SPIN

—and when was that ever not the case?'

'We're all mortal, but we used to have the consolation of knowing the human species would go on without us.'

'But species are mortal, too. All that's changed is that suddenly it's not way off in the foggy future. It's possible we'll all die together in some spectacular way in a few years… but even that's still just a possibility. The Hypotheticals might keep us around longer than that. For whatever unfathomable reason.'

'That doesn't frighten you?'

'Of course it does! All of it frightens me. But it's no reason to go out and kill people.' She waved at the TV. Someone had launched a grenade into the Riksdag. 'This is so overwhelmingly stupid. It accomplishes nothing. It's a hormonal exercise. It's simian.'

'You can't pretend you're not affected by it.'

She surprised me by laughing. 'No… that's your style, not mine.'

'Is it?'

She ducked her head away but came back staring, almost defiant. 'The way you always pretend to be cool about the Spin. Same way you're cool about the Lawtons. They use you, they ignore you, and you smile like it's the natural order of things.' She watched me for a reaction. I was too stubborn to give her one. 'I just think there are better ways to live out the end of the world.'

But she wouldn't say what those better ways were.

* * * * *

Everyone who worked at Perihelion had signed a nondisclosure agreement when we were hired, all of us had undergone background checks and Homeland Security vetting. We were discreet and we respected the need to keep high-echelon talk in-house. Leaks might spook congressional committees, embarrass powerful friends, scare away funding.

But now there was a Martian living on campus—most of the north wing had been converted into temporary quarters for Wun Ngo Wen and his handlers—and that was a secret difficult to keep.

It couldn't be kept much longer in any case. By the time Wun arrived in Florida much of the D.C. elite and several foreign heads of state had heard all about him. The State Department had granted him ad hoc legal status and planned to introduce him internationally when the time was right. His handlers were already coaching him for the inevitable media feeding frenzy.

His arrival could and perhaps should have been managed differently. He could have been processed through the U.N., his presence immediately made public. Garland's administration was bound to take some heat for hiding him. The Christian Conservative Party was already hinting that 'the administration knows more than it's saying about the results of the terraforming project,' hoping to draw out the president or open up Lomax, his would-be successor, for criticism. Criticism there would inevitably be; but Wun had expressed his wish not to become a campaign issue. He wanted to go public but he would wait until November, he said, to announce himself.

But the existence of Wun Ngo Wen was only the most conspicuous of the secrets surrounding his arrival. There were others. It made for a strange summer at Perihelion.

Jason called me over to the north wing that August. I met him in his office—his real office, not the tastefully furnished suite where he greeted official visitors and the press; a window-less cube with a desk and sofa. Perched on his chair between stacks of scientific journals, wearing Levi's and a greasy sweatshirt, he looked as if he'd grown out of the clutter like a hydroponic vegetable. He was sweating. Never a good sign with Jase.

'I'm losing my legs again,' he said.

I cleared a space on the sofa and sat down and waited for him to elaborate.

'I've been having little episodes for a couple of weeks. The usual thing, pins and needles in the morning. Nothing I can't work around. But it isn't going away. In fact it's getting worse. I think we might need to adjust the medication.'

Maybe so. But I really didn't like what the medication had been doing to him. Jase by this time was taking a daily handful of pills: myelin enhancers to slow the loss of nerve tissue, neurological boosters to help the brain rewire damaged areas, and secondary medication to treat the side effects of the primary medication. Could we boost his dosage? Possibly. But the process had a toxicity ceiling that was already alarmingly close. He had lost weight, and he had lost something perhaps more important: a certain emotional equilibrium. Jase talked faster than he used to and smiled less often. Where he had once seemed utterly at home in his body, he now moved like a marionette—when he reached for a cup his hand overshot the target and jogged back for a second intercept.

'In any case,' I said, 'we'll have to get Dr. Malmstein's opinion.'

'There is absolutely no way I can leave here long enough to see him. Things have changed, if you haven't noticed. Can't we do a telephone consult?'

'Maybe. I'll ask.'

'And in the meantime, can you do me another favor?'

'What would that be, Jase?'

'Explain my problem to Wun. Dig up a couple of textbooks on the subject for him.'

'Medical texts? Why, is he a physician?'

'Not exactly, but he brought a lot of information with him. The Martian biological sciences are considerably in advance of ours.' (He said this with a crooked grin I was unable to interpret.) 'He thinks he might be able to help.'

'Are you serious?'

'Quite serious. Stop looking shocked. Will you talk to him?'

A man from another planet. A man with a hundred thousand years of Martian history behind him. 'Well, yeah,' I said. 'I'd be privileged to talk to him. But—'

'I'll set it up, then.'

'But if he has the kind of medical knowledge that can effectively treat AMS, it needs to reach better doctors than me.'

'Wun brought whole encyclopedias with him. There are already people going through the Martian archives— parts of them, anyway—looking for useful information, medical and otherwise. This is just a sideshow.'

'I'm surprised he can spare the time for a sideshow.'

'He's bored more often than you might think. He's also short of friends. I thought he might enjoy spending a little time with someone who doesn't believe he's either a savior or a threat. In the short term, though, I'd still like you to talk to Malmstein.'

'Of course.'

'And call him from your place, all right? I don't trust the phones here anymore.'

He smiled as if he had said something amusing.

* * * * *

Occasionally that summer I took myself for walks on the public beach across the highway from my apartment.

It wasn't much of a beach. A long undeveloped spit of land protected it from erosion and rendered it useless for surfers. On hot afternoons the old motels surveyed the sand with glassy eyes and a few subdued tourists washed their feet in the surf.

I came down and sat on a scalding wooden walkway suspended over scrub grass, watching clouds gather on the eastern horizon and thinking about what Molly had said, that I was pretending to be cool about the Spin (and about the Lawtons), faking an equanimity I couldn't possibly possess.

I wanted to give Molly her due. Maybe that was the way I looked to her.

'Spin' was a dumb but inevitable name for what had been done to the Earth. That is, it was bad physics— nothing was actually spinning any harder or faster than it used to—but it was an apt metaphor. In reality the Earth was more static than it had ever been. But did it feel like it was spinning out of control? In every important sense, yes. You had to cling to something or slide into oblivion.

So maybe I was clinging to the Lawtons—not just Jason and Diane but their whole world, the Big House and the Little House, lost childhood loyalties. Maybe that was the only handle I could grab. And maybe that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If Moll was right, we all had to grab something or be lost. Diane had grabbed faith, Jason had grabbed science.

And I had grabbed Jason and Diane.