Blue Mars (67 page)

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 glass, cracking inside. Something freer, Maya turned and
walked away.

Michel found them a passenger schooner
, going to Odessa byway 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 crn a bump in the basin floor.

Their ship 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 ship leaped into the clear blue
swells, knocking up sheets of spray with every slam into an oncoming wave.
After the confinement of the Grand Canal’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 Hell’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 Hell’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 Hellas 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 canal,” 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 Ter-rans 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 space, 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 Canal.
“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 Canal. Oh there were whitewashed little fishing 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
grass flowing in the wind.

“It looks so empty,” Maya remarked as they sailed around the north
point and down the western shore. “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 fishing village, and dropped an anchor, which
remained clearly visible on the sandy bottom, ten meters below. They ferried
ashore using the schooner’s dinghy, passing some big sloops and several fishing
boats anchored 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 ec-togenes—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, clustered 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 Hellas Basin—the games were still mostly a Hellas 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 illustrated 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
space, 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.
Homo 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 breasts, 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
sexual 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 / 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 gods and
goddesses, 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 sexes.. . .”

“That’s certainly what the Dorsa Brevians would claim.”