Maya was the last of these, and Nirgal laughed happily to see her. His skin was white with dried sweat, his lips caked and cracking, hair dust-colored, eyes bloodshot. Ribby and wiry, almost emaciated. He gulped water from a bottle, drained it, refused another. “Thanks, I’m not that dehydrated, I hit a reservoir there around Jiri Ki.”
“So which way did you take?” someone called.
“Don’t ask!” he said with a laugh, as if it had been too ugly to own up to. Later Maya learned that people’s routes were left unobserved and undescribed, a kind of secret. These cross-country races were popular in a certain group, and Nirgal was a champion, Maya knew, particularly at the longer distances; people spoke of his routes as if they involved teleportation. This was apparently a short race for him to win, so he was especially pleased.
Now he walked over to a bench and sat down. “Let me get myself together a bit,” he said, and sat watching the last sprints, looking distracted and happy. Maya sat next to him and stared; she couldn’t get enough of him. He had been living on the land for the longest time, part of a feral farmer-and-gatherer co-op . . . it was a life Maya could scarcely imagine, and so she tended to think of Nirgal as in limbo, banished to an outback netherworld, where he survived like a rat or a plant. But here he was, exhausted but exclaiming at a four-hundred-meter race’s photo finish, exactly the vital Nirgal she remembered from that Hell’s Gate tour so long ago— glory years for him as well as her. But looking at him, it seemed unlikely that he thought of the past in the same way she did. She felt in thrall to her past, to history; but something other than history was his fulfillment now— his destiny survived and put aside like an old book, and now here he was, in the moment, laughing in the sun, having beat a whole pack of wild young animals at their own game, by his wits alone and his feel for Mars, and his lung-gom-pa technique and his hard legs. He had always been a runner, she could see in her mind Jackie and him dashing over the beach after Peter as if it were yesterday— the other two had been faster, but he had gone on all day sometimes, round and round the little lake, for no reason anyone could tell. “Oh Nirgal.” She leaned over and kissed his dusty hair, felt him hugging her. She laughed, and looked around at all the beautiful giants around the field, the athletes ruddy in the sunset, and she felt life slipping into her again. Nirgal could do that.
• • •
Late that night, however, she took Nirgal aside, after an outdoor feast in the cool evening air, and she told him all her fears about the latest conflict between Earth and Mars. Michel was off talking to people; Sax sat on the bench across from them, listening silently.
“Jackie and the Free Mars leadership are talking a hard line, but it won’t work. The Terrans won’t be stopped. It could lead to war, I tell you, war.”
Nirgal stared at her. He still took her seriously, God bless his beautiful soul, and Maya put her arm around him like she would have her own son, and squeezed him hard, hard.
“What do you think we should do?” he asked.
“We have to keep Mars open. We have to fight for that, and you have to be part of it. We need you more than anyone else. You were the one that had the greatest impact during our visit to Earth; in essence you’re the most important Martian in Terran history, because of that visit. They still write books and articles about what you do, did you know that? There’s a feral movement getting very strong in North America and Australia, and growing everywhere. The Turtle Island people have almost entirely reorganized the American west, it’s scores of feral co-ops now. They’re listening to you. And it’s the same here. I’ve been doing what I can, we just fought them in the election campaign for the whole length of the Grand Canal. And I tried to counter Jackie a bit. That worked a little, I think, but it’s bigger than Jackie. She’s gone to Irishka, and of course it makes sense for the Reds to oppose immigration, they think that will help protect their precious rocks. So Free Mars and the Reds may be in the same camp for the first time, because of this issue. They’ll be very hard to beat. But if they aren’t. . . .”
Nirgal nodded. He took her point. She could have kissed him. She squeezed him across the shoulders, leaned over and kissed his cheek, nuzzled his neck. “I love you, Nirgal.”
“And I love you,” he said with an easy laugh, looking a bit surprised. “But look, I don’t want to get involved in a political campaign. No, listen— I agree that it’s important, and I agree we should keep Mars open, and help Earth out through the population surge. That’s what I’ve always said, that’s what I told them when we were there. But I won’t get into the political institutions. I can’t. I’ll make my contribution the way I did before, do you understand? I cover a lot of ground, I see a lot of people. I’ll talk to them. I’ll start giving talks to meetings again. I’ll do what I can at that level.”