I put my clothes on and walked into the waiting room. Mimas’s bull’s-eye crater stared at me from its poster like the Cyclops. I looked at the sheaf of prescriptions in my hand.

Things as they are have been destroyed…

I could not stand to be in fleshy hothouse Alexandria that night, and I walked to the station to take the very next train east, back to New Houston. In the station I stopped in the drug store and got my prescriptions filled.

Once we were taut bowstrings, vibrant on the bow of mortality — now the bow has been unstrung, and we lie limp, and the arrow has clattered to the ground.

Graben

But then I left the station and went back into the city, to see Shrike. That night we had dinner in an Indian restaurant in the lower part of the city, where canals alternate with industrial plants and tenement dormitories, and the poor live everywhere, even under the bridges where the icy canals abrade their skin until the sores look like leprosy. Of course they could get a prescription for it, if they could afford it.

“It’s like Soviet history,” I said on one of the canal bridges.

Shrike stopped at the bridge’s peak. Above us between the shabby dormitories the sky was marbled like a jar of marmalade. “What is?”

“We are. Right after the 1917 revolution the Bolsheviks set up the government, and it ruled the country. Then Lenin built up the party until it was his tool. To get into the government you had to be in the party first, so the party lay on top of the government and was the real power system. Then when Stalin took over, he built the security network as his personal power base. It didn’t matter if you were in the party or not — it was the secret police had the power, and Stalin controlled the police. So there was a three-tiered system. Khrushchev’s big reform was to dismantle the secret police, and return the power to the Communist party. So it was back to two tiers.”

“How are we like that?” Shrike said, peering closely at the tenements surrounding us, looking into an open window where a woman washed clothes.

“You can see it as well as I! The first power system on Mars was the individual rule of the corporations here. The Committee was convened first to be no more than an information pool for the corporations and the Soviets. But the Russians and Americans decided to use the Committee to get control of the planet away from the corporations.”

“That would be like Lenin’s use of the party?” Shrike said, his voice mocking me with faked interest.

“Right.”

“It’s not a very close analogy, is it.”

“Close enough. And the third step was when the Committee took over all planetary policy — took over the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. At that point Chairman Sarionovich — Kremlin-trained, remember — set up his own five-year plans, overstressing the Martian economy and of course the people, to prove to the two superpowers that we could make them money if he was given a free hand. And they gave him a free hand, and he increased the size and power of the police enormously to accomplish his goals. And so we got the Unrest.”

“And now?” Shrike asked, humoring me. “Are we like Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Kerens?”

“Brezhnev was nongovenment. Confusion and corruption, even when he was healthy. And Andropov and Chernenko were still in the push and pull with the Americans. I’d say you’re most like Kerens.”

Shrike contemplated me with a big O of mockery rounding his lips. “Why, Hjalmar! What a compliment! That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in months, are you sure you spoke correctly?”

“Ach,” I said. “Quit being an ass and listen.”

“I know. I’m not taking your history lesson seriously. But to tell the truth I find the analogy stretched. Don’t you find historical analogies a bit… artificial? And you’re distracting me from my walk.”

“So you look around when you walk in this district! I should think you would turn away, to keep your conscience clean.”

“My righteous professor,” Shrike said with a wide grin. “My holy professor who shuns all the privileges of his class, and devotes every moment of his life to ending social injustice—”

“Shut up—”

“Who can’t imagine any other way of working for change than moaning and groaning from the top of his ivory tower, and digging about in the dirt.” By the width of his grin I saw I had angered him, and that surprised me.

“So I’ve hit a sore spot,” I said.

“No! You’ve hit unfairly, as usual. You bitch at me every time we meet, as if it’s impossible for me to be in pursuit of anything but personal power. And then you take advantage of my work every day of your life. So ungrateful.” He grinned again. “Perhaps I am tired of you, Hjalmar. Perhaps I am tired of working for your good and being nagged about it too. Perhaps you should not have bothered me this evening at all.”

But even in the dusk he could see the fear on my face, and after a moment’s scrutiny he laughed. “Come back to my place, Hjalmar, and teach me some more ancient history. And leave the righteousness in the canal. You’re doing no better than any of the rest of us.”

And later that night, in bed, I woke from a doze and said, “Can you get rid of Satarwal for me? He’s dangerous, I think.”

“How so?” He was half asleep,

“He hates me. It’s gone beyond obstructing my efforts, he wants to destroy them — he’ll do anything. He’s plotting with Petrini against me.”

“We’ll see. Maybe I’ve put him out there to keep you on your toes, eh, Hjalmar? To keep you sharp?” And he fell asleep.

Olympus Mons — he tallest volcano in the solar system; its peak is 27 kilometers above the datum, and its volume is one hundred times that of the largest terran volcano, Mauna Loa.

One day I ordered my team over the crater rim and into the rift once called Spear Canyon, to do a survey. Bill Strickland gave me an aggrieved look, as if because he had once mentioned the canyon I was obliged to acknowledge him every time the matter came up. Irritably I sent him packing, to complete the gathering of equipment; for this Hana gave me a piercing glare.

New Houston was set in a “splosh crater,” meaning the ejecta shield is made of lobes of what was fluidized material directly after the impact. The shield is thus an even surface, except for a narrow rift created by two lobes of fluid being split by some prominence that was later buried by the falling ballistic ejecta of the rim. This rift or canyon broadens to split the shield’s low outer rampart, so it opens up directly onto the surrounding plain. Altogether it seemed to me a promising avenue of escape for any party trying to slip away from the crater unobtrusively.

I led my team down the outside of the rim, switchbacking from ledge to ledge down the broken slope. The drop was about one in two, but the use of ledges as ramps made it an easy walk, down pitted rock sheets that lapped over each other like insulating tiles. Behind me the others remarked at the cold; it was a windy day, and most of them wore masks and goggles. But I enjoyed the chill of the harsh wind on me (Dr. Laird would be angry). The sky was the color of old paper; it made a fine dome to hike under.

We explored the length of the canyon, through the break in the rampart and onto the boulder-covered plain. In several places we found remnants of a road that had been cut into the south slope of the canyon. Landslides covered the majority of this road, but near the upper end of the canyon a good stretch of it was clear. The entire team stood on this trace and looked back up at the rim. “It must have switchbacked to the top,” Bill said.

“Or stopped in this little cirque,” I suggested, “where an escalator could take them up to the dome.”

“Possibly,” said Bill with a shrug.

“I wonder why they cut the road into the slope when the landslide danger was so great,” Hana said.