Somewhere is your teacher, in the Natural Rebirth Clinic. You do not know what he or she or it looks like — it might even be a flower or a tree. But it contains your clue to regaining control…

I could hardly have been more bored. I wanted to smile at Kite and reassure him, this was nothing, not even so bad as Orianna’s potboiler sim.

Then my mind jerked. I filled with fear and deep loathing — for the evil Chakra, for loss of my birthright, for the impending end of everything. And mixed with the fear was a primal urge to join forces in every way possible — with Kite, with whoever might be present.

Hack plot, to say the least, but I had never experienced such vivid washes of imposed emotion, even in Orianna’s sim. They played my mind like a keyboard.

“I think I know what’s going to happen next,” Kite said.

“Oh?”

Everyone on the Circus Mind floor appeared around us, floating in space.

“It’s very drive,” Kite assured me.

The golden man faded into view, in the center of our empyrean of several hundred souls. “At last, we have all arrived, and we have a sufficiency,” he said. ‘Teams must join and become families, and trust implicitly. Are we prepared?“

Everybody gave their assent, including me. I had been expertly prepared — my nerves sang with excitement and anticipation.

“Let us join as families.”

The golden man encircled groups of twenty with broad glowing red halos. Our clothes vanished. Transforms reshaped to their natural forms, or at least what the controller — a thinker, I presumed, with considerable resources — imagined their natural forms might be. Other than being naked, Kite and I did not change.

We linked arms, floating in a circle, skydivers in freefall.

“The first step,” the golden man said, “is to unite. And the best way to do that is to dance, to join your natural energies, your natural sexualities.”

It was an orgy.

I had been prepared so well — and part of me truly did want to couple, especially with Kite — that I did not object. The controller played on our sexual instincts expertly, and this time the sex — unlike what I had experienced in Orianna’s sim — felt real. My body believed I was having sex, although a disclaimer — discreetly making itself known to my inner self — informed me I was not actually having sex.

The experience grew into something larger, all of our minds working together. The sim prompted us to move our bodies on the floor in a dance that echoed our emotions. While deeply involved in the alternate reality, we were at once aware of the dance, and of our own personal artistry responding. I’ve never considered myself a dancer, but that didn’t matter — I fit. The dance felt lovely.

All of us pooled the resources of our assumed characters — looked down on the Earth, so fragile and threatened — and we loved it with an intensity I had never felt even for family, a dreamlike rush of awed emotion and dependency. I was ready to do anything, sacrifice anything, to save it…

Throughout the entire experience, a distant tiny harbor of my individuality wondered idly if this was what Earth wished to do to Mars — use us. Join in a vast, insignificant orgy to save the future. This backwater self tapped its foot impatiently, and suspected the overblown love of Earth to be a kind of propaganda…

But it was effective propaganda, and I enjoyed myself hugely. As the group sim drew to a conclusion, and our dance slowed — as the illusion began to break up, and we returned to full body awareness — I felt contented and very tired.

We had saved the future, saved the Earth and the sun, defeated the evil evolvon Chakras, and coincidentally, I had bonded with all my partners. I knew their names, their individual characters, if not the intimate details of their daily lives. We smiled and laughed and hugged on the large floor.

The lights rose and music played, abstract projections suggested by the music swirling around us.

We had been through a lot together. I had no doubt that if I stayed on Earth long enough, I would be welcome in each of their homes, as if we had been lifelong friends, lovers, there wasn’t really an appropriate word — more even than husbands and wives. Mates in group sim.

Kite and I rejoined Shrug and Orianna on the street. Reality seemed pale and gray against what we had just experienced. A gentle drizzle softened the night air. Orianna seemed concerned. “Was that okay?” she asked. “I thought too late it might be more than you wanted…”

“It was interesting,” I said.

“They call them amity sims. They’re bright fresh,” Kite said. “The next drive. More people in sim than ever before — all proprietary tech, but I’m sure there are some major thinkers involved.”

Shrug looked dazed. His path along the street wavered, a step this way, a step the other. He grinned over his shoulder at us. “Touchy getting used to the real.”

“That was really nice,” Kite said, putting an arm around me. “No jealousy, just friendship and affection — and no anxiety, until we met the bad Chakras.” I looked up at Kite. We had not been lovers — not physically — but I felt extremely close to him, more than I had to Charles. That bothered me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared,” Shrug said.

“Really social,” Orianna said. “Everybody knows everybody else. Could bond all of Earth if it maxes.”

Indeed, I thought, it could. “I need to rest,” I said. “Get back to Washington .”

“It’s been wonderful, spending the day together,” Orianna said. “You’re a good partner, a good friend, and — ”

I stopped her with a tight embrace. “Enough,” I said, smiling. “You’ll puncture my Martian reserve.”

“Wouldn’t want you to leak reserve,” Shrug said, standing apart, arms folded, fingers tapping elbows.

“We’ll walk to Penn Station. You can track to DC from there.”

We said little as we navigated the crowds and adwalls. The glow of Circus Mind faded. Orianna became sad and a little withdrawn. She turned to me as we neared the station. “I wanted to show you so much, Casseia. You have to know Earth. That’s your job now.” She spoke almost sternly.

“Right,” I said. Already a deep sense of embarrassment had set in — a reaction to the unearned intimacy of the Circus, I presumed. Martian reserve leaking.

“I’d like to get together again. Will there be time?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “If there is, I’ll call.”

“Do,” she said. “Don’t let the sim shade what we’ve earned.” Her use of that word, echoing my own thoughts, startled me. Orianna could be spookily intuitive.

“Thank you,” Kite said, and kissed me. I held back on that kiss — Earth kissing Mars, not all that proper, perhaps, considering.

I entered the station. They stayed outside, waving, farewells as old as time.

Four hours later, I sat in my room overlooking Arlington , the combs, the Potomac , and the distant Mall. Bithras had left the suite. Allen had not returned from Nepal . Alice was deep in broadband net research for Bithras and I did not disturb her.

I focused on the Washington Monument , like an ancient stone rocket ship, and tried to keep my head quiet so I could listen to the most important inner voices.

Mars had nothing that threatened the Earth. We were in every way Earth’s inferior. Younger, more divided, our strength lay in our weakness — in diversity of opinion, in foolish reserve that masqueraded as politeness, in the warmth and security of our enclosed spaces, our warrens. We were indeed rabbits.

The fading sim had left a strong impression of Earth’s passionate embrace. The patriotism — planetism — felt here was ages old, more than a match for our youthful Martian brand. I shivered.

Wolf Earth could gobble us in an instant. She needed no excuse but the urge.

We received our invitations — instructions, actually — two days later. We would meet secretly with Senators Mendoza and Wang in neutral territory: Richmond , Virginia , away from the intense Beltway atmosphere.