“We don’t have anywhere near the means to destroy all the factories,” he said. “The locust concept is specifically forbidden by treaty signed by all nations and alliances.”

“And we’re too young and naive to have thought of a defense.”

‘Theoretically,“ Jack said, ”in a year or two, all of our scientists could design a response. A nano-level disease. But if the locusts are Earth-designed, we…” He did not finish.

But we did have defenses, and they were in themselves so frightening as to have provoked the Earth… Extremes bringing on extremes. The future seemed not just dangerous, not just bleak; it seemed incomprehensible.

Dandy left the controls briefly to tell us the track ahead was clear for five hundred klicks. Jack and I told him about the locust warning. His face went gray.

I told neither of them about Ti Sandra’s impending death.

Jack switched places with Dandy, and the engine pushed on across Mars, skirting the rugged regions a hundred klicks south of Mariner Valley and Eos Chasma.

I had never felt so isolated, so wrapped in silence. The train’s faint vibration on a curved trace rose through my feet. Dandy slept fitfully, leaning against the cabin bulkhead behind the stool, feet splayed like a boy’s, boots turned out.

In the next few hours, I studied the contingency plans available on my VP slate. They were none of them useful or even suggestive. None of them took into account either locusts or Olympians. Those preparing the plans would not have been in the know about the Olympians, and Martians were too trusting to assume the worst of Mother Earth.

How many Martians would die now, brave and artless?

How many deaths could Ti Sandra and I absorb the blame for?

I stared out the port again. The stars in the sky over nightbound Mars had their echo in the sands — piezoelectric flashes as the sizzle contracted from the day’s mild warmth, sparkling like thousands of tiny fireflies. I turned off the cabin light to see them better and pressed my armor-wrapped face against the glass like a little girl. For a moment, the vision seduced me into forgetting my worries, and I felt suspended like a wraith, a child’s ghost flying over the sands. I specked through my enhancement pressures building in sizzle baked by ultraviolet across the years, wind removing layers of flopsand and powder, sudden cold night air flowing from nearby scarps, pressure within the desert varnish squeezing tiny crystals of quartz…

Then I imagined the flashes were locusts signaling to each other, and pulled away from the port with a small cry. Dandy came awake instantly, straightened his legs, blinked at me. He drew his gun so quickly I only noticed the result, not the action.

“Dreaming?” he asked, pocketing the weapon without apology.

“No,” I said. “Thinking the worst, though.”

“No good that,” he said.

Jack came into the cabin and told us the tracks seemed to be clear through Schiaparelli and into Many Hills. “We’ve passed two trains that coasted automatically onto spurs,” he said. “At least the computers did that much before they locked up.”

“People still in the trains?” I asked.

“I assume,” he said, face stony.

The engine ascended a graceful, fairy-light series of sloping trestles. We topped the inward-facing scarps of Schiaparelli basin and descended into the great flat plain twenty-five hours after departing UMS. Many Hills stood at the center, in the worn hummocks of ancient central rings. The engine coasted into the new, dazzling white depot.

The white walls and pressure arches stood out against the ochre and red all around, a beacon for assault. The entire town was a target. But that kind of warfare had long since ceased. Now, soldiers could be invisible, and destruction carried out by machines like termites from within, not bombs from without. Warbeiters, Jack had called them. A horribly awkward and unpleasant name.

All seemed deserted, which was expected. During an emergency, red rabbits clustered close to water and oxygen sources. A Martian station seldom looks inhabited from the outside, anyway. And the Republic’s new capital had not yet received its full population of bureaucrats, cabinet members, jurists, governors and representatives.

Point One had established its command at Many Hills some weeks before. Overseeing guards for the President and Vice President, assembling the early stages of Martian intelligence and internal security, Point One had taken on a carefully observed life of its own with surprising speed. Now I was grateful to see men and women I recognized at the depot, carrying weapons, wearing pressure suits, waiting for the train with somber but professional faces.

We disembarked in an underground area, away from possible bombardment, and I was immediately taken by armored truck to fresh tunnels east of the capitol construction.

Dandy and Jack met with their superior, Tarekh Firkazzie, in the rear of the truck. A slim blond man from Boreum, Firkazzie had been appointed head of overall security the month before.

Two women stripped my reactive armor and carefully packaged it for disposal. “You’re brave, traveling for a day with this stuff, Madam Vice President,” one said.

Jack came forward, grinding his teeth audibly, thrusting his lower jaw as it mocking a heroic male. Then I saw that his expression, however absurd, was genuine; he was grieving.

“Madam Vice President, I’ve been appointed… we chose by lots… to bring you bad news. You have a much heavier burden now. Ti Sandra Erzul and her crew have been involved in a shuttle mishap. It may have been an accident, but we’re not sure. We haven’t confirmed the location of the crash, and we won’t be able to for some time. Emergency beacon reports rescue arbeiters have not located anybody alive in the wreckage. We’re bringing in a magistrate from the court tunnels. We’ll have you sworn in as President as soon as possible, perhaps in the next few minutes. I’m sorry.”

For a moment, I did not know whether this was the faked death Ti Sandra had warned me about, or a real accident. I had to assume it was the former. I would become acting President.

I felt nothing then. I had become an arbeiter working for a political machine with its own rules, inevitable and soulless.

Point One had played its role as protector of the chain of command during my flight by train engine from Sinai. The interim Speaker of the House of Governors had been flown in from Amazonis by shuttle; the speaker for the House of the People had been at Many Hills to begin with. The interim congress had been caught campaigning, scattered across Mars, except for three governors and two candidate representatives. They were in a deep tunnel guarded by what defense arbeiters and personnel the Point One folks could assemble.

Point One had assumed control of all the available links. The ex net was down, but some private nets strung through local optics were up on manual and portable narrowband, keeping us informed about conditions at stations around Schiaparelli Basin . In effect, there were communications, but at less than one-tenth of one percent normal.

We still could not talk with the Olympians. I did not expect any further messages from Ti Sandra for days, perhaps longer.

All rules were being ignored, all bets were off.

Led by Dandy Breaker, five guards and two arbeiters escorted me into the narrow emergency tunnel two hundred meters below the congress, just above the new and expanded wellhead for Many Hills. There, I faced the dismayed band of seven legislators. For a moment, nobody spoke, and then all gathered in a circle around me, shaking my hands, asking questions.

I held up my arms, sidestepped a governor who seemed about to hug me, and called out, as clearly as possible without shouting, “We are the only ones who can act as a lawful government for the Republic! We must have order!”