But just when people most need help is when their isolation is the most extreme. Maya had learned that on the night of Hiroko’s disappearance, when she had tried to comfort Michel. Nothing could be done.
Maya almost cuffed the sniffling young aide, restrained herself: “Why don’t you escort Ms. Boone back to your ship. And then keep people away for a while.”
Jackie was still lost in her thoughts. Her flinch away from Maya had been instinct only, she was stunned— disbelieving— and the disbelief absorbed all her effort. All just as one would expect, from any human being. Maybe it was even worse if you hadn’t gotten along with the child— worse than if you loved them, ah, God—”Go,” Maya said to the aide, and with a look commanded Athos to help. He would certainly make an impression on her, one way or the other. They led her off. She still had the most beautiful back in the world, and held herself like a queen. That would change when the news sank in.
Later Maya found herself down at the southern edge of town, where the lights left off and the starry sheen of the canal was banked by black berms of slag. It looked like the scroll of a life, someone’s world line: bright neon squiggles, moving across a landscape to the black horizon. Stars over-head and underfoot. A black piste over which they glided soundlessly.
She walked back to their boat. Stumped down the gang-plank. It was distressing to feel this way for an enemy, to lose an enemy to this kind of disaster. “Who am I going to hate now?” she cried to Michel.
“Well,” Michel said, shocked. Then, in a comforting tone: “I’m sure you’ll think of someone.”
Maya laughed shortly, and Michel cracked a brief smile. Then he shrugged, looking grave. He less than any of them had been lulled by the treatment. Immortal stories in mortal flesh, he had always insisted. He was downright morbid about it. And here another illustration of his point.
“So the all-too-human got hers at last,” he said.
“She was an idiot with all those risks, she was asking for it.”
“She didn’t believe in it.”
Maya nodded. No doubt true. Few believed in death anymore, especially the young, who never had, even before the days of the treatment. And now less than ever. But believe in it or not, it was touching down more and more, mostly of course among the superelderly. New diseases, or old diseases returned, or else a rapid holistic collapse with no apparent cause— this last had killed Helmut Bronski and Derek Hastings in recent years, people Maya had met, if not known well. Now an accident had struck someone so much younger than they were that it made no sense, fit no pattern but youthful recklessness. An accident. Random chance.
“Do you still want to get Peter to come?” Michel asked, from out of a whole different realm of thought. What was this, realpolitik from Michel? Ah— he was trying to distract her. She almost laughed again.
“Let’s still get in touch with him,” she said. “See if he might come.” But this was only to reassure Michel; her heart was not in it.
That was the beginning of the string of deaths.
But she didn’t know that then. Then, it was only the end of their canal journey.The burn of the aerial lens had stopped just short of the eastern edge of the Hellas Basin watershed, between Dao and Harmakhis valleys. The final segment of the canal had been dug by conventional means, and it dropped so precipitously down the steep eastern slope of the basin that frequent locks were necessary, here functioning as dams, so that the canal no longer had the classic look it had had in the highlands, but was rather a series of reservoir lakes connected by short broad reddish rivers, extending out from under each clear dam. So they boated across lake after lake, down and down in a slow parade of barges and sailboats and cabin cruisers and steamers, and as they dropped in the locks they could see through their clear walls down the string of lakes like a giant staircase of blue stepping-stones, down to the distant bronze plate of the Hellas Sea. Somewhere in the badlands to right and left, the Dao and Harmakhis canyons cut deeply into the redrock plateau, following their more natural courses down the great slope; but with their tents removed the two canyons were not visible until you were right on their rims, and nothing could be seen of them from the canal.
On board their ship, life went on. Apparently it was much the same on the Free Mars barge, where Jackie was said to be doing well. Still seeing Athos when the two boats were docked in the same town. Accepting sympathy graciously, and then turning the topic elsewhere, usually to the campaign business at hand. And their campaign continued to go well. Under Maya’s coaching the Green campaign was being run better than before, but anti-immigrant sentiment was strong. Everywhere they went the other Free Mars councillors and candidates spoke at the rallies, and Jackie only made occasional short, dignified appearances. She was a lot more powerful and intelligent a speaker than she used to be. But by watching the others speak Maya got a good sense of who was at the top level of the organization, and several of these people looked very happy to have gained the limelight. One young man, another one of Jackie’s young men, named Nanedi, stood out in particular. And Jackie did not seem very pleased to see it; she became cool to him, she turned more and more to Athos, and Mikka, and even Antar. Some nights she appeared a veritable queen among the consorts. But Maya could see under that, to the truth she had witnessed in Anteus. From a hundred meters away she could see the darkness at the heart of things.