Blue Mars (66 page)

As they barged farther south the southern autumn put a chill in
the air. Hardwood trees began to appear on the once-again-basalt banks, their
leaves flaring red and yellow; and one morning there was a skim of ice sheeting
the smooth water against the shores. When they stood on the top of the western
bank, the volcanoes Tyrrhena Patera and Hadriaca Patera loomed on the horizon
like flattened Fujis, Hadriaca displaying the banded maypole of white glaciers
on black rock which Maya had first seen from the other side, coming up out of
Dao Vallis when she had made her tour of the flooding Hellas Basin, so long
ago. With that young girl, what was her name? A relative of someone she knew.

The canal cut through the dragonback mounds of the Hesperia Dorsa.
The canalside towns grew less equatorial, more austere, more highland. Volga
river towns, New England fishing villages, but with names like Astapus, Aeria,
Uchronia, Apis, Eunostos, Agathadaemon, Kaiko ... on and on the broad band of
water led them, south by west, as straight as a compass bearing for day after
day, until it was hard to remember that this was the only one, that such canals
were not webbed everywhere, as on the maps of the ancient dream. Oh there was
one other big canal, at Boone’s Neck, but it was short and very wide, and
getting wider every year, as draglines and the eastward current tore at it; no
longer a canal, really, but rather an artificial strait. No, the dream of the
canals had been enacted only here, in all the world; and while here, cruising
tranquilly over the water, one’s view of everything else cut off by the high
banks, there was a sense of romance in the air, a sense that their political
and personal squabbles had a kind of Barsoomian grandeur.

Or so it felt, strolling in the nip of an evening under the pastel
neons of a canalside town. In one, called Anteus, Maya was strolling the
canalside promenade, looking down into boats large and small, onto beautiful
big young people drinking and chatting lazily, sometimes cooking meat on
braziers clamped to the railings and hung out over the water. On a wide dock
extending into the canal, there was an open-air cafe, from which came the
plaintive singing of a gypsy violin; she turned into the cafe instinctively,
and only at the last minute saw Jackie and Athos, sitting at a canalside table
alone, leaning over until their foreheads almost touched. Maya certainly did
not want to interrupt such a promising scene, but the very abruptness of her
halt caught Jackie’s eye, so that she looked up, then started. Maya turned to
leave, but saw Jackie was getting up to come over.

Another scene, Maya thought, only partly unhappy at the prospect.
But Jackie was smiling, and Athos was coming with her, at her side, watching it
all with wide-eyed innocence; either he had no idea of their history, or else
he had a good control of his expressions. Maya guessed the latter, simply
because of the look in his eye, just that bit too innocent to be real. An
actor.

“It’s beautiful this canal, don’t you think?” Jackie was saying.

“A tourist trap,” Maya said. “But a pretty one. And it keeps the
tourists nicely bunched.”

“Oh come now,” Jackie said, laughing. She took Athos’s arm.
“Where’s your sense of romance?”

“What sense of romance,” Maya said, pleased at this public display
of affection. The old Jackie would not have done it. Indeed it was a shock to
see that she was no longer young; stupid of Maya not to have thought of that,
but her sense of time was such a mishmash that her own face in the mirror was a
perpetual shock to her—every morning she woke up in the wrong century, so
seeing Jackie looking matronly with Athos on her arm was only more of the
same—an impossibility—this was the fresh dangerous girl of Zygote, the young
goddess of Dorsa Brevia!

“Everyone has a sense of romance,” Jackie said. The years were not
making her any wiser. Another chronological discontinuity. Perhaps taking the
longevity treatment so often had clogged her brain. Curious that after such
assiduous use of the treatments there should be any signs of aging left at all;
in the absence of cell-division error, where exactly was it coming from? There
were no wrinkles on Jackie’s face, in some ways she could be mistaken for
twenty-five; and the look of happy Boonean confidence was as entrenched as
ever, the only way really she resembled John—glowing like the neon scrim of the
cafe overhead. But despite all that she looked her years, somehow—in her eyes,
or in some gestalt at work despite all the medical manipulation.

And then one of Jackie’s many assistants was there among them,
panting, gasping, pulling Jackie’s arm away from Athos, crying “Jackie, I’m so
sorry, so sorry, she’s killed, she’s killed—”—shivering—

“Who?” Jackie said sharply, like a slap.

The young woman (but she was aging) said miserably, “Zo.”

“Zo?”

“A flying accident. She fell into the sea.”

This ought to slow her down, Maya thought.

“Of course,” Jackie said.

“But the birdsuits,” Athos protested. He was aging too. “Didn’t
they. . . .”

“I don’t know about that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jackie said, shutting them up. Later Maya
heard an eyewitness account of the accident, and the image stayed etched in her
mind forever—the two fliers struggling in the waves like wet dragonflies,
staying afloat so that they would have been okay, until one of the North Sea’s
big swells picked them up and slammed them into the base of a seastack. After
which they had drifted in the foam.

Now Jackie was withdrawn, remote, thinking things over. She and Zo
had not been close, Maya had heard; some said they hated each other. But one’s
child. You were not supposed to survive your children, that was something even
childless Maya felt instinctively. But they had abrogated all the laws, biology
meant nothing to them anymore; and here they were. If Ann had lost Peter on the
falling cable; if Nadia and Art ever lost Nikki... even Jackie, as foolish as
she was, had to feel it.

And she did. She was thinking hard, trying to find the way out.
But she wasn’t going to; and then she would be a different person. Aging—it had
nothing to do with time, nothing. “Oh Jackie,” Maya said, and put a hand
forward. Jackie flinched, and Maya pulled the hand back. “I’m sorry.”

But just when people most need help is when their isolation is the
most extreme. Maya had learned that on the night of Hiroko’s disappearance, when
she had tried to comfort Michel. Nothing could be done.

Maya almost cuffed the sniffling young aide, restrained herself:
“Why don’t you escort Ms. Boone back to your ship. And then keep people away
for a while.”

Jackie was still lost in her thoughts. Her flinch away from Maya
had been instinct only, she was stunned—disbelieving—and the disbelief absorbed
all her effort. All just as one would expect, from any human being. Maybe it
was even worse if you hadn’t gotten along with the child—worse than if you
loved them, ah, God—”Go,” Maya said to the aide, and with a look commanded
Athos to help. He would certainly make an impression on her, one way or the
other. They led her off. She still had the most beautiful back in the world,
and held herself like a queen. That would change when the news sank in.

Later Maya found herself down at the southern edge of town, where
the lights left off and the starry sheen of the canal was banked by black berms
of slag. It looked like the scroll of a life, someone’s world line: bright neon
squiggles, moving across a landscape to the black horizon. Stars overhead and
underfoot. A black piste over which they glided soundlessly.

She walked back to their boat. Stumped down the gangplank. It was
distressing to feel this way for an enemy, to lose an enemy to this kind of
disaster. “Who am I going to hate now?” she cried to Michel.

“Well,” Michel said, shocked. Then, in a comforting tone: “I’m
sure you’ll think of someone.”

Maya laughed shortly, and Michel cracked a brief smile. Then he
shrugged, looking grave. He less than any of them had been lulled by the
treatment. Immortal stories in mortal flesh, he had always insisted. He was
downright morbid about it. And here another illustration of his point.

“So the all-too-human got hers at last,” he said.

“She was an idiot with all those risks, she was asking for it.”

“She didn’t believe in it.”

Maya nodded. No doubt true. Few believed in death anymore,
especially the young, who never had, even before the days of the treatment. And
now less than ever. But believe in it or not, it was touching down more and
more, mostly of course among the superelderly. New diseases, or old diseases
returned, or else a rapid holistic collapse with no apparent cause—this last
had killed Helmut Bronski and Derek Hastings in recent years, people Maya had
met, if not known well. Now an accident had struck someone so much younger than
they were that it made no sense, fit no pattern but youthful recklessness. An
accident. Random chance.

“Do you still want to get Peter to come?” Michel asked, from out
of a whole different realm of thought. What was this, realpolitik from Michel?
Ah—he was trying to distract her. She almost laughed again.

“Let’s still get in touch with him,” she said. “See if he might
come.” But this was only to reassure Michel; her heart was not in it.

That was the beginning of the string of deaths.

But she didn’t know that then
. Then, it was only the end of their canal journey.

The burn of the aerial lens had stopped just short of the eastern
edge of the Hellas Basin watershed, between Dao and Harmakhis valleys. The
final segment of the canal had been dug by conventional means, and it dropped
so precipitously down the steep eastern slope of the basin that frequent locks
were necessary, here functioning as dams, so that the canal no longer had the
classic look it had had in the highlands, but was rather a series of reservoir
lakes connected by short broad reddish rivers, extending out from under each
clear dam. So they boated across lake after lake, down and down in a slow
parade of barges and sailboats and cabin cruisers and steamers, and as they
dropped in the locks they could see through their clear walls down the string
of lakes like a giant staircase of blue stepping-stones, down to the distant
bronze plate of the Hellas Sea. Somewhere in the badlands to right and left,
the Dao and Harmakhis canyons cut deeply into the redrock plateau, following
their more natural courses down the great slope; but with their tents removed
the two canyons were not visible until you were right on their rims, and
nothing could be seen of them from the canal.

On board their ship, life went on. Apparently it was much the same
on the Free Mars barge, where Jackie was said to be doing well. Still seeing
Athos when the two boats were docked in the same town. Accepting sympathy
graciously, and then turning the topic elsewhere, usually to the campaign
business at hand. And their campaign continued to go well. Under Maya’s
coaching the Green campaign was being run better than before, but
anti-immigrant sentiment was strong. Everywhere they went the other Free Mars
councillors and candidates spoke at the rallies, and Jackie only made
occasional short, dignified appearances. She was a lot more powerful and
intelligent a speaker than she used to be. But by watching the others speak
Maya got a good sense of who was at the top level of the organization, and
several of these people looked very happy to have gained the limelight. One
young man, another one of Jackie’s young men, named Nanedi, stood out in
particular. And Jackie did not seem very pleased to see it; she became cool to
him, she turned more and more to Athos, and Mikka, and even An-tar. Some nights
she appeared a veritable queen among the consorts. But Maya could see under
that, to the truth she had witnessed in Anteus. From a hundred meters away she
could see the darkness at the heart of things.

Nevertheless, when Peter returned her call, Maya asked him to meet
her for a talk about the current elections; and when Peter arrived, Maya
rested, watchfully. Something would happen.

Peter looked relaxed, calm. He lived in the Charitum Montes these
days, working on the Argyre wilderness project, and also with a co-op making
Mars-to-space planes for people who wanted to bypass the elevator. Relaxed,
calm, even a bit withdrawn. Simon-like.

Antar was already angry at Jackie, for embarrassing him more than
usual by her lack of discretion with Athos. Mikka was even angrier than Antar.
Now, with Peter on hand, Jackie was baffling and then angering Athos as well,
as she devoted all her attention to Peter. She was as reliable as a magnet. But
she was attracted to Peter, who was as inert to her as always, iron to her
magnet. It was depressing how predictable they were. But useful: the Free Mars
campaign was subtly losing momentum. Antar was no longer so bold as to suggest
to the Qahiran Mahjaris that they forget about Arabia during its time of
troubles. Mikka was intensifying the MarsFirst critique of various Free Mars
positions unrelated to immigration, and pulling some of the other members of
the executive council into his sphere. Yes—Peter was acting as intensifier to
Jackie’s impolitic side, making her erratic and ineffective. So it all was
working as Maya had planned; one only had to roll men toward Jackie like
bowling balls, and over she would go. And yet Maya felt no sense of triumph.

And then they were pushing out of the final lock into Malachite
Bay, a funnel-shaped indentation of the Hellas Sea, its shallow water covered
by a sun-beaten windchop. Farther out they pitched gently onto the darker sea,
where many of the barges and smaller craft turned north and made toward Hell’s
Gate, the largest deepwater harbor on the east coast of Hellas. Their barge
followed this parade, and soon the great bridge crossing Dao Vallis appeared
over the horizon, then the building-covered walls at the entrance to the
canyon; then the masts, the long jetty, the harbor slips.

Maya and Michel went ashore, and made their way up the cobbled and
staired streets, to the old Praxis dorms under the bridge. There was an autumn
harvest festival the next week that Michel wanted to attend, and then they
would be off to Minus One Island, and Odessa. After they checked in and dropped
their bags, Maya took off for a walk through the streets of Hell’s Gate, happy
to be out of the canal boat’s confinement, able to get off by herself. It was
near sunset, near the end of a day that had begun in the Grand Canal. That trip
was over.

Maya had last visited Hell’s Gate back in 2121, during her first
piste tour of the basin, working for Deep Waters, and traveling with—with
Diana! that was her name! Esther’s granddaughter, and a niece of Jackie’s. That
big cheerful girl had been Maya’s introduction to the young natives, really—
not only by way of her contacts in the new settlements around the basin, but in
herself, in her attitudes and ideas— the way Earth was just a word to her, the
way her own generation absorbed all her interest, all her efforts. That had
been the first time Maya had begun to feel herself slipping out of the present,
into the history books. Only the most intense effort had allowed her to
continue to engage the moment, to have an influence on those times. But she had
made that effort, had been an influence. It had been one of the great periods
of her life, perhaps the last great period of her life. The years since then
had been like a stream in the southern highlands, wandering through cracks and
grabens and then sinking into some unexpected pothole.

But once, sixty years before, she had stood right here, under the
great bridge that carried the piste from cliff to cliff over the mouth of Dao
canyon—the famous Hell’s Gate bridge, with the city falling down the steep
sun-washed slopes on both sides of the river, facing the sea. At that time
there had been only sand out there, except for a band of ice visible on the
horizon. The town had been smaller and ruder, the stone steps of the staircase
streets rough and dusty. Now they had been polished on their tops by feet toiling
up them. The dust had been washed away by the years; everything was clean and
had a dark patina; now it was a beautiful Mediterranean hillside harbor,
perched in the shadow of a bridge that rendered the whole town a miniature,
like something in a paperweight or a postcard from Portugal. Quite beautiful in
an autumn’s early sunset, all shadowed and florid to the west, everything
sepia, the moment trapped in amber. But once she had passed through this way
with a vibrant young Amazon, when a whole new world was opening up, the native
Mars she had helped to bring into being—all of it revealed to her, while she
was still a part of it.

The sun set on these memories. Maya returned to the Praxis
building, still located up under the bridge, the final staircase to it as
steeply pitched as a ladder. Ascending it with pushes on her thighs to help,
Maya suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of deja vu. She had done this before—
not only climbed these steps, but climbed them with the sense that she had
climbed them before—with precisely the same feeling that in a yet earlier
visit, she had been an effective part of the world.

Of course—she had been one of the first explorers of Hellas Basin,
in the years right after Underhill. That had slipped her mind. She had helped
to found Lowpoint, and then had driven around, exploring the basin before
anyone else had, even Ann. So that later, when working for Deep Waters, and
seeing the new native settlements, she had felt similarly removed from the
contemporary scene. “My God,” she exclaimed, appalled. Layer on layer, life
after life—they had lived so long! It was like reincarnation in a way, or
eternal recurrence.

There was some little kernel of hope at the middle of that
feeling. Back then, in that first feeling of slipping away, she had started a
new life. Yes she had—she had moved to Odessa, and made her mark on the
revolution, helping it to succeed by hard work, and a lot of thought about why
people support change, about how to change without engendering a bitter
backlash, which though perhaps decades removed yet always seemed to smash back
into any revolutionary success, wrecking what was good in it. And it looked as
though they had indeed avoided that bitterness.

At least until now. Perhaps that was the best way of looking at
what was happening in this election; an inevitable backlash of some kind.
Perhaps she had not succeeded as much as she had thought—perhaps she had only
failed less drastically than Arkady, or John, or Frank. Who could be sure; so
hard to say anymore what was really going on in history, it was too vast, too
inchoate. So much was happening everywhere that anything might be happening
anywhere. Co-ops, republics, feudal monarchies ... no doubt there were Oriental
satrapies out there in the back country, in some caravan gone wrong ... so that
any characterization one made of history would have some validity somewhere.
This thing she was involved in now, the young native settlements demanding
water, going off the net and outside UNTA’s control—no—it wasn’t that—something
else....

But standing there at the Praxis flat door, she couldn’t remember
what it was. She and Diana would take a piste train south the next morning,
around the southeast bend of Hellas to see the Zea Dorsa, and the lava-tube
tunnel they had converted to use as an aqueduct. No. She was here because…

She couldn’t bring it back. On the tip of the tongue . .. Deep
Waters. Diana—they had just finished driving up and down Dao Vallis, where on
the canyon floor natives and immigrants were starting up an agrarian valley
life, creating a complex biosphere under their enormous tent. Some of them
spoke Russian, it had brought tears to her eyes to hear it! There—her mother’s
voice, sharp and sarcastic as she ironed clothes in their little apartment
kitchen nook-sharp smell of cabbage—

No. It wasn’t that. Look to the west, to the sea shimmering in the
dusk air. Water had flooded the sand dunes of east Hellas. It was a century
later at least, it had to be. She was here for some other reason... scores of
boats, little dots down in a postage-stamp harbor, behind a breakwater. It
wouldn’t come back to her. It wouldn’t come. A horrible sense of
tip-of-the-tongueism made her dizzy, then sick, as if she would get it out by
vomiting. She sat down on the step. On the tip of the tongue, her whole life!
Her whole life! She groaned aloud, and some kids throwing pebbles at gulls
stared at her. Diana. She had met Nirgal by accident, they had had a dinner....
But Nirgal had gotten sick. Sick on Earth!

And it all came back with a physical snap, like a blow to her
solar plexus, a wave rolling over her. The canal voyage, of course, of course,
the dive down into drowned Burroughs, Jackie, poor Zo the crazy fool. Of course
of course of course. She hadn’t really forgotten, of course. So obvious now
that it was back. It hadn’t really been gone; just a momentary lapse in her
thinking, while her attention had wandered elsewhere. To another life. A strong
memory had its own integrity, its own dangers, just as much as a weak memory
did. It was only the result of thinking that the past was more interesting than
the present. Which in many ways was true. But still. ...

Still, she found she preferred to sit a while longer. The little
nausea persisted. And there was a bit of residual pressure in her head, as if
that tongue’s hard tipping had left things sore; yes, it had been a bad moment.
Hard to deny when you could still feel the throbbing from that tongue’s
desperate thrusts.

She watched the end of dusk turn the town a deep dark orange, then
a glowing color like light shining through a brown bottle. Hell’s Gate indeed.
She shivered, got up, stepped unsteadily down the stairs into the harborside
district, where the restaurants ringing the quays were bright moth-flittering
globes of tavern light. The bridge loomed overhead like a negative Milky Way.
Maya walked behind the docks, toward the marina.

There was Jackie, walking toward her. There were some aides
following some way back, but in front it was just Jackie, coming toward her
unseeing; then seeing. At the sight of Maya a corner of her mouth tightened, no
more, but it was enough to allow Maya to see that Jackie was, what, ninety
years old? A hundred? She was beautiful, she was powerful; but she was no
longer young. Events would soon be washing by her, the way they did everyone
else; history was a wave that moved through time slightly faster than an
individual life did, so that even when people had lived only to seventy or
eighty, they had been behind the wave by the time they died; and how much more so
now. No sailboard would keep you up with that wave, not even a birdsuit
allowing you to air-surf the wave in pelican style, like Zo. Ah, that was it;
it was Zo’s death she saw on Jackie’s face. Jackie had tried her best to ignore
it, to let it run off her like water off a duck’s back. But it hadn’t worked,
and now she stood in Hell’s Gate over star-smeared water, an old woman.