The Speaker of the House of Governors, Henry Smith of Amazonis, a stocky man with a close-trimmed beard and piggish discerning eyes, used his stentorian voice to call the meeting to order. “Obviously,” he added, in an aside to me, “we do not have a quorum, but this is an emergency session.”

I agreed. “All of our intelligence, assembled by the Point One people — thanks to all of them for their extraordinary work — ”

“They did not avert this catastrophe!” shouted the representative from Argyre.

“They are not intended for military defense!” responded Henry Smith, raising a tight-fisted hand, his chin lowered as if he were a bull about to charge. Argyre clapped his mouth shut, eyes wide. They were all very frightened men and women.

“Please let me say what needs to be said,” I continued.

“Without interruptions,” Henry Smith insisted.

“The President may be dead.”

Some of the legislators and even a few of the guards who had not heard seemed to wilt, their faces as blank as those of shocked children. “My God,” Henry Smith said.

“I will take the oath of office soon, unless we can establish that Ti Sandra Erzul is still alive. We have heard that her shuttle crashed. I assume it was destroyed by some sort of aggressive action.”

“Who? Who, in God’s name, has done this to us?” cried Representative Rudia Ely from Icaria .

“I’ve been told that we will be negotiating with people from Cailetet, representing Earth. Earth seems to have decreed that all our thinkers and computers be shut down by activated evolvons.”

“We swept them!” someone shouted. “There were guarantees!”

“Quiet!” Henry Smith yelled.

I asked Lieh Walker, the head of the Point One Com and Surveillance team, to give us a status report. Her words provided no comfort. We knew conditions around most of Schiaparelli, and there were bursts of information from places as far away as Milankovic and Promethei Terra, but no complete picture. “Communications with other parts of Mars are severely restricted,” she said. “Even if we had the data, we could not assemble it into anything coherent. Our interpreters are down. Everything’s badly polluted except our slates and a few personal computers with CPUs made on Mars.”

When she finished, I spoke again. “Our position may be untenable for the time being. Not only is Mars paralyzed, but it seems the Terries have laced parts of the planet with locusts.”

Not all the legislators understood the term. Martians have always been known for a tight domestic focus. I explained briefly. “Is that possible?” one asked.

Henry Smith glanced at me as if for moral support. “I’ve had some briefings on it,” he said. “It’s a little buried cesspool of tech. Nobody much admits to that sort of thing.”

“Then we’re dead,” said Argyre.

“Don’t settle for anything so final,” I said sharply. “Some options are still open.”

Dandy Breaker entered the chamber and told me that the negotiators from Cailetet had arrived by shuttle at the depot. “They’re clean and well-dressed,” he said contemptuously. “Their stuff seems to work.”

I glanced at Lieh Walker for an explanation. She dropped the edges of her lips, eyes flashing anger. “Cailetet has been removed from our net links,” she said. “They may not be affected, but they are lying low. There is nothing from their regions coming through Point One com.”

I studied the legislators. I would need a witness and some support for my negotiations. I had to pick wisely from a group I knew only in passing; the interim government had never quite integrated. Ti Sandra had conducted a lot of business personally with these people, but I had met only a few, very briefly.

“Governor Smith, Representative Ely, if you’ll come with me…”

Smith seemed eager to please, but he was smart and tough — Ti Sandra had told me so, and I trusted her judgment implicitly. Candidate Representative Rudia Ely of Eastern Hellas — unopposed — had served with me on a capital architecture committee, several months ago. She was generally quiet and observant and I had felt comfortable around her.

I did not want to think too long about the importance of every decision I made now, of the roles these people would play, of what I would discuss with the traitors from Cailetet.

Someone has said that nobody pays politicians to have emotions. Yet when the magistrate administered the Oath of the Presidency, in a tiny anteroom to the Hall of the Judiciary, surrounded by gray racks of dormant, polluted law library thinkers, I wept quietly.

No one gave it the slightest notice.

Sean Dickinson had changed little in appearance since the days in the trench dome. He stood very straight, knees limber, with hands folded behind him, parade rest. He clenched and unclenched his jaw muscles, regarded me steadily, and blinked only once in the long seconds I examined him.

We were meeting in the half-finished chamber of the governors, scaffolding and architectural slurry above our heads, the air yeasty with active nano. So long as the nutrient vats held out, the capitol would continue building itself. Dickinson stood before the hand-carved pink marble podium where Henry Smith — if he were elected — would gavel the House of Governors to order.

“I have been sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Mars,” I said. “I understand you represent Cailetet?”

“I recognize you,” Dickinson said, words clipped but soft. “Casseia Majumdar. Do you remember us?”

His lip twitched as if he might smile, but he turned away and gave a languid look at Gretyl Laughton. She stood at the front of their aides, four men and women from Cailetet. They appeared uneasy, well aware of possible charges of treason even though they belonged to a nonaligned BM. Gretyl had become leaner, like a greyhound or whippet; she wore deliberately dull clothes, her hair had grayed, and she seemed uninterested in appearances.

“I remember,” I answered.

“We did some brave things together not that many years ago. You once claimed to despise the Statists.”

“And now I am one.”

“Worse. You are the state.”

Neither of us cared to break through the iciness and unpleasant formality. “Where are your documents? I won’t talk with you until I’m convinced you have the powers you claim.”

Dickinson said, “We have the proper documents. We represent factions on Earth who have control over much of Mars now. They do not wish to reveal themselves, but they have given us coded identifiers for verification. Our documents have been hand-vetted, since your security thinkers and other machines are not functioning.”

“Is this so?” I asked Lieh Walker, who stood beside Henry Smith. Tarekh Firkazzie entered the chamber and sat inconspicuously in one of the gallery seats.

“Their codes match Earth codes shipped to all governments in the Triple,” Lieh said.

“Utter cowardice,” I said, shaking my head. “Are they afraid of their own plebiscites? This is an atrocity, an illegal act.”

Dickinson smiled. “Can we become serious?” he asked.

I glared at him. At that moment, it was all I could do to keep myself from reaching out and striking him.

We chose a table in the witness square and sat.

“I’ve been authorized to present you with an offer.”

I made a gesture to Lieh. The chamber recorders were switched on. “Mars has been attacked without reason,” I said. “Is Cailetet cooperating with the aggressors?”

Sean leaned forward slightly. “The Republic, the state to which Mars has decided to give itself, is developing very dangerous weapons. Considering the political situation in the Triple — completely peaceful for nearly sixty years — that seems out of character and very damned stupid.“

“No weapons are being developed,” I said.

“I’ve been told that these weapons could be more destructive than any yet made.”