The Martians(34)

And so Maya lived with Michel in Odessa, and they were partners—as married as anyone—for decade after decade of their unnaturally extended lives. But often it seemed to Maya that they were more friends than lovers, not “in love” in the way that she dimly remembered being with John, or Frank, or even Oleg. Or—when Coyote came through and she saw his face at the door—the memory sometimes came to her of that shocking encounter with her stowaway on the Ares, her discovery of him in the storage attic, their first conversation—making love before he took off with Hiroko's group, and the few times after that—yes, she had loved him too, no doubt about it. But now they were just friends, and he and Michel like brothers. It was good to have such a family of the remaining First Hundred, the first hundred and one, with all that had happened between them, twining together to make the familial bond. As the years passed it became more and more of a comfort to her. And as the second revolution approached, like a storm they could do nothing to avoid, she needed them more than ever.

Some nights, as the crises intensified and she had trouble sleeping, she read about Frank. There was a mystery at the center of him that resisted any final summation. In her mind he kept slipping away. For years she had been afraid to think about him, and then after Michel had advised her to face her fear, actually to research the matter, she had read as much about him as anyone could; and all it had done was confuse her memories with other people's speculations. Now she read in the hope of finding some account that would resemble what she ever less certainly remembered, to reinforce her own memory. It did not work, but it seemed as if it should, and so she went back to it from time to time, the way one will push a sore tooth with a tongue to confirm that it is still sore.

One night when Desmond was there staying with them, she had a dream about Frank, and then she got up and went out to read about him, feeling curious yet again. Desmond was asleep on a couch in the study. The book she was reading suddenly took up the matter of John's assassination, and she groaned at the memory of that awful night, reduced now in her mind to a few blurred images (standing under a streetlight with Frank, passing a body on the grass, holding John's head in her hands, sitting in a clinic) all now overlaid by the countless stories she had heard since.

Desmond, disturbed by dreams of his own, groaned and staggered out and passed her on the way to the bathroom. He too had been in Nicosia that night, she recalled suddenly. Or so one of the accounts had said. She looked in the book's index; no mention of him. But some accounts had him there that night, she was sure of it.

When he came back out, she steeled herself and asked him. “Desmond—were you in Nicosia the night John was killed?”

He stopped and looked down at her, his face a blank—an uncharacteristic, too-careful blank. He was thinking fast, she thought.

“Yes. I was.” He shook his head, grimaced. “A bad night.”

“What happened?” she said, sitting up straight, boring into him with her gaze. “What happened?” Then: “Did Frank do it, like they say he did?”

Again he looked at her, and again she thought she saw his mind racing, in there behind his eyes. What had he seen? What could he recall?

Slowly he said, “I don't think Frank did it.” Then: “I saw him up in that triangular park, right around the time they must have attacked John.”

“But Selim and he . . .”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “No one knows what went on between those two, Maya. That's all just talk. No one can ever know what other people really said to each other. They make that stuff up. And it doesn't matter what people say to each other either. Not compared to what they do. Even if Frank took this Arab and said, 'Kill John, I want you to do it, kill him kill him'—even if he said that, which I doubt very much, because Frank was never that straightforward, you have to admit"—he waited for her to nod and force a smile—"even so, if this Selim then went off and killed John, got his friends to help him, then it was still their doing, you know? The people who do the deed are the ones responsible, if you ask me. All this stuff about following orders, or he made me do it or whatnot, all that is so much bullshit, it's just excuses.”

“So if Hitler never killed anyone himself . . .”

“Then he's not as guilty as the guys in the camps, pulling the triggers and turning on the gas! That's right! He was just a crazy old fuck. But they were murderers. And there were a lot more of them than there were of him. Sad when you think of it that way.”

“Yes.” So sad it could hardly bear thinking about.