Equilateral: A Novel Part 9

As for the girl, she has remained no less a mercurial, spectral presence than she was before, attending Thayer while he studies the new cables and manipulates figures on sc.r.a.ps of precious foolscap. She continues to bring him his tea. He smiles absently and sometimes when she's not there he picks up his smooth, highly reflective head to listen for her approach.

Miss Keaton accepts that they will not be returning to Cambridges.h.i.+re after all. She recognizes, reluctantly and painfully, that she has entertained a series of vague expectations about what would happen once the Equilateral was completed, and what her life with Thayer would be like once their years of toil and privation were behind them. She was of course hideously mistaken. A return to England, even at this hour of the Equilateral's accomplishment, can provide only further reminders of her error. The sterile, static desert comforts her in the daytime; the sky, as always, relieves her at night.

In any case, the correspondence now arrives in a torrent, with open-ended questions and tentative, unreliable answers about what is being seen on the ever-closer Martian surface. Government ministers, newspapermen, the Concession's governors, and the world's public await the Red Planet's response to the Equilateral, which they expect even though the Flare has gone unseen. Miss Keaton must continuously consult with Thayer, while the girl hardly leaves his side and their robes and common baldness set them apart. With Miss Keaton, Thayer expresses in precise, professorial language the apparent complexities of planetary motion, the varying illumination of distant celestial bodies, relative atmospheric conditions, and the vagaries of human eyesight; when he turns to the girl, he manages to communicate what's necessary with subvocal murmurs and primitive gestures.

Thayer initially seems revitalized by the Equilateral's completion-he doesn't speak of the Flare-and then by the hosannahs that reach them on the Great Sand Sea. Yet Miss Keaton detects a certain weakness, an occasional palsy, and a moment of inattention or incomprehension when she addresses him. It's several weeks before she becomes accustomed to Thayer's hairlessness, as well as to the robe and the new, less penetrative cast of the blue eyes that radiate from the shadows of his white cowl. They're as bright and cool as ever, yet often they seem fixed on an object elsewhere. His hand takes a moment to find the teacup that she offers him. They don't speak of this either.

No, he can't speak of the Flare; he can hardly think of the events that led to the mistimed firing. Days of obscurity are followed by electric nights when Thayer believes the lighting of the petroleum still lies in the future. At other times the Earth remains fixed in its place in the sky of Mars, and the Flare continues to burn, casting on the fourth planet's sere sands the permanent shadow of man's greatest accomplishment.

One aspect of the attack on Point A unreported in the press is that the Mahdists spared the observatory, thoughtlessly sweeping past it. Only one of the men stopped. He dismounted, approached the building, and smashed the lock with an ax. He stepped inside the windowless shed, still breathing hard from his ride, and pondered the object in the murk. He circled around the cold steel barrel. He tentatively pressed a lever extending from above his head and was startled when the roof slid open. The stars were revealed in a rush, and he knew that the machine was not a gun. Embarra.s.sed by his fright, he realized then that it was not a weapon at all, but something utterly foreign, directly connected to something in the infinite. Unsettled by the encounter, he left the shed open but didn't lay a hand on the instrument.

Twenty-Nine.

In the long course of the unusually clear-skied summer, Earth continues to close the distance with Mars, which gets more intense scrutiny than it ever has before. New controversies erupt, in particular over the discovery of ca.n.a.ls radiating from the Elysium Basin in the northern temperate zone, one apparently extending toward Mnemosyne, the other to Arcadia. Thayer's colleagues struggle to find France-Lanord's markings around h.e.l.las, in the planet's more easily observed southern hemisphere.

Point A receives hourly bulletins from the Concession, which forwards detailed reports from the world's planetary astronomers. Their observations are often at odds with each other, entire networks of waterways being erased from one night to the next. Thayer fires back in reply, demanding that they look again for the features that he's identified, but he sadly expects them to fail. He knows the corresponding visual weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues: whose eyes are capable of resolving close double stars but are unable to recognize faint shadings or patterns on a planetary surface; whose eyes are easily blinded by a disk's full illumination; whose optic nerves are connected to brains of plodding imagination. He can very nearly predict which astronomer won't see what.

Mars is now seventeen seconds across, no more than a tiny fraction of the eyepiece's field of view, yet for Thayer it's enormous, five times its apparent size last October when it emerged from behind the sun. As always the planet is featureless upon immediate viewing, but the image is steady and the object shows itself to be a three-dimensional solid, almost graspable. It's a marble we can insert into our mouths, roll around on our tongues, taste, and take care not to swallow. He peers deeply into the ocher pit and, after a long while, a single phantom makes itself known, followed by the rumor of another. Thayer holds very still, save to caress the fine-motion screw centering the planet. The girl stands behind him and Miss Keaton stands behind her. Thayer murmurs something. Then he sharply takes in his breath. His eyes never leave the eyepiece. His lower lip trembles.

The markings at Peneus, almost in the center of the disk, have been extended on either side, from h.e.l.lespontus to Malea. But the regions bordering the excavations have not deepened their shades and become verdant, as is usually the case with the ca.n.a.ls at springtime. Another line is also becoming apparent, from h.e.l.lespontus to the h.e.l.las Basin, completing the figure.

The bald, hooded man shudders and exhales.

"It's very clear," he announces when he finally pulls away from the eyepiece. He speaks to both women, though only one may understand. "This is the most important discovery yet. Now we know what they're constructing north of Mare Australe. Those aren't ca.n.a.ls. No one constructs a triangular ca.n.a.l. It's obvious. They've responded to our Equilateral by excavating their own, conveniently situated to be observed from Earth!"

"A triangle ..." Miss Keaton murmurs, trying to make herself recognize the implications, even though what she is most aware of is that Thayer has stepped away from the telescope to make way for the girl.

The bald, hooded girl again shows enormous patience at the eyepiece, before scratching a figure on the palm of her small, delicate hand. It's a triangle. She holds up her hand for both to see, as if the diagram will remain visible there.

At the eyepiece, Miss Keaton tries to approach the girl's stillness, but she finds herself distracted, in no position to peer through the murk of s.p.a.ce at a faraway turning stone. Thayer's feature refuses to resolve itself. She thinks she may see the same new h.e.l.las ca.n.a.l they observed in May, but she's not even sure of that.

When she finally pulls back from the telescope, Thayer's watches her intently, waiting for confirmation. Offering confirmation will be much easier than withholding it, and also the best thing for Thayer's precarious health. But Miss Keaton finds herself rebelling against confirmation. She hasn't seen the triangle.

Thayer turns away, and wipes the absence of confirmation from his mind.

Miss Keaton cables Thayer's report to the Concession, which relays it to the International Astronomical Congress. No one will remark the absence of the second observer's name. The world's leading astronomers are notified.

Corroborations shortly flood the wires in return, from Professor Verzola in Padua, from Professor Belokovsky at Pulkovo near St. Petersburg, from Professor Barnard at Lick in California, and from Professor Max Wolf in Heidelberg. At the same time, as Thayer has antic.i.p.ated, the skeptics who have opposed the Equilateral, calling him a fraud, now deny that the new markings are as regular as he claims. These are the men, now in the despised minority, who denied they saw ca.n.a.ls even when they were made manifest in the world's greatest telescopes, in the best conditions. Thayer smirks as he reads their dissents.

"Fools," Miss Keaton agrees, but a keen observer would have noticed in the epithet a s.h.i.+mmer of a quaver.

"Blockheads," Thayer a.s.serts.

Miss Keaton admires the skills of their European and American correspondents, and of course Sanford Thayer remains the world's keenest pract.i.tioner of the astronomical science and its attendant arts. Time and again Thayer has been the first man to see planetary features and starry phenomena that were later confirmed by his colleagues. Miss Keaton suspects that her inability to distinguish the Mars Equilateral lies within herself, and that this failure reflects a weakness more profound than a defect in her eyesight. She has never before failed to see what Thayer has discovered.

The International Astronomical Congress calls an extraordinary conference at the Royal Albert Hall, the greatest gathering of astronomers in history. They come to London, their suitcases bulging with reports and sketchbooks. They give interviews to the press and lectures to a paying, clamoring public. At midday we may walk into a cigar shop and overhear two gentlemen arguing declinations and hours of right ascension. The visitors erect their portable telescopes on every green at evening dusk.

Isolated at Point A, Thayer nevertheless enjoys his success. The cables report that many of his early opponents occupy the Hall. Having once regarded him as a charlatan, the best of them have been won over to the Equilateral's vital purpose by evidence and argument, the others by the accelerating prestige of Martian studies, which have brought opportunities for research sinecures and academic advancement. Thayer reads that as his colleagues filed into the Hall this morning, they shouted their huzzahs to him.

For three days the astronomers present their observations of the new markings in h.e.l.las, confirming and amplifying Thayer's findings. The dozens of journalists who crowd the wings, smoking cigarettes, consider the reports dry and repet.i.tive, but they abruptly lift their pens when Professor Hector France-Lanord presents what he says are the most definitive measurements of the figure's size. Several preceding speakers have noted that it appears to be larger than our own Equilateral. Without raising his voice, or showing any suggestion of satisfaction or enthusiasm, France-Lanord reveals that the Mars triangle is in fact 921 miles on a side, precisely three times as large.

The implications surge through the hall and spill onto the streets, where the newsboys are hawking special editions almost before he has returned to his seat. We're aware of the arduous human labor that has been required to dig the simple geometric figure Great Sand Sea. In order to excavate an Equilateral whose lines are three times as long, in a fraction of the time, Mars must possess a level of engineering expertise millennia beyond man's, just as we suspected. The newspapers ill.u.s.trate steam-driven earth-moving equipment the size of cathedrals and an under-race of tireless, single-minded giants.

Yet the astronomers are made uneasy by the question of why the inhabitants of Mars have so fastidiously tripled the size of their Equilateral. The immediate speculation in the hall, on the streets, and in government ministries across Europe is that they're mocking the Concession's laborious progress across the Western Desert. They're acknowledging our primitive intelligence while simultaneously a.s.serting their superiority. In any kind of social exchange, Earth will remain the subordinate partner. Some of the newspapers urge their governments not to accept any cut or condescension. One writer suggests that our neighbors' need to impress demonstrates a lack of confidence, which has been diminished by their accelerating senescence and their awe of man's virility.

In his cables to London, dictated to Miss Keaton, Thayer disputes these uninformed, hysterical interpretations, announcing that he's pleased, and indeed gratified, by the h.e.l.las triangle's extent. As members of a younger race, the men of Earth will have much to learn from Mars, but our neighbors' prompt, enthusiastic response is rather a gesture of fellows.h.i.+p, and a promise that the wealth of Mars' civilization will be shared. If our Equilateral has been a sort of peace offering to the fourth planet, then the gift has been returned handsomely.

One moonless September night while Thayer and the girl sleep, and the entire camp at Point A is silent save for the uncla.s.sified, unknowable desert fauna, Miss Keaton unlocks the observatory. Mars rests at the edge of Aries, brighter than Sirius, already near minus-two magnitude. Phobos and Deimos spark from opposite sides of the planet, whose features gradually materialize. The south pole is soon visible, much smaller than it was before maximum elongation. The h.e.l.las Basin has moved into the center of the disk, showing a certain brightness. Within h.e.l.las, however, she detects only s.h.i.+fting shadows. Even now, as our world celebrates the discovery of an equilateral triangle drawn on the surface of another, she's unable to see the figure at all.

Thirty.

After months of almost hourly telegraphed observations, a.n.a.lysis, instructions, and arguments, the cable from Point A suddenly falls silent and the Earth's capitals are plunged into confusion. October the twelfth, the date of Mars' closest approach, is imminent. Unrequited appeals are sent back across the line. The Concession insists the telegraphic equipment is operating properly, but the newspapers declare that the lines must have been severed by the Mahdists, or very likely they have overrun Point A again and put Thayer himself to the torch. Sir Harry convenes with the ministers of the Great Powers to consider a military relief force.

Something is wrong indeed, but not with the telegraphic equipment. Thayer's been put to the torch by the resurgent fever; his metabolism's been overrun. No cool compress, no water splashed in his face, and no alcohol bath can bring down his temperature. The girl works with tight-lipped urgency. The astronomer is unconscious most of the time. When he's awake he insists that she allow light into the sickroom, which is already fully illuminated.

Miss Keaton stands by, ignoring the telegraphic signals that after traveling thousands of miles across Europe and the Mediterranean now spill onto the sands unread. The telegraph bureau has become a loathsome place, the locus of all points that encompa.s.s her sorrow. But even in Thayer's tent, the clatter of the cables reaches her ears, begging her to respond, expressing their own disappointment and fears.

The secretary is grateful for the girl's confident ministrations. When one treatment fails to bring Thayer's fever down, she swiftly employs another. The girl in turn recognizes Miss Keaton's wretchedness and offers her small tasks to perform for the sake of the patient: fetching water, boiling tea. Early one morning, as his temperature spikes again, the girl signals to Miss Keaton that she's leaving.

"Where are you going? Where?" Miss Keaton demands, alarmed.

The girl motions outside the tent, into the void.

"You can't go! He's burning up. What will I do?"

"Make sure he takes water. I'll return within the hour. He's very ill; Kharga Fever is very often fatal. If we don't do something now, it certainly will be."

"What are you saying?"

The girl's secret pharmacopoeia has been depleted, and the quarter in which the apothecary was located is gone, leaving only the faint scents of myrrh and galbanum, storax and onycha, coiling up from the sands. The fellahin who have remained at Point A, unwilling or unable to return to their villages, are disconcerted when she goes out among the settlement's ruins and presents herself at their dispersed quarters. Although she's fully dressed, her hairless brow reminds them of the nakedness beneath her robes, and also of her malign, shameful, obscure alliance with the astronomer. She demands whatever medicinal substances they may be h.o.a.rding.

From the raw ingredients she's collected, the girl prepares several potions and a gray, mustardy poultice. Miss Keaton doesn't object; the medical delegation left long ago. Gradually the fever abates. Thayer stirs. It's October the tenth, two days before Mars' closest approach.

They insist that he retire to his camp bed. The girl speaks urgently, fluently, rationally, affectionately, and eventually with anger; Miss Keaton says only, "Sanford!" Directly opposite the Earth from the sun, Mars rises now at evening dusk. Thayer insists that he must go to the observatory, even if it means staggering there, even if he nearly stumbles over his robe, even if Point A has taken on an unusually soft, fluid aspect that makes it difficult to find the structure, even if he's nearly too weak to pull the lever that slides open the roof. The two women stand behind him, united in their fury. Thayer takes some time before aligning his eye with the instrument.

But Mars is there, fully twenty-two arc seconds in diameter, as large as it will get this year. The planet has been waiting for him.

Furthermore, the seeing at Point A has improved beyond Thayer's expectations: a solid ten on the Dougla.s.s scale; no, it's gone beyond ten, the sky is darker, more transparent, more proximate than anyone ever thought possible, reminding us, yet again, that our planet whirls through the same vacuum ocean as any celestial object. Messier 33 and M34 are visible to the naked eye, bobbing s.p.a.ce anemones. The Andromeda Nebula's a starry thumbprint smudged on the underside of the heavenly dome.

In the eyepiece, Mars hangs even more tangibly, more tantalizingly ripe than it did before his illness. h.e.l.las is again well placed for observation, near the center of the planetary disk. The Equilateral and other features are immediately apparent. He sees at once that the southern cap has melted off half its volume, corresponding to the growth of the effervescently blue Syrtis Major sea.

Even as he gazes into the disk, other features develop: a possibly new waterway or causeway linking the Hammonis Cornu promontory to h.e.l.las, and then a peculiar shadowing in Noachis, west of h.e.l.las. Even more peculiar, there's something outside the disk, evidently in the thin upper atmosphere above Mare Australe. It's a line, a red-pink fluorescing line, that he has never seen before. None of us have.

"Two or three ..." he murmurs to himself. "Faint, wispy tendrils. Red, pink, purple ... Very high atmospheric phenomena ... They're projections of some kind! That's what they are, coming off the disk, perhaps half the disk's radius, extending from about due south. Oh, my, oh, my! They're prominences ..."

Thayer won't remove his eyes from the telescope or blink. He tracks the planet up and down the celestial bowl during the pa.s.sage of the night, ignoring the girl's entreaties to rest. He doesn't invite his companions to view the planet; he doesn't seem aware of them. The atmospheric filaments hang above Mare Australe for hours, fading only as Mars sinks into the horizon near dawn.

The telegraph finally stutters to life at Mars House. Sir Harry is summoned at once. The staff cheers. Operating the Point A telegraphic equipment himself, Thayer doesn't report his illness, but the unacknowledged silence of the past ten days adds gravity and credence to the electrifying cable, punched on a continuous paper strip, that unwinds from the device in London.

That morning at Point A Thayer can't rest: he's too stimulated, too exhilarated, too far lost in a calculating reverie. The Concession demands a clarification. He cables back a clarification, as well as elaborations, arguments, presumptive refutations of any challenges, and telegraphic shouts of triumph. By the end of the day his colleagues in California, observing Mars hours after it has set in Egypt, confirm the prominences, even if they have not seen them in as great detail.

The new geometric figure on the surface of Mars is clearly not the only response to the excavations in the Western Desert. Clouds have risen into Mars' tenuous atmosphere. They're likely to be rich in carbon dioxide, nitrogen, sulfur, and several pota.s.sium compounds. The Concession's public statement draws no explicit conclusion, but its description of the phenomenon leaves the unavoidable impression of the smoky effluvia that typically accompanies the discharge of terrestrial cannon.

At dusk that evening, Thayer returns to the telescope and fails to observe Miss Keaton's deliberate absence. Yesterday's prominences are gone, save for a single nebulosity off the planet's surface, high above its south pole. The other filaments have vanished, just as we would expect from the gaseous by-products of combustion.

Is Earth under attack? An Oxford linguist suggests that among the inhabitants of Mars the display of an equal-sided triangle commonly represents a grave insult, or even a declaration of war. Mars' own, greater Equilateral, excavated in response to this interplanetary misunderstanding, indicates then a repet.i.tion and amplification of the aspersion, or an even more belligerent, less compromising acceptance of the military challenge. The papers cry that mortars have been fired from the Martian surface. Ministers secrete themselves in their offices late into the night, wondering how they will prepare their armies for celestial bombardment.

With the full weight of the Concession behind him, Thayer a.s.sures the world of Mars' peaceful intentions. He cables members of Parliament directly, explaining that the sh.e.l.ls were launched without destructive force or intent. He has made precise measurements of the prominences. Judging from the size of the discharges and the peculiarities of the trails lingering in the Martian atmosphere, the projectiles are most likely several airtight vessels transporting, at this very moment, a diplomatic emba.s.sy across the forty million miles that separate the two planets, as heroic a voyage as any taken by Columbus or Magellan. Determining the velocity indicated by the dissipation of the cannon's fumes, Thayer predicts the fleet will make landfall on Earth within a matter of months, perhaps as early as July the first, 1895, just a year after maximum elongation. He declares that the vessels will arrive somewhere in Egypt and, almost certainly, that their landing place will be located in the vicinity of the geometric figure that has beckoned them to our planet, most logically at Point A.

Thirty-One.

Ballard is directed to construct the customs house. Erected on the sands formerly occupied by the wrecked pitch factory near Vertex BAC, the building will be hewn in majestic dimensions, greater than its a.n.a.logue on the Thames embankment. The edifice will tower two hundred feet above the desert floor and will be equipped with accommodations for hundreds of Concession agents, its workmans.h.i.+p expressing the century's highest ideals of structural beauty. A simple colonnade of the Tuscan order will sweep beneath its wings; Ionic columns and pediments will cap the building's upper stories. Ballard may summon whatever muscle and material is necessary to have it constructed before June 1895, so that it may be properly furnished for the interplanetary travelers' arrival. Tons of Portland stone have already been cut and s.h.i.+pped.

Burdened by overcoats, impatient with celebratory dinners, and fatigued with London, Ballard is pleased to accept the new a.s.signment. He makes the arrangements to return tens of thousands of fellahin to Point A and set them to work, protected now by a British battalion. A chartered express conveys him to Ma.r.s.eilles, where he boards a military packet to Egypt. At Alexandria he joins the supplies caravan south through the "Valley of Rushes," El-Maghra, past the rocky plateau of B'ir Abu Gharadiq and the Sitra Oasis, and across the greater portion of the Bahr ar Rimal al 'Azim, the Great Sand Sea, and he recognizes how much he has missed the desert in the last several months: its soundlessness, its blankness. He misses Thayer no less.

But he's stunned by the sight of the astronomer, who stands outside his tent as the caravan arrives, in the full sun, as haggard as a penny-ante fakir, with a fakir's wide-eyed stare. Thayer doesn't immediately recognize him. The Arab girl doesn't seem to have fared any better, besides being freakishly hairless. She's also visibly with child: the most striking measure of Thayer's decline. Yet the greatest shock is Miss Keaton. She's lost weight as well as stature; he perceives tremors and confusion. One of the engineer's first commands provides them with an arriving Sister of Mercy.

Soon Point A is again the center of an infernal tumult. Thousands swing their hammers at once. Thousands more lift their burdens. The tower rises from a swarm of shouts and cries. Despite the building's reported solidity-the thousands of tons of marble that are carted there, the entire forests of mahogany-it retains a kind of immateriality in the desert astringence. Perhaps the overwhelming volume of the sky and its purpling deepness are what make us believe we can see directly behind the structure. Oriented south to face the tracks of the sun, the moon, Mars, and the other planets, the customs house occupies a magnificent cobblestoned plaza half a mile wide that would have been admired in Vienna or Budapest; indeed, many of the cobblestones were quarried from Vienna's and Budapest's city squares. Beyond the edge of the pavement lies the duned wastes.

Returning engineers and other Europeans marvel at the transformation that has been wrought so thoroughly that they can't locate their former quarters, nor the old hammam, nor the scaffold. New buildings of brick and mortar are being raised into permanence around the customs house, which nevertheless retains its colorless translucence, and from a distance appears slightly removed from the desert floor, almost hovering there. Only the sun and the sky have remained where they were. The fellahin may not even be aware that they've come back to Point A.

From his movable chair, Thayer witnesses this construction with satisfaction, the men straining against the pull of terrestrial gravity, the days and nights of preparations. The girl brings him to the telescope one evening, an occasion for him to declare that the northern ice cap has greatly diminished and at the junction of nine ca.n.a.ls the oasis of Trivium Charontis, or the "Crossroads of Charon," is in full bloom. Ice water gurgles through channels natural and artificial. Tender shoots pierce the red soil. Avians fledge. Spring has come to Mars' northern hemisphere.

Accompanied by orchestral fanfare and the Board of Governors, an invigorated Sir Harry arrives to take charge of the Concession's bureau. He must also arrange for the comfort of the heads of state and the returning Khedive, who will meet the Martian representatives. When he surveys the tasks at hand, he does so with measures of resolve and jubilation. Every thought of the astronomer, however, pa.s.ses over him like the moon's shadow.

Miss Keaton is yet another shade. She finds him one afternoon in the vast long hall of the unfinished customs house. Torrents of light and heat pour through the leaded clerestory windows. Ballard has so far been unable to solve the problem of keeping the building tolerably cool. The summer solstice is weeks away. She says to Sir Harry, "I presume you're aware that Professor Thayer's name has been excluded from the welcoming commission."

He has antic.i.p.ated this moment, even if he did not expect the lady to be so frail, her voice so hoa.r.s.e, and her eyes so fierce. He's taken aback.

"Professor Thayer has been indisposed ..."

"He's recovering," she declares, even though the astronomer has not left his quarters in the past week, since making his most recent observations.

"His health is our paramount concern."

"I can't conceive how you plan to develop relations with Mars without the man who initiated them!"

Sir Harry smiles, demonstrating his wellborn charm despite the perspiration that has flushed his face and soaked his s.h.i.+rt and jacket.

"Can I offer you some tea, or a cold drink, my dear? There's no ice, I'm afraid. Of course, Professor Thayer is a world hero. The Equilateral was his idea, and without his effort and sacrifices-and certainly your steadfastness, Miss Keaton-not a spadeful of sand would have been turned."

"This is all the more reason for Professor Thayer to be present at the arrival of the Martian delegates. The press will demand it. So will the public. So will Mars!"

"But Professor Thayer is a scientist," Sir Harry says firmly. His eyes bear down on the woman. "And the Equilateral is no longer a scientific concern. The interests of the Concession are strictly commercial. We have obligations to our shareholders, as well as a solemn agreement with the Khedive. In return for the vast improvements the excavation of the Equilateral has brought to his nation, as well as a percentage of future revenue, the Concession has been granted a monopoly on trade with Mars. The Concession will hold the terrestrial patent for Martian inventions. Now that our enterprise has fully a.s.sumed its mercantile aspect, men of business will have to take center stage. I'll be the one to meet the emba.s.sy, with Herr Krupp, Mr. Rockefeller, and Baron Rothschild at my side. Professor Thayer will be welcome, once he feels fit, to engage his Martian colleagues in discussion of scientific matters, as long as they're without application."

"This can't be!" she protests, realizing at once that it can. She searches his face for a sign that he will soften his heart. "The Equilateral is meant to serve humanity-"

"Millions have been raised for the endeavor, Miss Keaton. The investors expect to profit."

She shudders in response. A tremor pulses through Sir Harry as well: sympathy. He never should have allowed Thayer to keep her in the desert. But the governors were unanimous in their decision to bar Thayer from the commission.

Miss Keaton leaves the customs house without ceremony, a tiny figure beneath the vastness of Point A's constructions, within the barren enormousness of the Western Desert, under the immense dish of the ceramic sky. She recognizes now that the purposes of the Concession have been visible all the time.

She doesn't inform Thayer about the composition of the welcoming commission. He sleeps most of the day anyway, dreaming of a basic language that he may share with his visitors. He murmurs of diameters and ellipses, of octagons and parabolas, of trapezoids and dodecahedrons.