“A very literal demonstration of emergence theory,” Vlad said with a small smile. Nadia saw by that smile that he had been instrumental in designing the procedure.

“It works?” she asked him directly.

“It works. We make what is in effect a new finger bud over your stump. It’s a combination of embryonic stem cells with some cells from the base of your other little finger. The combination functions as the equivalent of the homeobox genes you had when you were a fetus. So you’ve got the developmental determiners there to make the new stem cells differentiate properly. Then you ultrasonically inject a weekly dose of fibroblast growth factor, plus a few cells from the knuckle and the nail, at the appropriate times . . . and it works.”

As he explained Nadia felt a little glow of interest spread through her. A whole person. Art was watching her with his friendly curiosity.

“Well, sure,” she said at last. “Why not.”

So in the following week they took some biopsies from her remaining little finger, and gave her some ultrasonic shots in the stump of the missing finger, and in her arm, and gave her some pills; and that was it. After that it was only a matter of weekly shots, and waiting.

• • •

Then she forgot about it, because Charlotte called with a problem; Cairo was ignoring a GEC order concerning water pumping. “You’d better come check it out in person. I think the Cairenes are testing the court, for a faction of Free Mars that wants to challenge the global government.”

“Jackie?” Nadia said.

“I think so.”

3

Cairo stood on its plateau edge, overlooking the northwestern-most U-valley of Noctis Labyrinthus. Nadia walked out of the train station with Art onto a plaza flanked by tall palm trees. She glared at the scene; some of the worst moments of her life had occurred in this city, during the assault on it in 2061. Sasha had been killed, among many others, and Nadia had blown up Phobos, she herself!— and all just a few days after finding Arkady’s burned remains. She had never returned; she hated this town.