“No, I don’t think they can. You’ve caught them too late. At best you can order them to act differently. But that’s not being areoformed by the planet, that’s indoctrination, reeducation camps, what have you. Fascist areophany.”

“Persuasion,” Hiroko countered. “Advocacy, argument by example, argument by argument. It need not be coercive.”

“The aerogel revolution,” Ann said sarcastically. “But aerogel has very little effect on missiles.”

Several people spoke at once, and for a moment the thread of discourse was lost; the discussion immediately fissioned into a hundred smaller debates, as many there had something to say which they had been holding back. It was obvious they could go on like this for hour after hour, day after day.

Ann and Sax sat back down. Nadia made her way out of the crowd, shaking her head. On the edge of the meeting she ran into Art, who shook his head soberly. “Unbelievable,” he said.

“Believe it.”

2

The days of the congress unfolded much as the first few had, with workshops good or bad leading to dinner, and then long evenings of talk or partying. Nadia noticed that while the old emigrants were likely to go back to work after dinner, the young natives tended to regard the conferences as daytime work only, with the nights given over to celebration, often around the big warm pond in Phaistos. Once again this was only a matter of tendencies, with many exceptions either way, but she found it interesting.

She herself spent most of her evenings on the Zakros dining patios, making notes on the day’s meetings, talking to people, thinking things over. Nirgal often worked with her, and Art too, when he was not getting people who had been arguing during the day to drink kava together, and then go up to party in Phaistos.

In the second week she got in the habit of taking an evening walk up the tube, often all the way to Falasarna, after which she would walk back and join Nirgal and Art for their final postmortem on the day, which they convened on a patio set on a little lava knob in Lato. The two men had become good friends during their long trek home from Kasei Vallis, and under the pressure of the congress they were becoming like brothers, talking over everything, comparing impressions, testing theories, laying out plans for Nadia’s judgment, and deciding to take on the task of writing some kind of congress document. She was part of it— the elder sister perhaps, or maybe just the babushka— and once when they shut down and staggered off to bed Art spoke of “the triumvirate.” With her as Pompey, no doubt. But she did her best to sway them with her analyses of the larger picture.