There beyond the columns was a row of buildings. The buildings were the anchoring point for a line of kelp; long trunks rose from their roofs into the murk, their broad leaves undulating gently in a slow current. There had been a cafe in the front of that end building, a sidewalk cafe, partly shaded by a trellis covered with wisteria. The last salt column served as a marker, and Maya was sure of her identification.
She swam laboriously into a standing position, and a time came back to her. Frank had shouted at her and run off, no rhyme or reason as usual with him. She had dressed and followed him, and found him here hunched over a coffee. Yes. She had confronted him and they had argued right there, she had berated him for not hurrying up to Sheffield … she had knocked a coffee cup off the table, and the handle had broken off and spun on the ground. Frank got up and they walked away arguing, and went back to Sheffield. But no, no. That wasn’t how it had been. They had quarreled, yes, but then made up. Frank had reached across the table and held her hand, and a great black weight had lifted off her heart, giving her a brief moment of grace, of being in love and being loved.
One or the other. But which had it been?
She couldn’t remember. Couldn’t be sure. So many fights with Frank, so many reconciliations; both could have happened. It was impossible to keep track, to remember what had happened when. It was all blurring together in her mind, into vague impressions, disconnected moments. The past, disappearing entirely. Small noises, like an animal in pain — ah — that was her throat. Mewling, sobbing. Numb and yet sobbing, it was absurd. Whatever had happened then, she just wanted it back. “Fuh.” She couldn’t say his name. It hurt, as if someone had stuck a pin in her heart. Ah — that was feeling, it was! It couldn’t be denied; she was gasping with it, it hurt so. One couldn’t deny it.
She pumped the fins slowly, floated off the sand, up away from the rooftops anchoring their kelp. Sitting miserably at that cafe table, what would they have thought if they had known that a hundred and twenty years later she would be swimming overhead, and Frank dead all that time?
End of a dream. Disorientation, of a shift from one reality to another. Floating in the dark water brought back some of the numbness. Ah but there it was, that pinprick pain, there inside, encysted — insisted — hold on to it forever, hold on to any feeling you can, any feeling you can dredge up out of all that muck, anything! Anything but the numbness; sobbing in pain was rapture compared to that.
And so Michel was proved right again, the old alchemist. She looked around for him; he had swum off on voyages of his own. Quite some time had passed, the others were making their rendezvous in the cone of light before the trawl, like tropical fish in a dark cold tank, drawn to the light in hopes of warmth. Dreamy slow weightlessness. She thought of John, floating naked against black space and crystal stars. Ah — too much to feel. One could only stand a single shard of the past at a time; this drowned city; but she had made love to John here too, in a dorm somewhere in the first years — to John, to Frank, to that engineer whose name she could seldom recall, no doubt to others besides, all forgotten, or almost; she would have to work on that. Encyst them all, precious stabs of feeling held in her forever, till death did they part. Up, up, up, among the colorful tropical fish with their arms and their legs, back into the light of day, blue sunlight, ah God yes, ears popping, a giddiness perhaps of nitrogen narcosis, rapture of the deep. Or the rapture of human depth, the way they lived and lived, giants plunged through the years, yes, and what they held on to. Michel was swimming up from below, following her; she kicked then waited, waited, clasped him and squeezed hard, ah, how she loved the other’s solidity in her arms, that proof of reality, she squeezed thinking thank you Michel you sorcerer of my soul, thank you Mars for what endures in us, drowned or encysted though it may be. Up into the glorious sun, into the wind, strip off the suit with cold clumsy fingers, pull it off and step out of it chrysalislike, careless of the power of the female nude over the male eye, then suddenly aware of it, give them that startling vision of flesh in the sunlight, sex in the afternoon, breathe deep in the wind, goose-pimpling all over with the shock of being alive. “I’m still Maya,” she insisted to Michel, teeth chattering; she hugged her breasts and toweled off, luxury of terry cloth on wet skin. She pulled on clothes, whooped at the chill of the wind. Michel’s face was the image of happiness, the deification, that mask of joy, old Dionysius, laughing aloud at the success of his plan, at the rapture of his friend and companion. “What did you see?” “The cafe — the park — the canal — and you?” “Hunt Mesa — the dance studio — Thoth Boulevard — Table Mountain.” In the cabin he had a bucket of champagne on ice, and he popped the cork and it shot off into the wind and landed lightly on the water, then floated off on the blue waves.
But she refused to say any more about it. She would not tell the story of her dive. The others did and then it was her turn, somehow, and the people on the boat were looking at her like vultures, eager to gulp down her experiences. She drank her champagne and sat silently on the upper deck, watching the broad-sloped waves. Waves looked odd on Mars, big and sloppy, impressive. She gave Michel a look to let him know she was all right, that he had done well to send her under. Beyond that, silence. Let them have their own experiences to feed on, the vultures.
The boat returned to DuMartheray Harbor, which consisted of a little crescent of marina-platted water, curving under part of the apron .of DuMartheray Crater. The slope of the apron was covered with buildings and greenery, right up to the rim.
They disembarked and walked up through the town, had dinner in a rim restaurant, watching sunset flare over the water of Isidis Bay. The evening wind fell down the escarpment and whistled offshore, holding the waves up and tearing spray off their tops, in white plumes crossed by brief rainbow arcs. Maya sat next to Michel, and kept a hand on his thigh or shoulder. “Amazing,” someone said, “to see the row of salt columns still gleaming down there.”
“And the rows of windows in the mesas! Did you see that broken one? I wanted to go in and look, but I was afraid.”
Maya grimaced, concentrated on the moment. People across the table were talking to Michel about a new institute concerning the First Hundred and other early colonists — some kind of museum, a repository of oral histories, committees to protect the earliest buildings from destruction, etc., also a program to provide help for superelderly early settlers. Naturally these earnest young men (and young men could be so earnest) were particularly interested in Michel’s help, and in finding and somehow enlisting all of the First Hundred left alive; twenty-three now, they said. Michel was of course perfectly courteous, and indeed seemed truly interested in the project.
Maya couldn’t have hated the idea more. A dive into the wreckage of the past, as a kind of smelling salts, repellent but invigorating — fine. That was acceptable, even healthy. But to fix on the past, to focus on it; disgusting. She would have happily tossed the earnest young men over the rail. Meanwhile Michel was agreeing to interview all the remaining First Hundred, to help the project get started. Maya stood up and went to the rail, leaned against it. Below on the darkening water luminous plumes of spray were still blowing off the top of every wave.
A young woman came up beside her and leaned on the railing. “My name is Vendana,” she said to Maya, while looking down at the waves. “I’m the Green party’s local political agent for the year.” She had a beautiful profile, clean and sharp in a classic Indian look: olive-skinned, black-eyebrowed, long nose, small mouth. Intelligent subtle brown eyes. It was odd how much one could tell by faces alone; Maya was beginning to feel she knew everything essential about a person at first glance. Which was a useful ability, given that so much of what the young natives said these days baffled her. She needed that first insight.