“What?” She had been nearly asleep, listening to some tinny old jazz from her AI. “Ah. Art.” Her voice was low and quiet, the Russian accent light but distinct. She sat slumped on the couch. A pile of paper balls lay around her feet, like pieces of some structure she was putting together. The Martian way of life. Her face was oval under a cap of straight white hair, the wrinkles of her skin somehow wearing away, as if she were a pebble in the stream of years. She opened her flecked eyes, luminous and arresting under their Cossack eyelids. A beautiful face, looking now at Art perfectly relaxed. “The next worst problem.”

“Yes.”

She smiled. Where did that calmness come from, that relaxed smile? She wasn’t worried about anything these days. Art found it surprising, given the political high-wire act they were performing. But then again it was politics, not war. And just as Nadia had been terribly frightened during the revolution, always tense, always expecting disaster, she was now always relatively calm. As if to say, nothing that happens here matters all that much— tinker with the details all you want— my friends are safe, the war is over, this that remains is a kind of game, or work like construction work, full of pleasures.

Art moved around to the back of the couch, massaged her shoulders. “Ah,” she said. “Problems. Well, there are a lot of problems that are about equally sticky.”

“Like what?”

“Like, I wonder if the Mahjaris will be able to adapt to democracy. I wonder if everyone will accept Vlad and Marina’s eco-economics. I wonder if we can make a decent police. I wonder if Jackie will try to create a system with a strong president, and use the natives’ numerical superiority to become queen.” She looked over her shoulder, laughed at Art’s expression. “I wonder about a lot of things. Should I go on?”

“Maybe not.”

She laughed. “You go on. That feels good. These problems— they aren’t so hard. We’ll just keep going to the table and pounding away at them. Maybe you could talk to Zeyk.”

“Okay.”

“But now do my neck.”

• • •

Art went to talk to Zeyk and Nazik that very night, after Nadia had fallen asleep. “So what’s the Mahjari view of all this?” he asked.