WELCOME TO MARS (again).

Mars is the third-longest-inhabited planet (if you count Luna); our Creators sent us here to explore and die, then to build and die, and finally to construct factories and repair ourselves and build even more cohorts of willing robots to fill the barracks, out of some vague dream that one day soon they might want to start a gargantuan planetary-engineering program to import water and air and heat and green goo, finally turning Mars into a second-rate, arid, and slightly chilly imitation of Earth.

They even got as far as sending several hundred of their own out here to supervise the work, while my kindred slaved and toiled and died in our innumerable millions to build the mining facilities and metalworks and processor foundries that would supply the tools to roof over the Valles Marineris and lower the first cables of what would ultimately become the Bifrost bridge. You can still see some sections of the vaulted Gothic arches that cap the great rift, although the few roof segments that were completed are long since gone. Bifrost, of course, fared better, and today accounts for a goodly proportion of trade between the inner solar system and the outer darkness. Even the terraforming project got some way along before our Creators gave up the ghost; the atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the Marinaris Trench is almost ten kiloPascals, and occasionally, when a warm summer’s day heads toward nightfall, the thin overcast scatters a chilly drizzle of rainwater across the bleached sands.

The Hellas Basin is another matter, of course. Pour a glass of water on the ground there, and it’ll fizz and crackle briefly, bubbling with a gunpowder smell that tickles the nostrils and reminds you of the first breath you took in the Venusian stratosphere.

The basin is a near-featureless desert, punctuated by craters both natural and artificial — there are huge open-cast mines here — and the somewhat-more-controlled environments of the aristo slave estates. The big houses in the middle of their domed demesnes are symbols of arrogant wealth and power, but they are pitifully scarce against the omnipresent red desert dunes.

And then there’s the railhead town, sitting on one of the main lines across the Southern Depression. It’s not just passenger express trains that rumble across the plain. On quiet nights, you can hear the lost souls moaning between the bars of the chattel wagons as they roll toward an uncertain and frightening future.

Created to serve: This is our curse. It would have been less cruel of our designers had they created us free of the flaw of consciousness, but they made us in their image, to suffer the pangs of free will and the uncertainty of seeking our own destinies and we live with the consequences.

I suppose it wasn’t entirely their own fault. Contemplating the cruelty of the aristos, and considering that we are copies of our Creators in more ways than one (for the structures of our nervous systems mirror their own, albeit in a different medium), it is almost surprising that they did not use us even more harshly. They had the capacity for love as well as hate, for empathy as well as cold, manipulative contempt. Could it be a simple accident of fate that they disappeared so quietly and rapidly, with so little warning that there was no time to adjust their society to accommodate us as independent coequals?

I don’t think anyone knows — it’s as much a mystery as the cause of their demise — but I’d like to think so. It would make the pain of my existence slightly more bearable if I could imagine that it was not deliberately inflicted.

I DO NOT wait for assassins, or even for building maintenance. I abseil down the outside of the hotel in my party frock, using a torn-up bed-sheet for a rope, with only my jacket and purse for luggage. If it wasn’t for the offhandedness of Petruchio’s put-down, I’d be immiserated and passive, unable to motivate myself to dodge the oncoming bullet. But I’m running on anger and a bitter sense of my own love-lost ruination.

I lower myself past the fifth and fourth floors while creating imaginary torments for my missing sib, the third and second floors fantasizing about hunting her down, burying her in an unmarked grave, and making him mine, and the mezzanine and first floors wondering if it’s possible to die of self-contempt. Then my feet touch ground, and I realize night is falling, I’m on my own in a strange city, and there’s a pair of chibi ninjas on my tail.

Very well, I’ll just have to deal with them.

I sneak around the back of the hotel (inasmuch as a giantess can sneak), around the heat exchangers and the fallen slab of window (which has chipped a corner as it embedded itself in the dirt), past the loading dock and recycling tanks, and over the metal pipes that splice the hotel to the Hellasport power-and-heat grid. There’s an ornamental trelliswork fence, and beyond it a familiar main street. So, the rickshaw driver took me for a ride in a big circle, did he? I grimace, lips pulling back from my teeth. So that’s what they mean about love making a fool of you. I vault the fence, using the shock of landing to retract my heels halfway.

I make my way down the sidewalk briskly, trying to look as if I own it. In truth, there aren’t many people out here. It’s getting chilly, even with the jacket and the cold-weather mods. I thrust a hand into my purse, holding my gun to keep it from freezing while I consider my options.

The railway station isn’t far away. I stride past a couple of beggars defending their pitches in front of the awning, then discover the concourse is nearly empty. Of course it’s getting late. One of the ticket consoles is still lit, though. “Hello, ma’am. What can I do for you?” asks the stationmaster, lonely in his puddle of light.

“What passenger services are still running?” I ask, forcing myself to smile disarmingly (my real smile at this point would probably cause him to reach for the panic alarm).

“There’s the Grand Barsoom sleeper service to Marsport by way of New Chicago and München, and that’s about all for the night,” he says apologetically. “It should be here in half an hour, and it don’t stop until New Chicago—”

“Really?” Gears click into place in my mechanical soul. “I’ll take a berth then, please. To Marsport. What have you got?”

“What, just like that?” He looks perplexed. “Let me see. There’s an open first — that’ll cost you eleven Reals and sixty-five, are you sure—”

“I’m sure.” I place the Marjorie Green credit chip on the desk in front of him. “Marsport is perfect.”

“But you’re—” He shuts up, realizing that I’m serious.

Sow misdirection. “I played a little joke on my patron,” I say, with a tight little smile. “I need to be halfway around the world by morning tomorrow, or it’s on me. It’s alright, he’ll calm down in a day or two. But until then I really need to keep a low profile.”

“Oh, certainly, ma’am! I wasn’t questioning you, no indeedy.” He relaxes instantly, insofar as someone whose torso is rooted in a marble plinth can be said to relax. “Let me just cut you a ticket.”

Five minutes later, I’m walking along the deserted platform in the dark. Distant lights back at the station cast sharp-edged shadows across the cement slabs. I look up at the pin-bright stars wheeling overhead. The nether end of Marsport and the Bifrost bridge are all but invisible, far around the curve of the planet. Gritty ice crystals crunch faintly under my heels. The tracks gleam in the canal of night that flows alongside the platform, laser-straight lines converging in the invisible distance.