“That’s what it looks like to us on Mars, anyway— a long evolution through the centuries, toward justice and peace. As people learn more, they understand better their dependence on each other and on their world. On Mars we have seen that the best way to express this interdependence is to live for giving, in a culture of compassion. Every person free and equal in the sight of all, working together for the good of all. It’s that work that makes us most free. No hierarchy is worth acknowledging but this one: the more we give, the greater we become. Now in the midst of a great flood, spurred by the great flood, we see the flowering of this culture of compassion, emerging on both the two worlds at once.”

• • •

He sat in a blaze of noise. Then the speeches were over and they had shifted into some kind of public press conference, responding to questions asked by the beautiful woman in the green sari. Nirgal responded with questions of his own, asking her about the new compound of buildings surrounding them, and about the situation on the island; and she answered over a chatter of commentary and laughter from the appreciative crowd, still looking on from behind the wall of reporters and cameras. The woman turned out to be the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. The little two-island nation had been unwillingly dominated by the metanat Armscor for most of the previous century, the woman explained, and only since the flood had they severed that association, “and every colonial bond at last.” How the crowd cheered! And her smile, so full of a whole society’s pleasure. She was dugla, he saw, and amazingly beautiful.

The compound they were in, she explained, was one of scores of relief hospitals that had been built on the two islands since the flood. Their construction had been the major project of the islanders in response to their new freedom; they had created relief centers that aided flood victims, giving them all at once housing, work, and medical care, including the longevity treatment.

“Everyone gets the treatment?” Nirgal asked.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“Good!” Nirgal said, surprised; he had heard it was a rare thing on Earth.

“You think so!” the prime minister said. “People are saying it will create all kinds of problems.”

“Yes. It will, in fact. But I think we should do it anyway. Give everyone the treatment and then figure out what to do.”