They breakfasted in the barrel vaults, in the large hall where Ann and Sax had once argued the merits of terraforming. Sax had won that argument, but Ann was out there fighting it still, as if it had not been decided long since.

Nadia focused on the present, on her AI screen and the flood of news pouring through it this Saturday morning: the top of the screen given over to Maya’s safe house in Burroughs, the bottom to Praxis reports from Earth. Maya was performing heroically as usual, vibrant with apprehension, hectoring everyone in sight to conform to her vision of how things should happen, haggard and yet buzzing with her internal spin. As Nadia listened to her describe the latest developments she chewed breakfast methodically, scarcely noticing Underhill’s delicious bread. It was afternoon already in Burroughs, and the day had been busy. Every town on Mars was in turmoil. On Earth all the coastal areas were now flooded, and the mass dislocations were causing chaos inland. The new UN had condemned the rioters on Mars as heartless opportunists who were taking advantage of a time of unprecedented suffering to advance their own selfish cause. “True enough,” Nadia said to Sax as he walked in the door, fresh from Da Vinci Crater. “They’ll hold that against us later, I bet.”

“Not if we help them out.”

“Hmm.” She offered him bread, regarding him closely. Despite his changed features he was looking more like Sax every day, standing there impassively, blinking as he looked around the old brick chamber. It seemed as though revolution was the last thing on his mind. She said, “Are you ready to fly to Elysium?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.”

“Good. Let me go get my bag.”

While she was throwing her clothes and AI into her old black backpack, her wrist beeped and there was Kasei, his long gray hair wild around his deeply lined face, which was the strangest mix of John and Hiroko— John’s mouth, at the moment stretched into a wide grin; Hiroko’s Oriental eyes, now slitted with delight. “Hello, Kasei,” Nadia said, unable to conceal her surprise. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you on my wrist before.”

“Special circumstances,” he said, unabashed. She was used to thinking of him as a dour man, but the outbreak of the revolution was obviously a great tonic; she understood suddenly by his look that he had been waiting for this all his life. “Look, Coyote and I and a bunch of Reds are up here in Chasma Borealis, and we’ve secured the reactor and the dam; everyone working here has been cooperative—”

“Encouraging!” someone beside him yelled.

“Yes, there’s been a lot of support up here, except for a security team of about a hundred people who are holed up in the reactor. They’re threatening to melt it down unless we give them safe passage to Burroughs.”