He nodded. She put the grotesque mask on again and the two of them left the building.
Ylia's father was Kring, a sub-commissioner of commerce in the government of President Murain. (The news services had begun the custom of transliterating Martian names into pronounceable English, the W.G. language, and W.G. itself later adopted it.) Murain was a symbol of World Government's diplomatic triumph, as Earth chose to regard it. For two decades the dirty political game of collaboration with the Rockheads had been played—although it was on such a high level that diplomacy was considered the proper word. It ended, finally, with free elections—the first since the military coup.
The elections were the result of W.G.'s long psychological siege against the Rockheads. The men from Earth played on the vanity of the complacent dictators until they believed they could be the people's choice voluntarily. It was a masterpiece, Scott had to admit—but a masterpiece of striped-pants double-cross. On the one hand the Earthmen pumped up the egos of the Rockheads, and on the other they smuggled the democratic leaders—those who still lived—out of their desert Siberias and let them talk to the people in thousands of small indoor gatherings.
The people anywhere—whether it's in Iopa or Middletown—are smart if they have the facts. These people went to the polls and booted the Rockheads out. It was close, and there was some violence when W.G. watchers arrested repeaters from the Rockheads' machine, but the dictatorship went down in a relatively peaceful manner. The democratic coup evoked a singing story from Scott Warren, who was then newly-assigned to the post of Mars bureau chief. The story won him a journalistic prize.
The election also provoked a counter-revolution by the Rockheads, which had to be put down by World Government's police troops. That was another story, and it won Scott a rest leave on Earth—which he cut short to get back to the news beat which he found, strangely, he had an unaccountable hankering for.
And so democratic government returned to Mars and everything was dandy—for a while.
Scott and Ylia pushed their way through the celebrating crowds. The big, grinning masks of Earth women were moving chaotically, idiotically, all around them. Spotlights which were partly heat-lamps played over the throng in their many colors, coloring and warming the night scene. Musicians in outlandish costumes circulated in groups of three or four, their reedy tunes conflicting and yet mingling in a pleasing semi-harmony.
Most of the crowds were Martians, but here and there a party of Earth people was taking part in the gaiety. In the warm glow of one big spotlight, an Earthman was dancing with a Martian girl, her mask and his fantastic steps parodying a popular Terrestrial ballroom team.
Suddenly there was an intrusion into this scene of celebration. From a side street into the main square which Scott and Ylia were now going through there came a knot of people. They came on slowly, about a dozen of them, their steady progress in contrast to the aimless, carefree motions of the rest. Their faces were serious, and the group held both Martians and Earthmen. They were young-old faces, young in age but old in their apparent contempt for the scene all round them. The group remained close together, not costumed, and when a reveler pulled at the sleeve of one in invitation to join a chain dance, he was pushed away brusquely, almost angrily. When the group reached a well-lighted position near the center of the square, its members formed themselves into a tight circle. They pulled signs from beneath their tunics and thrust them up, then began moving in a shuffling lockstep, chanting discordantly. They were pickets—serious, almost fanatic young men of two planets, bound together in their cause. Their signs read: "Down with the Earth Imperialists," "Democracy, Not Mockery," "What are you Celebrating—Colonization?" and so on.