I shook my head.

“You’ve heard something upsetting,” he said. “Something you can’t tell me about.”

“I wish I could,” I said fervently. “I need advice and wisdom so much.”

‘“Is it something dangerous?”

“I can’t even tell you that,” I said.

He lay back on the bolster with his hands behind his head. “I will be glad when — ”

“You have your wife back?” I said quickly, fixing him with an accusing glare.

“No,” Ilya said evenly. “Well, yes, actually.” He smiled. “Trick question. I haven’t lost you yet.”

“Yes,” I said, unassuaged, “but I can’t go on digs with you. We seldom spend time together. I wish I was with you all of the time. I’m getting sick of meetings and dinners and propaganda and being called ‘the midwife of a New Mars.’ ”

Ilya refused to snap back. This angered me even more, and I jumped out of bed, marching back and forth along one short wall of the inn room, raising my fists at the ceiling. “God, God, God!” I shrieked. “I do not want this, I do not need this!” I turned on him again, hands outstretched with fingers curled in witch’s claws. “We had things under control! We could do everything on our own! This only makes things so much worse.”

Ilya watched me helplessly. “I wish—”

“But you can’t!”

The one-sided rant faded and I slumped by the wall, knees drawn up, staring blankly at a corner of the bed. Ilya kneeled beside me, hand on my shoulder. After, as a kind of apology, I forcefully made love to him. My false performance did not seem sufficient. I held on to him and we talked about the time after the interim government’s term had expired.

I wanted to take a teaching position at an independent school, I said, and he reassured me, there would be no end of such appointments. I had only to ask. “Midwife to the New Mars,” he had said softly. “It fits, really. Don’t be angry at yourself.”

I had watched him fall asleep, thinking of when we would have children, wondering now whether that time would come.

It was easy to imagine what so much power could lead to. Images of Achmed Crown Niger and Freechild Dauble, unwise leaders, memories of forceful, together Earth; how would they feel, knowing youthful, naive, dangerous Mars had such power? Perhaps they already knew, and plans were in place, and there was nothing we could do.

The Olympians erected a small, remote laboratory in Melas Dorsa, using some of their own money and a bit of land donated by Klein BM. Melas Dorsa is moderately cratered land, cut from the south by shallow canyons, and swept by low dunes. There was little water and few resources.

Even on Mars, it was a desert.

I went alone to view the demonstrations. Ti Sandra had an emergency meeting in Elysium to shore up support for the new government among suddenly nervous delegates and a district governor of marginal competence and few brains. She trusted me to be her eyes and ears, but I also sensed she was terrified of what they might show us, of the magnitude of this unexpected and unwanted gift. I was no braver than Ti Sandra, but perhaps I was less imaginative.

Charles and Stephen Leander accompanied me on the shuttle flight from UMS. The shuttle had been marked with government symbols — the flag and “FRM 1” to signify it was carrying VIPs. We were to meet two impartial scientists from Yamaguchi and Erzul, flying separately from Rubicon City , at the Melas Dorsa lab.

There were no trains through Melas Dorsa, no stations within four hundred kilometers of the lab, and Charles warned me there would be few amenities.

I stared at him accusingly. “Luxury is not very important to me, certainly not now,” I said. Leander sensed the charged atmosphere and conspicuously studied the landscape passing several dozen meters below. The craft flew over a low ridge, then continued its ascent to avoid a chain of diffuse dust devils.

Charles blinked at me, surprised by my tone, then reached for his slate. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

“I’ve read your papers,” I said. “Most of it’s way beyond me.”

Charles nodded. “The ideas are simple enough, however.”

He drew his lips together and raised an eyebrow. “Are you prepared to take some things on trust?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Then I suppose I’m prepared for it.”

“You’re angry.”

“Not with you specifically,” I said.

Leander unharnessed himself and stood. “I’m going forward for a better view,” he said. We ignored him. He shrugged and took a seat out of earshot.

“That’s not what I meant. You’re angry about our giving you so much responsibility.”

“Yes.”

“I wish we could have avoided it.”

“You wanted to change the universe, Charles.”

“I wanted to understand. All right, I wanted to change it. But I didn’t want to make you responsible.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

Charles drew back and looked away, hurt and irritated. The slate rested on his lap. “Please be fair, Casseia.”

“You know,” I said, fairness far from my thoughts at the moment, “it was you who scuttled our first initiative on Earth. You Olympians. You made everybody so very nervous… You put us under so much pressure — and we did not even understand what you were planning.”

“Planning?” He chuckled. “We didn’t know ourselves. Apparently the implications were more clear to people on Earth than they were to us.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Did you think you could do all this in a vacuum?”

He shook his head. “Vacuum?”

“Ethics, Charles.”

“Oh… Ethics.” His face reddened. “Casseia, now you’re being very unfair.”

“Dust unfairness. Do you know what this is going to do to us?”

“What kind of decision could I make? To back away from knowledge? Casseia, I’ve tried to be as ethical and straightforward as I can. Our whole group has stuck with very high standards.“

“That’s why you worked for Cailetet.”

“They are — were — hardly villains. As soon as Achmed Crown Niger came on board, we prepared to close up shop. And Cailetet actually helped us. With a push from Earth. Crown Niger was less concerned with what we could offer him than with satisfying his bosses on Earth.”

“You left when they cut funding.”

“We told them nothing even before that.”

I smiled. “Are you sure they don’t have your results locked away somewhere? Before Crown Niger ?”

“It’s possible. But if they look over that material, they won’t have a clue about what we’ve discovered since. It will be very misleading. We explored a lot of blind canyons, Casseia. Earth is still chasing up blind canyons.”

For a few seconds, I had nothing to say. Then my anger collapsed and I shivered. “Charles, aren’t you frightened?”

He considered cautiously, looking at me. “No,” he said. “You’ve put our house in order, Casseia — or it’s on its way to being put in order. A responsible government — ”

“In its infancy, uncoordinated and frail and new. We don’t even know whether the interim government can flow smoothly into an elected government. We haven’t tried it out yet, Charles.”

“Well,” he said. “I have faith in you.”

“In Mars?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself to control my shivering. He reached out to touch me and I gave him a withering glare. He pulled his hand back. “Charles, you’re giving us the power to destroy our enemies, and we don’t know who our enemies are. Earth has very subtle means of persuading us… and all you’re offering is a sledge hammer!”

“Much more than that,” Charles said softly. “Huge supplies of power, remote control of resources. We are limited in significant ways, but that doesn’t mean we can’t defend ourselves against almost anything.“

“By threat, perhaps. You can convert matter to antimatter. Remotely. From a very great distance. With pinpoint accuracy.”