Art called up William Fort and told him what he was doing, and got an answer back later the same day. The old man was at a new refugee town in Costa Rica, looking just as distracted as always. “Sounds good,” he said. And after that Praxis people were checking with Art daily to see what they could do to help organize things. Art became busier than he had ever been, doing what the Japanese there called nema-washi, the preparations for an event: starting strategy sessions for an organizing group, revisiting everyone he had spoken to before, trying, in effect, to talk to every individual on Pavonis Mons. “The John Boone method,” Coyote commented with his cracked laugh. “Good luck!”
Sax, packing his few belongings for the diplomatic mission to Earth, said, “You should invite the, the United Nations.”
Sax’s adventure in the storm had knocked him back a bit; he tended to stare around at things, as if stunned by a blow to the head. Art said gently, “Sax, we just went to a lot of trouble to kick their butts off this planet.”
“Yes,” Sax said, staring at the ceiling. “But now co-opt them.”
“Co-opt the UN!” Art considered it. Co-opt the United Nations: it had a certain ring to it. It would be a challenge, diplomatically speaking.
• • •
Just before the ambassadors left for Earth, Nirgal came by the Praxis offices to say good-bye. Embracing his young friend, Art was seized with a sudden irrational fear. Off to Earth!
Nirgal was as blithe as ever, his dark brown eyes alight with anticipation. After saying good-bye to the others in the outer office, he sat with Art in an empty corner room of the warehouse.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Art asked.
“Very sure. I want to see Earth.”
Art waggled a hand, uncertain what to say.
“Besides,” Nirgal added, “someone has to go down there and show them who we are.”
“None better for that than you, my friend. But you’ll have to watch out for the metanats. Who knows what they’ll be up to. And for bad food— those areas affected by the flood are sure to have problems with sanitation. And disease vectors. And you’ll have to be careful about sunstroke, you’ll be very susceptible—”
Jackie Boone walked in. Art stopped his travel advisory; Nirgal was no longer listening in any case, but watching Jackie with a suddenly blank expression, as if he had put on a Nirgal mask. And of course no mask could do justice to Nirgal, because the mobility of his face was its essential characteristic; so he did not look like himself at all.
Jackie, of course, saw this instantly. Shut off from her old partner . . . naturally she glared at him. Something had gone awry, Art saw. Both of them had forgotten Art, who would have slipped out of the room if he could have, feeling like he was holding a lightning rod in a storm. But Jackie was still standing in the doorway, and Art did not care to disturb her at that moment.
“So you’re leaving us,” she said to Nirgal.
“It’s just a visit.”
“But why? Why now? Earth means nothing to us now.”
“It’s where we came from.”
“It is not. We came from Zygote.”
Nirgal shook his head. “Earth is the home planet. We’re an extension of it, here. We have to deal with it.”
Jackie waved a hand in disgust, or bafflement: “You’re leaving just when you’re needed here the most!”
“Think of it as an opportunity.”
“I will,” she snapped. He had made her angry. “And you won’t like it.”
“But you’ll have what you want.”
Fiercely she said, “You don’t know what I want!”
The hair on the back of Art’s neck had raised; lightning was about to strike. He would have said he was an eavesdropper by nature, almost a voyeur in fact; but standing right there in the room was not the same, and he found now there were some things he did not care to witness. He cleared his throat. The other two were startled by his noise. With a waggle of the hand he sidled past Jackie and out the door. Behind him the voices went on— bitter, accusatory, filled with pain and baffled fury.
• • •
Coyote stared gravely out the windshield as he drove the ambassadors to Earth south to the elevator, with Art sitting beside him. They rolled slowly through the battered neighborhoods that bordered the Socket, in the southwest part of Sheffield where the streets had been designed to handle enormous freight-container gantries, so that things had an ominous Speeresque quality to them, inhuman and gigantic. Sax was explaining once again to Coyote that the trip to Earth would not remove the travelers from the constitutional congress, that they would contribute by vid, that they would not end up like Thomas Jefferson in Paris, missing the whole thing. “We’ll be on Pavonis,” Sax said, “in all the senses that matter.”