They were also paying attention to what was going on in space and on Earth. A fast shuttle from Earth, contents unknown, had contacted them requesting permission to make an orbital insertion without a keg of nails being thrown in its way. So a Da Vinci team was now nervously working out security protocols, in heavy consultation with the Swiss embassy, which had taken an office in a suite of apartments at the northwest end of the arc. From rebels to administrators; it was an awkward transition.

“What political parties do we support?” Sax asked.

“I don’t know. The usual array I guess.”

“No party gets much support. Whatever works, you know.”

Sax knew. That was the old tech position, held ever since scientists had become a class in society, a priest caste almost, intervening between the people and their power. They were apolitical, supposedly, like civil servants— empiricists, who only wanted things managed in a rational scientific style, the greatest good for the greatest number, which ought to be fairly simple to arrange, if people were not so trapped in emotions, religions, governments, and other mass delusional systems of that sort.

The standard scientist politics, in other words. Sax had once tried to explain this outlook to Desmond, causing his friend for some reason to laugh prodigiously, even though it made perfect sense. Well, it was a bit naive, therefore a bit comical, he supposed; and like a lot of funny things, it could be that it was hilarious right up to the moment it turned horrible. Because it was an attitude that had kept scientists from going at politics in any useful way for centuries now; and dismal centuries they had been.

But now they were on a planet where political power came out of the end of a mesocosm aerating fan. And the people in charge of that great gun (holding the elements at bay) were at least partly in charge. If they cared to exercise the power.

Gently Sax reminded people of this when he visited them in their labs; and then to ease their discomfort with the idea of politics, he talked to them about the terraforming problem. And when he finally got ready to leave for Sabishii, about sixty of them were willing to come with him, to see how things were going down there. “Sax’s alternative to Pavonis,” he heard one of the lab techs describe the trip. Which was not a bad thought.

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