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.”