Art came slouching out to help her with the teacups, scruffy and relaxed as always. She asked him what he’d heard from Fort, and he gave her the daily report from Earth. Subarashii and Consolidated were under attack by fundamentalist armies, in what looked like a fundamentalist alliance, although that was an illusion as the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists hated each other, and despised the fundamentalist Hindus. The big metanats had used the new UN to give warning that they would protect their interests with appropriate force. Praxis and Amexx and Switzerland had urged use of the World Court, and India had done so, but no one else. Michel said, “At least they’re still afraid of the World Court.” But to Maya it looked like the metanatricide was shifting to a war between the well-to-do and the “mortals,” which could be much more explosive— total war, rather than decapitations.

She and Art talked the situation over as they served the people in the apartment tea. Spy or not, Art knew Terra, and had an incisive political judgment, which she found helpful. He was like a mellow Frank. Was that right? Somehow she was reminded of Frank, and though she couldn’t pin down why, she was obscurely pleased. No one else could have seen any resemblance in this lumbering sly man, it was her perception and hers alone.

Then more people began to crowd into the apartment, cell leaders and visitors from out of town. Maya sat at the back and listened as Jackie spoke to them. Everyone in the resistance, Maya thought as she listened to her, was in it for themselves. The way Jackie used her grandfather as a symbol, waving him like a flag to rally her troops, was sickening. It wasn’t John who had gotten her her followers, but her white scoop blouse, the slut. No wonder Nirgal was estranged from her.

Now she exhorted them with her usual incendiary message, enthusiastically advocating immediate rebellion, no matter what the agreed-upon strategy was. And to these so-called Booneans, Maya was nothing more than an old paramour of the great man, or perhaps the reason he had been killed: a fossil odalisque, a historical embarrassment, an object of men’s desire, like Helen of Troy called back by Faustus, insubstantial and weird. Ach, it was maddening! But she kept a calm face, and got up and walked in and out of the kitchen with her head averted, doing what paramours did, keeping people comfortable and fed. Nothing more to be done, at this point.