“Maya,” Sax said, feeling the words like pebbles in his mouth, “You should try it. It’s not so bad.”
She shook her head. “I remember everything that I want to. Even now, without your drugs, even now when I hardly remember anything, I still remember more than you ever will. I don’t want any more than that.”
It was possible that minute quantities of the drugs had gotten into the air and thus onto her skin, giving her a small fraction of the hyperemotional experience. Or perhaps this was just her ordinary state.
“Why shouldn’t now be enough?” she was saying. “I don’t want my past back, I don’t want it. I can’t bear it.”
“Maybe later,” Sax said.
What could one say to her? She had been like this in Underhill as well— unpredictable, moody. It was amazing what eccentrics had been selected to the First Hundred. But what choice had the selection committee had? People were all like that, unless they were stupid. And they hadn’t sent stupid people to Mars, or not at first, or not too many. And even the dull-witted had their complexities.
“Maybe,” she said now, and patted his head, and took the teapot off the burner. “Maybe not. I remember too much as it is.”
“Frank?” Sax said.
“Of course. Frank, John— they’re all there.” She stabbed her chest with a thumb. “It hurts enough. I don’t need more.”
“Ah.”
He walked back outside, feeling stuffed, uncertain of anything, off balance. Limbic system vibrating madly under the impact of his whole life, under the impact of Maya, so beautiful and damned. How he wished her happy, but what could one do? Maya lived her unhappiness to the full, it made her happy one might say. Or complete. Perhaps she felt this acutely uncomfortable emotional overfullness all the time! Wow. So much easier to be phlegmatic. And yet she was so alive. The way she had flailed them onward out of the chaos, south to the refuge in Zygote . . . such strength. All these strong women. Actually to face up to life’s awfulness, awfulness, to face it and feel it without denial, without defenses, just admit it and carry on. John, Frank, Arkady, even Michel, they had all had their great optimism, pessimism, idealism, their mythologies to mask the pain of existence, all their various sciences, and still they were dead— killed off one way or another— leaving Nadia and Maya and Ann to carry on and carry on. No doubt he was a lucky man to have such tough sisters. Even Phyllis— yes, somehow— with the toughness of the stupid, making her way, pretty well at least, fairly well, well at least making it, for a while. Never giving up. Never admitting anything. She had protested his torture, Spencer had told him so, Spencer and all their hours of aerodynamics together, telling him over too many whiskeys how she had gone to the security chief in Kasei and demanded his release, his decent treatment, even after he had knocked her cold, almost killed her with nitrous oxide, lied to her in her own bed. She had forgiven him apparently, and Spencer had never forgiven Maya for killing her, though he pretended he had; and Sax had forgiven her, even though for years he had acted as if he hadn’t, to get some kind of hold on her. Ah the strange recombinant tangle they had made of their lives, result of the overextension, or perhaps it was that way in every village always. But so much sadness and betrayal! Perhaps memory was triggered by loss, as everything was inevitably lost. But what about joy? He tried to remember: could one cast back by emotional category, interesting idea, was that possible? Walking through the halls of the terraforming conference, for instance, and seeing the poster board that estimated the heat contribution of the Russell Cocktail at twelve kelvins. Waking up in Echus Overlook and seeing that the Great Storm was gone, the pink sky radiant with sunlight. Seeing the faces on the train as they slid out of Libya Station. Being kissed in the ear by Hiroko, in the baths one winter day in Zygote, when it was evening all afternoon. Hiroko! Ah— ah— He had been huddling in the cold, quite vexed to think he would be killed by a storm just when things were getting interesting, trying to work out how he might call his car to him, as it seemed he would not be able to get to it, and then there she had appeared out of the snow, a short figure in a rust-red spacesuit, bright in the white storm of wind and horizontal snow, the wind so loud that even the intercom mike in his helmet was no more than a whisper: “Hiroko?” he cried as he saw her face through the slush-smeared faceplate; and she said “yes.” And pulled him up by the wrist— helped him up. That hand on his wrist! He felt it. And up he came, like viriditas itself, the green force pouring through him, through the white noise, the white static sleeting by, her grip warm and hard, as full as the plenum itself. Yes. Hiroko had been there. She had led him back to the car, had saved his life, had then disappeared again, and no matter how certain Desmond was of her death in Sabishii, no matter how convincing his arguments were, no matter how often second climbers had been hallucinated by solo climbers in distress, Sax knew better, because of that hand on his wrist, that visitation in the snow— Hiroko herself in the hard compact flesh, as real as rock. Alive! So that he could rest in that knowledge, he could know something— in the inexplicable seeping of the unexplainable into everything, he could rest in that known fact. Hiroko lived. Start with that and go on, build on it, the axiom of a lifetime of joy. Perhaps even convince Desmond of it, give him that peace.