Atlas & Ares book 1: Men of the Red Earth

Cap lay awake on the hard floor of the bunk room, and only discovered he had slept when he awoke in the dark to the sound of women's voices. He groped for the hatch. Below, light spilled from the niche under the ramp where Hazel had established her domain with a hammock, curtain, and hoard odds and ends she stole from the cargo. Her voice was hushed but earnest. Arguing with someone.

Cap tiptoed down the ramp.

Judith sat on the floor, legs outstretched and eyes attentive, listening, though in her blindness she couldn't track Hazel's pacing, which bounced back and forth every two steps. On a sudden about-face she saw Cap. Her mouth clapped shut and one hand flipped a towel over a hoard of wires. He said, "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"She wants to tell you," Judith replied, "but she's afraid what you'll do with the knowledge. She supposed a reporter could understand that dilemma."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I told her people don't decide from knowledge, they decide from feelings, and she hasn't yet decided how she feels her about that knowledge." She smirked at the epigram, but said to Hazel, "He'll find out eventually. How will he feel if you knew but didn't tell him?"

Hazel wavered, then pulled away the towel. "I built an A.M. radio."

"You're talking to Wright?"

"No, monitoring channels, like you asked. Now listening what he changed the anti-immigration broadcast to. So far he hasn't. He's been...preoccupied."

"By what?"

"Chatter. Civilian traffic, peer to peer."

Judith said, "Wright let the telecom infrastructure rot because he didn't like what people told each other, called it disinformation and characterized cutting subsidies as a campaign against the vice of gossip. It worked. People had to reinvent the ham radio, which Wright allowed because he could listen in."

"So what's the gossip?"

Hazel said, "It's not gossip, it's an information underground. People are warning each other, mentioning call signs that won't answer, friends who haven't updated their arrest canaries. It's an information blackout."

"Where?"

She bit her lip. "Washington, D.C."

"What information is Wright suppressing?"

"No one's willing to say now, but they've been hinting what it was about. They keep directing conversation to harmless topics: places to eat in cities, weird clothes to wear, the best vacations to take with your kids, business proposals that need to be signed tonight. It's an ad hoc code."

"What's it mean?"

"Places to eat in cities: urban food outlets. Weird clothes: unique fashion options. Vacations with kids: ultimate family outings. Business proposals: urgent final offers—"

"Rust. U.F.O."

"They saw the August Hawk, sir."

Landing before sunup, taking off after sundown, Wright's curfew—none of it was enough to stop people from peeking through unlit windows. And now the people who had seen something had said something, and their thanks for it was to be dragged away from their microphones. "Politics."

"Religion," Judith said. "This isn't Wright's first news blackout. For twenty years he's covered up the fact that Thomas Kaufman breached the Argrid. Ice, the public hardly remembers the Argrid exists or the U.N. lost control of it. The official line is that spaceflight has always been illegal, there were never fleets of drones exploring the solar system, no bases on the Moon, private enterprise didn't lasso near-Earth asteroids into orbit. That's all science fantasy, not history. The only history Wright admits to is that manned rockets exploded when they left the atmosphere. Not because of the Argrid, but because of divine judgment. Man isn't allowed to leave the Earth. God won't let sin spread to other planets. Claiming you saw a U.F.O. is tantamount to blasphemy."

"Maybe," Cap said, "but blasphemy is just what Wright puts on the warrant."

"I heard that too."

"Heard what?" Hazel asked.

Cap said, "He's using the ham radio operators as bait." Just like he'd used Judith, and before her—

Cap looked away from Judith's bandages. "There's nothing we can do."

Hazel protested. "We're the reason they're in trouble."

"I can't take responsibility for every crime of paranoia Sampson Wright perpetrates against his own people. He took political prisoners long before we landed, and he'll take them long after everyone's forgotten us again."

"You're a coward. If you won't order Marcus, I will."

"He doesn't work for you."

"No, but he owns the Hawk."

"He only owns the Hawk while he works for me, and he's smart enough to know he can't do that if I'm rotting in a gulag."

Hazel stormed past. "We'll see." She disappeared up the ramp.

When the echo of her footsteps disappeared into the cockpit, Judith said, "She loves radio, has a real head for it. Listening to these ham radio guys, she's found her people. Brothers in ears. She's never spoken to them, but she's terrified of letting them down." She let Cap consider that. Then she asked, "Who is she?"

"Stowaway from the Belt."

"Ah."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm not looking at anything."

"You know what I mean. That look on your face, like you're waiting for me to change my mind."

"That? I already told you: you're a sap."

"You expect me to buckle under the weight of a guilty conscience?"

"Not guilty, exactly."

"Then what?"

"I'm not sure yet, but you're toting this around the solar system." And she slid a brown rectangle across the floor toward his feet. The Scarlet Pimpernel. "Where in Washington did you find that?"

"I brought it with me."

"Didn't realize Mars had a copy."

He picked up the book. "It's a replica. My sister hired someone on Mars to make it."

"Feels like the real thing."

"Apparently among the many alleged criminals on Mars is a genuine forger." Then he understood what she meant and put the book back down. "I'm not a hero."

"No, just a good forgery."

"You think I've adopted Sir Percival Blakeney as a role model?"

"Well, you entered enemy territory, donned a disguise, reparteed with Washington's Chauvelin, then rescued a prisoner. Daring stuff, even if we are now in the Day Dream part of the story."

He lifted the book from the deck and stroked its chestnut cover. "There was a moment..." He had been denying it, denying his memory of reading the story in a hut, of relishing that he too was in a secret league, the league of Thomas Kaufman, and he imagined all the stories that would some day be written of their adventures. Denying it because he was certain George had meant him to think those thoughts. He put the book on a crate and nudged it away. "It was only a fantasy."

"That's what makes it a fun story." She waited for him to rebut, and when he didn't, she asked, "Why do you suppose Blakeney did it, rescued aristocrats from the Reign of Terror."

"He's a fictional character."

"So what's his fictional motive?"

"It makes a good story."

"That's the authoress's motive. What's Blakeney's motive?"

"To have fun."

"That's the movie version."

"Class loyalty. Aristocrats are for aristocrats."

"And Martians are for Martians?"

"What's your point?"

"Not all Martians live on Mars."

"You don't become a Martian by seeing a U.F.O."

"Then how? I was born there, but you weren't."

"I've lived on Mars half my life."

"Hazel hasn't."

"We're Martians by virtue of being loyal to Thomas Kaufman."

"You don't suppose there's anyone on Earth who would be Thomas Kaufman if they'd had the chance?"

"Why are you of all people trying to convince me to go back?"

"Because you want to. You're a sap."

"You think I always do the right thing?"

"No, not the right thing, exactly."

"Then what?"

"Who's Hazel?"

"A stowaway from the Belt."

"Why haven't you sent her back to her parents?"

"She showed up on the ride out and I was in too much of a hurry to go back."

"To rescue me."

"Yes."

"C'mon, Pierce. One orphan can't recognize another."

Cap stared at her. "Rust."

A quiet part of him had known, known from the first glimpse of her starving ribs and frightened eyes. He was nobody. If she'd had anyone else to go to, she would have.

Judith said, "Stowaways are for stowaways, and orphans are for orphans—is that it?" I've always wondered what happened on Plymouth when you were found. Why weren't you ejected out the airlock? Is it possible somebody stood up for you, stopped the other eleven from lynching you and now you're left to repay that debt? That's what I mean when I say you're a sap. You desperately need to save someone the way you were once saved."

Cap fled. Not out of anger, but as a product of a pride that demanded he answer such an accusation, and a shock that found he couldn't. For all his years of self-recrimination—for running away, for his extra weight and mouth on Plymouth, for needing straps that were taken from the water drill—he had seen only the trouble he caused and assumed his purpose in life must be to pay back for what he had taken. It never occurred to him that he might be trying to pay anything forward.

Udike met him on the ramp, Hazel having chased him out of the cockpit to ask Cap's orders, but when the pilot saw Cap's face and his grim, confused expression, he only nodded once, returned to the cockpit, and continued the August Hawk to Australia and out through the gap in the Argrid. Hazel pleaded with Cap. The crackdown was getting worse. The Secret Servus was catching on to the codes. Voices were falling quiet one by one, and those who were left became too timid to say why. They needed help. They needed to go back and show themselves, make such a scene everyone would see it and Wright would have to give up on the arrests, make a public statement, release his prisoners...

But the more she said, the less plausible it felt. If they went back, they would have to be willing to fight. She withdrew from the side of his bunk. Cap had said nothing.

That's what Ourson had done.

While the Twelve exhausted themselves scraping waterless ice and Plymouth fell slowly on top of them, Ourson refused. No amount of speeches convinced him to stop tinkering with the shattered remnants of the drill and come help, and through haranguing after haranguing he spoke not a word of argument, of rationalization, of explanation. He listened as he fiddled, then smiled and silently dismissed the intralocutor. Talking to themselves. Ourson felt no need to respond.

But that was Ourson. Big, strong, quiet Ourson. Ourson, who could be happy without words.

It wasn't Cap. The less he spoke the more sullen he became. In silence he circled, ruminating to the point of starvation. Talking, he moved forward. He wasn't like Halliday, doing math in her head. He needed paper. He had to show his work.

He left his bunk and found the galley. Judith gnawed on a dehydrated ration bar. "Hope you don't mind."

"Help yourself," he said, then mused on the term's self-contradiction, opened a bin, and took out a ration for himself. He sat.

Without eyesight Judith had seen through twenty years of murk Cap hadn't been able to penetrate, and he felt no need to apologize to her for fleeing last night's conversation, certain it hadn't been the first time she'd gotten such a reaction, and certain it wouldn't deter her from continuing. He waited for her to decide on a question.

"What did Hazel mean, yesterday, when she said your pilot owns the ship?"

"You've talked to Solange. With a labor shortage comes a pilot shortage. Solange is having trouble making water shipments. After we found Marcus Udike was a pilot, Solange hired him out from under us by offering twice as much as whatever we offered, so I hired him back by giving him ownership of the August Hawk."

"Clever."

"Desperate. But Udike took it, even knowing it's not real ownership."

"Ownership on paper still gives him bragging rights. It was a smart move. You know how to pit your strengths against others' weaknesses. Is that why you won't go back to Earth? You can't catch the Secret Servus by surprise, so you don't have a strength and they don't have a weakness?"

"That's one reason."

"What's another?"

"I don't know yet. Keep talking."

"Do you think the problem will resolve itself?"

"Wright can't arrest everyone."

"When he sees you haven't taken the bait, will he release the people he's arrested?"

Cap sighed. "I don't suppose so."

"Are you being stubborn because you don't know what to do?"

"Doubtful. I left for Earth without knowing how to get through the Argrid."

"So you're just being stubborn."

"I have to hold out."

"Why?"

"Because that's what Martians do. It's how we survive. Thomas Kaufman held out against the U.N., my mother held out against Wright, Ourson held out— It's what we do. Stay the course, outlast the problem."

"How do you decide when it's right to hold out, and when holding out is maintenance of a broken status quo?"

"You have to stick to your principles."

"What if the principles are flawed?"

"They're time-tested principles."

"Times change."

"People don't."

"Not even on another planet? You think our species is incapable of adapting to new circumstances?"

"Humans have survived in deserts for millennia."

"As shepherd nomads, yes, but Cain killed Abel. The agriculturalist destroys the nomad in his hunger for more land to farm."

"What I meant is, circumstances aren't that different. As long as Martians have the will to survive, we'll always value tenacity."

"But what about all the old Earthly principles we hold onto in service of survival? Growth, so we have enough fat to get through the lean times? Greed, so we have enough growth? What do we do when those don't work on a desert planet?"

"Growth and greed are tactics, not principles."

"Then self-interest and freedom—"

"We're not talking about me anymore, are we?"

Judith winced. Nothing had touched the bandages on her arms, but she recoiled from where she'd been leaning ever closer to his voice, elbows on the small table, and he knew she'd violated some code of professional journalism—her own if not others'—by allowing her personal opinion to enter the line of questioning.

Cap studied her. "What was Tony Zinser trying to tell me about you? He was stumbling over his words, couldn't talk straight. Said you were conservative but also unconventional. 'Unconventional for Mars.' Since you'd chosen to go to Earth, I assumed you wanted a government on Mars, but now I'm not so sure that's what he meant. What makes you an unconventional Martian?"

"I suppose if I don't answer that question you won't answer mine."

"Would you have given up that easily in your interrogation of Sampson Wright?"

She chuckled, a modicum of gallows humor, but her body relaxed. "I'll answer it. But before I do, I want to ask you a follow-up to something you said yesterday. When I told you Mars was headed for famine, you said we'd already been through a food shortage. When was that?"

"I meant in the small."

"I know. We're forever on the caloric knife edge, always starving, never starved, but no one has ever called it a food shortage, just the perpetual hunger of living on a planet where food doesn't grow. What are you referring to, and why don't other Martians know about it?"

"I can't say."

"Was it something that happened on Plymouth before the Boulder arrived?"

"I still can't say."

"So it's a secret. Off the record?"

"That's not how secrets work."

"But now that I know there's a secret, I'll investigate, and you see what lengths I'll go to." She lifted her bandaged arms. "Of the original Thirteen, nine are still alive. Who are you protecting?"

Cap counted, twice, then said, "All but one of us."

Her eyes darted through a space he couldn't see. "So it's about the survivors. But who's the odd one out? Ourson." She grinned. "This is about why the Babineauxs own the Water Works. No one's ever sussed out how, when the Boulder arrived, not only had the Water Works been constructed differently than designed, but Mars already had private property. But you know. That's the secret. You're sure you won't give me an exclusive? Being the first to tell lets you define the narrative."

"It's not my story to sell the rights to."

"So when the rest of the Thirteen are gone?"

"Maybe."

"I have to outlast a bunch of die-hards?" Again she showed her arms. "At the rate I'm going, I won't get that far."

Cap hesitated. No wonder the girl thought in terms of pitting strengths against weaknesses. She did it for a living. He had caused her to be arrested, but did he owe her more than rescue? Had he also caused her to be tortured? Self-recrimination was getting complicated. Maybe it always had been. It was easy to assign blame, hard to untangle cause. Certainly that had been the case on Plymouth, when stinginess was met with stinginess. They all owed Ourson more than they were willing to admit, and Cap owed Judith, whether or not he had caused her pains. "Off the record?"

"Yes." She leaned onto her elbows. "How did Ourson acquire the Water Works?"

"He owned the drill."

"How?"

"The water drill we built on the Boulder was destroyed in the crash. We didn't have the parts to build another. Benning had us scrape ice twenty hours a day, but it was all dry CO₂, and every flake sublimated as soon as we pressurized the airlock. We sweated gallons to recover mere drops. The recyclers couldn't keep up. Everything we drank tasted of our own sweat and urine. But we had to drink, we had to boil our rations. The alternative was death—for us and everyone on the Boulder. Our only hope was to hit a vein of water ice. So we kept clawing, further and further down.

"But not everyone dug. Ourson refused. The biggest man on the crew and he wouldn't put in any muscle. He insisted on tinkering with the drill. Thought he could rebuild Inspector Gadget. Pleading didn't work, arguing didn't work. He just said if we couldn't fix a broken drill, how could we fix a broken planet? He wouldn't quit.

"One by one we harangued him, said he was paralyzed by hopelessness, not thinking, not dying on his feet but dead on his feet. But nothing worked. So we changed tactics. We decided to starve him out. One day when he came to rehydrate his rations, we told him the water wasn't his. We were digging, he wasn't. If he wanted water to drink or boil his food bricks, he could scrape it himself. No more living off our labor. He could live off his own sweat."

"Harsh, but we thought of it as standard procedure, responding in kind to obduracy. Poetic justice. If nothing else could change Ourson's mind, his body could.

"But he did the same way he always did. He listened, nodded, and returned to the hold to tinker. He didn't argue, didn't protest, didn't accuse us of being unfair or robbing him. He just accepted our ruling.

"But without water to boil his hardtack, Ourson began to starve. His body digested muscle. Within a week he went from Magilla Gorilla to Underdog. But he wouldn't surrender. He didn't have it in him. He wouldn't surrender to Mars, wouldn't surrender to the drill, and he wouldn't surrender to us. But Ourson didn't have to be big to break through obstacles. He simply outlasted them.

"One day he came out of the ship, weak, almost unable to stand. He had something with him. He struggled to get it down into the pit where we were digging, but he wouldn't let us help, rigged up a block and tackle and lowered to the floor of the cavern. We had no idea what the thing was. Certainly wasn't a drill, with a bit and a screw to move ice scrapings and a heated reservoir. Then Ourson threw the power. In a blast of smoke the thing disappeared. But it wasn't smoke, it was steam. Ourson had built a different kind of drill, one with a heating element. It sublimated the CO₂ beneath it and tunneled straight down until it hit water ice. It was genius. We were all fools, out there scraping ice like bad versions of the drill that had broken, and we ignored the lesson of Plymouth melting its way down on top of us. But Ourson saw. He made a drill that did the same thing, used heat and its own weight to find water. He changed the order of operations. Instead of transporting ice to where it could be melted, he melted the ice and transported it as liquid. His drill hit water a hundred feet down.

"When the steam cleared and we lifted the hose running into the borehole, felt how heavy it was with water, all was forgiven. We laughed and slapped each other on the backs and hugged Ourson. As if we'd been in his corner the whole time. Hafidh was halfway to the ladder calling dibs on a shower when Ourson stopped him on the ice. Five words. He said, 'This is not your water.'

"We were so dumbfounded he had to say it three different ways before we fathomed that he really wasn't going to share. 'This is not your water. It belongs to me. Get your own.' And we wouldn't have believed him except those were exactly the three things we had said to him when we wouldn't share our minuscule water. We had set the rules, he was holding us to them. He was cold as ice.

"There was a fight, of course. Someone lunged for Ourson's helmet, got a thumb under the release, but Benning made a flying tackle, bad leg and all. Then there was a lot of flailing, reaching for air hoses and slapping hands away. But a brawl in pressure suits is too awkward to last long. It floundered as quickly as it started.

"So we argued, used all the words he wouldn't. Said it was unfair, that our resources had to be shared, that the spare parts he had used belonged to the whole expedition, that we had a right to that water. Then, when we had said all we could think to say, Ourson asked one question. 'Where are my rations?' And that was the end of it. He knew where his rations were. When he couldn't eat them and he'd left them in the galley, twelve gnawing stomachs had pounced. We'd eaten every last crumb. If we'd ever had a right to that drill, we'd sold it for bread. Ourson had paid for the parts with his body. If we wanted water, we'd have to put in what he did and work ourselves to the bone for it.

"There would have been another fight except for Solange. She put herself between him and the rest of us, tall but skinny, and she glared with those burning copper eyes, daring us to fight her when she'd been working harder than all of us. Then she picked up her sharpened cowling and went back to scraping. That's how monstrous Ourson was. He wouldn't share with his own daughter.

"But while we grumbled as we got back on our hands and knees, we all felt a change in tenor. Ourson had done the unimaginable. Whether he shared the drill or not, he showed us the situation could be beat."

Cap stared at the floor for a long time after he finished speaking. Shame had made the secret easy to keep, but the shame had never grown into guilt, never become oppressive, never developed an ominous presence that drove those who knew it mad. Keeping what happened private had just become a tradition. A family tradition for a family secret. Occasionally Cap had supposed telling it would bring a measure of relief, but instead he felt a loss. The same loss as when Frank Wollam died. Cap took a few minutes to grieve.

Afterward, when he stood, Judith faced him with her blind, distant eyes and nodded. "Off the record."

"Thank you."

Cap left up-ramp to the cockpit where Udike stood ever-present at the helm. When Cap began to circle the perimeter, the pilot asked, "Something wrong?"

"Just a problem from long ago. I felt like I'd overlooked part of it, but now I can't remember what."

"You'll figure it out."

"What gives you that idea?"

"Experience."

"Yours predicts differently than mine."

"Yours has to worry what could happen. Mine only has to see what has happened."

"Say again?"

Udike elaborated. "You survived the crash of the first manned mission to Mars. You anticipated a metal shortage and started a shipping company to avert it. You found a way through the Argrid. You found Judith, made a jailbreak. You did all those things because you had to, but before you had to, would have you have imagined you were capable of any of them?"

Cap gaped. What a terrifying perspective! Knowing his limitations was how he sorted the possible from the impossible. To believe that any impossibility could be accomplished was a frightening freedom. He shrank from it.

Then, with the story fresh in his mind, Cap realized that embracing the necessary, no matter how impossible it seemed, was exactly what Ourson had done. He had ignored his personal limitations and focused instead on the limitations of the problem. He pivoted on its weaknesses, not his own.

Cap paced the rest of the day, but unlike the trip to Earth when he cycled high and low through the ship, now he remained on the bridge, walking loops around the helm, not slowing but accelerating. He became openly agitated. He developed a grim resolve that didn't know what it was resolved to do. He grasped only the tail of a solution and feared if he let go it would disappear forever into the jungle of lost thought.

But no matter how he pulled, he couldn't extricate it. He tried pushing from different angles. He thought about how George wanted him to bring refugees from Earth and Ambrose wanted scientists, how he couldn't do either because of the cost of transporting a person from one planet to another, how anyone brought to Mars would have their labor sold to the highest bidder, how no Martian had been a slave but none of them had forgotten slavery, how Martians loved to plan boycotts, how Halliday would quit and leave Grand Plymouth floundering. It all hinged on transport costs. Why did it cost so much to move people? Because of mass. Rather, having to accelerate mass. Rather, having to accelerate mass out of a planetary gravity well. That took fuel. Why was fuel so expensive? Because water was expensive. Fuel was priced against the value of its alternative uses: drinking, farming, washing, reactor coolant, reactor fuel. High demand, low supply. But no, water wasn't scarce, just scarce on Mars. Udike had refueled the August Hawk from the Potomac. She had an onboard processing plant. How much fuel could she carry? Enough for a round trip? Maybe. He could work out the math later—Halliday could work out the math—but he suspected if he timed the orbits right, the Hawk could get to Mars on half a tank and have enough left to get back to Earth and refill. With luck, he could transport people for free. Without luck, it would still be cheaper than he had imagined.

But he still had the problem of Martian pay. Cap poked and prodded the puzzle into the evening, in the spirit of Ourson poking and prodding the drill. Martian employers were ruthless. They had to be. Their margins were too thin to put anyone on salary. Everyone had to prove their direct impact on revenue, even the bosses. Tyros were paid nothing. An immigrant wouldn't take home a penny until they learned the job and brought in some cash, and all the while they'd be paying for room, food, water, air, a pressure suit, and ice forbid a doctor. Ambrose would lend, but the interest on his loans was already exorbitant. It would be even higher for risky loans to newcomers who didn't know what they were doing or how to live on a dangerous planet. Interest had to pay for the money lost on people who died in accidents. Owing Ambrose, even the hardest working, most brilliant immigrant might never break even. They'd be caught in a debt trap. A euphemism. They'd be slaves.

Cap left the cockpit. That had been the place to think about the fuel problem, but the economic problem needed somewhere else, a view of the hold, maybe. He paced the balcony. He slid one hand along the rail from galley to bunk room, then turned and slid the other on the way back. Seeking guidance. By the end of the day both palms were tender. The ship faded into twilight gloom, then night, and Cap found himself sitting on the floor outside the bunk room, exhausted and staring at the toilet.

Sometime after midnight a leg bumped his own. Judith lowered herself to the floor across from him. She said, without prelude, "There is an option you're not considering."

"What's that?"

"Slavery."

"Correct."

"You're not as much of a capitalist as you pretend, refusing to sell labor to the highest bidder."

"Boycotts are bad for business."

"Rimstaffers love to conspire, but they don't follow through. Look at the Bank of Mars. Everyone hates predatory lending, but everyone needs a loan."

"Grand Plymouth isn't a bank, and I'm not Jonathan Ambrose."

"So get a better salesman."

"To sell slavery?"

"According to Gabriel Levy, there are worse things than slavery."

"Levy was a tyrant."

"Reformed tyrant, but he had a point."

Cap rolled his eyes but asked what she wanted him to ask. "What's worse than slavery?"

"Loneliness."

Cap scoffed.

"No, listen. Levy didn't arrive at that conclusion to justify slavery, or even from some theory of human psychology. He witnessed it. Once, in a act of magnanimity, he granted ten slaves their freedom. Nine of them took it. The tenth refused. Instead, he insisted on having his ear pierced with an awl to mark him permanently as the king's slave. Levy didn't know what made the man different. Then he realized: that slave had a wife. Levy hadn't granted her freedom, and the slave wanted to remain with her rather than be free."

"Levy was a sadist."

"He never claimed he wasn't. But that day he learned that for as strong as the desire for freedom is, the need for love is stronger."

"Where are you going with this? You want me to convince scientists and refugees to accept being slaves on Mars by offering them wives?"

"No. I'm saying when slavery is an inevitable part of the equation, you have to identify some other, better part of the equation to amplify."

"I don't accept that slavery is an inevitable part of the equation."

"We're all slaves one way or another: slave to money, slave to upbringing, slave to neurobiology, natural law—"

"But we're not slaves to each other." He stood.

She rose to face him. "We're already slaves, and we always will be. The only choice we get is what we're slave to—"

"The answer to the question 'What's right?' is never 'Slavery'."

"It is when freedom is worse."

She had kept her voice low as others slept, but those words had an edge. She was angry. How bizarre to be angry that someone wouldn't resort to enslaving others. Cap said, softly, "That's what Tony Zinser was trying to tell me about you, isn't it? How you're unusual for a Martian but not for the human race. You're afraid of freedom."

She inhaled and faced him, pulled her head and shoulders back. "Reality is dangerous. Self-awareness is the rarest and most important element in the universe, and the most fragile. Look how many times we've almost lost it or destroyed it. We need something that protects us from the dangers, even if one of the dangers is ourselves."

"Government."

"A strong government."

"I don't accept that."

"You knew Thomas Kaufman. He cited the Mosaic law as proof that God didn't intend man to have a government, but read chapter and verse and you'll see that God's perfect government was only capitalist forty-nine years out of fifty. On the fiftieth year it was socialist. All land was redistributed back to its original owners and all debts forgiven."

"Debt forgiveness creates the wrong incentives."

"There was no debt forgiveness. Think it through. You're a businessman and you know all debts will be forgiven by the state in fifty years. You don't make a loan for fifty-one years. Whatever the amount, you adjust payments so the loan is paid back before Jubilee. If you're a farmer, you don't buy land for more money than you can get selling forty-nine harvests."

"That's not buying land, that's leasing it."

"My point is, a rule that creates wrong incentives between free individuals may create right incentives for the system as a whole—"

"Wait, please."

"—and to survive, even as an interplanetary species, we have to overcome this dogma of every man for himself and institute discipline—"

"Please wait."

"—real discipline, which requires a strong central government—"

Behind her the hatch to the washroom clanged shut. She hadn't stopped when he asked and Cap needed quiet, just for a minute, his mental foot having discovered sudden purchase that, if he was lucky, might enable him to pull the tail an inch back from the jungle...

He stepped from the washroom.

Judith glowered, offended to be walked out on, but beside her stood Rigsby, awake and not slouched, fully upright. He said, "Nothing rouses a guy like a break in an argument. You have an idea."

Cap said, "I need to see Solange—in person. And get Jonathan Ambrose on the lens."

Rigsby nodded. Judith said, "It's middle of the night in Rimstaff."

"Then we'll wake him up."

"The richest man on Mars?"

"My payments on the Princes are the biggest line items on his balance sheet. I pay Jonathan Ambrose's salary."

"But what's so urgent you have to talk to him now?"

Cap took a long, painful breath. "I need another loan."

Somewhere between Earth and Mars, not far from where Udike had noted they were closer to Venus than Earth or Mars, Rigsby had felt the ground shift. He recognized the sensation from working the mines below Rimstaff, when pebbles danced between his feet and alarms sounded in his suit and the tunnel cleared in seconds. A Marsquake. He had to remind himself he was on the August Hawk, safe. But still he felt apprehensive. He knew why. He was no longer in charge.

He had never wanted to be C.E.O.. Too much scrutiny. He wanted to do real work. So he hired Cap to take the limelight, and Cap had never challenged his role as figurehead. Until now. Now he was taking command.

"Get Gidja Boyle."

"What personal information do I use as blackmail?"

"Her step-brother is working for the U.S. government."

Rigsby raised his eyebrows. Cap said, "It was Lonson who took Judith to Earth. I proved to Wright I was Martian by showing him a comm lens, but Judith didn't have hers when the Secret Servus arrested her. She'd lost it to a pickpocket a couple days before. Judith didn't talk under interrogation, so who besides Lonson could have given that Wanted poster's uncanny description of how Martians look, dress, talk, and smell?"

Rigsby did as ordered. As much not being in charge made him squirm, he squirmed more to think that the person in charge might be Lonson Boyle.

Rigsby dialed and put the lens to his ear as Cap stood above on the balcony, hands on the rail. He was playing captain. What worried Rigsby was that Cap worked less from analysis than intuition. And his intuition suggested things like kidnapping Swiss electricians just to see what would happen. Martians shouldn't rely on intuition, Rigsby thought. Intuition belonged on Earth, where it had been acquired and calibrated. It wasn't fit for the vacuum of space or inhospitable worlds. Humanity would need ten generations before anyone off-Earth could trust their survival to gut instinct.

But what bothered Rigsby wasn't the irrationality of it—humans would always have irrationality—it was the arationality, something beyond reason yet not directly counter to it. Cap's flailing had gotten results. Awkwardly, inelegantly, hitting targets he hadn't aimed at, but still hitting targets. The chaotic interplay between thought and hunch made Cap hard to predict.

One thing Rigsby did know. They were headed back to Earth. As he chained himself to the front of the helm and the August Hawk dropped past Deimos, Cap dispatched orders to Bennington to unload his cargo and have leapers take it to Deimos. Udike wouldn't be going to the Belt. He'd been practicing flight maneuvers, readying for another pass through the Argrid.

Thin air howled beneath the ship and the dusty brown surface of Mars transitioned to white ice cap. Rigsby shivered. He'd never been to Bennington, and hoped he never would. Cap had spent ten years trying to escape this frozen wasteland. Why would he return? He could leave cargo in Rimstaff. He could take Judith directly to Colorado. He could talk to Solange in person when she flew up with a water shipment. He was here for something else. But as polar winds buffeted the ship and the Hawk flew into darkness, Rigsby couldn't intuit what.

Bennington's wall appeared as a ring of searchlights on the horizon, and Udike brought the August Hawk into the sheltered burnyard. Dry snow whipped the windshield. An orange light flashed across the hull. What a bleak place. The people who lived here must be madmen—

With a start Rigsby realized Cap had not chained in next to him. He stood at the helm, braced but untethered. Then, in a leap of reasoning, Rigsby understood why Cap had returned to Bennington. If they were going back to Earth, they were headed into a fight. Cap had played at conflict, but never resorted to more than banter and dirty looks. Those days were gone. Cap was done playacting. If he was headed into a fight, he needed to talk to a fighter.

Cap had come to see to Ourson.

Flurries beat against the windshield as Cap freed himself and Udike powered down the August Hawk. With her belly to the ice, internal heat would start to sink her. She had to get cold to stay afloat. The crew donned exosuits, and within minutes Udike withdrew their air. Cap opened the enormous cargo doors without a sound.

He tucked a foil package under his arm and stepped out, his boots crunching ice for the first time in five years. He searched for landmarks in the snow and darkness. Only an occasional orange flash greeted him. He headed toward it. Out of the murk appeared a sloped cellar door embedded in a hillock of ice, and beside it waited a figure, short and boxy, dressed in a yellow exosuit. Marion Baker. Her ebony face noticed the package. "What'd you bring me?"

"See Rigsby for souvenirs. This is a peace offering."

"Ah, then not for me." She turned to the cellar and with a manly heave swung the iron door open for him, held it, then lowered it as they descended inside the airlock. When they had atmosphere, Cap hooked the rim of his helmet with a thumb and popped it off. Marion one-upped him. She grabbed the front of her collar and tugged. The whole yellow suit fell away in one piece, limp in her arms.

"New design?" he said.

"Prototype. Leaks oxygen, and heat, and lets in scads of radiation. Think anyone will mind?"

"All that so it's easier to undress?"

"When you pop in and out as often as we do..." But her proud glint faded. "If I'd had it working six weeks ago I'd have gotten to the reactor soon enough to pull Ourson out."

"It's not your fault, Marion."

"No, I suppose not." The grim acceptance of a heart unconvinced. "This way."

The walls of the tunnel shone pale green, and Cap traced the fingers of his glove along the icy surface, feeling their undulating ripples, the warp and woof left by water melting and refreezing every day for ten years. Marion said, "You're in time to catch Solange before she retreats for the evening. I didn't tell her you were coming, might've even bribed flight control not to mention it."

"Can she beat my offer?"

"No, so she's been asking a lot of questions about kidnapping. I think they're jokes, but I wouldn't risk it. If she asks, you got here by burrowing."

They came to the familiar sight of an upside-down airlock. Cap paused, unsure whether to clasp his hands in reverence or worry, and Marion opened the hatch for him. She stood aside and let him in. "Best of luck with the peace offering." And she closed him in, sealing him alone in Solange's office.

Not much had changed since Cap saw it last. The commons had always been Solange's favorite part of Plymouth, was where she had painted the mural-map of Mars on a bulkhead, roughed in canyons, mountains, ice caps, then painted details over them, the pink, wrinkled sand dunes, ocher plains, the black scar of Marineris, the dotted pimples of ancient volcanoes, rilles and dry river beds. By accident the portrait had north on top. Solange had painted it as it appeared in her telescope, mirrors inverting the image, but when Plymouth crashed upside-down, the image flipped. Chinedu said they were destined to crash on their back, the planet wanted its portrait right-side-up.

Solange had told Ourson she was painting a map, but not until after the drill did anyone understand that it was not a map of Mars as it was, but as it could be. To the reds and whites Solange added a third color. Blue. Mars was to be a wet world. Solange dabbed in turquoise and cyan, oceans and seas and lakes speckled in craters. "How are you going to keep water liquid on the surface?" Cincinnati had mocked.

"Easy," the fourteen year-old had answered, "increase atmospheric temperature and pressure." But as she started probing Hafidh about chemistry, he discovered her real idea, to devise a salt that would lower the vapor pressure of water yet could easily be extracted from it. A Martian brine. Sounded impossible, both to Cincinnati and to Cap, but if anyone would stick with it long enough to make it reality, it was Solange. She had her father's stubbornness.

A rear hatch opened. Cap hadn't seen Solange since she slapped him. He had expected her to be dressed the same way, in the silver refrigerator suit with her braids tied tight behind her head, but instead her hair lay in a flat beaver's tail and over her heat-reflective mylar she wore a loose-knit sweater. It wouldn't provide much warmth, but she liked its coziness. "Sorry I didn't come sooner," he said. "I took the scenic route."

She jerked up from the papers in her hands. "Cap?" Wondering if she was delusional. She lowered the papers to her desk then abruptly turned them over, supposing after her last visit to his office that he had come to steal something. "Lauren wouldn't tell me where you were."

"She was afraid I'd gone to do what Ambrose wanted."

"You went to Earth?"

"Not to fetch scientists. I got someone in trouble, a Martian, and had to get them out. While I was there, I stumbled into trade talks with the most powerful man in Washington."

"And?"

"No deal. King Louie wanted spaceflight."

Solange sank into her chair. "Oh, Cap, you didn't call him a monkey to his face, did you?"

Cap grimaced as he thought of the scuffle in the interrogation room. "If only."

"No matter. I never expected help from the authorities."

"Send a boy to do a man's job." He placed the foil package on the corner of her desk. "That's why I'm here. I need to talk to your father."

"He's not doing well, Cap."

"I know."

"The gene therapies...we were just guessing. They haven't been able to repair the damage." She blinked and looked at the ceiling, then shook her head. "It's not a good idea."

"It's important, Solange."

"He's in no condition for visitors."

"I'm not a visitor."

"No? You haven't been here in ten years. What are you if not a visitor?"

"An heir."

"Cap—"

"Did he ever tell you why he kept the drill, why he wouldn't share the water it produced?"

"He didn't have to tell me. He built that drill and paid for it with his body. He earned the water rights."

"That's how he got ownership, not why. It doesn't explain his motivation to rebuild the drill in the first place."

"If he hadn't, we'd have died."

"Then why didn't he ask for help? We'd have finished sooner and had plenty of water for the Boulder."

"What are you getting at?"

"I don't think your father built a new drill and kept it for the reason we assumed."

"And what reason is that?"

"Selfishness." Solange bit her lip and looked away. Devoted as she was to her father, he knew she believed, as the rest of the Thirteen had, that Ourson kept the drill out of greed. "It wasn't for personal gain, Solange. He was willing to starve. When Chinedu attacked him in the pit, he did nothing. He refused to defend himself when Elombe ambushed him in the accessway and beat what the nothing that was left of him. A man whose motive is personal gain doesn't tolerate that kind of abuse. He fights back."

"That's not who Dad is."

"I agree. He's not selfish. Except, for some reason, when it came to the drill, about which he was selfish beyond greed."

"Selfish beyond greed? What does that mean?"

"He didn't share the drill with anyone, Solange. Not even you."

Her molten irises bore into him, hot and ready with anger, but his steadiness confused her and the anger became a fierce need to understand his angle. She searched his face. "He wanted me to earn my way..."

"He didn't make you earn your way onto Plymouth. He refused to go without you."

"He didn't want to leave me behind."

"You're making excuses for him, Solange, for the same reason you won't let him have visitors. You don't have to protect him."

"I..." The rims of her eyelids moistened, and she looked everywhere but at him. "I'm afraid...what people will say to him. I can't have the last thing he hears be..."

She blinked again at the ceiling, fighting to compose herself, hands twitching back and forth on the cold metal edge of the desk. Finally she looked down, at her hands, her papers, his helmet, the foil package, then up at his face. Then, as if his steadiness had both confused and bolstered her, she chose to trust him. "Give him something to smile about."

Cap knew the way. He ducked into the access tunnel, the same one Silva had blocked to save his life, the one where Elombe had ambushed Ourson and beat his frail body to a bloody mess, where Benning who had happened in from the pit had seized Elombe and pinned him to the wall. No one else had seen the attack, but the rest of the Thirteen heard Benning's words over comms.

"Without water we don't survive. Without each other we're dead."

At the end of the tunnel hung strips of semi-transparent sun-shield. The hold, which had become Ourson's workshop, later became Ourson's room, its bowl-shaped floor terraced with couches and desks and shelves. But as Cap pushed aside the sun-shield, he saw that it had again been transformed. Now it was a sickbay. The terraces hung with I.V. bags. Medical equipment beeped. Tables were covered in syringes, vials, bandages, tubing, a centrifuge. The couch was a bed. And the bed was a gurney.

Cap approached. On it lay a ghastly figure, humped in the middle and the pallid color of waterlogged skin, living flesh rotting. It could not be Ourson. This was a man dying on his back. But at one end of the gurney Cap found the muddled features of a face, and in their sagging, uneven eyelids he recognized the last glint of the man he once knew.

"Who...comes?"

"It's me, Ourson. Cap."

The body grunted. "Lying...to the dying."

"I'm really here, Ourson. It's me, Cincinnati. Cincinnati A. Pierce."

"What does...the 'A' stand for?"

Cap smiled. "Not telling."

Ourson grunted again, but this time from deep in his chest. A contented grunt. "Come to pay...last respects?"

"I came to ask..." Cap fumbled with the words. "Why'd you do it, Ourson?"

"Had to save...my people."

"Solange could have shut down the reactor."

"No...time. Too much...danger. Had to...save my people."

"We would have found a way, Ourson. We always have."

"Maybe could have fixed...radiation. Never could not have fixed...cowardice."

For twenty years Ourson had told Martians to die on their feet, and if in one critical moment he had hesitated to dive into a runaway reactor to shut it down, it would have taken another twenty years to forge a new Iron Rule. Without Ourson's rule, they might not have that long.

"A life...cannot be saved up. It must be used up. The only way to have a life...is to spend it."

Another of Ourson's paradoxes. Cap hadn't heard it before, but he understood the accusation. He had lived withdrawn, stockpiling his energies for some great moment worthy of heroics, but life did not guarantee great moments, only a succession of small moments, pains and arguments and dilemmas and everyday miseries that asked him not to alter the course of history but to give the best of his weak self, strengthen his inner muscle one degree, and ready himself for the next menial crisis. That's what Ourson had done. He sacrificed his body to build his spirit. And in so doing, he had built everyone else's spirit.

But Cap had not come to ask about the reactor. He knew Ourson, so he knew why Ourson had done what needed to be done despite the risk. What Cap wanted to know about was the drill. He leaned toward the hideous mass of white flesh. "Is that why you did it, all those years ago, Ourson? Not with the reactor, but with the drill? Why did you risk your life for it? What was so important?"

The great flesh heaved a mighty shudder. "So...long...ago... The drill..." The eyes fluttered under their sagging eyelids. "They won't understand... The drill is broken. I can fix it...but it cannot break again. Too important."

"We understood, Ourson. We all knew the drill was important."

"What has many owners...has no owner. That is how...the drill broke."

Cap put a hand on the cold, wet skin. "What do you mean, Ourson? The drill broke because I stowed away and needed a harness. We took what we thought were straps the drill didn't need."

"Not...the reason. All the way to Mars...we checked the drill. Too important. Had to oil it...calibrate it...sharpen blades...polish... We all...gave ourselves jobs. But no one...had job...of securing it again. Didn't break free in crash...wasn't tied down."

Cap's hand withdrew. "It was never my fault?"

"Was...all our fault."

Cap flushed with anger. "You should have told us—"

The white mass rolled side to side. "Would have promised...not to make same mistake. But promises...are not good enough. Mars does not forgive...the same mistake twice. Must prevent next crisis...by taking full responsibility. Had to own drill. Had to let it...own me."

For two decades Martians had hated Ourson, not just the Thirteen who attacked him in the pit or beat him in the access tunnel, but all the Martians who arrived after who heaped on Ourson verbal abuse and angry glares, malice and ostracism. Ourson had refused to do what they considered decent, what they expected, what they wanted, what would have made their lives easier. And for two decades Ourson had borne up under it. He had never lessened his burden by explaining why he did it.

"Was willing...to be misunderstood. Had to save...my people." The eyelids lifted as the head turned to face him. "Had...to save Cincinnati."

"Save me? Why?"

Ourson's weak arm lifted from the table, his hand floating. "If we had failed...would have blamed...you. I chose...to be their enemy."

"Ourson—no—that wasn't your responsibility—"

The floating hand waved his objections away. Ourson's words came with difficulty. One eye became wet. "It is...deeply to my shame...that I was not the one...to stop your execution."

Cap trembled. "No, Ourson, no, that's not—you should never..." It was too small a reason to accept such great pains, but Cap had no words to protest. Instead, he bowed his head, and his hand took Ourson's, grasping it as firmly as he dared. He said, "I'm going back to Earth, Ourson."

"Give them...what for?"

"No, Ourson. I'm going back to find more men like you."

When Cap returned to Solange, she had opened the foil package with her name on it and in her arms cradled a triangle of faded stars and stripes. The flag from Wright's trophy case. She stroked the dusty colors, then stood, carried the flag past him, and with ceremony placed it on a ledge beneath the mural on the bulkhead, her vision of a wet Mars now perched atop a point in matching red, white, and blue.

A whole world balanced on one spot on the southern ice cap...

On the wall beside the mural was a quote:

Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is. "Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans".... Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness. We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth...

Solange was talking. He didn't hear her and only later realized she was asking questions rather than making statements, mentioning rumors of him getting another loan from Ambrose, wanting to know why, if he was going back to Earth. Involuntarily, he nodded. For workers? Yes. She smiled.

His eyes remained on the fulcrum beneath Mars. The world balanced not on a system, but on a man...

Solange took him by the collar and pulled him to her lips. "Die on your feet, Cincinnati."