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.