When the New Soil Crew left Orange Yellow in the Recycling Rooms, they did not all go directly to their homes.  Emma and Elijah had told their kids (which included Stanley, you recall) that Liam would be making their dinner that night, because they would be eating with Olivia and Liam's kids (which included Dorothy and Raymond, you may recall).

They didn't exactly say, "we are going to go have a secret talk with Olivia at her place this evening, and we don't want any kids there to listen in", nor did they intend to, but they might as well have.

Therefore, the whole crew went to Eugene's home first.  Eugene's parents, Oliver and Charlotte, enjoyed watching a particular Earth drama show together, and the latest episode had recently been downloaded, so they were in the other room watching it together, and could be relied on not to interrupt until that was over.  Eugene also had no siblings to listen in, while they listened in on what was happening in Dorothy's house.  They did have to text Liam's tablet eventually, to say that they were playing at Eugene's, but did not do so too quickly, lest they risk having him tell them they had to come home instead.  Timing was important.

"Whose tablet did you leave on at your place?" asked Mildred.

"Mine," said Dorothy.  "Raymond cannot live without his, although he normally has headphones plugged into his because his music is awful, and nobody else can stand it."

Raymond, who normally shrugged off any jibes from his sister, looked a bit stung, and before she could stop herself, Dorothy asked, "where do you find that stuff, anyway?"

Raymond didn't answer, and Dorothy realized with regret that it was almost certainly Raymond's own music.  Not just "his music" meaning "the music he listens to", but also music he had composed and created.  Well, stench and leakage, she hadn't actually meant to hurt his feelings, it was just supposed to be normal sibling sparring.  She fumbled for a bit, trying to find a way to pull back her already-flung barb, and of course failed.  Mildred, who might have been oblivious to what was going on, did them both a favor by opening a call to Dorothy's tablet, so that they all four (even Eugene) had to be quiet so that Emma, Elijah, and Olivia would not hear them through the open connection.  They all huddled close around Mildred's tablet, with the volume turned down so that Oliver and Charlotte could not hear it from the other room.  After a few minutes of introductory chit-chat, Emma began the real conversation in earnest. 

"Olivia, we need to talk," she said.

"We are talking," said Olivia.  What a typical Olivia thing to say, thought Mildred.  Dorothy, on the other hand, was reminded of her mother saying almost the same thing just before she and her grandmother had started crying and wailing like crazy people.

"Well you're not talking back enough," said Elijah.

Olivia looked up from her tablet at Elijah, her expression blank, then confused.

"What?" she asked.

"He means you need to stand up for yourself more, when you're talking to Helene," said Emma.

"What does that actually mean here, 'stand up for yourself'?  Which conversation are we talking about, anyway?"

"Any of them," said Emma.  "You let her make all the decisions, without challenging them, even if she is ignoring the problems you point out.  For example, the rat experiment.  You said we should make new enclosures before we transferred them from the spaceship, and she ignored you, and now we have over a dozen rats on the loose."

"Less than a dozen, now," said Olivia.  "Loki has been doing a good job."

"Wow, that was fast," said Elijah, with an expression of surprise that also indicated he was impressed.  He had been opposed to introducing the cat into Building 3, but he was capable of changing his mind in the face of empirical data.  Loki was an efficient killer.

"You know what I mean," said Emma.

"No, I don't actually."

"She doesn't ever show you any respect!" said Elijah.  "You've been leading this Colony, successfully, for years, and she comes in her and immediately thinks she knows better than you about everything."

"It's ok," said Olivia, looking down at her tablet.  "I don't mind."

Emma leaned forward to hold Olivia's hands, to get her to look up again.

"We don't need you to not mind," said Emma.  "We need you to stand up to her.  We need you to lead."

"We don't have leaders on Mars," said Olivia.

"No, we don't have bosses," said Emma.  "We always had a leader.  But now she won't lead.  We need her to lead again."

There was a long silence, and Dorothy realized that her mother was uncertain, bewildered by recent events, and unsure how to proceed.  Dorothy had never imagined her mother as bewildered.  Of course, sometimes in the face of an unclear situation, she would not immediately know what the solution was.  She always, though, seemed to know what she needed to do next, and what other people needed to do next, to help figure it out.  Dorothy knew, from the long silence, that her mother did not know what to say, and that was because she did not know what to do, or even how to figure out what to do.  Olivia was faced with a situation she did not know how to fix, or figure out how to fix, or cope with not fixing.  She was bewildered.  Dorothy found it frightening.

Then, with a flash of insight that almost made her dizzy, Dorothy realized that her mother knew this, had always known this.  Or perhaps, Emma had told her, that the rest of them would find it frightening if she ever sounded bewildered or lacking in self-confidence.  Her mother had been, in some sense, faking her confidence, all her adult life.  Not out of vanity, but rather as a comfort to all of the others who depended on her.  Olivia was, in a way, mother to the entire Orphans generation, especially all of them like Harper who were much younger.  She had never been as confident as Dorothy had imagined; she had been aware that she needed to seem confident, for their sakes.

"I don't understand what you want me to do," said Olivia softly.

"Punch her in her fat face!" said Elijah in frustration.  Mildred and Eugene both made silent "yeah!" gestures.

"No, don't do that," said Emma quickly.

"Why not?" asked Elijah angrily.  "It'll shut her up!"

"No, it probably won't, but it will turn all 50 of the Earthlings against us," said Emma.  "But Olivia, Helene is not making good decisions, and I'm not even convinced that it's by mistake.  Sometimes I think she doesn't even want the Colony to survive; she seems to be looking for an excuse for another Evacuation, this time taking us also."

There was a long pause again.

"And if that's true?" asked Olivia.

"We will need you to lead again, but don't lead us into surrender.  Lead us back to independence."