The Martians

Chapter 16 Keeping the Flame

Once during one of his long runs across the land, after he had given up looking for Hiroko but before he had stopped the movement of the search, Nirgal crossed the great dark forest of Cimmeria, south of Elysium. In the forest it was slow going. The trees were tall fir and linden trees, with a dense understory of Hokkaido pine and birch. The sun lanced through the thick roof of the canopy in bright pencils of light, which struck pads of dark moss, curled ferns, wild onions, and mats of electric green lichen. In those shadows and through the myriad parallel shafts of buttery light he ran slowly for day after day, lost but unconcerned, as a general western push would eventually lead him out of the forest to some point on the Great Canal. The forest silence was broken only by the chirps of birds, the deep soughing chorus of wind in the pine needles above, and twice the distant yodeling of coyotes, or wolves. Once something big that he never saw crashed away through brush. He had been running for sixty days straight.

Low crater rings were the only relief, all softened and buried under trees, leaf mats, humus, and rocky carpets of moss. Most of the craters were rimless, so that jogging along he would come on the arc of a sunken round room, and through branches spy a little round meadow, or a shallow round lake, infilling with meadow from the sides. Usually he circled them and continued on his way. But in one little sunken meadow there stood the ruins of a white-stone temple.

He dropped down the gentle slope of the depression, approached at a walk, feeling hesitant. The stone of the temple was alabaster, and very white. It reminded him of the white-stone village in Medusa Fossa. It looked Greek, though it was round. Twelve slender white Ionic pillars, made of stacked drums of stone, set around the flat base like the points of a clock. No roof, which made it look even more like a Greek ruin, or a British henge. Lichen was growing in the cracks of its base.

Nirgal walked around and through it, suddenly aware of the silence. There was no wind, no sound of bird or beast. All was in shadow; the world had stopped. Apollo might step out of the gloom. Something reminded him of Zygote; perhaps simply the white of the columns, somewhat like Zygote’s dome, back there in his past which now seemed to him like a fairy tale from another age, a tale with a child hero and an animal mother. The notion that that fairy tale and the moment he lived in were parts of the same life—his life—it took a leap of faith that he was incapable of making. Hard to imagine how it would feel a century or two on, in other words what it felt like now for Nadia and Maya and the rest of the issei. . . .

Something moved and he jumped. But it was nothing. He shook his head, touched the smooth cool surface of a column. A human mark in the forest. Human marks, both temple and forest. In this ancient eroded crater.

Two old people appeared across the clearing, walking to the temple, unaware of Nirgal. His heart leaped in him like a child trying to escape—

But they were strangers. He had never seen them before. Old men; Caucasian; bald; wrinkled; one short, the other shorter.

Both now looking at him suspiciously.

“Hello!” he said.

They approached, one pointing a dart gun at the ground.

He said, “What is this place?”

One stopped, held the other back by the arm. “Aren’t you Nirgal?”

Nirgal nodded.

They glanced at each other.

“Come back to our place,” the same one said. “We’ll tell you there.”

They hiked up through the woods covering the old crater wall, to the edge of the crater, where stood a little cottage, constructed of logs, roofed by dark red slates. The men led Nirgal into this home of theirs, Nirgal ducking under the lintel.

It was dim inside. One window overlooked the crater. The tops of the monument’s pillars were visible in the treetops.

They served Nirgal an odd herb tea, made from a kind of pond weed. They were issei, they said—not only issei, but members of the First Hundred. Edvard Perrin and George Berkovic. Edvard did most of the talking. Friends, they were. And colleagues of Phyllis Boyle. The monument in the crater was a memorial to her. The three of them had built a similar structure long ago, out of ice drums, for fun. On the first trip to the North Pole, with Nadia and Ann, in m-year 2.

“In the beginning,” George added with a flinty smile.

They told him their story, and he saw it had once been oft-repeated. Edvard told most of it, with George adding comments, or finishing some of Edvard’s trailing sentences.

“We were there when it all came down. There wasn’t any reason for it. They screwed it up when it all could have been so easy. I’m not saying we’re bitter, but we are. 2061 wasn’t necessary.”

“It could have been avoided, if they had listened to Phyllis. It was all Arkady’s fault.”

“Bogdanov’s stupid confidence. Whereas Phyllis had a plan that would have worked fine, without all the destruction and death.”

“Without the war.”

“She saved us all when we were marooned on Clarke. After saving everyone on Mars before that.”

They glowed dimly as they remembered her. Happy to have their tale to tell. They had survived ’61, they had worked for peace in the years between revolutions, helping UNTA in Burroughs to coordinate mining efforts in Vastitas, sequencing them so that sites in danger of inundation by the north sea were strip-mined with enormous speed before the ice and water buried them. Those were the glory years, a moment in history when the tremendous power of technology could be wielded on the landscape without consequences—no environmental impact statements, no scars that would last . . . billions of dollars of metals extracted before the ice overwhelmed the sites.

“That was when we found this place,” George said.

“Amazonia was full of metals,” Edvard added. “No way we got it all out.”

“And now, of course,” Edvard said, and sipped his tea.

Silence fell. George poured more tea, and Edvard began again.

“We were in Burroughs when the second revolution began, working for UNTA. Phyllis was dead at that point. Killed by red terrorists.”

“In Kasei.”

Nirgal kept his face still.

They watched him.

“Maya, in fact. Maya killed Phyllis. So we have heard.”

Nirgal stared back at them, sipping his tea.

They gave up the gambit. “Well, it’s well-known. She was certainly capable of it. She would be the one to do it. Murderous. I’m still sick about it. Sick.”

“I can’t believe it happened.”

“I sometimes wonder if it did. If maybe Phyllis got away and disappeared, like Hiroko is supposed to have. They never did find her body. I never saw it. We opposed Free Mars, we opposed you.” Glancing defiantly at him as he said it.

“We despised the red guerrillas. At least until—”

“But our special hatred is reserved for our crèche-mates, isn’t it.”

“It’s always that way.”

“Nadia, Sax, Maya—death and mass destruction. That’s all they brought us with their so-called ideals. Death and mass destruction.”

“Not your fault,” George told Nirgal.

“But if Phyllis had lived . . . We were in Burroughs during the protests. The standoff with UNTA. The flooding of the city—the deliberate flooding of the greatest city on Mars! Phyllis would never have let that happen.”

“We were on the planes that evacuated.”

“Five planes, five giant planes. We flew to Sheffield. So we were there for that one too. Death and destruction. We tried to mediate. We tried to do what Phyllis would have done.”

“Tried to mediate.”

“Yes, to mediate, between UNTA and the reds. It was impossible, but we did it. We did it. The cable would have gone twice if it weren’t for us. It’s a monument to Phyllis just as much as our little gazebo down there. She was the first advocate of the elevator. A visionary. So we did what we could.”

“After the truce we went east.”

“By piste where it was still possible. In rovers where it wasn’t. We separated at Underhill, didn’t we.”

“And met again on Elysium. But only after the most amazing adventures I’ve ever heard of.”

“Crossing the north sea ice.”

“Slipping across the bridge over La Manche.”

“Walking all the way across the Hump. Finally we reunited, here, and helped to build Cimmeria Harbor. Lobbying all the while for the name Boyle Harbor, to match Boone Harbor in Tempe.”

“And all the places named Bogdanov.”

“But no such luck. She’s a forgotten hero. But someday justice will be done. History will judge. Meanwhile we’re helping to establish Cimmeria, and doing some prospecting in the forest.”

Nirgal said, “Ever hear anything of Hiroko?”

They looked at each other. Nirgal had no idea what their glances meant, but there was quite a silent conversation going on between them.

“No. Hiroko . . . she disappeared so long ago. We never heard from her again. But she’s your mother, no?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t hear from her?”

“No. She disappeared in Sabishii. When UNTA burned it down.” Reminding them. “Some say she was killed then. Others say that she got away with Iwao and Gene and Rya and the rest of them. Lately I heard they may have come to Elysium. Or to somewhere near here.”

They frowned. “I’ve never heard that, have you?”

“No. But they wouldn’t have told us, would they.”

“No.”

“But you’ve seen nothing out here,” Nirgal said. “No settlements or camps?”

“No. Well . . .”

“There are settlements all over. But they all come into town. They’re all natives like you. A few Kurds.”

“No one unusual.”

“And so all the settlements are accounted for, you think?”

“I think so.”

“I think so.”

Nirgal considered it. These were two of only a few, maybe a half dozen, of the First Hundred who had sided with the UNTA all the way. Would Hiroko reveal herself to them? Would she try to hide from them? If they knew of her presence, would they tell him?

But they didn’t know. He sat there in the big comfortable armchair, falling asleep. There was nothing to know.

Around him the two wizened old men moved quietly about the dim room. Old turtleheads, deep in their dark cave. But they had loved Phyllis. Both of them. As friends. Or maybe it hadn’t been like that. Maybe it hadn’t been that simple. However it had happened, they were the partners now. Maybe they had always been the partners. In the First Hundred that might have been a difficulty. Phyllis of course seemed an unlikely refuge. All the better perhaps. Who knew what had happened in the beginning. The past was a mystery. Even to those who had been there and lived it. And of course even at the time none of it had made sense, not the kind of sense people talked about afterward. Now they puttered about in the dusk. He felt the exhaustion of his long run take hold of him.

Let him sleep.

We should tell him.

No.

Why not?

There’s no need. Everyone will find out soon enough.

When things start dying. Phyllis wouldn’t have wanted that.

But they killed her. So they don’t have her here to save them.

So they get what they deserve? Everything dying?

Everything won’t die.

It will if it works the way they want. She wouldn’t have wanted that.

We had no choice. You know that. They would have killed us.

Would they? I’m not so sure. I think you wanted it. They kill Phyllis, and so we—

We had no choice I say! Come on. They could have gotten the locations from the records. And who’s to say they aren’t right anyway.

Revenge.

Okay, revenge. Say it was. Serves them right. This was never their planet.

Much later Nirgal found himself suddenly awake, and cold. Neck sore from being bent in the big armchair. The old men were slumped at the kitchen table over books, as still as wax figurines. One of them was asleep, dreaming the other’s dream. The other watched it in the air. Their fire had banked to gray coals. Nirgal whispered that he had to leave. He got up and walked out into a frigid predawn, walked for a while and then ran again through the dark trees, running as if to escape something.