He said, “I don’t think that that’s their way.”
“Nor do I. But I wondered what had become of him.”
“You never found out?”
She shook her head with vehemence. “No. I didn’t want to. I tracked him down once, and look what happened then. But recently…”
“Yes?”
She gave a long, heartfelt sigh. “You’ll think me silly, but recently I’ve been… curious. I suppose I look at Shantidev, and he so much reminds me of Bilal… and I can’t help myself thinking back to those days. Anyway, recently I’ve wanted to go back to Earth, find him, discuss what he did ten years ago… find out what I really mean to him, if anything.”
He nodded, considering her words. “It might be… painful.”
She held his gaze. “I know that,” she said, “but I’ve got to do it. Anyway, I’ve discussed it with Kapil, and next week I’m taking a few days off and going to Earth, to New York.”
“I want to hear all about it when you get back.”
“Oh you will, Geoff. I’ll bore you and Sally to tears about what I did.”
His forearm tingled, signalling that a priority incoming call had overridden the quiescent function. He apologised and accepted the call.
A familiar face expanded in the screen on his forearm. Nina Ricci smiled out at him. “Nina… this is a welcome surprise. It’s been months.”
“Six,” she said with her customary precision. “I’d like to see you, Geoff.”
“Great. When are you next over our way?”
Nina Ricci was a high-level politico with administrative duties that extended over the entirety of Mars’s southern hemisphere. “How about the weekend?” she said.
“Wonderful. Stay at our place for the weekend. I’ll get a few people together and we’ll make a party of it on Saturday.”
“That sounds like a good idea, though I would like to see you alone at some point.”
He nodded. “Fine… But what about?”
She pulled a face. “About many things, but principally about the Titan obelisk, our increased duties… I have an idea.”
“What a coincidence. I was just talking about those very things.”
“With whom?”
Allen lifted his forearm and directed it across the table at Ana, who smiled and waved her fingers. “Hi, Nina!”
“Ana, good to see you. I take it that you will come on Saturday too?”
Ana nodded. “I’m sure Geoff will invite me,” she said.
To Allen, Nina said, “Midday Saturday, then. Ciao, Geoff.”
He cut the connection, sat back and smiled at Ana. “Now, I wonder what all that was about?”
Ana laughed. “That,” she said, “was Nina, being all conspiratorial again. You know her!”
“And I know that when she has ideas they can often be very interesting.”
They ordered more drinks and chatted as the Martian afternoon mellowed towards evening.
A COUPLE OF weeks after their arrival on Mars, as they sat in the garden with a bottle of red wine, Sally had said to him, “Do you know what’s wrong with this house, Geoff?”
He looked at her. “Isn’t it perfect? That’s what you always said — it’s perfect.” He paused. “Okay, is it because it’s on Mars?”
“Of course not. I like it here. And Hannah has settled in wonderfully.”
“So what’s wrong with the house?”
“It’s the wrong way around.”
“Come again?”
“The garden,” she said, indicating the lawn, “should be on the other side, overlooking the escarpment. The Serene didn’t get it right.”
“I think, if you recall, it was rather a rushed job. They had other things to think about, after all.”
She hit his arm. “I know that! It’s just… I wonder if we could get them to turn it around?”
“Tell you what, next time I see Kath, I’ll mention it to her.”
It was said in jest, of course, as it was a week later when he met with Kath Kemp and mentioned Sally’s criticism of the Serene’s architectural prowess. She had smiled and murmured an apology — but a few days later, on arriving home with Sally, he had braked their buggy before the house, stared at Sally and laughed aloud.
The Serene had turned the cottage around so that now the back garden overlooked the escarpment and the five-hundred-metre drop to the plain below.
It made a great venue for the parties and get-togethers that he and Sally hosted every month.
Now thirty friends and neighbours thronged the garden, setting up a pleasant hubbub of chatter; Martian tablas played in the background, and somewhere one of Hannah’s friends was attempting — not altogether successfully — to coax a raga from a sitar.
The majority of the guests were workmates of Allen and Sally’s, professionals in their forties and fifties and their teenage children. Ana had come early and with Sally had cooked up an Indian feast, which they were carrying with triumphal pride from the kitchen to trestle tables set up at the end of the garden. Shantidev, Ana’s six-year-old son, was dangling contentedly from the rope-swing that Allen had made, twelve years ago, for Hannah. The sight of the child penduluming back and forth beneath the sturdy branch of the ash tree brought back a slew of pleasant memories.
He knocked back his fifth beer and listened to Kapil and a colleague at the farm talking shop.
It was six o’clock, and the sun was setting on a short Martian day. It was warm — as it was all the year round at this equatorial latitude — and the party was set to go on quietly until midnight, when the last of the guests would wander off home until next time. As Allen sipped his beer and stared around at the happy revellers, he realised that he had not felt so contented in years.
Nina Ricci had arrived a little after midday, tall, elegant and regal as ever; if anything, the passing years had done something to mature and deepen her Latin beauty. She was in her late forties now, with the poise and gravitas of an emeritus ballerina, and a restless, questing intelligence.
A murmur had passed around the gathering on her arrival; she had risen from being a nondescript journalist ten years ago, to her current, elevated position as one of the leading political thinkers on Mars.
Allen had introduced her to various friends and then, later, they had chatted about nothing in particular, catching up on each other’s recent exploits — Allen realising, as he recounted council meetings, how humdrum his life had become of late, at least relative to Ricci’s hectic lifestyle.
He had been eager to hear her latest theories, but it was evident from the line of her conversation that that would be saved until later.
Now he saw her in earnest conversation with a professor at the local university, a man known for his trenchant views who, on this occasion, seemed to have found his conversational match.
Allen looked around the gathering but could not see Sally.
He moved back into the house and found her in the kitchen. He leaned against the door-frame and watched her putting the finishing touches to three vast bowls of trifle. He was overcome with a strange sensation; it came to him from time to time, unexpectedly, surprising him with its power. It was an upwelling of love for this woman who had shared his life now for twenty years. She was sixty-two, upright and slim, her face lined, her hair grey, and he realised that he had never found her as beautiful as he did now. The emotion almost choked him.
Sensing his presence, Sally turned quickly. With the back of her hand — her fingers sticky — she brushed away a strand of hair and smiled at him. “What?” she asked. “You’re staring at me very oddly, Geoff.”