“I'm not in the best of shape for this,” Hans puffs. “It may take me a few days to get my rhythm.”
“Don't worry about me,” Roger says. “We're going about as fast as I like.”
“I wonder how far above Camp Two is?”
“Not too far. Too many carries to make, without the power reels.”
“I look forward to the vertical pitches. If we're going to climb we might as well climb, eh?”
“Especially since the power reels will pull our stuff up.”
“Yes.” Breathless laugh.
Steep, deep ravine. Medium gray andesite, an igneous volcanic rock, speckled with crystals of dark minerals, knobbed with hard protrusions. Pitons hammered into small vertical cracks.
Midday they meet with Eileen, Arthur, and Frances, the team above, who are sitting on a narrow ledge in the wall of the Gully, jamming down a quick lunch. The sun is nearly overhead; in an hour they will lose it. Roger and Hans are happy to sit on the ledge. Lunch is lemonade and several handfuls of the trail mix Frances has made. The others discuss the Gully and the day's climb, and Roger eats and listens. He becomes aware of Eileen sitting on the ledge beside him. Her feet kick the wall casually, and the quadriceps on the tops of her thighs, big exaggerated muscles, bunch and relax, bunch and relax, stretching the fabric of her climbing pants. She is following Hans's description of the rock and appears not to notice Roger's discreet observation. Could she really not remember him? Roger breathes a soundless sigh. It's been a long life. And all his effort—
“Let's get up to Camp Two,” Eileen says, looking at him curiously.
Early in the afternoon they find Marie and Dougal on a broad shelf sticking out of the steep slabs to the right of the Great Gully. Here they make Camp Two: four large box tents, made to withstand rockfalls of some severity.
Now the verticality of the escarpment becomes something immediate and tangible. They can only see the wall for a few hundred meters above them; beyond that it is hidden, except up the steep trough in the wall that is the Great Gully, etching the vertical face just next to their shelf. Looking up this giant couloir, they can see more of the endless cliff above them, dark and foreboding against the pink sky.
Roger spends an hour of the cold afternoon sitting at the Gully edge of their shelf, looking up. They have a long way to go; his hands in their thick pile mittens are sore, his shoulders and legs tired, his feet cold. He wishes more than anything that he could shake the depression that fills him; but thinking that only makes it worse.
Eileen Monday sits beside him. “So we were friends once, you say.”
“Yeah.” Roger looks her in the eye. “You don't remember at all?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Yes. I was twenty-six, you were about twenty-three.”
“You really remember that long ago?”
“Some of it, yes.”
Eileen shakes her head. She has good features, Roger thinks. Fine eyes. “I wish I did. But as I get older my memory gets even worse. Now I think for every year I live I lose at least that much in memories. It's sad. My whole life before I was seventy or eighty—all gone.” She sighs. “I know most people are like that, though. You're an exception.”
“Some things seem to be stuck in my mind for good,” says Roger. He can't believe it isn't true of everyone! But that's what they all say. It makes him melancholy. Why live at all? “Have you hit your three hundredth yet?”
“In a few months. But—come on. Tell me about it.”
“Well . . . you were a student. Or just finishing school, I can't remember.” She smiles. “Anyway, I was guiding groups in hikes through the little canyons north of here, and you were part of a group. We started up a—a little affair, as I recall. And saw each other for a while after we got back. But you were in Burroughs, and I kept guiding tours, and—well, you know. It didn't last.”
Eileen smiles again. “So I went on to become a mountain guide—which I've been for as long as I can remember—while you moved to the city and got into politics!” She laughs and Roger smiles wryly. “Obviously we must have impressed each other!”
“Oh yes, yes.” Roger laughs shortly. “Searching for each other.” He grins lopsidedly, feeling bitter. “Actually I only got into government about forty years ago. Too late, as it turned out.”
Silence for a while. “So that's what's got you down,” Eileen says.
“What?”
“The Red Mars party—out of favor.”
“Out of existence, you mean.”
She considers it. “I never could understand the Red point of view—”