The Martians(122)

“Ah yeah. Fun.”

“So sometimes you . . .”

“Well, you know. Sometimes.”

“Sure.”

“It's not like teacher and student, or lawyer and client.”

“Not a power relationship.”

“No. Shouldn't be. I guide them—they can take it or leave it. They hire me. A matter of equals. If something else happens . . .”

“Sure.”

“But . . .”

“But what?”

“I have to admit it's not happening as much lately, now I think of it. I don't know why.”

They laughed.

“Just chance.”

“Or age!”

More laughter at this horrible possibility.

“Yeah—the tourists are getting too old.”

“Ah ha ha. Exactly. But . . .”

“But what?”

“Well, the thing is, it's more trouble than it's worth.”

“Ah yeah. Getting them to go back home.”

“Yeah, sure. Or not getting to go home with them! I mean, either way. . . .”

“Well, that way's worse, clearly.”

“Yes it is. I remember the first time it happened. I was young, she was young. . . .”

“It was love.”

“It was! I mean really. But what were we supposed to do? She was a student, I was a guide. I couldn't just quit, even if I wanted to. And I didn't. I couldn't leave the land. And she couldn't leave her work either. So . . .”

“That's tough. You hear about that kind of thing a lot. People's work taking them in different directions, what they do—”

“What they are!”

“Right. Keeping them apart even when they, when the feeling between them . . .”

“It's hard.” Big sigh. “It was hard. That time it—I don't know. It was hard. Nothing since has really ever felt the same.”

Long silence.

“You never saw her again?”

“I did, actually. We ran into each other, and then after that we've stayed in touch, sort of. I see her every few years. It's always the same. She's great, she really is. She even got into canyon guiding herself, for a while there. And I can still see why I felt that way about her, so long ago. And she even seems to feel sort of the same. But, you know. . . .”

“No?”

“Well, one or the other of us is always partnered with someone else! It never fails. She's been single when I've been partnered, and vice versa.” A shake of the head. “It keeps happening.”

“I know that story.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. A long time ago. Like yours, sort of, though . . .”

“Someone you met?”

“Someone I grew up with, sort of. In Zygote. You know Jackie Boone?”

“Not really.”

“Well, when she was a kid, she thought I was—well, I was it for her.” A shrug. “But she was just a kid. Even when she had grown up a bit, I thought she was just a kid. Then one time years later I ran into her when I was—when I had been alone a long time.”

Deep nod.

“And she was—grown-up. She'd been living in Sabishii and Dorsa Brevia. She had become one of the great ones. A power. And still interested. So finally I was ready, you know, and we got together, and it was incredible. I was . . . I was in love, sure. But the thing was, she wasn't really interested anymore. Not in the same way. It had just been settling old business. Like doing a climb just to show you can, but without the feeling you had when you couldn't do it.”

“People do that.”

“All the time. So, well, I got over it. She's become, I don't know, kind of strange these days anyway. But I think that if we had ever been in the same place, you know, in the same frame of mind, at the same time. . . .”

“Sure. That's just it with me and Eileen. I think we might have . . .”

“Yeah.”

The sodden, somber silence of the what-might-have-been.

“Lost chances.”

“Right. The fate of chance.”

“Some fate is character.”

“Sure. But most fate is fate. It's what picks you up and carries you off. Who you meet by accident, what happens—what you feel inside, no matter what you think. And it affects everything. Everything! Every thing. People argue about politics, and when people write history books they talk about politics, and policy, the reasons why people did this or that—but it's always the personal stuff that mattered.”

“It's always the stuff they don't write about. The stuff they can't write about. The look in someone's eye.”

“Right, the way something catches you. . . .”

“The way it carries you away.”

“Like falling in love. Whatever the hell that means.”

“That's it, sure. Falling in love, being loved back—”