Abdi said, “My dear doctor, was it trivial that a moon was shifted from its orbit, and moved instantly to the vicinity of Earth?”
“I only know what I was told,” Wachsler said stubbornly.
“I was there,” Leander said. “So was Charles.”
Wachsler shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Madam Vice President, I know my duty. But I must express my dismay that so much disruption and even destruction is contemplated, yet nobody is going to ask Martians what they want.”
“I wish there were time, and that we had the means,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” Wachsler said. “Not really. If Martians decided to vote this idea down, to stay where we are…”
“That could be suicide,” Charles said.
“Do we have the right to choose our fate?” Wachsler asked heatedly. “Or do you believe you can choose for us, because you are so much better informed?”
To this there was no good answer. Wachsler had expressed the dilemma admirably. “I hope we are judged less harshly, Doctor Wachsler,” I said quietly.
“Don’t count on it, Madam Vice President,” he said.
Charles stayed behind after the meeting ended. Aelita stayed as well. “We haven’t talked about Ilya,” he said.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
“Doctor Abdi reminded me… I’d like to express my sorrow. He was a wonderful man.”
“Please,” I said, looking away. It was all the more unbearable coming from Charles.
“Do you blame me for his death?” Charles asked, his voice plaintive.
“No,” I said. “How could I?”
“If I had died ten years ago, none of this would have happened… Not this way.”
“What kind of megalomania is that?” I asked.
“Without my contribution, we wouldn’t have built a tweaker for another five or ten years. Earth might have built it first.”
I stared at him, wondering whether I could maintain my careful mask of neutral efficiency. “I’m as much to blame as you are.”
“I need to know. Because if you blame me for that, I don’t think I could stand it. Really.”
Tears welled in his eyes. I turned away, absolutely unwilling to join him in a display of emotion. “Get yourself together,” I said, a little harshly.
“I’ve never felt more together and clear-headed in my entire life.”
“My head is not clear and I’m not at the top of my form. Please. Please.” I pounded the table with my fist. “Just please don’t.”
“I won’t,” he said,
“I spoke to Ti Sandra a few hours ago,” I said, swallowing and regaining my composure. “We have to choose where we’ll take Mars when the time comes. If it comes. And we’ll have to make a test run with Phobos.”
“I’ve been planning that,” Charles said. “We can take the Mercury and the original tweaker to Phobos within a few days. The larger tweakers should stay here.”
“We need to disperse the tweakers and thinkers, in case Earth makes another, more directed attempt to stop us.”
Charles looked away. “We could destroy all of our equipment,” he said. “Provide proof to Earth.”
“I’d do that in an instant,” I said, “if Earth could possibly believe us. They can’t. The stakes are too high. Politics and survival drive everything now.”
“I thought I’d make the suggestion. I would kill myself if I thought it would change the situation. If I thought I could stop your grieving.”
I glared at him. “I’d kill all of you, myself, if…” The admission startled me, and the last few words came out weakly, with a sudden decrease of breath. Charles did not seem startled or shocked.
“I envied Ilya. I remember you years ago,” he said after a pause of many seconds. “I’ve been with a fair number of women since, and none has had your strength of purpose, your conviction.”
“Purpose?” I asked. “Conviction?”
“I said to myself, ‘She’s as crazy as you are.’ ”
“Jesus,” I said, forcing a laugh.
“I believed I could rock the century-long status quo, discover how the universe worked. And you… I said you’d become President of Mars. Remember?”
“I’ll go back through my diaries and check it out,” I said. “Maybe you can read tarot after all this is settled.”
“It will never be settled,” Charles said. “Events this large never finish. You’ve never asked about my wife.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“She was a sweet woman, a true Martian. She stood by me for three years. She had a strong sense of duty, and she really tried. But eventually she left. She said she never knew where I was — what I was thinking.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You obviously weren’t well-matched.”
“No.” He turned away, seeming to wilt. I wondered how much the QL links were draining him.
I needed to bring us back to our focus. “Where should Mars go?” I asked.
Charles straightened and linked his slate to the main display. “Aelita, these are rough coordinates and star numbers. Link and update with the astronomy library.”
Aelita graphically depicted a scatter of densely-packed stars.
“We can’t just move a few light-years away. With present tracking and measuring, Earth could find us anywhere within a few hundred light-years. If we move at all, it’s because Earth has proven it will do everything it can to destroy us… And will keep on trying.“
Bald expression of our dilemma still had power to chill me.
“So I’m suggesting we make a grand leap. I’ve looked at the new surveys, run them through Aelita for processing, and come up with a candidate. It’s the best of all possible places in the near galaxy. About ten thousand light-years away, five thousand light-years closer to galactic center. A narrow, restricted cloud separating from the leading edge of a galactic arm. A thick cluster of stars a few billion years younger than most of the stars near the sun, stable and rich with metals. Beautiful skies, bright nights.
“I searched the Galactic Survey Twenty-Two Catalog and found a yellow dwarf star about nine-tenths the size of the sun, with perturbations suggesting four large planets. Rocky worlds unknown, of course. And there are a dozen similar stars in the same region.
“I give them to you,” he concluded. “All the clouds and stars, a new garden of flowers.” He watched me closely. “Choose. Become mother to the new Mars.”
I remembered the ancient flowers Charles had given me near Trés Haut Médoc, cut from the Glass Sea beds. Now he offered me a bouquet of stars. After the weariness and grief, Charles could still take my breath away.
“I want to apologize,” I said. “I’ve been very rough on you. You’ve done magnificent work.”
“Thank you,” he said. His face brightened, and he watched me with gentle intensity. I still had such power to please Charles. I had never had such a hold on Ilya, and perhaps that was why I loved him.
I stared at the stars circled and blinking on the outskirts of the elongated blob. “Will we need reservations?” I asked.
I interrupted an argument the next day, as I walked with Dandy and Lieh to inspect the progress on the big tweakers.
The central laboratory had been finished the week before, the equipment had been consolidated in one chamber, and a few simple tests had been run converting small samples of oxygen to anti-oxygen. When we entered the lab, I heard Leander’s voice rise above shouting.
“Doesn’t anybody understand what we’re up against?”
Mitchell Maspero-Gambacorta and Tamara Kwang had squared off against Charles, Leander, and Royce. Kwang saw me enter the lab and fixed her face in a chilly mask. Maspero-Gambacorta shook his head, swearing beneath his breath, and walked to squat on the low bench supporting the larger force disorder pumps. Royce gathered up his slate and a few tools and seemed about ready to leave, but relented, standing awkwardly with his arms full. Leander’s face had flushed with emotion; Charles, sitting with hands wrapped on one crossed knee, appeared calm, even a little distanced from the row.