There was someone new. She sat beside Malik, had dark hair and a patient expression. Her face was a little too sharp to be classically beautiful, and the hair on her forearms was dark. She had the kind of genetics that developed a little moustache problem when she hit about thirty-five. Solomon didn’t believe in love at first sight, but as soon as she sat down at the table, he was profoundly aware that he hadn’t brushed his hair very effectively that morning and he was wearing the shirt with the sleeves that were a little too long.

“Mars is America,” Tori said, waving his beer expansively. “It’s exactly the same.”

“It’s not America,” Malik said.

“Not like it was at the end. Like the beginning. Look at how long it took to travel from Europe to North America in the 1500s. Two months. How long to get here from Earth? Four. Longer if the orbits are right.”

“Which is the first way in which it’s not like America,” Malik said, dryly.

“It’s within an order of magnitude,” Tori said. “My point it that, politically speaking, distance is measured in time. We’re months away from Earth. They’re still thinking about us like we’re some kind of lost colony. Like we answer to them. How many people here, just at this table, have had directives from someone who’s never been outside a gravity well but still felt like they could tell us where our research should go?”

Tori raised his own hand, and Raj followed suit. Voltaire. Carl. Reluctantly, Malik. Tori’s grin was smug.

“Who’s doing the real science in the system?” Tori said. “That’s us. Our ships are newer and better. Our environmental science is at least a decade ahead of anything they’ve got on Earth. Last year, we hit self-sustaining.”

“I don’t believe that,” Voltaire said. The new one still hadn’t spoken, but Solomon watched her attention shift to each new speaker. He watched her listen.

“Even if there are a few things we still need from Earth, we can trade for them. Shit, give us a few years and we’ll be mining them out of the Belt,” Tori said, backing away from his last point and making a new, equally unlikely assertion at the same time. “It’s not like I’m saying we should cut off all diplomatic relations.”

“No,” Malik said. “You’re saying we should declare political independence.”

“Damn skippy, I am,” Tori said. “Because distance is measured in time.”

“And coherence is measured in beer,” Voltaire said, the cadence of her voice matching Tori’s perfectly. The new woman smiled at the mimicry.

“Even if we decided that all we had to lose was our chains,” Malik said, “why would we bother? We are already de facto our own government. Pointing out the fact is only going to stir up trouble.”