Roger takes over the sailing from Arthur, and brings them around a point, and there suddenly is a steepwalled square island ahead, vivid green on top—ah. A township, frozen here near the entrance to a fjord, no doubt in a deep channel. All the townships have become islands in the ice. The greenery on top is protected by a tent which Eileen cannot see in the bright sun. “I'm just dropping by to pick up the rest of our crew,” Roger explains. “A couple of young friends of mine are going to join us."
“Which one is this?” Stephan inquires.
“This is the Altamira.”
Roger sails them around in a sweet curve that ends with them stalled into the wind and skidding to a halt. He retracts the cockpit dome. “I don't intend to go up there, by the way, that's an all-day trip no matter how you do it. My friends should be down here onshore to meet us.”
They step down onto the ice, which is mostly a dirty opaque white, cracked and a bit nobbled on the surface, so that it is slippery in some places, but mostly fairly steady underfoot; and Eileen sees that the treacherous spots stand out like windows inlaid in tile. Roger talks into his wristpad, then leads them into the fjord, which on one steep side displays a handsome granite staircase, frost lying like a fluffy carpet on the steps.
Up these stairs Roger climbs, putting his feet in earlier boot prints. Up on the headland over the fjord they have a good view over the ice to the township, which is really very big for a manufactured object, a kilometer on each side, and its deck only just lower than they are. Its square-tented middle glows green like a Renaissance walled garden, the enchanted space of a fairy tale.
There is a little stone shelter or shrine on the headland, and they follow the sidewalk over to it. The wind chills Eileen's hands, toes, nose, and ears. A big white plate, whistling in the wind. Elysium bulks behind them, its two volcanoes just sticking over the high horizon to the west. She holds Roger's hand as they approach. As always, her pleasure in Mars is mixed up with her pleasure in Roger; at the sight of this big cold panorama love sails through her like the wind. Now he is smiling, and she follows his gaze and sees two people through the shelter's open walls. “Here they are.”
They round the front of the shrine and the pair notices them. “Hi all,” Roger says. “Eileen, this is Freya Ahmet and Jean-Claude Bayer. They're going to be joining us. Freya, Jean-Claude, this is Eileen Monday.”
“We have heard of you,” Freya says to her with a friendly smile. She and Jean-Claude are both huge; they tower over the old ones.
“That's Hans and Frances behind us, down the path there arguing. Get used to that.”
Hans and Frances arrive, then Arthur and Stephan. Introductions are made all around, and they investigate the empty shrine or shelter, and exclaim over the view. The eastern side of the Elysian Massif was a rain shadow before, and now it bulks just as black and empty as ever, looking much as it always has. The huge white plate of the sea, however, and the incongruous square of the Altamira; these are new and strange. Eileen has never seen anything like it. Impressive, yes; vast; sublime; but her eye always returns to the little tented greenhouse on the township, tiny stamp of life in a lifeless universe. She wants her world back.
On the way back down the stone stairs she looks at the exposed granite of the fjord's sidewall, and in one crack she sees black crumbly matter. She stops to inspect it.
“Look at this,” she says to Roger, scraping away at rime to see more of it. “Is it lichen? Moss? Is it alive? It looks like it might be alive.”
Roger sticks his face right down into it, eyes a centimeter away. “Moss, I think. Dead.”
Eileen looks away, feeling her stomach sink. “I'm so tired of finding dead plants, dead animals. The last dozen times out I've not seen a single living thing. I mean winterkill is winterkill, but this is ridiculous. The whole world is dying!”
Roger waggles a hand uncertainly, straightens up. He can't really deny it. “I suppose there was never enough sunlight to begin with,” he says, glancing up at their bronze button of light, slanting over Elysium. “People wanted it and so they did it anyway. But reality isn't interested in what people want.”
Eileen sighs. “No.” She pokes again at the black matter. “Are you sure this isn't a lichen? It's black, but it looks like it's still alive somehow.”
He inspects some of it between his gloved fingers. Small black fronds, like a kind of tiny seaweed, frayed and falling apart.
“Fringe lichen?” Eileen ventures. “Frond lichen?”
“Moss, I think. Dead moss.” He clears away more ice and snow. Black rock, rust rock. Black splotches. It's the same everywhere. “No doubt there are lichens alive, though. And Freya and Jean-Claude say the subnivean environment is quite lively still. Very robust. Protected from the elements.”