“We have such a report, with detailed plans,” Leander said.
Ti Sandra shook her head firmly. “Not now, please. I shall have nightmares tonight as it is. We’ll get back to our duties, to our husbands… To our private thoughts. And,” she added, “to our prayers.”
Charles offered his hand, as did the others, and we all shook. “We’ll do nothing without the government’s agreement,” Winkleman said as he escorted us to the gate, and down the tunnel beyond.
“No,” Ti Sandra said. “You most certainly will not.”
Ti Sandra called me into her quarters, the chancellor’s suite, and offered me a cup of late-evening tea. Her face was gray as she poured. “I once had a dream,” she said. “A beautiful man approached me and dropped a bucket of gold into my lap. I should have been very happy.”
“And you weren’t?” I asked.
“I was terrified. I did not want the responsibility. I told him to take it back.” She drew herself up and stared at the chamber. Here, years before, Chancellor Connor had ordered the voiding of students, sparking our protest.
“You know Charles Franklin?” she asked.
“We were lovers, briefly,” I said.
Ti Sandra nodded appreciatively at the confidence. “I had four lovers before Paul. None of them showed much promise. Charles Franklin must have been something.“
“He was sweet and enthusiastic,” I said.
“But you did not love him.”
“I think I did,” I said, “but I was very confused.”
“And if you had lawbonded with him?”
“He asked,” I said.
“Oh?” Ti Sandra sat on the couch beside me and we sipped our tea in silence for a while. “Please tell me these scientists are making bad jokes.”
I did not answer.
“Madam Vice President,” she said, “life is becoming a bowl of shit.”
“Not cherries,” I said.
“Shit,” she repeated emphatically. “We are nothing but children, Casseia. We can’t possibly handle this much power.”
“Humans aren’t ready?”
She snorted. “I don’t speak for humanity. I speak for us — for simple Martians. I am terrified what Earth might do if they find out, and what we might do in return…”
“If they…”
“Yes,” she said before I finished.
“We should look on the bright side,” I said.
She ignored that with a toss of her hand and a shiver of her shoulders. “And over the years, Charles Franklin never told you? You wrote to him, asked him questions, no?”
“Once,” I said. “At my uncle’s urging. Charles told me he was working on something very important, and that… it would, it could cause us a lot of political trouble. What he actually said was that things were not going to get any easier. I thought he was exaggerating.”
“Should we speak privately with Charles Franklin, or with Stephen Leander?”
“I think Charles is the one in charge.”
“Is he wise, Casseia?”
I smiled and shook my head. “I don’t know. He wasn’t very wise when we were younger. But then, neither was I.”
“Cailetet’s involvement concerns me,” Ti Sandra said. “I would not put it past Achmed Crown Niger to know more than these scientists say he does. And if he knows, he will use the information. We have pushed him into a corner. He has gotten nowhere on Mars. He is trapped, politically and financially.”
“We don’t have guidelines for keeping government secrets,” I said. “Whom do we trust?”
“Trust! I don’t even trust myself.” Ti Sandra made a sad face. “God help us all.”
I lay beside Ilya that night, watching him sleep. He almost always slept soundly, like a child; I imagined his head filled with memories of the digs, thoughts of work yet to be done in the sulci… I envied him so much it brought tears of childish frustration to my eyes.
We had shared a glass of port and fresh cheese, both made by Erzul families and donated to the new government. He had joked about the infinite privileges of being at the center; I had not reacted, and he had asked why I was so somber. “Everything is going well,” he had said. “You deserve congratulations, all of you.”
I tried to smile. The effort was hardly convincing.
“Do you mind if I pry a little?” he asked, pushing closer to me on the bed.
I shook my head.
“You’ve heard something upsetting,” he said. “Something you can’t tell me about.”
“I wish I could,” I said fervently. “I need advice and wisdom so much.”
‘“Is it something dangerous?”
“I can’t even tell you that,” I said.
He lay back on the bolster with his hands behind his head. “I will be glad when — ”
“You have your wife back?” I said quickly, fixing him with an accusing glare.
“No,” Ilya said evenly. “Well, yes, actually.” He smiled. “Trick question. I haven’t lost you yet.”
“Yes,” I said, unassuaged, “but I can’t go on digs with you. We seldom spend time together. I wish I was with you all of the time. I’m getting sick of meetings and dinners and propaganda and being called ‘the midwife of a New Mars.’ ”
Ilya refused to snap back. This angered me even more, and I jumped out of bed, marching back and forth along one short wall of the inn room, raising my fists at the ceiling. “God, God, God!” I shrieked. “I do not want this, I do not need this!” I turned on him again, hands outstretched with fingers curled in witch’s claws. “We had things under control! We could do everything on our own! This only makes things so much worse.”
Ilya watched me helplessly. “I wish—”
“But you can’t!”
The one-sided rant faded and I slumped by the wall, knees drawn up, staring blankly at a corner of the bed. Ilya kneeled beside me, hand on my shoulder. After, as a kind of apology, I forcefully made love to him. My false performance did not seem sufficient. I held on to him and we talked about the time after the interim government’s term had expired.
I wanted to take a teaching position at an independent school, I said, and he reassured me, there would be no end of such appointments. I had only to ask. “Midwife to the New Mars,” he had said softly. “It fits, really. Don’t be angry at yourself.”
I had watched him fall asleep, thinking of when we would have children, wondering now whether that time would come.
It was easy to imagine what so much power could lead to. Images of Achmed Crown Niger and Freechild Dauble, unwise leaders, memories of forceful, together Earth; how would they feel, knowing youthful, naive, dangerous Mars had such power? Perhaps they already knew, and plans were in place, and there was nothing we could do.
The Olympians erected a small, remote laboratory in Melas Dorsa, using some of their own money and a bit of land donated by Klein BM. Melas Dorsa is moderately cratered land, cut from the south by shallow canyons, and swept by low dunes. There was little water and few resources.
Even on Mars, it was a desert.
I went alone to view the demonstrations. Ti Sandra had an emergency meeting in Elysium to shore up support for the new government among suddenly nervous delegates and a district governor of marginal competence and few brains. She trusted me to be her eyes and ears, but I also sensed she was terrified of what they might show us, of the magnitude of this unexpected and unwanted gift. I was no braver than Ti Sandra, but perhaps I was less imaginative.
Charles and Stephen Leander accompanied me on the shuttle flight from UMS. The shuttle had been marked with government symbols — the flag and “FRM 1” to signify it was carrying VIPs. We were to meet two impartial scientists from Yamaguchi and Erzul, flying separately from Rubicon City , at the Melas Dorsa lab.
There were no trains through Melas Dorsa, no stations within four hundred kilometers of the lab, and Charles warned me there would be few amenities.
I stared at him accusingly. “Luxury is not very important to me, certainly not now,” I said. Leander sensed the charged atmosphere and conspicuously studied the landscape passing several dozen meters below. The craft flew over a low ridge, then continued its ascent to avoid a chain of diffuse dust devils.