Nirgal liked it. He wanted to win the next Round-the-Worlder, to have won a majority of the first ten. He was out researching the route, checking new trails. Many new paths were being built every year, there had been a craze recently to inlay staircase trails in the sides of the canyon cliffs and dorsa and escarpments that everywhere seamed the outback. The trail he was on now had been constructed since he had last been in this area; it dropped down the steep cliff wall of a sink in the Aromatum Chaos, and there was a matching trail on the opposite wall of the sink. Going straight through Aromatum would add a fair bit of verti-cality to a run, but all flatter routes had to swing far to north or south, and Nirgal thought that if all the trails were as good as this one, the cost in elevation might turn out to be worth it.
The new trail occupied angled cracks in the blocky cliff wall, the steps fitted like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and very regular, so that it was like running down a staircase in the ruined wall of some giant’s castle. Cliffside trailmaking was an art, a lovely form of work that Nirgal had joined from time to time, helping to move cut rocks with a crane, to wedge them into position on top of the step below — hours in a belay harness, pulling on the thin green lines with gloved hands, guiding big polygons of basalt into place. The first trail builder Nirgal had met had been a woman constructing a trail along the finback of the Geryon Montes, the long ridge on the floor of lus Chasma. He had helped her all of one summer, down most of the ridge. She was still in Marineris somewhere, constructing trails with her hand tools and high-powered rock saws, and pulley systems with superstrong line, and glue bolts stronger than the rock itself — painstakingly assembling a sidewalk or staircase from the surrounding rock, some trails like miraculously helpful natural features, others like Roman roads, others still with a pharaonic or Incan massiveness, huge blocks fitted with hairline precision across boulder slopes or large-grained chaos.
Down three hundred steps, counting, then across the sink floor in the hour before sunset, the strip of sky a velvet violet glowing over dark cliff walls. No trail here on the shadowed sand of the sink floor, and he focused on the rocks and plants scattered over it, running between things, his glance caught by light-colored flowers on top of round-barreled cacti, glowing like the sky. His body was also glowing, with the end of the day’s run, and the prospect of dinner, his hunger a gnawing from within, a faintness, getting more unpleasant by the minute.
He found the staircase trail on the western cliff wall, up and up, changing gears into the uphill push stride, smooth and regular, turning left and right with the switchbacks, admiring the elegant placement of the trail in the crack system of the cliff, a placement that usually had him running with a waist-high wall of rock on the air side, except during the ascent of one bare sheer patch of rock, where the builders had been forced to the extremity of bolting in a solid magnesium ladder. He hurried up it, feeling his quadriceps like giant rubber bands; he was tired.
On a plinth to the left of the staircase there was a flat patch with a great view of the long narrow canyon below. He turned off the trail and stopped running. He sat down on a rock like a chair. It was windy; he popped his little mushroom tent, and it stood before him transparent in the dusk. Bedding, lamp, lectern, all pulled hastily from his fanny pack in the search for food, all burnished by years of use, and as light as feathers — his gear kit altogether weighed less than three kilos. And there they were in their place at the back, battery-powered stove and food bag and water bottle.
The twilight passed in Himalayan majesty as he cooked a pot of powdered soup, sitting cross-legged on his sleeping pad, leaning back against the tent’s clear wall. Tired muscles feeling the luxury of sitting down. Another beautiful day.
He slept poorly that night, and got up in the predawn cold wind, and packed up quickly, shivering, and ran west again. Out of the last Aromatum jumbles he came to the northern shore of Ganges Bay. The dark blue plate of the bay lay to his left as he ran. Here the long beaches were backed by wide sand dunes, covered by short grass that made for easy running. Nirgal flowed on, in his rhythm, glancing at the sea or into the taiga forest off to the right. Millions of trees had been planted along this coastline in order to stabilize the ground and cut down on dust storms. The great forest of Ophir was one of the least populated regions on Mars; it had been rarely visited in the earlier years of its existence, and had never been host to a tent town; deep deposits of dust and fines had discouraged travel. Now these deposits were somewhat fixed by the forest, but bordering the streams were swamps and quicksand lakes, and unstable loess bluffs that caused breaks in the lattice roof of branches and leaves. Nirgal kept to the border of forest and sea, on the dunes or among stands of smaller trees. He crossed several small bridges spanning river mouths. He spent a night on the beach, lulled to sleep by the sound of breaking waves.
The next day at dawn he followed the trail under the canopy of green leaves, the coast having stopped at the Ganges Chasma dam. The light was dim and cool. Everything at this hour looked like a shadow of itself. Faint trails branched off uphill to the left. The forest here was conifer for the most part: redwoods in tall groves, surrounded by smaller pines and junipers. The forest floor was covered by dry needles. In wet places ferns broke through this brown mat, adding their archaic fractals to the sun-dappled floor. A stream braided among narrow grassy islands. He could rarely see more than a hundred meters ahead. Green and brown were the dominant colors; the only red visible was the tint of the redwoods’ hairy bark. Shafts of sunlight like slender living beings danced over the forest floor. Nirgal ran outside himself, mesmerized as he passed among these pencils of light. He skipped on rocks across a shallow creek, in a fern-floored glade. It was like crossing a room, with hallways extending to similar rooms upstream and down. A short waterfall gurgled to his left.
He stopped for a drink from the far side of the creek. Then as he straightened up he saw a marmot, waddling over moss under the waterfall. He felt a quick stab to the heart. The marmot drank and then washed its paws and face. It did not see Nirgal.
Then there was a rustle and the marmot ran, was buried in a flurry of spotted fur — white teeth — a big lynx, pinning the marmot’s throat in powerful jaws, shaking the little creature hard, then pressing it still under a big paw.
Nirgal had jumped at the moment of attack, and now as the lynx stood over its prey it looked in Nirgal’s direction, as if just now registering the movement. Its eyes glittered in the dim light, its mouth was bloody; Nirgal shuddered, and when the cat saw him and their gazes locked, he saw it running at him and jumping on him, its pointed teeth bright even in the dim light —