“I am incredibly glad to see you,” Charles said.

I made a warm sound and squeezed his hand. “That was Sean,” I said. “Did you see him?”

“Sat with him,” Charles said. “He seems more cheerful than when we last met. He told me to apologize for making stupid accusations against you. He’s going south. I didn’t ask where.”

“That’s nice,” I said, and my face warmed. “Welcome to Jiddah Planum. Accountants, investment analysts, small engineering firms. No fossils to speak of, even Glass Sea .”

“You’re here, and that’s enough,” Charles said. We crossed the walkways to the lounge and booked tickets for the return. Ylla dug into the northern outskirts of Jiddah Planum. Smaller, slower trains fanned from Kowloon to Jiddah and Ylla and even smaller stations east.

Charles’s face seemed thinner. We had been apart for just over a week, yet he had changed drastically in both feature and mood. He held me close as we boarded our train, and fell back into his seat with a sigh. “God, it is good to see you,” he said. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

“I told you in my letters,” I said.

“Tell me in person. I worried, just getting letters.”

“Letters require much more effort,” I said.

“Tell me.”

I told him about applying for a Majumdar apprenticeship. He approved without reservation. “Brave and noble Casseia,” he said. “Go right to the top in the face of tradition.”

“Just my father,” I said. “My mother’s actually pretty neutral about politics.”

“We’re none of us going to be neutral for long,” Charles said. “Klein is wounded. Others are going to be hit next.”

“By Earth? By GEWA?”

He shrugged and looked out the window at the dull ochre prairies and shallow, kilometer-wide valleys and ditches called fossas. “We’re some sort of threat. Nobody seems to know what sort, but they’re using obvious muscle on us. We’re going to the Charter Council next week to ask for solidarity and relief.”

“Relief?” I was incredulous; Martian BMs rarely asked for relief. So much had to be conceded with competing BMs to get inter-family guarantees.

“We’re in big trouble, as I said. I hope Majumdar misses all this.”

“What will you do if you get the Council to call for solidarity? That’s the step before appealing for unified action by all the BMs — ”

“Shh,” he said, holding up a finger. “Don’t use that word, united.” He smiled, but the smile was not convincing.

“How did you get time off to come here?”

“I’ve done my share and more in the planning phase. I have three days before I return.”

“The next eighth at Durrey starts in four days,” I said.

“I’ll have to miss it.”

“You’re quitting school?”

“Family emergency sabbatical,” he said. “I’ll be on call until the crisis passes.”

“That could put you a year behind…”

“Martian year,” Charles said, patting my arm. “I’ll make it. Just my luck to be in a vulnerable BM. If you’re going into high-level govmanagement, maybe we can transfer your contract…”

Suddenly that wasn’t funny. I turned away, unable to hide my irritation, and Charles was dismayed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not being disrespectful. I really wanted to come here and persuade you to… and you said… I know, Casseia, I’m sorry.”

“Never mind.” He was missing the cause of my anger, couldn’t possibly understand — not yet. “We have a lot to talk about, Charles.”

“So serious,” he said. He closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest. “This isn’t going to be a vacation?”

“Of course it is,” I said. That wasn’t quite a lie.

Charles arrived in the middle of a most unusual paucity — most of my blood relations and relations by marriage, who normally trooped through Ylla and our warrens like a herd of friendly cats, had trooped elsewhere, spreading out across Mars on errands or vacations. We would have a rare time of privacy, and neither Charles nor I would have to suffer the staring eyes of curious urchins, impolite questions from my aunts, hints of liaisons from my elder cousins. Even my brother was away. Ylla Station would be empty and quiet, and for this I was supremely grateful.

Ylla occupied sixty hectares of an almost featureless prairie of little interest but for aquifers and solid ice lenses. Prospectors had mapped out a chain of stations along the Athene Aquifer in the first decade of the Mars expansion, thirty years ago; three of a possible six had been built, Ylla the first. It had originally been known as Where’s Ylla.

The lack of sentient Martians had disappointed few. Martian settlers landing on their new home, and taking station assignments, quickly became hard-bitten and practical; it was no picnic. Keeping a station open and staying alive was tough enough in those decades without having to deal with unhappy natives. Still, I had played Ylla as a girl, and my brother had played the defensive Mr. Ttt with his gun of golden bees, stalking human astronauts…

I related much of this nervously to Charles as the small train whined over the ditches and onto the main prairie, trying to keep an appearance of calm when in fact I was miserable. I had asked Charles to come to Ylla to ask him a question I now thought rude and unnecessary; rude, because he would have mentioned his desire to be enhanced had he wished to, and unnecessary, because I was determined to end our brief relationship. But I couldn’t simply tell him on the train.

And I couldn’t tell him at dinner. My parents of course went all-out with this meal, celebrating the first time I had brought a young man to our station.

Father was particularly interested in Charles, asking endless questions about the Terrie embargoes on Klein. Charles answered politely and to the best of his knowledge; there was no reason to keep any of this secret from someone as highly placed as Father.

My parents generally eschewed nano food, preferring garden growth and syn products. We ate potato and syn cheese pie and fruit salad and for desert, my father’s syn prime cheesecake with hot tea. After dinner, we sat in the memory room, small and tightly decorated as most old Mars station rooms are, with the inevitable living shadow box from Earth, the self-cycling fish tank, the small, antique wall-mount projectors for LitVid.

I loved my parents, and what they felt was important to me, but their immediate and natural affection for Charles was distressing. Charles fit right in. He and my father leaned forward in their chairs, almost knocking heads, talking about the possibility of hard financial times ahead, like old friends.

Inevitably, Father asked him what he planned to do with himself.

“A lot of things,” Charles answered. “I’m much too ambitious for a Martian.”

Mother offered him more tea. “We don’t see any reason why Martians shouldn’t be ambitious,” she said, lips pursed as if mildly chiding.

“It’s simply impractical to do what I want to do, here, at this time,” Charles said. He shook his head and grinned awkwardly. “I’m not very practical.”

“Why?” Father asked.

He has come all this way to be with me, I thought, and he spends this time talking with my parents… about what he is going to do in physics.

“Mars doesn’t have the research tools necessary, not yet, perhaps not for decades,” Charles said. “There are only two thinkers on the planet dedicated to physics, and a few dozen barely adequate computers tied up in universities with long waiting lists. I’m too young to get on any of the lists. My work is too primitive. But…” He stopped, hands held in mid-air, parallel to each other, emphasizing his point with a little jerking gesture. “The work I hope to do would take all of Earth’s resources.”

“Then why not go to Earth?” my father asked.

“Why not?” I put in. “It would be a marvelous experience.”

“No chance,” Charles said. “My grades aren’t perfect, my psych evaluations aren’t promising, to work on Earth they make outsiders pass rigid tests… We have to be ten times better than any Terrie.”