It took much of the next month to implement the compromise, as it entailed a whole set of corollary compromises to get the all voting delegations to accept it. Every nation’s delegate had to get a cut to show the folks back home. And there was Washington to be convinced as well; in the end Frank had to go over the heads of the kids right to the President, who was only a bit older than them, but could see a deal when it was poking him in the sternum. So Frank was busy, meetings nearly sixteen hours a day in his old pattern, as familiar as the sunrise. In the end, mollifying transnat lobbyists like Andy Jahns was the hardest part-essentially impossible, as the deal was being made at their expense and they knew it. They put all the pressure they could on the northern governments and on their flags of convenience, and that was considerable, as evidenced by the President’s scared irritability, and the defection of Singapore and Sofia from the deal. But Frank convinced the President, even across all that space, even across the deep psychological barrier of the time lag. And he used the same arguments with every other northern government. If you give in to the transnationals, he would say, then they’re the real government of the world. This is the chance to assert the interests of you and your population over those freefloating accumulations of capital which are very near to holding the ultimate power on earth! You need to get them on the leash somehow!

And it was the same at the UN, for every official there. “Who do you want to be the real world government? You or them?”

Still, it was a close thing. The pressures the transnats could bring to bear were awesome, it was impressive to watch. Subarashii and Armscor and Praxis were each bigger than all but the ten largest countries or commonwealths, and they really put out the funds. Money equals power; power makes the law; and law makes government. So that the national governments in trying to restrain the transnats were like the Lilliputians trying to tie down Gulliver. They needed a great network of tiny lines, staked into place along every millimeter of the circumference. And as the giant heaved to free itself and start trampling about, they had to rush from side to side, throw new lines over the monster, hammer new little pin stakes into place. Rush around making quarter-hour pin-stake appointments, for sixteen hours a day. Mad Dutch boy juggling.

Andy Jahns took him to dinner one night. He was angry with Chalmers, naturally, but tried to hide it, as the evening’s business consisted of the offer of a bribe thinly disguised, accompanied by threats thinly veiled. Business as usual, in other words. He offered Chalmers a position as head of a foundation which was being set up by the Earth-to-Mars transport consortium-the old aerospace industries, with their old Pentagon stash still sloshing around in their pockets. This new foundation would assist the consortium to make policy, and advise the UN on Mars-related matters. The position was to begin after his tenure as Secretary for Mars was over, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.

“It sounds marvelous,” Chalmers said. “I’m very interested indeed.” And over the course of the dinner he convinced Jahns he was sincere. Not only about taking the position in the foundation, but in working for the consortium immediately. This was work indeed, but he was good at it; he could see the suspicion slowly leak out of Jahns as the evening wore on. The weakness of businessmen: the belief that money was the point of the game. “I’ll do what I can,” Chalmers promised energetically, and outlined some strategies he would start to pursue at once. Talk to the Chinese about their need for land, get Congress back to the idea of a fair return on investments. Certainly. Make promises here and some of the pressure would subside; meanwhile the work could go on. There was no pleasure like double-crossing a crook.

So he went back to the conference table and carried on as before. The walk on the bridge, as it was now being called (others called it the Chalmers Shift), had broken the impasse. February 6th, 2057; Ls=144, m-16; a red-letter date in the history of diplomacy. Now it was a matter of giving everyone else a piece, and fixing the actual numbers. As this process ground along Chalmers talked with all the first hundred observers there, reassuring them and checking their opinions. Sax, it turned out, was upset with him, because he thought that if the transnats ceased investment his terraforming would have to slow considerably. He saw all the arriving business as heat. And yet Ann too was upset with him, because a new treaty based on the shift would allow both emigration and investment, and she and the Reds had been hoping for a treaty that would give Mars a kind of world park status. That kind of disconnection from reality made him crazy. “I’ve just saved you fifty million Chinese immigrants,” he yelled at her, “and you bitch at me because I haven’t managed to send everyone back home. You bitch because I didn’t work a miracle and turn this rock into a holy shrine, right next door to a world that’s beginning to look like Calcutta on a bad day. Ann, Ann, Ann. What would you have done? What would you have done except stalk around glaring at every single fucking thing people said, and convincing everyone that you’re from Mars? Jesus Christ. Go out and play with your rocks and leave the politics to people who can think.”

“Remember what thinking is, Frank,” she said. Somehow he had made her smile for a second there, in the middle of his tirade. But she laid the same old wild glare on him before she left.

But Maya, now; Maya was pleased with him. He could feel her gaze on him when he talked in the public meetings. Millions of people watching, and he felt only that gaze. It made him angry. She was full of admiration for the bridge walk, and he told her only what she would be pleased to hear about the backstage compromises he was making in order to get it accepted. She began joining him every evening during the cocktail hour, approaching him when the first press of critics and supplicants had ebbed, standing by his side through the second and third waves, watching and easing things along with her laugh, and extricating him from time to time with reminders that they had to go out and eat. Then they would go out onto restaurant terraces under the stars, and eat and then sip coffee, looking over the orange tiles and roof gardens under one of the big mesa-topping tents, feeling the evening breeze just as if they were out in the open. The MarsFirst crowd had committed themselves to his plan; so he had most of the locals, and he had the home office, and those were the two most important single parties in the whole process, he judged, aside from the transnational leadership, which he could do little about. So it was only a matter of time before he would work the deal. As he would tell her, sometimes, late in the evenings when he had fallen a bit under her spell. Been calmed by her. “Between us we’ll get it done,” he would say as he looked up at the vivid stars in the sky, unable to meet her penetrating gaze.

And one night she kept returning to his side during the cocktail gathering. With all the others they watched the terran news reports of the day’s progress, and saw again how oddly distorted and flattened they appeared, like tiny players in an incomprehensible soap opera. And then they left together, and ate, and then went walking down the wide grassy boulevards, eventually coming to his room in the lower town. And she accompanied him inside. Without explanation or comment, in Maya’s usual way. As if she always did this. It just happened, was happening. She was in his room, and then in his arms, hugging him. They lay on his bed and she kissed him. The shock of it was such that Frank felt completely removed from his body, his flesh was like rubber. This was beginning to worry him when the sheer animal presence of her broke through the shock, body spoke to body and he suddenly he could feel her again; sensation flooded back into him, and he responded to it with animal intensity. It had been a long time.