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Lindsay had seen them. He'd pitied them. The Ring Council did not waste investment. A seventeen-year-old genius was more than sufficient for the assignment, and they were cheap. They had looked him over with cold hazel eyes, with the alert and revolted stare that a man reserves for vermin. They longed to kill him, with a hunger tempered only by disgust. It was too late for that now. They should have killed him far away, when they could have stayed clean. Now he was too close. His skin, his breath, his teeth, even his blood seethed with corruption.

"We have no antiseptics," Nora said. "We never thought we'd need them. It won't be pleasant for us, Abelard. Boils, weals, rashes. Dysentery. There's no help for it. Even if you left tomorrow, the air from your ship ... it was crawling." She spread her hands. Her blouse had scarlet drawstrings at the wrists, with puffed slashed sleeves showing the smooth skin of her forearms. The blouse was a wraparound garment, tied with short strings at each hip and belted at the waist. She'd sewn it herself, embroidering the lapels in pink-and-white gridwork. Below it she wore shorts cinched at the knee and lace-up crimson sandals.

"I'm sorry," Lindsay said. "But it's better than dying. The Shapers are burned, Nora. They're finished. I have no love for the Mechs, believe me." For the first time, he gestured with his right arm. "Let me tell you something I'll deny if you repeat. The Mechs wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. Their Union of Cartels is a sham. It's only united by fear and hatred of the Reshaped. When they've destroyed the Ring Council, as they must, the Mechs themselves will fly to pieces.

"Please, Nora. See it my way for a moment, for the sake of argument. I know you're committed, I know you're loyal to your gene-line, your people back home. But your death won't save them. They're burned, doomed. It's just flBOflRD THE RED CONSENSUS: 1-1-17

"Welcome aboard, Dr. Mavrides," the President said. He extended his hand. Nora shook it without hesitation; her skin was protected under the thin plastic of her spacesuit.

"A fine beginning for the new year," Lindsay said. They were on the control deck of the Red Consensus. Lindsay realized how much he'd missed the familiar pop-blip-and-squeak of the instruments. The sound settled into him, releasing tension he hadn't known he had.

The negotiations were twelve days old. He'd forgotten how bad the pirates looked, how consummately grubby. They had clogged pores, hair rank with you and us now. Eighteen people. I've lived with these Fortunans. We know what they are. They're scum, pirates, marauders. Failures. Victims, Nora. They live in the gap between what's right and what's possible.

"But if you go along, they won't kill you. It's your chance, a chance for the six here.... After they've shut you down, they'll go back to the cartels. If you surrender, they'll take you along. You're all young. Disguise your pasts, and in a century you could be running those cartels. Mech, Shaper, those are only labels. The point is that we live."

"You're tools," the woman said. "Victims, yes, I'll accept that. We're victims ourselves. But victims in a better cause than yours. We came here naked, Abelard. We were shipped here in a one-way drogue, and the only reason we weren't blown away in flight is because the Council launches fifty decoys for every real mission. It costs the cartels more to kill us than we're worth.

"That's why they hired you. The rich Mechs, the ones in power, have turned you on us. And we were surviving. We made this base from nothing with our hands, brains, and wetware. It was you who came to kill us."

"But we're here now," Lindsay said. "What's past can't be helped. I'm begging you to let me live, and you give me ideology. Please, Nora, bend a little. Don't kill us all."

"I want to live," she said. "It's you who should join us here. Your lot won't be of much use, but we could tolerate you. You'll never be true Shapers, but there's room for the unplanned under our aegis. In one way or another, we outflank every move the cartels make against us."

"You're under siege," Lindsay said.

"We break out. Haven't you heard? The Concatenation will declare for us. We have one circumlunar already: the Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic."

Even here Constantine's shadow had touched him. "You call that a triumph?" he said. "Those decadent little worlds? Those broken-down relics?"

"We will rebuild them," she said with chilling confidence. "We own their youth."

ABOARD THE RED CONSENSUS: 1-1-'17

"Welcome aboard, Dr. Mavrides," the President said. He extended his hand. Nora shook it without hesitation; her skin was protected under the thin plastic of her spacesuit.

"A fine beginning for the new year," Lindsay said. They were on the control deck of the Red Consensus. Lindsay realized how much he'd missed the familiar pop-blip-and-squeak of the instruments. The sound settled into him, releasing tension he hadn't known he had.

The negotiations were twelve days old. He'd forgotten how bad the pirates looked, how consummately grubby. They had clogged pores, hair rank with grease, teeth rimmed with plaque. To a Shaper's eyes they looked like wild animals.

"This is our third agreement," the President said formally. "First the Open Channels Act, then the Technological Assessment and Trade Consensus, and now a real breakthrough in social justice policy, the Integration Act. Welcome to the Red Consensus, doctor. We hope you'll regard every angstrom of the craft as part of your national heritage."

The President pinned the printout treaty to a bulkhead and signed it with a flourish. Lindsay printed the state seal with his left hand. The flimsy paper ripped a little.

"We're all nationals here," the President said. "Let's relax a little. Get to, uh, know each other." He pulled a gunmetal inhaler and sniffed at it ostentatiously.

"You sew that spacesuit yourself?" the Speaker of the House said.

"Yes, Madam Speaker. The seams are threadwire and epoxy from our wet-ware tanks."

"Clever."

"I like your roaches," said Rep 2. "Pink and gold and green. Hardly look like roaches at all. I'd like to have some of those."

"That can be arranged, I'm sure," Nora said.

"Trade you some relaxant for it. I have lots."

"Thank you," Nora said. She was doing well. Lindsay felt obscurely proud of her.

She unzipped her spacesuit and stepped out of it. Below it she wore a triangular over-the-shoulders poncho, geometrically embroidered in white and ice blue. The poncho's tapering ends were laced across her hips, leaving her legs bare except for lace-up velcro sandals.

The pirates had tactfully given up their red-and-silver skeleton jumpsuits. Instead they wore dun-brown Zaibatsu coveralls. They looked like savages.

"I could do with one of these," said Rep 3. He held the accordioned arm of his ancient spacesuit next to the thin plastic of hers. "How you breathe in that sucker?"

"It's not for deep space. We just fill it with pure oxygen and breathe as long as we can. Ten minutes."

"I could hook tanks to one. More spacey, citizen-to-be. The Sun would like it."

"We could teach you to sew one. It's an art worth knowing." She smiled at Rep 3, and Lindsay shuddered inwardly. He knew how the sweaty reek of the Rep's suit must turn her stomach.

He drifted between the two of them, unobtrusively nudging Rep 3 to one side. And, for the first time, he touched Nora Mavrides. He put his hand gently on the soft blue and white shoulder of her poncho. The muscle beneath his hand was as stiff as wire.

She smiled again, quickly. "I'm sure the others will find this ship fascinating. We came here in a drogue. Our cargo was nine-tenths ice, for the wetware tanks. We were in paste, close to dead. We had our robot and our pocket toka-mak. The rest was bits and pieces. Wire, a handful of microchips, some salt and trace minerals. The rest's genetics. Eggs, seeds, bacteria. We came here naked, to save launch weight. Everything else we've done with our hands, friends. Flesh against rock. Flesh wins, if it's smart enough." Lindsay nodded. She had not mentioned their electromagnetic pulse weapon. No one talked about the guns.

She struggled to charm the pirates, but her pride stung them. The pride of the Family was justified. They'd bootstrapped themselves into prosperity with bacterial wetware from gelatin capsules no bigger than pinheads. They had mastered plastics; they conjured them out of the rock. Their artifacts were as cheap as life itself.

They had grown themselves into the rock; wormed their way in with soft-bodied relentless persistence, esairs was riddled with tunnels; their sharp-toothed tunneling hoops ran around the clock. They had air blowers rigged from vinyl sacks and ribs of memory plastic. The ribs breathed. They were wired to the tokamak fusion plant, and a small change in voltage made them bend and flex, bend and flex, sucking in air with a pop of plastic lung and an animal wheeze of exhalation. It was the sound of life inside the rock, the rasp of the hoops, the blowers breathing, the sullen gurgling of the fermenters.

They had plants. Not just algae and protein goo but flowers: roses, phlox, daisies—or plants that had known those names before their DNA had felt the scalpel. Celery, lettuce, dwarf corn, spinach, alfalfa. Bamboo: with fine wire and merciless patience they could warp bamboo into complex pipes and bottles. Eggs: they even had chickens, or things that had once been chickens before Shaper gene-splicers turned them into free-fall protein tools. They were powerful, subtle, and filled with desperate hatred. Lindsay knew that they were waiting for their chance, weighing odds, calculating. They would attack to kill if they could, but only when they could maximize the chance of their own survival.

But he also knew that with each day that passed, with each minor concession and agreement, another frail layer of shellac was laid over the open break between them. Day by day a new status quo struggled to form, a frail detente supported by nothing but habit. It was not much, but it was all he had: the hope that, with time, the facade of peace would take on substance. ESAIRS XII: 3-2-'17

"Hey, Secretary of State."

Lindsay woke. In the ghostlike gravity of the asteroid he had settled imperceptibly to the bottom of his cavern. They called his dugout "the Embassy." With the passage of the Integration Act, Lindsay had moved into the rock, with the rest of the FMD.

Paolo had spoken. Fazil was with him. The two young men wore embroidered ponchos and stiff plastic crowns holding floating manes of shoulder-length hair.

The skin bacteria had hit them badly. Every day they looked worse. Paolo's neck was so badly inflamed that his throat looked cut. Fazil's left ear was infected; he carried his head tilted to one side.

"We want to show you something," Paolo said. "Can you come with us, Mr. Secretary? Quietly?" His voice was gentle, his hazel eyes so clear and guileless that Lindsay knew at once that he was up to something. Would they kill him? Not yet. Lindsay laced on a poncho and struggled with the complex knots of his sandals. "I'm at your disposal," he said. They floated into the corridor. The corridors between dugouts were no more than long wormholes, a meter across. The Mavrides clansmen propelled themselves along with a quick side-to-side lizardlike skittering. Lindsay was slower. His injured arm was bad today, and his hand felt like a club. They glided silently through the soft yellow light of one of the fermenting rooms. The blunt, nippled ends of three wetware bags jutted into the room. They were stuffed like a string of sausages into stone tunnels. Each tunnel held a series of bags, united by filters, each bag passing its output to the next. The last bag had a spinneret running, a memory-plastic engine, clacking slowly. A hollow tube of flawless clear acrylic coiled in free-fall, reeking as it dried.

They entered another black tunnel. The tunnels were all identical, all perfectly smooth. There was no need for lighting. Any genius could easily memorize the nexus.

To his left Lindsay heard the slow clack-rasp, clask-rasp of a tunneling hoop. The hoops were handmade, their teeth hand-set in plastic, and they each sounded slightly different. They helped him navigate. They could gnaw two meters a day through the softer rock. In two years they had gnawed over twenty thousand tons of ore.

When the ore was processed, the tailings were shot into space. Everything launched away left a hole behind it. A hole ten kilometers long, pitch black, and as knotted as snarled fishline, beaded with living caverns, greenhouses, wetware rooms, and private hideyholes.

They took a turn Lindsay had never used before. Lindsay heard the grating sound of a stone plug hauled away.

They went a short distance, squirming past the flaccid bulk of a deactivated air blower. As Lindsay crawled past it in the darkness, the blower came to life with a gasp.

"This is our secret place," Paolo said. "Mine and Fazil's." His voice echoed in the darkness.

Something fizzed loudly with a leaping of white-hot sparks. Startled, Lindsay braced to fight. Paolo was holding a short white stick with flame gnawing at one end. "A candle," he said.

"Kindle?" said Lindsay. "Yes, I see."

"We play with fire," Paolo said. "Fazil and I." They were in a workshop cavern, dug into one of the large stony veins within esairs xii. The walls looked like granite to Lindsay's untrained eye: a grayish-pink rock studded with little gleams of rock crystal.

"There was quartz here," Paolo said. "Silicon dioxide. We mined it for oxygen, then Kleo forgot about it. So we drilled this room ourselves. Right, Fazil?"

Fazil spoke eagerly. "That's right, Mr. Secretary. We used hand drills and expansion plastic. See where the rock shattered and came loose? We hid the chunks in the debris for launch, so that no one knew. We worked for days and saved the biggest chunk."

"Look," Paolo said. He touched the wall, and the stone wrinkled in his hand and came away. In a broken-out rough cavity the size of a closet, an oblong boulder floated, kept from falling by a thread. Paolo snapped the thread and pulled the boulder out. It moved sluggishly; Fazil helped him stop its inertia.

It was a two-ton sculpture of Paolo's head.

"Very fine work," Lindsay said. "May I?" He ran his fingertips across the slickly polished cheekbone. The eyes, wide and alert, cored out for pupils, were as big as his outstretched hands. There was a faint smile on the enormous lips.