Blue Mars (83 page)

Wandering in the Alchemist’s Quarter. He came on Vasili again,
sitting in the dust with the tears running down his face. The two of them had
botched the Underbill algae experiment together, right there inside this very
building, but Sax doubted very much that this was what Vasili was crying about.
Something from the many years he had worked for UNOMA, perhaps, or something
else—no way to know— well, he could ask—but wandering around Underhill seeing
faces, and then remembering in a rush everything about them that one knew, was
not a situation conducive to follow-up inquiries. No—walk on, leave Vasili to
his own past. Sax did not want to know what Vasili regretted. Besides, halfway
to the horizon to the north a figure was striding away alone—Ann. Odd to see
her head free of a helmet, white hair coursing back in the wind. It was enough
to stop the flow of memories—but then he had seen her that way before, in
Wright Valley, yes, her hair light then too, dishwater blond they called that
color, not very generously. So dangerous to develop any bond under the watchful
eyes of the psychologists. They were there on business, under pressure, there
was no room for personal relations which were dangerous indeed, as Natasha and
Sergei had proved. But still it happened. Vlad and Ursula became a couple,
solid, stable; and same with Hiroko and Iwao, Nadia and Arkady. But the danger,
the risk. Ann had looked at him across the lab table, eating lunch, and there
was something in her eye, some regard—he didn’t know, he couldn’t read people.
They were all such mysteries. The day he got his letter of acceptance, selection
to the First Hundred, he had felt so sad; why was that? No way of knowing. But
now he saw that letter in the fax box, the maple tree outside the window; he
had called Ann to see if she had been included— she had, a bit of a surprise,
her such a loner, but he had been a bit happier, but still—sad. The maple had
been red-leafed; autumn in Princeton, traditionally a melancholy time, but that
hadn’t been it, not at all. Just sad. As if accomplishment were nothing but a
certain number of the body’s three billion heartbeats passed. And now it was
ten billion, and counting. No, there was no explanation. People were mysteries.
So when Ann had said, “Do you want to hike out to Lookout Point?” in that dry
valley lab, he had agreed instantly, without a stammer. And without really
arranging to, they had walked out separately; she had left the camp and hiked
out to Lookout Point, and he had followed, and out there—oh yes—looking down at
the cluster of huts and the greenhouse dome, a kind of proto-Underhill, he had
taken her gloved hand in his, as they sat side by side arguing over
terraforming in a perfectly friendly way, no stakes involved. And she had
pulled her hand away as if shocked, and shuddered (it was very cold, for Terra
anyway) and he had stammered just as badly as he had after his stroke. A limbic
hemorrhage, killing on the spot certain elements, certain hopes, yearnings.
Love dead. And he had harried her ever since. Not that these events functioned
as proper causal explanations, no matter what Michel would have said! But the
Antarctic cold of that walk back to the base. Even in the eidetic clarity of
his current power of recollection he could not see much of that walk.
Distracted. Why, why had he repelled her so? Little man. White lab coat. There
was no reason. But it had happened. And left its mark forever. And even Michel
had never known.

Repression. Thinking of Michel made him think of Maya. Ann was on
the horizon now, he would never catch her; he wasn’t sure he wanted to at that
moment, still stunned by this so-surprising, so-painful memory. He went looking
for Maya. Past where Arkady had laughed at their tawdriness when he came down
from Phobos, past Hiroko’s greenhouse where she had seduced him with her
impersonal friendliness, like primates on the savanna, the alpha female
grabbing one male among the others, an alpha, a beta, or that class of
could-be-alpha-but-not-interested which struck him as the only decent way to
behave; past the trailer park where they had all slept on the floor together, a
family. With Desmond in a closet somewhere. Desmond had promised to show them
how he had lived then, all his hiding places. Jumble of Desmond images, the
flight over the burning canal, then the flight over burning Kasei, the fear in
Kasei as the security people strapped him into their insane device; that had
been the end of Saxifrage Russell. Now he was something else, and Ann was
Counter-Ann, also the third woman that was neither Ann nor Counter-Ann. He
could perhaps speak to her on that basis: as two strangers, meeting. Rather
than the two who had met in the Antarctic.

Maya was sitting in the barrel-vault kitchen, waiting for a big
teapot to boil. She was making tea for them.

“Maya,” Sax said, feeling the words like pebbles in his mouth,
“You should try it. It’s not so bad.”

She shook her head. “I remember everything that I want to. Even
now, without your drugs, even now when I hardly remember anything, I still
remember more than you ever will. I don’t want any more than that.”

It was possible that minute quantities of the drugs had gotten
into the air and thus onto her skin, giving her a small fraction of the
hyperemotional experience. Or perhaps this was just her ordinary state.

“Why shouldn’t now be enough?” she was saying. “I don’t want my
past back, I don’t want it. I can’t bear it.”

“Maybe later,” Sax said.

What could one say to her? She had been like this in Underbill as
well—unpredictable, moody. It was amazing what eccentrics had been selected to
the First Hundred. But what choice had the selection committee had? People were
all like that, unless they were stupid. And they hadn’t sent stupid people to
Mars, or not at first, or not too many. And even the dull-witted had their
complexities.

“Maybe,” she said now, and patted his head, and took the teapot off
the burner. “Maybe not. I remember too much as it is.”

“Frank?” Sax said.

“Of course. Frank, John—they’re all there.” She stabbed her chest
with a thumb. “It hurts enough. I don’t need more.”

“Ah.”

He walked back outside, feeling stuffed, uncertain of anything,
off balance. Limbic system vibrating madly under the impact of his whole life,
under the impact of Maya, so beautiful and damned. How he wished her happy, but
what could one do? Maya lived her unhappiness to the full, it made her happy
one might say. Or complete. Perhaps she felt this acutely uncomfortable
emotional overfullness all the time! Wow. So much easier to be phlegmatic. And
yet she was so alive. The way she had flailed them onward out of the chaos,
south to the refuge in Zygote . .. such strength. All these strong women.
Actually to face up to life’s awfulness, awefullness, to face it and feel it
without denial, without defenses, just admit it and carry on. John, Frank,
Arkady, even Michel, they had all had their great optimism, pessimism, idealism,
their mythologies to mask the pain of existence, all their various sciences,
and still they were dead—killed off one way or another—leaving Nadia and Maya
and Ann to carry on and carry on. No doubt he was a lucky man to have such
tough sisters. Even Phyllis— yes, somehow—with the toughness of the stupid,
making her way, pretty well at least, fairly well, well at least making it, for
a while. Never giving up. Never admitting anything.

She had protested his torture, Spencer had told him so, Spencer and
all their hours of aerodynamics together, telling him over too many whiskeys
how she had gone to the security chief in Kasei and demanded his release, his
decent treatment, even after he had knocked her cold, almost killed her with
nitrous oxide, lied to her in her own bed. She had forgiven him apparently, and
Spencer had never forgiven Maya for killing her, though he pretended he had;
and Sax had forgiven her, even though for years he had acted as if he hadn’t,
to get some kind of hold on her. Ah the strange recombinant tangle they had
made of their lives, result of the overextension, or perhaps it was that way in
every village always. But so much sadness and betrayal! Perhaps memory was
triggered by loss, as everything was inevitably lost. But what about joy? He
tried to remember: could one cast back by emotional category, interesting idea,
was that possible? Walking through the halls of the terraforming conference,
for instance, and seeing the poster board that estimated the heat contribution
of the Russell Cocktail at twelve kelvins. Waking up in Echus Overlook and
seeing that the Great Storm was gone, the pink sky radiant with sunlight.
Seeing the faces on the train as they slid out of Libya Station. Being kissed
in the ear by Hiroko, in the baths one winter day in Zygote, when it was
evening all afternoon. Hiroko! Ah—ah—He had been huddling in the cold, quite
vexed to think he would be killed by a storm just when things were getting
interesting, trying to work out how he might call his car to him, as it seemed
he would not be able to get to it, and then there she had appeared out of the
snow, a short figure in a rust-red spacesuit, bright in the white storm of wind
and horizontal snow, the wind so loud that even the intercom mike in his helmet
was no more than a whisper: “Hiroko?” he cried as he saw her face through the
slush-smeared faceplate; and she said “yes.” And pulled him up by the
wrist—helped him up. That hand on his wrist! He felt it. And up he came, like
viriditas itself, the green force pouring through him, through the white noise,
the white static sleeting by, her grip warm and hard, as full as the plenum
itself. Yes. Hiroko had been there. She had led him back to the car, had saved
his life, had then disappeared again, and no matter how certairj Desmond was of
her death in Sabishii, no matter how convincing his arguments were, no matter
how often second climbers had been hallucinated by solo climbers in distress,
Sax knew better, because of that hand on his wrist, that visitation in the snow—Hiroko
herself in the hard compact flesh, as real as rock. Alive! So that he could
rest in that knowledge, he could know something—in the inexplicable seeping of
the unexplainable into everything, he could rest in that known fact. Hiroko
lived. Start with that and go on, build on it, the axiom of a lifetime of joy.
Perhaps even convince Desmond of it, give him that peace.

He was back outside, looking for the Coyote. Not an easy task,
ever. What did Desmond recall of Underhill—hiding, whispers, the lost farm
crew, then the lost colony, slipping away with them—out there driving around
Mars in disguised boulder cars, being loved by Hiroko, flying over the night
surface in a stealthed plane, playing the demimonde, knitting the underground
together—Sax could almost remember it himself, it was so vivid to him.
Telepathic transfer of all their stories to all of them; one hundred squared,
in the square of barrel vaults. No. That would be too much. Just the
imagination of someone else’s reality was stunning enough, was all the
telepathy one required or could handle.

But where had Desmond gone? Hopeless. One could never find Coyote;
one only waited for him to find you. He would show up when he chose. For now,
out northwest of the pyramids and the Alchemist’s Quarter, there was a very
ancient lander skeleton, probably from the original pre-landing-equipment drop,
its metal stripped of paint and encrusted with salt. The beginning of their
hopes, now a skeleton of old metal, nothing really. Hiroko had helped him
unload this one.

Back into the Alchemist’s Quarter, all the machines in the old
buildings shut down, hopelessly outdated, even the very clever Sabatier
processor. He had enjoyed watching that thing work. Nadia had fixed it one day
when everyone else was baffled; little round woman humming some tune in a world
of her own, communing with machinery, back when machines could be understood.
Thank God for Nadia, the anchor holding them all to reality, the one they could
always count on. He wanted to give her a hug, this most beloved sister of his,
who it appeared was over there in the vehicle yard trying to get a
museum-exhibit bulldozer to run.

But there on the horizon was a figure walking westward over a
knoll: Ann. Had she been circling the horizon, walking and walking? He ran out
toward her, stumbling just as he would have in the first week. He caught up
with her, slowly, gasping.

“Ann? Ann?”

She turned and he saw the instinctive fear on her face, as on the
face of a hunted animal. He was a creature to run from; this was what he had
been to her. “I made mistakes,” he said as he stopped before her. They could
speak in the open air, in the air he had made over her objection. Though it was
still thin enough to make one gasp. “I didn’t see the— the beauty until it was
too late. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Oh he had tried to say
it before, in Michel’s car when the deluge poured, in Zygote, in Tempe Terra;
never had it worked. Ann and Mars, all intertwined— and yet he had no apology
to make to Mars, every sunset was beautiful, the sky’s color a different washed
tint every minute of every day, blue sign of their power and their
responsibility, their place in the cosmos and their power within it, so small
and yet so important; they had brought life to Mars and it was good, he was
sure of that.

But to Ann he needed to apologize. For the years of missionary
fervor, the pressure applied to make her agree, the hunt for the wild beast of
her refusal, to kill it dead. Sorry for that, so sorry—his face wet with tears,
and she stared at him so—just precisely as she had on that cold rock in
Antarctica, in that first refusal—which had all come back and rested inside him
now. His past.