Atlas & Ares book 1: Men of the Red Earth

Sampson Emmerich Wright sat behind the polished surface of his desk and turned an I.D. badge round and round in his fingers, wondering how he had managed to alchemize the collapse of the entire automobile industry into the preservation of God's green earth and blue sky yet find himself struggling with one small piece of plastic. He had a record of presenting happenstance as thought-out intention. Intention created confidence. Creating confidence was his job. He'd operated Washington long enough to know how to cast bad luck as deliberate, from inconsequential misfortune, like decaying telecommunications infrastructure, to the openly malicious, like Thomas Kaufman. Kaufman he had transmuted halfway across the solar system. And if the old man couldn't foil Wright, how could a microscopic bit of uncensored news?

He flicked the badge across the glossy desk. The plastic surface caught the light everywhere except where it had been scrawled with burgundy lipstick.

Wright sneered. He threw himself back from desk and fumbled for a cigar. Not to smoke, just to feel the rough paper and smell the tobacco, to draw strength from the authority possession of a cigar conferred. Two words. Small ones. Why was he so flustered? All the work he had done to eradicate the name "Thomas Kaufman", all the fabrications to show that Thomas Kaufman had been a hoax perpetrated by his office to draw out malcontents, the dealing to convince the Bureau of Education that Mars had always had three moons, the wrangling of unions of engineers on three continents into declaring spaceflight a technical impossibility—and all of it undone by some French or Italian newspaper editor who had the gall to run a grainy photo of an electrician's abandoned I.D.—

A phone rang.

The noise erupted from an old ironclad on the sideboard. Its receiver sat heavily on the top like a bushy brow over its many-eyed rotary dial. Unsophisticated, but easy to repair. It clattered a second time.

Wright let it ring. He shoved free of the desk and took his cigar to the window. Buried under ten feet of sod it showed no view, only his reflection. His lip curled. He was Sampson Emmerich Wright. He'd served six presidents and three national parties. He didn't wait for the phone to ring. He made the calls. He was the most powerful man in the most powerful city in the most powerful country on the most powerful planet—

He whipped the cigar at the reflection and snapped his teeth. Most powerful planet. Mars shouldn't even have entered into consideration. It was supposed to be a dead world.

The phone beat his eardrums obnoxiously a third time. Wright kicked the cigar into a corner and went to the door. "Dorcas, I'm not to be disturbed." Then he closed the door and in a single motion both latched and locked it, hiding the click of the lock in the pop of the latch. Before the phone could ring again, he snatched the receiver off the cradle.

An irritating voice declared, "Small craft advisory, Signor W. Do I deliver or do I deliver?"

"I saw the radar. What is it?"

"Exactly what the grand viz ordered: interplanetary endo-/exo-atmospheric V.T.O.L. flying cargo bay. In a previous life she gobbled up baby satellites. Best in show. This hour next week you'll be hopping D.C. to Hong Kong for the price of a straw."

"How can you guarantee it'll arrive safely?"

"Got it all calculated, your prominence. The cap'n's an old dunce I know, real quarter-wit. I can pin what he'll do before he even s'poses he has a choice. I slipped him the skinny on that missile system and left him a little nest to drop through, safe as a baby bird. Good as in your pocket."

Wright bit his tongue. He had to keep his voice patient, even with this slang-tongued devil. But he was small-time. He didn't think far enough ahead. Wright asked, "But what about tomorrow? Don't tell me even a dimwitted Martian is dumb enough to stroll up to the White House with an immigration ban on his back."

The voice on the phone laughed. "No problemo, Sammy, old boy. You want a confab with your quarry, mesmerize him with the ol' twirly eye and curl your mustache before you pick his pocket? Easy as winkin'. These redheads have their bible. Just play to their expectations."

"And how do I do that?"

"Defy yourself, O great amplitude. Show 'em a chink in your armor. You gotta threaten the dupe, then give him a line o' retreat. Let him see what he wants to see. Say the magic words and he'll knock on over to negotiate the girl's release, fearing nothing and leaving that pretty little starboat right where you can take it."

"And I suppose, before you tell me, you have but a minor request."

Several minutes later when Wright replaced the cast iron receiver back on its hook, he found the I.D. badge again between his fingers, rubbing his thumb over the waxy texture of the lipstick. He couldn't read the first name—Something Farelli—and he licked his thumb to rub out the burgundy words, but succeeded only in smearing them. So be it. The media's enthusiasm would soon wane, and by then he would have alchemized this mishap into a victory, a victory far greater, grander, and more glorious than anyone but Sampson Wright could have foreseen. He nearly laughed at it. To think that two weeks ago when it was published he had blanched, struck by a mere pair of words as if by a declaration of war. But now, what pathetic words they were. Words were not actions, and Mars had no ability to wage action against Earth. He had blanched at a spasm of imagination.

Wright snorted and with a flick of his wrist sent the plastic into the trash.

It landed face up in the light, the enemy's declaration emblazoned across it—

Mars lives!

The August Hawk slipped through the Argrid.

Udike's gamble that the missile was targeting deflected wreckage had been right, and as he stayed the course to the bottom of the funnel Hazel saw behind them a brief flare and the glitter of an expanding shell of debris. Then they dropped out of the firing range and into the atmosphere.

The numbness in Cap's hands eased into sharp, tingling pains, and with effort he uncurled his claws, but his mental fugue state remained. Not until long after it happened did Cap comprehend that Rigsby had unchained himself, taken one look at the ocean ahead of them, and ordered Udike to take them to Washington over as much land as possible. But for it, Cap was grateful. The planet scrolled beneath them, black and silent, land matte, seas glossy where they reflected starlight. Unfamiliar. He saw no signs of human habitation, no coasts or deltas or rivers strung in yellow lights. It appeared to be a dead world.

Or worse—a world that was dying.

Plymouth had hit the ice at a hundred and forty miles per hour, and thanks to Marsha, at a sixty-degree down slope. Hanging from her pilot's chair Marsha had aimed them into a glancing blow on a polar mountainside. The ship struck—and rolled. She was old construction, built like a bunker, and held together as she tumbled and bounced, shedding speed, and she ground to a halt intact—intact, but upside-down.

Cincinnati hung delirious by his makeshift harness as a pair of large hands released him and lowered him gently to the ceiling. "Awake, boy."

"He has a concussion, Dad."

"Keep opening. There you are. Now. What is today's date?"

"Dad, no one knows the date."

"How many fingers?"

The boy guessed. "Two."

"What's your name?"

"Cinc...Cincinnati Pierce."

"You have a middle name, Cincinnati Pierce?"

"Cincinnati...A. Pierce."

"What's the 'A' stand for?"

"Not telling."

A baritone chuckle. "You are well enough to joke, you are well enough to help. Come. We have breaches to seal."

Cap awoke, sweaty and aching in his exosuit. He staggered to his feet. Earth's full gee felt more than a tenth stronger than the nine mississippi at which he had spent the last three days. The gravity of the situation, he rued. "Where are we?"

"Eastern seaboard of the United States. Landing in a few minutes."

Cap twitched an acknowledgement and left the cockpit. Rigsby met him on the ramp. "Sleeping in a onesie again?"

Cap threw down a gauntlet but said nothing.

Rigsby reported, "Hazel's been on the radio. Some peer-to-peer chatter but mostly official business only. Alternates between bald-faced propaganda and travel brochures. Hazel's working out a map of the city. Seems to be mainly tombs."

A world that was dying. Cap picked his gauntlet off the ramp and pried out his lens. Nothing from George. He called over his shoulder into the cockpit. "Do a thermal scan. Find the people."

Rigsby said, "What's your plan?"

"Find the Secret Servus."

"How?"

"According to Tony Zinser, they're secret police. They'll be wherever people are assembled."

"Dressed like that, the Secret Servus will find you before you find them."

"I'll improvise something."

Cap disassembled his exosuit and an hour later found himself at the huge cargo door of the Hawk wearing a bedsheet as a toga and a pair of uncomfortable slippers that Rigsby had informed him were motor cowlings but which Cap insisted on wearing anyway. It wasn't what Earthlings wore, but it wasn't Martian either. No time to rig better. Cap slapped a control paddle.

Internal couplings within the doors released with a series of loud clangs, oversized and mechanical, like the raising of a castle gate. A gust of wind blasted his face, hot and humid—and disgusting. Cap gagged. It was a fetid stench, not chemical or geological, like the smells of Mars, but stale and sour, biological. Cap tasted the foulness on his tongue.

Next to him, Rigsby gasped, "What's that awful stink?"

Udike strolled in from outside, having done a security lap. "Welcome to Planet Dirt."

"I worked the Rimstaff farm. Our dirt never smelled that bad."

"It's not just dirt," Udike answered, "it's dirt in progress."

A planet-wide mold. Cap shuddered, then steeled himself. He breathed through his mouth and stepped onto the tarmac.

They had landed at an abandoned airfield outside Washington, setting down before dawn, and as the sun rose an autumn breeze whipped his toga and raised a wave of litter against an empty hangar. The sky was gray and overcast. Bluer than Mars. Hotter in temperature, colder in spirit.

Cap picked a direction and strode purposefully, dodging reflections of the sky in gray puddles as he navigated toward the distant billboard where Hazel had pointed him. Beyond it would be a highway into the city. Burlap had been stapled over the original sign, black letters stenciled onto it that read Dulles-Wong International Spaceport, National Strategic Aerospace Reserve. Cap crossed a mangled guardrail beneath it and climbed through a heap of fallen scaffolding.

"Nightmare of a jungle gym," Rigsby said as he hopped to extract a leg from the tangle. He'd copied Cap's bedsheet-toga, but awkwardly, less patrician and more mummy, and he did his best to straighten it. "Which way?"

"We're west of the city, it's morning. Head for the sun."

Rigsby shaded his eyes.

A highway snaked east like a dry river, white surface as broken as an ice pack in spring, islands of fractured concrete floating on brown, withered grass. It rose above the surrounding streets and buildings, but the awful smell of garbage left in the sun remained.

The highway was strangely quiet.

Amid the riot of smell, color, texture, temperature, the absence of sound felt eerily Martian. At home, the air was too thin to carry much sound. Vibrations were muted. But on Earth there should be a racket of machinery and animals and howling winds and children yelling and men fighting. Cap supposed the city to be uninhabited.

Then, far behind them, movement stirred. Something undulated. A procession, rolling forward in solemn unison, men and women under load, burdened by sacks and bundles and baskets. One man had an eight-foot log on his shoulder. Another pushed a wheelbarrow full of potatoes. Everyone wore brown woolen clothing, thick and coarse. Homespun. They trudged with necks bent, eyes on the ground, passing Cap and Rigsby without so much as a tip of the hat. One ashen-skinned woman squinted contemptuously at them and puckered at their flowing garb, as if she disapproved of going out in pajamas. Cap said, "We're missionaries." Rigsby bowed and raised his palms.

The woman tossed her chin another direction, not even deigning to look at them.

An old timer at the rear of the parade grunted. "You're on the wrong side."

By reflex Cap readied to argue, but Rigsby batted him on the arm and pointed. "The yellow line. They're all on that side of the highway."

Cap rolled his eyes but fell in at the back of the procession.

The solemnity of the march endured for three or four miles, until the occasional graffiti on the concrete barricades thickened into an intricate lacework and the formation thinned into single queue. It veered right. The barricade rose into a wall, in the middle of it a chainlink door that clattered shut as each sojourner passed through one by one. Cap noted the posters on the wall. Prepare to show your commerce license. He whispered to Rigsby. "These people don't look like they have a license for anything, let alone commerce."

"That's why they're carrying so much. They're not allowed to use money. They have to barter."

"It's a black market?"

"The goods aren't regulated, just the method of exchange."

"But no one at the gate is checking licenses."

"Unenforced laws."

Rigsby said it as a verbal shrug and didn't need to quote more. Cap had read Levy's journal. That's why he'd gone to a crowded place. Where there were crowds there would be laws, where there were laws there would be laws that were ignored, and where there were laws that were ignored there would be secret police. It had been one of tricks Levy confessed from his days as a despot.

"So how do we find them?" Cap asked, not having to say who they were.

"Heads down."

Rigsby nodded at the walkers in front of them, then bowed, not in prayer but with eyes that watched the ground. No, not the ground, their shoes—no, not their shoes, everyone else's shoes. "They have different footwear?"

"Bare feet and tattered sandals aren't no good in a chase. I'd bet the authorities wear actual shoes."

Cap inventoried footwear as they passed between the galvanized poles of the gate and turned onto a metal catwalk mounted sixty feet above the street, the grate rattling against its bolts as if about to give way. The caged walk sloped down. They descended past the rusted steel girders holding the roadbed, and the noise that been missing struck in full cacophony. The catwalk debouched them into a market.

Not a market, Cap thought, but a bazaar.

The structure hung from the highway's girders, a cube of structural pipes that held up four decks of loose planking and housed innumerable stalls partitioned from each other by ratty quilts and bedsheets and splashes of vinyl color torn from old billboards. They were trapped in a shifting, three-dimensional maze.

The bedlam assaulted Cap's Martian ears. He wandered the labyrinth, forgetting shoes as he examined the pitiful wares and waved off vendor's shouts and pleadings for him to buy their misshapen clay dishes, soured apples, and shedding fur hats.

Cap found himself at a dead end. He circled back, looking for another passage but forgetting what he was searching for.

Then he halted.

Pasted to a plywood board was Zinser's broadside—the Martian ban. But this version was newer. It included a complete and precise Martian stereotype: tall, thin, straight, well, peculiar accent, well fed, excessive personal hygiene. Cap recognized himself in the "Wanted" poster. He had hoped that trading his spacesuit for a toga would have been unpredictable enough to disguise him, but it wouldn't fool anyone. White linen contrasted too much with Earth's wool, his cleanliness with their smudges, his height with their gravity. The poster knew to profile what he couldn't change. Cap wouldn't blend in until he rubbed his face with dirt, stooped, and practiced decades of malnutrition. The poster might as well have his picture on it.

He had to get out of there.

Then, in the jostle of the horde, his eye caught three more familiar things.

First, the curve of a chin, now lost in the crowd but which seemed to be speaking to him, almost telepathically, the words, Well, well, well, the pilgrims regress.

Second, a girl, thin and bare-armed in the cold, peering through the slats in the deck.

Third, two planks in front of him at the end of thready pant cuffs, a pair of black, patent leather, rubber-soled—

Shoes.

The shoes spoke. "Stop. Right. There."

Cap raised his eyes to meet a pistol aimed at his chest, a black, surgical cylinder that bore the fangy scent of machine oil. He had seen a gun before, and he felt again that a man did not wield a gun so much as a gun wielded a man. But he suppressed a sneer. Behind the man was a petrified expression. Hazel had never seen a gun. Cap straightened to his full Martian height, ten inches taller than the man with the gun. "Hello, Mr. Ranger, sir."

The gun wagged. "You're under arrest. Against the wall. Hands on the chains."

Cap defied the gun and remained where he was, drawing the gun's attention as Rigsby faded back into the crowd and crept toward Hazel. Opposite Rigsby, a motion. Again words in his head. On your mark.

The gun wagged a second time. "Hands on the chains." It wouldn't wag again.

Cap's toe felt for the edge of the plank.

Get set.

Cap raised his hands and twisted sideways, his eyes locked on the gunman's.

The milling throng had not been perturbed by this minor intervention and its hot-blooded dickering had continued without pause, but through the noise broke a shout from the adjacent aisle. A curtain flapped—

"Stop! Thief!"

—and a boy collided with the gunman—

Go!

Cap leapt from the plank. He shoved the gunman sideways, grabbed Hazel, and bolted into the crush of bodies. The way parted before him and closed together behind. Cap didn't have time to marvel at the peculiar human fluid dynamics but searched for an exit. Not the catwalk, it would be guarded. He pulled Hazel the opposite direction. Maybe he could lose the gunman in the labyrinth—

Two planks separated in front of him. He plunged through the floor. The quilt roof of the stall below caught him and tore loose. He collapsed onto a vendor. The quilt flailed and cursed as Cap scrambled out. Rigsby surfaced next to him. Cap grabbed Hazel.

The hole in the ceiling had closed.

Cap picked an aisle and ran, back the direction he had come but hoping the gunman wouldn't expect it. Then, at the end of the aisle, glimpsed between bodies, a phantom. A piece of clothing, or a gait. Something he knew he should remember.

A ping sparked at his feet. The gunman, shooting between the planks. The crowd scattered. He'd lost his grip on Hazel and spun to find her, but she grabbed him and jerked him left into a booth, under its rear curtain into the next aisle. They needed an exit.

Again, the phantom. A hat. Swerving into a crossway.

Cap lunged across the aisle, dropped to his hip and slid on the metal under a tassel veil to pop up in the next aisle before the phantom. He whirled. There—at the end of the aisle, far ahead, stepping up into—

"Cap, no!"

He ran, collided with a vendor, lost his toga, and clad only in his gray Martian skinsuit reached the end of the aisle where the phantom had disappeared. He peered down the red garbage chute. Without thinking he grabbed an overhead bar, swung his legs in, and let go.

The world became a red esophageal blur of sunlight on plastic. Segments rattled. The chute curved. Cap shot out onto a pile of refuse, hard and slick. He tumbled. For a moment he found his feet, then lost them, then recovered again and skidded to an unbalanced stop. Slime covered him. He searched for the phantom.

A shadow blinked. He darted for it. It led him down narrow concrete steps, funneled him through a maze of back alleys, into a billowing cloud of white steam, through a door, into a white tiled room. Rigsby and Hazel appeared behind him. The door closed without them touching it. Cap spun.

Behind the door, grinning through the steam, the phantom doffed her wide-brimmed hat. "Welcome back to Flatland, brother."

—

She wore a dun-colored safari dress with a wide belt and buckle, but all Cap saw through the steam was their mother. "George?"

She laughed. Her face had a light, musical quality, heart-shaped and rosy, and her cinnamon hair bobbed off her collar, different from their mother's very short hair yet part of the same family. Cap said, "Why are we in a Chinese laundry?"

"Fogs up their sunglasses."

He couldn't tell if she was serious.

She took his hand and palmed him a small box. "Here, take these. Immunizers. They may not have caught you, but for sure you caught something."

Rigsby took offense. "We have diseases on Mars."

"Not like we do. You don't have pigs."

"What do pigs have to do with—"

"And don't drink the milk, or eat anything with milk in it. You can't digest it."

"Why not?"

"After twenty years without lactose, your bodies have figured out you're no longer nursing."

Cap asked, "Anything else we should know?"

"Yeah. Don't flush toilet paper. It clogs the sewers."

Hazel gagged. "I am not using the bathroom on this planet."

Cap abandoned the conversation.

The door out of the steam room was hidden by racks of colorful cotton dresses, and after ducking through a hatch Cap found himself in a dismal brick room where an iron the size of a table clumped down from the ceiling to flatten a green shirt. A laundress pinched the shirt by two points and flicked it, perfectly folded, into a wire basket. She laid out another shirt. She must have known he was there, but her eyes remained fastidiously on the careful movements of her fingertips and Cap she didn't see him because she had instructions not to.

Hazel emerged, sopped in sweat, and climbed to the front window, high and underlooking the street. She peered as far as she could left and right. Then, in a gasp, she dropped and pressed herself to the wall—

Two Secret Servusmen, obvious in their shoes and big sunglasses, walked past, examining the building.

The Martians scattered.

George said, "Don't bother. It's liar's glass. They can't see in."

Hazel hissed, "They could go door to door."

"They won't go to this door. Other side of the glass shows a respiratory infection ward."

Cap peeked out, watched one of the Servusmen stare at the window, cross himself, and continue along the street.

George watched him. "Learn what you wanted from having me kidnap Farelli?"

Before Cap could say anything, Rigsby answered on his behalf. "Yeah, Ambrose's source is a newsman named Anthony Zinser, and Zinser has a reporter on Earth. That's how Ambrose knows scientists are disappearing."

"That's half of what he wanted to know."

"Half? He said he kidnapped Farelli to see how Ambrose got the news."

"Is it possible that what he said was he wanted, quote, 'to see how the news was received'?"

"It's possible..." Rigsby gave Cap a dirty glare.

George said, "A little pun, eh, Cincy?"

"Frost, don't call me that."

"Watch your language, star-sailor."

"You'd rather I swore like a zealot?"

"What's a lucky guy like you got to swear about? Nicknames?" She turned back to Rigsby. "He asked me to whisk away Farelli so he could show Ambrose how law enforcement would react to Martians breaking down Earth's gates to carry off its women."

Rigsby cocked his jaw. "Is that so? Satisfy your curiosity?"

"Yeah," Cap said, pistol bore still hot on his retinas, "I see how they reacted." To George, "What do you know about Judith?"

"Rumor has it she wanted an audience with Sampson Wright, Chief White House Legal Counsel, real commissar, snoopervises the whole town. Suspected he had a secret trade deal with Mars."

Cap sputtered, but again Rigsby spoke first. "Not possible. No one on Mars would trade with Earth." Then, after the reflex passed, he gave it a moment's thought and said to Cap, "Unless it could've have been—"

"She would never."

"Who?" George asked.

"No one," Cap answered, as Rigsby said, "Gidja Boyle." Cap waved. "You have no evidence."

"Zinser thinks she's building a shipyard in the Belt, Udike is counting pilots gone A.W.O.L., Judith poked around Ceres and came up with a ride through the Argrid—"

"All circumstantial."

"Circumstantial evidence is still evidence."

Cap resisted the bait and argued a different point. "You propose a gardener is behind all that?"

"She could be resource laundering. Mine on Earth, salt a few asteroids. We'd never know the difference."

"She wouldn't do that."

George asked, "Who's Gidja Boyle?"

"No one," Cap answered again, as Rigsby said, "His ex-girlfriend."

"Frost, would you—"

"And she's going to stay your ex-girlfriend if you don't stop blackmailing her."

"I didn't blackmail—"

"You told Halliday to ask if Gidj was getting her hands dirty on Earth. I know personal information when I hear it. She doesn't like being called 'Gidj', and she's a farmer who hates dirt. Gutsy move to find a way through the Argrid, but I hope you like being lonely."

"I could stand to be a little more lonely right now."

Hazel hopped to her feet and climbed back to the window. "Hey, check it out. That guy just tagged your building. He painted something in the entryway."

Cap read it. "'1345 AM'? That doesn't make sense. Thirteen hundred forty-five hours is afternoon. P.M., not A.M. Hey!"

Hazel had dropped from the ledge, picked his pocket, and blurted into his lens, "Udike, in the hold, tune the radio to thirteen-forty-five megahertz, amplitude modulation."

Cap snatched back his lens. "You don't take a guy's comm."

She shrugged but said nothing until Udike radioed back, relaying a broadcast. The Martian ban. A monotone voice read, "—hereby forbid trespass on United States and United Nations sovereign territory, by order of the U.N. Secretary General and the U.S. President Superior. All non-terrestrials apprehended will be placed in federal detention, tried, and found guilty. Direct appeals to the Executive Supreme Court..."

After a minute it repeated. Cap played it back three times. He felt he should recognize something in it, some excuse for its blandness, a password or a secret code, a hidden pattern of letters or words to decipher—

He laughed when he found it. "That's it. That's the way in."

"What is?"

"The appeals process. If we're to be tried and found guilty by a pro forma court, why is there an appeals process? It's like what Levy wrote. 'Liberty and justice for all our friends.' Half the purpose of a law is to punish your enemies, the other half is for letting your friends off the hook. You have to have built-in loopholes. This guy, Sampson Wright, he wouldn't have passed a total ban on Martians if he had any Martian friends, which means an appeals process isn't for protecting his friends. It's for making new friends. That's the answer to Judith's question. Wright doesn't have a secret trade deal with Mars. He wants one."

Ambrose had drilled Cap never to overlook an opening bid, least of all when disguised as a rejection. "Udike, reply broadcast, same frequency but with more power. Tell them a Martian's come to negotiate." He said to George, "Wright must have caught the same whiff Judith did, that someone on Earth had a trade deal with Mars, and he wanted one too. He arrested Judith as bait to lure a Martian who could deal."

Rigsby crossed his arms. "And that's you?"

"Sure."

"You don't represent Mars."

"Sampson Wright doesn't know that."

"What if it's a trap?"

"Why arrest me? No one's coming to my rescue."

"Sampson Wright doesn't know that either."

"You don't think I should go."

Rigsby didn't like the loophole. "Levy wrote that any government without a law against unenforced laws is, by definition, illegitimate."

"I didn't come to rescue democracy."

"What are you willing to pay for Judith's release?"

"Not much," Cap answered. "I have an idea."

He told them, and within half an hour Udike called back with an invitation to the White House, eight p.m. "Bring proof you're Martian."

George had brought terrestrial clothes for them, coarse and woven from plant fibers. Rigsby checked them over for mites, Hazel squirmed in long sleeves. To Cap George gave a pair of trousers, seaweed green, a white button-up shirt, short tie, and a morning jacket. Cap flapped the tails of the costume. It would have to do. He leaned against the wall, foppish.

"Don't do that," George said. "It won't be a masquerade ball to anyone but you. Stand like a man. You've got to play the part of a Martian statesman."

They waited in the laundry for several more hours, until the street began to turn orange in the sinking sun. George scouted the back alleys, then returned, scribbled on a piece of scrap linen a map of precise zigzags, explained them to Rigsby, and pushed him out the rear door with Hazel in a puff of steam. Cap she jagged by the sleeve and hauled him to a ladder.

They descended three floors to an ancient underground infrastructure, long abandoned. George threw a light from her lens and sidestepped broken derelicts until she found a canvas cover, underneath which was a flatbad the size of a car. She got low and pushed it, scraping, into a nearby groove in the cement. "You landed at the wrong airport," she told Cap. "It's fifteen miles to Washington. We'll have to risk a ride."

"What is it?"

"Old maglev distribution network. Track is clear, but no seatbelts, so hold on." She thumbed a control on her lens and the flatbed inched forward. Cap hunched, certain they would be entering a tunnel but unsure how low it would be. The flatbed picked up speed. Stale air whooshed into his face.

He crawled back to George and raised his voice over the wind. "How did I hear you at the market and the Secret Servusman didn't?"

"Acoustic beam-forming. Nothing fancy."

"Anything else in that bag of tricks?"

She winked.

"What do I need to know about Wright?"

"Technically, he's a staffer, but he has more clout than the actual president. He's been around longer. Presidents are term limited; White House legal counsel isn't. Wright's held the office for twenty-seven years. In a way, everyone in Washington reports to him. Partly, he's their lawyers' lawyer, but he's also charismatic, shrewd, effective, and so far, scandal-proof. He thinks circles around the press. They won't touch him. Almost no one outside Washington knows who he is."

"How's he play for different sides?"

"He has no dogmas. He's an operator. Whatever the agenda, he executes it. For one president he instituted universal healthcare. For the next, he gutted it with vice laws. No president worries about Wright's loyalty because every president knows exactly who Wright is loyal to. Himself. And presidents accept that because Sampson Emmerich Wright is the one person who gets things done in a city where nothing gets done."

The flatbed slowed, then stopped in a small chamber, barely wider than Cap was tall. George got off and climbed a ladder. Cap followed, paused as she slid aside a heavy iron manhole cover, then ignored the hand she offered and pulled himself out into a tight space between two buildings. They ventured toward the street.

The air smelled of woodsmoke, and the marble city gleamed in the setting sun as if dying in a blaze of glory. The street was empty. Cap whispered, "Where is everyone?"

"Curfew. Wright instituted it a few years ago during the austerity riots. Spun a yarn about how G.D.P. would improve if everyone stayed inside and prayed to dead economists."

Cap frowned at the easy manner in which she accepted this dystopia.

"This way."

They kept close enough to the the buildings to avoid being seen from a distance, but not so close as to be considered skulking. Cap said, "Thanks for Farelli."

"Hm? Oh. No problem. Glad to do it."

"He was willing to go?"

"Sure. I let him play with a couple toys Thomas Kaufman saved from the lawyers. Farelli refused to give them back, locked himself in my safe house."

"Where?"

"Swiss border."

The sky faded from orange to gray, but only a handful of stars shone. Wind snatched at Cap's curls. Clotheslines hung between tenements. Graffiti on a wall read, If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em. Cap lowered his voice. "Ambrose claims scientists are disappearing."

"They are. Everyone has theories. Most blame the government, but spin the roulette wheel of people's problems and thirty-five times out of thirty-seven they'll blame the government. What's new?"

He studied her in the deepening night, the flash of her wide brim in the light of a pink streetlight, her easy, almost flippant gestures, and recognized more than the just the appearance of their mother. She also had the family mannerisms. She took the flawed world in stride. Oh how he'd missed her. "You know, I came for more than Judith and Farelli."

"Cincy—"

"Cap."

"We've talked about this."

"You have a price on your head."

"I can't abandon these people."

"They're not your people."

"They need me."

"They need the state."

"They need schools and wells and basic nutrition—"

"Cooking classes—"

"Orphanages—"

"Don't—"

"Cincy, I can't wage a guerilla war on poverty from another planet."

"And you can't fix the tragedy of the commons. It's a broken planet, George. Humpty Dumpty has had his great fall and Elmer Fudd in a pinstripe suit can't put him back together again."

"I'm not counting on Sampson Wright to save the day."

"Then who? The brainiacs vanishing into thick air?"

She danced away, backward, as if to get behind him, and he started to apologize before he realized she hadn't done it because of what he said but because beyond the corner lay a blaze of light. She pressed herself against the wall. "This is as far as I go."

He stood before her, and she smoothed the lapels of his blazer. "I should have found you a better suit."

"Clothes don't make the man. Clothes make the mannequin."

"Wright is no dummy. And it won't help to play the fool with him. He'll respect you more if you show your intelligence. But you can't compete with him on double meaning, so save your puns."

A troubled look must have crossed his face, because she reached up and patted him on the cheek. "Don't worry. You'll do fine. He knows what you want, you know what he wants. You're practically friends. Just get him talking. He'll do the rest."

She dipped her fingertips into her pocket and felt a staccato buzz from her lens. "Five to eight. Time to go."

Then she peeled herself off the wall and shoved him into the white blinding lights of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A quarter-mile radius had been cleared and lit with banks of stadium lights, but the presidential palace was invisible at the center, isolated in an island of night, around which faint shadows patrolled. Cap cycled through personality tricks to buck his confidence. He tried to act like he belonged, like he was an official dignitary of a foreign state who often visited the White House and knew the staff by name. He asked himself what Thomas Kaufman would do. As the pavement sloped downward, he racked his imagination to invent a bold alter ego, but his imagination was more practiced in terror than fancy and no saving persona came to mind before he reached the twelve-foot marble security wall and turned to skirt it, aware that he was watched from atop it.

Cap searched for the entrance. Around the curve of the wall appeared a heavy metal door guarded by two sentries in gray camo and cradling oversized rifles. The men registered Cap's approach but remained motionless. Cap said, "I have an invitation."

"Name."

"Cincinnati Pierce."

"Rank."

"I don't have one."

The other sentry shifted his rifle. "Title."

Cap sighed. "Chief Executive Officer, Grand Plymouth Lines."

The sentry gave a stern look, testing whether Cap would turn and run, and when he didn't said, "Proof of your identity."

Cap held out his hand with a lens.

The sentry took the device, held it up and to peer through the glass, and flipped it over, suspicious that Cap had given him an ordinary magnifying lens. When Cap didn't elaborate, he reached behind him and slipped it through a mail slot in the gate. "Lift your arms."

Cap did, and the sentry slung his weapon across his back while his comrade covered him. Cap allowed himself to be frisked. He fought the urge to flinch at the stranger's hands, and when the man finished he resumed cradling his rifle, retreated to consult the metal gate, and motioned for Cap to advance.

A section of marble next to the gate opened.

Cap entered, and the door closed, sealing him in darkness. His eyes adjusted to see a dim string of bead lights along the floor of an arched concrete tunnel. Ahead of him a silhouette said, "This way," and a second silhouette appeared behind, another man with a rifle. Cap followed as commanded. The passageway never turned or branched, but Cap suspected that, like the outside security wall, it had hidden doors and false panels, and if he had entered without permission, the corridor would have silently reconfigured into a winding, inescapable maze.

He was brought to a hatch. It swung aside to reveal a small but opulent room, trimmed in polished wood and brass. Velvet drapes framed oil paintings of battles and speeches. Embroidered cushions rested on a curved bench, too narrow to sit on. Overhead hung an immense crystal chandelier. The air was fragrant. A woman in a tight military dress uniform stood with her hands tucked into the small of her back. "Mr. Pierce. Welcome to the White House. His Prelacy Sampson Emmerich Wright wished to greet you personally but has been delayed by unavoidable circumstances and asks you to wait here until he is available." Then she turned on a heel and departed.

Cap knew better than to test the door. Possibly he had imagined the click of a lock, and possibly he imagined the faint movement of air that suggested to him the paintings were on mesh through which he could be watched from dark rooms on the other side. So he smiled, clasped his hands loosely behind him, and peered admiringly at the chandelier.

The crystal faces swayed. They refracted light in kaleidoscopic shards, tinkling against each other like broken glass...

Cap's eyes lost their focus, and in a moment he was back in the watery gloom of Plymouth after the crash, wandering upside-down corridors, patch-tape on his faceplate, searching for hull breaches. The old ship had been built like a bunker. She survived impact, but she'd ruptured and lost her atmosphere, had to be patched up before they could repressurize. Without air to transmit the sound, he must have heard the crunch of the broken glass over comms. They all had. Within moments the Thirteen gathered on the bowled floor that had once been the ceiling of Plymouth's hold. Heads craned back to survey the cargo, now hung in hammocks.

A boot kicked a heap of twisted metal on the floor. "There goes the mission."

"Fix it."

"What do you want me to do? The water drill was cobbled together from spare parts. Now it can't even be used as spare parts."

"How did it happen?"

"Does it matter?"

"Are the storage tanks intact?"

"We have no way to fill them."

"We'll find a way."

"Without a drill?"

"Yes."

"Did that tool chest hit your head too?"

"Two thousand people are counting on us to have water when they arrive."

"Ha. Our recyclers are almost saturated. We will die of thirst before the Boulder arrives."

"We'll die of talk before we die of thirst. We have ice outside and heat inside. We can make water. Silva, fix the airlock. The rest of you, finish patching the hull then find something to scrape with."

"Outside is not water ice. It's a hundred meters of frozen carbon dioxide."

"Then we'll dig where it's water ice."

"And haul shavings through the airlock?"

"That's enough, Chinedu. You have your orders. All of you. Report in half an hour."

They disbanded, but the stowaway remained, glass crunching under his boots as his eyes traced the dangling tie-down straps back to where their hooks had sheared. It was the only cargo that had broken loose. The straps for his jury-rigged harness...

It was his fault the drill had broken.

They should have eaten him.

"Delightful!"

Cap's head snapped down from the chandelier. Into the anteroom had come a compact man in a gray, closely-tailored suit. He spread his hands as if winding up for to give a hug, then brought them together to seize Cap's hand and elbow in a firm handshake. "Apologies for the delay. I trust you weren't bored."

"Never. Boredom is a symptom of a weak mind."

"Aha! A Martian aphorism, I presume?"

"One of Thomas Kaufman's."

The smile in the man's gray beard flickered, but only for a moment, and an expansive gesture erupted to distract from it. "Welcome to the White House, Mr. Pierce. We permit only the most esteemed guests to enter through the rear door. Sampson Emmerich Wright, at your service. Let's talk in my office."

He led Cap from the anteroom through a series of hallways, meeting rooms, bullpens, and offices, all ornate in shining wood and copper and glass fixtures. Wright burbled over his shoulder. "My sincerest apologies for the wait. My secretary double-booked me. You see, I present a weekly radio address, sort of a fireside chat with the nation, and I've found that doing it live, without a script, keeps the conversation informal and gives listeners confidence it's not censored. Naturally it can't be interrupted, even for the most important matters of state. And do make no mistake, meeting with you is of the utmost importance, not merely to me but to the nation. May I get you a drink? Dorcas, a whiskey for our guest. In here, Mr. Pierce. Or do you prefer 'Cincinnati'? A curious name. Is it in honor of anyone? I believe there was a Roman emperor named Cincinnati. If you'd like to look him up, we maintain an extensive presidential library." Wright about-faced in front of a large, polished desk in a private office, and gestured at Cap to sit in one of the two chairs reserved for visitors. Then he stepped to the door, swung it to without latching it, and resumed his casual stance at the desk.

Cap sat in the chair. It was overstuffed, its seat too low, and its armrests too close together. His limbs protruded. The office was smaller than Cap's and felt similarly cramped, not just by the size but by the clutter of furnishings. The walls were lined with mahogany cabinets, showcases, filing drawers, letter tables, and in the middle of it all the immense desk, its surface waxed to such a sheen that it had no color of its own except the reflection of the yellow lights in the ceiling. Wright leaned on the edge as if perched. He smiled congenially. He wore a silver Oxford suit which rumpled exquisitely when he moved. His cufflinks glinted under the ceiling lights, as did his yellow tie, whose triangular knot tied such that it formed many layers of tight chevrons. He was overweight—for a Martian—but not heavyset, trim enough to mean business but fat enough to show that business was good. Cap said, "I suppose you need to interview me before I speak with the President."

"The President? Oh. Yes." Wright shuffled through miscellany on a sideboard and uncovered a paper photo, He handed it to Cap, the image of a tall, wooden-haired man in a blue suit and a grin like a crescent moon. "President Ellroy. Truly a great man. Sadly, he's traveling overseas, and as you may not know, an ocean voyage in this season can be rather unpleasant to the human constitution, and the President has been unable to attend to matters of state. Fortunately, he has entrusted all matters into my hands. Whatever you would discuss with him you may equally discuss with me. I am, as you may not know, fully vested to authorize treaties on the President's behalf."

A knock on the door interrupted. A spectacled woman appeared in the gap and but only injected her hand with a heavy-bottomed tumbler holding a brown liquid. She wiggled it toward Cap.

When he saw her, she averted her eyes to the carpet, and he felt the urge to help. He took the glass. "Thank you—Dorcas."

She bowed and receded, latching the door behind her.

Wright smirked in bemusement. "'Dorcas' isn't her name. It's her title."

Cap felt a twinge of horror and glanced back at the door, fearing he had wronged the woman. Mars didn't have servants. He had never referred to someone by their position rather than their name. He hated to think that anyone's importance could be not themselves but how they elevated someone else.

As if to interrupt that line of thought, Wright said, "How are you, Mr. Pierce? Are you comfortable on Earth? You seem perfectly ambulant, despite the gravity."

"Hm? Oh. Pills."

"So the rumors are true? I've heard of high-G pharma, legends that the lunar bases engineered a retrovirus to stimulate bone and muscle density, but we had no proof of it. Do Martians retain that lunar technology?"

"We have cultures, but no ability to create new ones if they die."

"Do you have many children on Mars?"

"I'm not married."

Cap knew that Wright meant in general, not children that he specifically had fathered, but Cap said it to force the conversation to slow down and, in a small way, to correct for the Dorcas incident and show Wright that Martians thought of the individual.

Wright cleared his throat. "What I mean is, are there many children on Mars?"

"A few dozen."

"In a population of..."

"Thousands."

"Why so few?"

"Prudence, in part."

"And the other part?"

Cap hesitated. "We have a lot of stillbirths."

"How utterly tragic. Have your doctors been unable to find a remedy?"

Wright was probing for information. Was that the trade deal he wanted? Medical science? Cap answered, vaguely, "No luck so far," and didn't mention that Mars had no real doctors, only medics.

Wright shook his head. "The travails of being stranded on a desert planet. I can't imagine. And yet—" He plucked off his desk the lens Cap had given the sentry. "—and yet you have a remarkable repository of high technology that Earth has lost."

"One of those curiosities of history." Cap waved his hand, and was reminded it held a glass half-full of liquid.

"I'm a collector, you know." Wright gestured at the display cases arranged with scrolls, buckles, pens and inkwells, flags, a gavel. He turned the lens over lovingly. "Mid twenty-second century, I believe. So old. Yet robust. It has survived where its successors couldn't, the nanotech and carbon fabrics, the things that were more capable but less maintainable. These simple lenses are, in a way, self-sufficient. They don't need us." He held it up to the light, clueless of metamaterials and ferrofluids and reveling only in the belief that he held a mystic relic, an item capable of magic. "Name your price."

Cap stammered. He hadn't anticipated that Wright would want to haggle over trinkets.

"I mean that metaphorically, of course," Wright chuckled, seeing Cap's surprise. "A bauble like this only has meaning to me as a token of something greater, as a symbol of our meeting, this intersection of the histories of our two worlds. And I hope it will be more than an intersection. Rather a pivotal moment. I believe, as I hope you do, that the time has come to write a new chapter in the story of our worlds. Neither you nor I have any need to perpetuate the petty dogmas of our predecessors. By accepting my invitation to be here tonight, you have taken the first step toward mutual reconciliation, initiated the opportunity to resume our human journey together. Where you have high technology and scientific know-how, Earth has resources. Material resources. Craftsmanship. Tradition. Cultures beyond measure. Exchange between Earth and Mars can be the bolt of electricity that resurrects dead worlds. What say you? Shall we draft a treaty?" Wright took a pen from inside his jacket.

Cap's lips went dry. He had expected more preamble. He tried to remember what Ambrose and Halliday had taught him about negotiating, but none of it seemed applicable. He was on an alien planet, with different rules. Then what would you do on Mars? He would stall. But he couldn't do it the way he was used to, the rapid back and forth. Wright preferred speeches. So although loquacity was foreign tongue for a Martian, Cap moistened his lips and did his best to fake it. "It might be, shall we say, inappropriate to discuss interplanetary economics when the immediate situation poses more pressing matters."

"You have preconditions?"

"Not to be indelicate—"

"Please, Mr. Pierce, there can be no offense among comrades. State your mind."

"I'm here of behalf of certain stakeholders—"

"Of course."

"—who are concerned that you have, under the aegis of state security—"

"I think I know—"

"You have Martian prisoners."

Wright had been interrupting Cap to fluster him, and Cap's return interruption struck on a half-beat that threw Wright off-balance. "I was afraid that might create a wedge between us. You see, I warned President Ellroy that an executive order banning Martians from Eearth would trigger unforeseeable consequences, utterly disastrous ones, but he refused to listen. I assure you he meant the order merely as a gesture, no more than empty rhetoric useful to his re-election campaign. He supposed it to be as harmless as banning leprechauns or seraphim. That such myths turned out to be fact was a regrettable accident."

"Even so, I can hardly return to Mars and present to my government a trade deal with a partner who's holding one of our citizens hostage. It would be a betrayal."

"Don't tell me we've already reached an impasse."

"Is it not possible to repeal the law?"

"A repeal is such a drastic measure. It would suggest that the President was wrong and create terrible uncertainty."

Cap remembered the sign at the market. "Can you ignore the law?"

Wright did not look horrified at the suggestion, but he said, "Ignoring the law would be quite illegal."

"Is there no loophole within the law?"

"Only one. It has, as all executive orders must, an expiration date. Normally it would renew automatically, but it could, under certain conditions, be allowed to expire quietly. If we could reach even a tenuous agreement tonight, I'm sure I could convince President Ellroy to allow the order to lapse, and at that point we would release any Martians we have in custody. Such a delay would avoid any appearance of quid pro quo."

"You'll gladly pay me Tuesday for a hamburger today."

Wright's head tilted uncertainly. "A curious way to put it, but yes, we'd be very glad."

Cap rolled the tumbler in his hand and watched the brown liquid slosh. "It is difficult to give you a hamburger today, given the present circumstances and our concerns that you'll pay us Tuesday."

"What can I do to allay your fears? Would you like a demonstration of good faith? Allow me." Wright hopped off the desk and went to the door. "Dorcas, Agent Guysler. Have him bring a radio."

While he waited, Wright did not return to the desk but sat on the chair next to Cap, leaned toward him casually, and said, "Tell me something about yourself. Were you born on Mars?"

Cap was unsure where Wright was leading, but he answered honestly. "No. I born on Earth. I left as a boy."

"As a boy, my, you took a rocket, then. You must have been very frightened."

"I don't remember much."

"Probably you're also too young to remember suborbital flights." Wright sat back in the chair and gazed at the ceiling. "We had them once, you know. Divine form of transportation. New York to Singapore in under two hours. Hard to imagine now, with the state of the world. We were so prosperous back then. Then the Argus Network—what a first-magnitude black swan that was. We never conceived that a swarm of satellites might become self-aware. The first time it shot down a suborbital flight, we believed it was an accident. The second time, a fluke. The third time, well, then we knew something was wrong. But we were powerless to fix it. The Argus Network had locked us out. We had to ground the entire suborbital fleet, and when we did we discovered that the airlines had been playing shell games with their finances, using the extraordinary revenue of their suborbital flights to prop up their regional business. Without prestige travel, the cost of minor cross-country flights doubled. No one could pay it. The airlines had to be nationalized. We established new taxes to pay for it, but once globe-trotting tourists and business had lost their appetite for world travel. Whole industries began to fray—science, technology, capital investment—and with them, downstream industries. When we lost suborbital flight, we lost a global society. An entire world's economy collapsed. We tried lifting ourselves back up by our bootstraps, instituting production quotas, mandating six-day work weeks, temporarily suspending child labor laws, but none of it has worked. The despair I see, right outside these doors, in the countenance of every person I meet. Such sorrow." Wright stared at the rug beneath his feet, mourning a past interred beneath the floorboards.

He leaned toward Cap again. "If you and I can work together, on behalf of our respective governments, it would give everyone so much hope. To think of the hope we lost when we were barred access to the solar system—I don't mean solely the material riches, but also the scientific ones. No more missions to unexplored planets. No more satellites to capture the light of distant stars and galaxies. Now, sadly, the sky is the limit. We've been cut off from the cosmos of infinite possibility. That's the poverty we fight: poverty of the spirit. We've descended into petty localism, ignorance, the tyranny of small minds. It's caused so much suffering. In the golden days of spaceflight, there were nine billion souls on Earth, and a mere three percent lived on less than a dollar a day. Such an incredible wealth of nations. Your presence, Mr. Pierce, here, this evening, gives me a great hope that we can begin the work of rebuilding that lost world. Or, dare I say it, a world much better. One world can't help itself. We need a hand—your hand, if I may be so bold. Together, we can pull each other up. We certainly have an obligation to try. We owe it to everyone. They deserve it. My singular aim is to give our peoples hope. If I can do that, it would be the pinnacle of my career."

For the briefest of moments, Cap was tempted. He heard the words and wanted the same things and longed for an ally with whom to achieve them. He was being sucked into Wright's orbit.

Then, to his relief, the door of the office swung wide without a knock, and in strode a black suit and ruby tie. The man must have had giant's blood. He was Cap's height but twice as wide, with cropped blond hair that disappeared in the yellow ceiling lights. A Secret Servusman in uniform, Cap thought. Same polished shoes as the man at the bazaar, but with the rest of the suit too.

The agent crossed the room with a narrow scowl at Cap, as if every visitor and motion was a security risk. Cap nodded a greeting. "Bluto."

The agent gave Wright a radio.

The device was an aluminum cylinder with a dangling antenna, a two-way walkie-talkie. Wright hefted it, stood, and rounded his desk to assume his high-backed leather throne. As he did, he made introductions. "Agent Guysler, Cincinnati Pierce, of Mars. He would like assurance of the safety of our Martian detainees. Be so kind as to put me in touch with one of their guards."

Guysler adjusted knobs on the radio. Wright held it vertically in front of him, sat very proper, and squeezed the button. "Good evening, sir. This is Summum Magister Sampson Emmerich Wright. I speak to you from my office in the White House, where I have a visitor requesting a brief interview with one of our Martian guests. Over."

Cap had said "prisoners", plural, to disguise how much he knew, but Wright spoke so easily of "detainees" and "guests" that Cap began to consider that Judith might not be the Secret Servus's only captive. But the odds that Wright was bluffing increased when the radio crackled and the voice that spoke was a woman's. "Ah, the great and terrible Sampson Wright. Good gracious!"

Wright beamed as if having received due deference. "Greetings, madame. I have a compatriot of yours here with me who asks for assurances that you are unharmed. Over."

"Unarmed?"

"Unharmed. Over."

"Oh. Thought you asking whether these restraints—"

Wright mashed the button and his voiced keyed half an octave higher. "State your name and occupation, please. Over."

Cap smirked. The voice was a woman's, and the humor Martian. Cap supposed the conversation could be an imposture, a Sercret Servuswoman with a radio in the other room reading from a script, but he doubted whether any such script would have had the sophistication to feign authenticity by annoying Wright. Wright didn't seem like a man who would have approved it. Indeed, when the voice on the radio returned, its sass was gone. It answered questions plainly and directly, like it had a gun to its head. "Judith. Investigative journalist."

Wright straightened in the harsh light, pleased. He tilted the radio's antenna at Cap. "You may ask whatever questions you wish, but I will relay them."

Cap pondered how to distinguish Judith from an imposter. Martians had no passwords or secret handshakes. They'd never needed them. The little Cap knew about Judith the Secret Servus could easily have extracted by interrogation, so answering a few personal questions wouldn't confirm anything. He had to think of a question they wouldn't have asked. Or a way of answering they couldn't fake. Cap said, "What are the titles of her three most recent publications?"

Wright relayed the question. "'Ceres greenhouse yields lower than predicted,' 'Thompson Post's farm hires staff despite stalled R&D,' 'Colorado compost hints at overconsumption.'"

"What are the odds of her next story being published?"

Wright didn't understand the question, but the voice on the radio did. "Better than even. Four out of six ain't bad, so I'm five to three in favor."

She was Martian. She'd answered using Laplace's rule of succession. The Rule of One and Two More. Hard to fake that. Cap guessed if the Secret Servus manual said anything about "rule of succession," it meant something else.

"She's one of ours—" Cap started, but a low growl sounded on the desk.

Wright's elbow jumped back. The lens sitting next to him had begun to wobble, resonating against the wood as it precessed like a top. But it precessed in reverse, gaining energy. It spun quicker and quicker, its tilt steepening, until it popped up onto its edge and spun like a coin. Cap said, "Someone's trying to call me."

"You'll have to call them back." Wright folded the antenna and gave the radio to Guysler. The golem took it and returned to the door with a hard glare at Cap, which Cap read to mean that he was headed to the White House library to look up "Bluto". He latched the door behind him.

Cap squirmed. The chair was uncomfortable, but moreover he was trapped. Wright wouldn't let him go without at least some semblance of a trade agreement, which Cap couldn't give him.

Wright said, "You haven't touched your drink."

Cap looked at his hand. He'd forgotten the glass and the brown liquid inside, but as Wright mentioned it Cap again detected the smell, chemical and noxious. A demipoison. Wright said, "That's our finest thirty-year-old Scotch. Enjoy it. As you may not know, alcohol is under edict. Money can't buy what you have in that glass."

Cap transferred it to his other hand, then slid it onto a sideboard. "Sorry to say, but it would be wasted on me."

"Do Martians not drink? I wasn't aware you were teetotalers."

"Not so much teetotaler as teetotaled. On a hostile planet, we don't have the luxury of impaired judgment."

"How extraordinarily prudent of you! I suppose, in addition, food is too valuable to allow to ferment."

Cap nodded. So Wright had understood Judith's headlines.

Wright sighed and clasp his hands. "A truly terrible situation. Sadly, I too have seen first-hand the demoralizing effects of starvation. The pain on so many faces. Even here in Washington. Rest assured, once we reach an agreement, my chief priority is to ensure Martian citizens are fed. No one deserves to feel hungry."

Cap tried to formulate an exit strategy.

Wright said, "And you needn't worry about the cost." He picked up the lens. "The kind of high technology Martians have preserved will sell on Earth for tenfold, a hundredfold, maybe even a thousandfold its original price. Every home needs a stove, every city a reactor, every scientist a computer. What to you is commonplace are to us lost treasures. Of inestimable value. Supply them, and I can guarantee greater than food for Mars. Far greater. In the blink of an eye Martians will ascend to the ranks of the old colossi of industry, among the wealthiest magnates in human history, like the generation of trillionaires who mined asteroids. Of course, remuneration would also be warranted for any intermediaries. It needn't be monetary. Material gain so quickly loses its luster when one's peers share the same gains. Rewards are so much sweeter when they're exclusive. Priceless art. A villa on the Spanish Riviera. A world-class chef. I'm happy to offer whatever one might desire from the vast resources at Earth's disposal."

Cap was impressed. The politician had offered a bribe without once uttering the word "you". But he would expect an answer equally indirect. Cap had to be careful. He had to reply without ending up in Wright's debt, and without giving the impression he was in Wright's debt. Cap had to continue the diplomatic play-acting. Without it, Wright could realize why he had taken the risk of visiting the White House.

Solange's words came to mind. When you've got two ugly options, you gotta make yourself a third. He could take a bribe, but it would have to be so trivial that if Wright tried to hold it over him he could laugh at the man's gall. Cap's eyes ran down Wright's trophy case. Treasures that meant nothing to him rippled behind old float glass. Then his gaze settled on an large isosceles, red, white, and blue and resting on its hypotenuse. A misfolded American flag. "There is one thing I want. That flag."

Wright twitched uncertainly. He twisted to see what Cap meant, checked that he'd heard correctly, then as if accepting the challenge of whether he could fulfill such a minor request, he rose, took a key from his suit pocket, and unlocked the door of the display case. He stroked it. Being wanted by a Martian had endowed the object with greater value. "It's an antique, sewn in an era when they still updated the number of stars every time a new state joined the union. It predates the First Civil War." With ceremony he laid the flag in Cap's hands.

Years under the intense lights of the office had faded its blues and yellowed its whites, but dust had deepened its reds to the color of dried blood. Cap accepted the bribe.

Wright resisted. "Consider it a token of goodwill, a symbol of reconciliation between our peoples. Shall we draft a few words of—"

"I can't give you spaceflight."

Wright jerked.

Cap waited for him to take the flag back. "That's what you're wanting, isn't it? To rewind the clock a century, back to when airlines were in business and suborbital passenger jets crossed the world in two hours and barons mined asteroids? A time before the...Argus Network."

"You're very astute, Mr. Pierce. Spaceflight is indeed one of the things I hope we can arrange. Not for me, of course, but for the American people. Are you certain the Argus Network prevents us from accomplishing that together?"

Cap considered blaming the Argrid, but the Hawk had gotten through, and a jumper carrying Judith, and Wright knew about both. An excuse wouldn't fool him. Cap had to admit the truth. "The Argus Network is part of the problem, not so much because it's still present but because of what it's already done. Everywhere we've been—the Moon, Mars, the astroid belt—we've only recovered a few dozen remnants of the fleets Earth once boasted. The vast majority were destroyed return home to Earth. We've done what we can to refurbish the derelicts, but our technical know-how is limited. Our repairs are rudimentary. I can't give you spaceflight because we barely have it ourselves."

"Your time is running out." Wright's gaze fell to the floor. "As ours already has."

Wright mourned the fallen world in silence, then at length slid gently off the edge of the desk, shoulders drooped, and sank into the wing chair next to Cap. His suit bunched inelegantly.

Wright's abrupt change from speech-making to defeatism surprised Cap, and he supposed it to be a negotiating tactic. He waited for a counter-proposal. It never came. Instead Wright stared, unfocused, at the rug. He seemed to come undone when confronted by a direct answer.

Cap stood to make his escape, but he suffered the urge to comfort the man. "Let me make some calls. See what I can do about those stoves you asked for. If Martians know one thing, it's how to create heat."

Wright's eyebrows flickered. "Stoves? Oh, yes. Please do."

Cap tucked the flag under his arm and went for the door.

Wright livened a moment to thrust a hand toward his desk. "Mr. Pierce, your device."

"Keep it." Cap tipped the flag. "Consider it a trade. You can add it to your collection. And next time we need to talk it'll be easier than shouting at each other over the A.M. bands."

Wright's eyes fell back to the floor. "Yes. Next time."

Cap let himself out.

Cap departed with unhurried stride through the halls and bullpens and the anteroom and the concrete tunnel, through the false door in the marble ha-ha wall and the ring of light, back to the safety of the darkness beyond. From the blank shadow of a brick wall appeared a heart-shaped face. A glint flashed in the air.

Cap caught his lens. George said, "Wright didn't check the I.D. on the spare you gave him?"

"No, but a lens proved I was Martian. And he's seen one before, but not in action. It frightened him when you called."

"He put it where you could see it?"

"Right on the desk. You got a lock?"

"Not too many transmitters these days, but I never had the chance to pin it down. Where'd you get that stowawy? She pinpointed the signal before the second byline. They're holding Judith in a false tenement across the river."