Blue Mars Part 37

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 h.e.l.las 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 s.h.i.+mmering in the dusk air. Water had flooded the sand dunes of east h.e.l.las. 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 ca.n.a.l 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 s.h.i.+ning through a brown bottle. h.e.l.l's Gate indeed. She s.h.i.+vered, 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l's Gate over star-smeared water, an old woman.

Maya, shocked by the intensity of this vision, stopped. Jackie stopped. In the distance the clack of dishes, the loud burble of restaurant conversations. The two women looked at each other. This was not something Maya could remember doing with Jackie- this fundamental act of acknowledgment, meeting the other's eye. Yes, you are real; I am real. Here we are, the both of us. Big sheets of gla.s.s, cracking inside. Something freer, Maya turned and walked away.

Michel found them a pa.s.senger schooner, going to Odessa by way of Minus One Island. The boat's crew told them that Nirgal was expected to be on the island for a race, news which made Maya happy. It was always good to see Nirgal, and this time she needed his help as well. And she wanted to see Minus One; the last time she had been there it had not been an island at all, just a weather station and airstrip on a b.u.mp in the basin floor.

Their s.h.i.+p was a long low schooner, with five bird's-wing mast sails. Once beyond the end of the jetty the mast sails extruded their taut triangular expanses, and then, as the wind was from behind, the crew set a big blue kite spinnaker out front. After that the s.h.i.+p leaped into the clear blue swells, knocking up sheets of spray with every slam into an oncoming wave. After the confinement of the Grand Ca.n.a.l's black banks it felt wonderful to be out on the sea, with the wind in her face and the waves coursing by- it blew all the confusion of h.e.l.l's Gate out of her head- Jackie forgotten- the previous month now understood to be a kind of malignant carnival that she would never have to revisit- she would never return there- the open sea for her, and a life in the wind! "Oh Michel, this is the life for me."

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

And at the end of the voyage they were to settle in Odessa, now a seaside town like h.e.l.l's Gate. Living there they could sail out any day they wanted when the weather was nice, and it would be just like this, windy and sunny. Bright moments in time, the living present which was the only reality they ever had; the future a vision, the past a nightmare- or vice versa- anyway only here in the moment could one feel the wind, and marvel at the waves, so big and sloppy! Maya pointed at one blue hillside rolling by in a long irregular fluctuating line, and Michel laughed out loud; they watched more closely, laughed harder; not in years had Maya felt so strongly the sense of being on a different world, these waves just didn't act right, they flew around and fell over and bulged and wriggled all over their surfaces much more than the admittedly stiff breeze could justify, it looked odd; it was alien. Ah Mars, Mars, Mars!

The seas were always high, the crew told them, on the h.e.l.las Sea. The absence of tides made no difference- what mattered most when it came to waves was gravity, and the strength of the wind. Hearing that as she looked out at the heaving blue plain, Maya's spirits bounced up in the same wild way. Her g was light, and the winds were strong in her. She was a Martian, one of the first Martians, and she had surveyed this basin in the beginning, helped to fill it with water, helped to build the harbors and put free sailors at sea on it; now she sailed over it herself, and if she never did anything again but sail over it, that would be enough.

And so they sailed, and Maya stood in the bow near the bowsprit, hand on the rail to steady her, feeling the wind and the spray. Michel came and stood with her.

"So nice to be off the ca.n.a.l," she said. nice to be off the ca.n.a.l," she said.

"It's true."

They talked about the campaign, and Michel shook his head. "This anti-immigration campaign is so popular."

"Are the yonsei racist, do you think?"

"That would be hard, given their own racial mix. I think they are just generally xenophobic. Contemptuous of Earth's problems- afraid of being overrun. So Jackie is articulating a real fear that everyone already has. It doesn't have to be racist."

"But you're a good man."

Michel blew out air. "Well, most people are."

"Come on," Maya said. Sometimes Michel's optimism was too much. "Whether it's racist or not, it still stinks. Earth is down there looking at all our open land, and if we close the door on them now they're likely to come hammer it open. People think it could never happen, but if the Terrans are desperate enough then they'll just bring people up and land them, and if we try to stop them they'll defend themselves here, and presto we'll have a war. And right here on Mars, not back on Earth or in s.p.a.ce, but on Mars. It could happen- you can hear the threat of it in the way people in the UN are trying to warn us. But Jackie isn't listening. She doesn't care. She's fanning xenophobia for her own purposes."

Michel was staring at her. Oh yes; she was supposed to have stopped hating Jackie. It was a hard habit to break. She waved all that she had said away, all the malevolent hallucinatory politicking of the Grand Ca.n.a.l. "Maybe her motives are good," she said, trying to believe it. "Maybe she only wants what's best for Mars. But she's still wrong, and she still has to be stopped."

"It isn't just her."

"I know, I know. We'll have to think about what we might do. But look, let's not talk about them anymore. Let's see if we can spot the island before the crew."

Two days later they did just that. And as they approached Minus One, Maya was pleased to see that the island was not at all in the style of the Grand Ca.n.a.l. Oh there were white-washed little fis.h.i.+ng villages on the water, but these had a handmade look, an unelectrified look. And above them on the bluffs stood groves of tree houses, little villages in the air. Ferals and fisherfolk occupied the island, the sailors told them. The land was bare on the headlands, green with crops in the sea valleys. Umber sandstone hills broke into the sea, alternating with little bay beaches, all empty except for dune gra.s.s flowing in the wind.

"It looks so empty," Maya remarked as they sailed around the north point and down the western sh.o.r.e. "They see the vids of this back on Earth. That's why they won't let us shut the door."

"Yes," Michel said. "But look how the people here bunch their population. The Dorsa Brevians brought the pattern up from Crete. Everyone lives in the villages, and goes out into the country to work it during the days. What looks empty is being used already, to support those little villages."

There was no proper harbor. They sailed into a shallow bay overlooked by a tiny whitewashed fis.h.i.+ng village, and dropped an anchor, which remained clearly visible on the sandy bottom, ten meters below. They ferried ash.o.r.e using the schooner's dinghy, pa.s.sing some big sloops and several fis.h.i.+ng boats anch.o.r.ed closer to the beach.

Beyond the village, which was nearly deserted, a twisting arroyo led them up into the hills. When the arroyo ended in a box canyon, a switchbacked trail gave them access to the plateau above. On this rugged moor, with the sea in view all around, groves of big oak trees had been planted long ago. Now some of the trees were festooned with walkways and staircases, and little wooden rooms high in their branches. These tree houses reminded Maya of Zygote, and she was not at all surprised to learn that among the prominent citizens of the island were several of the Zygote ectogenes- Rachel, Tiu, Simud, Emily- they had all come to roost here, and helped to build a way of life that Hiroko presumably would have been proud to see. Indeed there were some who said that the islanders hid Hiroko and the lost colonists in one of the more remote of these oak groves, giving them an area to roam in without fear of discovery. Looking around, Maya thought it was quite possible; it made as much sense as any other Hiroko rumor, and more than most. But there was no way of knowing. And it didn't matter anyway; if Hiroko was determined to hide, as she must have been if she was alive, then where she hid was not worth worrying about. Why anyone bothered with it was beyond Maya. Which was nothing new; everything to do with Hiroko had always baffled her.

The northern end of Minus One Island was less hilly than the rest, and as they came down onto this plain they spotted most of the island's conventional buildings, cl.u.s.tered together. These were devoted to the island's olympiads, and they had a consciously Greek look to them: stadium, amphitheater, a sacred grove of towering sequoia, and out on a point over the sea, a small pillared temple, made of some white stone that was not marble but looked like it- alabaster, or diamond-coated salt. Temporary yurt camps had been erected on the hills above. Several thousand people milled about this scene; much of the island's population, apparently, and a good number of visitors from around h.e.l.las Basin- the games were still mostly a h.e.l.las affair. So they were surprised to find Sax in the stadium, helping to do the measurements for the throwing events. He gave them a hug, nodding in his diffuse way. "Annarita is throwing the discus today," he said. "It should be good."

And so on that fine afternoon Maya and Michel joined Sax out on the track, and forgot about everything but the day at hand. They stood on the inner field, getting as close to events as they wanted. The pole vault was Maya's favorite, it amazed her- more than any other event it ill.u.s.trated to her the possibilities of Martian g. Although it clearly required a lot of technique to take advantage of it: the bounding yet controlled sprint, the precise planting of the extremely long pole as it jounced forward, the leap, the pull, the vault itself, feet pointing at the sky; then the catapulted flight into s.p.a.ce, body upside down as the jumper shot above the flexing pole, and up, and up; then the neat twist over the bar (or not), and the long fall onto an airgel pad. The Martian record was fourteen meters and change, and the young man vaulting now, already winner for the day, was trying for fifteen, but failing. When he came down off the airgel pad Maya could see how very tall he was, with powerful shoulders and arms, but otherwise lean to the point of gauntness. The women vaulters waiting their turn looked much the same.

It was that way in all the events, everyone big and lean and hard-muscled- the new species, Maya thought, feeling small and weak and old. h.o.m.o martial h.o.m.o martial. Luckily she had good bones and still carried herself well, or else she would have been ashamed to walk among such creatures. As it was she stood unconscious of her own defiant grace, and watched as the woman discus thrower Sax had pointed out to them spun in an accelerating burst that flung the discus as if shot from a skeet-casting device. This Annarita was very tall, with a long torso and wide rangy shoulders, and lats like wings under her arms; neat b.r.e.a.s.t.s, squashed by a singlet; narrow hips, but a full strong bottom, over powerful long thighs- yes, a real beauty among the beauties. And so strong; though it was clear that it was the swiftness of her spin that propelled her discus so far. "One hundred eighty meters!" Michel exclaimed, smiling. "What joy for her."

And the woman was pleased. They all applied themselves intensely in the moment of effort, then stood around relaxing, or trying to relax- stretching muscles, joking with each other. There were no officials, no scoreboard, only some helpers like Sax. People took turns running events other than their own. Races started with a loud bang. Times were clocked by hand, and called out and logged onto a screen. Shot puts still looked heavy, their throwing awkward. Javelins flew forever. High jumpers were only able to clear four meters, to Maya and Michel's surprise. Long jumpers, twenty meters; which was a most amazing sight, the jumpers flailing their limbs through a leap that lasted four or five seconds, and crossed a big part of the field.

In the late afternoon they held the sprints. As with the rest of the events, men and women competed together, all wearing singlets. "I wonder if s.e.xual dimorphism itself is lessened in these people," Michel said as he watched a group warm up. "Everything is so much less genderized for them- they do the same work, the women only get pregnant once in their lives, or never- they do the same sports, they build up the same muscles...."

Maya fully believed in the reality of the new species, but at this notion she scoffed: "Why do you always watch the women then?"

Michel grinned. "Oh I I can tell the difference, but I come from the old species. I just wonder if they can." can tell the difference, but I come from the old species. I just wonder if they can."

Maya laughed out loud. "Come on. I mean look there, and there," pointing. "Proportions, faces...."

"Yeah yeah. But still, it's not like, you know, Bardot and Atlas, if you know what I mean."

"I do. These people are prettier."

Michel nodded. It was as he had said from the start, Maya thought; on Mars it would finally become clear that they were all little G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and should live life in a sacred joyfulness.... Gender, however, remained clear at first glance. Although she too came from the old species; maybe it was just her. But that runner over there... ah. A woman, but with short powerful legs, narrow hips, flat chest. And that one next to her? Again female- no, male! A high jumper, as graceful as a dancer, though all the high jumpers were having trouble: Sax muttered something about plants. Well, still; even if some of them were a bit androgynous, for most it was the usual matter of instant recognition.

"You see what I mean," Michel said, observing her silence.

"Sort of. I wonder if these youngsters really think about it differently, though. If they have ended patriarchy, then there must necessarily be a new social balance of the s.e.xes...."

"That's certainly what the Dorsa Brevians would claim."

"Then I wonder if that's not the problem with Terran immigration. Not the numbers themselves, but the fact that so many people arriving from Earth are coming from older cultures. It's like they're arriving out of a time machine from the Middle Ages, and suddenly here are all these huge Minoans, women and men much the same-"

"And a new collective unconscious."

"Yes, I suppose. And so the newcomers can't cope. They cl.u.s.ter in immigrant ghettos, or new towns entire, and keep their traditions and their ties to home, and hate everything here, and all the xenophobia and misogyny in those old cultures breaks out again, against both their own women and the native girls." She had heard of problems in the cities, in fact, in Sheffield and all over east Tharsis. Sometimes young native women beat the s.h.i.+t out of surprised immigrant a.s.sailants; sometimes the opposite occurred. "And the young natives don't like it. They feel like they're letting monsters into their midst."

Michel grimaced. "Terran cultures were all neurotic at their core, and when the neurotic is confronted with the sane, it usually gets more neurotic than ever. And the sane don't know what to do."

"So they press to stop immigration. And put us at risk of another war."

But Michel was distracted by the beginning of another race. The races were fast, but not anywhere near two and a half times as fast as Terra's, despite the gravity difference. It was the same problem as the high jumpers' plants, but continuous through the race: the runners took off with such acceleration that they had to stay very low to keep from bounding too high away from the track. In the sprints they stayed canted forward throughout, as if desperately trying to avoid falling on their faces, their legs pumping furiously. In the longer dashes they finally straightened up near the end, and began to scull at the air as if swimming forward from an upright position, their strides longer and longer until they seemed to be leaping foward like one-leg-at-a-time kangaroos. The sight reminded Maya of Peter and Jackie, the two speedsters of Zygote, running the beach under the polar dome; on their own they had developed a similar style.

Using these techniques, the winner of the fifty-meter dash ran the race in 4.4 seconds; the winner of the hundred in 8.3; the two hundred in 17.1; and the four hundred in 37.9; but in each case the balance problems engendered by their speeds seemed to keep them from a full sprint the way Maya remembered seeing it in her youth.

In the longer races, the running style was a graceful bounding pace, similar to what they had called the Martian lope back at Underhill, where they had tried it without much success in their tight walkers. Now it was like flight. A young woman led most of the ten-thousand-meter race, and she had enough in reserve to kick hard at the end, accelerating throughout the entire last lap, faster and faster until she gazelled around the track only touching down every few meters, lapping some of the other racers who seemed to toil as she flew past; it was lovely; Maya shouted herself hoa.r.s.e. She held to Michel's arm, she felt dizzy, tears sprang to her eyes even as she laughed; it was so strange and so marvelous to see these new creatures, and yet none of them knew, none of them!

She liked to see women beating men, though they themselves did not seem to remark it. Women won slightly more often in long distances and hurdles, men in the sprints. Sax said that testosterone helped with strength but caused cramping eventually, hampering long-distance efforts. Clearly most of the events were a matter of technique in any case. And so one saw what one wanted, she thought. Back on Earth- but these people would have laughed if she had started a sentence with that phrase. Back on Earth, so what? There had been all sorts of bizarre and ugly behavior back in the nest world, but why worry about that when a hurdle was approaching and another runner advancing in your peripheral vision? Fly, fly! She shouted herself hoa.r.s.e.

At the end of the day the field athletes, finished with their events, cleared a pa.s.sageway into the stadium and around the track; and a single runner jogged in, to sustained applause and wild cheers. And it was Nirgal! Starting hoa.r.s.e already, Maya's shouting was ragged, almost painful.

The cross-country racers had started at the southern end of Minus One that morning, barefoot and naked. They had run over a hundred kilometers, over the heavy corrugations of Minus One's central moors, a devilish network of ravines, grabens, pingo holes, alases, escarpments and rockfalls- nothing too deep, apparently, so that many different routes were possible, making it as much an orienteering event as a run; but difficult all the way; and to come jogging in at four P.M. was apparently a phenomenal accomplishment. The next racer wouldn't be coming in until after sunset, people said. So Nirgal took a victory lap, looking dusty and exhausted, like a refugee from a disaster; then he put on pants, and ducked his head for his laurel wreath, and accepted a hundred hugs.

Maya was the last of these, and Nirgal laughed happily to see her. His skin was white with dried sweat, his lips caked and cracking, hair dust-colored, eyes bloodshot. Ribby and wiry, almost emaciated. He gulped water from a bottle, drained it, refused another. "Thanks, I'm not that dehydrated, I hit a reservoir there around Jiri Ki."

"So which way did you take?" someone called.

"Don't ask!" he said with a laugh, as if it had been too ugly to own up to. Later Maya learned that people's routes were left un.o.bserved and undescribed, a kind of secret. These cross-country races were popular in a certain group, and Nirgal was a champion, Maya knew, particularly at the longer distances; people spoke of his routes as if they involved teleportation. This was apparently a short race for him to win, so he was especially pleased.

Now he walked over to a bench and sat down. "Let me get myself together a bit," he said, and sat watching the last sprints, looking distracted and happy. Maya sat next to him and stared; she couldn't get enough of him. He had been living on the land for the longest time, part of a feral farmer-and-gatherer co-op... it was a life Maya could scarcely imagine, and so she tended to think of Nirgal as in limbo, banished to an outback netherworld, where he survived like a rat or a plant. But here he was, exhausted but exclaiming at a four-hundred-meter race's photo finish, exactly the vital Nirgal she remembered from that h.e.l.l's Gate tour so long ago- glory years for him as well as her. But looking at him, it seemed unlikely that he thought of the past in the same way she did. She felt in thrall to her past, to history; but something other than history was his fulfillment now- his destiny survived and put aside like an old book, and now here he was, in the moment, laughing in the sun, having beat a whole pack of wild young animals at their own game, by his wits alone and his feel for Mars, and his lung-gom-pa lung-gom-pa technique and his hard legs. He had always been a runner, she could see in her mind Jackie and him das.h.i.+ng over the beach after Peter as if it were yesterday- the other two had been faster, but he had gone on all day sometimes, round and round the little lake, for no reason anyone could tell. "Oh Nirgal." She leaned over and kissed his dusty hair, felt him hugging her. She laughed, and looked around at all the beautiful giants around the field, the athletes ruddy in the sunset, and she felt life slipping into her again. Nirgal could do that. technique and his hard legs. He had always been a runner, she could see in her mind Jackie and him das.h.i.+ng over the beach after Peter as if it were yesterday- the other two had been faster, but he had gone on all day sometimes, round and round the little lake, for no reason anyone could tell. "Oh Nirgal." She leaned over and kissed his dusty hair, felt him hugging her. She laughed, and looked around at all the beautiful giants around the field, the athletes ruddy in the sunset, and she felt life slipping into her again. Nirgal could do that.

Late that night, however, she took Nirgal aside, after an outdoor feast in the cool evening air, and she told him all her fears about the latest conflict between Earth and Mars. Michel was off talking to people; Sax sat on the bench across from them, listening silently.

"Jackie and the Free Mars leaders.h.i.+p are talking a hard line, but it won't work. The Terrans won't be stopped. It could lead to war, I tell you, war."

Nirgal stared at her. He still took her seriously, G.o.d bless his beautiful soul, and Maya put her arm around him like she would have her own son, and squeezed him hard, hard.

"What do you think we should do?" he asked.

"We have to keep Mars open. We have to fight for that, and you have to be part of it. We need you more than anyone else. You were the one that had the greatest impact during our visit to Earth; in essence you're the most important Martian in Terran history, because of that visit. They still write books and articles about what you do, did you know that? There's a feral movement getting very strong in North America and Australia, and growing everywhere. The Turtle Island people have almost entirely reorganized the American west, it's scores of feral co-ops now. They're listening to you. And it's the same here. I've been doing what I can, we just fought them in the election campaign for the whole length of the Grand Ca.n.a.l. And I tried to counter Jackie a bit. That worked a little, I think, but it's bigger than Jackie. She's gone to Irishka, and of course it makes sense for the Reds to oppose immigration, they think that will help protect their precious rocks. So Free Mars and the Reds may be in the same camp for the first time, because of this issue. They'll be very hard to beat. But if they aren't...."

Nirgal nodded. He took her point. She could have kissed him. She squeezed him across the shoulders, leaned over and kissed his cheek, nuzzled his neck. "I love you, Nirgal."

"And I love you," he said with an easy laugh, looking a bit surprised. "But look, I don't want to get involved in a political campaign. No, listen- I agree that it's important, and I agree we should keep Mars open, and help Earth out through the population surge. That's what I've always said, that's what I told them when we were there. But I won't get into the political inst.i.tutions. I can't. I'll make my contribution the way I did before, do you understand? I cover a lot of ground, I see a lot of people. I'll talk to them. I'll start giving talks to meetings again. I'll do what I can at that level."

Maya nodded. "That would be great, Nirgal. That's the level we need to reach anyway."

Sax cleared his throat. "Nirgal, have you ever met the mathematician Bao?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Ah."

Sax slumped back into his reverie. Maya talked for a while about the problems she and Michel had discussed that day- how immigration worked as a time machine, bringing up little islands of the past into the present. "That was John's worry too, and now it's happening."

Nirgal nodded. "We have to have faith in the areophany. And in the const.i.tution. They have to live by it once they're here, the government should insist on that."

"Yes. But the people, the natives I mean...."

"Some kind of a.s.similationist ethic. We need to draw everyone in."

"Yes."

"Okay, Maya. I'll see what I can do." He smiled at her; then suddenly he was falling asleep, right before their eyes. "Maybe we can pull it off one more time, eh?"

"Maybe."

"I've got to get flat. Good night. I love you."

They sailed northwest from Minus One, and the island slipped under the horizon like a dream of ancient Greece, and they were on the open sea again, with its high broad sloppy groundswell. Hard trade winds poured out of the northeast for every hour of their pa.s.sage, tearing off whitecaps that made the dark purple water look even darker. Wind and water made a continuous roar; it was hard to hear, everything had to be shouted. The crew gave up speech entirely, and worked on setting the maximum amount of sail possible, forcing the s.h.i.+p's AI to deal with their enthusiasm; the mast sails stretched or tightened with each gust like bird's wings, so that the wind had a visual component to match the invisible kinetics of Maya's buffeted skin, and she stood in the bow looking up and back, taking it all in.

On the third day the wind blew even harder, and the boat got up to its hydroplaning speed, the hull lifting up onto a flat section at the stern and then skipping over the waves, knocking up far more spray than was comfortable for anyone on deck; Maya retreated to the first cabin, where she could look out the bow windows and witness the spectacle. Such speed! Occasionally crew members would come in sopping, to catch their breath and suck down some java. One of them told Maya that they were adjusting their course to take account of the h.e.l.las current; "this sea's the biggest example ever of the Coriolis force on a bathtub drain, it being round, and in the lat.i.tudes where trade winds push it the same way as the Coriolis force, so it's swirling clockwise around Minus One Island like a great big whirlpool. We have to adjust for it big time or we'll make landfall halfway to h.e.l.l's Gate."

The strong winds held, and flying along like they were, hydroplaning for most of the day, it took them only four days to sail across their radius of the h.e.l.las Sea. On the fourth afternoon the mast sails feathered in, and the hull fell back into the water, rolling in the whitecaps. To the north land appeared over all the horizon at once: the rim of the great basin, like a mountain range without any peaks: a giant berm of a slope, looking like the inner wall of a crater, which of course it was, but so much bigger than any normal crater that one could only barely see the arcing of the circle- exactly that that big- which struck Maya as beautiful, somehow. And as they closed on the land, and then coasted westward toward Odessa (their landfall had still been east of the town, despite their adjustment for the clockwise current) she could, by climbing up the shrouds into the wind, see the beach that the sea had created: a wide strand, backed by gra.s.s-covered dunes, with creek mouths cutting through here and there. A handsome coast, and near the outskirts of Odessa; part of Odessa's handsomeness then, part of her town. big- which struck Maya as beautiful, somehow. And as they closed on the land, and then coasted westward toward Odessa (their landfall had still been east of the town, despite their adjustment for the clockwise current) she could, by climbing up the shrouds into the wind, see the beach that the sea had created: a wide strand, backed by gra.s.s-covered dunes, with creek mouths cutting through here and there. A handsome coast, and near the outskirts of Odessa; part of Odessa's handsomeness then, part of her town.

Off to the west, the rugged peaks of the h.e.l.lespontus Montes began to poke over the waves, distant and small, very different in character from the smooth northern rise. So they had to be close. Maya climbed up farther in the shrouds. And there it was, on the rise of the northern slope- the topmost rows of parks and buildings, all green and white, turquoise and terra-cotta. And then the big bowed middle of town, like an enormous amphitheater looking down on the stage of the harbor, which came over the horizon white lighthouse first, then the statue of Arkady, then the breakwater, then the thousand masts of the marina, and the jumble of roofs and trees behind the stained concrete of the corniche seawall. Odessa.

She scampered down the shroud like a crew member, almost, and hugged a few of them and Michel, feeling herself grin, feeling the wind pour over them. They came into the harbor and the sails furled into their masts like touched snails. They puttered into a slip, and walked down a gang-plank, and along the dock, up through the marina and into the corniche park. And there they were. The blue trolley still clang-clanged on the street behind the park.

Maya and Michel walked down the corniche hand in hand, looking at all the food vendors and the small outdoor cafes across the street. All the names seemed new, not a single one the same, but that was restauranteering for you; they all looked much as they had before, and the city rising up terrace by terrace behind the seafront was just as they remembered it: "There's the Odeon, there's the Sinter-"

"That's where I worked for Deep Waters, I wonder what they all do now?"

"I think maintaining sea level keeps a good number of them busy. There's always some kind of water work."

"True."

And then they came to the old Praxis apartment building, its walls now mostly ivy-covered, the white stucco discolored, the blue shutters faded. In need of a bit of work, as Michel said, but Maya loved it that way: old. There on the third floor she spotted their old kitchen window and balcony, and Spencer's there beside it. Spencer himself was supposed to be inside.

And they went in the gate, and said h.e.l.lo to the new concierge, and indeed Spencer was inside, sort of: he had died that afternoon.

It shouldn't have mattered so much. Maya hadn't seen Spencer Jackson in years, she had never seen that much of him, even when he lived next door; never known him at all well. No one had. Spencer was one of the least comprehensible of the First Hundred, which was saying a lot. His own man, his own life. And he had lived as part of the surface world under an a.s.sumed ident.i.ty, a spy, working for the security gestapo in Kasei Vallis for almost twenty years, until the night they had blown the town away and rescued Sax, and Spencer as well. Twenty years as someone else, with a false past, and no one to talk to; what would that do to one? But then Spencer had always been withdrawn, private, self-contained. So maybe it hadn't mattered as much to him. He had seemed all right in their years in Odessa, always in therapy with Michel of course, and a very heavy drinker at times; but easy to have as a neighbor, a good friend, quiet, solid, reliable in his ways. And he certainly had continued to work, his production with the Bogdanovist designers had never flagged, neither during his double life or after. A great designer. And his pen sketches were beautiful. But what would twenty years of duplicity do to you? Maybe all his ident.i.ties had become a.s.sumed. Maya had never thought about it; she couldn't imagine it; and now, packing Spencer's things in his empty apartment, she wondered that she had never even tried before- that somehow Spencer had managed to live in such a way that one did not even wonder about him. It was a very strange accomplishment. Crying, she said to Michel, "You have to wonder about everybody!"

He only nodded. Spencer had been one of his best friends.

And then in the next few days an amazing number of people came to Odessa for the funeral. Sax, Nadia, Mikhail, Zeyk and n.a.z.ik, Roald, Coyote, Mary, Ursula, Marina and Vlad, Jurgen and Sibilla, Steve and Marion, George and Edvard, Samantha, really it was like a convocation of the remaining Hundred and a.s.sociated issei. And Maya stared around at all their old familiar faces, and realized with a sinking heart that they would be meeting like this for a long time to come. Gathering from around the world each time one fewer, in a final game of musical chairs, until one day one of them would get a call and realize they were the last one left. A horrible fate. But not one that Maya expected to have to endure; she would die before that, surely. The quick decline would get her, or something else; she would step in front of a trolley if she had to. Anything to avoid such a fate. Well- not anything. To step in front of a trolley would be both too cowardly and too brave, at one and the same time. She trusted she would die before it came to that. Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it. Maybe the final survivor of the First Hundred wouldn't be such a bad thing anyway. New friends, a new life- wasn't that what she was searching for now? So that these sad old faces were just a hindrance to her?

She stood grimly through the short memorial service and the quick eulogies. Those who spoke looked somewhat perplexed as to what they could say. A big crowd of engineers had come from Da Vinci, Spencer's colleagues from his design years. Clearly a lot of people had been fond of him, it was surprising, even though Maya had been fond of him herself. Curious that such a hidden man could evoke such a response. Perhaps they had all projected onto his blankness, made their own Spencer and loved him as part of themselves. They all did that anyway; that was life.

But now he was gone. They went down to the harbor and the engineers let loose a helium balloon, and when it reached a hundred meters Spencer's ashes began to spill out, in a slow trickle. Part of the haze, the blue of the sky, the bra.s.s of sunset.