“Joseph’s family has had theirs for thirty years now,” Diane said, smiling at her husband.
Watching them and listening, I felt an odd pang. My feelings for Ilya were strong, and we were comfortable together. Of necessity, we had found ways to be apart without being devastated. I doubted that Diane and Joseph had been apart for more than a few hours in all the years of their marriage.
They were beautiful.
After dinner, Joseph and I cleared dishes while Ilya and Diane talked. Simplicity and self-reliance kept servant arbeiters out of their apartment. Joseph asked a few polite questions about the new government — questions I had long since grown used to, and answered easily. Then he frowned, put down the last plate, and turned to face me. “I’d like to mention something. Diane didn’t think it worth bothering with, but I have different instincts,” he said.
“Oh?”
“There have been requests from several sources to use Steinburg-Leschke territories for mineral exploration, to set up remote analyzers.”
“Is that unusual?” I asked.
“No… But the requests don’t make sense.”
“How?”
“All the requests are for land mapped in the General Resource Survey twenty years ago. New surveys don’t seem necessary.”
All of Mars was ready to find burglars under the bed. The President’s office received more than a hundred warnings a week. If a little worry about the Republic was Joseph’s worst flaw, I could accept that. I politely encouraged him. “And?”
“I’ve traced the requests. They all come from former extensions of Cailetet, and contractors beholden to Cailetet.”
“Former BMs?”
“All signatory to the Republic. None from Cailetet directly… but… all, indirectly.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, though it seemed normal enough. Cailetet might not wish to draw attention from a government it did not support — and it might not wish to be denied permissions by testy district governors.
“I’ve asked around,” Joseph said, sealing the kitchen washer and starting a cycle. “Nine out of ten of the districts Steinburg-Leschke deals with have gotten requests. That would cover half of Mars. Thousands of sites.”
My attention sharpened. “Why so many?”
“I presume they wish to discover resources and stake shared claims before the election. They’re afraid the rules will change after. But I’m puzzled — they couldn’t possibly exploit so many sites.”
“Shotgun spread?” I asked, alluding to the old technique of filing many claims in the hopes of getting one or two that were productive. Erzul itself had not been innocent of such tactics. Hardscrabble mining was a tough enterprise.
“Why in so many empty or depleted areas? Do they know something about areology the government should know? Or maybe my family?”
I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll look into it.”
“I apologize for talking business,” Joseph said, “but I’ve always listened to my instincts.”
“Have they ever been wrong?”
“Oh, frequently.” He laughed. “I listen to them. I don’t always act on them.”
We joined Ilya and Diane in the small living room. The talk wandered from business to politics — nothing impolite or too probing, for which I was grateful. Truly I was getting sick of this public self, longing for some relief. Ilya saw this and quickly moved the discussion over to food and farming. Diane watched me as Joseph took the bait and described Mispec Moor’s plans for expansion.
I took a toilet break as an excuse to be alone for a while and think. There would come a time, I realized, when I would hate even more this role of public person, whose ear was always being whispered in, whose life was the subject of LitVid stare-ups, who could not spend enough time with her husband to fill out half a marriage.
By unspoken agreement, Ilya and I had postponed planning for children, and I realized children and a continuation of real life might not be possible for years if I joined Ti Sandra on a ticket, and we won…
I thought of Joseph, polite and smooth-faced and sincere, and his worries about potholes all over Mars — and of the thousands of warnings either dire or silly, the endless responsibilities focused impossibly on people who must delegate, and in delegating choose wisely and when some of those choices fail — as they will — trim mercilessly for a higher good, a good not always definable, certainly never agreed to by all the governed. I thought of the great grinding of the political wheels and felt very sorry for myself.
It passed. I returned to the living room after washing my face. Ilya, too aware of my hidden emotions, patted the cushions of the couch beside him and hugged me as I sat.
“We have good men, don’t we?” Diane asked.
I put my arm around Ilya and smiled, and Joseph blushed.
I called a conference with the Olympians at Many Hills, two weeks after receiving my enhancement, and revealed my suspicions that not all had been told.
I had not seen Ilya in a week. Criss-crossing Mars, campaigning with and without Ti Sandra, shaking hands and listening earnestly to a thousand well-wishers, ignoring those who simply turned their eyes away and did not offer their hands, I wondered if real life would ever return again, and whether I would recognize it.
We met in the Vice President’s office, just completed — large but not richly furnished, befitting our style.
More than a little dazed, I stared at the full gathering of nine Olympians across a table laden with fresh fruit and grain breakfast goodies. For the first time I met Mitchell Maspero-Gambacorta, blocky and balding, dressed in black, who came from a small Martian BM in Hellas; Yueh Liu, tall and athletic, a mild transform, originally from Earth, who had joined the Olympians two years ago; Amy Vico-Persoff from Persoff BM in Amazonis, a solid-looking young woman with determined features and a quiet, steady voice; and Danny Pincher, a bland-faced man of middle years who seemed unconcerned about grooming or clothes. Charles sat at the opposite end, his expression calm and alert as I told them of reading the presentation papers over again.
“There’s something missing, and it’s important,” I concluded. “You haven’t dropped the other boot.”
Charles looked at me with the glimmer of a smile. “What boot?”
I struggled to find words for what my enhancement had encouraged me to think. “Seven league boots,” I said.
The room fell quiet. Nobody ventured to speak. I marched two stiff fingers across the desk in front of me. “Your equations imply a lot more. That much I’ve been able to puzzle through with the help of an enhancement. And if these things bother me, they surely must bother people on Earth.”
“Nobody on Earth has access to our data,” Charles said.
“How long can a discovery this important be kept secret?” I asked. “Weeks, months? Surely someone on Earth will understand — there are millions of people much brighter than I am — ”
“Maybe in a few years someone will stumble on what we’ve learned,” Leander said, clearly uncomfortable. “A lot of what we’re studying is speculative — ”
“I don’t agree,” said Yueh Liu, stretching his tight-muscled arms over his head. “The implications are clear, as Vice President Majumdar says. We should not be too cautious. I know a lot of our colleagues on Earth, and the whole picture is going to be clear to them sooner than we’d like.”
“The destiny tweak,” I said.
Charles shook his head forcefully. “Forget about that. If means nothing.”
“We should reveal all to everybody and put them on equal ground, Earth and Mars and the Belts,” said Chinjia Park Amoy. “I would feel so much better if we could do that.”
“We’ve already decided on secrecy,” Leander said with a worried frown. He sensed the, group’s cohesion loosening. They all looked uneasy, even frightened. I felt as if I had stuck my hand into a nest of sleeping hornets, waking them all.