They partied right through the afternoon, and then called in a feast. Innumerable women kissed his cheeks, he was drunk on their perfume and skin and hair, their smiling liquid dark eyes, looking at him with friendly curiosity. Native Martian girls one always had to look up to, inspecting their chins and necks and the insides of their nostrils. Such a pleasure to look down on a straight part in glossy black hair.

In the late evening people dispersed. Francis walked with Michel over to the Roman arena, and they climbed the bowed stone steps of the medieval towers that had fortified the arena. From the little stone chamber at the top of the stairs they looked out small windows at the tile roofs, and the treeless streets, and the Rhone. Out the south windows they could see a portion of the speckled sheet of water which was the Camargue.

“Back on the Med,” Francis said, deeply satisfied. “The flood may have been a disaster for most places, but for Arles it has been a veritable coup. The rice farmers are all coming into town ready to fish, or take any work they can get. And many of the boats that survived have been docked right here in town. They’ve been bringing fruit in from Corsica and Mallorca, trade with Barcelona and Sicily. We’ve taken a good bit of Marseilles’s business, although they’re recovering quickly, it has to be said. But what life has come back! Before, you know, Aix had the university, Marseilles had the sea, and we had only these ruins, and the tourists who came for a day to see them. And tourism is an ugly business, it’s not fit work for human beings. It’s hosting parasites. But now we’re living again!” He was a little bit drunk. “Here, you must come out on the boat with me and see the lagoon.”

“I’d like that.”

That night Michel called Maya again. “You must come. I’ve found my nephew, my family.”

Maya wasn’t impressed. “Nirgal went to England looking for Hiroko,” she said sharply. “Someone told him she was there, and he left just like that.”

“What’s this?” Michel exclaimed, shocked by the sudden intrusion of the idea of Hiroko.

“Oh Michel. You know it can’t be true. Someone said it to Nirgal, that’s all it was. It can’t be true, but he ran right off.”

“As would I!”

“Please, Michel, don’t be stupid. One fool is enough. If Hiroko is alive at all, then she’s on Mars. Someone just said this to Nirgal to get him away from the negotiations. I only hope it was for nothing worse. He was having too much of an effect on people. And he wasn’t watching his tongue. You should call him and tell him to come back. Maybe he would listen to you.”

“I wouldn’t if I were him.”