Redemption Ark

The great wall is a massive construction, large enough to enclose an entire city, and the atmosphere above it. The wall encloses the base of the Conjoiners, a group that uses neural implants to enhance intelligence. When a representative of the opposing Coalition arrives for negotiations, he finds himself trapped when his own brother starts to attack the base. Injured himself, the representative realises that a young girl who seems to be brain damaged is actually controlling repairs to the Great Wall, and ends up having to rethink his own attitude towards the Conjoiners.An early story from the Revelation Space sequence by Alastair Reynolds, this story plays an important part in setting up the complex web of ideas that runs through the sequence.Reynolds has returned to Mars several times in his fiction, most thrillingly, perhaps, in Blue Remembered Earth. But this story presents a particularly startling image of the planet.