She wanted to get off the mountain and breathe the open air. She wanted to work on tangible things; she wanted to build, with her nine fingers and her back and her mind, build anything and everything, not just structures, although those would be wonderful of course, but also things like air or dirt, parts of a construction project new to her, which was simply terraforming itself. Ever since her first walk in the open air down at DuMartheray Crater, free of everything but a little CO2 filter mask, Sax’s obsession had finally made sense to her. She was ready to join him and the rest of them in that project, and more than ever now, as the removal of the orbiting mirrors had kicked off a long winter and threatened a full ice age. Build air, build dirt, move water, introduce plants and animals: all that kind of work sounded fascinating to her now. And of course the more conventional construction projects beckoned as well. When the new North Sea melted and its shoreline stabilized, there would be harbor towns to be inlaid everywhere, scores of them no doubt, each with jetties and seafronts, channels, wharves and docks, and the towns behind them rising into the hills. At the higher altitudes there would be more tent towns to be erected, and covered canyons. There was even talk of covering some of the big calderas, and of running cable cars between the three prince volcanoes, or bridging the narrows south of Elysium; there was talk of inhabiting the polar island continent; there were new concepts in biohousing, plans to grow homes and buildings directly out of engineered trees, as Hiroko has used bamboo, but on a bigger scale. Yes, a builder ready to learn some of the latest techniques had a thousand years of lovely projects ahead of her. It was a dream come true.

• • •

Then a small group came to her and said they were exploring possibilities for the first executive council of the new global government.

Nadia stared at them. She could see their import like a big slow-moving trap, and she tried her best to run out of it before it snapped shut. “There are lots of possibilities,” she said. “About ten times more good people than council positions.”

Yes, they said, looking thoughtful. But we were wondering if you had ever thought about it.

“No,” she said.

Art was grinning, and seeing that she began to get worried. “I plan to build things,” she said firmly.

“You could do that too,” Art said. “The council is a part-time job.”

“The hell it is.”

“No, really.”