CHAPTER NINE
THE CHARTER
Geneva*10, late 1979 and the first half of 1980
Daniel Justice did not write the Martian Charter.
He had worked on some ideas for it.
But the argument that would eventually require men like him began before he joined the offices working on the charter.
The interim legal conference met in Geneva under a title so long nobody used it twice.
Representatives from the United States, Soviet Union, China, Japan, France, West Germany, Britain and other participating states occupied a horseshoe table beneath translation booths.
The first question was ownership.
The second was law.
The third was force.
The fourth was economy.
They discovered quickly that the questions were the same question.
If Mars belonged to nobody, who enforced rules?
If Mars belonged to everybody, whose rules?
If every nation controlled its own habitat, the settlement would become a collection of extraterritorial islands separated by pressure doors.
If one nation dominated the system, the others would withdraw.
If corporations received property rights too early, governments feared they would inherit private colonies beyond meaningful supervision.
The residence question had first reached the United Nations negotiating group in the closing weeks of 1979. By the time the legal conference resumed in Geneva, the photographs of the first landing were familiar enough to appear on the covers of briefing folders. The men beneath the translation booths were still arguing about what could be allowed behind a pressure door.
The Soviet delegate placed a revised annex on the table.
“Our contribution cannot be limited to four men in a photograph,” he said. “The next phase requires permanent technical contingents. Those contingents must retain their own administration.”
The chairman asked whether he meant discipline during working hours.
“During service. Including accommodation.”
The annex made the answer plain. Soviet personnel would live in a separate residential dome. Personnel assigned through the participating Warsaw Pact*11 governments would be housed there too. Their employers could send them into the international workshops every morning. At the end of their shifts, their residence obligation would bring them back through the same controlled entrance.
The British representative turned a page.
“You are asking us to build a common settlement with compulsory separate quarters.”
“We are asking you to recognize an existing chain of responsibility.”
“On another planet.”
“Distance does not cancel responsibility.”
The scientific annex was more persuasive than the residence annex. Poland could supply mining specialists and geodesists. The East German*12 proposal concerned precision instruments and control equipment. Czechoslovakia offered materials research and heavy engineering. Hungary's contribution included computing and automation. Romania put forward drilling and geological expertise; Bulgaria proposed electronics and agricultural research.
They were proposals for later rotations, not additional names on the first civilian transport. The planners wanted those skills. They also wanted access to the engineers who possessed them without having to negotiate every conversation through Moscow.
A Romanian representative asked for his country's technical appointments to be recorded separately. The Soviet delegate agreed without looking pleased. The East German representative supported the residence annex at once. Others studied the wording before speaking. Membership of the same alliance had not made their interests identical.
The chairman passed the papers to the secretariat of the United Nations Extra-Planetary Administration. UNEPA would coordinate the proposed placements with the needs reported from Camp One. Its staff could match a laboratory vacancy to an available specialist. The Soviet annex would decide where that specialist slept.
The Yugoslav representative interrupted when a clerk began grouping the applications beneath an Eastern European heading.
“Yugoslavia*13 is not a member of the Warsaw Pact.”
The clerk stopped writing.
“Our scientists apply through their own institutions. They will not be assigned Soviet accommodation.”
The correction went into the record. On Mars, Alina Marković's work would remain international. Her Yugoslav passport was not a permit for Moscow to choose her bedroom.
The Chinese delegate had been listening without touching his microphone. Now he switched it on.
“China does not accept the assumption beneath this annex.”
The Soviet delegate looked across the table.
“Which assumption?”
“That every socialist country belongs inside an administrative system directed by the Soviet Union.”
“No such claim has been made.”
“It has been made in the accommodation plan.”
An interpreter finished the sentence. For a moment the loudest sound in the room was a ventilation fan above the booths.
The Chinese delegate drew the annex toward him.
“You offer technical assistance, then require the people who provide it to live under your supervision. Cooperation becomes dependence. Dependence becomes control.”
“These are agreed arrangements between participating governments.”
“Then let those governments speak.”
The Polish representative reached for his microphone. Before he could switch it on, the Soviet delegate answered.
“We will not allow this conference to become a platform for allegations against the Soviet Union.”
“Then withdraw a proposal that makes those allegations relevant.”
The chairman asked both men to return to Mars.
“That is precisely where I intend to stay,” the Chinese delegate said. “We have seen what Moscow calls fraternal assistance in Southeast Asia. Vietnam entered Kampuchea*14. Soviet support helped sustain the new arrangement. Beijing is told to regard the result as stability.”
The Soviet delegate leaned forward.
“Vietnam ended the rule of Pol Pot*15. Your government supported him.”
The Chinese man did not answer that charge. He returned to the annex.
“A small country must not become an instrument of a larger power. We oppose hegemonism on Earth. We will not help transport it to Mars.”
“And China's troops crossing the Vietnamese border last February*16?” the Soviet delegate asked. “Was that your contribution to peaceful coexistence?”
The room had stopped pretending it was discussing accommodation. Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and China's subsequent war with Vietnam were still recent events. Each delegation could describe its own side as defensive. Neither could make the other forget the soldiers involved.
A French representative removed his headset.
“If we bring every war into this room, there will be no settlement to administer.”
The Chinese delegate looked toward him.
“If we leave the causes outside it, we will reproduce them inside the settlement.”
He turned back to the Soviet seats.
“We do not want your conflict with China, or the struggle over Vietnam and Kampuchea, reproduced behind Martian pressure doors. One power must not use this charter to organize the lives of everyone who needs its equipment.”
The Soviet delegate closed the annex.
“Our personnel will not be sent without acceptable residence arrangements.”
It was the line nobody could talk around. The reactor program depended on Soviet participation. The settlement needed the proposed specialists. China had already committed machinery and technicians to the manufacturing work. A charter that lost either contribution could remain beautifully neutral on paper while Camp One waited for parts.
UNEPA's chairman called a recess. The interpreters switched off their microphones, but the delegates continued speaking to their own advisers. Nobody crossed the aisle.
When they returned, the compromise separated residence administration from territorial sovereignty. A Soviet-administered dome could house the Soviet contingent and personnel assigned under the participating Warsaw Pact agreements. Their daily work would remain part of the international settlement. The dome's internal administration would govern their residence obligations, including required return after shift and political briefings.
The charter would not turn the dome into Soviet soil. Its life-support connections remained subject to the common emergency arrangements. No national administrator could close a pressure door against a rescue team when the settlement was in danger.
China demanded that UNEPA record the residence arrangement as a limited negotiated exception. It was not a model to be imposed on other national contingents. The Yugoslav exclusion was explicit. The scientific appointments would continue to be listed by contributing country.
None of those qualifications opened the door for a Warsaw Pact technician who simply preferred a bed elsewhere. The compulsory residence provision remained.
The Chinese delegation entered its objection to hegemonic administration in the minutes. The Soviet delegation entered its assurance that the arrangement protected the rights of participating states. Both could return home claiming they had defended a principle.
On Mars, someone would have to build the door.
The residence annex had placed a Martian Berlin Wall*17 inside a charter that promised neutrality.
The broader solution remained neutrality.
Not philosophical neutrality.
Administrative neutrality.
The settlement and designated surrounding operational zones would be recognized by participating governments as neutral Martian territory under a common interim jurisdiction. National military personnel remained subject to their services for internal discipline, but crimes affecting the settlement, civil disputes, contracts, resource allocations and future civilian governance would pass into a Martian legal framework.
It was temporary.
Everything on Mars was temporary until it worked.
Then it became permanent.
Shaw received the draft by transmission.
She read it at the table in Home.
Hale entered carrying coffee.
“You look unhappy.”
“I am reading law.”
“That explains it.”
She slid the pages toward him.
“Neutral Martian territory.”
He read the phrase.
“Sounds good.”
“You read three words.”
“Best three.”
“Keep going.”
He did.
After several pages he looked up.
“Who handles a bar fight?”
Shaw blinked.
“What?”
“Two civilians. Different countries. One breaks the other man’s nose in Chinatown. Who arrests him?”
She took the paper back.
“That is exactly the problem.”
“And they’re sending civilians anyway?”
“Yes.”
Hale drank his coffee.
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Because if we wait until lawyers finish Mars, nobody will ever come.”
Shaw almost smiled.
“Do not put that in writing.”
The final passenger requirements for the first civilian mission included technical skills, medicine, transport, communications, agriculture and legal-administrative competence.
Earth wanted settlers who could survive.
Mars wanted people who could build a society.
The distinction mattered.