If one tallies weekly allowances, part-time employment, birthday and holiday gifts, as well as limited trusts, the children of the world wield an annual income approaching one trillion NA dollars. Because parents and an assortment of social service organizations supply most of their basic needs, that income can be considered discretionary. Discretionary income always possesses an impact far beyond its apparent value. And even more important, children are more open than adults when it comes to radical changes in spending habits, and in their view of the greater world.

Please note: We have ignored all income generated through gambling, prostitution, the sale of drugs and stolen merchandise, or currency pilfered from a parent's misplaced wallet.

We need to conspicuously avoid all questionable sources of revenue … at least for the present …

—Crusade memo, confidential

We were still a couple weeks away from Hanna's due date. By chance, I didn't have an afternoon class, which was why I drove her to the doctor's office. The check-up was supposed to be entirely routine. Her OB was a little gray-haired woman with an easy smile and an autodoc aide. The doctor's eyes were flying down a list of numbers—the nearly instantaneous test results derived from a drop of blood and a sip of amniotic fluid. It was the autodoc who actually touched Hanna, probing her belly with pressure and sound, an elaborate and beautiful and utterly confusing three-dimensional image blooming in the room's web-window. I've never been sure which professional found the abnormality. Doctors and their aides have always used hidden signals. Even when both of them were human, one would glance at the other in a certain way, giving the warning, and the parents would see none of it, blissfully unaware that their lives were about to collapse.

Some things never change.

It was our doctor who said, "Hanna," with the mildest of voices. Then showing the barest smile, she asked, "By any chance, did you have a cold last week?"

My wife was in her late forties. A career woman and single for much of her life, she delayed menopause so that we could attempt a child. This girl. Our spare bedroom was already set up as a nursery, and two baby showers had produced a mountain of gifts. That's one of the merits of waiting to procreate to the last possible moment; you have plenty of friends and grateful relatives with money to spend on your unborn child. And as I mentioned, it had been a wondrously easy pregnancy. Hanna has never been a person who suffers pain well or relishes watching her body deformed beyond all recognition. But save for some minor aches and the persistent heartburn, it had been a golden eight-plus months, and that's probably why Hanna didn't hear anything alarming in that very simple question.

"A cold?" she said. Then she glanced in my direction, shrugging. "Just a little one. There and gone in a couple days. Wasn't it, Wes?"

I looked at our doctor.

I said, "Just a few sniffles."

"Well," our doctor replied. Then she glanced at her aide, the two of them conversing on some private channel.

Finally, almost grudgingly, Hanna grew worried, taking a deep breath and staring down at her enormously swollen belly.

Seeing her concern, I felt a little more at ease.

Someone had to be.

Then our doctor put on a confident face, and a lifetime of experience was brought to bear. "Well," she said again, her voice acquiring a motherly poise. "There is a chance, just a chance, that this bug wasn't a cold virus. And since the baby could be in some danger—"

"Oh, God," Hanna whimpered.

"I think we need to consider a C-section. Just to be very much on the safe side."

"God," my wife moaned.

My temporary sense of wellbeing was obliterated. With a gasp, I asked, "What virus? What chance?"

"A C-section?" Hanna blurted. "God, when?"

The doctor looked only at her. "Now," she answered. And then with an authoritarian nod of the head, she added, "And we really should do it here."

"Not at the hospital?" Hanna muttered.

"Time is critical," the doctor cautioned. "If this happens to be a strain of the Irrawaddy—"

"Oh, shit—"

"I know. It sounds bad. But even if that bug is the culprit, you're so far along in the pregnancy, and you have a girl, and the girls seem to weather this disease better than the boys—"

"What chance?" I blurted. "What are we talking about here?"

The autodoc supplied my answer. With a smooth voice and a wet-nurse's software, it told me, "The odds of infection are approximately one in two. And if it was the Irrawaddy virus, the odds of damage to a thirty-nine week fetus are less than three in eleven."

Our doctor would have preferred to deliver that news. Even in my panic, I noticed the bristling in her body language. But she kept her poise. Without faltering, she set her hand on my wife's hand. I think that was the first time during the visit that she actually touched Hanna. And with a reassuring music, she said, "We're going to do our best. For you and for your daughter."

About that next thirty minutes, I remember everything.

There was a purposeful sprint by nurses and autodocs as well as our doctor and her two human partners. The largest examination room was transformed into a surgical suite, every surface sterilized with bursts of ionized radiation and withering desiccants. Hanna was plied with tubes and fed cocktails of medicines and microsensors. Needing something to do, I sent a web-flash to family and friends, carefully downplaying my worsening fears. And then I was wrapped inside a newly made gown and cap and led into the suite, finding Hanna already laid out on a table with her arms spread wide and tied down at the wrists. Some kind of medical crucifixion was in progress. She was sliced open, a tidy hole at her waist rimmed with burnt blood and bright white fat. I could smell the blood. I overheard the doctor warning Hanna about some impending pressure. And all the while, the autodoc worked over her, those clean sleek limbs moving with an astonishing speed and a perfect, seamless grace.

Thirty seconds later, my daughter was born.

With a nod to custom, our doctor was allowed to cut the cord.

Then both professionals worked with my daughter, stealing bits of skin and blood for tests, and in another few moments—a few hours, it felt like—they decided that Hanna's cold had been a cold and nothing more.

The autodoc began gluing my wife back together, and with a congratulatory smile, the doctor handed my baby to me. Veronica, named after her mother's mother. I had just enough time to show the screaming baby to Hanna, and then the ambulance arrived, flying the three of us to a hospital room where we could start coming to terms with the changes in our lives.

Veronica slept hard for hours, swaddled tight in a little blanket infused with helpful bacteria and proven antibodies. Hanna drifted into a shallow sleep, leaving me alone. I was holding my child, and the room's web-window was wandering on its own, searching for items that might interest me, and there was this odd little news item about a fifteen-year-old boy in France—a bright and handsome young man blessed with rich parents and a flair for public speaking. Standing in a mostly empty auditorium, Philippe Rule was announcing the launch of some kind of private space program.

It involved Mars, I halfway heard.

But honestly, I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy holding my happy, healthy daughter, watching her eyes twitch as she dreamed her secret dreams.

A manned mission to Mars.

The Americans were first, and by some measures, they had the greatest success. Seven astronauts completed the voyage, only to discover that their lander was inoperative. Repairs were attempted while in Martian orbit, but with the launch window closing and limited supplies on hand, the mission had to be canceled. An American flag was dropped on Olympus Mons, pledges were made to return soon, and after several months in deep space, and a string of catastrophic mechanical failures, three of the original crew returned home alive.

Four years later, the European Union sent nineteen astronauts inside a pair of elaborate mother ships. One of the mission's twin landers exploded during its descent, but the other lander managed to reach the surface. Photographs made from orbit show a squat, bug-like machine tilted at an unnatural angle, its landing gear mired in an unmapped briny seepage. At least one of its crew managed to climb out of the airlock, crossing a hundred meters of the Martian surface. Then she sat on a windswept boulder and opened the faceplate, letting her life boil away.

The Chinese mission was the most expensive, and ambitious, and in the end, it was the most frustrating. The nuclear-powered rocket was intended to solve the difficulties of past missions. The voyage to Mars would consume only two weeks. With the added thrust, a wealth of supplies and spare parts could be carried along, and the inevitable problems of muscle and bone atrophy would be avoided. Depending on circumstances, the crew would stay on Mars for as long or as briefly as needed, exploring various sites while building the first structures in a permanent settlement.

Unfortunately, the ship that held so much promise survived only sixty-five minutes. A flaw in the reaction chamber triggered a catastrophic series of accidents, culminating in that brief, awful flash that lit up our night sky.

Since that tragedy, no nation or group of nations has found the courage, much less the money, to attempt a fourth mission.

This is wrong.

These countries, and the adults who lead them, are cowards.

Mars is out there. Mars is waiting, and we know it. It is a new world, and it is wonderfully empty, and you want to go there. I know that's what you want. You dream about walking in its red dust, and exploring its dry riverbeds, and building castles out of its red rock, and hunting for alien fossils. Or better still, you want to find living Martians hiding in some deep canyon or under the floor of an old sea …

I know you.

You want to do what your parents couldn't do.

Help me! Together, let's do this one great thing! If you give me just a little money … a week's allowance, or what the tooth fairy leaves under your pillow tonight … then maybe you will be one of the lucky ones chosen for the next mission!

The mission that succeeds!

—Philippe Rule, from the announcement

She is my only sister, and how can anything be easy between us?

I love my nephews and nieces, but according to Iris, I have never shown the proper interest in them.

Tom was her middle-born—an undersized kid with a bright, overly serious manner and a real talent for getting whatever he wanted. When he was eight years old, he decided that he wanted money for Christmas. Nothing but. He pushed hard for months, pleading and arguing, and begging, and generally making his parents miserable. And even when they surrendered, his demands didn't stop.

"He won't accept even one present," his mother complained to me. "Not from anyone. He says he'll throw any package into the fire."

"Give him fireworks," was my snappy advice.

Iris put her arms around herself, and shuddered.

Then with a more serious tone, I offered, "Cash is good. I always liked getting it when we were kids."

"I didn't," my sister snarled.

In secret, I was admiring the boy's good sense. His mother's gifts tended towards the fancy and the lame, and after a day of fitful abuse, the new toys usually ended up inside some cavernous closet, forgotten.

"This is our deal," Iris continued. "Every relative puts money into a common account, and Tom buys himself something. A real gift."

It was Christmas Eve. Hanna and I had flown into town that afternoon, bringing our baby girl. "So you want me to throw in a few dollars?"

Iris blinked, and a tension revealed itself. She looked thinner than normal, nervous and pretty in equal measures. As if in pain, she winced, and then with a stiff voice, she admitted, "He really likes you."

"Tom does?"

"He adores you, a little bit."

I always thought the kid was high-strung and spoiled. But everybody likes to hear that someone adores him.

"I told him you'd help. Help him pick a real gift."

I halfway laughed. "Okay. I don't understand any of this."

"This is part of our deal. We aren't going to let him just throw his money away on something stupid."

"'His money,'" I quoted.

Iris missed my point.

So I told her, "You're not negotiating with the Teamsters here. This is an eight-year-old child. Your child."

Iris was four years my junior. But there were moments when she looked older than me, her youthful beauty tested by childbirth and the burdens that followed. Her face had a paleness, brown eyes rimmed with blood. I saw the cumulative wear and tear. For an instant, I almost felt sorry for her. But then she looked at Veronica sitting in her bouncy seat, purring and blabbering. And with a cold menace, my sister warned me, "You wait, Wes. Wait. You think you know things, but you'll see how hard kids can be."

I nearly said an honest word or two. But a lingering pity kept me quiet.

Iris decided to smile, using her own brand of begging. "I want your help. Would you do this one favor for me?"

Grudgingly, I shrugged my shoulders, and with a whiff of genuine pain, I muttered, "Why not?"

Once the gift-grab was finished, he approached me, whispering, "Uncle Wes? Can we go now?"

"Sure," I purred.

The family web-room was at the back of the house. With an unconscious ease, Tom took us to a popular mall. A thousand toyshops lined themselves up before us. But he hesitated. Turning abruptly, he spotted his mother watching from the hallway. "Go away!" he shouted. "You told me I could do this myself! Leave us alone!"

I will never let a child of mine talk that way to any adult. But honestly, I felt a shrill little pleasure watching my sister slink away, vanishing inside the illusion of a candy factory.

Tom turned to me and smiled. With a bottled up joy, he admitted, "I want to go to Mars."

I didn't understand, and I said so.

"Mars," he repeated. "If I give enough, and if I'm a good enough astronaut, I can go there."

The last few months had been a blur. Between taking care of a newborn and teaching a full class load, I hadn't found the time to keep up with the affairs of the world.

"Explain this Mars business to me," I said.

"This is my money," Tom replied, clinging to his tiny piece of paper.

All at once he was this earnest and pleasantly goofy little kid, buoyed up by his relentless enthusiasm. "Pretend that I'm stupid," I suggested, feeling a sudden affection for the goof. "Explain everything to me. From the start."

With a passion that I hadn't mustered in decades, the boy told me all about Philippe Rule. He described a future mission to Mars and all the good neat stuff that would come from it. Millions of kids had already given money; he would have to hurry to catch up. And then he told me how the Rule Project would use the money to build rockets and habitats and space suits—all that good neat stuff you had to have if you were going to travel across millions of miles of space.

"Okay," I said. "But why do you get to go to Mars?"

"A lot of kids are going," he countered. "Uncle Wes, there's going to be dozens and dozens of us—"

"Out of millions and millions," I cautioned.

"I know that," he claimed.

And I explained, "A million is a lot of people, Tom. If Philippe takes just one kid out of a million, what are your odds going to be?"

Eight-year-olds don't believe in odds. Feelings matter, and this eight-year-old had the sudden feeling that I was going to fight him. "This is my money," he repeated, waving that piece of paper under my nose. "I can do what I want with my own money!"

My affections wavered.

Quietly, I asked, "How much money is it?"

He showed the account number to a scanner, and after reading both passwords aloud, an account balance appeared before us.

I was appalled. My few dollars dangled at the end of that king's ransom.

"I know Mars won't be easy," Tom offered. "But I'm going to work hard. I'm going to be one of those astronauts."

"What else happens?" I asked.

He didn't understand.

"Your mother's going to ask to see your gift," I said. "What are you going to show her?"

He had a ready answer.

"This," he said, punching in a new address. An instant later, we were standing on the surface of Mars. Beneath us was the eroded channel of an ancient river, its sediments peppered with tiny shellfish. A towering rocket stood before us, sleek and silvery against the dusty sky. Downstream from us was a crystal-domed city, implausible and lovely, a thousand little homes gathered around a pink-face lake—some tiny portion of the ancient Martian seas reborn inside a digital dream.

"I get to come here," my nephew gleefully reported. "Because I'm giving them money, I can walk anywhere on Mars. I'll meet kids like me. While I'm here, I'll train to be an astronaut. And there's classes about the planets, and games, and I'll learn everything about space and science and things like that."

The illusionary Mars was astonishingly vivid, and for a middle-aged biology professor, it was a little unsettling.

"She'll think it's okay, Uncle Wes. If you like it, and tell her so … "

Honestly, I was curious. Even a little intrigued. I took a weak breath, halfway expecting to find the air suffocatingly thin and brutally cold. Then with a defeated laugh, I said, "Sure." I put a hand on his bony little shoulder, telling him, "I guess I don't see the harm."

Web-Mars will be an entertaining and gentle realm.

When children dream of Mars, this is the Mars they will see. This is the world they will believe in. This is what it will take to inspire them—for a day, or a year, or in some cases, for the rest of their lives.

—Crusade memo, confidential

"Very?" I asked.

"I thought she was with you," Hanna explained. Then she sighed in exasperation, and with her hands around her mouth, she called out, "Very! Where are you?"

The playroom was enormous, and it looked empty. But you could never be sure. I walked twice through the armies of toys before my sister finally drifted into view, mentioning, "She's in the web-room with Tom. Sorry, I forgot to tell you."

"Thanks," I growled.

With a hard stare, Hanna delivered my marching orders.

It had been a difficult visit. My mother was dying, and most of my sister's kids had been perfect brats. Three days of uninterrupted rain hadn't helped anyone's mood. Plus Hanna and I didn't appreciate watching our five-year-old growing accustomed to this new life of abundance and anarchy. The sole exception was Tom. We only saw him at the dinner table, and he was nothing but polite, pleasantly uninvolved with the rest of his chaotic family.

I found the web-room open but guarded by a visual fog and the image of a handsome, suspicious young man. With a thin French accent, the man asked, "May I help you, sir?"

"My daughter's here."

"Is Veronica your daughter?"

I wasn't in a patient mood. I said, "Drop the screens. I want to see her."

Philippe Rule broke into a sudden smile. "She's a very bright girl, sir. You should feel proud—"

I stepped through the doppleganger, finding myself climbing stairs onto some kind of platform. No, it was a boat—a simple square aerogel raft drifting in the midst of a smooth ocean. In every direction, I saw the close horizon and a patchwork of thin clouds. The air tasted of saltwater and fish. The gravity had to be Earth's, but when I took my next step, the scene moved, producing a powerful illusion that sixty kilograms of meat and fat had been stolen from me.

It was almost fun.

And then I realized that I couldn't see anyone else. Hands on hips, I screamed, "Very! Come here. Very! Where are you?"

The fictional water splashed, and my daughter burst to the surface. Giggling, she grabbed at the raft and crawled up. She was wearing both a skin-tight stimsuit as well as one of her girl-cousin's old swimsuits, and she looked thoroughly soaked. But when I touched her, she felt dry and cool.

For no good reason, I said, "You can't swim without an adult."

"Daddy," she snapped. "This isn't water. So I wasn't."

Ignoring her seamless logic, I asked, "What have you been doing?"

"Watching."

"Watching what?"

"The fish!" Very was a small five-year-old with an infectious laugh and easy smile. Tugging on my arm, she told me, "You should see them, Daddy! They're pretty, and funny, and neat-strange!"

Curiosity licked at me.

But then Tom broke the surface, arms and legs pretending to swim as he came closer to the illusionary boat. I understood most of the trickery. But I barely saw the stimsuits, and the smart-wires were almost invisible. I had no idea how the AIs could so perfectly anticipate his every flail and kick, moving his thirteen-year-old body over to the ladder.

"Here it comes!" he cried out.

What was coming?

With a coarseness born from youth and excitement, he screamed, "Damn, it's a monster … shit … !"

A scaly head broke the surface. I saw jaws longer than I was tall, and great fishy eyes, and then a ropy body twisted, propelling the apparition past the raft, the long head dipping for an instant, bringing up a rainbow-colored fish with three eyes and a peculiar ventral gill.

For an instant, I was a biologist studying these marvels.

But then fatherhood reclaimed me. I kneeled and looked at my daughter, touching her again on that wet-looking, perfectly dry shoulder. "You know," I growled. "When you go somewhere, you have to tell us first."

"I'm still in the house, Daddy."

Here was the heart of it. To her old father, web-Mars was a separate place—a peculiar and potentially dangerous realm that happened to be a whole lot closer than the real Mars.

Ignoring my daughter's argument, I looked at her cousin. "Don't," I warned Tom. "Very's mother and I don't want her involved with this project. So I'm telling you: Don't bring her here again."

"Why not?" Thirteen and full of opinions, Tom grinned in an aggravating way. "All these things," he said. "These fish and plesiosaur and everything … they all come from fossil DNA—"

"No," I interrupted.

But he couldn't hear me. Dancing to the edge of the raft, the boy shook his dry leg, scattering slow drops. "I know this place, Uncle Wes. Better than anyone. You'd like it here. There's an old starship on the beach over there, and it's full of neat games and puzzles … I could take you, as my guest … if you want … "

With a quiet fury, I told my nephew, "Mars is nothing like this."

He stared at me. He seemed appalled, and then in the next instant, he was laughing at me.

"On its warmest day," I explained, "Mars was a very cold place. The old seas were covered with ice. Life was scarce, and it was single-celled, and there's absolutely no reason to think we could find starships there."

He laughed again, dismissing me with a sturdy shake of his head. "How do you know, Uncle Wes? Have you ever gone to Mars?"

I took my daughter by the hand.

"I'll be going there," he reported, nothing about his voice or manner betraying the slightest doubt.

"Good for you," I told him.

Then I hauled Very and myself out of the room.

Philippe Rule waved good-bye to both of us. "It was nice meeting you, Veronica," he called out. "And I hope to see you again."

But of course, I was a boy when this great adventure began.

Boys don't know much about anything, except for their own hearts …

—Philippe Rule, interview

"The first for what?" Hanna asked.

"I'm actually noticing them," I told her. "At school. In my classes."

"Okay, I'll bite. Who are you talking about?"

"Rule's kids." I blanked my reader and set it on the nightstand. "This year's freshmen had to be twelve, maybe thirteen when Rule got rolling. Older kids were too skeptical, or too something, to buy into this business."

Hanna let her reader fall to her lap, saying nothing.

"If they were fourteen and older … I guess there were too many hormones raging inside them, keeping them safe … "

"Safe," she echoed.

That wasn't the best word, but I was in no mood to correct myself. "Anyway, I've got at least seven believers sitting in my intro class."

"How do you know? Do they wear uniforms?" She gave a laugh. "I know. Inverted fishbowls set over their heads."

I laughed, but without much heart.

"No, they just sit together," I explained. "Down in front, and from day one. Very chummy. I asked if they came from the same high school. But they aren't even from the same state. They met on web-Mars."

"Understandable," said Hanna.

Which irritated me. For a lot of vague and silly reasons, I growled, "Sure, it's understandable. We all know people that we've never seen in person."

"Seven," she remarked, "is not a lot of students."

I said nothing.

"How many are in that class?"

"Two hundred and six."

"A little more than three percent," she said.

And I gave her a hard smile, reminding her, "I'm also teaching that advanced placement class."

She saw my trap closing.

"Forty students," I said. "The best of the best."

"And how many believers?" Hanna asked.

"Half," I replied.

"Twenty?"

"Nearly." I shook my head, admitting, "They're wonderful students. In most ways, I can't complain."

"It sounds like complaining to me."

"I'm a cranky middle-aged man. Grumbling is my business."

Hanna just shook her head.

"No, these kids have a good working knowledge about genetics and evolution, and metabolisms, and how ecological systems operate."

"They sound perfectly horrible."

I let her have her fun.

"Okay," she finally said. "Where's the tragedy in having so many smart, wonderful students?"

"I wish I knew," I muttered.

"You know what bothers you," Hanna growled. Then she picked up her reader again, telling me, "You didn't teach these children any of those great lessons. Which means their allegiances lie elsewhere, and that's what has you pissed."

I gave a snort and a half-laugh.

"God," I said. "We can hope that's all!"