“Of course not! Haven’t you noticed that before, Sax?”

“… I guess not.”

Of course he had seen that human affairs were irrational and unexplainable. This no one could miss. But he realized now that he had been making the assumption that the people who involved themselves in governance were making a good-faith effort to run things in a rational manner, with a view to the long-term well-being of humanity and its biophysical support system. Desmond laughed at him as he tried to express this, and irritably he exclaimed, “But why else take on such compromised work, if not to that end?”

“Power,” Desmond said. “Power and gain.”

“Ah.”

Sax had always been so uninterested in those things that it was hard for him to understand why anyone else would be. What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one’s options, and reduce one’s freedom. One became a servant of one’s wealth or power, constrained to spend all one’s time protecting it. So that properly seen, the freedom of a scientist with a lab at his command was the highest freedom possible. Any more wealth and power only interfered with that.

Desmond was shaking his head as Sax described this philosophy. “Some people like to tell others what to do. They like that more than freedom. Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it’s high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It’s safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards.”

Sax shook his head. “I think it’s simply an inability to understand the concept of diminishing returns. As if there can never be too much of a good thing. It’s very unrealistic. I mean, there is no process in nature that is a constant irrespective of quantity!”

“Speed of light.”

“Bah., Irrelevant. Physical reality is clearly not a factor in these calculations.”

“Well put.”

Sax shook his head, frustrated. “Religion again. Or ideology. What was it Frank used to say? An imaginary relationship to a real situation?” . “There was a man who loved power.”

“True.”

“But he was very imaginative.”

They stopped at Sax’s apartment and changed clothes, then-went up to the top of the mesa, to get breakfast at Antonio’s. Sax was still thinking about their discussion. “The problem is that people with a hypertrophied regard for wealth and power achieve positions that give them these gifts in excess, and then they find that they’re as much slaves to them as masters. And then they become dissatisfied and bitter.”

“Like Frank, you mean.”

“Yes. So the powerful almost always seem to have a dysfunctional aspect to them. Everything from cynicism to full-blown de-structiveness. They’re not happy.”

“But they are powerful.”

“Yes. And thus our problem. Human affairs”-Sax paused to eat one of the rolls just brought to their table; he was famished- “you know, they ought to be run according to principles of systems ecology.”

Desmond laughed out loud, hastily grabbing up a napkin to clean off his chin. He laughed so hard that people at other tables looked over at them, worrying Sax somewhat. “What a concept!” he cried, and started to laugh again. “Ah ha ha! Oh, my Saxifrage! Scientific management, eh?”

“Well, why not?” Sax said mulishly. “I mean, the principles governing the behavior of the dominant species in a stable ecosystem are fairly straightforward, as I recall. I’ll bet a council of ecol-ogists could construct a program that would result in a stable benign society!”

“If only you ran the world!” Desmond cried, and started laughing again. He put his face right down on the table and howled.

“Not just me.”

“No, I am joking.” He composed himself. “You know Vlad and Marina have been working on their eco-economics for years now. They have even had me using it in the trade between the underground colonies.”

“I didn’t know that,” Sax said, surprised.

Desmond shook his head. “You have to pay more attention, Sax. In the south we have lived by eco-economics for years now.”

“I’ll have to look into that.”

“Yes.” Desmond grinned widely, on the verge of cracking up yet again. “You have a lot to learn.”

Their orders arrived, with a carafe of orange juice, and Desmond poured their glasses full. He clinked his glass against Sax’s, offered a toast: “Welcome to the revolution!”

Desmond left for the South, having extracted a promise that Sax would pilfer what he could from Biotique for Hiroko. “I’ve got to go meet Nirgal.” He gave Sax a hug and was gone.

A month or so passed, during which Sax thought about all he had learned from Desmond and the videos, sifting through it slowly, getting more and more disturbed as he did. His sleep was still broken nearly every night by hours of wakefulness.

Then one morning after one of these restless, fruitless bouts of insomnia, Sax got a call on his wristpad. It was Phyllis, in town for meetings, and she wanted to get together for dinner.

Sax agreed, with his surprise and Stephen’s enthusiasm. He met her that evening, at Antonio’s. They kissed in the European style, and were led to one of the corner tables, overlooking the city. There they ate a meal that Sax scarcely noticed, talking inconsequentially about the latest events in Sheffield and Biotique.

After cheesecake they lingered over brandies. Sax was in no hurry to leave, as he was not sure what Phyllis had in mind for afterward. She had given no clear sign, and she seemed in no hurry either.

Now she leaned back in her chair, and regarded him cheerfully. “It really is you, isn’t it.”

Sax tilted his head to indicate his incomprehension.

Phyllis laughed. “It’s hard to believe, really. You were never like this in the old days, Sax Russell. I wouldn’t have guessed in a hundred years that you would be such a lover.”

Sax squinted uncomfortably and looked around. “I would hope that says more about you than me,” he said with Stephen’s insouciance. The nearby tables were all empty, and the waiters were leaving them alone. The restaurant would close in a half hour or so.

Phyllis laughed again, but her eyes had a hard look to them, and suddenly Sax saw that she was angry. Embarrassed, no doubt, at being fooled by a man she had known for some eighty years. And angry that he had decided to fool her. And why not? It showed a very fundamental lack of trust, after all, especially from someone who was sleeping with you. The bad faith of his behavior at Arena was coming back to him with a vengeance, making him quite queasy. But what to do about it?

He recalled that moment in the elevator when she had kissed him, when he had been similarly nonplussed. Taken aback first by her nonrecognition, and now by her recognition. It had a certain symmetry. And both times he had gone along with it.

“Don’t you have anything more to say?” Phyllis demanded.

He spread his hands. “What makes you think this?”

Again she laughed angrily, then regarded him with lips tight. “It’s so easy to see it now,” she said. “They just gave you a nose and a chin, I suppose. But the eyes are the same, and the head shape. It’s funny what you remember and what you forget.”

“That’s true.”

Actually it was not a matter of forgetting, but of being unable to recollect. Sax suspected the memories were still there, in storage.

“I can’t really remember your old face,” Phyllis said. “To me you were always in a lab with your nose pressing a screen. You might as well have worn a white lab coat, that’s the way I see you in my memories. A kind of giant lab rat.” Now her eyes were glittering. “But somewhere along the line you managed to learn to imitate ! human behavior pretty well, didn’t you? Well enough to fool an old friend who liked the way you looked.”