contested, Dao objected
loudly, the neighborhood around it was vulnerable and could be taken, there was
no reason to back off like this, they were only trying to sweep a problem under
the rug because it was hard! But the majority were in agreement. The cable
should remain.
     
    Ann felt the old urge: escape. Tents and trains, people, the
little Manhattan skyline of Sheffield against the south rim, the summit basalt
all torn and flattened and paved over.... There was a piste all the way around
the rim, but the western side of the caldera was very nearly uninhabited. So
Ann got in one of the smallest Red rovers, and drove around the rim counterclockwise,
just inside the piste, until she came to a little meteorological station, where
she parked the rover and went out through its lock, moving stiffly in a walker
that was much like the ones they had gone out in during the first years.
    She was a kilometer or two away from the rim’s edge. She walked
slowly east toward it, stumbling once or twice before she started to pay proper
attention. The old lava on the flat expanse of the broad rim was smooth and
dark in some places, rough and lighter in others. By the time she approached
the edge she was in full areologist mode, doing a boulder ballet she could
sustain all day, attuned to every knob and crack underfoot. And this was a good
thing, because near the rim’s drop-off the land collapsed in a series of narrow
curving ledges, the drops sometimes a step, sometimes taller than she was. And
always the