He put a pair of shears in the walker's other pocket. Narrow gravel paths led him up between long beds of barley and wheat, back toward the city proper. He went in the lock leading into town, unclipped his helmet, stripped off the walker and boots, transferred the contents of the walker pockets to his coat. Then he went back into the lower end of town.

Here the Arabs had built a medina, insisting that such a neighborhood was crucial to a city's health; the boulevards narrowed, and between them lay warrens of twisted alleyways taken from the maps of Tunis or Algiers, or generated randomly. Nowhere could you see from one boulevard to the next, and the sky overhead was visible only in plum strips, between buildings that leaned together.

Most of the alleys were empty now, as the party was uptown. A pair of cats skulked between buildings, investigating their new home. Frank took the shears from his pocket and scratched into a few plastic windows, in Arabic lettering, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew. He walked on, whistling through his teeth. Corner cafés were little caves of light. Bottles clinked like prospectors' hammers. An Arab sat on a squat black speaker, playing an electric guitar.

He found the central boulevard, walked up it. Boys in the branches of the lindens and sycamores shouted songs to each other in Schwyzerdüütsch. One ditty was in English: "John Boone, Went to the moon, No fast cars, He went to Mars!" Small disorganized music bands barged through the thickening crowd. Some moustached men dressed as American cheerleaders flounced expertly through a complicated can-can routine. Kids banged little plastic drums. It was loud; the tenting absorbed sound, so there weren't the echoes one heard under crater domes, but it was loud nevertheless.

Up there, where the boulevard opened into the sycamore park-that was John himself, surrounded by a small crowd. He saw Chalmers approaching and waved, recognizing him despite the mask. That was how the first hundred knew each other...

"Hey, Frank," he said. "You look like you're having a good time."

"I am," Frank said through his mask. "I love cities like this, don't you? A mixed-species flock. It shows you what a diverse collection of cultures Mars is."

John's smile was easy. His eyes shifted as he surveyed the boulevard below.

Sharply Frank said, "A place like this is a crimp in your plan, isn't it?"

Boone's gaze returned to him. The surrounding crowd slipped away, sensing the agonistic nature of the exchange. Boone said to Frank, "I don't have a plan."

"Oh come on! What about your speech?"

Boone shrugged. "Maya wrote it."

A double lie: that Maya wrote it, that John didn't believe it. Even after all these years it was almost like talking to a stranger. To a politician at work. "Come on, John," Frank snapped. "You believe all that and you know it. But what are you going to do with all these different nationalities? All the ethnic hatreds, the religious manias? Your coalition can't possibly keep a thumb on all this. You can't keep Mars for yourselves, John, it's not a scientific station anymore, and you're not going to get a treaty that makes it one."