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and thick-soled shoes, he looked the part of a cop. Kris had ditched her cover and wore a light blue civilian raincoat over her whites. The violation of uniform regs just might make her a harder target. It made Jack happier.
    Jack, along with a half dozen other Marines in civilian clothes formed a wedge behind Kris. Martinez took in their tight haircuts with a nod and a smile. “I’ll see if I can postdate your application’s approval to cover this walk.”
    “We would greatly appreciate that.” Kris left it to Martinez to decide if the “we” was royal or collective. The nod from Jack made either fit.
    “So, where shall we walk?” Kris asked.
    “There is a mall that many people enjoy on days as sunny as these,” the policeman said, eyeing a patch of blue sky where the sun shown through the white, fluffy clouds. The raincoats actually might come in handy.
    “You pick the mall, I pick the direction,” Kris said.
    Martinez smiled tightly and led the way. Jack’s team formed a circle around them. Two blocks over, they found the mall, four-or six-blocks wide with trees and gravel walks. At one end was a stone monument in the classic shape of a rocket. At the other end an imposing building with colonnades.
    “Is that where the tricameral legislature meets?” Kris had noted in passing that Eden was unusual in that it had three legislative bodies, not the usual one or two.
    Martinez shook his head. “Only the American legislature.”
    Kris was about to let that pass, but a faint alarm bell went off somewhere. Martinez was leading the way across the mall. They had some time, so Kris asked the dumb question.
    “American. Isn’t that one of the main powers on Earth? It can’t have a legislative body out here on Eden.”
    “Earth doesn’t,” Martinez said, then gave a quick jerk of his head toward the domed building. “That thing is all ours.”
    Kris goaded him on with a quizzical look.
    “About a third of the politicians that make the laws of my fair planet work out of that building. The European legislature sits in New Geneva and the Chinese Mandate of Heaven speaks from Guang Zhou Du.”
    Kris almost missed a step as they crossed from grass to gravel. She’d assumed that the tricameral reference had been to three houses elected by the same people, maybe one by head count, one by regions, and one by wealth or nobility or some such. Why hadn’t this been plainer in her briefing. N ELLY?
    I AM SEARCHING THE RECORDS, K RIS. S UDDENLY WHAT SEEMED PLAIN AS THE NOSE ON YOUR FACE IS TURNING INTO A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING .
    Kris suspected any third-grader on Eden could have told her what she wanted to know. Why should it be written down?
    “Those are all from old Earth,” Kris said.
    “AmeraEx, ReichBank, and some similar association from China funded the loans that got Eden started. Most of the early settlers came from those three. When they paid off the mortgage and demanded the right to set up their own government, they wanted a world government, but one that wouldn’t step on any of their toes. Here in the American territories we measure in feet, apply common law, and things like that. They actually use the Napoleonic code I’m told in the Eurolands. And if you can figure out the Mandate of Heaven…” He shrugged.
    Kris had that feeling she got when she was being attacked by all the information she needed to solve a problem. Only it was nibbling her to death by the bites of a thousand rabbits. And in a moment they’d all be gone and she’d be left bleeding with nothing to show for the effort.
    She fell back on the blandest of questions a politician’s daughter knew. “So, do you like what your legislator is doing? You plan to vote for him next election?”
    “I don’t have a representative. I’m not a voter.”
    And alarm bells went off all through Kris’s skull. “Jack, have we got a secure area here?”
    “Any beams aimed at us will only get white noise. Unknown nanos within ten meters are