So he strode through the subsequent parade with the cold satsifaction of work well done. The grass-floored tents and walktubes of the city were crowded with thousands of spectators, and the parade wound through them, wandering down the big canalside tent with diversions up into the mesas, coming back down and crossing every canal bridge to cheers, and proceeding up to Princess Park for a great street party. The weather people had set for cool and crisp, with brisk downslope winds. Kites dueled under the tent roofs like raptors, their colors bright against the dark pink afternoon sky.

Frank found the party in the park unsettling, there were too many people watching him, too many who wanted to approach him and talk. That was fame: you talked to groups. So he turned around and walked back up the canalside tent.

Two parallel rows of white pillars ran down the sides of the canal; each pillar was a Bareiss column, semicircular at top and bottom but with the hemispheres rotated 180 degrees to each other. This simple maneuver created pillars that looked completely different depending on where you were when you looked at them, and the two rows of these pillars had a strange tumble-down look, as if they were already ruins, although the smoothness and whiteness of their diamond-coated salt belied that; they stood off the grass as white as sugar cubes, and gleamed as if wet.

Frank walked between the rows, touching each pillar in turn. Above them on each side the valley slopes rose to the window-walled bluffs of mesas. Massed greenery shone behind these cliffs of untinted glass, so that it looked as if the city were rimmed by enormous terrariums. A really elegant ant farm. The part of the valley slope under tenting was dotted with trees and tile roofs, and cut by broad grassy boulevards. The uncovered part was still a red rocky plain. A great number of buildings were just being finished, or still under construction; there were cranes everywhere rearing up toward the tent roofs, a kind of odd colorful skeletal statuary. Also scores of scaffolded buildings, so that Helmut had said the tented hillsides reminded him of Switzerland, no suprise since most of the construction was being done by Swiss. “They scaffold a house to replace a window box.”

Sax Russell was standing at the foot of one of these scaffolded buildings, looking up at it critically. Frank turned and walked up a tube to him, said hello.

“There’s twice as much support as they need,” Sax said. “Maybe more.”

“The Swiss like that.”

Sax nodded. They stared at the building.

“Well?” Frank said. “What do you think?”

“The treaty? It will reduce support for terraforming,” Sax said. “People are more inclined to invest than to give.”

Frank scowled. “Not all investment is good for terraforming, Sax, you have to remember that. A lot of that money is spent on other things entirely.”

“But terraforming is a way to reduce overhead, you see. A certain percentage of the total investment will always be devoted to it. So I want the total as high as possible.”

“Real benefits can only be calculated using real costs,” Frank said. “All the real costs. Terran economics never bothered to do that, but you’re a scientist and you should. You have to judge the environmental damage from higher population and activity, as well as the benefits to terraforming that go along with it. Better to up the investment devoted to pure terraforming, rather than compromising and taking a percentage of a total that in some ways is working against you.”

Sax twitched. “It’s funny to hear you speak against compromise after the last four months, Frank. Anyway, I say it’s better to up both the total and the percentage. The environmental costs are negligible. Managed right they can mostly be turned to benefits. An economy can be measured in terawatts or kilocalories, like John used to say. And that’s energy. And we can use energy here in any form, even a lot of bodies. Bodies are just more work, very versatile, very energetic.”

“Real costs, Sax. All of of them. You’re still trying to play at economics, but it isn’t like physics, it’s like politics. Think what will happen when millions of displaced terran emigrants arrive here, with all their viruses, biological and psychic. Maybe they’ll all join Arkady or Ann, ever thought of that? Epidemics, running through the mob’s body and mind-they could crash your whole system! Look, hasn’t the Acheron group been trying to teach you biology? You should pay attention! This isn’t mechanics, Sax. It’s ecology. And it’s a fragile, managed ecology, so it has to be managed.”

“Maybe,” Sax said. It was one of John’s mannerisms, that phrase. Frank missed what Sax was saying for a minute, then his attention was captured again:

“… this treaty isn’t going to make all that much difference anyway. The transnationals that want to invest will find a way. They’ll make a new flag of convenience and it’ll look like a country staking its claim here, exactly according to the treaty’s quotas. But behind it will be transnational money. There’ll be all kinds of that stuff happening, Frank. You know how it is. Politics, right? Economics, right?”

“Maybe,” Frank said harshly, upset. He walked away.

Later he found himself in an upper valley district, still being built. The scaffolding was extreme, as Sax had said, especially for Martian gee. Some of it looked like it would be hard to bring down. He turned and looked out over the valley. The city was nicely placed, that was indisputable. The two sides of the valley meant there was going to be a lot visible from any point. Everywhere in town would have a view.

Suddenly his wristpad beeped, and he answered. It was Ann, staring up at him. “What do you want,” he snapped. “I suppose you think I sold you out too. Let in the hordes to overrun your playground.”

She grimaced. “No. You did the best that could be done, given the situation. That’s what I wanted to say.” She clicked off and his pad went blank.

“Great,” he said aloud. “I’ve got everyone on two worlds mad at me except Ann Clayborne.” He laughed bitterly, took off walking.

Back down to the canal and the rows of Bareiss columns. Lot’s wives. There were knots of celebrants scattered over the canalside sward, and in the late afternoon light their shadows were long. The sight took on a somehow ominous cast, and Frank turned, uncertain where to go. He didn’t like the aftermath of things. Everything seemed finished, done, revealed as pointless. It was always this way.

A group of Terrans were standing under one of the more magnificent new office blocks in the Niederdorf tent. There was Andy Jahns among them.

If Ann was pleased, Andy would be furious. Frank walked up to him, wanting to witness that.

Andy saw him, and his face went still for a moment. “Frank Chalmers,” he said. “What brings you down here?”

His tone was amiable, but his eyes were unamused, even cold. Yes, he was angry. Frank, feeling better every second, said “I’m just walking around, Andy, getting the blood flowing again. What about you?”

After the briefest of hesitations Jahns said, “We’re looking at office space.”

He watched as Frank digested the implications of the statement. His smile took on an edge, became a genuine smile. He went on: “These are friends of mine from Ethiopia, from Addis Ababa. We’re thinking of moving our home office there next year. And so” his smile broadened, no doubt in response to the look on Frank’s face, which Frank could feel hardening over the front of his skull, “we have a lot to discuss.”

Al-Qahira isthe name for Mars in Arabic, and Malaysian, and Indonesian. The latter two langauges got it from the former; look at a globe, then, and see how far the Arabs’ religion spread. The whole middle of the world, from West Africa to the West Pacific. And most of that in a single century. Yes, it was an empire in its time; and like all empires, after death it had a long half-life.