Rekari’s son Burmari was in the center of the arc, working on a boat that was obviously new and nearly finished, only the mast and sail missing. When he saw Dave, he made the Martian sign for welcome, then walked over to clap him on the shoulder in a human greeting. Like all Martians, Burmari was thin and wiry, with ruddy skin and large, pale eyes, and he was more than a head taller than any Marsman. Dave smiled and reached up to return his greeting. They had known each other all of Dave’s life.
“School treated you well,” said Burmari. “You look healthy and strong.”
He spoke in the local Martian language, but Dave had no trouble understanding him; since childhood, he had been as fluent in it as in English.
“Extra gravity will do that,” said Dave. “But I’m happy to be back where there is less of it. Where is your father?”
But before his son could respond, Rekari came out of the cottage at the far end of the arc, and he made the sign of greeting, then held his arms out for a very human-style embrace.
After that, there was a gathering of the rest of Rekari’s family from every point on the arc, his wife, his younger brother and his wife, and their two children. A table and stools were brought out, and cups of an herbal drink that both humans and Martians liked, mint-flavored and faintly alcoholic. Dave could see the curiosity on the faces that surrounded him, but only the nephew, who had been little more than a knee-high nuisance when Dave left, was impolite enough to ask about Earth. Settling himself with a cup, Dave talked about the cities, the crowds, the school, and his teachers, trying to give an overview of the experience, and they seemed willing to listen as long as he wanted to go on. Eventually, though, Rekari called a halt, saying that Dave was too tired to keep talking. Adult Martians were generally good at reading humans—much better than humans were at reading them—but Dave actually felt less tired than before his meal. But he knew that if anyone had answers to his own questions, it was his father’s Martian business partner.
“I think we should speak in the office,” Rekari said, raising a hand in a gesture that meant to wait a moment. He ducked inside one of the cottages and came back with a green Martian lamp. There wasn’t much left of the old civilization, but the sun-loving lichen that the ancients had either discovered or created were still around, and they could be persuaded to give a little light back for a few hours every day if you knew exactly how to treat them. Rekari had tried to teach Dave the trick, but he had always ended up overfeeding them, which stifled their light.
“I have a flash,” Dave said, patting one of his jacket pockets.
“I’m sure you do,” said Rekari, but he took the lamp anyway.
In the office, Rekari closed the front door and set the light on the long table that served as a desk and a display surface for maps. He brushed the dust from his usual chair and sat down. Dave took his father’s chair and waited. He knew that Rekari would eventually get around to telling him what he wanted to know, and there was no use trying to rush him. Martians always took their time.
Rekari folded his long fingers on his knee. “Did you find school on Earth to be useful?” he asked.
Dave had spent his undergraduate years at Syrtis University, where his teachers were all his father’s former students, and he had been satisfied at the prospect of earning his doctorate there. But his father had insisted that the Earth experience would make him a better archaeologist, even though on Earth he would be working at digs that had already been thoroughly explored by several generations of Ph.D. candidates. In the end, he realized that his father had been right. The range of knowledge of his teachers on Earth was astonishing, and they were more than willing to mentor the son of Dr. Benjamin Miller.
“Yes,” Dave said. “Extremely useful.”
Rekari’s hands moved in the Martian sign of approval. “Your father was pleased that you went. One of his old friends there wrote to him and said you were doing well.”
Dave waited.
Rekari seemed to be studying him. At last, he said, “Your father was ill.”
Dave felt a chill run up his back. It was bad news, then. “What do you mean?”
“His heart was not functioning properly.”
“He seemed fine when I left.”
Rekari made the Martian negative sign. “There were pills to help, even before you left.”
Dave frowned at him. “You should have told me.”
“The doctor said there was nothing to be done beyond the medication. A procedure on Earth might have helped, but the doctor was not certain your father would survive the journey. And your father did not wish to waste the ticket on himself.”
“I would have given it to him, gladly.”
“He knew that.”
Dave sighed heavily. His father had always been so stubborn. “You really should have told me.”
Rekari’s voice was low. “That may be, but he did not wish it.”
Dave understood, but it was so frustratingly Martian. They had immense respect for their own elders, and that spilled over to the humans they knew best. You just didn’t cross an elder if you were a Martian. That was why Rekari had gone along on so many expeditions even when he didn’t believe they would result in anything.
Rekari had been his father’s business partner for more years than Dave had been alive, helping his father guide rich Earth tourists through the best-preserved Martian ruins, offering lore that was traditional if not always accurate—as he admitted privately—and translating ancient inscriptions in colorful ways. In the long periods between tourist visits, the two of them searched for more ruins as well as for any interesting minerals that the long-depleted Martian landscape had to offer. The ancient civilization had used up most of the planet’s easily accessible resources, leaving a legacy of rust thinly scattered over the surface, but his father had once found a narrow vein of opal in a cliff exposed by the melting of the northern ice cap. Now there were rings and pendants of that opal among the more affluent residents of Syrtis City, although the gold for the settings had been brought from Earth in the luggage of the city’s only jeweler. The opal money had helped to finance several expeditions to sites that seemed to have exceptional archaeological potential. Nothing significant came of any of them, though. The old Martian cities had been lost for a very long time. But his father had never given up.
“I found his notebook,” said Dave. “It says he had some promising coordinates.”
The Martian lifted one hand in his version of a shrug. “Your father heard a story. You know, he was always hearing stories.”
Dave nodded.
“He thought he had some coordinates. So we took the boat and went, and we spent weeks searching at the edge of the northern ice. To my eyes, there was nothing, but in one area, your father saw … perhaps … some traces of what once might have been. We had brought the excavator along, of course, and he used it to strip off the top layer of soil, as always. Then he went down on his hands and knees with a trowel and began to scrape at some markings he said appeared to be the remains of wooden footings. He had done the same so often before, I did not think it would harm him. I knelt beside him and tried to help, but he pushed me away. It was delicate work, he said. Leave it to the expert, he said. I had used my trowel before, many times, but your father did have a surer hand.”