“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.