Camels, Abdikadir said, pointing to the road.

Bisesa saw a kind of baggage train trailing south toward the port. Men and women rode peculiar-looking horses that had a tendency to buck and bite. And, yes, towering over them there were camels, heavily laden, imperious, spitting. Another import?

Oh, no, Emeline said. The camels were here already. Those horses toolots of breeds of them in fact, not all of them useful. I told you we have a real menagerie here. Mammoths and mastodons and camels and saber-toothed catslets hope we dont run into any of those.

All of which, Bisesas phone murmured from her pocket, died out the moment the first human settlers got here. They even ate the native horses. Schoolboy error.

Hush. Remember were guests here.

In a sense, so are the Chicagoans...

She was aware of Emelines faint disapproval. Emeline clearly thought it bad manners to ignore the flesh-and-blood human beings around you and talk into a box.

Abdikadir, though, who had grown up under the tutelage of his father, was interested. Is it still able to pick up the signals from Earth?

Bisesa had tested the phones intermittent connection through the Eye all the way across the Atlantic. It seems so.

At a low bit rate, the phone whispered. Even that is pretty corrupt...

A thought struck Bisesa. PhoneI wonder how close the Chicagoans are to radio technology.

For answer, the phone displayed a block of text. Only a generation before the Chicago time slice James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist so admired by Alexei Carel, had predicted that electromagnetic energy could travel through space. The slice itself had been taken in the few years between Heinrich Hertzs first demonstrations that that was true, with parabolic-mirror transmitters and receivers a few feet apart, and Guglielmo Marconis bridging of the Atlantic.

We ought to push this on, Abdi. Think how useful a radio link would be to Babylon right now. Maybe when we get to Chicago well try to kick-start a radio shop, you and I.

Abdi looked excited. I would enjoy that Emeline snapped, Perhaps you should keep a hold of your plans to assist us poor Chicagoans, until youve seen how much weve been able to do for ourselves.

Bisesa said quickly, I apologize, Emeline. I was being thoughtless.

Emeline lost her stiffness. All right. Just dont go showing off your fancy gadgets in front of Mayor Rice and the Emergency Committee or you really will give offense. And anyhow, she said more grimly, it wont make a blind bit of difference if that toy of yours is right about the world coming to an end. Has it got any more to say about how long we have left?

The data are uncertain, the phone whispered. Handwritten records of naked-eye observations, instruments scavenged from a crashed military helicopter Bisesa said, I know. Just give us the best number you have.

Five centuries. Maybe a little less.

They considered that. Then Emeline laughed; it sounded forced. You really have brought us nothing but bad news, Bisesa.

But Abdikadir seemed unfazed. Five centuries is a long time. Well figure out what to do about it long before then.

They spent the night in the train, as advertised.

The frosty night air, the primal smell of wood smoke, and the steady rattling of the train on its uneven tracks lulled Bisesa to sleep. But every so often the trains jolting woke her.

And once she heard animals calling, far off, their cries like wolves howls, but deeper, throatier. She reminded herself that this was not a nostalgically reconstructed park. This was the real thing, and Pleistocene America was not a world yet tamed by man. But the sound of the animals was oddly thrillingeven satisfying. For two million years, humans evolved in a landscape full of creatures such as this. Maybe they missed the giant animals when they were gone, without ever knowing it. And so, maybe the Jefferson movement back home had the right idea.

It was kind of scary to hear them in the dark, however. She was aware of Emelines eyes, bright, wide open. But Abdikadir snored softly, wrapped in the immunity of youth.

38: EVA.

March 2070 Yuri and Grendel invited Myra out on an excursion. Just a routine inspection tour and sample collection, Yuri said. But you might like the chance to go outside.

Outside. After months stuck in a box of ice, in a landscape so flat and dark that even when the sun was up it was like a sensory deprivation tank, the word was a magic spell to Myra.

But when she joined Yuri and Grendel in their rover, by clambering through a soft tube from a hab dome to the rovers pressurized cabin, she realized belatedly that she was only exchanging one enclosed volume for another.

Grendel Speth seemed to recognize what Myra was feeling. You get used to it. At least on this jaunt youll get a different view from out the window.

Yuri and Grendel sat up front, Myra behind them. Yuri called, All strapped in? He punched a button and sat back.

The hatch slammed shut with a rattle of sealing locks, the tunnel to the hab dome came loose with a sucking sound, and the rover lurched into motion.

It was northern summer now. Spring had arrived around Christmas time, with an explosive sublimation of dry ice snow that burst into vapor almost as soon as the sunlight touched it, and for a time the seeing had gotten even worse than during the winter. But now, though a diminishing layer of dry-ice snow remained, the worst of the spring thaw was over and the winter hood long dissipated, and the sun rolled low around a clear orange-brown sky.

This was actually the first time Myra had been for a trip in one of the bases rovers. It was a lot smaller than the big beast she had ridden down from Lowell, its interior cramped by a miniature lab, a suiting-up area, a tiny galley, and a toilet with a sink where she would have to take sponge baths. It towed a trailer, which didnt contain a portable nuke like Discovery from Port Lowell but a methane-burning turbine.

We manufacture the methane using Mars carbon dioxide, Yuri called back. More of Hanses ISRU. He pronounced it issroo. In-situ resource utilization. But its a slow process, and we have to wait for the tank to fill up. So we can only afford a few jaunts like this per year.

You need a nuke, Myra said.

Yuri grunted. Lowells got all the best gear. We get the dross. But its fit for purpose. And he banged the rovers dash as if apologetically.

This trip isnt too exciting, Grendel warned.

Well, its new to me, Myra replied.

Anyhow youre doing us a favor, Yuri called. Standing orders say we should take three out on every excursion more than a days walk back to the station. I mean, we can do what we like; we override. Sometimes I even do this route alone, or Grendel does. But the AIs get pissy about rules, you know?

We are undermanned, Grendel said. Nominally Wells Station should house ten people. But theres just too much to do on Mars.

And I guess Ellie is pretty much locked up with her work in the Pit.

Grendel pulled a face. Well, yes. But she isnt one of us anyhow. Not a Martian.

What about Hanse?

Hanses a busy guy, Yuri said. When hes not running the station, or drilling his holes in the ice, hes running his ISRU experiments. Living off the land, here on Mars. You might think the north pole of Mars is an odd place to come try that. But, Myra, theres water here, sitting right here on the surface, in the form of ice. Theres nowhere else on the inner worlds, save a scraping at the poles of the Moon, where you can say that.

And, Grendel said, Hanse is thinking bigger than that.

Yuri said, Myra, there are a lot of similarities between trying to live here on the Martian ice cap and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which are generally nothing but big balls of frozen ice around nuggets of rock. So Hanse is trialing technologies that might enable us to survive anywhere out there.

Ambitious.

Sure, Yuri said. Well, hes a South African on his mothers side. And you know what the Africans are like nowadays. They were the big winners out of the sunstorm, politically, economically. Hanses committed to Mars, I think. But hes an African Martian, and he has deeper goals...

After a couple of hours driving they came to the lip of a spiral canyon.

The wall of eroded ice was shallow, and the canyon wasnt terribly deep; Myra thought the rover would easily be able to skim down to its floor, and indeed the rutted track they were following snaked on down into the canyon. But she could see that further ahead the canyon broadened and grew deeper, curving smoothly into the distance like a tremendous natural freeway.

They didnt descend into the canyon immediately. Yuri tapped the dashboard, and the rover lumbered along the canyons lip until an insectile form loomed out of the dark before them. It was a complex platform maybe fifty centimeters across laden with instruments, and it stood on three spindly legs. The rover had a manipulator arm, which now unfolded delicately to reach out to the tripod.

This is a SEP, Yuri said. A surface experiment package. Kind of a weather station, together with a seismometer, laser mirrors, other instruments. Weve been planting a whole network of them across the polar cap. He spoke with a trace of pride.

To keep him talking she asked, Why the legs?

To lift it above the dry ice snow, which can reach a depth of a few meters by the end of the winter. And there are surface effectsyou can get major excursions of temperature and pressure over the first few meters up from the ground. So there are sensors mounted in the legs too.

It looks spindly. Like it will fall over in the first gust of wind.

Well, Mars is a spindly kind of planet. I calculated the wind loading moment. This baby wont get knocked over in a hurry.

You designed it? Yes, said Grendel, and hes bloody proud of it. And any resemblance of these toy weather stations to the Martian fighting machines of certain books and movies is purely coincidental.

Theyre my babies. Yuri threw his head back and laughed through his thick black beard.

While it was halted the rover released other, more exotic bits of gear: tumbleweed, cage-like balls a meter across that rolled away over the dry ice snow, and smart dust, a sprinkling of black soot-like powder that just blew away. Each mote of dust was a sensor station just a millimeter across, with its own suite of tiny instruments, all powered by microwave energy beamed from the sky, or simply by being shaken up by the wind. We have no control over where the weed and the dust goes, Yuri said. It just blows with the wind, and a lot of the dust will just get snowed out. But the idea is to saturate the polar cap with sensors, to make it self-aware, if you like. Already the data flows are tremendous.

With the SEP seen to, the rover began its descent into the canyon. The ice wall was layered, like stratified rock, with thick dark bands every meter or so deep, but much finer layers in betweenvery fine, like the pages of a book, fine down to the limits of what Myra could see. The rover drove slowly and carefully, its movements evidently preprogrammed. Every so often Yuri, or more rarely Grendel, would tap the dashboard, and they would stop, and the manipulator arm would reach out to explore the surface of the wall. It scraped up samples from the layers, or it would press a box of instruments against the ice, or it would plant a small instrument package.

Grendel said to Myra, This is pretty much the drill, all the way in. Sampling the strata. Im testing for life, or relics of life from the past. Yuri here is trying to establish a global stratigraphy, mapping all the caps folded layers as read from the cores and the canyon excursions against each other. Its not very exciting, I guess. If we see something really promising, we do get out and take a look for ourselves. But you get tired of the suit drill, and we save that for special occasions.

Yuri laughed again. The rover rolled on.

I spoke to Ellie, Myra said uncertainly. Down in the Pit. She told me something of her experiences of the sunstorm.

Grendel turned, her eyebrows raised. Youre honored. Took me three months to get to that point. And Im her nominated psychiatric counselor.

Sounds like she had it kind of tough.

Myself, I was ten, Grendel said. I grew up in Ohio. We were a farming family, far from any dome. Dad built us a bunker, like a storm shelter. We lost everything, and then we were stuck in the refugee camps too. My father died a couple of years later. Skin cancers got him.

In the camps I worked as a volunteer nurse at triage stations. Gave me the taste for medicine, I guess. I never wanted to feel so helpless in front of a person in pain again. And after the sunstorm, after the camps, I worked on ecological recovery programs in the Midwest. That got me into biology.

Yuri said cheerfully, As for me, I was born after the sunstorm. Born on the Moon, Russian mother, Irish father. I spent some time on Earth, though. As a teen I worked on eco-recovery programs in the Canadian Arctic.

Thats how you got a taste for ice. I guess. And now youre here, Myra said. Now youre Spacers.

Martians, Grendel and Yuri said together.

Yuri said, The Spacers are off on their rocks in the sky. Mars is Mars, and thats that. And we dont necessarily share their ambitions.

But you do over the Eye in the Pit.

Yuri said, Over that, yes, of course. But Id rather just get on with this. He waved a hand at the sculptures of ice beyond the windscreen. Mars. Thats enough for me.

I envy you, Myra blurted. For your sense of purpose. For having something to build here.

Grendel turned, curious. Envys not a good feeling, Myra. You have your own life.

Yes. But I feel Im kind of living in an aftermath of my own.

Grendel grunted. Given who your mother is thats understandable. We can talk about it later, if you like.

Yuri said, Or we can talk about my mother, who taught me how to drink vodka. Now thats the way to put the world to rights.

An alarm chimed softly, and a green panel lit up on the dash. Yuri tapped it, and it filled up with the face of Alexei Carel. Youd better get back here. Sorry to interrupt the fun.

Go on, said Yuri.

Ive two messages. One, Myra, weve been summoned to Cyclops.

The planet-finder station? Why?

To meet Athena.

Yuri and Grendel exchanged glances. Yuri said, Whats your second message?

Alexei grinned. Something Ellie von Devender has dug out of the Pit. The most common glyph sequenceMyra, she said youd understand that. Shell explain to the rest of us when you get back.

Show us, said Myra. Alexeis face disappeared, and the screen filled with four stark symbols:

39: NEW CHICAGO.

They reached New Chicago around noon.

There was a proper rail station here, with a platform and a little building where you could wait for a train and buy actual tickets. But the track terminated; they would have to travel on north to the old Chicago some other way.

Emeline led them off the train and into the town. She said it might take days to organize their onward travel. She hoped there would be room for them to stay at one of the towns two small hotels; if not they would have to knock on doors.

New Chicago was on the site of Memphis, but there was no trace of that city here. With the wooden buildings, brightly painted signs, horse rails, and dirt-track streets, Bisesa was reminded of Hollywood images of towns of the old Wild West. The streets were a pleasant bustle, adults coming and going on business, children hanging around outside a schoolhouse. Some of the adults even rode bicyclessafety bicycles that they called Wheels, an invention only a few years old at the time of the Discontinuity. But many of the townsfolk were bundled up in furs, like Arctic seal trappers, and there were camels tied up outside the saloons alongside the horses.

They were able to take rooms in the small Hotel Michigan, though Emeline and Bisesa would have to share. In the lobby hung a framed newspaper front page. It was a Chicago Tribune late edition, dated July 21, 1894, and its headline read: WORLD CUT OFF FROM CHICAGO.

They left their bags. Emeline bought them a roast beef sandwich each for lunch. And in the afternoon they went for a walk around the new city.

New Chicago was nothing but street after dirt-track street of wooden buildings; only one of the bigger churches had been built in stone. But it was big. Bisesa saw this must already be a town of several thousand people.

There was a handsome clock fixed to a tower on the town hall, which Emeline said was carefully set to Chicago standard railway time, a standard that the Chicagoans had clung to despite the great disruption of the Discontinuityeven though it was about three hours out according to the position of the sun. There were other signs of culture. A note pinned on a ragged scrap of paper to the town hall door announced a meeting: A WORLD WITHOUT A POPE? WHERE NEXT FOR CHRISTIANS? WEDNESDAY, EIGHT OCLOCK. NO LIQUOR. NO GUNS.

And one small house was labeled EDISONS MEMORIAL OF CHICAGO. Bisesa bent down to read the details on the poster: The FATE Of CHICAGO On the NIGHT The WHOLE WORLD FROZE JULY 1894 A Production for the Edison-Dixon Kinetoscope U.S. Patent Pending A WONDER TEN CENTS.

Bisesa glanced at Emeline. Edison?

He happened to be in the city that night. Hed been advising on the worlds fair, a year or two before. Hes an old man now, and poorly, but still aliveor he was when I set out for Babylon.