The train ran south from Bern, past a long blue lake called the Thuner See, which was flanked by steep grassy alps, and ramparts and spires of gray granite. The lakeside towns were topped by slate roof tiles, dominated by ancient trees and an occasional castle, everything in perfect repair. The vast green pastures between the towns were dotted by big wooden farmhouses, with red carnations in flower boxes at every window and balcony. It was a style that had not changed in five hundred years, the escorts told him. Settling into the land, as if natural to it. The green alps had been cleared of trees and stones— in their original state they had been forests. So they were terraformed spaces, huge hilly lawns that had been created to provide forage for cattle. Such an agriculture had not made economic sense as capitalism defined it, but the Swiss had supported the high farms anyway, because they thought it was important, or beautiful, or both at once. It was Swiss. “There are values higher than economic values,” Vlad had insisted back in the congress on Mars, and Nirgal saw now how there were people on Earth who had always believed that, at least in part. Werteswandel, they were saying down in Bern, mutation of values; but it could as well be evolution of values, return of values; gradual change, rather than punctuated equilibrium; benevolent residual archaisms, which endured and endured, until slowly these high isolated mountain valleys had taught the world how to live, their big farmhouses floating by on green waves. A shaft of yellow sun split the clouds and struck the hill behind one such farm, and the alp gleamed in an emerald mass, so intensely green that Nirgal felt disoriented, then actually dizzy; it was hard to focus on such a radiant green!

The heraldic hill disappeared. Others appeared in the window, wave after green wave, luminous with their own reality. At the town of Interlaken the train turned and began to ascend a valley so steep that in places the tracks entered tunnels into the rocky sides of the valley, and spiraled a full 360 degrees inside the mountain before coming back out into the sun, the head of the train right above the tail. The train ran on tracks rather than pistes because the Swiss had not been convinced that the new technology was enough of an improvement to justify replacing what they already had. And so the train vibrated, and even rocked side to side, as it rumbled and squealed uphill, steel on steel.