I walked into the living room of Kal’s small apartment. It was a constant source of frustration that, on a planet with so much space, people were crowded into such concentrations. Granted, most of the planet was water, but there were enough mats—and now, enough floating cities—so that people could spread out. The Council’s insistence that everyone stay together had lately become a planetwide source of contention. I wondered how much of that was natural, and how much was helped along by the rabble-rousers in this room.