“Yes,” Nazik said. “But on the other hand, Jackie is powerful. And all of the people now leading the Free Mars party are in a position to become even more powerful in the new state. And the young Arabs like that. They are more native than Arab, I think. It’s Mars that matters to them more than Islam. From that point of view, a close association with the Zygote ectogenes is a good thing. The ectogenes are seen as the natural leaders of the new Mars— especially Nirgal, of course, but with him off to Earth, there’s a certain transfer of his influence to Jackie and the rest of her crowd. And thus to Antar.”

“I don’t like him,” Zeyk said.

Nazik smiled at her husband. “You don’t like how many of the native Muslims are following him rather than you. But we are old, Zeyk. It could be time for retirement.”

“I don’t see why,” Zeyk objected. “If we’re going to live a thousand years, then what difference does a hundred make?”

Art and Nazik laughed at him, and briefly Zeyk smiled. It was the first time Art had ever seen him smile.

• • •

In fact, age didn’t matter. People wandered around, old or young or somewhere in between, talking and arguing, and it would have been an odd thing for the length of someone’s lifetime to become a factor in such discussions.

And youth or age was not what the native movement was about anyway. If you were born on Mars your outlook was simply different, areocentric in a way that no Terran could even imagine— not just because of the whole complex of areorealities they had known from birth, but also because of what they didn’t know. Terrans knew just how vast Earth was, while for the Martian-born, that cultural and biological vastness was simply unimaginable. They had seen the screen images, but that wasn’t enough to allow them to grasp it. This was one reason Art was glad Nirgal had chosen to join the diplomatic mission to Earth; he would learn what they were up against.

But most of the natives wouldn’t. And the revolution had gone to their heads. Despite their cleverness at the table in working the constitution toward a form that would privilege them, they were in some basic sense naive; they had no idea how unlikely their independence was, nor how possible it was for it to be taken away from them again. And so they were pressing things to the limit— led by Jackie, who floated through the warehouse just as beautiful and enthusiastic as ever, her drive to power concealed behind her love of Mars, and her devotion to her grandfather’s ideals, and her essential goodwill, even innocence; the college girl who wanted passionately for the world to be just.