'It's a great talk,' Charles Outis says enthusiastically. 'I'm learning about the death passage and its impact on modern society. And the sky-I see the sky through the rover's outside sensors! It's bright-and pink!'
'The thin atmosphere carries dust right into space,' the androne says. 'Most of the particles are less than a thousandth of a millimeter, the most effective size to scatter red light.' From his post before the dune climber, Munk turns his empty face toward the jumper. 'I have been hearing a firsthand account of the archaic bonding practice called family from Mr. Charlie-from his childhood! Can you imagine? Neonatal memories. How very rare.'
'Mr. Charlie,' Mei sits down in the gray, form-fit hug of a deck chair. 'Did you hear about Terra Tharsis and the Moot?'
'I heard it all,' Charles tells her. 'I spoke with everyone while you were sleeping-Rey Raza, Grielle Aspect, Buddy-'
'Aspect is acting like we're baggage,' she complains. 'And she's lugging us three days out of our way for some damned religious observance.'
'Don't be upset,' Charles says brightly. 'We're on Mars! We got away from the Judge and Sitor Ananta. I met the Judge, and he didn't seem very favorably disposed to my plea for freedom.'
'Mr. Charlie,' Munk cuts in. 'I must tell you that I saw Sitor Ananta in the facepan of a sentinel androne.'
'What? Wait a minute,' Mei asks. 'Who is Sitor Ananta?'
'The Commonality agent who tortured me,' Charles replies. 'A maladjusted hermaphrodite.'
'Probably a morph,' Munk says.
'Morphs, clades, anthros,' Charles sounds perplexed. 'It doesn't make any difference. Trust me, Sitor Ananta is dangerous.'
'At the Moot he charged that the Friends of the NonAbelian Gauge Group
tampered with your brain,' the androne says. 'I don't have much on them. They're a faction of clades, aren't they, Jumper Nili?'
'I think so,' she replies through a morose frown. 'Maybe, yes. The name is familiar. There are so many reservations, I can't remember them all. Ours was exclusively anthro, but we'd heard of the clades.'
'Can someone please explain-' Charles begins.
'Clades,' Munk hurries to elucidate, 'branches-genetic variants on the human genome, not just morphologic changes like the gender shifts and body-shaping of morphs, but whole new neurologies, new biokinetic paradigms, new species.-like the Maat.'
Mei ignores the sadness that talk of Earth stirs in her and adds, 'The Maat are the most successful of the clades. They're the branch that has expanded its intelligence the furthest. Other branches have grown in different directions. The Friends, I think, are factions of an adrenal or parasyinpathetic clade. I don't remember exactly. But they hate authority of all kinds and live with what seems to us anthros a peculiar passion for certain kinds of mathematics.'
Charles remembers the humanoids with four-fingered hands, delicate,
glass-faced beings who used him to teach their young. 'My torturer told me that the Friends are rebels or something.'
Munk's voice enters assuredly, 'I have here what you recorded in your broadcast: 'They're enemies of the Commonality-anarchists, a selfish cult intent on usurping the law.''
'The Commonality are full of themselves,' Mei says bitterly. Charles asks, 'Who exactly is-'
'The Commonality?' Munk anticipates him again. 'They are a cartel of all the anthro and morph colonies on Earth, Luna, Mars, and the Belt who were set up by the Maat to help collect materials for neo-sapien projects.'
'They throw their weight around a lot,' Mei adds. 'I think they feel the Maat have gone on to another reality and left this one for them.'
'Well,' Charles says, 'all I want to know is whether or not Sitor Ananta is coming after me.'
'The Commonality thinks you're a weapon,' Munk responds, his voice lively but his body motionless in the brash sunlight. 'We have to get you to Solis. That's a neutral settlement.'
As Mei and Munk talk, Charles uses the desert rover's external cameras to direct his attention to his surroundings. It's enough, he tells himself, staring through the seething air above the red iron desert. It's enough to have lived to see Mars.
The 360-degree vista displaces his dread with wonder. The surface looks pretty much like a desert, but the Avenue of Limits is as alien a scene as he's ever imagined. He sees the sleek, multitiered contours of the other rovers parked in
a row and behind them the imposing skyline of silos and warehouses with their odd architectural character, looking to him like a queer blend of Chinese and art deco. The people, too, are both seen before and utterly singular, swathed head to toe in multicolored mummy windings, bobbing in slow rhythms like tribal dancers, polishing the air with their glittery veils.
A feeling of awe and unreality pervades Charles, and he says earnestly, 'It's enough that I've lived to see people on Mars.'
Shau Bandar has chosen to ride alone in the third rover so that he can better record the dramatic start of the trek. Sitting on the rover's bridge above the swarming crowd, he adjusts his reflectors to play back an earlier interview with Rey Raza, queuing it for a leader to explain what he is going to record next.
Rey stands in playback blue before the open bay to his garage five minutes in the past. In the background the locals bob-dance, tatterdemalion garb floating around them like kelp, handkerchiefs dazzling blessings over Grielle and Buddy, who are making their way toward the shining rovers.
