But one night he came to from a reverie, having heard some voice say “Hiroko.”
“What’s that?” he said.
“Hiroko. We met her flying around Elysium, up on its north slope.”
It was a young woman speaking, her face innocent of any knowledge of who he was.
“You saw her yourself?” he said sharply.
“Yes. She’s not hiding or anything. She said she liked my flier.”
“I don’t know,” an older man said. A Mars vet, an issei immigrant from the early years, his face battered by wind and cosmic rays until it looked like leather. Voice hoarse: “I heard she was down in the chaos where the first hidden colony used to be, working on the new harbors in the south bay.”
Other voices cut in: Hiroko had been seen here, had been seen there, had been confirmed dead, had gone to Earth; Nirgal had seen her there on Earth—
“This here’s Nirgal,” one said to the last comment, pointing and grinning. “He should be able to confirm or deny that one!”
Nirgal, taken aback, nodded. “I didn’t see her on Earth,” he said. “There were rumors only.”
“Same as here, then.”
Nirgal shrugged.
The young woman, flushed now that she knew who Nirgal was, insisted she had met Hiroko herself. Nirgal watched her closely. This was different; no one had ever made such a direct claim to him (except in Switzerland). She looked worried, defensive, but was holding her ground. “I talked with her, I say!”
Why lie about something like that? And how would it be possible for someone to get fooled about it? Impersonators? But why do that?
Despite himself Nirgal’s pulse had quickened, and he was warmer. The thing was, it was possible Hiroko would do something like this; hide but not hide; live somewhere without bothering to contact the family left behind. There was no obvious motive for it, it would be weird, inhumane, inhuman; and perfectly within Hiroko’s range of possibilities. His mother was a kind of insane person, he had understood that for years— a charismatic who led people effortlessly, but was mad. Capable of almost anything.
If she was alive.
He did not want to hope again. He did not want to go chasing off after the mere mention of her name! But he was watching this girl’s face as if he could read the truth from it, as if he could catch the very image of Hiroko still there in her pupils! Others were asking the questions he would have asked, so he could stay silent and listen, he did not have to make her overselfconscious. Slowly she told the whole story; she and some friends had been flying clockwise around Elysium, and when they stopped for the night up on the new peninsula made by the Phlegra Montes, they had walked down to the icy edge of the North Sea where they had spotted a new settlement, and there in the crowd of construction workers was Hiroko; and several of the construction crew were her old associates, Gene, and Rya, and Iwao, and the rest of the First Hundred who had followed Hiroko ever since the days of the lost colony. The flying group had been amazed, but the lost colonists had been faintly perplexed at their amazement. “No one hides anymore,” Hiroko had told the young woman, after complimenting her flier. “We spend most of our time near Dorsa Brevia, but we’ve been up here for months now.”
And there it was. The woman seemed perfectly sincere, there was no reason to believe she were lying, or subject to hallucination.
Nirgal didn’t want to have to think about this. But he had been considering leaving Shining Mesa anyway, and having a look around at other places. So he could. And— well— he was going to have to at least have a look. Shigata ga nai!
• • •
The next day the conversation seemed much less compelling. Nirgal didn’t know what to think. He called Sax on the wrist, told him what he had heard. “Is it possible, Sax? Is it possible?”
A strange look passed over Sax’s face. “It’s possible,” he said. “Yes, of course. I told you— when you were sick, and unconscious— that she. . . .” He was picking his words, as he so often did, with a squint of concentration. “— that I saw her myself. In that storm I was caught out in. She led me to my car.”
Nirgal stared at the little blinking image. “I don’t remember that.”
“Ah. I’m not surprised.”
“So you . . . you think she escaped from Sabishii.”
“Yes.”
“But how likely was that?”
“I don’t know the— the likelihood. That would be difficult to judge.”
“But could they have slipped away?”
“The Sabishii mohole mound is a maze.”
“So you think they escaped.”