The Martians(121)

“No they didn't. Could you stand them?”

Roger shrugged. “I was willing to put up with them. I felt like I was still out there. Although now that I can get my face in the wind, I like that quite a bit. But the primal landscape—it had a quality. . . .” He shook his head to show he was unable to express it. “That's gone now.”

“Really? I find it just as wild as ever.” Gesturing over the side of the railing, where they could now see sheets of sunlit snow falling from the bottom of one dark cloud.

“Well, wild. It's a tricky word. When I was first guiding, that's when I would have said things were wild. But ever since the air came, and the great lakes, it doesn't seem so wild to me. It's a park. That's what the Burroughs Protocol means, as far as I'm concerned.”

“I don't know about that.”

“You know—the big land-use thing.”

Peter shook his head. “Must have been a while ago.”

Roger shook his. “Not so long.”

“But Burroughs was flooded, back when . . .”

“Sure. Every spring, like clockwork. But I worry how it's been starting later, and running harder. I think there's something we're not catching that's causing these long cold winters.”

“I thought this winter was pretty warm, myself.”

Then the members of a band crowded by their table, carrying their instruments and equipment. While they set up their amps and music stands on a little platform at the terrace's railing right by the two Claybornes, a great number of masked people poured onto the terrace, as if the band had led in some kind of parade. Roger stopped their waiter as he rushed by. “What's this?”

“Oh it's Fassnacht, didn't you know? It'll start getting crowded now that the train is in. Everyone will be here tonight, you're lucky you got here early.” From one of his vest pockets he pulled two small white domino masks out of a nestled stack and tossed them onto their table. “Enjoy.”

Peter pulled the masks apart, gave one to Roger. They put them on and grinned at the odd look that resulted. As the waiter had predicted, the terrace and the whole complex—hotel, restaurant, outbuildings, co-op quarters—were all quickly filling with people. Most of the masks people had on were much more elaborate than Roger's and Peter's. Apparently their wearers were locals of the region, mostly Swiss in the mountaineering and tourist trade; also a lot of Arabs from Nectaris Fossae, and from roving caravans rolling in for the night. The equinoctial sunset poured light directly up the great gorge of the canyon, illuminating everything horizontally; indeed it appeared that the sun was well below them, the light shining upward. Their terrace the edge of the world; the sky dark, and filled now with twirling flakes of snow, like bits of mica.

The band started to play. Trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, bass, drums. They were loud. From Munchen, down to the south in Protva Vallis. Clearly favorites of the local Swiss—a privilege to have them there, you could tell by the enthusiastic response. Hot jazz blaring in the cold dusk.

Peter and Roger ordered a pitcher of dark beer and cheered them on with the rest of the crowd. Some maskers danced, many sat, some stood and wandered from table to table, chatting with seated people or each other. Some groups had their waiters take rounds of grappa up to the band between songs, and happily the band members downed them, until they were saturated, at which point they passed the drinks out to people in the front row; two or three times these medicinal toasts came to Roger and Peter, who drained them in tandem. Without intending to they got a bit drunk. In the frequent “kleines pauses” they continued talking, but the noise of the crowd obscured their hearing, and they often found themselves misunderstanding each other.

Eventually, after a rousing final number ("King of the Zulus,” with spectacular trumpeting by “our star, Dieter Lauterbaun!"), the band ended their first set. The two men ordered another round of grappa, which at that point had actually begun to taste good to them, even to become the one true ambrosia. The dusky evening was still chill, but the terrace remained crowded with the chattering crowd of masked celebrants; these were not the kind of people to be driven indoors by a few flakes of snow drifting onto their tabletops. The slight breeze both Claybornes recognized as the feel of basically still air, falling under its own weight over the cliff into the black canyon below.

“I love this.”

“Yeah.”

“It must be nice, taking people out into these kinds of nights.”

“Yeah. If they're nice.”

“I suppose that's variable.”

“Oh yeah.”

“But when they're really nice—you know?”