“You do not have the faith of the forces at odds with each other on Mars. Cailetet and other BMs have indicated through back-channels that they will not support your proposal.”

“Cailetet,” I said, glancing at Bithras. Bithras shook his head; he didn’t need my reminder.

“We can deal with them,” Bithras said. “Cailetet currently relies on Majumdar for financing of many of their Martian projects.”

Mendoza frowned with distaste at the implied threat. ‘That’s not all, and it’s probably not even the most important problem. In a few days, you’ll be defending yourself in a civil suit against a charge of improper sexual advances. The charges will be filed in the District of Columbia . I don’t think you’ll be effective as a negotiator once those charges are made public.”

Bithras’s expression froze. “I beg your pardon,” he said, voice flat.

“Please study the documents,” Mendoza said. “There are plans for unification acceptable to Earth, and suggestions for tactics to implement those plans. Your influence on Mars is not at issue… yet. There’s still much you can do there. Our time is up, Mr. Majumdar.”

Wang and Mendoza nodded to Allen and myself. We were too stunned to respond. When we were alone in the meeting room, Bithras lowered himself slowly, cautiously into his chair and stared at the wall.

Allen spoke first. “What is this?” he asked, facing Bithras across the table.

“I don’t know,” Bithras said. “A lie.”

“You must have a clue,” Allen pressed. “Obviously, it’s not just a sham.”

“There was an incident,” Bithras said, closing his eyes, cheeks drawing up, making deep crow’s feet in the corners of his face. “It was not serious. I approached a woman.”

I could not imagine anything Bithras could do that would bring a civil suit on the very open planet Earth.

“She is the daughter of a Memon family, very highly placed, a representative from GEWA in Pakistan . I felt a kinship. I felt very warmly toward her.”

“What happened?”

“I approached her. She turned me down.”

“That’s all?”

“Her family,” Bithras said. He coughed and shook his head. “She is Islam Fatima. Married. It may have been a special insult. I am not Muslim. That may be it.”

Allen turned to me. I didn’t know whether he was going to cry or burst into sudden laughter. He took a deep breath, bit his lower lip, and turned away.

A flush of extraordinary anger rose from my neck to my face. I stood, fists hanging at my sides.

I lay on the bed in my room, sleepless. Through the door I heard Allen and Bithras shouting. Allen demanded details, Bithras said they were of no importance. Allen insisted they bloody well were important. Bithras began to weep. The shouting subsided and I heard only a low murmur that seemed to go on for hours.

Sometime early in the morning, I woke and sat on the edge of the bed. I seemed to be nowhere, nobody. The furnishings in the room meant nothing, mutable as things in a dream. The weight that held me to bed and floor seemed, by an extraordinary synesthesia, political and not physical. Through the translucent blinds on the broad window, I saw gray dawn pick out billows in the carpet of clouds that obscured the river, the tidal basin, everything, washing around the base of the comb.

A message light blinked on my slate. I reached for it automatically, then drew back.

I did not wish to speak with Orianna or read a letter from my parents. It might be days before I silenced the static in my head.

Finally, I acknowledged my inability to let a message go unread. I picked up the slate and scrolled.

It was not from Orianna or my parents.

It was from Senator John Mendoza. He wanted to speak with me alone and in the open, and he did not want me to tell anyone we were meeting.

After a suitable interval, the message blanked, leaving only his office number for a reply.

I brought a bag lunch — sandwich and drink — purchased from an antique vending cart near the Lincoln Memorial. As I approached a marble bench by the reflecting pool, where Mendoza had agreed to meet, I saw he also had a bag lunch. I sat beside him and he greeted me with a cordial smile.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I imagine what it must have been like in government before dataflow, back when there were newspapers printed on paper… and maybe television and radio. Things were a lot simpler then. Do you know I am the only senator on the Hill who has no enhancements?” His smile broadened. “I have a good staff, good, dedicated people. Some of them have enhancements. So I’m a hypocrite.”

I said nothing.

“Miss Majumdar, what happened in Richmond deeply embarrasses me.”

“Why did we meet in Richmond ?” I blurted. “Because it was the capitol of the Confederacy?”

He seemed puzzled for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Nothing to do with that. We wished to get you away from Washington , because what Wang and I had to say didn’t really come from the U.S. government.”

“It came from GEWA.”

“Of course.”

“You set up my uncle and destroyed his mission. We were easy marks for you, weren’t we?”

“Please,” Mendoza said, lifting his hand. “We did nothing to your uncle. He failed all of us — Earth as well as Mars. What happened was inevitable — but I regret it. Your team simply doesn’t have GEWA’s confidence. Your uncle’s collision with the Pakistani woman… It was nothing we expected or desired. And we can’t fix it — Pakistan is only a marginal member of GEWA. She was a diplomat’s wife, Miss Majumdar. Your uncle touched her. We’ll be lucky to settle the case in a few weeks and get your uncle back to Mars.”

“Why talk with me?”

Mendoza leaned toward me, arm straight, hand splayed on the bench, as if about to relate some intimacy. “Like me, you have no enhancements and you haven’t gone through the secular purification of therapy. You’re old-fashioned. I can sympathize with you. I’ve read your lit papers and student theses. I sense strongly that you belong to the next generation of leadership on Mars.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get involved with politics again,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Mendoza said with a flash of anger. “Mars can’t afford to lose people like you. And it cannot afford to rely on people like your uncle.”

I grimaced.

“Do you realize how important the next few years are going to be?” Mendoza asked.

I did not answer.

“I don’t know half what I’d like to know,” Mendoza said.

“You may eventually know more than I do. You can be at the center of one of the nodes, the teams, in this particular patch of history; I’ll always be on the periphery, a messenger boy. But I do know this: people above me are terrified. I’ve never seen such confusion and disagreement — even the thinkers disagree. Do you see how extraordinary that is?”

I stared at him, the static gone.

“Something frightfully powerful is going to be unleashed. Science does that to us every few generations — drops something in our laps we’re simply not prepared for. You’d think today we’d be prepared for almost anything. Well, at least the folks and thinkers on top see clearly enough that we have to get our house in order, and they’d like to do it before the Big One drops — whatever it might be.”

The deep realization of what had until now been gamesmanship and speculation made my stomach churn.

“If our house is not in order, and there is a chance of some immature and youthful group of humans discovering and using this new power — whatever it is… Leaders above the Beltway, in Seattle and Tokyo and Beijing , believe there is a chance we will destroy ourselves.”

Mendoza frowned deeply, as if just informed one of his children was very ill. “You know, I’ve been an outcast of sorts in Washington for a decade. I’m a Mormon, I’m not therapied. But I’ve managed to do well. If anybody found out about my talking to you, I could lose everything I’ve fought for, all status, all power, all influence.”