Ann tried to walk on, but Tati refused to budge, tugged insistently at her hand: “Innit pretty? Innit pretty? Innit pretty?”
“Yes.”
Tati let go of her and trundled over the sand, just managing to stay on her feet, her diaper waddling like a duck’s behind, the backs of her fat knees dimpling.
But still it moves, Ann thought. She followed the child, smiling at her little joke. Galileo could have refused to recant, gone to the stake for the sake of the truth, but that would have been silly. Better to say what one had to, and go on from there. A brush reminded one what was important. Oh yes, very pretty! She admitted it and was allowed to live. Beat on, heart. And why not admit it. Nowhere on this world were people killing each other, nowhere were they desperate for shelter or food, nowhere were they scared for their kids. There was that to be said. The sand squeaked underfoot as she toed it. She looked more closely: dark grains of basalt, mixed with minute seashell fragments, and a variety of colorful pebbles, some of them no doubt brecciated fragments of the Hellas impact itself. She lifted her eyes to the hills west of the sea, black under the sun. The bones of things stuck out everywhere. Waves broke in swift lines on the beach, and she walked over the sand toward her friends, in the wind, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars.
Acknowledgments
Thanks this time to Lou Aronica, Stuart Atkinson, Terry Baier, Kenneth Bailey, Paul Birch, Michael Carr, Bob Eckert, Peter Fitting, Karen Fowler, Patrick Michel Franfois, Jennifer Hershey, Patsy Inouye, Calvin Johnson, Jane Johnson, Gwyneth Jones, David Kane and Ridge, Christopher McKay, Beth Meacham, Pamela Mellon, Lisa Nowell, Lowry Pel, Bill Purdy, Joel Russell, Paul Sattelmeier, Marc Tatar, Ralph Vi-cinanza, Bronwen Wang, and Vie Webb.
A special thanks to Martyn Fogg, and, again, to Charles Sheffield.