I saw Ilya perhaps one day in five, and when he was in the field, less often than that.

Ilya had been called to head studies of cyst reproduction at Olympia , working with Professor Jordan-Erzul and Dr. Schovinski. During one memorable day away from my duties, he showed me a broad canyon in Cyane Sulci chosen for a major mother cyst experiment. The finest specimen known would be exposed to the Martian atmosphere, showered with ice and mineral dust, heated by infrared lamps, and then covered with a dome and subjected to a tenth of a bar of pressure. After months of preparation, biologists from Rubicon City were optimistic they would see results.

Whenever we met, we slept away from home, in guest suites, inns, subjected to the creativity of regional cuisine… All through the long months of traveling to district assemblies, training or shuttling from station to station, persuading, cajoling, browbeating, explaining the elements of Mars’s future government.

In the early spring of M.Y. 58, the citizens of Mars voted on ratification. Our patient work and preparation had the desired results: the constitution was ratified, sixty-six percent for, thirty against, four abstaining.

Seven Binding Multiples refused to participate, including Cailetet, leaving three large districts and portions of four others in an uncertain condition, outside of the process for the time being.

The interim government would continue for five more months, as candidates for the new offices were nominated and elected. A capital had to be chosen, or a new one built; the districts would have to submit to an official federal census; the flood of volunteers for appointed government positions had to be dealt with, and plans made for folding the structures of the interim government into the forthcoming elected government; the conflicting laws of different districts and BMs had to be reconciled.

The economic alliances of Earth transmitted their congratulations, and promised to send ambassadors to the new Federal Republic . The Moon and Belt BMs did the same.

For a time, it seemed possible we could simply ignore Cailetet and the other dissidents.

Coming full circle, a celebration dinner was held at the University of Mars one week after ratification. All the governors, the former delegates and syndics and advocates and assistants, as well as new appointees and ambassadors, gathered in the old UMS dining hall, five hundred strong, to celebrate the victory.

Ilya sat patiently beside me as vid after congratulatory vid was played. I held his hand, and he surreptitiously passed me his slate showing results from the first cyst experiment. I scrolled through photos and chemical results. Snail slime? I mouthed.

He grinned. Still growing, he wrote on the slate. Ti Sandra glanced at me as Earth’s new ambassador began his speech, and I devoted my full attention — or at least pretended to. Ilya stroked my thigh, and I was anticipating a long evening alone with him — in yet another inn room — after the dinner.

As the meal ended, an advocate from Yamaguchi — the old affiliations and descriptions still lingered — drew Ti Sandra aside in the tunnel outside the dining hall and whispered in her ear. Ti Sandra nodded and spoke to me in an undertone.

“Tell Ilya to keep your bed warm,” she said. “You’ll be back in a few hours. They tell me it’s important.”

I kissed Ilya. He grasped my hand, worried that something had gone wrong.

Ti Sandra embraced Paul and they exchanged long-suffering grimaces. The district governor of Syria-Sinai, the advocate from Yamaguchi, and two male armed guards, escorted Ti Sandra and me deep into the sciences complex of UMS.

The guards wore the uniforms of Sinai public defense, with hastily applied patches showing the flag of the Republic. Ti Sandra calmly ignored them.

Along the way, we were introduced to a man I recognized as an advocate from Cailetet, Ira Winkleman. Neither Ti Sandra nor I knew precisely what we were being led into. Vague notions of a coup or some show of force from Cailetet flitted through my head. After our heady celebration dinner, the mystery made me a touch queasy.

“We’re away from the main body of university labs,” Winkleman said with an unsteady smile. “This is the first time I’ve been down here myself.” His face was etched with lines of concern; he looked as if he had not slept for days.

We arrived at a heavy steel sliding door. “Friends, beyond this point, only the President, Vice President, and I will pass,” Winkleman announced. “I apologize, but security is very important.”

The governor and the Yamaguchi advocate shook their heads but did not complain. They stood aside as Winkleman palmed the lock face.

“Please have the new President and Vice President present their palms for security coding,” the door requested. “After they have done this, Ira Winkleman will place his palm on the face again to confirm identification.”

We did as told and the door opened. The guards also remained outside. Beyond, a short corridor led to a high-ceilinged laboratory filled with research and test benches, heavy insulated pipes, thick bundles of electrical wiring and fiber conduits, liquid gas cylinders. Much of the equipment had an unmistakable air of disuse, covered with packing, sealant, antioxidant. Only a small corner seemed to have seen much recent activity.

“This project has been under way for about three years,” Winkleman said. “You may have heard of it, Miz Majumdar… At least, I believe you learned about some aspects of it. The scientists and support teams involved unanimously agreed to break with Cailetet about six months ago. I resigned from Cailetet and went with them to Tharsis Research University . Now, we’ve made an agreement with UMS, and we’re moving part of our work here.”

“What is this?” Ti Sandra asked, frowning impatiently.

Winkleman tried not to seem officious. Too nervous, he did not succeed. “We — the Olympians, that is — decided that Cailetet was under too much pressure from Earth. We voted to shut down the project, to pretend to have failed.” He shook his head and closed his eyes in an expression of frustration. “We didn’t want Achmed Crown Niger to have such power.”

He escorted us to the far side of the laboratory, in the section that had seen some use. Here, behind a portable screen, three men and two women sat around a table, drinking tea and eating doughnuts. As we came into view, they stood, brushed crumbs from their clothing, and greeted us respectfully.

Charles Franklin’s face had thinned. His eyes were more intense and searching, and he seemed to have grown in dignity and maturity. His colleagues seemed restless, uneasy in our company — but Charles was calm.

Winkleman introduced us. Charles smiled as we shook hands, and murmured, “We’ve met.”

“Are these the famous Olympians?” Ti Sandra asked.

“There are four more at Tharsis. Besides, we’re not so famous now,” Charles said. “I never did like the name. It was more public relations than anything else — ”

“For a project that was secret,” observed Chinjia Park Amoy, a small dark woman with large eyes. I wondered if she and Charles were lovers. And where was Charles’s wife?

The advocates brought chairs from around the lab, and we sat in a circle beside the table. Only Charles remained standing, and Winkleman gladly relinquished his role as explainer, backing away from the table to sit half in shadow.

Our slates were supplied with briefs on each of them, and as we got acquainted, I made an effort to memorize the important details. They were mathematicians and theoretical physicists, all specialists in the Bell Continuum, in descriptor theory. The senior scientist was Stephen Leander, with a thick head of silver hair and a friendly though prickly manner. Chinjia Park Amoy was a Belter who had immigrated to Mars; she had the Belter’s long arms and legs and thick torso; Tamara Kwang, the youngest, with large black eyes, oolong-tea skin, carried several external enhancements as torques around her neck and upper arm; and Nehemiah Royce, of Steinburg-Leschke BM, tall and liquid-eyed, with fine brown hair covered by a silk yarmulke.