Sax would have liked to be sure about that, one way or the other. It made the word itself a problem to mull over. But as he sauntered Odessa thinking about it, he did not see how the matter could be investigated any further, the etymologists having been thorough. The past was resistant to research.
Automorphism; idiomorphism. These were qualities Sax found underconsidered in Michel’s personality theories. He said to Michel, “We make ourselves.”
Altruistic behavior will tend to be chosen when k> 1/r, where k is the ratio of recipient benefit to altruist’s cost, and r is the coefficient of relationship between altruist and recipient, summed for all recipients. In the classical version of the theory r is the proportion of genes in two individuals that are identical because of common descent. But what if common descent is taken to mean the same phylum or order? What if r is not a function of common descent but of common interest? Sax found the social sciences very interesting.
For a time after he had mostly recovered from his stroke, Sax read quite a lot about strokes and brain damage, trying to learn more about what had happened to him. One case, famous in the literature, concerned a brilliant student at the polytechnic in Moscow, wounded in the head during World War Two. This young Russian, Zasetsky by name, had suffered gross trauma to the left parietal-occipital area (like Sax), and could no longer perceive his right visual field, could not add, knew not the order of the seasons, and so on; his symbolic and conceptual faculties had been crippled. But his frontal lobes had remained intact (as had Sax’s), leaving him his will, his desires, his sensitivity to experience. And so he had spent the rest of his days struggling to write down an account of his mentation, for the benefit of science, also for something to do; it was his life project, at first titled “The Story of a Terrible Injury,” later changed to “I’ll Fight On.” He wrote every day for twenty-five years.
Sax read this journal with immense feeling for Zasetsky, the sentences sometimes causing a terrible stab to the heart, the perceptions in them were so familiar: “I’m in a kind of fog all the time, like a heavy half-sleep. . . . Whatever I do remember is scattered, broken down into disconnected bits and pieces. That is why I react so abnormally to every word and idea, every attempt to understand the meaning of words. . . . I was killed March 2, 1943, but because of some vital power of my organism, I miraculously remained alive.”
That hand on his wrist, how to tell it!
As Ann and Sax were being blown around in the storm, Sax felt an updraft in the thunderhead drawing them up and concluded they had escaped drowning at sea only to be thrown right up out of the sky. The cockpit dome would probably hold even against the vacuum of space, but the cold would kill them. It was too loud to remember anything, but he wanted to remember to say to Ann, We ask Why all our lives and never get past Because. We stop after that word, in disarray. I wish I had spent more time with you.
Chapter 27
The Names of the Canals
Lestrygon, Antaeus, Cimmeria, Hyblaeus, Scamander, Pandoraea, Fretum, Hiddekel. Phison, Protonius, Python, Argaeus.
Mostly Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Some names refer to real features, visible from Earth through early telescopes: the big volcanoes, Hellas and Argyre, the great canyons, the dark land on Syrtis, the shifting polar caps.
Idalius, Heliconius, Oxus, Hydroates.
But the lines. Lines connecting everything. Even at the time illusory lines were known to occur between dark dots in a telescope, a matter of optics and vision. And the minimal width of any line that could be visible on Mars through those telescopes was known to be hundred kilometers. And yet the names. We want life. We want to live.
Cadmus, Erigone, Hebrus, Ilisus.
So silly. But I too I live in a world I love.
Pyriphlegeton, Memnonia, Eumenides, Ortygia.
I live in a big valley, on its flat floor, the mountains on both sides visible on most days, the smaller range closer to the west, the larger one farther away to the east. To north and south, as far as the eye can see, a valley. A valley about as wide as a Martian canal.
Chapter 28
The Soundtrack
Before work every morning, espresso and Steve Howe’s “Turbulence.” For Red Mars, Glass’s Satyagraha. For Green, Ahknaten. For Blue, Mishima and The Screens. For Maya, Astor Piazzolla, especially “Tango: Zero Hour.” For Ann, Gorecki’s Third Symphony, Paul Winter’s “Sun Singer,” and the Japanese folk song “Sakura.” For Sax, Beethoven’s late string quartets and piano sonatas. For Nadia, Louis Armstrong 194656, also Clifford Brown and Charles Mingus. For Michel, Keith Jarrett’s “Köln Concert.” For Nirgal, Najma. And always Van Morrison, Pete Townshend, and Yes.
Van when I’m happy
Pete when I’m mad
Steve when I’m energetic
Astor when I’m sad
Chapter 29
A Martian Romance
Eileen Monday hauls her backpack off the train’s steps and watches the train glide down the piste and around the headland. Out the empty station and she’s into the streets of Firewater, north Elysium. It’s deserted and dark, a ghost town, everything shut down and boarded up, the residents moved out and moved on. The only signs of life come from the westernmost dock: a small globular cluster of yellow streetlights and lit windows, streaking the ice of the bay between her and it. She walks around the bay on the empty corniche, the sky all purple in the early dusk. Four days until the start of spring, but there will be no spring this year.
She steps into the steamy clangor of the hotel restaurant. Workers in the kitchen are passing full dishes through the broad open window to diners milling around the long tables in the dining room. They’re mostly young, either iceboat sailors or the few people left in town. No doubt a few still coming out of the hills, out of habit. A wild-looking bunch. Eileen spots Hans and Arthur; they look like a pair of big puppets, discoursing to the crowd at the end of one table—elderly Pinocchios, eyes lost in wrinkles as they tell their lies and laugh at each other, and at the young behemoths passing around plates and devouring their pasta while still listening to the two. The old as entertainment. Not such a bad way to end up.
It isn’t Roger’s kind of thing, however, and indeed when Eileen looks around she sees him standing in the corner next to the jukebox, pretending to make selections but actually eating his meal right there. That’s Roger for you. Eileen grins as she makes her way through the crowd to him.
“Hey,” he says as he sees her, and gives her a quick hug with one arm.
She leans over and kisses his cheek. “You were right, it’s not very hard to find this place.”
“No.” He glances at her. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Oh, the work will always be there, I’m happy to get out. Bless you for thinking of it. Is everyone else already here?”
“Yeah, all but Frances and Stephan, who just called and said they’d be here soon. We can leave tomorrow.”
“Great. Come sit down with the others, I want some food, and I want to say hi to the others.”
Roger wrinkles his nose, gestures at the dense loud crowd. This solitary quality in him has been the cause of some long separations in their relationship, and so now Eileen shoves his arm and says, “Yeah yeah, all these people. Such a crowded place, Elysium.”