We finished our lunch and checked into a private space, nothing said, nothing suggested; Ilya led me. I talked some more, and then I leaned on him and he put an arm around my shoulders.

“They treated you pretty shabbily,” he said. “You deserve better.”

Of course, that was what I wanted to hear; but he meant it with utmost sincerity. And gauging what I was prepared for, and not prepared for, he did not press his suit too strongly.

I had rented guest lodgings at Rubicon City for the duration of the Grange. He suggested I stay afterward with his family, Erzul BM, at Olympus Station. I didn’t have time — I had planned to leave early and get back to Jiddah to work on a Majumdar project report. But I promised we’d get together soon.

I wasn’t about to let this relationship lapse. My feelings toward Ilya began simply and directly. He was the sweetest, most intuitive, and most straightforward man I had ever met. I wanted to continue talking with him for hours, days, months, and much longer. Making love seemed a natural extension of talking things through; lying naked together, warmed by our exertion, limbs casually locked, giggling at jokes, aghast at the state of the BMs and the Council that bowed low before Earth…

When I was with him, I felt an extraordinary peace and wholeness. Here was someone who could help me sort things out. Here was a partner.

Erzul’s Olympus Station felt very different from Ylla, or any other station I had visited on Mars. Erzul BM had begun in 2130 as a joint venture between poor American Hispanic, Hispaniolan, and Asian families on Earth. Trying to finance passage to Mars, they had eventually drawn in Polynesians and Filipinos. When they arrived on Mars, they occupied a ready-built trench dome in the western shadow of the Olympus Rupes. Within five Martian years, they had established liaisons with seven other BMs, including the ethnic-Russian Rabinovitch. Erzul had quickly prospered.

A small, prosperous mining and soil engineering BM, respected and unaligned, Erzul had kept all of its contracts on Mars. Now, with ninety mining claims in four districts, they were still small, but efficient and well-regarded, known for their trustworthiness and friendly dealings.

When I arrived at Olympus Station, I checked in to a guest room — Ilya gave me this much freedom, a way out if I didn’t get along with his family — and toured the BM museum, a boring collection of old drilling and digging equipment enlivened by large murals of Polynesian and Hispaniolan myth. He left me before a portrait of Pele, Little Mother of Volcanoes, a passionate and bitchy-looking female of considerable beauty, and returned a few minutes later. A formidable woman accompanied him, taller than Ilya and twice as broad.

“Casseia, I’d like you to meet our syndic, Ti Sandra.”

Ti Sandra looked me over with a little frown, lower lip poked out. An impressively large woman, two meters high and big-boned, with an enormous smile, deep-set warm eyes and a soft-spoken alto voice, Ti Sandra Erzul carried herself with stately bearing. Very dark, thick black hair in a halo around her head, a firmly friendly face with prominent and assertive features, she might have been a warrior queen in a fantasy sim… But her easy manner, her girlish pride in bright clothes, dissipated whatever threat her physical presence might have implied. “Are you a banker?” she asked.

I laughed. “No,” I said.

“Good. I don’t think Ilya would get along with a banker. He’d always be asking for research money.” She smiled sunnily, her deep warm eyes crinkling almost shut, and pulled a loop of flowers from a bag Ilya carried. She spread her large, strong arms wide and said, “You are always welcome. You have such a lovely name, and Ilya is a good judge. He is like my son, except that we are not too far apart in age — five years, you know!”

We ate a huge dinner in the syndic’s quarters that evening, joined by twenty family members, and I met Ti Sandra’s husband, Paul Crossley, a quiet, thoughtful man ten years older than Ti Sandra. Paul stood no taller than Ilya. Ti Sandra towered over her husband, but only in size. They flirted like newlyweds.

The gathering’s lively informality charmed me. They chatted in Spanish, French, Creole, Russian, Tagalog, Hawaiian, and for my benefit, English. Their curiosity about me was boundless.

“Why don’t you speak Hindi?” Kiqui Jordan-Erzul asked.

“I never learned,” I said. “My family speaks English…”

“All of them?”

“Some of the older members speak other languages. My mother and father spoke only English when I was young.”

“English is a cramped language. You should speak Creole. All music.”

“Not much good for science,” Ilya said. “Russian’s best for science.”

Kiqui snorted. Another “digger,” Oleg Schovinski, said he thought German might be best for science.

“German!” Kiqui snorted again. “Good for metaphysics. Not the best for science.”

“What kind of tea do you brew in Ylla?” asked Kiqui’s wife, Therese.

Ti Sandra was much loved in Erzul. Young and old looked on her as matriarch, even though she was less than twenty Martian years old. After dinner, she carried a huge bowl of fresh fruit around the table, offering everybody dessert, then stood before the group. “All right now, all of you put down your beers and listen.”

“Lawbond! Lawbond!” several chanted.

“You be quiet. You have no manners. I am pleased to bring you a friend of Ilya’s. You’ve talked with her, impressed her with our savoir-faire, and she’s impressed me, and I’m very pleased to say that she is going to marry our little digger-after-useless-things.”

Ilya’s face reddened with embarrassment.

Ti Sandra held up her hands above the raucous cheering. “She’s from Majumdar but she isn’t a banker, so you be good to her and don’t ask for more loans.”

More cheers.

“Her name is Casseia. Stand up, Cassie.” I stood and it was my turn to blush. The cheers nearly brought down the insulation.

Kiqui toasted our health and asked if I was interested in fossils.

“I love them,” I said, and that was true; I loved them because of their connection to Ilya.

“That’s good, because Ilya’s the only man I know who gets depressed when he hasn’t dug for a week,” Kiqui said. “He’s my kind of assistant.”

“She hasn’t decided what arrangements to make, but we’ll be happy either way,” Ti Sandra said.

“We’ve decided, actually,” Ilya said.

“What?” the crowd asked as one.

“I’ve offered to transfer to Majumdar,” Ilya said.

“Very good,” Ti Sandra said, but her expression betrayed her.

“But Casseia tells me she’s ready for a change. She’s transferring to Erzul.”

“If you’ll have me,” I added.

More cheers. Ti Sandra embraced me again. A hug from her was like being folded in the arms of a large, soft tree with a core of iron. “Another daughter,” she said. ‘That’s lovely!“

They crowded around Ilya and me, offering congratulations. Aunts, uncles, teachers, friends, all offered bits of advice and stories about Ilya. Ilya’s face got redder and redder as the stories piled one on top of another. “Please!” he protested. “We haven’t signed any papers yet… Don’t scare her off!”

After dessert, we squatted in a circle around a large rotating table and sampled a variety of drinks and liqueurs. They drank more than any Martians I had met, yet kept their dignity and intelligence at all times.

Ti Sandra took me aside toward the end of the evening, saying she wanted to show me her prize tropical garden. The garden was beautiful, but she did not spend much time with the tour.

“I know a little about you, Casseia. What I’ve heard impressed the hell out of me. We may not look it, but we’re an ambitious little family, you know that?”

“Ilya’s given me some hints.”

“Some of us have been studying the Charter and thinking things through. You’ve had a lot of experience in politics…”