And free myself, thought Mahnmut, although being separated from The Dark Lady did not seem like freedom to him. All deep-sea Europan cryobots had carried the kernel of agoraphobia in them—true terror of open spaces—and their evolved moravec descendents had inherited it. On the second day, after their eighth chess game, Orphu said, “The Dark Lady has some sort of escape device, doesn’t it?”
Mahnmut had hoped that Orphu wouldn’t know this fact. “Yes,” he said at last.
“What kind?”
“A little life bubble,” said Mahnmut, in a foul mood for having to talk about this. “Not much bigger than me. Mostly meant to survive deep pressures and get me to the surface.”
“But it has a beacon, its own life support system, some sort of propulsion and navigation systems? Some water and food?”
“Yes,” said Mahnmut, “what of it?” You wouldn’t fit in it and I can’t tow you behind it.
“Nothing,” said Orphu.
“I hate the idea of leaving The Dark Lady,” Mahnmut said truthfully. “And I don’t have to think about it now. Not for days and days.”
“All right,” said Orphu.
“I’m serious.”
“All right, Mahnmut. I was just curious.”
If Orphu had rumbled amusement at him at that moment, Mahnmut might well have crawled into the survival bubble and cast off. He was furious at the Ionian for raising this topic. “Want to play another game of chess?” Mahnmut asked.
“Not in this lifetime,” said Orphu.
At sixty-one hours after splashdown, there was only one chariot visible to radar, but it was circling just eight klicks above them and ten to the north. Mahnmut reeled in the periscope buoy as quickly as he could.
He sat listening to music over the intercom—Brahms—and, down in his flooded hold, Orphu presumably was doing the same.
Suddenly the Ionian asked, “Ever wonder why we’re both humanists, Mahnmut?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, humanists. All moravecs evolved into either us humanists with our odd interest in the old human race, or the more interactive types like Koros III. They’re the ones who forge moravec societies, Five Moon Consortiums, political parties . . . whatever.”
“I never noticed,” said Mahnmut.
“You’re kidding me.”
Mahnmut stayed silent. He was beginning to realize that in almost a century and a half of existence, he had managed to stay ignorant of almost everything important. All he knew were the cold seas of Europa—which he would never see again—and this submersible, which was hours or days away from ceasing to exist as a functioning entity. That and Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays.
Mahnmut barely resisted laughing on the hardline. What could be more useless?
As if reading his mind again, Orphu said, “What would the Bard say about this predicament?”
Mahnmut was scanning the energy data and the consumable readouts. They couldn’t wait the seventy-three hours. They would have to try to break free in the next six hours or so. And even then, if they weren’t able to pull themselves free right away, the reactor might cease functioning altogether, overload, and . . .
“Mahnmut?”
“I’m sorry. Dozing. What about the Bard?”
“He must have something to say about shipwrecks,” said Orphu. “I seem to remember lots of shipwrecks in Shakespeare.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mahnmut. “Lots of shipwrecks. Twelfth Night, The Tempest, the list goes on and on. But I doubt if there’s anything in the plays to help us in this situation.”
“Tell me about some of the shipwrecks.”
Mahnmut shook his head in the vacuum. He knew that Orphu was just trying to take his mind off current realities. “Tell me about your beloved Proust,” he said. “Does the narrator Marcel ever say anything about being lost on Mars?”
“He does, actually,” said Orphu with the slightest hint of a rumble.
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about À la recherche du temps perdu,” said Orphu in a tone that almost, not quite, convinced Mahnmut that the Ionian was serious.
“All right, what does Proust say about surviving on Mars?” said Mahnmut. In five minutes he was going to deploy the periscope buoy again and bring them up even if the chariot was hovering ten meters overhead.
“In Volume Three of the French edition, Volume Five of the English translation I downloaded to you, Marcel says that if we suddenly found ourselves on Mars and grew a pair of wings and a new respiratory system, it would not take us out of ourselves,” said Orphu. “Not as long as we have to use our same senses. Not as long as we’re stuck in our same consciousnesses.”
“You’re kidding,” said Mahnmut.
“I never kid about the character Marcel’s perceptions in À la recherché du temps perdu,” Orphu said again in a tone that told Mahnmut that he was kidding all right, but not about that particular odd Mars reference. “Didn’t you read the editions I sent you at the beginning of the voyage in-system?”
“I did,” said Mahnmut. “I really did. I just sort of skipped over the last couple of thousand pages.”
“Well, that’s not uncommon,” said Orphu. “Listen, here’s a passage that comes after the growing wings and new lungs on Mars bit. Do you want it in French or English?”
“English,” Mahnmut said quickly. This close to a terrible death from suffocation, he didn’t want the added torture of listening to French.
“ The only true voyage, the only Fountain of Youth,” recited Orphu, “would be found not in traveling to strange lands but in having different eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another person, of a hundred others, and seeing the hundred universes each of them sees, which each of them is.”
Mahnmut actually forgot about their imminent asphyxiation for a minute as he thought about this. “That’s Marcel’s fourth and final answer to the puzzle of life, isn’t it, Orphu?”
The Ionian stayed quiet.
“I mean,” continued Mahnmut, “you said that the first three failed for Marcel. He tried believing in snobbery. He tried believing in friendship and love. He tried believing in art. None of it worked as a transcendent theme. So this is the fourth. This . . .” He could not find the right word or phrase.
“Consciousness escaping the limits of consciousness,” Orphu said quietly. “Imagination outstripping the bounds of imagination.”
“Yes,” breathed Mahnmut. “I see.”
“You need to,” said Orphu. “You’re my eyes now. I need to see the universe through your eyes.”
Mahnmut sat in the umbilical O2 hiss silence for a minute. Then he said, “Let’s try to take The Dark Lady up.”
“Periscope buoy?”
“To hell with them if they’re up there waiting. I’d rather die fighting than choke to death in the mud down here.”
“All right,” said Orphu. “You said ‘try’ to take the Lady up. Is there some doubt that you can get us out of the slime?”
“I have no fucking idea if we can break free of this stuff,” said Mahnmut, flicking virtual switches with his mind, powering the reactor up into the red, arming the thrusters and gyros. “But we’re going to give it a good try in . . . eighteen seconds. Hang on, my friend.”
“Since my grapplers, manipulators, and flagella are gone,” said Orphu, “I presume you mean that rhetorically.”
“Hang on with your teeth,” said Mahnmut. “Six seconds.”
“I’m a moravec,” said Orphu, sounding slightly indignant. “I don’t have any teeth. What were you . . .”
Suddenly the comm line was drowned out by the firing of all the thrusters, the booming of bulkheads creaking and giving way, and a great moaning sound as The Dark Lady fought to break free of Mars’ slimy grip.