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 unobserved 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 Hell’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 technique and his hard legs. He had always been a runner, she could see in her mind Jackie and him dashing 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 leadership 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, God 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 Canal. 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 institutions. 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 constitution. 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 assimilationist 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 passage, 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 ship’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 Hellas current; “this sea’s the biggest example ever of the Coriolis force on a bathtub drain, it being round, and in the latitudes 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 Hell’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 Hellas 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 norma
l crater that one could only barely see the arcing of the circle— exactly 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 grass-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 Hellespontus 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 cafés 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 hello 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 assumed identity, 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 identities had become assumed. 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 Nazik, 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 associated 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 brass of sunset.
In the days that followed the crowd dispersed, and Maya wandered Odessa nosing through used-furniture shops and sitting on benches on the corniche, watching the sun bounce over the water. It was lovely to be in Odessa again, but she felt the funereal chill of Spencer’s death much more than she would have expected. It cast a pall over even the beauty of this most beautiful town; it reminded her that in coming back here and moving into the old building, they were attempting the impossible— trying to go back, trying to deny time’s passing. Hopeless— everything was passing— everything they did was the last time they would ever do it. Habits were such lies, such lies, lulling them into the feeling that there was something that was lasting, when really nothing lasted. This was the last time she would ever sit on this bench. If she came down to the corniche tomorrow and sat on this same bench, it would again be the last time, and there would again be nothing lasting about it. Last time after last time, so it would go, on and on, always one final moment after the next, finality following finality in seamless endless succession. She could not grasp it, really. Words couldn’t say it, ideas couldn’t articulate it. But she could feel it, like the edge of a wave front pushing ever outward, or a constant wind in her mind, rushing things along so fast it was hard to think, hard to really feel them. At night in bed she would think, this is the last time for this night, and she would hug Michel hard, hard, as if she could stop it happening if she squeezed hard enough. Even Michel, even the little dual world they had built—”Oh Michel,” she said, frightened. “It goes so fast.”
He nodded, mouth pursed. He no longer tried to give her therapy, he no longer tried always and ever to put the brightest face on things; he treated her as an equal now, and her moods as some kind of truth, which was only her due. But sometimes sh
e missed being comforted.
Michel offered no rebuttal, however, no hopeful comment. Spencer had been his friend. Before, in the Odessa years, when he and Maya had fought, he had sometimes gone to Spencer’s to sleep, and no doubt to talk late into the night over glasses of whiskey. If anyone could draw out Spencer it would have been Michel. Now he sat on the bed looking out the window, a tired old man. They never fought anymore. Maya felt it would probably do her some good if they did; clear out the cobwebs, get charged again. But Michel would not respond to any provocation. He himself didn’t care to fight, and as he was no longer giving her therapy, he wouldn’t do it for her sake either. No. They sat side by side on the bed. If someone walked in, Maya thought, they would observe a couple so old and worn that they did not even bother to speak anymore. Just sat together, alone in their own thoughts.
“Well,” Michel said after the longest time, “but here we are.”
Maya smiled. The hopeful remark, made at last, at great effort. He was a brave man. And quoting the first words spoken on Mars. John had had a knack, in a funny way, for saying things. “Here we are.” It was stupid, really. And yet might he have meant something more than the John-obvious assertion, had it been more than the thoughtless exclamation that anyone might make? “Here we are,” she repeated, testing the phrase on her tongue. On Mars. First an idea, then a place. And now they were in a nearly empty apartment bedroom, not the one they had lived in before but a corner apartment, with views out big windows to south and west. The great curve of sea and mountains said Odessa, nowhere else. The old plaster walls were stained, the wood floors dark and gleaming; it had taken many years of life to achieve that patination. Living room through one door, hall to the kitchen through the other. They had a mattress on a frame, a couch, some chairs, some unopened boxes— their things from before, pulled out of storage. Odd how a few sticks of furniture hung around like that. It made her feel better to see them. They would unpack, deploy the furniture, use it until it became invisible. Habit would once again cloak the naked reality of the world. And thank God for that.