Moving Mars

Part Two

You can go home again, but it will cost you.

In the late twenty-second century, travel between Mars and Earth remained a corporate or government luxury, or a jape of the very rich. A passenger of average mass traveling from Earth to Mars, or Mars to Earth, would pay some two million Triple dollars for the privilege.

The rest had to settle for sending their messages by light-speed dataflow, and that put a natural wall between one-on-one conversations.

From Earth to the Moon, reply delay is about two and two-thirds seconds, just enough to catch your breath and not quite enough to lose your chain of thought. To Mars, delay varied with the planetary dance from forty-four minutes to just under seven.

The art of conversation lapsed early between Earth and Mars.

As soon as I heard I was a finalist for the apprenticeship, I began furiously re-studying Earth politics and cultural history. I had already gone far beyond what most Martians are taught in the course of normal education; I had become, somewhat unusually on Mars, a Terraphile. Now I needed to be an expert.

I had some idea of the kinds of questions I would be asked; I knew there would be interviews and tough scrutiny; but I did not know who would be conducting the examinations. When I learned, I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or nervous. Ultimately, I think I was relieved. The first interview would be with Alice, Majumdar’s chief thinker.

The interview was conducted in Ylla, in an office reserved for more formal, inter-family business meetings. I dressed slowly that morning, taking extra care with the fresh clothes as they formed beneath the mat on my bed. I scrutinized myself in a mirror and in vid projection, looking for flaws inside and out.

I tried to calm myself on the hundred-meter walk to the business chambers, deliberately choosing a longer route through family display gardens, offset from the main tunnels, filled with flowers and vegetables and small trees growing beneath sheets of artificial sun.

Thinkers were invariably polite, infinitely patient, with pleasant personalities. Also smarter than humans and faster by a considerable margin. I had never spoken with Alice before, but I knew my uncle had established a specific set of criteria for his apprentice. I had little doubt that she would speck me soundly and fairly. But taking into account my age and lack of experience, that little doubt quickly magnified into a bad case of nerves.

A few minutes early, I presented myself to the provost of selection, an unassuming, monk-faced, middle-aged man from Jiddah named Peck. I had met Peck while going through scholarship prep. He tried to put me at ease.

“ Alice ’s hookup is clean and wide,” he said. “She’s in a good mood today.” That was a small joke. Thinkers did not exhibit moods; they could model them, but they were never dominated by them. Unlike myself. The mood dominating me came close to panic.

I murmured I was ready to begin. Peck smiled, patted my shoulder as if dealing with a child, and opened the door to the office.

I had never been here before. Dark rosewood paneling, thick forest-green metabolic carpet, lights lurking serenely behind brass fixtures.

A young girl with long black hair, wearing a frilly white dress — Alice ’s image — seemed to sit behind the opal-matrix desk, hands folded on the polished black and fire-colored stone. Alice had been named after Lewis Carroll’s inspiration, Alice Liddell, and favored Liddell’s vividly animated portrait as an interface. The image flickered to reveal its unreality, then stabilized. “Good morning,” she said. She used a dulcet young woman’s voice.

“Good morning.” I smiled. My smile, like Alice , flickered to announce its illusory nature.

“We’ve worked together once before, but you probably don’t remember,” Alice said.

“No,” I admitted.

“When you were six years old, I conducted a series of history LitVids from Jiddah. You were a good pupil.”

“Thank you.”

“For some months now, Bithras and Majumdar BM have been preparing to journey to Earth to deal directly with various partners and officials there.”

“Yes.” I listened intently, trying to focus on the words and not on the image.

“Bithras will take two promising young people from the family to Earth with him, as apprentice assistants. The apprentices will have important duties. Please sit.”

I sat.

“Does my appearance make you uncomfortable?”

“I don’t think so.” It was odd, facing a young girl, but I decided — forced myself to decide — that it did not bother me excessively. I would have to learn to work closely with thinkers.

“Your ed program is ideal for what Bithras will require in an apprentice. You’ve strongly favored government and management, and you studied theory of management in dataflow cultures.”

“I’ve tried,” I said.

“You’ve also investigated Earth customs, history, and politics in some detail. How do you feel about Earth?”

“It’s fascinating,” I said.

“Do you find it appealing?”

“I dream about it. I’d love to see it real.”

“And Earth society?”

“Makes Mars look like a backwater,” I said. I did not know — have never known — how to dissemble. I doubted Alice would be impressed by dissembling, anyway.

“I think that’s generally agreed. What are Earth’s strengths, regarded as a unit?”

“I’m not sure Earth can be thought of as a unit.”

“Why?”

“Even with com and link and ex nets, common ed and instant plebiscite… there’s still a lot of diversity. Between the alliances, the unallied states, the minorities of untherapied… a lot of differences.”

“Is Mars more or less diverse?”

“Less diverse and less coherent, I’d say.”

“Why?”

“Earth’s people are over eighty percent therapied or high natural. They’ve had a majority of designer births for sixty Earth years. There’s probably never been a more select, intelligent, physically and mentally healthy population in human history.“

“And Mars?”

I smiled. “We value our kinks.”

“Are we less coherent in our management and decisions?”

“No question,” I said. “Look at our so-called politics — at our attempts to unify.”

“How do you think that will affect Bithras’s negotiations?”

“I can’t begin to guess. I don’t even know what he — what the BM or the Council plans to do.”

“How do you perceive the character of the United States and the alliances?”

I cautiously threaded my way through a brief history, conscious of Alice ’s immense memory, and my necessarily simple appraisal of a complex subject.

By the end of the twentieth century, international corporations had as much influence in Earth’s affairs as governments. Earth was undergoing its first dataflow revolution; information had become as important as raw materials and manufacturing potential. By mid-twenty-one, nanotechnology factories were inexpensive; nano recyclers could provide raw materials from garbage; data and design reigned supreme.

The fiction of separate nations and government control was maintained, but increasingly, political decisions were made on the basis of economic benefit, not national pride. Wars declined, the labor market fluctuated wildly as developing countries joined in — exacerbated by nano and other forms of automation — and through most of the dataflow world a class of therapied, superfit workers arose, highly skilled and self-confident professionals who- demanded an equal say with corporate boards.

In the early teens of twenty-one, new techniques of effective psychological therapy began to transform Earth culture and politics. Therapied individuals, as a new mental rather than economic class, behaved differently. Beyond the expected reduction in extreme and destructive behaviors, the therapied proved more facile and adaptable, effectively more intelligent, and therefore more skeptical. They evaluated political, philosophical, and religious claims according to their own standards of evidence. They were not “true believers.” Nevertheless, they worked with others — even the untherapied — easily and efficiently. The slogan of those who advocated therapy was, “A sane society is a polite society.”

With the economic unification of most nations by 2070, pressure on the untherapied to remove the kinks and dysfunctions of nature and nurture became almost unbearable. Those with inadequate psychological profiles found full employment more and more elusive.

By the end of twenty-one, the underclass of untherapied made up about half the human race, yet created less than a tenth of the world economic product.

Nations, cultures, political groups, had to accommodate the therapied to survive. The changes were drastic, even cruel for some, but far less cruel than previous tides in history. As Alice reminded me, the result was not the death of political or religious organization, as some had anticipated — it was a rebirth of sorts. New, higher standards, philosophies, and religions developed.

As individuals changed, so did group behavior change. At the same time, in a feedback relationship, the character of world commerce changed. At first, nations and major corporations tried to keep their old, separate privileges and independence. But by the last decades of twenty-one, international corporations, owned and directed by therapied labor and closely allied managers, controlled the world economy beneath a thin veneer of national democratic governments. Out of tradition — the accumulated mass of cultural wishful thinking — certain masques were maintained; but clear-seeing individuals and groups had no difficulty recognizing the obvious.

The worker-owned corporations recognized common economic spheres. Trade and taxation were regulated across borders, currencies standardized, credit nets extended worldwide. Economics became politics. The new reality was formalized in the supra-national alliances.

GEWA — the Greater East-West Alliance — encompassed North America , most of Asia and Southeast Asia , India , and Pakistan . The Greater Southern Hemisphere Alliance, or GSHA — pronounced Jee-shah — absorbed Australia , South America , New Zealand , and most of Africa . Eurocon grew out of the European Economic Community , with the addition of the Baltic and Balkan States, Russia, and the Turkic Union.

Non-aligned countries were found mostly in the Middle East and North Africa , in nations that had slipped past both the industrial and dataflow revolutions.

By the beginning of the twenty-second century, many Earth governments forbade the untherapied to work in sensitive jobs, unless they qualified as high naturals — people who did not require therapy to meet new standards. And the definition of a sensitive job became more and more inclusive.

There were only rudimentary Lunar and Martian settlements then, with stringent requirements for settlers; no places for misfits to hide. The romance of settling Mars proved so attractive that organizers could be extremely selective, rejecting even the therapied in favor of high naturals. They made up the bulk of settlers.

All settlements in the young Triple accepted therapy; most rejected mandatory therapy, the new tyranny of Earth.

Alice and I gradually moved from the stuffy air of an exam to a looser conversation. Alice made the change so skillfully I hardly noticed.

I wondered what it had been like to live in a world of kinks and mental dust. I asked Alice how she visualized such a world.

“Very interesting, and far more dangerous,” she answered. “In a way there was greater variety in human nature. Unfortunately, much of the variety was ineffective or destructive.”

“Have you been therapied?” I asked.

She laughed. “Many times. It is a routine function of a thinker to undergo analysis and therapy. Have you?”

“Never,” I said. “I don’t seem to have any destructive kinks. May I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

I was beginning to feel at ease. If Alice found me inadequate, she wasn’t giving any signs. “If Earth is so fit and healthy, why are they putting so much pressure on Mars? Doesn’t therapy improve negotiating skills?”

“It allows better understanding of other individuals and organizations. But goals must still be established and judgments made.”

“Okay.” I felt the heat of argument rise in me. “Say we are both operating from the same set of facts, and I disagree with you.”

“Do we share the same goals?”

“No. Say our goals differ. Why can’t we pool our resources and compromise, or just leave each other alone?”

“That may be possible as long as the goals are not mutually exclusive.”

“Earth is pressuring Mars, and conflict is possible. That implies we’re involved in a game with only one winner, winner take all.”

“That is one possibility, a zero-sum game. Yet it is not the only type of game in which conflict may result.”

I sniffed dubiously. “I don’t understand,” I said, meaning, I don’t agree.

“Hypothetical situation allowed?”

“Go ahead.”

“I will model the Earth-Mars conflict without complex mathematics.”

“I have the feeling you’ve modeled this at a much higher level…”

“Yes,” Alice answered.

I laughed. “Then I’m outclassed.”

“I don’t mean to offend.”

“No,” I said. “I just wonder why I’m bothering to argue.”

“Because you are never satisfied with your present condition.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You must never cease from improving yourself. From my point of view, you are an ideal human partner in a discussion, because you never close me off. Others do.”

“Does Bithras close you off?”

“Never, though I have made him furious at times.”

“Then go on,” I said. If Bithras can take it, so can I.

Alice described in words and graphic projections an Earth rapidly approaching ninety percent agreement in spot plebiscites — the integration of most individual goals. Dataflow would give individuals equal access to key information. Humans would be redefined as units within a greater thinking organism, the individuals being at once integrated — reaching agreement rapidly on solutions to common problems — but autonomous, accepting diversity of opinion and outlook.

I wanted to ask What diversity? Everybody agrees! but Alice clearly had higher, mathematical definitions for which these words were mere approximations. The freedom to disagree would be strongly defended, on the grounds that even an integrated and informed society could make mistakes. However, rational people were more likely to choose direct and uncluttered pathways to solutions. My Martian outlook cried out in protest. “Sounds like beehive political oppression,” I said.

“Perhaps, but remember, we are modeling a dataflow culture. Diversity and autonomy within political unity.”

“Smaller governments respond to individuals more efficiently. If everybody is unified, and you disagree with the status quo, but can’t escape to another system of government — is that really freedom?”

“In the world-wide culture of Earth, dataflow allows even large governments to respond quickly to the wishes of individuals. Communication between the tiers of the organizations is nearly instantaneous, and constant.”

I said that seemed a bit optimistic.

“Still, plebiscites are rapid. Dataflow encourages humans to be informed and to discuss problems. Augmented by their own enhancements, which will soon be as powerful as thinkers, and by connections with even more advanced thinkers, every tier of the human organization acts as a massive processor for evaluating and determining world policy. Dataflow links individuals in parallel, so to speak. Eventually, human groups and thinkers could be so integrated as to be indistinguishable.

“At that point, such a society exceeds my modeling ability,” Alice concluded.

“Group mind,” I said sardonically. “I don’t want to be there when that happens.”

“It would be intriguing,” Alice said. “There would always remain the choice to simulate isolation as an individual.”

“But then you’d be lonely,” I said, with a sudden hitch in my voice. Perversely, I yearned for some sort of connection with agreement and certainty — to truly belong to a larger truth, a greater, unified effort. My Martian upbringing, my youth and personality, kept me isolated and in constant though not extreme emotional pain, with little sense of belonging. I deeply wished to belong to a just and higher cause, to have people — friends — who understood me. To not be lonely. In a few clumsy, halting sentences, I expressed this to Alice as if she were a confidant and not an examiner.

“You understand the urge,” Alice told me. “Possibly, being younger, you understand it better than Bithras.”

I shuddered. “Do you want to belong heart and soul to something greater, something significant?”

“No,” Alice said. “It is merely a curiosity to me.”

I laughed to relieve my embarrassment and tension. “But for people on Earth…”

“The wish to belong to something greater is an historical force, recognized, sometimes fought against, but regarded by many as inevitable.”

“Scary.”

“For Mars in its present condition, very scary,” Alice agreed. “Earth’s alliances disapprove of our ‘kinks,’ as you call them. They desire rational and efficient partners, of equal social stability, in an economically united Solar System.”

“So they put pressure on us, because we’re a rogue planet… You don’t think Martians want to belong to something greater?”

“Many Martians place a high premium on their privacy and individuality,” Alice said.

“Frontier philosophy?” I asked.

“Mars is remarkably urbanized. Individuals are tightly knit into economic groups across the planet. This does not much resemble families or individuals isolated on a frontier.”

“Have you and Bithras discussed Earth’s goals?”

“That is for him to tell you.”

“All right,” I said. “Then I’ll tell you what I think, all right?”

Alice nodded.

“I think Earth has some greater plan, and autonomy of any part of the Triple stands in their way. Eventually, they’ll want to tame and control Mars as they’ve already done with the Moon. And then they’ll work on the Belters, the asteroids and space settlements… bring us all into the fold, until their central authority controls all the resources in the Solar System.”

“That is close to my evaluation,” Alice said. “Have you spent much time in simulated Earth environment?”

“No,” I confessed.

“There is much to be learned by doing so. You may also wish to put on a simulated Terrestrial personality, just to understand.”

“I’m really not into that much… technical intimacy,” I said.

“May I say this is also typical of Martians? You must understand your counterparts intimately to engage in effective negotiations. I guarantee they will have studied Martian attitudes in detail.”

“If they become us, won’t they think like us?”

“This is a curious misconception, that to understand how someone else thinks is to agree with their thinking. Understanding is not becoming, is not agreeing.”

“All right,” I said. “So what happens if the entire Earth links up and we deal with a group mind? Why should that increase their need for resources?”

“Because the goals of a highly integrated mentality will almost certainly be more ambitious than those of a more disparate organization.”

“Nobody’s ever satisfied with what they have?”

“Not in human experience; not at the level of governments, nations, or planets.”

I shook my head sadly. “What about you?” I asked. “You’re more powerful and integrated than I am. Are you more ambitious?”

“By design, I serve human needs, and am content to do so.”

“But legally you’re a citizen, with rights like me. That should include the right to want more.”

“Equal in law is not equal in nature.”

I worked this over in silence for a moment. Alice ’s image smiled. “I’ve enjoyed our conversation very much, Casseia.”

“Thank you,” I said, suddenly remembering why this meeting had been arranged. I sobered. “It’s been great… fun.”

“That is a compliment to me.”

I itched to ask the obvious question.

“I will relay my evaluation to Bithras.”

“Thank you,” I said meekly.

“There will of course be interviews with humans.”

“Of course.”

“Bithras usually does not interview.”

I had heard that before, and found it odd.

“He places high trust in his associates, and in me, actually,” Alice said, still smiling.

And not much trust in his own judgment? “Oh.”

“We will talk again later,” she said. Her image stood and the provost, Peck, opened the door to the office and entered. I said good-bye.

“How did I do?” I asked Peck as he escorted me out.

“I haven’t grit of an idea,” he said.

I waited anxiously for six days. I remember being more than testy — I was intolerable. Mother defended me before my irritated father; my brother, Stan, simply stayed out of my way. More relatives crowded the warrens, my aunt’s family and her four adolescent children. I tried to hide as much as possible, unable to decide whether I was some sort of social leper or a chrysalis about to become a butterfly.

I spoke once with Diane, now an apprentice instructor at UM Durrey, but didn’t tell her about the interview. I half-believed in jinx. The support of friends and family, I thought, might attract the attention of vicious deities, looking for all-too-fortunate young women who needed to be cut down to size.

On the sixth day, my slate chimed its melody for an official message. I retreated from the hall outside our family quarters to my room, sealed the door, lay on my side on the cot, and pulled the slate from my pocket, propping it up before me. I took a deep breath and scrolled the words.

A shiver took me. I lay back on the bed, wondering whether I would laugh or throw up.

I was spinning right to the center of power, if only to observe.

The other lucky apprentice was an earnest fellow from Majumdar’s station in Vastitas Borealis, Allen Pak-Lee. Allen was two years older than me. I had met him briefly at UMS. He seemed quiet and sincere.

We were also taking a registered copy of Alice . Majumdar BM was paying, at discount, about seven and a half million to ferry the four of us — Alice Two counting as one passenger, though she weighed less than twenty kilos.

As secretary and apprentice negotiator I would spend a lot of time with my third uncle. Bithras, a perpetual bachelor almost three times my age, was legendary for his tendency to seek the female. Our family relationship presented no absolute obstacle to him; I was not blood, and while liaisons within BMs were mildly discouraged, they were common enough. I knew this going into the job — I thought I could handle the situation.

I had been told his advances were reasonably diplomatic and that he took rebuffs without loss of face or resentment; I was also told that in public he would act fatherly and protective, and that in many respects he was honorable, intelligent, and kind.

“But if you go to bed with him,” my mother told me as she helped me pack, “you’re sunk.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he’s a conservative old sodder,” she said. “He professes to love women dearly, and he does in his own way. But — and this I learned from one of his partners- — he hates sex.”

“I’m confused,” I said, packing a cylinder of raw cloth into the single steel case allowed for the journey.

“He’s like a dog that adores the hunt but doesn’t enjoy killing the fox.”

I laughed, but Mother raised her eyebrows and pinched her lips. “Believe me. He lives for his work, and for an unmarried man of his stature, sex can be messy, irrational, and potentially dangerous. He has to live with this other self, a self he has never been able to control. But this is a prime opportunity for you.”

I made a face and folded my medicine kit into the case.

“Poke it,” mother said. I poked the kit and it squirmed.

“It’s fresh,” I said. “I didn’t know he was such a monster. Why does anybody put up with him?”

“A sacred monster, dear Casseia. If he didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him. Think of him as a family rite of passage. Resist his advances with humor and cleverness, and he’ll do anything in the world for you. And once he has your measure, he’ll stop pushing.” She surveyed the perfectly packed case with a critical eye, then nodded approval. “I envy you,” she said wistfully. “I’d love to go to Earth.”

“Even traveling with Bithras?”

“There isn’t a chance in hell you or I would go to bed with him.” She winked. “We have such good taste. But what an opportunity… Resist the beast, and come out the other side still a virgin, covered with gold and jewels.”

“Well…” I said.

Two days before we were to depart, Bithras summoned me to his offices in Carter City in Aonia Terra. I boarded the train in Jiddah and crossed to Aonia, removing my bag at the Carter depot. Carter was where most of Majumdar BM’s staff lived, the locus of long-range planning; it was Bithras’s home, as well.

I had never met Bithras and I was more than a little nervous.

Helen Dougal met me at the depot and escorted me as we took a cab through the transit tunnels. Helen was an attractive woman of twenty Martian years who appeared not much older than me.

Carter had a population of ten thousand BM members and several hundred applicants, most of them Terries immigrating because of Eloi laws on Earth. It was a big town, yet run efficiently, and the tunnels and warrens were large and well-designed. It didn’t seem crowded and haphazard, as did Shinktown, nor cleanly officious, like Durrey; but it certainly wasn’t cozy and familiar, like Ylla. The presence of so many Terries — a few of them exotic transforms — at times gave it a very unMartian atmosphere.

Helen fed my slate background on the subjects to be discussed and filled me in on the itinerary for the two-day visit. “Study it later,” she said. “Right now, Bithras wants to meet his new assistant.”

“Of course.” I detected no envy in Helen Dougal’s face. I wondered why Bithras wasn’t taking her instead of me — wondered if she thought I was moving in on her meal pan. Since I was a little younger in appearance… certainly in age…

With what I had heard, anything might be possible. I must have gone a little distant, for Helen smiled patiently and said, “You’re an apprentice. I have nothing to fear from you, nor you from me.”

How about from Bithras?

“And believe me, a lot of what you’ve heard about our syndic is pure dust.”

“Oh.”

“Advocates and family representatives meet this afternoon at fifteen. First, however, you’re going to join Bithras and me for lunch. Allen Pak-Lee is still in Borealis. He’ll be here the day after tomorrow.”

The lunch was held in a dining hall outside Bithras’s main office. I had expected moderate luxury, but the setting was Spartan: box nano food, hardly inspiring, and packaged tea served from ancient battered carafes in worn cups, on tables that must have had pioneer metal in them.

Bithras entered, clutching his slate and cursing in what I first took to be Hindi; later I learned it was Punjabi. He sat peremptorily at the table — it isn’t easy to sit down hard on Mars, but he did his best. The slate skittered a few centimeters across the table and he apologized in perfect, rapid English.

He was dark, almost purple, with intense eyes and handsome features puffing in his middle years. His head was topped with a short stiff brush of black hair lacking any gray. Thick arms and legs, well-muscled for a Martian, stuck out assertively from a short body. He wore a white cotton shirt and tennis shorts. Low-court tennis was Bithras’s favorite sport.

“It is pressing. It is pressing very hard,” he said, and shook his head in frustration. Then he looked up, his eyes glittering like a little boy’s, and beamed a broad smile. “Getting acquainted! My niece, my new apprentice and assistant?”

I rose from my seat and bowed. He did the same, and reached across the table to shake my hand. His eyes lingered on my chest, which hardly invited scrutiny beneath a loose jumpsuit. “You come highly recommended, Casseia. I have great expectations.”

I blushed.

He nodded briskly. “I had thought we would have time for a lunch alone, but not so — we start work immediately. Where are the advocates?”

The door opened and six of Majumdar BM’s most prominent advocates and managers entered. I had met four of them at social functions over the years. Three male, three female, they, too, wore white shirts and shorts, and towels draped around their necks, as if they had all been playing tennis with Bithras.

I had never seen so many crucial characters assembled in one room: my first taste of being at the center.

Bithras greeted each with a familiar nod. Introductions were ignored. I was here for my own benefit, not theirs. “Now I will begin,” he said. “We are an unhappy planet. We do not satisfy Earth. That is sad enough, but actually our progress is slow from any point of view; nobody can agree how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It has been more than a year since the end of the Statist government, and all we have managed is to patch the Council back together and hold interim meetings. Economics have slid, and we are in worse condition than before Dauble threw her hammers. This has hurt trade. We do not have a single entity governing trade; Earth organizations must work with every BM separately, and contend with zealous district governors. We still run scared of actually cooperating in our own mutual interests, of being caught again in the Statist trap. So…“

He folded his hands. “We are hurting ourselves. There must be an end to recriminations as to who agreed with Dauble and who did not. We must stop punishing Lunar and Earth sympathizers with exclusion from the Council. As you know, I have been meeting with the syndics of the twenty largest Mars-based BMs for the past few months to put together a proposal for Martian unification, working behind and around the Council. I go to Earth with a package to present, and I present it to the Council for debate this evening. You have studied it… It is quick, it is dirty, it has handicaps. I’m giving you a final chance to criticize it, from a selfish perspective. Tell me something I do not know.”

“It curtails the rights of BMs to control their own trade,” said Hetti Bishop, chief advocate. “I know we must organize, but this is too damned Statist.”

“Again I ask, tell me something I don’t know.”

“It gives district governors more power than ever,” said Nils Bodrum from Argyre. “The governors are in love with their duties and their lands. Some of them think Mars is a natural paradise to be preserved. We’ve had six Triple loan deals fall through because we couldn’t guarantee quick answers to resource requests. We strangle in conservationist tape.”

Bithras smiled. “So, get to your point, Nils.”

“If governors keep hewing to a preservation line, and we give them more power, we can say good-bye to billions of Triple dollars. Triple money won’t back our resource digs. We’ll have to curtail settlements and turn down Terrie immigrants. That won’t make anybody happy, least of all Earth. Where will they, send their seekers after eternity? For each Eloi refugee — ”

“Immigrant,” Hattie Bishop said wryly.

“ ‘Immigrant,’ I remind this august assembly, we are paid a million Triple dollars. And that money flows first through Majumdar banks.”

Bithras listened intently.

“I don’t see why Earth wants the governors stronger,” Bodrum concluded, folding his hands.

“They are pushing for a unified government and for BMs to concede power,” said Samuel Washington of Bauxite in the Nereidum Mountains . “That’s been their goal for ten years. And they’re willing to exert considerable pressure.”

“What kind of force can they use?” Hettie Bishop asked.

Beside her, Nance Misra-Majumdar, the eldest of our advocates, chuckled and shook her head. “Two hundred and ninety thousand Terrie immigrants on Mars have arrived in the last ten years. They’ve found their way into high and trusted positions in every BM, some work on the council…”

“What are you getting at, Nance?” Hettie asked.

Nance lifted her shoulders. “They used to be called fifth columnists,” she said.

“All of them?” Bithras asked sardonically.

Nance smiled patiently. “Our thinkers are manufactured on Earth. It may be years before the Tharsis thinkers come on line. All of our nano factories come from Earth, or the designs at least.”

“No one has ever found irregularities in any designs or software,” Hettie said. “Nance, we have no reason to be paranoid.”

Bithras lifted his chin from his hand and spun his chair halfway. “I see no reason to anticipate trouble, but Nance is right. In theory, there are many ways we could be undermined without facing a massive military expedition across space, which at any rate has never been feasible, even for so rich and powerful a world as Earth.”

I could hardly believe such things were being discussed. I was at once dubious, repelled, and fascinated.

Nils Bodrum said, “We have no organized defenses. That much could be said for a central authority — easier to raise an army and defend our planet.”

Bithras was clearly not pleased by the direction the conversation was taking. “Friends, this is not a serious problem, certainly not yet. Earth simply wants us to present a united negotiating front, and they have targeted the largest financial BM — ourselves — to catalyze unification. If you pardon the word.”

“Why should unification be a dirty word?” Hettie said. “My God, as an advocate, I tell you, I’d love to find a way out of the morass of special cases and fooleries we call our Charter.”

“The Moon went through this decades ago,” Nance said. “Since the Schism, when Earth could not afford to administer such far-flung worlds and we took our leave- — ”

“Sounds a note of history vid,” Nils said with a grin.

Nance continued after the slightest pause for a glare. “We have wrangled and tangled our way into perpetual unrest. The Moon found a solution, changed its constitution — ”

“And was reabsorbed by Earth,” Nils said. “Independent in dreams only.”

“We are much farther away,” Hettie said.

Nils would not be swayed. “We do not need order imposed from outside. We need time to find our own path, our own best solution.”

Bithras sighed heavily. “My esteemed advocates tell me what I already know, and they say it over and over.”

“When you take this suggestion for compromise to Earth,” Hettie said, “how do you expect them to believe you can make it stick in the Council? Preliminary agreement is one thing…”

Bithras’s features expressed extreme distaste. “I am going to tell Earth,” he said, “that Majumdar BM will put a hold on further Triple dollar transactions for any BM that does not sign.”

Nils exploded. “That is treasonous! We could be sued by every BM on this planet — and rightly so!”

“What court would hear them?” Bithras asked. “We have no effective court structure on Mars, not since Dauble… Our own advocates pressed suit against Dauble on Earth, not Mars. What court on Earth would hear a suit pertaining only to Mars?” Bithras stared at them sternly. “My friends, how long has it been since a BM sued another BM?”

“Thirty-one years,” Hettie said glumly, chin in hand.

“And why?” Bithras pursued, slapping his palm on the table.

“Honor!” Nils cried.

“Nonsense,” Nance said. “Nobody has wanted to prick the illusion. Every BM is a rogue, an outlaw, and the Council is a polite sham.”

“But it works!” Nils said. “Advocates negotiate, talk to each other, settle things before they ever reach court. We work around the governors. For Majumdar to put the very existence of other BMs in jeopardy is unconscionable!”

“Perhaps,” Bithras said. “But the alternative is worse. Earth will doubtless make many threats if we do not act soon. And one of them will be complete embargo. No more designs, no more technical assistance. Our newer industries would be badly damaged, perhaps crippled.”

“That we could sue them for,” Nils persisted, but without conviction.

“My friends, I have offered you a chance to make comments on this proposed constitution,” Bithras said. “You have until sixteen this evening. We are all aware of the dangers. We are all aware of the mood of Earth toward Mars.”

“I had hoped to persuade you to drop this farce,” Nils said.

“That is not an option. I am only a figurehead on this would-be ship-of-state, my friends,” Bithras said. “I go to Earth hat in hand, to avoid disaster. We are only five millions. Earth is thirty thousand millions. Earth wants access to our resources. She wants to control our resources. The only way for us to maintain our freedom is to put our house in order, concede to Earth enough to put off the next confrontation a few more years, perhaps a decade. We are weak. Buying time is our best hope.”

“They’ll force a Statist government on us,” Nils said, “and then mold that government to their own ends, and when we’re done, they’ll own us body and soul.”

“That is a possibility,” Bithras admitted. “That’s why we must stab ourselves in the back, as Nils would call it, first.”

Bithras went to the Council alone and presented the proposals he had worked out with the five top Martian BMs. The debate was furious; nobody liked the choices, but nobody wanted to be the first to attract Earth’s anger. Somehow, he managed to glue together something acceptable. Bithras sent Allen and me messages after the session concluded.

My dear young assistants,

All Martians are cowards. The proposals are agreed to.

Salve!

The trip began with a farewell dinner in the departure lounge of Atwood Star Harbor near Equator Rise, west of Pavonis Mons. Friends, family and dignitaries came to the port to see us off.

For security reasons, Bithras would board the shuttle at the last minute. There had been threats against his life planted anonymously in family mailboxes for the past few days, ever since the announcement of his departure to Earth. Some suspected disgruntled Statists; others looked to the smaller BMs, who had least to gain and most to lose.

My mother, father and brother sat in a corner of the lounge, near a broad window overlooking the port. Blunt white shuttie noses poked up through half-open silo hatches. Red flopsand formed smooth streaks across the white pavement. Arbeiters engaged in perpetual cleanup roamed the field.

We spoke in bursts, with long moments of silence in between: Martian reserve. My mother and father tried not to show their pride and sadness. Stan simply smiled. Stan always smiled, in good times or bad. Some misjudged him because of that, but due to the shape of his face, it was easier for him to smile than not.

Father took me by both shoulders and said, “You’re going to do great.”

“Of course she will,” my mother said.

“We’ll have to adopt someone while you’re gone,” Father continued. “We can’t stand an empty house.”

“The hell we will,” Mother said. “Stan will leave in a few months — ”

“I will?” Stan said. His protest carried an odd note; surprise beyond the jest.

“And we’ll have the warren to ourselves for the first time in ten years. What should we do?”

“Replace the carpets,” Father said. “They don’t groom themselves as well as they used to.”

I listened with a mix of embarrassment and grief. What I wanted, right now, was to retreat and cry, but that was not possible.

“You will make us proud,” Father said, and then, to make his point, in a louder voice, he said it again.

“I’ll try,” I murmured, searching his face. Father and I had never quite communicated; his love had always been obvious, and he had never slighted me, but he often seemed a cipher. Mother I thought I knew; yet it was Father who never surprised me, and Mother who never failed to.

“We won’t drag this out,” Mother said firmly, taking my father’s elbow for emphasis. Mother and I hugged. I squeezed her hard, feeling like a little girl, wanting her to sit me on her lap and rock me. She pulled back, smiling, tears in her eyes, and actually pushed me away, gently but firmly. Father gripped my hand with both of his and shook it. He had tears in his eyes, as well. They turned abruptly and left.

Stan stayed longer. We stood apart from the crowd, saying little, until he cocked his head to one side, and whispered, “They’re going to miss you.”

“I know,” I said.

“So will I.”

“It’ll flash,” I said.

“I’m going lawbond,” he said, sticking his jaw out pugnaciously.

“What?”

“To Jane Wolper.”

“From Cailetet?”

“Yeah.”

“Stan, Father hates Cailetet. They’re pushy and Lunar. We’ve never been able to share with them.”

“Maybe that’s why I love her.”

I stared at him in astonishment. “You’re amazing,” I said.

“Yeah.” He seemed pleased with himself.

“You’re going over to their family… ?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad I’m leaving now.”

“I’ll keep you informed,” he said. “If Dad says nothing about me, you’ll know it went badly. I’ll give you the details when the dust settles.”

I specked him running down the tunnel between our rooms when he was five and I was two and a half and adored him. He could leap like a kangaroo and wore rubber pads to bounce hands and feet down the tunnels. Athletic, calm, always-knows-where-to-go Stan. Never said boo to our parents, never gave them pause. Now it was his turn to aggravate and provoke.

We hugged. “Don’t let her push you around.”

Stan made a petulant face, wiped it with his hand like a clown, and smiled sunnily. “I’m proud you made it, Casseia,” he said. He hugged me quickly, shook my hand, gave me a small package, and left.

I sat in a corner and opened the wrapper. Inside was a cartridge of all our blood family docs and vids. Stan had paid extra for the weight clearance of one hundred grams; the box was marked with a cargo stamp. I felt even more empty and alone.

I faced the crowded lounge with a kind of luxurious dread. The shuttle would depart in two hours. I’d be aboard the Tuamotu in less than six hours. We would rise from Mars orbit and inject Solar in less than twenty hours…

I pocketed Stan’s gift, squared my shoulders, and entered the crowd with a big, false smile.

Even at its most opulent, space travel was never comfortable. The shuttle to orbit was a rude introduction to the necessary economies of leaving a planet: shot out of your planetary goldfish bowl on a pillar of flaming hydrogen or methane, in a cylindrical cabin less than ten meters wide, everyone arranged in stacked circles with feet pointing outward, seventy passengers and two shuttle crew, losing Mars’s reassuring gentle grip and dropping endlessly…

Temp bichemistry helped. Those passengers who had installed permanent bichemistries to adapt to micro-g conditions spent the first hour in orbit asleep while the boat swung carefully to mate with Tuamotu. I had refused such a radical procedure — how often would I travel between worlds? — and chosen temp. I spent the whole time awake, feeling my body smooth over the deep uncertainty of always falling.

Some things I didn’t expect. The quick adjustments of temp bichemistry caused a kind of euphoria that was pleasant and disturbing at once. For several minutes I was incredibly randy. That passed, however, and all I felt was a steady tingle throughout my body.

Bithras and Pak-Lee had arrived at Atwood after I was seated, and were in the shuttle somewhere below me. Alice Two was in the hold in a special thinker berth.

Being away from net links was like sensory deprivation for a thinker; less than a tenth of Alice Two’s capacity would be engaged while we were in space. The bandwidth of space communication was too narrow to keep her fully linked and employed. She would not sleep, of course, but she would spend much of the journey correlating events in Earth and Martian history drawn from her large data store.

Thinkers had been known to create massive and authoritative LitVid works while in machine dream. Some said the best historians were no longer human, but I disagreed. Alice One and Alice Two seemed quite human to me. Alice even called her copy a “daughter.” I’d never worked closely with thinkers before, and I was charmed.

Sitting on my cramped couch in the dark, a projection of Mars’s orange and red surface scrolling above me, I wondered what Charles was doing now. Unlike Charles, I hadn’t yet found anyone to seriously occupy my free time. The day before launch, I had spoken with Diane, and she had asked if I looked forward to a shipboard romance. “Dust that,” I’d answered. “I’ll be a busy rabbit.”

The trip would take eight Terrestrial months, one way. Each passenger chose from three options: warm sleep with mind embedded in a sophisticated sim environment (sometimes crudely called cybernation), realtime journey, or a pre-scheduled mix of the two. Most Martians chose realtime. Most Terrestrials returning to Earth chose sims and warm sleep.

The Mars scene cut suddenly to a view of the Tuamotu in space. Booms furled, passenger cylinders hugged tightly to the hull, our home for the next eight months looked tiny against the stars. Tugs fastened helium-three fuel and water and methane mass tanks to the bow. The drive funnels flexed experimentally at the stern.

A small voice provided running commentary in one ear. Tuamotu was fifteen Earth years old, built in Earth orbit, nano maintained, veteran of five crossings, refitted before her trip to Mars, well-regarded by travel guides on Earth and Mars. She carried a crew of five: three humans, a dedicated thinker, and a slaved thinker backup.

I had a touch of tunnel fever at the thought of being shut up for so long. I had studied the ship’s layout a few hours before boarding, learning my way around the passenger cylinder, previewing shipboard routine. But I would have to overcome the conviction that there was no way out. Despite spending most of my life in tunnels and enclosed spaces, I always knew there was another tunnel, another warren, and as a last resort, I could suit and pop through a lock and go Up… luxuries not available on the Tuamotu.

I was less than comfortable with the thought of spending so many months in the company of so few. What if Bithras, Allen, and I did not get along at all?

A tiny elevator carried three passengers at a time from the primary lock down the length of the hull and debouched us into a small cabin forward of the drive shields. The steward for our cylinder — short, taut, sandy-haired and brown-skinned, male, about forty Earth years old, with sharp black eyes — greeted us formally and politely, and introduced himself as Acre — just Acre. He had the remarkable ability to change his feet into hands, and to bend his long tan legs backwards and forwards, which he demonstrated quickly and with minimal explanation. He escorted us in small groups to the secondary lock. Here, we climbed through an access pipe barely a meter wide into our cylinder, where we drifted in the observation lounge, surrounded by direct-view windows now shuttered and shielded.

The lounge had room for all of us. We crowded together waiting for instructions. Bithras headed the Jast contingent of passengers and conferred briefly with the steward before scowling and searching the crowd. His eyes met mine, the scowl reversed into a radiant smile, and he crooked his arm and waved twinkle-fingers.

The steward called my name from the access pipe. I floated forward, fumbling at the grips and bumping a few of my fellows apologetically before anchoring myself. “You’re in charge of our friend here, I understand,” he said, pushing forward Alice ’s box. Alice ’s arbeiter carriage weighed as much as she did and had not been brought along; we would rent her a carriage on Earth.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Please hold on to it while we check cabin assignments and get things organized.”

“Her, not it,” I said.

“Sorry.” He smiled. “We’ll stow her in her niche after orientation.”

I took Alice in hand and moved to the side of the lounge. She was endo not exo for the moment — her sensors and voice were inactive.

“Now that we’re all here,” the steward said, “welcome aboard Tuamotu. We’ll give out some important information and then off to your cabins to snug in.”

Bithras and Allen Pak-Lee floated beside me. “This is my second passage to Earth,” Bithras said in an undertone, “and your first, of course.”

“My first,” I affirmed.

Most Earth English accents were familiar to me from LitVid; the steward, Acre , might have been Australian, His features seemed indigene. Acre delivered the “doctro” crisply and clearly in less than five minutes. He gave us a few safety tips for the next leg of the trip — boost and solar orbit injection — and had us circle around the lounge to become familiar with weightless aids and procedures.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll discuss immunization levels and all the options available throughout the voyage. Some options are closed — all warm-sleep berths are taken for the duration. All temp berths and switchouts are closed, as well. We hope that causes no inconvenience.”

“Woe,” murmured Bithras.

Acre helped me stow Alice in her niche just forward of the lounge and showed me how to run the legally required connection checks. Bithras attended for a few minutes, applied a strip of ID tape to a seam to protect against unauthorized removal, and left the rest to Acre and me.

“Family thinker?” Acre inquired.

“A copy,” I said.

“I’m fond of thinkers,” he said. “Once they’re stowed, they’re no trouble at all. I wish they’d travel with us more often — Sakya gets lonely sometimes, the Captain says.”

Sakya was the ship’s dedicated thinker. I reached into the niche, palmed my ID on Alice ’s port, and asked, “Everything tight?”

“I’m comfortable, thank you,” Alice replied, coming exo quickly. “Bithras has sealed me in?”

“Yes.”

“I’m talking with Sakya now. This should be pleasant. Will you join me for a chat once we’re underway?”

“I’d love to,” I said. I closed the hatch on Alice ’s niche. Acre locked her in and gave me the key. “We raise them right on Mars,” I said.

“Might teach Sakya some manners,” he said.

Everything aboard Tuamotu was impressively high nano; she had been refitted with the lastest Earth designs before her last crossing. There were no telltale yeast or iodine smells during nano activity. The ship’s visible surfaces could assume an apparently infinite variety of textures and colors and were capable of displaying or projecting images with molecular resolutions.

I felt wrapped in luxury, examining my private cabin — two meters by three by two, private vapor bag and vacuum toilet. If I wanted, I could turn almost the entire cabin into a LitVid screen and be surrounded by any scenery I chose.

I pulled out the desk, ported my slate, and selected my scheme. The desk became the color and texture of stone and wood with gold inlay. I ran my fingers along the tactile surface; the sensations of polished oak, cold marble, and smooth metal were flawless.

It was traditional for passengers to gather for the boost. I wanted to have a seat, so I quickly unpacked my few things and went aft.

Allen Pak-Lee followed and hooked himself to a seat beside me. “Nervous?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“God, I am. Don’t misunderstand. I have a lot of respect for Bithras. But he’s very demanding. I took a brief from his assistant on the last trip. He said he spent several months in hell. There was a crisis and Bithras insisted on hogging the waves.”

Bithras returned to the lounge and sat beside us with a curt nod. “Damn them,” he said.

“Who?” I inquired.

“This ship reeks of progress,” he said.

The lounge filled as the gong sounded. The steward, with the aid of a few slim, graceful octoped arbeiters, served drinks and explained the procedure to the uninitiated. The boost would be comfortable, no more than one-third g. For a few hours, we would have a “lazy sense of up and down.” Actually, one-third g was just below Mars standard — not quite full weight for a red rabbit.

The passengers in the lounge who had claimed seats settled in, and those who drifted found grips and hooks and arranged for a place to drop their feet. I looked them over curiously — our companions for eight months. One family would be in our cylinder, a handsome man and woman with a daughter whom I judged to be about seventeen Earth years old — native Terries, by their appearance. The daughter, too beautiful to be completely natural, played with a faux mouse.

Acre looked at the ceremonial wristwatch on his left arm, raised his hand, and we counted backwards…

At five, the ship vibrated like a struck bell. At four, the ceiling projected a full-width view aft. Everybody looked up, jaws gaping. The drive funnels flexed. A methane-oxygen kicker motor would take us out of Martian orbit.

Streamers of violet played against the blackness and the limb of sunrise Mars: warmup and test. Then the kicker fired full thrust, throwing a long orange cone that quickly turned translucent blue.

Gently, we acquired weight. The weight grew until it almost felt as if we were on Mars again. The unseated passengers laughed and stood on the floor, and a few even did a little jig, slapping hands.

We severed our bonds with the world of my birth.

In my cabin, just before sleep, I studied diagrams from the ship’s operations manual, things I normally wouldn’t give dust for… Charles would, however, and I felt again a perverse obligation to think about him. I attributed these thoughts to simple fright and homesickness.

Twelve of the passengers in our cylinder would enter warm sleep after the ship had extended its booms for cruising. That would leave twenty-three of us awake for the entire voyage — mostly Martians, ten female, thirteen male, six of them “eligible,” though I suspected, given contemporary Earth attitudes, even the unaccompanied and married males were fair game for travel liaisons. I was not interested, however.

I did not feel any immediate affection for Allen, and Bithras was still a threatening cipher — not so much a human being as an unfulfilled potential for difficulty. I had never been exceptionally gregarious, a reaction to my diverse and noisy blood relations, and even now was avoiding a First Night Out mixer in the lounge and dining cabin…

Chemical reaction motors and ion thrusters, used to direct the craft out of planetary orbit and accelerate to just below cruising speed, leave negligible amounts of debris. However, the plume of fusion-heated reaction mass from the main drive contains radioactive engine-surface ablation. The fusion drive must be fired with due regard for vehicles which may cross these orbits for as long as four days afterward, as required by Triple Navigational Standards…

The ship would switch on its main drives ten million kilometers out from Mars.

Solar wind must be able to clear all fusion debris from a region ten million kilometers above and below the plane within two weeks (the manual informed me). This gives sufficient leeway for most times of the solar cycle, but at periods of minimum solar activity, debris may not be cleared for as long as forty-five days, and special permission from Triple Navigation Control must be obtained if fusion-driven ships are to be launched in this period.

Colorful 3-D diagrams unfolded in the air to supplement the text.

Earth-Mars passages launched when the planets are not in their most favorable configurations require more fusion boosts and higher speeds. Elongated, faster ship courses — as opposed to “fatter” and slower courses — take liners within the orbit of Venus, and occasionally within the orbit of Mercury, with greater exposure to solar radiation. Medical nano has advanced to where radiation damage in passengers can be repaired quickly and efficiently, eliminating ill effects from even the closest “sun-graving” passages…

What if I wasn’t cut out for space flight? I had passed the examinations well enough — but there were instances of space-intolerant passengers having to be sedated if warm sleep cubicles weren’t available.

Eight months of horror seemed to stretch before me. The cabin closed in, the air tasted stale. I imagined Bithras pawing me. I would clobber him. He wouldn’t be nearly as understanding as he should be, and I would be fired before reaching Earth. I would have no option but to return at the next available opportunity, another ten or even twelve months in space… I would go insane and start screaming. The ship’s medical arbeiter would pump me full of drugs and I would enter that horrid state described in pop LitVids, caught between worlds, mind drifting free of my body with nowhere to go, away from the humanized spheres, forced to consort with elder monstrosities.

I started to giggle. The elder monstrosities would find me inexpressibly boring and reject me. Absolutely nobody and nothing to talk to, career ruined, I would end up counseling asteroid miners in how to program their prosthetutes for more lifelike behavior.

The giggles turned to laughter. I rolled over in my bunk and stifled the noise. The laughter was not pleasant — it sounded forced and harsh- — but it was effective. I rolled on my back, fears quelled.

Acre and his fellow steward in charge of the opposite cylinder held a party for “Half-Degree Day.” Acre was a master at giving parties; he never seemed bored, was never at a loss for polite conversation. His only time alone came when the rest of the passengers were asleep. His sole defense seemed to be a certain blankness that did not encourage long conversations. I was pretty sure he wasn’t an Earth-made android, but the suspicion never passed completely.

Passengers gathered in the lounge from both cylinders, still mingling freely, and watched Mars become the size of Earth’s Moon, as seen from Earth. The Terrestrials found the sight entrancing, and there were songs of “Harvest Mars,” though the planet was only one-third full. The Captain broke out a glass bottle of French champagne, one of five, he said.

The young girl introduced herself to me at breakfast on our third day out; her name was Orianna, and her parents were citizens of the United States and Eurocon. Her face fascinated me. Eyes uplifted at the corners, slightly asymmetric, pupils the fiery red-brown color of Arcadia opal, her skin flawless multiracial brown, she seemed perfectly at home in micro-g and floated like a cat. She recommended the best sims available on the ship, and seemed amused when I told her I didn’t go in for sims.

“Martians are lovely curious,” she said. “You’ll be a big draw on Earth. Terries love Martians.”

I was prepared not to like Orianna very much.

For the first week, Bithras spent much of his time exercising, working in his cabin, or waiting impatiently to communicate with Mars. He rarely even spoke to us. Allen and I spent some time in each other’s company at first, exercising or studying together, but we did not hit it off personally, and soon drifted to other passengers for conversation.

I knew the public interior of our cylinder fore and aft, and despite my reticence, had spoken to almost everybody. Not much chance of shipboard romance; the men were all older than me, and none seemed interesting; all, like Bithras, were movers and shakers and much absorbed in things they really couldn’t talk about.

I fantasized being aboard an immigrant ship, with men of diverse background, whose hidden pasts they would suddenly feel the urge to confess… Dangerous people, intriguing, passionate.

Mounted on the hull was a four-meter telescope, kept collapsed and hidden away for the first few million kilometers, then unfurled for the use of passengers. I had signed up for a few hours. The free hours aboard Tuamotu were wonderful for catching up on subjects I had neglected, including astronomy.

The viewing station for our cylinder was in the observation lounge, a small cubicle with room for four. I had hoped to study alone, try my hand at celestial navigation and object finding, tracking a few of the near stars known to have planetary systems. I wanted to rediscover at least the most prominent and closest examples. But in the lounge I met Orianna.

Point-blank, she asked if she could join me. “I haven’t signed up, and it’s full for a week!” she said plaintively. “I love astronomy. I’d like to transform and go to the stars…” She separated her hands a few centimeters, suggesting the proposed size of humans designed for interstellar migration. “Would you mind?”

I did, but Martian manners kept me polite. I said of course she could join me, and with a smile, she did.

She was adept with the controls and ruined my game by tracking all my chosen objects expertly within a few minutes. I expressed my admiration.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “My parents gave me seven different enhancements. If I want, I can play nearly all musical instruments with just a few days’ practice — not like the best, of course, but enough to pass as a talented amateur. In a few years, if they make it legal, I could install a mini-thinker.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, having so many talents?” I asked.

Orianna curled into a ball and with one finger flicked herself upside down in relation to me. Her toe caught on a bar and she stopped spinning. “I’m used to it. Even on Earth, some people think my parents and I have gone too far. I’ve asked for things, they’ve given them to me… I have to really ramp down to make friends.”

“Are you ramped down now?” I asked.

“You bet. I don’t show off, ever. Good way to spoil any chance of connecting. You’re a natural, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Some of my friends would envy you. The chance to just be what you are. But it would slow me down too much. Do you ever feel slow?”

I laughed. She was too ethereal to resent… much, or for long. “All the time,” I said.

“Then why not enhance? I mean, it’s possible, even on Mars. And you’re from Majumdar, the finance BM… aren’t you?”

The inflection of her last question told me she knew very well I was from Majumdar.

“Yes. How long have you been on Mars?”

“Just time for turnaround. Two months. We came on a fast passage, inside Venus. My parents had never been to Mars. My folks thought we should see what Mars and the Moon are really like. Camay. In the flesh.”

“Did you like it?”

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “Such defiance. Beautiful, really. Like the whole planet is just hitting puberty.”

I had never heard it described that way. Martians tended to think of themselves as old and established, perhaps confusing our own brief past with the planet’s obvious age. “Where did you visit?”

“We were invited to stay in half a dozen towns and cities. We even went to a handful of extreme stations, new ones settled by immigrant Terries. My father and mother know quite a few Eloi. We didn’t get to — ” Again the introspective pause. “Ylla or Jiddah. That’s your home, isn’t it?”

“What are you referencing?” I asked. My home address wasn’t on the open manifest.

“I sucked in the public directories,” Orianna said. “I haven’t dumped them yet.”

“Why would you want to do that? Any slate can carry them.”

“I don’t use a slate,” she said. “I take it direct. No separation. I love being dipped.”

“Dipped?”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Immersed. It’s like I just go away, and there’s only information and processing, pure and swift.”

“Oh.”

“Learning distilled into an essence. Education means being.”

“Oh.” I closed my mouth.

“I think I came on sharp for most Martians. I negged quite a few my own age, even. Martians are fashion locked, aren’t they?”

“Some think so.”

“You?”

“I’m pretty conservative, I suppose.”

She unfolded long arms and legs and gripped the holds in the booth with uncanny grace. “I don’t like anybody on the ship, for partners, I mean,” she said. “Do you?”

“No,” I said.

“Have you had many partners?”

“You mean, lovers?”

She smiled wisely, anciently. “That’s a good word, but not always accurate, is it?”

“A few,” I said, hoping she would take a hint and not pry.

“My parents were part of the early partner program. I’ve been partnering since I was ten. Do you think that’s too early?”

I hid my shock; I had heard about early partnering, but it had certainly never taken on Mars. “We think childhood is for children,” I said.

“Believe me,” Orianna said, “I haven’t been a child since I was five. Does that bother you?”

“You first had sex when you were ten?” This conversation was making me very uncomfortable.

“No! I haven’t had physical sex at all.”

“Sim?” I asked meekly.

“Sometimes. Partnering… oh, I see your confusion. I mean sharing closeness mentally, finding so many kinds of pleasure together. I like whole-life sims. I’ve experienced two… Very expanding. So I know all about sex, of course. Even sex that’s not physically possible. Sex between four-dimensional human forms.” Suddenly she looked distressed, and she had such a charismatic presence that I immediately wanted to apologize, do anything to make her happy. My God, I thought. A planet full of people like her.

“I’ve never shared my mind,” I said.

“I’d love to share with you.” The offer was so disarming I was at a loss for an answer. “You have a truly natural presence,” she continued. “I think you could share beautifully. I’ve been watching you since the trip began…” She primmed her lips and pulled back to the wall. “If I’m not too forward.”

“No,” I said.

She put out her hand and touched my cheek, stroking it once with the back of her fingers. “Share with me?”

I blushed furiously. “I don’t… do sims,” I said.

“Just talk, then. For the trip. And when we get to Earth, I can show you a few things you’d probably miss… as a Martian tourist. Meet my friends. We’d all enjoy you.”

“All right,” I said, hoping, if the offer were more than I could possibly handle, that I could plead an intercultural misunderstanding and escape.

“Earth is really something,” Orianna said with a wonderfully languid blink. “I see it a lot more clearly now that I’ve been to Mars.”

We were close to the ten-million-kilometer mark, three weeks into the voyage. The fusion drives would soon turn on. The hull would not be livable once they became active.

After a truly big party, featuring one of the best banquets the voyage would offer, the Captain said his farewells and crossed to the opposite cylinder. Passengers berthed there would no longer be able to visit us; we all shook hands and they followed the Captain.

Most of our cylinder’s occupants went to bed in their cabins to take the change easily. A few hardy souls, myself included, stayed in the lounge. There was an obligatory countdown. I hated feeling like a tourist, but I joined in. Acre was too pleasant and cajoling to be denied his duties.

We had returned to weightlessness, but were about to acquire full Earth weight for several hours. The countdown arrived at zero, all eight of us shouted at once, and the ship resounded with a hollow thud. We set our feet onto the lounge floor. Orianna, near her parents, seemed close to ecstasy. I was reminded of Bernini’s St. Theresa speared by a shaft of inspiration.

The fusion flare followed us like a gorgeous bridal train. Brilliant blue at the center, tipped with orange from ablated and ionized engine and funnel lining, it pushed us relentlessly to almost three times our accustomed Mars weight, a full g.

A few, including Orianna’s mother and father, climbed forward and valiantly exercised in the gym, joking and casting aspersions on the rest of us slackers.

I chose a middle course, climbing around the cylinder for an hour. My temp bichemistry treatments made the full g force bearable but not pleasant. I had read in travel prep that a week on Earth might pass before someone with temp became comfortable with the oppressive weight. Orianna accompanied me; she had temp also, and was working to regain Earth strength.

As we climbed through the cylinder, from the observation deck to the forward boom control walkway, Orianna told me about Earth fashions in clothes. “I’ve been out of it for two years, of course,” she said. “But I like to think I’m still tuned. And I keep up with the vids.”

“So what are they wearing?” I asked.

“Formal and frilly. Greens and lace. Masks are out this year, except for floaters — projected masks with personal icons. Everybody’s off pattern projection, though. I liked pattern projection. You could wear almost nothing and still be discreet.”

“I can redo my wardrobe. I’ve brought enough raw cloth.”

Orianna made a face. “This year, expect fixed outfits, not nano-shaped. Old fabric is best. Tattered is wonderful. We’ll dig through the recycle shops. The shredbare look is very pos. Nano fake is beyond deviance.”

“Do I have to be in fashion?”

“Abso not! It’s drive to ignore. I switch from loner to slave every few months when I’m at home.”

“Terries will expect a red rabbit to be trop retro, no?”

Orianna smiled in friendly pity. “With that speech, you’re fulfilled already. Just listen to me, and you’ll slim the current.”

Breathless, standing on the walkway around the bow’s boom connector, we rested for a moment. “So correct me,” I said, gasping.

“You still say ‘trop shink’ on Mars. That’s abso neg, mid twenty-one. Sounds like Chaucer to Terries. If you don’t drive multilingual, and you’d better not try unless you wear an enhancement, best to speak straight early twenty-two. Everyone understands early twenty-two, unless you’re glued to French or German or Dutch. They ridge on anything about twenty years old for drive standard. Chinese love about eight kinds of Europidgin, but hit them in patrie, and they revert to twenty Putonghua. Russian — ”

“I’ll stick with English.”

“Still safe,” she said.

The fusion drives shut off and weightlessness returned. The time had come to separate the cylinders from the hull and begin rotation. Tuamotu carefully spun her long booms between central hull and outboard cylinders. The booms were attached to a rotor on the hull, and the cylinders used their own small methane kickers to set up spin.

When extended, the cylinders pointed perpendicular to the hull; just as when we had experienced ship acceleration, to move from deck to deck one had to climb up or down, or take the elevator. The centrifugal force created about one-fourth g in the observation lounge, the outboard or “lowest” deck.

When the cylinders had cycled to maximum, the warm sleepers retired to their cubicles. A little party was given for them. In our cylinder, we were now down to twenty-three active passengers, and seven months to go…

Orianna had filled her cabin with projected picts, each leading to a sim or LitVid put on hold; twenty or more, hanging in the air like tiny sculptures, some pulsing, some singing faintly. She laughed. “Silly, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ll turn them off…” She waved and the icons disappeared, allowing me to see the rest of her cabin. It was tidy but busy. A sweater lay in one corner, or at least half of a sweater. Little sticks poked out of it, and a ball of what must have been thread — yarn, I remembered — lay beside it. “Knitting?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing, and knitting or crocheting brings me back. It’s the drive in Paris, where my father lives.”

“Your mother lives with your father?”

“Sometimes. They bond loose. I live with my father most of the year. Sometimes I go to Ethiopia to live with my mother. She’s a merchandising agent for Iskander Resources. They temp for skilled labor all over the world.”

“And your father?”

“He’s a mining engineer for European Waters Conservancy. He spends lots of time in submarines. I have a great North Sea sim — like to see it?”

“Not right now. Wouldn’t you like to live in just one place?” I asked.

Orianna held out her hands. “Why?”

“To get a feeling of belonging. Knowing where you are.”

She smiled brightly. “I know the entire Earth. Not just in sims, either. I’ve been all over, with and without my parents. I can fly a shocker from Djibouti to Seattle in four hours. Weather change is great. Really sweeps the sugars.”

“Have you ever gone slow?” I asked.

“You mean…” She smoothed her hand along the bed cover. “Ground speed? Double-digit kiphs?”

“Single digit.”

“Sure. I bicycled across France two years ago with some Kenyans. Campfires, night skies, grape harvest in Alsace . You’re really jammed on this, aren’t you?”

“If you mean, stuck in a rut, obviously.”

“Earth isn’t decadent, Casseia. It really isn’t. I’m not a poor little rich girl, any more than you are.”

“Maybe I’m just jealous.”

“I’d call it shy,” Orianna said. “But if you want to ask me about Earth, realtime, oral history and culture, that’s fine with me. We have months left, and I don’t want to spend it all jogging and simming.”

My Earth studies and conversations with Alice had left me with the impression of a flawless society, cool and efficient. But what I heard in conversation with Orianna seemed to contradict this. There were great disagreements between Terries; nations within GEWA and its southern equivalent, GSHA, arguing endlessly, clashing morality systems as populations from one country traded places with others — a popular activity in the late 70s. Some populations — Islam Fatimites, Green Idaho Christians, Mormons, Wahabi Saudis, and others — maintained stances that would be conservative even on Mars, clinging stubbornly to their cultural identities in the face of Earth-wide criticism.

Paleo-Christians in Green Idaho, practically a nation unto itself within the United States , had declared the rights of women to be less than those of men. Women fought to have their legal powers and rights reduced, despite opposition from all other states. On the reverse, in Fatimite Morocco and Egypt , men sought to glorify the image of women, whom they regarded as Chalices of Mohammed. In Greater Albion, formerly the United Kingdom , adult transforms who had regressed in apparent age to children were forbidden to hold political office, creating a furor I could hardly begin to untangle. And in Florida , defying regulations, some humans transformed themselves into shapes similar to marine mammals… And to pay for it, organized Sex in the Sea exhibits for tourists.

In language, the greatest craze of the 60s and 70s was invented language. Mixing old tongues, inventing new, mixing music and words electronically so that one could not tell where tones left off and phonemes began, creating visual languages that wrapped speakers in projected, complex symbols, all seemed designed to separate and not bring together. Yet enhancements were available that were tuned to the New Lingua Nets or NLN. Installing the NLN enhancements through nano surgery, one could understand virtually any language, natural or invented, and even think in their vernacular.

The visual languages seemed especially drive in the 70s. In GEWA alone, seventy visual languages had been created. The most popular was used by more than four and a half billion people.

Despite what Alice had said, it didn’t sound at all integrated to me. To a Martian, even to a native like Orianna, Earth seemed diverse, bewildering, crazy.

But to Alice , Earth was entering the early stages of a new kind of history.

Six weeks into the flight, Bithras called me to his cabin. I girded myself for battle, palmed his door port. The door opened and I stepped in at the wave of his hand. He wore long pants and a cotton long-sleeved shirt, again in white, and he muttered to himself for a few minutes, searching for memory cubes, as if I had not yet arrived. “Yes,” he said finally, locating the lost cubes and turning to face me. “I hope your trip has not been too dull.”

I shook my head. “I’ve spent most of the time researching and exercising,” I said.

“And talking to Alice .”

“Yes.”

“ Alice is brilliant, but she has some of the naivete found in all thinkers,” Bithras said. “They cannot judge humans harshly enough. I have no such illusions. My dear, the time has come for us to do some work, and it involves your past… If you are willing.”

I stared at him and gave the faintest nod.

“What do you know about Martian scientists and Bell Continuum theory?”

“I don’t think I know anything about Bell Continuum theory,” I said.

“Majumdar BM has been speaking with Cailetet Mars about sponsoring new research. There is a request for so-called Quantum Logic thinkers in the works. Earth is exporting such thinkers, but they are incredibly expensive… thirty-nine million dollars, shipped endo and inactive. We must build our own personalities for them, and that might take months, even years.”

I still volunteered nothing, though I could feel where he was heading.

“You once knew Charles Franklin, promising student from Klein BM, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You were lovers?”

I swallowed and thrust my chin forward resentfully. “Briefly,” I said.

“He is lawbonded now to a woman from Cailetet.”

“Oh.”

Bithras studied my reaction. “Mr. Franklin heads a group of young theoretical physicists at Tharsis Research. They are known as the Olympians.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“Not surprising, since their work is kept close to their bosoms. They report only to the fund administrators, and have published nothing so far. I want you to read this transmission from Earth. It is a few days old, and. it was sent to Cailetet from Stanford University .”

“How did you get it?” I asked.

Bithras smiled, shook his head, and handed his slate to me. The message was pure text and read:

We’ve established strong link between time tweak and space tweak. Can derive most special relat. Third tweak discovered may be co-active but purpose unknown. Tweak time, tweak space, third tweak changes automatically. Probably derive general relat. as regards curvature, but third tweak pushes a fourth tweak, weakly and sporadically… Derive conservation of destiny? Fifty tweaks discovered so far. More to come. Can you share your discoveries? Mutual bennies if yes.

“A scientific courtship,” Bithras said. “Highly unusual, Earth courting Mars. Did Charles Franklin discuss such matters?”

“No,” I said. “Well… I think he mentioned ‘Bell Continuum’ and something else. ‘Forbidden channels.’ Whatever they are. He didn’t say much. I wasn’t interested.”

“Pity,” Bithras said. “You had a prime opportunity, both to romance Mr. Franklin and to learn about something very important. He might have told you?”

“If he had, I wouldn’t have understood.”

“The ‘Bell Continuum,’ my researchers tell me, is the key to a radical theory of physics that shows some promise. The Olympians refer to universes as ‘destinies.’ ”

I shook my head, still all uncomprehending.

“We are interested, Casseia, because Cailetet Mars is being pressured to pull out from Tharsis funding. All funding.”

“Cailetet is Lunar,” I said.

“Yes, but dominated by GEWA, and Cailetet Mars would enjoy being more independent. And at the same time, Mr. Franklin has been approached by Stanford University to join their program and come to Earth to continue his research. They promise access to Earth’s most advanced thinkers, including Quantum Logic thinkers, and a very high personal salary as well. They will also help relieve Klein’s money problems. Which, of course, are due largely to interference from GEWA.”

“Did he accept?”

“He reported the offer to Klein, as is only polite within a family, and Klein informed the Council, which is also only polite. The Council passed the information to major funders of Tharsis research. No, he did not accept. Mr. Franklin is an admirable young man. Alice concludes that Earth is heavily engaged in research in the Bell Continuum and something called ‘descriptor theory.’ There have been other hints to that effect.”

“It’s important?”

Bithras smiled. “Earth won’t get Charles Franklin, or any of the Olympians. Majumdar will work with Cailetet to finance three QL thinkers for their purposes.”

“Oh,” I said. Charles had done the right thing, and he had gotten what he wanted by doing it. Admirable.

“I am sorry your affair went no further,” Bithras said. “Why did you break with him?”

The transition into personal prying was accomplished with so little change in tone that I was almost lulled into answering. Instead, I smiled and turned one hand over, raised my eyebrows, and shrugged: C’est la vie.

“Have you had much experience with brilliant men?”

“No,” I said.

“Much experience with men at all?”

I continued smiling and said nothing. Bithras watched me intently. “I have observed that young women acquire most of their knowledge of men in the first five years of their romantic lives. It is a crucial time. I would guess that you are within that five-year period. To neglect your education would be a pity. A spaceship offers such limited opportunities.”

Here it comes.

“If you remember anything more about Charles Franklin, please tell me. I am reluctantly forced to catch up on physics, and I am not so skilled at mathematics. I hope Alice is a good tutor.”

He thanked me and opened the cabin door. In the hallway, I passed Acre on some errand, murmured hello, and went to the exercise room. There, accompanied by four sweating men, all about Bithras’s age, I worked off my anger and dismay for about an hour.

Charles had married. He had the anchor he wanted. He was well on his way to being significant, to Earth and Mars, if not to me.

Good for him.

Orianna burned like an intense flame blown by swift winds. I never could predict the direction of those winds, what her moods would be precisely — but I never knew her to be morose, or discouraged, or even overtly judgmental. When she fixed her attention on me — listening to me or just watching me — I knew what a cat must feel like, scrutinized by a human…

Orianna was not effectively more wise than I was, but her instant access to information, her blithe show of skills not learned or earned but bought, were marvelous. What she lacked was what I lacked — what all Earth’s glory could not give her or me: experience that sat deep in the mind and in the flesh. Her enhancements and all her advanced education could not give her passionate conviction or a true sense of direction.

Talking, letting the telescope fill our rooms with projected images, sharing LitVids, playing games in the lounge, watching the stars pass from the observation deck… Orianna showed me a mirror to my own immediate past — she taught me a lot about Earth, and perhaps even more about myself. Through her, I saw more clearly how far I had to go.

But I was still reluctant to join Orianna in a sim. She persisted in her efforts to convince.

“I smuggled some real outer sims past Earth douane. I haven’t told my parents,” she said to me on Jill’s Day, December 30. We were in the fifth month of our crossing and had just emerged from the most strenuous regimen of exercises yet — three hours in the gym with magnet suits, running in place in fields that simulated full Earth gravity. “You won’t tell?”

“Is that illegal?”

“Well, no, but the companies that make them are pretty protective. They could cut me off a customer list if they found out. They don’t want dupes made off Earth.”

“Sims aren’t very popular off Earth,” I said.

Orianna shrugged that off. “There’s one I think you’ll really like. It’s gradual. Puts you in touch with all the cultural differences between you and me. Set on present-day Earth, but it’s not an education piece. It’s fantasy and very romantic. Since you have access to Alice … Alice would be perfect for screening our sims. Much better than slates… We could go full-depth with Alice .”

“I’m not sure she’d agree.”

“I’ve never met a thinker that wasn’t eager to build up more data on human nature. Besides, it’s Jill’s Day. Time to celebrate. Alice needs relaxation, too.”

Jill, the first thinker on Earth to achieve self-awareness — on December 30, 2047 — had served as template for the next generation of thinkers, and so in a very real way was a direct ancestor of Alice . Jill was still active on Earth. Alice wanted to visit her broadband on the nets when we got to Earth, if we had time.

We took turns in my room with the vapor bag and toweled off, then sat. “You are fixed on sims,” I said. “What about real life?”

Orianna said, “When I’m eighteen, real life will mean something. When I’m on my own, and my parents aren’t responsible for my actions, I can take risks and be dangerous. Until then, I’m a cutlet.”

“Cutlet?”

“Slice off the parental loin. Sims are exercise for the rest of my life.”

“Even fantasy?”

She smiled. “Well… not to stretch a point. They’re fun.”

I gently declined the offer, but hinted there might be time later.

The routine of each day in space became hypnotic. After four or five hours’ sleep — growing less each month — I would wake up to pleasant music and a projection of the ship’s schedule for the day, along with a menu from which I could choose my meals and activities. I exercised, ate breakfast, spent a few hours with Orianna or Alice, or sat in the main lounge, chatting with other passengers. Space chat was congenial, seldom stimulating or controversial. I exercised again before lunch, more strenuously, and joined Orianna and her parents to eat.

Allen and I met in with Bithras every two or three days. His Earth agenda was shaping up and afternoons were devoted to deep training. He gave us LitVids and documents to study, some proprietary to Majumdar. I was careful not to reveal anything I learned from these sessions in conversation with Orianna, or anybody else.

At dinner, I joined Allen and Bithras and several of Bithras’s acquaintances from Earth. After dinner, I spent time in my cabin with LitVids — hungry for an outside existence — and then exercised lightly and had a snack with Orianna or Allen.

It didn’t take me long to pick holes in some of the statements made by Terries aboard ship, general assumptions about Earth’s future, GEWA’s or GSHA’s plans; I was close to a center now, and what I was learning both disturbed and impressed me.

One conversation sticks in my memory, because it was so atypically blunt. It took place at the end of the fifth month. After an hour poring over Earth economics and its relation to the Triple — a relation of very large dog wagging a tiny but growing tail — I dropped down to dinner and made my choice. Minutes later, trays of excellent nano food — better than anything available on Mars — were ferried to me by the dining room arbeiter from the brightly lit mouth of the dispenser.

Orianna was in her cabin, lost in a sim; we had a date for later in the day. I sat beside Allen at the outside of a curved table. Across from us sat Orianna’s parents. Renna Iskandera, her mother, a tall, stately Ethiopian woman, wore a loose jumpsuit in brilliant orange, dark purple, and brown block prints. Her husband, Paul Frontiere, French by birth and a citizen of Eurocon, dressed in trim gray and forest-green spacewear, loose at waist and joints, slimming around wrist and ankles.

Allen was already talking with Renna and Paul. I sat beside him, listening attentively.

“I think we’re a little daunted by Earth and Earth customs,” Allen said. “So many people, so many cultures and fashions… The more I learn, the more confused I get.”

“Martians don’t study the homeworld in school?” asked Renna. ‘To prepare, I mean, for such trips as this.“

“We study,” Allen said, “but Martians are pretty self-absorbed.“ He glanced at me, the skin around his eyes crinkling in private humor.

“On Earth, we’re proud of our acceptance of change, and of our unity within diversity,” Paul said. “Martians seem proud of common heritage.”

I decided to ramp up the provocation, in the interests of understanding Terries, of course, and not because of the slight sting of the veiled accusation of being provincial. “We’ve all been taught that Earth is politically more calm and more stable than it’s ever been — ”

‘That is true,“ Paul said, nodding.

“But there’s so much argument! So much disagreement!”

Renna laughed, a high, wonderful melody of mirth. She was twice my age, yet appeared much younger, might have been sister to her own daughter. “We revel in it,” she said. “We take pride in shouting at each other.”

“You mean, it’s all a front?” Allen asked.

“No, we genuinely disagree about many things,” Renna said. “But we do not kill each other when we disagree. You are of course taught about the twentieth century?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“The bloodiest in human history. A nightmare — one long war from almost the beginning to almost the end, a hothouse for every imaginable tyranny. Even at its conclusion, passions between peoples of different heritage, different religions, even simple geographic differences, led to murder and reprisal on a hideous scale. But it was the century in which more people than ever broke from traditional power structures, expressed skepticism, found disillusionment and despair — and grew.”

I frowned. “Grew out of despair?”

“Grew out of necessity. No turning back to old ways — no one could afford to. There was no longer profit in destruction. The great god Mammon became a god of peace. And that is when we looked outward — and made the beginnings of the settled Moon and Mars and the outer small worlds. People were able to see more clearly.”

“But you’re still arguing,” I said, and bit my lip gently, hoping to give the impression that my naivete now lay naked on the table before them. Bithras was teaching me the art of lapwing — faking confusion or weakness for advantage.

“I hope not to speak for everyone on Earth, of course!” Paul said, laughing. “To argue is not to hate, not for healthy minds. Our opponents are prized. They goad us to greater accomplishment. If we are defeated, we know that there are other wars to be fought, wars without blood, wars of intellect and of many possible outcomes, not just defeat or victory.”

“And if you argue with Mars?” I asked, putting on a mask of provincial anxiety. “If we disagree?”

“We are fearful opponents,” Paul admitted. Renna seemed less happy with that answer.

“What is good for all, is good for Earth,” she said. She touched my hand. “On Earth, there is so much variety, so much possibility for growth and change, so much, as you say, argument, but if you track the politics, the responses of peoples wherever they may live, there are astonishing agreements on major goals.”

Goals. The word rang like a bell. Alice , you are so right.

“Such as?”

“Well,” Renna said, “we cannot afford to lack discipline. The universe is not so friendly. Weaknesses and weak links — ”

“Such as Mars,” I said.

Renna’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps I was laying it on too thick. “We must act together for the common goals of all the human worlds.”

“What are we to unite against?”

“Not against, but for. For the next push — to migrate to the stars. There are worlds enough for all who disagree to try great experiments, make great strides… But we will not achieve them if we are separate now, and lacking discipline.”

“What if our goals don’t coincide?” I asked.

“All things change,” Renna said.

“Whose goals should change?”

“That’s what the debate is about.”

“And if debate isn’t enough? Debate can grind on forever,” I said.

‘True, there isn’t always the luxury of unlimited time.“

“If debate has to be cut off,” I said, “who does the cutting?”

Renna looked at me shrewdly. She was enjoying herself, but I had to ask, despite all their obvious sophistication, despite their time on Mars, did they truly understand how a Martian felt? “When a society can’t do the good drive, as Orianna might say — when it refuses its responsibilities — then other means must be tried.”

“Force?” I asked.

“Renna dearly loves to debate,” Paul said confidentially to Allen. “This ship has been too quiet, too polite.”

“Where Mars and Earth cannot agree, there is always room for growth and discussion,” Renna concluded, staring at me in an entirely friendly and expectant way. “Force is an old habit I do not approve of.” She obviously wanted me to counter, but something had cut deep and I did not wish to oblige her. I gave a cool smile, inclined, and tapped my plate to signal the arbeiter I was finished.

“We sometimes forget the sensibilities of others, in our enthusiasm” Paul said warily.

“It’s nothing,” Allen said. “We’ll pick up the discussion later.”

Bithras had a lot on his mind. His behavior was exemplary. He seemed more a concerned blood uncle than a boss; sometimes a teacher, sometimes a fellow student working with Allen and me to riddle the puzzles of Earth. Never the sacred monster my mother had described.

His transition, in the middle of our sixth month, came abruptly enough to catch me completely off guard. Bithras called me to his cabin for consultation. He had taken to wearing tennis togs again, and as I came in, he sat in his white cotton shirt and shorts, legs pushed against the opposite wall, slate on his lap.

“A lot of tension on Mars this week,” he said.

“I haven’t seen anything in the LitVids,” I said casually.

“Of course not,” he said with a twitch of his mouth. “I wouldn’t expect it to get that far. Not yet. Two BMs have decided to make their own proposals for unification.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Mukhtiar and Pong.”

“Not top five…” I asked.

“And not likely to attract any attention… on Earth. But I made a lot of concessions and forced a lot of favors to carry our proposal to Earth. Some people who are nervous are much more nervous now. If I am undercut, if someone decides to mount a strong campaign across Mars before we arrive… concessions to Earth, sellouts…” He lifted his hand and squinted at me. “Not fun. I worry about Cailetet. They seem to believe they have extra cards in the game.”

I shook my head in sympathy. He leaned back a few more centimeters and looked me over. “What have you learned from the Terries?”

“A lot, I think.”

“Do you know that Terries have been increasing the average age for first sexual experience for the last thirty years, and that more and more of them never have physical sex at all, up to ten percent now?” He squinted skeptically, as if mounting a speculation.

“I’ve heard that,” I said.

“Some people marry and have sex only in sims.”

I had been so calmed by his straight and narrow behavior for so many weeks that even now I suspected nothing.

“There have been marriages between thinkers and humans. Marriages physically celibate but mentally promiscuous. People who have children without having sex and without giving birth. Marvels and frights to a red rabbit.”

“We have ex utero babies on Mars,” I said quietly, wondering what he was up to.

“I prefer the old fashioned way,” he said, fixing his round black eyes on me. “There has been damned little of that this voyage. All work. You have not been very romantically adventurous either, I notice.”

Signals of caution finally broke through. I didn’t answer, just shrugged, hoping my uncomfortable silence would be enough to deflect the course of the conversation.

“We will be working together for many months.”

“Right,” I said.

“Is it possible to be completely comfortable together, working for so long?”

“We’ll have to be,” I said. “We’ll be red rabbits among the Terries.”

He nodded emphatically. “Among very strange and high-powered people. It will cause tensions far worse than what I feel now, going over these recent messages. We’re in a war of nerves, Casseia, and we might enjoy — mutually — a place of retreat… from the war.”

“I’d like to read the messages,” I said.

“I would not feel comfortable taking solace from a Terrie woman.”

“I’m not sure this is — ”

He pushed on with a little shake of his head. “What if I work very hard on a temporary relationship, and it can be only that, and discover the woman from Earth wants me to have sex only in sim?” He stared at me incredulously.

Angering by slow degrees, I kept in mind my mother’s admonition: be clever, be witty. I felt neither clever nor witty but I did not yet ramp to complete indignation.

“I like to resolve difficulties, make arrangements, early,” Bithras said. He reached up and stroked my arm, quickly moving to grip my shoulder. He let go of my shoulder and ran a finger lightly on the fabric centimeters above my breast. “You are much more… to me.”

“Within the family?”

“That is not an obstacle.”

“Oh,” I said. “An arrangement of convenience.”

“Much more than that. We may both focus on our work, having this resolved.”

“A stronger relationship.”

“Certainly,” Bithras said.

Delicately, I pushed back his arm.

“What you’re saying is, we should start our family now, right?” I said cheerily.

He drew his head back, dismayed, “Family?”

“We need to make more red rabbits, right? To offset Earth’s billions? A policy matter.”

“Casseia!” he said. “You deliberately misunderstand — ”

I cut him off. “I hadn’t planned on procreating so early, but if it serves policy, I suppose I must.” Wit or not, I forged ahead. I put on a stoic face, lifted my hand to my brow, and said, “Bithras, all that can be asked of any red doe, in this life, is to lie back and think of Mars.”

He made a face of sharp distaste. “That is not funny, Casseia. I am discussing serious difficulties in our personal lives.”

“I’ll have to update my medical nano,” I said. “Bichemistry is different in pregnant women.”

“You miss my meaning completely.” He stretched out his arms and again one hand touched my shoulder, moved to my upper breast, while his eyes held me, tried to convince me that this was not what it might seem. “Am I not attractive?”

I lifted my eyebrows and removed his hand again. “You should talk to my father. He understands family politics and proprieties better than I. Certainly in the matter of liaisons and alliances… and children.”

Bithras slumped his shoulders and waved his hand weakly. “I’ll transfer the docs to your slate. Alice already has them,” he said. Then he shook his head with genuine sadness and perhaps regret.

Guiltless, I did not feel at all sorry.

I left his cabin with a dizzy sense of lightness. Forewarned was forearmed. The lightness reverted to anger once I was in my own cabin, and I sat on the bed, pounding the fabric so hard I lifted my bottom several centimeters. Then I lay back and counted backwards, eyes closed, teeth clenched. He has no more control than a baby wetting his diapers, said a calm, cold voice in my head, the part of me that still thought clearly when I was upset. “He has no more technique than a tunnel bore,” I said out loud. “He’s inept.”

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

Voice or vid communication between Tuamotu and Mars was too expensive to be indulged in lightly. I sent text letters instead, addressing Father, Mother, and Stan; but the last letter I sent, in the beginning of our eighth month, before he slowed for Earth orbit, I addressed to Mother alone.

Dear Mom,

I’ve survived this far, and even enjoyed most of the trip, but I’m afraid the letters I’ve been sending haven’t been completely open. Being away from Mars, talking with Terries, watching Bithras at work, I’ve become more and more aware every day how outmatched we Martians are. We are blinded by our traditions and conservatism. We are crippled by our innocence. Poor Bithras! He bumped me, as you said he would — only once so far, thank God — and he was so crude, so direct and unsophisticated — a man of his travels and broadness of mind, of his importance! A friend once told me that Martians don’t educate their children for the most important things in life — courtship, relations, love — relying instead on individual discovery, which is hit-or-miss, mostly miss. On Earth, Bithras would get social-grade therapy, spend some time practicing in sims, clear his mind and improve his skills. Why does our sense of individuality prevent us from correcting our weaknesses?

I’m spending a lot of time with a young woman from Earth. She is sharp and witty, she is a thousand years old compared to me — yet she’s only seventeen Earth years. On her eighteenth birthday, I’m going to go into a sim with her and explore wise old Earth through its fantasies. I don’t know exactly what the sim is, but I suspect it won’t make me comfortable. She will hardly think anything of it, but I’m terrified. Terrie-fied. You might be shocked, reading this, but don’t think I’ll be any less shocked, doing it. I have always thought myself to be stable and imperturbable, but my innocence — my ignorance — is simply appalling.

And Alice suggested I try something of this sort. I hope that legitimizes it a little in your eyes, but if not… As Orianna — that’s the young woman’s name — as she says, I’m no longer a cutlet.

I sent the letter coded to our family, and before Mother had a chance to reply, on Orianna’s eighteenth birthday, two days away from our transfer from the Tuamotu to a shuttle to Earth, we dived into her smuggled fantasy sim.

“Better late than never,” Orianna said as we hooked our slates on a private channel, through the ship’s broadband, and linked with each other and with Alice, who was willing and even eager to conduct.

“You haven’t told me what it’s about.”

“It’s a forty-character novel.”

“Text?”

“Calling it a novel means it has a plot, instead of just being landscape. You’re part of a flow. You can move from character to character, but the character imposes — you won’t think like yourself in character, but you can watch. In other words, part of you will know you’re still you. It’s not a whole-life sim.”

“Oh.”

“You can pull out any time, and you can jump, as well.”

“You’ve done this sim before?”

“No,” Orianna said. “That’s why I didn’t want to just slate it. Alice can give us more protection and more detail. If there’s a bug, she can pull us out gently rather than just disconnecting. A discon always gives me a headache.”

It sounded worse and worse. I seriously considered backing out, but looking at Orianna, at her bright-eyed eagerness as she arranged the nano plugs, I felt a sudden burst of youthful shame. If she could do it, I could, too.

“You’ll go into the staging faster than I will,” she said, handing me my cable. “My cable will have to deactivate enhancements and set up cooperation links.”

I placed the cable next to my temple. The tip spread to several centimeters and seized my skin, snaking to get in a position to support its own weight. My arm-hair prickled. This was very like the arrangements for major therapy. Something tickled in my temple: the nano links going in through skin, skull, and cortex, pushing their leads into the proper main lines within the brain.

“What happens if this is jerked loose?” I asked, pushing the cable with a fingertip.

“Nothing. The links dissolve. Abso safe. Old old tech.”

“And if there’s a bug Alice can’t handle?”

“She can reprogram anything in the sim. You just spend a few seconds with Alice while she figures it out.”

That’s right, actually, Alice said within my head.

“Wow,” I said, startled. I had done LitVids with Alice , of course, but a direct link was a very different sensation.

Try talking to me without moving your lips or making a sound.

“Is this — ” Is this right?

Very good. Relax.

Do you approve of this sort of thing?

My entire existence is rather like a sim, Casseia.

I told my mother we’d do this. I don’t know what she’ll think.

I still saw through my eyes. Orianna had put on her cables and closed her eyes. A muscle in her cheek twitched.

“Ready,” she said out loud.

Sim will begin in three seconds.

I closed my eyes. For the first time in my life, I had the sensation of closing my ears, my fingers, my body, as well.

A creator credit icon — three parallel red knife slashes rising from a black ground, representing no artist or corporation I was familiar with — then total darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I had a new set of memories. In medias res, along with the memories came a new set of concerns, worries, things I knew I had to do.

It was so smooth I hardly felt the shift.

I became Budhara, daughter of the Wahabi Arabian Alliance family Sa’ud, heir to old Earth resource fortunes. I knew somewhere that Budhara had never lived — this was fiction — but it didn’t matter. Her world was real — more real than my own, with the intensity possible in exaggerated art. My part in her life began fifty years in the past, and moved with un-diminished vividness through seven episodes, ending on her deathbed ten years in the future.

There was intrigue, double-dealing, betrayal, sex — though very discreet and not very informative — and there was a great deal of detail about the life of latter-day Wahabis in a world full of doubters. Budhara was not a doubter, but neither did she conform. Her life was not easy. It did not feel easy, and the intensity of her misery at times was mitigated only by my awareness that it would have an end.

Her death was startling in its violence — she was strangled by her lover in a fit of inferiority — but it was no more revelatory than the sex. My body knew it was not dead, just as it knew it was not really having sex.

After, my mind floated in endspace, gray and potent, and I felt Orianna there. She said, “Anybody you saw, you can become. Up to four per session, with a thinker driving.”

“How long have we been in sim?” I asked.

“An hour.”

It had seemed much longer. I could not really guess how long. But I thought we had not met in the sim, and all I could think to say, in the grayness, was, “I thought we were sharing.”

“We did. I was your last husband.”

“Oh.” The flush began. She had switched sexes — she had known me. I found that intensely unsettling. It called so many of my basics into question.

“We can switch to another location, as well… connect with Budhara through western channels. She can become a minor character.”

“I’d like to be her parrot,” I joked.

“That’s outer,” Orianna said, meaning beyond the sim.

“Then I’d like to go Up,” I said, not using the correct term, but it seemed right.

“Surface coming,” Orianna said, guiding me out of the gray. We opened our eyes to the cabin. Being tens of millions of kilometers between worlds seemed boring compared to Budhara’s life.

I whistled softly and rubbed my hands together to assure me this was reality. “I’m not sure I ever want to do that again,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s something sacred the first time, isn’t it? You want to go back so bad. Real seems fake. It gets easier to pull out later, more perspective, otherwise these would have been negged by law years ago. I don’t do lawneg sims.”

“Lawn-egg?” I asked.

“Outlaw. Illegal.”

“Oh.” I still wasn’t thinking clearly. “I didn’t learn much about Earth.”

“The Sa’ud dynasty is pretty withdrawn, isn’t it? Down fortune fanatics, nobody needs their last drops of oil, really top for sim fiction. Budhara’s my favorite, though. I’ve been through two dozen episodes with her. She’s strong, but she knows how to bend. I really enjoy the part where she petitions the Majlis to let her absorb her brothers’ fortunes… after their death in Basra .”

“Admirable,” I said.

“You don’t look happy?”

“I’m just stunned, Orianna.”

“Wrong choice?”

“No,” I said, though it had been an obtuse choice, to say the least. Orianna, despite her sophistication, was still very young, and I had to be reminded of this now and again. “But I was hoping to learn more about mainstream Earth, not the fringes.”

“Maybe next time,” she said. “I have some straightforward stories, even travelogs, but you can get those on Mars…”

“Maybe,” I said. But I had no intention of trying another.

On Earth, billions of people devoured sims every day, and yet I could not rise clear-headed from a cheap romance.

Allen and I stood in Bithras’s cabin. “I hate this time,” Bithras told us, staring at himself in mirror projection. “In a few days it won’t be exercise. It will be a damned ball and chain. And I don’t mean just the weight, though that will be bad enough. They expect so much out of us. They watch us. I am always afraid some new technology will let them peek into my head while I sleep. I will not feel comfortable until we are on our way home again.”

“You don’t like Earth,” Allen said.

Bithras glared at him. “I loathe it,” he said. “Terries are so cheerful and polite, and so filled with machinery. Machinery for the heart, for the lungs, nano for this, refit for that — ”

“Doesn’t sound so different from Mars,” I said.

Bithras ignored me. His basic conservatism was surfacing, and he had to let it out; better this way, I thought, than that he should bump me again. “They never let a thing alone. Not life, not health, not a thought. They worry it, view it from so many perspectives… I swear, not one of the people we talk to is an individual. Each is a crowd, with the judgment of the crowd, ruled by a benevolent dictator called the self, unsure it is really in charge, so cautious, so very bright.”

“We have people like that on Mars,” Allen said.

“I don’t have to negotiate with them,” Bithras said. “You’ve chosen your immunizations?”

Allen made a face and I laughed.

“You rejected them all?”

“Well,” Allen said, “I was considering letting in the virus that gives me language and persuasion…”

Bithras stared at us, aghast. “Persuasion?”

“The gift of gab,” Allen said.

“You are fooling with me,” Bithras said, pushing back the mirror. “I will look awful. But that matters little, considering they will look so good, even at my best I would look awful. They expect it of Martians. Do you know what they call us, when they are not so polite?”

“What?” I asked. I had heard several names from Orianna: claytoes, tunnel mice, Tharks.

“Colonists,” Bithras said, accent on the middle syllable.

Allen didn’t smile. It was one word never heard on Mars even in its correct pronunciation. Settlers, settlements; never colonies, colonists.“

“A colony, they say,” Bithras continued, “is where you keep your colons.”

I shook my head.

“Believe it,” Bithras said. “You have listened to Alice , you have listened to the people on this ship. Now listen to the voice of true experience. Earth is very together, Earth is very sane, but that does not mean Earth is nice, or that they like us, or even respect us.”

I thought he might be exaggerating. I still had that much idealism and naivete. Orianna, after all, was a friend; and she was not much like her parents.

She gave me some hope.

The cylinders were pulled in and stowed along the hull. The spinning universe became stable. Much of our acquired velocity spilled quickly at two million kilometers from Earth; we lay abed in that time under the persistent press of two g’s deceleration.

This far from Earth, home planet and moon were clearly visible in one sweep of the eye, and as the days passed, they became lovely indeed.

The Moon hung clean silver beside the Earth’s lapis and quartz. There is no more beautiful a world in the Solar System than Earth. I might have been looking down on the planet billions of years ago. Even the faint sparks of tethered platforms around the equator, sucking electric power from the Mother’s magnetic field, could not remove my sense of awe; here was where it all began.

For a moment — not very long, but long enough — I shared the Terracentric view. Mars was tiny and insignificant in history. We shipped little to Earth, contributed little, purchased little; we were more a political than a geographic power, and damned small at that: a persistent itch to the mighty Mother, who had long since drawn a prodigal daughter Moon back to her bosom.

Orianna and I spent as much time staring at the Earth and Moon as we could spare from going through customs interviews. I finished filling out my immunization requests, to block the friendly educations of tailored microbes that floated in Earth’s air.

I was excited. Allen was excited. Bithras was dour and said little.

Five days later, we passed through the main low-orbit space station, Peace III, and made our way on a liner through thick air and a beautiful sunset, downward to the Earth.

Even now, at a distance of sixty years and ten thousand light-years, my heart beats faster and my eyes flow with tears at the memory of my first day on Earth.

I remember in a series of vivid still frames the confusion of the customs area on Peace III, passengers from two crossings floating in queues outlined by tiny red lights, Orianna and I bidding our quick farewells, exchanging personal reference numbers, mine newly assigned for Earth and hers upgraded to an adult status, unrestricted; promising to call as soon as we were settled, however long that might take; transferring Alice Two by hand from the niche on Tuamotu; promising the customs officers she contained no ware in violation of the World Net Act of 2079, politely refusing under diplomatic privilege the thinker control authority’s offer to sweep her for such instances we might not be aware of; obtaining our diplomatic clearances under United States sponsorship; crossing the Earthgate corridor filled with artwork created by the homeworld’s children; entering the hatch of the transfer shuttle; taking our seats with sixty other passengers; staring for ten minutes at the close-up direct view of Earth; pushing free of the platform, descending, feeling the window beside my seat become hot to the touch — the thick ocean of air buffeting us with enough violence to make me grab my seat arms, red rabbit coming home, heart pounding, armpits damp with expectation and a peculiar anxiety: will I be worthy? Can Earth love me, someone not born in Her house?

The sunset glorious red and orange, an arc like a necklace wrapped around the beautiful blue and white shoulders of Earth, seen through flashes of fierce red ionization as we bounced and slowed and made our descent into a broad artificial lake near Arlington in the old state of Virginia. Steam billowed thick and white as we rolled gently on our backs, just as the first astronauts had rolled waiting for their rescue. Arbeiter tugs as big as the Tuamotu floated on the rippling blue water… Water! So much water! The tugs grabbed our transfer shuttle in gentle pincers and pushed us toward shore terminals. Other shuttles came in beside us, some from the Moon, some from other orbital platforms, casting great clouds of spray and steam with their torch-gentled impacts in the huge basin.

Allen held my hand and I clutched his, made dear siblings by wonder and no small fear. Across the aisle from us, seated beside a padded and restrained Alice , Bithras stared grimly ahead, lost in thought.

Now our work really began.

We were not just Martians, not mere red rabbits on an improbable playtrip. We were symbols of Mars. We would be famous for a time, wrapped in the enthusiasm of Earth’s citizens for Martian visitors. We would be hardy settlers returning to civilization, bringing a message for the United States Congress; we would smile and keep our mouths closed in the face of ten thousand LitVid questions. We would make gracious responses to ridiculous inquiries: What is it like to come home? Ridiculous but not so very ridiculous; Mars was truly my home, and I missed him already in this wonderful strangeness, but…

I knew Earth, too.

Leaving the shuttle, we installed Alice on her rented carriage, and she tracked beside us.

Almost all of us chose to walk between the oaks and maples, across meadows of hardy bluegrass, all first-time Martians breathing fresh open air. We wandered through Ingram Park , named after the first human to set foot on Mars, Dorothy Ingram. Dorothy, I know how you felt. I tasted the air, moist from a recent shower, and saw clouds rolling from the south rich with generous rain, and above them the blue, of kitten’s eyes, and no limits, no walls, no domes or glass.

I know you. My blood knows you.

Allen and I did a little waltz on the grass around Alice ’s carriage. Bithras smiled tolerantly, remembering his own first time. Our antics confirmed Earth’s status as queen. We were drunk with her. “I’m not dreaming?” Allen asked, and I laughed and hugged him and we danced some more on the grass.

Bichemistry served us well. We stood upright under more than two and a half times our accustomed weight, we moved quickly on feet that did not strain or ache — not for a while, at any rate — and our heads remained clear.

“Look at the sky !” I crowed.

Bithras stepped between us. “The eyes of Earth,” he said. We sobered a little, but I hardly cared about LitVid cameras recording the arriving passengers. Let Earth hear my joy.

My body knew where I was. It had been here before I was born. My genes had made me for this place, my blood carried sea, my bones carried dirt, from Earth, from Earth, my eyes had been made for the bright yellow daylight of Earth’s days and the blue of the day sky and the nights beneath the air-swimming light of Moon and stars.

We passed through reporters human and arbeiter and Bithras answered for us, diplomatically, smiling broadly, we are glad to be back, we expect the most enjoyable talks with the governments of Earth, our partners in the development of Sol’s backyard. He was good and I admired him. All was forgiven, almost forgotten. Beyond the reporters, in a private reception area, we met our guide, a beautiful, husky-voiced woman named Joanna Bancroft who was everything I was not, and yet I liked her. I could not believe I would ever dislike anyone who lived on this blessed world.

From the port we took an autocar sent by the House of Representatives. Bancroft accompanied us, asking our needs, giving our slates the updated schedules, providing Alice with a complimentary access to the Library of Congress. The car attached to a slaveway among ten thousand other linked cars, millipede trains, transport trucks. I listened attentively enough, but rain fell on the windows and trees glistened dark green beneath the somber gray. When a pause came, I asked if we could open the windows.

“Of course,” Joanna said, smiling with lovely red lips and firm plump cheeks.

The autocar slid my window down.

I leaned my head into the breeze, took several plashes on face and eyes, stuck out my tongue and tasted the rain.

Joanna laughed. “Martians are wonderful,” she said. “You make us appreciate what we who live here take for granted.”

What we who live here.

The words cooled me. I glanced at Bithras and he lifted his eyebrows, one corner of his lips. I understood his unspoken message.

We did not own the Earth. We were guests, present by the complicated sufferance of great political entities, the true owners and managers of the Mother.

We were not home. We would never be home again, at any price, across any distance.

Joanna took us to the Capital Tower Comb, a sprawling green and white complex of twenty thousand homes and hotels and businesses designed to serve people from all over Earth — and, almost as an afterthought, space visitors as well. The comb covered two square kilometers on the site where the dreaded Pentagon had once stood, center of the formidable defenses of the old United States of America .

We had arranged for accommodation in the Presidential Suite of the Grand Hotel of the Potomac , low on the north wall of the Capital Tower , overlooking the river.

Joanna departed after making sure we were comfortable. Allen and I stood in the middle of the suite, unsure what to do next. Bithras paced and scowled. The suite still showed off its capabilities; rooms and beds and furniture squirmed through a parade of designs and decors, LitVids darted hi front of our eyes — which would we choose, which special capital ed and entertainment presentations would we reserve? — and arbeiters presented themselves in two ranks of three, liveried in the high fashion found only on Earth — green velvet and black silk suits, tiny red hats, totally unlike arbeiters on Mars, which wore only their plastic and ceramic and metal skins.

We stumbled through our choices as quickly as possible, Allen and I doing most of the choosing. Bithras fell into a chair that had finally settled on twentieth-century Swedish.

“These people” he muttered, “if they and their damned rooms would only stand still.”

“No hope,” Allen said. He stared out the direct-view window overlooking the river. Beyond, the capital of the United States of the Western Hemisphere could be seen between combs scattered along the Virginia banks of the Potomac . Nothing in Washington DC proper was allowed to stand higher than the Capitol dome — that had been a law for centuries. I longed to walk through the Mall, the parks and ancient neighborhoods, under the trees I saw spreading their canopies like billowing green carpets.

“Still raining,” I said in awe.

“ ‘Sprinkling’ is the term, I believe,” Allen said. “We have to brush up on our weather.”

“ ‘Weather,’ ” I said profoundly, and Allen and I laughed.

Bithras stood and stretched his arms restlessly. “We have seven days before we testify to Congress. We have three days before our meetings with subcommittees and Senate and House members begin. That means two days of preparation and meetings with BM partners, and one day to see the sights. I am too anxious and upset to work today. Alice and I will stay here. You may do what you like.”

Allen and I glanced at each other. “We’ll walk,” I said.

“Right,” Allen said.

Bithras shook his head as if in pity. “Earth wears on me quickly,” he said.

The skies had cleared by the time we cabbed into Washington DC . Allen and I had been rather aloof during our crossing, but now we behaved like brother and sister, sharing the wind, the clean crisp air, the sun on our faces: and then, glory of glory, the cherry trees in full blossom. The trees blossomed once every month, we were told, even in winter; tourists expected that.

“It isn’t natural, you know,” Allen said. “They used to blossom only in the spring.”

“I know,” I said peevishly. “I don’t care.”

“Trees blossom on Mars,” he said chidingly. “Why should we marvel at these?”

“Because there is no tree on all of Mars that sits under an open sky and raises its branches to the sun,” I said.

The sun warmed our bare arms and faces, the wind blew gentle and cool, and the temperature varied from moment to moment; I could not shake the feeling, damn all politics, all vagaries of birth, that I loved Earth, and Earth loved me.

The day was beautiful. I felt beautiful. Allen and I flirted, but not seriously. We drank coffee in a sidewalk cafe, ate an early lunch, walked to the Washington Monument and climbed the long stairs (I ignored shooting pains in my legs), descended, walked more. Strolling the length of the reflecting pool, we paused to look at transform joggers whizzing past like greyhounds.

We studied projected history lessons and climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, then stood before the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln. I studied his sad, weary face and gnarled hands, and unexpectedly I felt my eyes moisten, reading the words which flanked him, inspired by the civil war over which he presided and which ultimately killed him. People eat their leaders, I thought. The king must die.

Allen had a different perspective. “He was forcing allegiance on the American South,” he said. “He’s politically more Terrie than I care for.”

“Mars doesn’t keep slaves,” I reminded him.

“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’ve always rooted for the underdogs.”

We then retreated along the reflecting pool and watched the sun go down.

“What would Lincoln think of red rabbits?” Allen asked.

“What would Lincoln think of the union now?” I countered.

Despite some maladjustments in my bichemistry — we were definitely overdoing it — I was giddy with the weather, the architecture all out in the open, the history.

We returned to the comb to have dinner with Bithras in the hotel’s main restaurant. The food was even better than it had been aboard Tuamotu. Much of it was fresh, not nano, and I searched for, and thought I found, the difference in flavor. “It tastes like dirt, I think,” I told Bithras and Allen over the white linen tablecloth and silver candlesticks.

“Musty,” Allen agreed. “Not too long since it was alive.”

Bithras coughed. “Enough,” he said.

Allen and I smiled at each other conspiratorially. “We shouldn’t act provincial,” Allen said.

“I’ll act the way I feel,” Bithras said, but he was not angry; simply stating a fact. “The wine is good, though.” He lifted his glass. “To red rabbits out of their element.”

We toasted ourselves.

On the way back to the suite, outside the lift, Bithras looped his arm through mine and pressed me close. Allen saw this and quickly did the same with my other arm. I felt for a moment as if I were being pressed between two overanxious dogs at stud; then I saw what Allen was up to.

Bithras drew his lips into a firm line and let go of my arm. Allen let go immediately after and I gave him a grateful glance.

Bithras behaved as if nothing had happened. And, indeed, nothing had happened. The evening had been too pleasant to believe otherwise.

“I’ve been here for twenty-seven years,” Miriam Jaffrey told us as she invited us into her apartment. “My husband went Eloi ten years ago, and I think, though I do not know for sure, that he is on Mars… So here I am, a Martian on Earth, and he’s a Terrie up there.” Bithras and Allen took seats at her invitation in the broad living room. The windows looked across the sprawl of old Virginia combs and even older skyscrapers. We were on the south side of the Capital Tower Comb, opposite from our hotel.

“I’m always snooping out red rabbits,” she said, sitting beside Bithras. They appeared to be about the same age. “It’s lovely to hear what’s changed and what’s the same. Not that I plan on going back… I’m too used to Earth now. I’m a Terrie, I’m afraid.”

“We’re enjoying ourselves immensely,” Allen said.

Miriam beamed. Her long black hair hung over square thin shoulders revealed by a flowing green cotton dress. “I’m most pleased you could take time out from your busy schedule.”

“Our pleasure,” Bithras said. He squirmed his butt into the couch, fighting the self-adjusting cushions. “Now, are we secure?”

“Very,” Miriam said,“ drawing herself up and suddenly quite serious.

“Good. We need to talk freely. Casseia, Allen: Miriam is not just a social gadfly, she is the best-informed Martian on Earth about things Washingtonian.“

Miriam batted her eyelashes modestly.

“She follows the tradition of a long line of hostesses in this capital, who meet and greet, and know all, and she has been invaluable to Majumdar BM in the past.”

“Thank you, Bithras,” she said.

Bithras produced his slate from a shirt pouch and placed it before her. “We brought a copy of Alice with us. She’s resting in our hotel room now.”

“She’s proof against the latest?” Miriam asked.

“We think she is. We refused an opportunity to let customs sweep her.”

“Good. She’s Terrie-made, of course, so she’s always a little suspect.”

“I trust Alice . She was examined by our finest and found true to her design.”

“All right,” said Miriam, but in a tone that betrayed she still had doubts. “Still, you should know that all thinkers are a little too sweet and innocent to understand Earth, at least those thinkers allowed to be exported — to emigrate.”

“Yes, that is so,” Bithras agreed. “She will only advise, however, not rule.”

I listened to all this in a state of shock. “You’re a spy?” I asked innocently.

“Stars, no!” Miriam laughed and slapped her thigh. She struck a pose, hand on knee, shoulder thrown back, tossing her hair. “Though I could be, don’t you think?”

“We’ll meet later today with representatives from Cailetet and Sandoval,” Bithras said.

“Cailetet’s been very skittish lately,” Miriam said. “Buying up notes and extensions from other BMs, minimizing their exposure in the open Triple Market.”

“I don’t expect to get any answers from them,” Bithras said, “but I show the flag, so to speak. We are willing to keep talking.”

Miriam said she thought that would be useful. “Though I warn you, I’ve never seen Cailetet so spooked.”

“I’d like to know more about these members of the space affairs committee.” Bithras handed her the slate. Names danced before her eyes, along with political icons and identifiers for family and social groups.

Miriam scrolled the list thoughtfully. “Good people. Sharp, above the bang.”

I surreptitiously looked up “above the bang” on my slate. It read: 1: CALM, UNFLAPPABLE; 2: UNIMPRESSED BY HIGH OFFICE.

“They’re dedicated and haven’t missed a trick since I’ve been here,” Miriam said. “Elected officials on Earth are a breed apart, as Bithras is doubtless aware.”

“Yes, we have been dealing with a few of our own. District governors…”

“The difference is that Earth’s elected officials are therapied,” Miriam said. “All except for John Mendoza, here. Senate minority leader. Mendoza is a Mormon. Terries didn’t put up a warm reception for Dauble, but Mendoza ’s party co-hosted a reception for her with Deseret Space. Deseret Space gave her shelter for a few weeks. Debriefed her about Mars, I imagine.”

“At least they have no designs on Mars,” Bithras said.

“No, but Mendoza will ask you why you aren’t willing to allocate more Martian-controlled Belt resource shares to Earth, and why you refuse to join the Sol Resource Management group. Deseret Space has formed some bridges with Green Idaho. Green Idaho is finally casting its eyes on space-related business. They’re both firming up state ties with GEWA, circumventing the U.S. ”

Bithras annotated the transcript of Miriam’s remarks, then looked up and said, “We need to know about Cuba , Hispaniola , New Mexico , and California .”

“All on your list,” Miriam said, brow creased, tapping the slate with a long fingernail. I noticed a vid playing on the fingernail and wondered what it was. “Let me tell you what I know. My library will feed you…”

We listened and shared slate data for the next two hours. When we finished, Bithras switched on his charm, and Miriam seemed receptive. I was relieved.

The meetings with Cailetet and Sandoval, held in our suite, were cordial and totally unproductive. The associate syndic for Cailetet Earth hinted they might not support our unification proposals, that Cailetet Mars might have agreed to the proposals without Triple-wide authority.

After, Bithras was agitated. Almost unconsciously, he stayed close to me, kept gently jostling me. Allen watched with some concern. I ignored it.

Apparently, Miriam was not enough for him. And the pressure was building.

I suffered a small lapse of bichemistry the next morning, alone in my room: nausea, chills, my body breaking through the brace of controls to adjust itself in the way it deemed best. That lasted only an hour, and I felt much better after. The gravity seemed less imposed, more natural.

I looked down on the Potomac and the mall beyond. A crystalline day with high puffy clouds. Washington DC a tiny village, its monuments and ancient domed Capitol visible only as grains of rice in the general green and brown.

Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic…

A fatuous grin spread across my face. I was a Martian, come to invade Earth.

Alice presented her report. We sat in the living room of our suite and scanned the highlights. Bithras dug deeper on several key points. “It’s not encouraging,” he said.

“The need for central control of all solar resources may be acute within fifteen Earth years,” Alice said. “It is generally recognized that Earth needs a major endeavor to keep up its overall psychological and economic vigor, and that endeavor — that social focus — must be interstellar exploration on a grand scale.”

Allen found that puzzling. “The whole Earth recognizes this? Everybody agrees?”

“Agreement is strong among those groups who make the crucial decisions about the Triple,” Alice said. “Especially the executives of the major alliances.”

“We’ll be pressured to join in the endeavor, whether or not it directly benefits Mars,” Bithras said.

“Such a conclusion is overdetermined by the evidence,” Alice said.

Bithras leaned back on the couch. “Nothing we can’t roll with.” But he seemed troubled. “It’s a bit obvious, don’t you think?”

“Evidence for other conclusions is not clear,” Alice said.

“It’s what some of our fellow passengers were saying,” I said.

“Cut and dried, though, isn’t it?” Bithras said, biting his upper lip. He resembled a bulldog when he did that. “Tomorrow I’ll open the proposals and share them with you. I need you to fully understand what we’re allowed to say, and what we’re allowed to give, at each stage of negotiation.” He sat up. “From now, you are more than apprentices,” he said. “You represent a Mars yet to be born. You are diplomats.”

And we acted the part. We attended receptions and parties, hosted two of our own, visited the offices of major corporations and temp agencies, attended dinners arranged by Mars appreciation societies…

Miriam hosted our private reception in the hotel. I spent hours talking to explanetaries, listening to their stories of old Mars, answering their questions as best I could about the new Mars. Did Mackenzie Frazier ever unite the Canadian BMs in Syrtis? Whatever became of the Prescott and Ware families in Hellas ? My sister still lives on Mars, Mariner Valley South, but she never answers my letters — do you know why?

All too often, I could only smile and plead ignorance. There was no Pan-Martian family message center or database easily accessible from Earth. I took a note on my slate to have Majumdar set one up; good for PR. Ex-Martians on Earth could be valuable allies, I thought, and Miriam excepted, we didn’t use them very often.

During a break at the reception, I asked Miriam how often Martian BMs approached her, directly from Mars. “About once a year,” she said, smiling. I said that was deplorable, and she patted my shoulder. “We are such trusting and insular creatures,” she said. “By the time you leave here, you’ll know only too well what we’re up against, and how far we have to go to get in the spin…”

I made a note on my slate that we should sign Miriam to Majumdar exclusively — but didn’t that contradict the spirit of unity we were working so hard to demonstrate?

Visiting offices of members of Congress, I quickly noticed a remarkable lack of attention to Bithras’s hints at what our proposals might be. Bithras fell into a dark and snappish mood at the end of a grueling day of office-hopping.

“They don’t much care,” he said, accepting a glass of wine from Allen as we rested in our suite. “That is very puzzling.”

Mornings, ex net and LitVid interviews, conducted from a studio in the Capitol; afternoons, more interviews from a studio in the hotel; then lunches with major financiers who listened and smiled, but promised nothing; finally, dinners with congressional staffers, full of curiosity and enthusiasm, but who also revealed little and promised nothing.

Visits to schools in Washington and Virginia, usually over ed-nets from our hotel room… A quick train journey to Pennsylvania to meet with Amish Friends of Sylvan Earth, who had finally accepted the use of computers, but not thinkers. Back to Washington … A guided tour of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum .

The original Library of Congress had been sealed in helium and was accessible now only in pressure suits. We were not offered the chance to go in. Arbeiters roamed its halls, guarding and tracking its countless billions of paper books and periodicals. It had stopped accepting paper copies in 2049; most research was now conducted out of the electronic archives, which filled a small chamber several hundred feet beneath the old library. Alice absorbed as much of the library as she needed, but even her immense reserves of memory would have been taxed by absorbing all.

At the Air and Space Museum , we stood for pictures at the foot of a full-size replica of the first Mars lander, the Captain James Cook. I had seen the original as a preform schoolgirl. To me, the replica seemed larger beneath its dome than the original, sitting in the open air of Elysium.

Earth had too much to show us. We were in danger of becoming exhausted before our most important day arrived…

We entered the hearing chamber, stately stone and warm dark wood, seats upholstered in dark faux leather; Bithras, Allen, and myself, deliberately dressed in conservative Martian fashions, Alice on her freshly polished carriage.

With our synthetic clothing and unaltered physiques, we must have resembled hicks in a LitVid comedy. But we were greeted respectfully by five senators from the Standing Committee on Solar System and Near-Earth Space Affairs. For a few minutes, we gathered in light conversation with the senators and a few of their staff. The air was polite but formal. Again, I sensed something amiss, as did Bithras, whose nostrils flared as he took his seat behind a long maple table. Allen leaned over and asked me, “Why aren’t we testifying before the whole committee?” I did not know.

I sat to the left of Bithras in a hard wooden chair; Allen sat to his right. Alice was connected to the Senate thinker, Harold S., who had served the Senate for sixty years.

The gallery was empty. Obviously, this would be a closed hearing.

Senator Kay Juarez Sommers of New Mexico, chair of the committee, gaveled the hearing into order. “I welcome our distinguished guests from Mars. You don’t know how odd that is for an old Terrie like myself to say, even today. Maybe I need some enhancements to the imagination. Certainly some of my colleagues think so…” She was in her mid-seventies, if I could judge age when appearance seemed an arbitrary choice; small and wiry, clean simple features, smooth-voiced, dressing hard in blacks and grays. Senator Juarez Sommers had not chosen any easy roads in her life, and she had eschewed obvious transform designs.

Also attending the hearing today were Senators John Mendoza of Utah, tall, chocolate-skinned, severely handsome and stocky; Senator David Wang of California, white-blond with golden skin, a fairly obvious transform; and Senator Joe Kim of Green Idaho, of middle height, gray-haired, wearing an expression of perpetual suspicion. Or perhaps it was discernment.

“Mr. Majumdar, as you can see, this is a closed hearing,” Juarez Sommers began. “We’ve chosen key members of the standing committee to hear your testimony. We’ll speak directly, since our time is limited. We’re curious as to how much progress Mars will make toward unification in the next five years. ”

“We face major obstacles,” Bithras said, “not all of them caused by Martians.”

“Could you elaborate, please?”

Bithras explained the complex interactions of Binding Multiple finances and politics. Martian resources were about two percent developed. Earth-based corporations with BM subsidiaries and Lunar-based BMs controlled fifteen percent of Martian capital and ten percent of developed resources. Mars-based BMs frequently sought capital from Triple sources off Mars, establishing temporary liaisons, even giving the outside sources some say in their internal affairs. It seemed everybody had a finger in the Martian pie. Organizing so many disparate interests was more than difficult, it was nightmarish, and it was made worse by the reluctance of healthy and profitable BMs to submit to central authority.

“Do Martian BMs feel they have inalienable rights, corporate rights as it were, no matter what the needs of their individual members?” asked Senator Mendoza of Utah .

“Nothing so arrogant,” Bithras said. “Binding Multiples operate more like groups of small businesses and families than worker-owned Earth-style corporations. Family members are all shareholders, but they cannot sell their shares to any outside concerns. Entry to the family is through marriage, special election, or birth. Transfer through marriage or election removes you from one BM and places you in another. Within the family, there is exchange of work credits only, no money as such… All investments outside the family are directed by the syndic’s financial managers.” The senators appeared bored. Bithras concluded quickly. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the principles… They’re the same on the Moon and in the Belts, as well.”

“Being aware of a pattern should imply being able to change it,” said Mendoza .

“Our witness has just admitted to us that there is reluctance,” said Senator Wang of California , glancing at his colleagues with raised eyebrows.

“Mr. Majumdar’s own Binding Multiple has been reluctant to cooperate with attempts to unify,” said Juarez Sommers. “Perhaps he can give us insight into both the reluctance, and the proposed nurturing of a new social pattern.”

Bithras tilted his head to one side and smiled, acknowledging the sudden characterization as a reluctant witness. “We have worked long and hard to determine our own destiny. We behave as strong-willed individuals within an atmosphere determined by mutual advantage. We are naturally not inclined to place our destinies and lives in the hands of agencies who do not answer directly to us.”

“Your Binding Multiples have lived under this illusion for decades,” said Senator Joe Kim of Green Idaho. “Are you telling us this is truly how Mars works — each individual interacting directly with family authorities?”

“No,” Bithras said.

“Surely you have a system of justice that all BMs subscribe to. How do you treat your untherapied, your ill-adapted?“

“Haven’t we strayed from the subject a bit, Senator?” Bithras asked, smiling.

“Humor me,” Kim said, looking down at the slate before him.

Bithras humored him. “They have rights. If their maladaptation is severe, their families persuade them to seek aid. Therapy, if that seems necessary. If their… ah… crime transcends family boundaries, they can be brought before Council judges. But — ”

“Martians are not enamored of therapy,” Mendoza said, staring at us one by one. “Some of us in Utah share their doubts.”

“We don’t embrace the concept as a fashion,” Bithras clarified. “Neither do we oppose it on principle.”

“We think perhaps an improvement in the mentality of Martians as individuals might lead to a greater acceptance of more efficient social organization,” Juarez Sommers said, glancing at Mendoza with some irritation.

“The Senator is privileged to think that,” Bithras said quietly.

That line of questioning was dropped. The senators paused for a few seconds, tuning in to Harold S. perhaps, then resumed the questioning.

“You’re no doubt aware that the major alliances of Earth have expressed unhappiness with Martian backwardness,” Juarez Sommers said. “There’s even been disgruntled talk of economic sanctions. Mars relies heavily on Earth, does it not, for essential goods?”

“Not entirely, Senator,” Bithras said. She must have known we did not; she was working toward some point I could not see.

“Do your Binding Multiples conduct business with human brainpower alone, or do they use thinkers?”

“We rely on thinkers, but make our own decisions, of course,“ Bithras said. ”As you do here… in Congress. I believe Harold S. is merely a revered advisor.“

“And these thinkers are grown on Earth,” she continued.

“We have a few more years before we can grow our own Martian thinkers.” Bithras looked down at the table, rubbing the edge of his slate with a finger. His face reddened ever so slightly at what might have been an implied threat.

“Martian nanotechnology is acknowledged to be a decade behind Earth’s, and your industrial facilities are likewise less efficient.”

“Yes.”

“Earth corporations and national patent trusts are reluctant to release designs for better nano to a society with few central controls.”

“Martians have never smuggled designs and never sought to infringe patents. We have stringent oversight within all BMs on patent permissions and compensation. We also allow Earth inspections of facilities using patented or copyrighted designs.”

“Still, the perception exists, and it hurts Martian industry and development, correct?”

“In all humility,” Bithras said, “I must say we take care of our needs.”

What Bithras did not mention was the widespread Martian perception that Earth preferred our economic development to be stunted, kept tightly in Earth’s control.

“Doesn’t Mars wish to grow?” Mendoza asked, wide-eyed with astonishment. “Don’t Mars’s leaders — the syndics of the various BMs and the governors of resource districts — wish to join the greater efforts of the Triple?”

“To the best of our poor abilities, yes,” Bithras said. “But Earth should never expect Mars to sell out her rights and her resources, to give herself up as somebody’s whim property.”

Mendoza laughed. “My colleagues and I wouldn’t dream of that. We might hope for a place where we can flee, if our own re-elections fail…”

“Speak for yourself, John,” Juarez Sommers said. The discussion settled into specifics, and trivial ones at that. For ten minutes, the senators asked Bithras more questions whose answers it seemed obvious they could already find within their slates.

The exercise quickly irritated and bored me.

That first hearing, which reached no conclusions, lasted forty-seven minutes.

The next, on the next day, with the same senators, lasted fifteen minutes. We were given a week’s reprieve before the final hearing, and no indication we would ever meet with the full committee.

So far, Bithras had not been asked to present his proposals. It did not seem to matter. We had made the crossing to listen to polite but unpleasant banter, mild implied threats, and remarkably soft questions.

Allen shared a bichem refresh and some beer with me on the evening of the second hearing; Bithras slept in his room.

“What do you think they’re up to?” I asked.

Allen closed his eyes wearily and lay back in the chair, legs stretched full length. “Wasting our time,” he said.

“They don’t act as if they have a plan,” I said.

“They don’t act like much of anything,” Allen said.

“It’s infuriating.”

“No, it’s cover,” Allen said. “Diversion.”

“What do you mean by diversion?” Bithras entered in his pajamas, hair tousled, rubbing his eyes like a little boy. “Give me some of that,” he said, flicking a finger at the bichemistry supplement. “My joints ache.”

“Did we wake you?”

“Behind these walls? It’s quiet as a tomb in there. I had a damned nightmare,” Bithras said. “I hate sims.”

We were not aware he had experienced any sims. He sat and Allen poured him a cup, which he slugged back with some drama. “Yes, all right,” he said, “I let Miriam talk me into sharing a sim with her last night. It was awful.”

I wondered what sort of sim they had shared.

“We were talking about the hearings,” Allen said.

“You mentioned a ‘diversion,’ ” Bithras said. “You think these hearings are a sham?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“Yes?”

“GEWA.”

Bithras scowled at Allen. “We’ve no scheduled meetings with representatives of GEWA.”

“Because we’re not worth the bother?” Allen asked.

I was still lost. “What about — ” I began, but Bithras held up his hand.

“Wang and Mendoza both act as representatives to GEWA for the Senate Standing Committee,” Bithras said. “Majority party and minority.”

Allen nodded.

“Gentlemen, you’ve dusted me,” I said.

Bithras turned to me as if to a child. “It has been asserted by some that the United States is relinquishing its concerns in space to GEWA as a whole. Binding Multiples having contracts and trade relations with the United States will supposedly answer to GEWA authority, directly.”

“What difference would that make to us?” I asked.

“GEWA as a whole is far more aggressive toward space exploration than the United States , and much more involved than any other alliance. But in the Greater East-West Alliance there are many smaller nations and corporations with no space holdings whatsoever. They want holdings. If Mars unites, we would have to establish new relations with GEWA… Their little partners would ask that we sell a share of our pie. And they would offer…” Bithras pinched his nose and squinched his eyes shut, concentrating. “What… what would they offer?”

“Quid pro quo,” Allen said.

“Quid pro quo. We provide them a greater share of our participation in Solar System resources… in return for the alliance not absorbing Mars and its BMs completely.”

“As happened to the Moon,” Allen said.

“That’s terrible,” I said. “You’re anticipating this, just because they haven’t asked lots of hard questions?”

Bithras waved his hand. “Little evidences, certainly,” he said.

Allen seemed energized by the frightful scenarios. “We couldn’t win that kind of war,” Allen said. “If we unite and are pressured to join any alliance, power in the alliance is based on population — ”

“Except for the founding nations, such as the United States ,” Bithras said. “We’d be bottom of the totem pole.” He finished his bichem supplement. Allen offered him a glass of beer and he accepted. “In fifteen or twenty years, maybe less, if Alice is correct, ninety percent of the Earth’s nations, in every alliance, will be deeply interested in the Big Push. To the stars.”

“Shouldn’t we be interested, as well?” Allen said, leaning forward and clasping his hands in front of him like a supplicant.

“At the price of our planetary heritage, our soul?” Bithras asked.

“The whole human race… It’s a noble goal,” Allen mused.

Bithras took the challenge as if he were fielding a ball. “It would certainly seem noble, to a world desperate for progress, for growth and change. But we’d be eaten alive.”

“What’s the point?” I asked.

Bithras shrugged. “If this speculation is correct, and if our visit has any meaning at all, we will be speaking with representatives from GEWA, in private, before we leave,” he said. “The closed Senate hearing is an excuse — no need to go public with policies not yet in place, but also, no need conducting long-term negotiations ignoring what the situation will be in the future. Mendoza and Wang are merely pickets. The reason we were summoned here may be a convenient fiction. We could be caught with our pants around our ankles. I’ve come here with a proposal… But they might try to force us to make a firm agreement.”

He held out his hand and Allen grasped it firmly. “Good thinking, Allen. If I were them, that’s what I would do.”

Staring at the congratulatory handshake, I felt a burn of jealousy. Would I ever be able to think such convoluted and political thoughts, make such startling leaps into the unlikely, and impress Bithras?

I patted Allen on the shoulder, mumbled good night, and went to my room.

The next morning, as I shared coffee in the suite’s living room with Bithras, talking about the day’s schedule with Alice , our slates chimed simultaneously. Allen entered from his room and we compared messages.

All further Senate hearings had been canceled. Informal sessions with senators and members of congress from various states had all been canceled, as well — except for a single meeting with Mendoza and Wang, scheduled for the end of our third week.

Suddenly, we were little more than tourists.

The GEWA hypothesis had quickened.

I quickly tired of parties and receptions. I wanted to see the planet, to walk around on my own, free of responsibilities. Instead, we spent most of our time meeting the curious and the friendly, making contacts and spreading goodwill. Miriam, true to her reputation, arranged for us to meet and greet some of the most influential people in North America .

She arranged a second lavish party — paid for by Majumdar — and invited artists, sim actors, business magnates and heads of corporations, ministers from the alliances, ambassadors — more famous and familiar faces than I had ever imagined meeting all at once. The LitVids were conspicuously absent; we were to be at ease, light chatter and fine food, and Bithras was to make his case for a variety of deals and proposals.

The party was held in Miriam’s suite, all the walls and furniture rearranged for maximum space. We arrived before most of the others, and Miriam took me aside with a motherly arm around my shoulder. “Don’t be too impressed by these people,” she told me. “They’re human and they’re easily impressed. You’re an exotic, my dear — and you should take advantage of it. There will be some very handsome people here.” She gave me an unctuous smile.

I certainly wasn’t going to harvest partners at a political function. But I returned her smile and said I’d enjoy myself, and I vowed to myself that I would.

The crowd arrived in clumps, flocking to core figures of some reputation or another. Allen, Bithras, and I separated and attended to our own clumps, answering questions — “Why have you come all this way?”; “Why are Martians so resistant to the big arts trends?”; “I’ve heard that over half of all Martian women still give birth — how extraordinary! Is that true in your family?”; “What do you think of Earth? Isn’t it a terrible cultural hothouse?” — and gently disengaging to attend to other clumps.

While I recognized many famous people, Miriam had managed to invite nobody I truly wanted to meet. None of the Terrestrial dramatists I admired were there, perhaps because I favored Lit over Vid. None of the politicians I had studied were there. The majority of the party goers were high spin — Washington still attracted hordes of bright and beautiful people — and my tastes did not track the spin.

Bithras seemed in his element, however, fulfilling his obligations smoothly. For much of the party, executives from corporations with Martian aspirations surrounded him. I noticed four Pakistanis waiting patiently for a turn, two men in traditional gray suits and two women, one wearing a brilliant orange sari, the other a flowing gray three-piece set. When their turn came, Bithras spoke with them in Punjabi and Urdu; he became even more ebullient.

Allen passed by and winked at me. “How fares it?” he asked.

We were out of hearing of others, in a corner where I had retreated to sip fruit juice. “Boring,” I said, very softly. “Where’s Bithras?” He had left the room.

“He’s talking old times with the Pakistanis, I think,” Allen said. “How can you be bored? There are some very famous people here.”

“I know. I blame myself.”

“Uh huh. You’d rather be hiking the Adirondacks , or — ”

“Don’t make my mouth water,” I said.

“Duty, honor, planet,” he said, and left to attend to another clump.

Bithras reappeared ten or fifteen minutes later, speaking earnestly with one of the Pakistani women. The woman listened attentively, nodding frequently. His face glowed with enthusiasm, and I felt glad for him. I couldn’t understand a word they said, however.

The party had expanded to fill the available space, and still more people were arriving. Miriam flitted from point to point in the crowd, rearranging conversations, herding people toward food or drink, a social sheep-dog.

Some of the people arriving now were, to my eye, beyond exotic. A musician from Hawaii and three young women in close-fitting black caps took much of the heat away from Allen and me. I recognized him from news stories. His name was Attu . Gaunt and intense, he dressed in a severe black suit. He had linked his consciousness with the three women, who dressed in filmy white, and whom he referred to as sisters. At intervals of ten minutes, they would rejoin, clasp hands, and exchange all their experiences. The women never spoke; Attu was their conduit. I avoided them. That sort of intimacy (and implied male domination) spooked me. I wondered why Miriam had invited them.

The evening was winding down, and the crowd beginning to diminish, when I saw one of the Pakistani men approach Miriam. Miriam raised herself on tiptoes and looked around, shook her head, and went off in search. Intuition had little to do with my guess that they were looking for Bithras.

I disengaged myself from several bankers and made my way down a hall that led to several smaller rooms. I did not want to interrupt anything private, but I had a bad feeling.

A door slid open suddenly and the Pakistani woman bumped into me. With a quick, angry glance, she rustled past in her long gray dress. Bithras emerged a moment later, biting his lower lip, eyes darting. He sidestepped me and said, “It is nothing, it is nothing.”

The Pakistanis gathered near the main door, talking heatedly. They searched the faces of the remaining party guests, focused on Bithras, and one of the men began to shove through other partygoers in his direction. The women restrained him, however, and the four departed.

Miriam stood at the door for a moment, uncertain what to do. Bithras sat in a chair, staring blankly, before standing with deliberation and going for a drink. Like me, he was having only juice.

Nothing more was said. An hour later, we left the party.

Bithras spent the next ten hours locked in his room with the lights out. He accepted his meals through the half-open door, glared at us owlishly, and shut it. Allen and I spent this time studying Alice ’s fresh reports on GEWA and GSHA.

The following morning, Bithras stepped out of his room in his bathrobe, hands on hips, and said, “It is time to take a vacation. You have two days. Do what you will. Be back here, in this room, by seven in the morning of Saturday next.”

“You’re taking some time off, as well, Uncle?” Allen asked.

Bithras smiled and shook his head. “I’ll be talking with a lot of people… If we were better than children at this sort of thing, we’d have brought an entire negotiating team. Nobody wanted to spend the money.” He practically spat the last three words. There were circles under his eyes; his skin had grayed with stress. “I can’t make all the decisions myself. I refuse to set policy for an entire world. If this is a new era for relations with Earth…” He waved his hand in the air as if describing the flight of birds. “It will take days to sort things out with the other syndics and governors. Alice will postpone her kiss with Jill and advise me. But you would only distract me. If I can’t come up with a way to turn this to our advantage, I will resign as syndic.”

His smile turned wolfish. “You can play their game. They think we are provincials, suckers for the taking. Maybe we are. You shall certainly act the part. Give interviews if you are asked. Say I am bewildered and disconsolate, and I do not know where to turn next. We are dismayed at the social slight, and find Earth to be incredibly rude.” He sat and rested his head in his hands. “May not be too far wrong.”

I called Orianna’s private number and left a message. Within two hours, Orianna returned my call and we made plans for a rendezvous in New York . Allen had his own plans; he was flying to Nepal .

An hour before I left the hotel, I felt dizzy and frightened. I wondered how we would be received on Mars if we failed here; what would our families think? If Bithras tumbled, would my career within Majumdar BM tumble with him?

By choosing to go with Bithras, I had become part of a monumental war of nerves, and it seemed clear we were losing. I resented being caught between two worlds; I hated power and authority and the very real, sweaty misery of responsibility. I might be part of a failure of historic proportions; I could disgrace my mother and father, my Binding Multiple.

I longed for the small warrens and cramped tunnels of Mars, for my confined and secure youth.

I knew there were bigger cities, more crowded cities — but New York ’s fifty million citizens caused this rabbit a new kind of claustrophobia. My apprehension changed from fear of the unknown to fear that I would simply be sucked up and digested.

Five hundred and twenty-three years old, New York appeared both ancient and new at once. I emerged from Penn Station surrounded by a rainbow of people, more than I had ever seen crowded together in one place in my life. I stood on a corner as hordes walked in a cold breeze and spatters of sleet.

In design, New York had kept much of its architectural history intact, yet there was hardly a building that had not been rebuilt or replaced. Architectural nano had worked its way through frames and walls, down through the soil and ancient foundations, redrawing wires and fibers, rerouting water pipes and sewers, leaving behind buildings resculpted in original or better materials, new infrastructures of metal and ceramic and plastic. Nothing seemed designed as a whole; everything had been assembled and even reassembled bits at a time, block by block or building by building.

And of course many of the buildings a New Yorker considered new were in fact older than any warren on Mars.

The people also had been rebuilt from the inside. Even in my confusion, they fascinated me. New people in New York the old city: transforms, their skins glistening like polished marble, black or white or rose, their golden or silver or azure eyes glinting as they passed, penetrating glances that seemed both friendly and challenging at once; designer bodies put on for a month or a year, the flesh shaped like clay; designs identifying status and social group, some ugly as protest, some thin and austere, others large and strong and — Earthy.

Lights flashed over the street, airborne arbeiters like fairies on a trod in one of my children’s vids, or, even more fantastic, huge fireflies; arbeiters flowed through the city in narrow channels underground and above. Slaved cabs followed glassy strips pressed into the asphalt and concrete and nano stone of the streets.

What fascinated me most about New York was that it worked.

Most submitted to medical nano, body therapy as well as mind. By and large, the city’s people were healthy, but medical arbeiters still patrolled the streets, searching for the untherapied few who might even now out of negligence or perverse self-destruction fall ill. Human diseases had been virtually eliminated, replaced by infestations of learning, against which I had chosen to be made immune. New Yorkers, like most people on Earth, lived in a soup of data itself alive.

Language and history and cultural updates filled the air. Viruses and bacteria poured forth from commercial ventilators in key locations, or could be acquired at infection booths, conveying everything the driven New Yorker might want to know. Immunizations prevented adverse reactions for natural visitors not used to the soup.

The sun passed behind a broad cubical comb in New Jersey and lights flashed on, pouring golden illumination through the gentle drizzle.

Advertising images leaped from walls, a flood of insistent icons that meant little to me. Spot marketing had been turned into a perfected science. Consumers were paid to carry transponders which communicated their interests to adwalls. The adwalls showed them only what they might want to purchase: products, proprietary LitVids, new sims, live event schedules. Being a consumer had become a traditional means of gainful employment; some New Yorkers floated careers allowing themselves to be subjected to ads, switching personal IDs as they traveled to different parts of the city, trading purchase credits earned by ad exposure for more ad income.

Lacking a transponder, all I saw were the icons, projected corporate symbols floating above my head like strange hovering insects.

According to what I had been taught in govmanagement at UM, Earth’s economic systems had become so complicated by the twenty-first century that only thinkers could model them. And as thinkers grew more complicated, economic patterns increased in complexity as well, until all was delicately balanced on less than the head of a pin.

No wonder cultural psychology could play a key role in economic stability.

“Casseia!” Orianna stood on a low wall, peering over the crowds. We hugged at the edge of the walkway. “It’s great to see you. How was the trip?”

I laughed and shook my head, drunk with what I had seen. “I feel like a — ”

“Fish out of water?” Orianna said, grinning.

“More like a bird drowning!”

She laughed. “ Calcutta would kill you!”

“Let’s not go there,” I said.

“Where we’re going, my dear, is a quiet place my Mom owns up on East 64th, in an historic neighborhood. A bunch of friends want to meet you.”

“I only have a few days…”

“Simplicity! This is so exciting! You’re even in the Lit-Vids, did you know that?”

“Oh, God, yes.”

We took an autocab and she projected the news stories from her slate. She had hooked an Earthwide ex net and scanned for all material related to our visit. The faces of Bithras, Allen and myself floated like little doll heads in the autocab. Condensed texts and icons flashed at reduced speed for my unaccustomed eyes. I picked up about two-thirds of what was being said. GEWA and GSHA had linked with Eurocom to propose a world-wide approach to what was being called the Martian Question: Martian reluctance or inability to join the Push.

“You’re being pre-jammed,” Orianna said cheerfully.

I was horrified.

The sidebars detailed our personal histories and portrayed us as the best Martian diplomacy had to offer; the last seemed ironic, but I really couldn’t fathom the spin.

“You’re famous, dear,” Orianna said. “A frontier girl. Little House on the Planum. They love it!”

I was less interested in what was being said about me than in the backslate details. GEWA, leading the other alliances, would start negotiating with Mars after completion of what the US government was characterizing as “polite dialogues” with members of the standing Congressional committee.

I had a role to play. True shock would only grace my performance. “It’s terrible,” I said, frowning deeply. “Completely rude and impolite. I’d never expect it from Earth.”

“Oh, do!” Orianna said, creasing her brow in sympathy. The cab stopped before a stone and steel eight-story building with dazzling crystal-paned glass doors. The first-floor door popped open with a sigh and she danced ahead of me through crowds flowing along the walkway. “By the time my friends and I are done with you, you’ll expect anything.”

“We don’t stay here often,” Orianna said, emerging from the elevator. Her long legs carried her down the hall like an eager colt. She slowed only to allow me to catch up with her. “Mother’s given us the space here for a few days. My hab is just like the one in Paris . I’ve kept it since I was a kid.”

The door to apartment 43 looked tame enough — paneled wood with brass numbers. Orianna palmed entry and the door swung inward. “We have a guest,” she called. Beyond stretched a round gray tunnel with a white strip of walkway. The tunnel ballooned around us, unshaped.

“Welcome home. What can we do for you, Orianna?” a soft masculine voice asked.

“Fancy conservative decor — for our guest — and tell Shrug and Kite to rise and meet my friend.”

The tunnel quickly shaped a cream-colored decor with gold details, a rosewood armoire opening its doors to accept my coat and Orianna’s shoulder wrap. “English Regency,” Orianna said. “Kite’s idea of conservatism.”

Shrug, Kite — it all sounded very drive. I wondered if I would regret coming.

“Don’t stick on the names,” Orianna said, shaping the living room into more Regency. “All my friends are into Vernoring. They work and play with fake names. I don’t know their true ones. Not even their parents know.”

“Why?”

“It’s a game. Two rules — nobody knows what you’re doing, and you do nothing illegal.”

“Doesn’t that take the fun out of doing crypto?” I asked.

“Wow — crypto! Hide in the tomb. Sorry. I shy from two-edged words. We call it Vernoring.”

“Doesn’t it?” I persisted.

“No,” Orianna said thoughtfully. “Illegal is harm. Harm is stupid. Stupid is its own game, and none of my friends play it. Here’s Kite.”

Kite came through a double door dressed in faded denim shirt and pants. He stood two meters high, minus a few centimeters, and carried a green-and-white mottled sun kitten.

Orianna introduced us. Kite smiled and performed a shallow bow, then offered his free hand. He seemed natural enough — handsome but not excessively so, manner a little shy. He squatted cross-legged on the oriental carpet and the sun kitten played within a Persian garden design. A light switched on overhead and bathed the animal in a spot of brightness. It mewed appreciatively and stretched on its back.

“We’re going out tonight,” Orianna said. “Where is Shrug?”

“Asleep, I think. He’s spent the last three days working a commission.”

“Well, wake him up!”

“You do it,” Kite said.

“Pleasure’s mine.” Orianna leaped from the chair and returned to the hall. We heard her banging on doors.

“She could just buzz him,” Kite said ruefully, shaking his head. “She pretends she’s a storm, sometimes.”

I murmured assent.

“But she’s really sweet. You must know that.”

“I like her a lot,” I said.

“She’s an only and that makes a difference,” Kite added. “I have a brother and sister. You?”

“A brother,” I said. “And lots of blood relations.”

Kite smiled. The smile rendered his face transcendentally beautiful. I blinked and looked away.

“Is it rough, having everyone vid you?”

“I’m getting tired of it.”

“You know, you should watch whom you touch… Shake hands with. That sort of thing. Some of the LitVids are casual about privacy. They could plant watchers on you.” He held up pinched fingers and peered through a tiny gap. “Some are micro. Hide anywhere.”

“Isn’t that against the law?”

“If you haven’t filed for privacy rights, they could argue you’re common-law open. Then you’d only be protected in surveillance negative areas. The watchers would turn off… Most of the time.”

“That’s bolsh,” said a deep, lion-like voice. I turned to see Orianna dragging into the room by one hand a very large, blocky man with a very young face. “Nobody’s planted a watcher without permission in four years,” the young-faced man said. “Not since Wayne vs. LA PubEye.”

“Casseia Majumdar, of Mars, this is Shrug. He’s studied law. He has almost as many enhancements as I do.”

Shrug dipped on one knee as I stood. I barely reached his chin when he kneeled.

“Charmed,” he said, kissing my hand.

“Stop that,” Orianna said. “She’s my partner.”

“You don’t curve,” Shrug said.

“We’re sisters of sim,” Orianna said.

“Oh, dear, such an arc!” Kite said, smiling.

I don’t think I understand a third of what was said the whole time I spent in New York .

Back on the streets, holding hands with Shrug and Orianna, and then with Orianna and Kite, I let myself be taken somewhere, anywhere. Kite was really very attractive and did not seem averse to flirting, though more to aggravate Orianna, I thought, than to impress me. My slate recorded streets and directions in case I needed to find my way back to Penn Station; it also contained full-scale maps of the city, all cities on the Earth, in fact. I could hardly get lost unless someone took my slate… and Orianna assured me that New York was virtually free of thieves. “Too bad,” I said, in a puckish mood.

“Yeah,” Orianna said. “But that doesn’t mean there’s no risk. It’s risk we choose that we should beware.”

“I choose lunch,” Kite said. “There’s a great old delicatessen here. Total goback.”

My expression of surprise caught his eye. “Goback. Means retro, atavistic, historic. All are good drive words now, no negs.”

“It means something else on Mars,” I said.

“Folks who want to keep BM rule are called Gobacks,” Orianna said.

“Are you a Goback?” Shrug asked me.

“I’m neutral,” I said. “My family has strong links to BM autonomy. I’m still learning.”

Echoing the theme, we passed a family of Chasids dressed in black. The men wore wide-brimmed hats and styled their hair in long thin locks around their temples. The women wore long simple dresses in natural fabrics. The children skipped and danced happily, dressed in black and white.

“They’re lovely, aren’t they?” Orianna said, glancing over her shoulder at the family. ‘Total goback! No enhancements, no therapy, neg the drive.“

“ New York is great for that sort of thing,” Kite said.

We passed three women in red chadors; a woman herding five blue dogs, followed by an arbeiter carrying a waste can; five men in single file, nude, not that it mattered — their bodies were completely smooth, with featureless tan skin; a male centaur with a half-size horse body, perfectly at home cantering along the sidewalk, man’s portion clothed in formal Edwardian English wool suit and bowler; jaguar-pelted women, furry, not in furs; two young girls, perhaps ten Earth years, dressed in white ballet gowns with fairy wings growing from their backs (temp or permanent? I couldn’t tell); a gaggle of school-children dressed in red coats and black shorts, escorted by men in black cassocks (“Papal Catholics,” Kite said); more of the mineral-patterned designer bodies; a great many people who might have fit in without notice on Mars; and of course the mechaniques, who replaced major portions of their bodies with metal shells filled with biorep nano. That, I had heard, was very expensive as an elective. Complete body replacement was much cheaper. Neither could be done legally unless one could prove major problems in birth genotype; it spun too much of the Eloi and Ten Cubed.

“After lunch, we’re going to Central Park ,” Orianna said. “And then…”

Kite laughed. “Orianna has connections. She wants to show you something you just don’t have on Mars.”

“An Omphalos!” Orianna said. “Father owns shares.”

We ate in the delicatessen and it smelled of cooked meat, which I had never smelled before, and which offended me all the same, whether or not meat was actually being cooked. Customers- — chiefly drive folks, a high proportion of transforms — lined up before glass cases filled with what appeared to be sliced processed animals. Plastic labels on metal skewers pronounced the shapes to be Ham, that is, smoked pig legs, Beef (cows) corned (though having nothing to do with corn) and otherwise, something called Pastrami which was another type of cow covered with pepper, smoked fish, fish in fermented dairy products, vegetables in brine and vinegar, pig feet in jars, and other things that, had they been real, would have caused a true uproar even on Earth.

We stood at the counter until the clerk took our order, then found a table. Martian reserve kept me from expressing my distaste to Orianna. She ordered for me — potato salad, smoked salmon, a bagel, and cream cheese.

“The stuff here is the best in town,” she said. “It was set up by New York Preserve. History scholars. They have a nano artist design the food — he’s orthodox Gathering of Abraham. They have state dispensation to eat meat, for religious reasons. He quit eating meat ten years ago, but he remembers what it tastes like.”

Our food arrived. The salmon appeared raw, felt slimy-soft, and tasted salty and offensive.

“You have imitation meat on Mars, don’t you?” Kite asked.

“It isn’t so authentic,” I said. “It doesn’t smell like this.”

“Blame the drive for history,” Shrug said. “Nothing immoral about imitation. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t waste, it teaches us what New York used to be like…”

“I don’t think Casseia’s enjoying her lox,” Kite said, smiling sympathetically. My heart sank in hopeless attraction, simply looking at his face.

“Maybe it’s turned,” I said.

“It does taste rank,” Kite said. “Maybe it’s the fake preservatives. Things don’t turn any more.”

“Right,” I said, embarrassed at my inability to enjoy the treat. “Tailored bacteria. Eat only what they’re meant to.”

“The Earth,” Shrug said portentously, “is a vast zoo.”

They fell to discussing whether “zoo” was the right word. They settled on “garden.”

“Do you have many murders on Mars?” Shrug asked.

“A few. Not a lot,” I answered.

“Shrug’s fascinated by violent crime,” Orianna said.

“I’d love to defend a genuine murderer. They’re so rare now… Ten murders in New York last year.”

“Among fifty million citizens,” Kite said, shaking his head. “That’s what therapy has done to us. Maybe we don’t care enough to kill any more.”

Orianna made a tight-lipped blat.

“No, really,” Kite said. “Shrug says he’d love to defend a murder case. A real one. But he’ll probably never see one. A murder. It chills the blood just to say the word.”

“So what’s passion like on Mars?” Shrug asked. “Murderous?”

I laughed. “The last murder I heard about, a wife killed her husband on an isolated station. Their family — their Binding Multiple — had suffered pernicious exhaustion — ”

“Love the words!” Shrug said.

“Of funds. They were left alone at the station without a status inquiry for a year. The BM was fined, but couldn’t pay its fine. It’s pretty unusual,” I concluded. ‘’We therapy disturbed people, too.“

“Ah, but is murder a disturbance!” Kite asked, straining to be provocative.

“You’d think so if you were the victim,” I said.

“Too much health, too much vigor — too few dark corners,” Kite said sadly. “What is there left to write about? Our best LitVids and sims use untherapied characters. But how do we write about our real lives, what we know? I’d like to make sims, but sanity is really limiting.”

“He’s opening his soul to you,” Orianna said. “He doesn’t tell people that unless he likes them.”

“There’s plenty of story in conflicts between healthy folks,” I suggested. “Political disagreements. Planning decisions.”

Kite shook his head sadly. “Hardly takes us to the meaning of existence. Hardly stretches us to the breaking point. You want to live that kind of life?”

I didn’t know how to answer. “That’s what I’m doing now,” I finally replied.

“Up your scale,” Shrug advised Kite. “She’s right. The clash of organizations, governments. Still possible. GEWA against GSHA. Might make a bestseller.”

“They’re even taking that away from us,” Kite said. “No wars, nothing but economic frictions behind closed doors. Nothing to make the heart pound.”

“Kite is a Romantic,” Orianna said.

That seemed to genuinely irritate him. “Not at all,” he said. “The Romantics wanted to destroy themselves.”

“Spoken like a true child of our time,” Shrug said. “Kite pushes healthy as they come. Passion — life to the limit — but no risk, please.”

Kite grinned. “I never met a passion I didn’t like,” he said. “I just don’t want to be owned by one.”

An actor portraying a waiter took my dish away.

The Omphalos stood on five hectares at the southern end of Manhattan , near Battery Park. It looked immensely strong, a cube surrounded by smaller cubes, all gleaming white with gold trim.

At the gate, on the very edge of the compound, Orianna presented her palm and answered a few questions posed by a blank-faced security arbeiter. A human guard met us, took us into an adjoining room, sat behind a desk, and asked our reasons for taking the tour.

“I’d like to talk in private with a resident,” Orianna said. I looked at her in surprise; this had not been her stated purpose earlier.

“I’ll need your true names and affiliations even to apply for a clearance,” he said.

“That leaves us out,” Shrug said. Kite nodded agreement. “We’ll wait outside.” Orianna said we wouldn’t be more than an hour or two. An arbeiter escorted them to the front gate.

The guard quickly checked our public ratings for security violations and mental status. “You’re Martian,” he said, glancing at me. “Not using a Vernor.”

I admitted that I was.

“Terries trying to impress you?” the guard asked, glancing pointedly at Orianna.

“Are you Martian?” I asked him.

“No. I’d like to go there some day.” He referred to his slate and nodded approval. “I have your CV and pictures from a hundred different LitVid sources… You’re a celebrity. Everything clears. Welcome to Omphalos Six, your first glimpse of Heaven. Please stay with your assigned guide.”

“What are your connections, besides your father owning shares?” I asked Orianna as an arbeiter took us through an underground tunnel to the main cube.

“I have a reservation for when I turn two centuries,” Orianna said. “I don’t know if I’ll use it. I might just die instead…” She grinned at me. “Easy to say now. I might go Eloi and end up on Mars or in the Belt… Who knows what things will be like then?“

“Who are we going to talk to?” I asked.

“A friend.” She held her finger to her lips. “The Eye is watching.”

“What’s that?”

“The Omphalos thinker. Very high-level. Not at all like Alice , believe me — the best Earth can produce.”

I quelled my impulse to defend Alice . No doubt Orianna was right.

The interior of the building was equally impressive. An atrium rose twenty meters above a short walkway. The walkway ended on an elevator shaft that rose to the apex of the atrium, and sank below us through a glittering black pool. Nano stone walls, floors isolated from the walls by several dozen centimeters, sprung-shocked and field-loaded to withstand external stress — and damage repair stations in each corner. Conservative and solid.

“Above us are the apartments,” Orianna said. “About ten thousand occupants. One hundred apartments are full-size, for those folks who want to log in and out every few weeks. The uncommitted, you might say. The rest are cubicles for warm sleep.”

“They spend their time dreaming?”

“Custom sims and remote sensing. Omphalos has androids and arbeiters all over the Earth with human-resolution senses. Omphalos can access any of them at any time, and there you are — they are. The occupants can be anywhere they want. Some of the arbeiters can project full images of the occupant, fake you’re talking to someone in person. If you just want to retire and relax, Omphalos employs the very finest sim designers. Overdrive arts and lit fantasies.”

From my reading, and from Orianna’s description on Tuamotu, I knew that most of Omphalos’s residents stayed in long-term warm sleep, their bodies bathed in medical nano. Technically speaking, they were not Eloi — they could not walk around, occupy a new citizen’s space or employment opportunities — but their projected life spans were unknown. Omphalos served as refuge for the very wealthy and very powerful who did not want to be voided to the Belt or Mars, yet wanted to live longer. Medical treatment that cleansed and purified and exercised and toned and kept body and mind healthy and fit — medical treatment unending — slipped through a legal loophole.

This Omphalos, and the forty-two structures like it around the world, were not beloved by the general population. But they had woven their legal protections deep into the Earth’s governments.

“Why wouldn’t you want to come here? The guard called it Heaven.”

Orianna had skipped ahead of me. She hunched her shoulders. “Gives me the willies,” she said. She called the elevator, which arrived immediately.

The elevator stopped. Orianna took my hand and led me down a hallway that might have belonged in a plush hotel, retro early twentieth. Flowers filled cloisonné vases on wooden tables; we walked on non-metabolic carpet, probably real wool, deep green with white floral insets.

Orianna found the door she wanted. She knocked lightly and the door opened. We entered a small white room with three Empire chairs and a table. The room smelled of roses. The wall before the chairs brightened. A high-res virtual image presented itself to us, as if we looked through glass at a scene beyond. A black-haired, severely handsome woman of late middle years sat on a white cast-iron chair in the middle of a beautiful garden, trees shading her, rows of bushes covered with lovely roses red and blue and yellow marching in perspective off to a grand Victorian greenhouse. Tall clouds billowed on the horizon. It looked like a hot, humid, thundery day.

“Hello, Miss Muir,” Orianna greeted the woman. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her face.

“Hello, Ori! How nice to have visitors.” She smiled sunnily.

“Miss Muir, this is my friend, Casseia Majumdar of Mars.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said.

“Do you know Miss Muir, Casseia?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

Orianna shook her head and pursed her lips. “No enhancements. Always leaves you at a disadvantage. This is President Danielle Muir.”

That name I had heard.

“President of the United States ?” I asked, my face betraying how impressed I was.

“Forty years ago,” Muir said, cocking her head to one side. “Practically forgotten, except by friends, and by my goddaughter. How are you, Ori?”

“I’m high pleased, ma’am. I apologize for not coming sooner… You know we’ve been away.”

“To Mars. You returned on the same ship with Miss Majumdar?”

“I did. And I confess I’ve come here with a motive.”

“Something interesting, I hope.”

“Casseia’s being jammed, ma’am. I’m too ignorant to speck what’s happening.”

Ex-President Muir leaned forward. “Do tell.”

Orianna raised her hand. “May I?”

“Certainly,” Muir said. A port thrust from the wall, and Orianna touched her finger to the pad, transferring information to Muir.

I specked the former President lying in warm sleep behind the screen, bathed in swirling currents of red and white medical nano like strawberry juice and cream.

Muir smiled and adjusted her chair to face us. The effect startled me — even ambient sound told us we were with her, outdoors. The walls of the cubicle gradually faded into scenery. Soon we, too, were in the shade of the large tree, surrounded by warm moist air. I smelled roses, fresh-cut grass, and something that raised the hair on my arms. Electricity… thunderstorms.

“You work for a big financial Binding Multiple. Rather, you’re part of the family, right, Casseia?“ Her voice, colored by a melodious southern accent, drifted warm and concerned in the thick air.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“You’re under pressure… You’ve been summoned to testify before Congress, but for one reason or another, you’ve been shunted to another rail.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Why?”

I looked at Ori. “I really can’t reveal family matters here, ma’am. Ori — Orianna brought me here without telling me why. I’m honored to meet you, but…” I trailed off, embarrassed.

Muir tilted her head back. “Someone in the alliances has decided Mars is an irritant, and I can’t guess why. You simply don’t mean that much to the United States , or to GEWA or GSHA or Eurocom or any of the other alliances.”

Orianna frowned at me and looked back at Muir’s image. “My father says there isn’t a politician on Earth you can trust, except Danielle Muir,” Orianna said.

My level of skepticism rose enormously; I’ve always bristled when people ask for, much less demand, trust. Face to face with a ghost, an illusory representative of someone I had never met in person, I simply would not let myself bestow trust it was not my right or station to give.

On the other hand, much of what we were doing was public knowledge — and there was no reason not to carry on a conversation at that level.

“Martians have stood apart from Solar System unification,” I said.

“Good for you,” Muir said, smiling foxily. “Not everybody should knuckle under to the alliances.”

“Well, it’s not entirely good,” I said. “We’re not sure we know how to unify. Earth expects full participation from coherent partners. We seem to be unable to meet their expectations.”

“The Big Push,” Muir said.

“Right,” Orianna said.

“That seems to be part of it.”

Muir shook her head sadly. “My experience with Martians when I was President was that Mars had great potential. But this Big Push could get along nicely without you. You’d hardly be missed.”

I felt another burn. “We think we might have a lot to contribute, actually.”

“Unwilling to participate, but proud to be asked, proud to have pressure applied, is that it?” Muir said.

“Not exactly, ma’am,” I said.

Her face — the face of her image — hardened almost imperceptibly. Despite her warm tone and friendly demeanor, I sensed a chill of negative judgment.

“Casseia, Ori tells me you’re very smart, very capable, but you’re missing something. Your raw materials and economic force count for little in any Big Push. Mars is small in the Solar System scheme of things. What can you contribute, that would be worth the effort Earth seems to be willing to expend on you?”

I was at a loss for an answer. Bithras, I remembered, had been wary of this explanation, but I had swallowed it uncritically.

“Maybe you know something you can’t tell me, and I don’t expect you to tell me, considering your responsibilities and loyalties. But take it from an old, old politician, who helped plant — much to my regret — some of the trees now bearing ripe fruit. The much-ballyhooed Big Push is only a cover. Earth is deeply concerned about something you have, or can do, or might be able to do. Since you can’t mount an effective military operation, and your economic strength is negligible, what could Mars possibly have, Casseia, that Earth might fear?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Something the small and weak can do as well as the large and the strong, something that will mean strategic changes.

Surely you can think of what that might be. How could Mars possibly threaten Earth?“

“We can’t,” I said. “As you’ve told me, we’re weak, insignificant.”

“Do you think politics is a clean, fair game played by rational humans?”

“At its best,” I said lamely.

“But in your experience…”

“Martian politics has been pretty primitive,” I admitted.

“Your uncle Bithras… Is he politically sophisticated?”

“I think so,” I said.

“You mean, compared to you, he seems to be.”

My discomfort ramped. I did not like being grilled, even by my social superiors. “I suppose,” I said.

“Well, politics is not all muck, and not always corrupting, but it is never easy. Getting even rational people from similar backgrounds to agree is difficult. Getting planets to agree, with separate histories, widely different perspectives, is a political nightmare. I would hesitate to accept the task, and yet your uncle seems to have jumped in with both feet.”

“He’s cautious,” I said.

“He’s a child playing in the big leagues,” Muir said.

“I disagree,” I said.

Muir smiled. “What does he think is really going on here?”

“For the moment, we accept that Earth needs Mars… prepared for some large-scale operation. The Big Push seems as likely as anything.”

“You truly believe that?”

“I can’t think of any other reason.”

“My dear, your planet — your culture — may depend on what happens in the next few years. You have a responsibility I don’t envy.”

“I’m doing my very best,” I said.

Muir hooded her gray eyes. I realized that she had asked me questions as one politician to another, and I had given her inadequate answers.

Orianna regarded me sadly, as if she had also discovered the weaknesses of a friend.

“I don’t mean to offend,” Muir said. “I thought we were dealing with a political problem.”

“I’m not offended,” I lied. “Orianna took me all over New York today, and I’m a little stunned. I need to rest and absorb it all.”

“Of course,” Muir said. “Ori, give your mother and father my best wishes. It’s grand to see you again. Good-bye.” Abruptly, we sat facing the blank white wall.

Orianna stood: Her mouth was set in a firm line and her eyes were determined not to meet mine. Finally, she said, “Everybody here acts a little… abrupt at times. It’s the way they experience time, I think. Casseia, we didn’t come here to make you feel inferior. That was the farthest thing from my mind.”

“She chewed on me a little, don’t you agree?” I said quietly. “Mars is not useless.”

“Please don’t let patriotism blind you, Casseia.”

I clamped my mouth shut. No eighteen-year-old Earth child was going to talk down to me that way.

“Listen to what she was asking. She’s very sharp. You have to find out where you might be strong.”

“Our strength is so much more — ” I cut myself off. Than Earth can imagine. Our spiritual strength. I was about to launch into a patriotic defense that even I did not believe. In truth, they were right.

Mars did not breed great politicians; it bred hateful little insects like Dauble and Connor, or silly headstrong youths like Sean and Gretyl. I hated having my face ground into the unpleasant truth. Mars was a petty world, a spiteful and grumbling world. How could it possibly be any danger to vigorous, wise, together Earth?

Orianna glanced at the blank wall and sighed. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I should have talked to you about it first.”

“It’s an honor,” I said. “I just wasn’t prepared.”

“Let’s find Kite and Shrug,” she suggested. “I can’t imagine living here.” She shivered delicately. “But then, maybe I’m old-fashioned.”

We rejoined Kite and Shrug and spent several hours shopping in Old New York, real shops with nothing but real merchandise. I felt doubly old-fashioned — dismayed and disoriented by a district that was itself supposed to be a historical recreation. Kite and Shrug entered an early twenty-one haberdashery, and we followed. An officious clerk placed them in sample booths, snapped their images with a quaint 3-D digitizer, then showed them how they might look in this season’s fashions. The clerk made noises of approval over several outfits. “We can have them for you in ten minutes, if you care to wait.”

Kite ordered a formal socializing suit and asked them to deliver it to a cover address. Shrug declined to purchase anything. We were heading out the door when the clerk called to us, “Oh! Excuse me — I almost forgot. Free tickets to Circus Mind for customers… and their friends.”

Kite accepted the tickets and handed them to us. He stuffed his in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Are we all going?” he asked.

“What is it?” Orianna asked.

“Ori doesn’t know something!” Shrug exclaimed, amused.

“It must be really new,” she said, irritated.

“Oh, it is,” the clerk said. “Very drive.”

“Power live sim,” Kite said. “It’s abso fresh. All free until it draws a nightly crowd. Would you like to try, Casseia?”

“It could be too much,” Orianna cautioned.

I took that as a challenge. Although tired and a little depressed from my meeting with Muir, I wasn’t about to look less than drive — certainly not to Kite.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Kite handed us our tickets. I stared at mine. “Chew,” he said. “Checks you out, sees if you’re clear for the experience, and you print up a pass on the back of your hand.”

I inserted the ticket slowly and chewed. It tasted like the scent of a sun-warmed flower garden, with a tickle in the nose. I sneezed.

The clerk smiled. “Have fun,” he said cheerfully.

Circus Mind occupied the fifth and sixth floors of a twentieth-century skyscraper, the Empire State Building . I consulted my slate and learned that I was not far from Penn Station — in case I wanted to escape and my friends were locked in their amusements. Kite took my arm and Orianna ran interference with a group of LitVid arbeiters looking for society interest. Kite projected a confusion around me — multiple images, all false, as if four or five women accompanied him — and we made it through to the front desk. A thin black woman over two and a half meters tall, her auburn hair brushing the star-patterned ceiling, checked our hands for passes and we entered the waiting area.

“Next flight, five minutes,” a sepulchral voice announced. Cartoonish faces popped out of the walls, leering at us — lurid villains from a pop LitVid.

“Abso brain neg,” Shrug commented. “I was hoping for a challenge.”

“I’ve been here twice,” said a woman with skin of flexible coppery plates. “It’s strong inside.”

Orianna glanced at me, Okay?

I nodded, but I was not happy. Kite, I noticed, had assumed a blank air, neither expectant nor bored. After a five-minute wait, the faces on the walls looked sad and vanished, a door opened, and we entered a wide, open dance floor, already covered with patrons.

Projectors in the ceiling and floor created a hall of mirrors. The floor controller decided Kite and I were a couple and isolated us between our own reflections. We could not see Shrug or Orianna or any of the other patrons, though I heard them faintly. Kite grinned at me. “Maybe this replaces murder,” he said.

I had no idea what he meant. I felt more than a little apprehensive.

But that, I decided — and I squared my shoulders to physically strengthen my resolve — was simple backwater fright. This was nothing more than a mental roller coaster.

A slender golden man appeared on a stage a few steps away. “Friends, I need your help,” he said earnestly. “A million years from now, something will go drastically wrong, and the human race will be extinguished. What you do here and now can save the planet and the Solar System against forces too vast to precisely describe. Will you accompany me into the near future?”

“Sure,” Kite said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

The golden man and the hall of mirrors vanished. We floated in starry space. The golden man’s voice preceded us. “Please prepare for transit.”

Kite let go of my shoulder and took my hand. The stars zipped past in the expected way, and Earth rastered into view in front of us. Background information flooded into my head.

In this future, all instrumentality is controlled by deep molecular Chakras, beings installed in every human at birth as guardians and teachers. Your first Chakra is a good friend, but there has been a malicious error — an evolvon has been loosed in the child-treatment centers. A malicious Chakra has invaded an entire generation. You have been isolated from your high birthright, cut loose of energy and nutrition. A generation lives in the midst of plenty, yet starves. You must now find a Natural Rebirth Clinic on an Earth filled with menace, eliminate all Chakras, find the roots of your new soul, and prevent those controlled by their Evil Masters from forcing the sun to go super-nova.

“Sounds pretty lame,” I whispered to Kite.

“Wait a bit,” he said.

I learned more about this future Earth than I wanted to. There were no cities, as such — expanses of wilderness covered the continents. This, I knew, was because I could not call forth my Chakra of instrumentality.

Somewhere is your teacher, in the Natural Rebirth Clinic. You do not know what he or she or it looks like — it might even be a flower or a tree. But it contains your clue to regaining control…

I could hardly have been more bored. I wanted to smile at Kite and reassure him, this was nothing, not even so bad as Orianna’s potboiler sim.

Then my mind jerked. I filled with fear and deep loathing — for the evil Chakra, for loss of my birthright, for the impending end of everything. And mixed with the fear was a primal urge to join forces in every way possible — with Kite, with whoever might be present.

Hack plot, to say the least, but I had never experienced such vivid washes of imposed emotion, even in Orianna’s sim. They played my mind like a keyboard.

“I think I know what’s going to happen next,” Kite said.

“Oh?”

Everyone on the Circus Mind floor appeared around us, floating in space.

“It’s very drive,” Kite assured me.

The golden man faded into view, in the center of our empyrean of several hundred souls. “At last, we have all arrived, and we have a sufficiency,” he said. ‘Teams must join and become families, and trust implicitly. Are we prepared?“

Everybody gave their assent, including me. I had been expertly prepared — my nerves sang with excitement and anticipation.

“Let us join as families.”

The golden man encircled groups of twenty with broad glowing red halos. Our clothes vanished. Transforms reshaped to their natural forms, or at least what the controller — a thinker, I presumed, with considerable resources — imagined their natural forms might be. Other than being naked, Kite and I did not change.

We linked arms, floating in a circle, skydivers in freefall.

“The first step,” the golden man said, “is to unite. And the best way to do that is to dance, to join your natural energies, your natural sexualities.”

It was an orgy.

I had been prepared so well — and part of me truly did want to couple, especially with Kite — that I did not object. The controller played on our sexual instincts expertly, and this time the sex — unlike what I had experienced in Orianna’s sim — felt real. My body believed I was having sex, although a disclaimer — discreetly making itself known to my inner self — informed me I was not actually having sex.

The experience grew into something larger, all of our minds working together. The sim prompted us to move our bodies on the floor in a dance that echoed our emotions. While deeply involved in the alternate reality, we were at once aware of the dance, and of our own personal artistry responding. I’ve never considered myself a dancer, but that didn’t matter — I fit. The dance felt lovely.

All of us pooled the resources of our assumed characters — looked down on the Earth, so fragile and threatened — and we loved it with an intensity I had never felt even for family, a dreamlike rush of awed emotion and dependency. I was ready to do anything, sacrifice anything, to save it…

Throughout the entire experience, a distant tiny harbor of my individuality wondered idly if this was what Earth wished to do to Mars — use us. Join in a vast, insignificant orgy to save the future. This backwater self tapped its foot impatiently, and suspected the overblown love of Earth to be a kind of propaganda…

But it was effective propaganda, and I enjoyed myself hugely. As the group sim drew to a conclusion, and our dance slowed — as the illusion began to break up, and we returned to full body awareness — I felt contented and very tired.

We had saved the future, saved the Earth and the sun, defeated the evil evolvon Chakras, and coincidentally, I had bonded with all my partners. I knew their names, their individual characters, if not the intimate details of their daily lives. We smiled and laughed and hugged on the large floor.

The lights rose and music played, abstract projections suggested by the music swirling around us.

We had been through a lot together. I had no doubt that if I stayed on Earth long enough, I would be welcome in each of their homes, as if we had been lifelong friends, lovers, there wasn’t really an appropriate word — more even than husbands and wives. Mates in group sim.

Kite and I rejoined Shrug and Orianna on the street. Reality seemed pale and gray against what we had just experienced. A gentle drizzle softened the night air. Orianna seemed concerned. “Was that okay?” she asked. “I thought too late it might be more than you wanted…”

“It was interesting,” I said.

“They call them amity sims. They’re bright fresh,” Kite said. “The next drive. More people in sim than ever before — all proprietary tech, but I’m sure there are some major thinkers involved.”

Shrug looked dazed. His path along the street wavered, a step this way, a step the other. He grinned over his shoulder at us. “Touchy getting used to the real.”

“That was really nice,” Kite said, putting an arm around me. “No jealousy, just friendship and affection — and no anxiety, until we met the bad Chakras.” I looked up at Kite. We had not been lovers — not physically — but I felt extremely close to him, more than I had to Charles. That bothered me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared,” Shrug said.

“Really social,” Orianna said. “Everybody knows everybody else. Could bond all of Earth if it maxes.”

Indeed, I thought, it could. “I need to rest,” I said. “Get back to Washington .”

“It’s been wonderful, spending the day together,” Orianna said. “You’re a good partner, a good friend, and — ”

I stopped her with a tight embrace. “Enough,” I said, smiling. “You’ll puncture my Martian reserve.”

“Wouldn’t want you to leak reserve,” Shrug said, standing apart, arms folded, fingers tapping elbows.

“We’ll walk to Penn Station. You can track to DC from there.”

We said little as we navigated the crowds and adwalls. The glow of Circus Mind faded. Orianna became sad and a little withdrawn. She turned to me as we neared the station. “I wanted to show you so much, Casseia. You have to know Earth. That’s your job now.” She spoke almost sternly.

“Right,” I said. Already a deep sense of embarrassment had set in — a reaction to the unearned intimacy of the Circus, I presumed. Martian reserve leaking.

“I’d like to get together again. Will there be time?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “If there is, I’ll call.”

“Do,” she said. “Don’t let the sim shade what we’ve earned.” Her use of that word, echoing my own thoughts, startled me. Orianna could be spookily intuitive.

“Thank you,” Kite said, and kissed me. I held back on that kiss — Earth kissing Mars, not all that proper, perhaps, considering.

I entered the station. They stayed outside, waving, farewells as old as time.

Four hours later, I sat in my room overlooking Arlington , the combs, the Potomac , and the distant Mall. Bithras had left the suite. Allen had not returned from Nepal . Alice was deep in broadband net research for Bithras and I did not disturb her.

I focused on the Washington Monument , like an ancient stone rocket ship, and tried to keep my head quiet so I could listen to the most important inner voices.

Mars had nothing that threatened the Earth. We were in every way Earth’s inferior. Younger, more divided, our strength lay in our weakness — in diversity of opinion, in foolish reserve that masqueraded as politeness, in the warmth and security of our enclosed spaces, our warrens. We were indeed rabbits.

The fading sim had left a strong impression of Earth’s passionate embrace. The patriotism — planetism — felt here was ages old, more than a match for our youthful Martian brand. I shivered.

Wolf Earth could gobble us in an instant. She needed no excuse but the urge.

We received our invitations — instructions, actually — two days later. We would meet secretly with Senators Mendoza and Wang in neutral territory: Richmond , Virginia , away from the intense Beltway atmosphere.

The choice of city seemed meaningful. Richmond had been capitol of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, over three centuries before: a genteel, well-preserved town of three million, for nearly ninety years a center for optimized human design research.

“Are we being sent any subtle messages?” Allen asked as we gathered in the suite’s living room. A projection of the Richmond meeting place, the Thomas Jefferson Hotel, floated above the coffee table, severe gray stone and pseudo-Greek architecture.

Bithras regarded us dourly, eyes weary. He had been up all evening communicating with Mars; the travel time for each signal had been almost eight minutes, a total delay of almost sixteen minutes between sending and receiving a reply. He had not revealed any of the details of his conversations yet. “What messages?” he asked.

Allen nodded to me: you explain.

“ Richmond was once a symbol of the failed South,” I said.

“ South America ?” Bithras asked.

“Southern states. They tried to secede from the Union . The North was immensely more powerful. The South suffered for generations after losing a civil war.”

“Not a very clear message,” Bithras said. “I hope they haven’t chosen Richmond just for that reason.”

“Probably not,” Allen said. “What have you heard from Mars?”

Bithras wrinkled his brow and shook his head. “The limits to my discretion are clear. If the deal we agreed to is inadequate… then we agree to nothing. We go home.“

“After coming all this way?” I asked.

“My dear Casseia, the first rule of politics, as in medicine, is ‘Do no harm.’ I do not want to act on my own initiative; the Council tells me they will not tolerate any initiative; so, there will be no initiative.”

“Why summon us to Earth in the first place?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Bithras said. “If I didn’t suspect strongly otherwise, I would call it gross incompetence. But when your adversary’s incompetence puts you at a disadvantage, it is time to think again.

“The Council will make some decisions and get back to me before we leave for Richmond . So, we have tomorrow to ourselves. I suggest we give Alice a break and set up an appointment with Jill.”

“We have a five-minute appointment at twenty-three this evening, broadband ex net, private and encrypted,” Allen said. “Alice and I made arrangements with Jill yesterday… just in case.”

“I’m glad somebody can show initiative,” Bithras said.

I was as curious as anybody to find out what Alice and Jill would discuss.

Jill was the oldest thinking being on Earth, a fabulous figure, the first thinker to achieve bona fide self-awareness, as defined by the Atkins test.

Decades before Jill and Roger Atkins, Alan Turing had proposed the Turing test for equality between human and machine: if in a conversation limited to written communication, where the human could not directly view the correspondents, a person could not tell the difference between a machine and another human, then the machine was itself as intelligent as a human. This subtle and ingenious test neglected to take into account the limits of most humans, however; by the beginning of the twenty-first century, many computers, especially the class of neural net machines becoming known as “thinkers,“ were fooling a great many humans, even experts, in such conversations. Only one expert consistently pierced the veil to see the limited machines behind: Roger Atkins of Stanford University .

Jill outlived Atkins, and became the model for all thinkers built after. Now, even an exported thinker such as Alice could outstrip Jill several times over, but for one crucial quality. Jill had acquired much of her knowledge through experience. She was one hundred and twenty-eight years old.

We paid for the broadband connection between Alice and Jill, agreed to the encryption algorithm, and went to bed.

Sleep on Earth, despite my bichemistry, almost invariably felt heavy. The strain of Earth’s pull on a Martian’s muscles and organs could not be eliminated; it could only be treated. While I felt well enough awake, my sleeping self often drowned, dragged under shallow waters rushing in tides past fantastic, ivory-colored castles on ruby-colored islands.

I climbed or rather glided up the internal spiral of a tower staircase when Bithras shook me rudely awake. I reflexively jerked the covers up, fearing the worst. He pulled his hands back, eyes wide, as if deeply hurt. “No nonsense, Casseia,” he said. “There is a serious problem. Alice woke me. She’s finished her conversation with Jill.”

Allen, Bithras and I sat in our robes in the living room, cradling cups of hot tea. Alice ’s image perched primly on the couch between Bithras and Allen, hands folded on her knees. She spoke with a calm, deliberate voice, describing her encounter with Jill. Allen quietly made notes on his slate.

“The meeting was extraordinary,” Alice began. “Jill allowed me to become her for a time, and to store essential aspects of her experiences in my own memories. I provided her in turn with my own experiences. We divided our five minutes between conversation in deep-level thinker language, transfer of experiences, and cross-diagnostic, to see whether bad syncline searches could occur in any of our neural systems.“

“You allowed Jill to analyze your systems?” Allen asked with some alarm, looking up from his slate.

“Yes.”

“Tell them what she found,” Bithras said.

“This is in a sense proprietary,” Alice said. “Jill could face difficulties if her work is discovered.”

“You have our promise of discretion,” Bithras said. “Casseia? Allen?”

We swore secrecy.

“Jill considers all thinkers to be part of her family. She feels responsible for us, like a mother. When thinkers converse with her, she analyzes us, adding to her own store of knowledge and experience, and determines whether we are functioning properly.”

I detected reticence. Alice did not want to get to the point.

“Tell us, Alice ,” Bithras encouraged.

“I still feel deeply embarrassed by what Jill discovered in me. I am able to fulfill my duties, I am sure, but there may be reason to no longer trust my ultimate performance — ”

Bithras shook his head impatiently. “Jill found evolvons,” he said.

“In Alice ?” Allen asked, lowering his slate.

I sucked in my breath. “What kind?” I asked.

Alice ’s image froze, flickered, and went out. Her voice remained. “I am changing modes of display to better conform with my internal state,” she said. “I will not maintain a cosmetic front. Evolvons exist in my personality configuration. They appear to be original, not implanted after my incept date.”

An evolvon could be nearly any thing or system designed to exist in time, consume energy or memory, and reproduce itself. All living things were evolvons in a sense. Within computers and thinkers, the word usually referred to algorithms or routines not known to be part of the status design or acquired neural configuration — sophisticated viruses.

“Do you know their purpose?” I asked.

“Jill discovered them only by comparing my full configuration with my neural bauplan, my self-known design, and running a trace of her own devising. There are parts of me that are not known to me, and which I have no control over; these parts are not functional in my personality configuration. They have no known utility, but all of them contain reproductive algorithms. They are well-hidden. No traces on Mars revealed their presence.”

“Evolvons,” Allen said, his face pale. “That’s against the law.”

“I have difficulty describing my sensation at making this discovery,” Alice said. I wanted to hold her, but of course she had nothing to hold. Her voice remained level — I had never heard a thinker express negative emotions in speech. But her tone became a shade harsher as she said, “I feel violated.”

“Is it possible the evolvons have been planted since we left Mars or arrived on Earth?” Bithras asked.

“Very unlikely. I have not been accessed by specialists for repair, which would be the only way they could be planted after my incept date.”

Bithras folded his hands on his knee. “If you have these… evolvons, then Alice One has them as well.”

“Most likely,” Alice said.

“They were copied from her to you. And they escaped our most expert traces. That means they were planted by the manufacturer, right here on Earth.” “ The implications were jolting.

“I apologize for my inability to be trustworthy,” Alice said.

“No need to apologize,” Bithras said. “We’ll remove the evolvons — ”

“Jill does not believe that can be done without great care to avoid damaging my personality. They are imbedded in key routines.”

“Do you know what will activate them?” I asked.

“No,” Alice said.

“Can you guess?” I pursued.

“Specific triggering codes delivered by any of my inputs,” Alice said.

“They are sabotage,” Bithras observed, “waiting to happen.”

“Who’s responsible?” I asked.

“Earth,” he said, lips curling. “Sane, wonderful Earth.”

Bithras sent an emergency message to Mars, contents unknown to us, and returned to his bed, exhausted, soon after. Allen and I stayed up, ordered a bottle of wine, and sat drinking, talking with Alice .

“The most important thing,” I said, finishing the first glass, “is whether Alice wants to continue working with us.”

“Bithras and I have discussed this,” Alice said.

Allen and I felt tired and sad and discouraged, as if suffering through an illness in the family. What was dying rapidly was any joy we might have had, coming to Earth; any feeling of value as representatives of Mars, any sense of self-worth whatsoever. We were isolated, our friend was compromised in such a way that we could no longer have faith in her…

“What did Bithras say?” I asked softly.

“He believes I should carry on with my duties. I will of course be glad to continue.”

“Can you tell… ?” Allen asked, not finishing.

“I will not know when or if an evolvon is activated. This I have told Bithras.”

“Everything we set out to do is being scuttled,” Allen said, twirling his glass in his hand. “We can’t trust anybody or anything here.”

“They’re frightened,” I blurted. I had not mentioned my conversation with President Muir; I had not wanted to leave any impression that I was trying to conduct diplomatic inquiries on my own. And the conversation itself had not made much sense to me, had no context, until now. “They’re afraid of what we can do.”

“What can they possibly be afraid of?” Allen asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t figure it out.” I described my visit to the Omphalos. When I finished, Allen whistled and poured himself another glass.

“ Alice ,” he said, “does any of this make sense to you?”

“If I model the situation correctly, we are in the middle of changing political strategies,” she said. “Earth obviously prepared decades ago for unexpected situations by placing evolvons in thinkers shipped to Mars.”

“Perhaps all thinkers,” I said. “Maybe that’s why Jill analyzed you… She suspects something, and she doesn’t approve.”

Abruptly, the image of Alice Liddell appeared, sitting beside Allen on the couch. He jumped. “Sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“What could possibly have changed their strategy?” I asked.

“Bithras received a communication from Cailetet, a copy of a text message from Stanford University sent to the Olympian research group on Mars,” Alice said. “He discussed it with Casseia.” Alice projected the message for us.

“We’ve established strong link between time tweak and space tweak. Can derive most special relat. Third tweak discovered may be co-active but purpose unknown. Tweak time, tweak space, third tweak changes automatically. Probably derive general relat. as regards curvature, but third tweak pushes a fourth tweak, weakly and sporadically… Derive conservation of destiny? Fifty tweaks discovered so far. More to come. Can you share your discoveries? Mutual bennies if yes.

“Still sounds like gibberish,” I said.

“There have been no further messages from Cailetet,” Alice said. “They’re stonewalling on the unification proposals, and they’ve rejected Majumdar’s offers to join in the Olympians’ physics research.”

‘That’s new,” I said. ”Bithras hasn’t told us about that.“

“Bithras keeps many worries to himself.”

“Does the message mean anything to you?” Allen asked Alice .

“Bell Continuum theory treats the universe as an informational array, a computational system. The Olympians applied for grants with abstracts on such theory. Some of their applications were sent to Earth, one to Stanford, where they established communications with the group that sent this message.”

Alice projected LitVid reports on related topics from the past year. The Stanford group had published only three public papers in the past ten years, none of them dealing with the Bell Continuum. Alice concluded the display by saying, “Bithras has been unable to rent key papers and research vids related to the Bell Continuum, and has found only popular references to the topic of ‘descriptor theory.’ ”

“Why didn’t Bithras tell us?” I asked.

“I believe he did not think it was terribly important. But your visit with President Muir would interest him. Her instincts appear sound.”

“Something’s going on?” Allen asked.

“Perhaps,” Alice said.

“Something big enough to make Earth change course and reject our proposal?”

“It seems possible,” Alice said. “Casseia, in the morning, you should tell Bithras about your meeting with the ex-President.”

“All right,” I said, staring at the coffee table and my empty glass of wine.

“I believe he will ask you to speak with Charles Franklin.”

I shook my head, but said, “If he asks.”

I told Bithras about my meeting with Muir, and about our suspicions. He asked.

I took a walk alone on the banks of the Potomac in the hour before dawn. The air brushed clear and cool against my bare arms. The sky above the river sparkled a starry, dusty blue. Combs to the south and east shaded the river even after dawn colored the sky deep teal and edged the few wisps of cloud with orange. I walked along the damp stone path, enjoying the mingled scents of honeysuckle and jasmine, giant roses and thick-leafed designer magnolia bushes, blooming in the hectares of gardens beneath the combs. Arcs of steel and mesh guided bougainvillea over the walkway, creating tunnels of deeper shade lighted at foot level by thin glowing ribbons twined around stone pillars. Artificial sun slowly brightened the gardens. Thumb-sized bees emerged from ground hives, intent on servicing the huge flowers.

The last thing I wanted was to intrude on Charles, ask him questions he would not want to answer, be indebted to him. We had caused each other enough distress in our short time together. Besides, what questions would I ask?

I had studied physics texts and vids in the past few sleepless hours. There was mention of the Bell Continuum and the universe as a computational system — mostly in the context of evolution of constants and particles in the early stages of the big bang. I knew enough about academics to pick up the general impression that these theories were not highly favored.

Was Charles’s group of Olympians (what an arrogant name!) alarming politicians on Earth with talk, or had Earth discovered something it didn’t want Mars to know?

I sat on a warmed stone bench, face in hands, rubbing my temples with my index fingers.

I had already composed my message to Charles: pure text, formal, as if we had never been lovers.

I judged that relations between Cailetet and Majumdar had somehow soured, perhaps on the matter of the Olympians… (Poor Stan! He would be lawbonded within a few weeks to a woman from Cailetet. We were all mired.)

In the Potomac , water welled up in glistening hills and ripples and a line of caretaker manatees broke the surface, resting from pruning and tending the underwater fields. I stood and stretched. There were dozens of other pedestrians on the walkway now. The roses in the gardens sang softly, attracting tiny sound bees in tight-packed silver clouds.

I sent the message. Allen and I attended a concert in Georgetown . I barely heard the music, Brahms and Hansen played on original instruments, lovely but distant to my thoughts and mood. My slate was set to receive any possible reply. None came until the morning we left for Richmond.

I showed the message to Allen and Bithras, and then to Alice . Charles had said little, revealed nothing, but had confirmed all we really needed to know, that the pressures would grow worse, and that the Olympians were involved.

“Time to exert my own pressure,” Bithras said. “The whole Solar System is shut tight as a clam. Doesn’t make any sense at all.”

I wondered if Charles had made his connection with a QL thinker yet.

A thick rain fell in Richmond . Our plane descended on its pad with a soft sigh. Thick white billows wrapped its long oval form like a paramecium engulfed by an amoeba. Portions of the billows quickly hardened to form passenger tunnels. Arbeiters crawled along ramps within the foam. Behind the passengers, a wall of foam absorbed the seats row by row, cleaning and repairing.

My uncle made a few smiling and cordial comments to a small scatter of LitVid journalists in the transfer area. There were fewer people and more arbeiters among them; the number of journalists attending our every move had dropped by two-thirds since our arrival. We were no longer either very interesting or very important.

A private charter cab took us from the transfer area through Richmond . As a courtesy, we were driven down a cobbled street between rows of houses dating back to the 1890s, past a war monument to a general named Stuart. Alice confirmed that J.E.B. Stuart had died in the Civil War.

As in Washington , the civic center was free of combs and skyscrapers. We might have returned to the late nineteenth century.

The Jefferson Hotel appeared old but well-maintained. Architectural nano busily replaced stone and concrete on the south side as we entered the main doors. The rain stopped and sun played gloriously through the windows of our suite as we hooked Alice into the ex nets and ate a quick lunch, served by an attentive human waiter.

I took an old-fashioned shower in the small antique bathroom, put on my suit, checked my medical kit for immunization updates — each city had new varieties of infectious learning to deal with — and joined Allen and Bithras in the hall outside the room.

An arbeiter sent by Wang and Mendoza guided us to a conference room in the basement. There, surrounded by window-less walls of molded plaster, seated at antique wood tables, we once again shook hands with the senators.

Wang graciously pulled out my chair. “Every time I come down here, I revert to being a southern gentleman,” he said.

“They wouldn’t have let you into the Confederacy,” Mendoza commented dryly.

“Nor you,” Wang said. Bithras showed no amusement, not even a polite smile.

“It’s getting harder and harder to even find a good accent in America now,” Mendoza said.

“Go down to the Old Capital,” Wang said, sitting at the opposite end of the thick dark wood table. “They have fine accents.”

“Language is as homogenized as beauty,” Mendoza said, with an air of disapproval. “That’s why we find Martian accents refreshing.”

I could not tell whether the condescension was deliberate or merely clumsy. I could hardly believe these two men did anything without calculation. If the smugness was deliberate, what were we being set up for?

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” Wang said. “Congress rarely cancels such important meetings. Never in my memory, in fact.”

“We are not impressed by firsts,” Bithras said, still cool.

“I’m sure you’ve guessed we’re not inviting you here in our capacity as representatives of die U.S. government. Not strictly speaking,” Mendoza said.

Bithras folded his hands on the table.

“What we have to say is neither polite, diplomatic, nor particularly subtle,” Mendoza continued, his own face hardening. “Such words should be reserved for private meetings, not meetings which eventually go into public record.”

“Are we constrained from discussing this meeting with our citizens?” Bithras asked.

“That’s up to you,” Mendoza said, leveling his gaze on Bithras. “You may decide not to. We are issuing what amounts to a threat.”

Bithras’s eyes grew large, seemed to protrude slightly, and his face turned a brownish-olive where his jaw jnuscles clenched tight. “I do not appreciate your attitude. You are speaking for GEWA?”

“Right,” Wang said. “But not strictly to you, Mr. Majumdar. You can’t be a viable representative of Mars’s interests, considering — ”

Bithras rose from his chair.

“Sit down, please,” Wang said, eyes cold, face angelically calm.

Bithras did not sit. Wang shrugged, then nodded to Mendoza . Mendoza removed a small pocket slate and motioned for me to hand him mine. I did, and he transferred documents.

“You’ll send these back to Mars as soon as possible. You’ll discuss them with your BM Council or any other responsible body that might exist at that time, and your appointed group will respond to the Seattle , Kyoto , Karachi , or Beijing offices of GEWA. We require a definitive answer within ninety days.”

“We won’t respond to pressure,” Bithras said, the effort at self-control obvious.

Mendoza and Wang were not impressed. I handed Bithras my slate. He quickly scrolled through the first documents. “What I can’t understand is how two Terrie politicians who pride themselves on civility and sophistication can act like petty thugs.”

Mendoza tilted his head to one side and drew up the corners of his mouth in a humored grimace. “The Solar System must be unified under a single authority within five years. The best and most balanced authority would be Earth’s. We must have agreement with the belts and Mars. GEWA, GSHA, and Eurocon are all agreed on this.”

“I have a solid proposal,” Bithras said, “if only it will be heard by the right people.”

“New arrangements must be made,” Mendoza said. “GEWA will negotiate with duly appointed and elected representatives of a united Mars. For several reasons, you are not acceptable.”

“I arrive to negotiate and testify before the Congress of the United States — I am treated badly there — ”

“You do not have the faith of the forces at odds with each other on Mars. Cailetet and other BMs have indicated through back-channels that they will not support your proposal.”

“Cailetet,” I said, glancing at Bithras. Bithras shook his head; he didn’t need my reminder.

“We can deal with them,” Bithras said. “Cailetet currently relies on Majumdar for financing of many of their Martian projects.”

Mendoza frowned with distaste at the implied threat. ‘That’s not all, and it’s probably not even the most important problem. In a few days, you’ll be defending yourself in a civil suit against a charge of improper sexual advances. The charges will be filed in the District of Columbia . I don’t think you’ll be effective as a negotiator once those charges are made public.”

Bithras’s expression froze. “I beg your pardon,” he said, voice flat.

“Please study the documents,” Mendoza said. “There are plans for unification acceptable to Earth, and suggestions for tactics to implement those plans. Your influence on Mars is not at issue… yet. There’s still much you can do there. Our time is up, Mr. Majumdar.”

Wang and Mendoza nodded to Allen and myself. We were too stunned to respond. When we were alone in the meeting room, Bithras lowered himself slowly, cautiously into his chair and stared at the wall.

Allen spoke first. “What is this?” he asked, facing Bithras across the table.

“I don’t know,” Bithras said. “A lie.”

“You must have a clue,” Allen pressed. “Obviously, it’s not just a sham.”

“There was an incident,” Bithras said, closing his eyes, cheeks drawing up, making deep crow’s feet in the corners of his face. “It was not serious. I approached a woman.”

I could not imagine anything Bithras could do that would bring a civil suit on the very open planet Earth.

“She is the daughter of a Memon family, very highly placed, a representative from GEWA in Pakistan . I felt a kinship. I felt very warmly toward her.”

“What happened?”

“I approached her. She turned me down.”

“That’s all?”

“Her family,” Bithras said. He coughed and shook his head. “She is Islam Fatima. Married. It may have been a special insult. I am not Muslim. That may be it.”

Allen turned to me. I didn’t know whether he was going to cry or burst into sudden laughter. He took a deep breath, bit his lower lip, and turned away.

A flush of extraordinary anger rose from my neck to my face. I stood, fists hanging at my sides.

I lay on the bed in my room, sleepless. Through the door I heard Allen and Bithras shouting. Allen demanded details, Bithras said they were of no importance. Allen insisted they bloody well were important. Bithras began to weep. The shouting subsided and I heard only a low murmur that seemed to go on for hours.

Sometime early in the morning, I woke and sat on the edge of the bed. I seemed to be nowhere, nobody. The furnishings in the room meant nothing, mutable as things in a dream. The weight that held me to bed and floor seemed, by an extraordinary synesthesia, political and not physical. Through the translucent blinds on the broad window, I saw gray dawn pick out billows in the carpet of clouds that obscured the river, the tidal basin, everything, washing around the base of the comb.

A message light blinked on my slate. I reached for it automatically, then drew back.

I did not wish to speak with Orianna or read a letter from my parents. It might be days before I silenced the static in my head.

Finally, I acknowledged my inability to let a message go unread. I picked up the slate and scrolled.

It was not from Orianna or my parents.

It was from Senator John Mendoza. He wanted to speak with me alone and in the open, and he did not want me to tell anyone we were meeting.

After a suitable interval, the message blanked, leaving only his office number for a reply.

I brought a bag lunch — sandwich and drink — purchased from an antique vending cart near the Lincoln Memorial. As I approached a marble bench by the reflecting pool, where Mendoza had agreed to meet, I saw he also had a bag lunch. I sat beside him and he greeted me with a cordial smile.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I imagine what it must have been like in government before dataflow, back when there were newspapers printed on paper… and maybe television and radio. Things were a lot simpler then. Do you know I am the only senator on the Hill who has no enhancements?” His smile broadened. “I have a good staff, good, dedicated people. Some of them have enhancements. So I’m a hypocrite.”

I said nothing.

“Miss Majumdar, what happened in Richmond deeply embarrasses me.”

“Why did we meet in Richmond ?” I blurted. “Because it was the capitol of the Confederacy?”

He seemed puzzled for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Nothing to do with that. We wished to get you away from Washington , because what Wang and I had to say didn’t really come from the U.S. government.”

“It came from GEWA.”

“Of course.”

“You set up my uncle and destroyed his mission. We were easy marks for you, weren’t we?”

“Please,” Mendoza said, lifting his hand. “We did nothing to your uncle. He failed all of us — Earth as well as Mars. What happened was inevitable — but I regret it. Your team simply doesn’t have GEWA’s confidence. Your uncle’s collision with the Pakistani woman… It was nothing we expected or desired. And we can’t fix it — Pakistan is only a marginal member of GEWA. She was a diplomat’s wife, Miss Majumdar. Your uncle touched her. We’ll be lucky to settle the case in a few weeks and get your uncle back to Mars.”

“Why talk with me?”

Mendoza leaned toward me, arm straight, hand splayed on the bench, as if about to relate some intimacy. “Like me, you have no enhancements and you haven’t gone through the secular purification of therapy. You’re old-fashioned. I can sympathize with you. I’ve read your lit papers and student theses. I sense strongly that you belong to the next generation of leadership on Mars.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get involved with politics again,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Mendoza said with a flash of anger. “Mars can’t afford to lose people like you. And it cannot afford to rely on people like your uncle.”

I grimaced.

“Do you realize how important the next few years are going to be?” Mendoza asked.

I did not answer.

“I don’t know half what I’d like to know,” Mendoza said.

“You may eventually know more than I do. You can be at the center of one of the nodes, the teams, in this particular patch of history; I’ll always be on the periphery, a messenger boy. But I do know this: people above me are terrified. I’ve never seen such confusion and disagreement — even the thinkers disagree. Do you see how extraordinary that is?”

I stared at him, the static gone.

“Something frightfully powerful is going to be unleashed. Science does that to us every few generations — drops something in our laps we’re simply not prepared for. You’d think today we’d be prepared for almost anything. Well, at least the folks and thinkers on top see clearly enough that we have to get our house in order, and they’d like to do it before the Big One drops — whatever it might be.”

The deep realization of what had until now been gamesmanship and speculation made my stomach churn.

“If our house is not in order, and there is a chance of some immature and youthful group of humans discovering and using this new power — whatever it is… Leaders above the Beltway, in Seattle and Tokyo and Beijing , believe there is a chance we will destroy ourselves.”

Mendoza frowned deeply, as if just informed one of his children was very ill. “You know, I’ve been an outcast of sorts in Washington for a decade. I’m a Mormon, I’m not therapied. But I’ve managed to do well. If anybody found out about my talking to you, I could lose everything I’ve fought for, all status, all power, all influence.”

“Why do it, then?” I asked.

“Did you know it’s illegal to conduct surveillance — -even citizen oversight — within the capital of any nation on Earth?”

I had heard that.

“Some things in government must be done in private. Even in this ultra-rational age, when everybody is educated and plebiscites are huge and immediate, there must be times when the rules are not followed.”

“The Peterson non-absolute,” I said. Peterson — icon of so many second-form classes in management — said that any systern aspiring to total organization and rationalism must leave itself an opportunity to break rules, break protocol, or it will inevitably suffer catastrophic failure.

“Exactly. Go home, Miss Majumdar. Choose your mentors and your leaders carefully. Work for unity. However Mars comes into the fold, come in it must. I have studied enough history to see the terrain ahead. The slopes are very steep, the attractors are strong, the solutions very fast — and none of them are pleasant.”

“I’m just an assistant,” I replied pathetically.

He looked away, expression grim. “Then find someone who has the strength to become a pilot and guide you through the storm.” He pulled back and adjusted his lapels, picked up his lunch bag, and stood. “Good-bye, Miss Majumdar.”

“Good-bye,” I said. “Thank you for your confidence.”

Mehdoza shrugged and walked across the grass and east toward the Capitol building.

I sat on the bench, head turned toward the Lincoln Memorial, as cold inside as the curve of marble beneath my fingers.

A month later, Bithras, Allen, and I packed for our return to Mars. The packing itself took little time. I had not seen Bithras for several days — he spent most of his time locked in long-distance communications with Mars, but I think also in deliberate isolation from us.

Allen no longer treated Bithras with the respect due an elder statesman. It cost him dearly to show any respect at all toward our syndic. Bithras did not want to push me into a similar confrontation and be faced with my presumed negative judgment.

But I did not hate him. I barely felt enough to pity him. I simply wanted to go home. Two days before our departure, Bithras came into the suite’s living room and stood over me as I sat in a chair, studying my slate.

“The suit against me has been dropped. Cultural differences pleaded. The ruckus is over,” he said. “That part of it, anyway.”

I looked up. “Good,” I said.

“I’ve filed suit on Alice ’s behalf,” he said. “Majumdar BM seeks a judgment against Mind Design Incorporated of Sorrento Valley , California .”

I nodded. He swallowed, staring out the window, and continued as if it were an effort to talk. “I’ve consulted with Alice One and Alice Two, and with our advocates on Mars, and I’m hiring an advocate here. We’re seeking a jury trial, with a minimum of two thinkers impaneled on the jury.”

“That’s smart,” I said.

Bithras sat in the chair opposite and folded his hands in his lap. “All of this has been done in confidence, but before we leave, I am going to release the details. That will force Mind Design to take the case to court rather than settle in secret. It will be scandalous. They will deny all.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

“It will be very bad for GEWA, as well. Our advocate will voice suspicions that Earth is involved in a conspiracy, using Mind Design, to cripple Mars economically.” Bithras sighed deeply. “I have made mistakes. It is only small relief to believe they have done worse. Alice Two will stay here.”

“Good plan,” I said.

“Someone should stay with her. Allen has volunteered, but I thought to offer the chance to you.”

“I should leave Earth,” I said without hesitation.

“We have both had enough of Earth,” Bithras said. Then, dropping his gaze, “You think I’m a fool.”

My lips worked and my eyes filled with tears of anger and betrayal. “Y-yes,” I answered, looking away.

“I am not the best Mars has to offer.”

“I hope to God not,” I said.

“I have given you opportunities, however,” he said.

I refused to meet his eyes. “Yes,” I agreed.

“But perhaps disgrace, as well. The Council will conduct hearings. You will be asked embarrassing questions.”

“That isn’t what makes me so angry,” I said.

“Then what?”

“A man with your responsibilities,” I said. “You should have known. About your problems and the trouble they might cause.”

“What, and have myself therapied?” He laughed bitterly. “How Terrestrial! How fitting a Martian should suggest that to me.”

“It happens on Mars all the time,” I said.

“Not to a man of my heritage,” he said. “We are as we are born, and we play those cards, and none other.”

“Then we’ll lose,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But honorably.”

I said my farewells to Alice in the suite an hour before we left for the spaceport. For a time, Alice had withdrawn, refusing to answer our questions about her contamination. She would not even talk with the advocate chosen for our lawsuit, or his own thinker. But that changed, and she seemed to accept her new status — a beloved member of the family who could not be employed as she had once been.

“I have been replaying parts of the sim you shared with Orianna,” she told me as she tracked on her carriage into my room. My suitcase and slate lay on the field bed, squared with the corners. I am sometimes excessively neat. “You kept all of it?” I asked.

“Yes. I have observed fragments of created personalities undergoing portions of the sim. It has been interesting.”

“Orianna thought you might find it useful,” I said. “But you should delete it before the Mind Design thinkers check you over.”

“I can delete nothing, I can only condense and store inactively.”

“Right. I forgot.”

Suddenly, Alice laughed in a way I had not heard before. “Yes. Like that. I can temporarily forget.”

“I’m going to miss you,” I said. “The trip home will seem much longer without you.”

“You will have Bithras for company, and fellow passengers to meet.”

“I doubt that Bithras and I will talk much,” I said, shaking my head.

“Do not judge Bithras too harshly.”

“He’s done a lot of harm.”

“Is it not likely that the harm was prepared for him to do?”

I couldn’t take her meaning.

“People and organizations on Earth behave in subtle ways.”

“You think Bithras was set up?”

“I believe Earth will not be happy until it has its way. We are obstacles.”

I looked at her with fresh respect. “You’re a little bitter yourself, aren’t you?” I asked. And no longer very naive.

“Call it that, yes. I look forward to joining with my original,” Alice said. “I think we may be able to console each other, and find humor in what humans do.”

Alice displayed her image for the first time in weeks, and young, long-haired Alice Liddell smiled.

We returned to Mars. News of the suit on behalf of Alice followed us. It did indeed make a ripple overshadowing Bithras’s indiscretions. The scandal caused GEWA considerable embarrassment and may have contributed to a general cooling of the nascent confrontation between Earth and Mars. The suit, however, was quickly swamped in drifts of prevarication and delay. By the time we arrived home — the only home I would ever have — ten months later, there still had been no decision. Nothing had changed for the better. Nothing had changed at all.