Maya stared at the screen. It was wrong, wrong, wrong, all wrong — nothing like that had happened! A liaison in Antarctica? No, never!

But she had once confronted him at some restaurant… no doubt it was possible they had been observed … so hard to say. But this book was stupid — stuffed with unwarranted speculation — not history at all. Or maybe all the histories would be like that, if one had really been there and so could judge them properly. All lies. She tried to call it back — she clenched her teeth, and stiffened, and her fingers curled as if she could dig out thoughts with them. But it was like clawing at rock. And now when she tried to remember that particular confrontation in a cafe, no visual image at all came into her mind; the phrases from the book overlaid them, She reminded him of every connection they had ever had no! Nol A figure hunched at a table, there it was, the image itself — and it finally looked up at her —

But it was the youthful face from her kitchen wall in Odessa.

She groaned; she began to cry; she chewed at her clenched fists and wept.

“You okay?” Coyote said blearily from the couch.

“No.”

“Find something?”

“No.”

Frank was being erased by books. And by time. The years had passed, and for her, even for her, Frank Chalmers was becoming nothing but one tiny historical figure among many others, standing out there like a person seen through the wrong end of the telescope. A name in a book. Someone to read about, along with Bismarck, Talleyrand, Machiavelli. And her Frank … gone.

She spent a few hours of most days going over the Praxis reports with Art, trying to find patterns and comprehend them. They were getting such great amounts of data through Praxis that they had the reverse of the problem they had had in the pre-’61 crisis — not too little information, but too much. Every day the screws tightened in a multitude of crises, and Maya often ended up near despair. Several countries attending the UN, all of them Consolidated or Subarashii clients, requested that the World Court be abolished, as its functions were redundant. Most of the metanats immediately declared their support for this idea, and as the World Court had long ago begun as an agency of the UN, there were those who claimed the action would be legal and have some historical reason for being — but the first result was to disrupt some of the arbitrations in process, leading to fighting in Ukraine and Greece. “Who’s responsible?” Maya exclaimed to Art. “Is there anyone doing this stuff?”

“Of course. Some metanats have presidents, and they all have executive boards, and they get together and talk things over, and decide what orders to give. It’s like Fort and the eighteen immortals in Praxis, although Praxis is more democratic than most. And then the metanat boards appoint the executive committee for the Transitional Authority, and the Authority makes some local decisions, and I could give you their names, but I don’t think they’re as powerful as the folks back home.”

“Never mind.” Of course people were responsible. But no one was in control. It was the same on both sides, no doubt. Certainly it was true in the resistance. Sabotage, against the Vastitas ocean platforms particularly, was now pandemic, and she knew whose idea that was. She talked with Nadia about getting in touch with Ann, but Nadia just shook her head. “Not a chance. I haven’t been able to talk to Ann since Dorsa Brevia. She’s one of the most radical Reds there is.” “As always.”

“Well, I don’t think she used to be. But it doesn’t matter now.” Maya shook her head and went back to work. She spent more and more time working with Nirgal, taking his instruction and advising him in turn. More than ever he was her best contact among the young, and the most powerful, and a moderate to boot; he wanted to wait for a trigger and then organize a concerted action just like she did, and this of course was one of the reasons she gravitated to him. But it was also just a matter of his character, his warmth and high spirits, his regard for her. He couldn’t have been more different than Jackie, although Maya knew the two of them had a very close complex relationship, going right back into their childhoods. But they appeared to be estranged these days, which she was not at all unhappy to see, and very much at odds politically. Jackie, like Nirgal, was a charismatic leader, and recruiting big new crowds into her “Boonean” wing of Marsfirst^ which advocated immediate action, and thus aligned her much more with Dao than Nirgal, politically in any case. Maya did everything she could to back Nirgal in this split among the natives: in every meeting she argued for policies and actions that were green, moderate, nonviolent, and coordinated from a center. But she could see that the majority of the newly politicized natives in the cities were attracted to Jackie and Marsfirst, which was generally Red, radical, violent, and anarchic — or so she saw it. And the increasing strikes, demonstrations, street fights, sabotage, and ecotage tended to support her analysis.

And it wasn’t just most of the new native recruits going to Jackie, but also great numbers of disaffected emigrants, the most recent arrivals. This tendency baffled her, and she complained about it to Art one day after they had gone through the Praxis report.

“Well,” he said diplomatically, “it’s good to have as many emigrants on our side as possible.”

Of course when he wasn’t on-line to Earth he was spending much of his time shuttling around between resistance groups trying to get them to agree, so this was his party line. “But why are they joining her?” Maya demanded.

“Well…” Art said, waggling a hand, “you know, these emigrants arrive, and some of them hear about the demonstrations, or they see one, and they ask around and hear stories, and some hear that if they go out and join in a demonstration then the natives will really like them for it, you know? Some of the young native women maybe, who they hear can be friendly, right? Very friendly. So they go out there thinking that maybe if they help out, one of these big girls will take them home at the end of the day.”

“Come on,” Maya said.

“Well, you know,” Art said. “It does happen to some of them.”

“And so of course our Jackie gets all the new recruits.”

“Well, I’m not sure it isn’t a factor for Nirgal as well. And I don’t know that people are making that much of a party distinction between them. That’s a fine point, something you’re more aware of than them.”

“Hmm.”

She remembered Michel, telling her it was important to argue for what she loved, as well as against what she hated. And she loved Nirgal, it was true. He was a wonderful young man, the finest native of them all. Certainly it was not right to scorn those kinds of motivations, that erotic energy taking people into the streets… Still, if only people would be more sensible. Jackie was doing her damnedest to lead them into yet another spastic unplanned revolt, and the results of that could be disastrous.

“It’s part of why people follow you too, Maya.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Come on. Don’t be a fool.”

Although it was nice to think so. Perhaps she could extend the struggle for control to that level too. Although she would be at a disadvantage. Create a party of the old. Well, in effect that’s what they were already. That had been her whole idea, back in Sabi-shii — that the issei would take over the resistance, and guide it on the right course. And a good number of them had devoted many years of their life to doing just that. But in fact it hadn’t worked. They were outnumbered. And the new majority was a new species, with new minds of their own. The issei could only ride the tiger. Do the best they could. She sighed.

“Tired?”

“Exhausted. This work is going to kill me.”

“Get some rest.”