“It does,” Elizabeth said. “It specifies no more than ten percent of the Martian population to be added every Terran year. But it also states that Mars should take more if they can.”

“Besides,” Amy said, “since when have treaties ever stopped governments from doing what they wanted to do?”

William Fort said, “We’ll have to send them somewhere else.”

The others looked at him.

“Where?” said Amy.

No one replied. Fort waved a hand vaguely.

“We’d better think of somewhere,” Elizabeth said grimly. “The Chinese and Indians have been good allies of the Martians, so far, and even they aren’t paying much attention to the treaty. I was sent a tape recording of an Indian policy meeting about this, and they spoke about running their program at capacity for a couple of centuries, and then seeing where they stand.”

1

The elevator car descended and Mars grew huge beneath their feet. Finally they slowed down, low over Sheffield, and everything felt normal, Martian gravity again, without the Coriolis force pulling reality to the side. And then they were in the Socket, and back home.

Friends, reporters, delegations, Mangalavid. In Sheffield itself people hurried about their business. Occasionally Nirgal was recognized, and waved at happily; some even stopped to shake his hand, or give him a hug, inquiring about his trip or his health. “We’re glad you’re back!”

Still, in most people’s eyes . . . Illness was so rare. Quite a few looked away. Magical thinking: Nirgal saw suddenly that for many people the longevity treatments equaled immortality. They did not want to think otherwise; they looked away.

But Nirgal had seen Simon die even though Simon’s bones had been stuffed with Nirgal’s young marrow. He had felt his body unravel, felt the pain in his lungs, in every cell of him. He knew death was real. Immortality had not come to them, and never would. Delayed senescence, Sax called it. Delayed senescence, that was all it was; Nirgal knew that. And people saw that knowledge in him, and recoiled. He was unclean, and they looked away. It made him angry.

• • •

He took the train down to Cairo, looking out at the vast tilted desert of east Tharsis, so dry and ferric, the Ur landscape of red Mars: his land. His eyes felt it. His brain and body glowed with that recognition. Home.

But the faces on the train, looking at him and then looking away. He was the man who had not been able to adjust to Earth. The home world had nearly killed him. He was an alpine flower, unable to withstand the true world, an exotic to whom Earth was like Venus. This is what their eyes were saying with their darting glances. Eternal exile.