There were no special perks in small stations like Mispec Moor. In a rickety cab traveling through the ancient tunnels, air thick everywhere with the yeasty smell of active nano, the info officer glanced at me cautiously and said, “What can we expect?”

I shook my head grimly. “Crown Niger is trying to sink the elections.”

“Is there anything more the RIO should know?” he asked.

“Not for the moment,” I said. I leaned back in the stiff seat and felt the enhancement’s tickle. Memories of the briefings from the Olympians mixed with my new sophistication. New questions tangled in my head. I visualized certain equations in the papers Charles had transferred to my slate. The symbols flared out in red, green, and purple, sorting themselves in the enhancement and being presented to conscious awareness. I did not savor the feeling yet — it was unsettling, having this powerful expert attached directly to both conscious and subconscious thinking.

The equations — which I still only vaguely understood, the enhancement’s assets not yet having penetrated deeply — kept pointing to vague discrepancies. I shut my eyes, trying to clear these distractions and think about Crown Niger . But the equations would not clear.

There is more.

I shook my head and swore under my breath.

“Are you all right?” the officer asked.

“I’m thinking,” I said, the best answer I could give at the moment.

Diane Johara had gained a couple of kilos in the years since I had seen her last, and her face had taken on a gentler, more knowing expression, but she was still Diane, and we hugged each other as if we were students and roommates again. Joseph and Ilya stood awkwardly beside each other, shaking hands, fresh male acquaintances sizing each other up. The apartment had three rooms and a sanitation alcove, spare even by Mispec Moor standards, but it was neat and comfortable and immaculately decorated with quilts from Diane’s family and colorful, fanciful paintings from Joseph’s.

Diane wore a long black velvet dress and a tiny yarmulke on the crown of her head. In New Reform Judaism, men and women equally had to hide their heads from God’s gaze. Her hair had been coiled into a dove-shaped bun on one side, and I found the style at once very dignified and very attractive. She had found her true beauty.

I was so happy seeing her and being distracted from my almost painful welter of thoughts that I felt like crying with relief. I did cry a little, the allowed tears of renewed friendship. Joseph led us into the middle room, a circular dig about seven meters wide with banded red and black rock walls over insulation. Ilya recognized the mineral immediately and he and Joseph had something to talk about — deposition of oxidized iron during Mars’s early history, the fluctuation of oxygen-producing organisms in the ancient Glass Sea and the chemical binding of their wastes.

I was glad that Ilya and Joseph had found topics of interest to keep them occupied. Diane and I had a lot of catching up to do. The evening progressed pleasantly into dinner, and this was the surprise — after a day of yeasty smells and reduced expectations, the food Diane and Joseph prepared and served was wonderful. Fresh vegetables, the finest salad I had tasted in months, premium protein cakes wonderfully spiced with curry and laced with fresh chutneys. We ate until we could hold no more, reconsidered, and tamped the excess down with a few more bites.

“We keep our own farm vats here,” Joseph explained. Whenever he looked at Diane, Joseph’s face beamed rapture. I don’t think I had ever seen a couple so much in love.

“Joseph’s family has had theirs for thirty years now,” Diane said, smiling at her husband.

Watching them and listening, I felt an odd pang. My feelings for Ilya were strong, and we were comfortable together. Of necessity, we had found ways to be apart without being devastated. I doubted that Diane and Joseph had been apart for more than a few hours in all the years of their marriage.

They were beautiful.

After dinner, Joseph and I cleared dishes while Ilya and Diane talked. Simplicity and self-reliance kept servant arbeiters out of their apartment. Joseph asked a few polite questions about the new government — questions I had long since grown used to, and answered easily. Then he frowned, put down the last plate, and turned to face me. “I’d like to mention something. Diane didn’t think it worth bothering with, but I have different instincts,” he said.

“Oh?”

“There have been requests from several sources to use Steinburg-Leschke territories for mineral exploration, to set up remote analyzers.”

“Is that unusual?” I asked.

“No… But the requests don’t make sense.”

“How?”

“All the requests are for land mapped in the General Resource Survey twenty years ago. New surveys don’t seem necessary.”

All of Mars was ready to find burglars under the bed. The President’s office received more than a hundred warnings a week. If a little worry about the Republic was Joseph’s worst flaw, I could accept that. I politely encouraged him. “And?”

“I’ve traced the requests. They all come from former extensions of Cailetet, and contractors beholden to Cailetet.”

“Former BMs?”

“All signatory to the Republic. None from Cailetet directly… but… all, indirectly.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, though it seemed normal enough. Cailetet might not wish to draw attention from a government it did not support — and it might not wish to be denied permissions by testy district governors.

“I’ve asked around,” Joseph said, sealing the kitchen washer and starting a cycle. “Nine out of ten of the districts Steinburg-Leschke deals with have gotten requests. That would cover half of Mars. Thousands of sites.”

My attention sharpened. “Why so many?”

“I presume they wish to discover resources and stake shared claims before the election. They’re afraid the rules will change after. But I’m puzzled — they couldn’t possibly exploit so many sites.”

“Shotgun spread?” I asked, alluding to the old technique of filing many claims in the hopes of getting one or two that were productive. Erzul itself had not been innocent of such tactics. Hardscrabble mining was a tough enterprise.

“Why in so many empty or depleted areas? Do they know something about areology the government should know? Or maybe my family?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll look into it.”

“I apologize for talking business,” Joseph said, “but I’ve always listened to my instincts.”

“Have they ever been wrong?”

“Oh, frequently.” He laughed. “I listen to them. I don’t always act on them.”

We joined Ilya and Diane in the small living room. The talk wandered from business to politics — nothing impolite or too probing, for which I was grateful. Truly I was getting sick of this public self, longing for some relief. Ilya saw this and quickly moved the discussion over to food and farming. Diane watched me as Joseph took the bait and described Mispec Moor’s plans for expansion.

I took a toilet break as an excuse to be alone for a while and think. There would come a time, I realized, when I would hate even more this role of public person, whose ear was always being whispered in, whose life was the subject of LitVid stare-ups, who could not spend enough time with her husband to fill out half a marriage.

By unspoken agreement, Ilya and I had postponed planning for children, and I realized children and a continuation of real life might not be possible for years if I joined Ti Sandra on a ticket, and we won…

I thought of Joseph, polite and smooth-faced and sincere, and his worries about potholes all over Mars — and of the thousands of warnings either dire or silly, the endless responsibilities focused impossibly on people who must delegate, and in delegating choose wisely and when some of those choices fail — as they will — trim mercilessly for a higher good, a good not always definable, certainly never agreed to by all the governed. I thought of the great grinding of the political wheels and felt very sorry for myself.