“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.