As accusations flew, heads of state within the Triple exchanged messages, offered reassurances, scanned all available diplomatic channels for signs and symbols of actions to come…

And found nothing. The channels were jammed with posturing and denial. I had never seen the Triple in such a state of absolute confusion.

None of the Earth alliances would admit to having given the go-ahead for war on Mars — but all were demanding full disclosure of Mars’s newfound powers. The Moon and the Belter BMs were if anything even more shrill about the Martian threat. The Republic Information Office and all diplomatic agencies worked to reassure the other members of the Triple of Mars’s peaceful intentions, but could not tell them precisely what had happened… or what we might do next.

Most Martians demanded full disclosure as well. Opposition inside the government was still too disorganized to mount a full effort against Ti Sandra and myself, but clearly the pressure would increase in weeks or months until it became unbearable.

We were contemplating a game of baboon’s asses — displaying the colors — on an enormous scale. In this game, however, for one contestant to even blink while making preparations to depart the field…

Disaster.

Point One’s extensive com net returned to full operations. Everything was cobbled together, with human rather than thinker oversight. Martian thinkers were still in very short supply; fewer than twenty had been grown and initiated at Tharsis Research and of those, only ten could be pulled from civilian purposes for the Republic’s needs. Many Hills received three, Kaibab, six — three of them QLs with built-in interpreters, to guide the large tweakers.

Lieh Walker had become spymaster. Day by day, she expanded the Republic’s solicitation of outlaw data gleans — buying information at great expense from sources that were not particular about their methods. We should have established extensive spy networks months before — but we had not foreseen a time when there would be such serious disharmony between Earth and Mars. Now, perhaps too late, we became more ruthless.

We added dozens of new data flies — operatives who coursed the Earth nets, tapped cable transmissions, fed from the sweet attractions of private GEWA and GSHA connections. Some of the data we gleaned we sold to other sources to help finance our own operations.

When Lieh asked me to authorize the funding of twenty additional agents on Earth and in the Belt, I asked what their status would be. “Well-paid,” she said. “Expendable.” GEWA and GSHA had already swatted a few of our flies — a usually fatal punishment that transferred corrosive evolvons to the data-coursing enhancements the flies used in the nets. “If I need to know any more,” I said, “tell me.” “It’s on my back,” she said. “You’ve got enough to carry now.”

By which she meant, I was carrying the lives of every Martian, herself included — and I never knew whether she approved or not. I suspect she didn’t.

Still, some good news came. Stan had been released by Cailetet. Crown Niger had kept Stan and his wife and child in detention at Kipini Station in Chryse for a total of ten weeks, preventing any communication with the outside. I had two text letters from Stan after his release; there was time only for a brief reply, and of course I could not tell him where I was, or what I was doing.

I made a few quick calls and got him a post at Many Hills, where he could use his experience with Cailetet to work on some diplomatic patchwork. I had heard little from Crown Niger’s camp; they were lying low after the Freeze, wisely enough, hoping to weather the storm. Ti Sandra created a special task force to deal with the dissident BMs and regions. Stan, I thought, could join this task force.

Charles and I met frequently, sometimes alone, more often with Stephen Leander and others present. Our discussions revolved around practical aspects of moving large objects with the tweakers.

He spent hours each day immersed in the QL thinker, preparing, exercising for another trip. The effort took its toll. After long sessions connected to the QL, Charles needed several minutes to begin speaking coherently. I feared for him.

Six attended the first conference on Preamble, two weeks after Ilya’s death: myself, Charles and Leander, areologist Faoud Abdi of Mariner Valley, architect and engineer Gerard Wachsler from Steinburg-Leschke in Arcadia, and a newly initiated Martian thinker, who had just the day before chosen her name: Aelita. Aelita would act as Preamble’s main thinker, coordinating all the station’s and project’s activities.

The experts convened in the laboratory annex, still unfinished. As we seated ourselves, nano paint crept along the walls, hissing quietly and forming geometric decorations. The ever-present smell of yeast was particularly pungent here. We seemed to live always in a vast bakery.

Faoud Abdi — tall, sharp-featured, with large, languid eyes — was the first to speak. He wore a neat white jallabah, slate and books making prominent lumps in the robe’s large pockets.

“I have been told to consider an impossibility,” Abdi began, standing before us with his back to a small data display. “I have been told to research the effects on Mars of a brief period without Solar System gravitational pull. I am told this is purely theoretical — and so I must assume that we are all going to do something drastic with Mars, perhaps what happened to Phobos. Unless Phobos is theoretical as well.” He regarded us dubiously, received no reaction to his humor — if humor was intended — and sighed. “I must tell you why Mars is stable now, and discuss popular theories of Mars’s areological decline. Is this what you wish?”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“I once worked with your husband, Madam Vice President. He was a fine man and we shall all miss him.”

“Thank you.”

“He was concerned, as am I, about the death of Mars hundreds of millions of years ago. But in fact death is a misnomer, for Mars is not completely cool inside. There is still areological activity. However, the plumes rising within the mantle have stabilized and no longer produce lateral pressure on the crust of Mars.

“In the past, there were never more than twelve crustal plates, and now those plates have frozen into one. No lateral pressure — no migration of the old plates — no fracture and subduction of plate boundaries — reduces volcanism. The last volcanoes active on Mars were the shield volcanoes familiar to us all, the Tharsis trio by main example, and Olympus itself. Without plate movement, mountains stopped building, and without volcanism, outgassing ceased, and Mars’s thin atmosphere simply evaporated into space, not to be replaced. Mars’s biosphere died within a few hundred million years of the end of tectonics. Now, stability…”

“Balanced flow,” Leander said.

“Precisely. Aelita, please bring up Dr. Wegda’s deep soundings of the Martian crust and mantle.”

Aelita complied. Behind Abdi appeared a diagram familiar to all — a cross-section of Mars, rotating to provide a three-dimensional view of the interior. “You see, there are sixteen cyclic plumes rising and sinking, but they have assumed a dimpled inverted form, rising on the outside and sinking on the inside. The net force conveyed to the crust over these plumes is zero, though local areological effects are evident. The stability is really too delicate… That is, Mars should shift at any time. But this has not happened in three hundred million years. There is much we do not understand.

“A shove applied to the entire planet, however slight — as might be given by removing solar tidal forces, for example — could upset the plumes and re-start tectonic activity.” He stopped for a moment, hands hovering beside the frozen diagram of Mars. “Without a large moon to keep Mars in balance, relatively slight changes may also tilt the axis.”