So. High barren rocky land, dusted with snow wherever shade predominated, so that the shadows tended to be white. Little sign of life except in basins, where the ecopoets helped along their little collections. Clouds surged in from west in the winter, east in the summer. The southern hemisphere had the seasons reinforced by the perihelion-aphelion cycle, so that they really meant something. On Tyrrhena the winters were hard.
Nirgal wandered the basin after storms, looking to see what had blown in. Usually it was only a load of icy dust, but once he found an unplanted clutch of pale blue Jacob’s ladders, tucked between the splits in a breadloaf rock. Check the botanicals to see how it might interact with what was already there. Ten percent of introduced species survived, then ten percent of those became pests; that was invasion biology’s ten-ten rule, Yoshi said, almost the first rule of the discipline. “Ten meaning five to twenty, of course.” Once Nirgal weeded out a springtime arrival of common streetgrass, fearing it would take over everything. Same with tundra thistle. Another time a heavy dust load fell on an autumn wind. These dust storms were small compared to the old global southern-summer storms, but occasionally a hard wind would tear up the desert pavement somewhere and send the dust below flying. The atmosphere was thickening rapidly these days, fifteen millibars a year on average. Each year the winds had more force, and so thicker areas of pavement were at risk of being torn away. The dust that fell was usually a very thin layer, however, and often high in nitrates; so it was like a fertilizer, to be washed into the soil by the next rain.
Nirgal bought a position in the Sabishii construction coop he had looked into. He went in often to work on the town’s buildings. Up in the basin he did some assembly and testing of solo blimpgliders. His work cottage was a small building made of stone-stacked walls, with plates of sandstone for shingles. Between that work and the farming in the greenhouse and his potato patch, and the ecopoesis in the basin, his days were full.
He flew the completed blimpgliders down to Sabishii, and stayed in a little studio above in his old teacher Tariki’s rebuilt house in the old city, living there among ancient issei who looked and sounded very much like Hiroko. Art and Nadia lived there too, raising their daughter Nikki. Also in town were Vijjika, and Reull, and Annette, all old friends from his student days— and there was the university itself, no longer called the University of Mars, but simply Sabishii College— a small school that still ran in the amorphous style of the demimonde years, so that the more ambitious students went to Elysium or Sheffield or Cairo; those who came to Sabishii were those fascinated by the mystique of the demimonde years, or interested in the work of one of the issei professors.
All these people and activities made Nirgal feel strangely, even uncomfortably, at home. He put in long days as a plasterer and general laborer on various construction jobs his co-op had around town. He ate in rice bars and pubs. He slept in the loft in Tariki’s garage, and looked forward to the days he returned to the basin.
One night he was walking home late from a pub, asleep on his feet, when he passed a small man sleeping on a park bench: Coyote.
Nirgal stopped short. He walked over to the bench. He stared and stared. Some nights he heard coyotes howling up in the basin. This was his father. He remembered all those days hunting for Hiroko, without a clue where to look. But here his father slept on a city park bench. Nirgal could call him anytime, and always that bright cracked grin, Trinidad itself. Tears started to his eyes; he shook his head, composed himself. Old man lying on a park bench. One saw it fairly frequently. A lot of the issei had gotten here and gone off somehow, into the back country for good, so that when they came into a city they slept in the parks.
Nirgal went over and sat on the end of the bench, just beyond his father’s head. Gray tatty dreadlocks. Like a drunk. Nirgal just sat with him, looking at the undersides of the linden trees around the bench. It was a quiet night. Stars ticked through the leaves.
Coyote stirred, twisted his head and glanced up. “Who dat.”
“Hey,” Nirgal said.
“Hey!” Coyote said, and sat up. He rubbed at his eyes. “Nirgal, man. You startle me there.”
“Sorry. I was walking by and saw you. What are you doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Well, I was. Far as I know that was all I was doing.”
“Coyote, don’t you have a home?”
“Why no.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No.” Coyote bleared a grin at him. “I’m like that awful vid program. The world is my home.”