Blue Mars(195)
One day a group of atmospheric engineers came by to see how much air was escaping through the Moreux mesh in the midday summer heat. There were a lot of old ones in the group, people with the blasted eyes and diffuse manner of the longtime field areologist. One of these issei was Sax Russell himself, a small bald man with a crooked nose, and skin as wrinkled as that of the tortoises clomping around the crater floor. Zo stared and stared at the old man, one of the most famous people in Martian history; it was bizarre to have such a figure out of the books saying hello to her, as if George Washington or Archimedes might dodder by next, the dead hand of the past still there living among them, perpetually dumbfounded by all the latest developments.
Russell certainly appeared dumbfounded; he looked thoroughly stunned through the whole orientation meeting, and left the atmospheric inquiries to his associates, and spent his time staring down at the forest below the town. When someone at dinner introduced Zo to him, he blinked at her with a tortoise’s dim cunning. “I taught your mother once.”
“Yes,” Zo said.
“Will you show me the crater floor?” he asked.
“I usually fly over it,” Zo said, surprised.
“I was hoping to walk,” he said, and looked at her, blinking.
The novelty value was so great that she agreed to join him.
• • •
They started out in the cool of the morning, following the shade under the eastern rim. Balsa and saal trees intersected overhead, forming a high canopy through which lemurs howled and leaped. The old man walked slowly along, peering at the heedless creatures of the forest, and he spoke seldom, mostly to ask if Zo knew the names of the various ferns and trees. All she could identify for him were the birds. “The names of plants go in one ear and out the other, I’m afraid,” she admitted cheerfully.
His forehead wrinkled at this.
“I think that helps me to see them better,” she added.
“Really.” He looked around again, as if trying it. “Does that mean you don’t see the birds as well as the plants?”
“They’re different. They’re my brothers and sisters, they have to have names. It’s part of them. But this stuff”— she gestured at the green fronds around them, giant ferns under spiky flowering trees—”this stuff is nameless, really. We make up names, but they don’t really have them.”
He thought about this.
“Where do you fly?” he said a kilometer down the overgrown trail.
“Everywhere.”
“Do you have favorite places?”
“I like Echus Overlook.”
“Good updrafts?”
“Very good. I was there until Jackie descended on me and put me to work.”
“It’s not your work?”
“Oh yes, yes. But my co-op is good at flex time.”
“Ah. So you will stay here awhile?”
“Only until the Galilean shuttle leaves.”
“Then you will emigrate?”
“No no. A tour, for Jackie. Diplomatic mission.”
“Ah. Will you visit Uranus?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see Miranda.”
“Me too. That’s one reason I’m going.”
“Ah.”
They crossed a shallow creek, stepping on exposed flat stones. Birds called, insects whirred. Sunlight filled the entire crater bowl now, but under the forest canopy it was still cool, the air shot with parallel columns and wires of slanting yellow light. Russell crouched to stare into the creek they had crossed.
“What was my mother like as a child?” Zo asked.
“Jackie?”
He thought about it. A long time passed. Just as Zo was concluding with exasperation that he had forgotten the question, he said, “She was a fast runner. She asked a lot of questions. Why why why. I liked that. She was the oldest of that generation of ectogenes, I think. The leader anyway.”
“Was she in love with Nirgal?”
“I don’t know. Why, have you met Nirgal?”
“I think so, yes. With the ferals once. What about with Peter Clayborne, was she in love with him?”
“In love? Later, maybe. When they were older. In Zygote, I don’t know.”
“You aren’t much help.”
“No.”
“Forgotten it all?”
“Not all. But what I remember is— hard to characterize. I remember Jackie asking about John Boone one day, just in the way you’re asking about her. More than once. She was pleased to be his granddaughter. Proud of him.”
“She still is. And I’m proud of her.”
“And— I remember her crying, once.”
“Why? And don’t say I don’t know!”
This balked him. Finally he looked up at her, with a smile almost human. “She was sad.”