They had crossed the divide; the protruding batholith of the peaks degenerated into parched, crumbling slopes of gigantic rubble. Ahead of them the scarred yellow desolation stretched away like an infinite canvas, into mauve haze. “How far does it go?”
“It goes on forever… Maybe not this desert, but this merges into others that merge into others—the whole planet is a desert, hot or cold. It’s been desiccating for eons; the sun’s been rising off the main sequence. The sea by New Piraeus is the only large body of free water left now, and that’s dropped half an inch since I’ve been here. The coast is the only habitable area, and there aren’t many towns there even now.”
“Then Oro will never be able to change too much.”
“Only enough to hurt. See the dust? Open-pit mining, for seventy kilometers north. And that’s a little one.”
He took them south, sliding over the eroded face of the land to twist through canyons of folded stone, sediments contorted by the palsied hands of tectonic force; or flashing across pitted flatlands lipping on pocket seas of ridged and shadowed blow-sand.
They settled at last under a steep outcurving wall of frescoed rock layered in red and green. The wide, rough bed of the sandy wash was pale in the chill glare of noon, scrunching underfoot as they began to walk. Pulling on his leather jacket, Maris showed her the kaleidoscope of ages left tumbled in stones over the hills they climbed, shouting against the lusty wind of the ridges. She cupped them in marveling hands, hair streaming like silken banners past her face; obligingly he put her chosen few into his pockets. “Aren’t you cold?” He caught her hand.
“No, my suit takes care of me. How did you ever learn to know all these, Maris?”
Shaking his head, he began to lead her back down. “There’s more here than I’ll ever know. I just got a mining tape on geology at the library. But it made it mean more to come out here… where you can see eons of the planet laid open, one cycle settling on another. To know the time it took, the life history of an entire world: it helps my perspective, it makes me feel—young.”
“We think we know worlds, but we don’t, we only see people: change and pettiness. We forget the greater constancy, tied to the universe. It would humble our perspective, too…” Pebbles boiled and clattered; her hand held his strongly as his foot slipped. He looked back, chagrined, and she laughed. “You don’t really have to lead me here, Maris. I was a mountain goat on Calicho, and I haven’t forgotten it all.”
Indignant, he dropped her hand. “You lead.” Still laughing, she led him to the bottom of the hill. And he took her to see the trees. Working their way over rocks up the windless branch wash, they rounded a bend and found them, tumbled in static glory. He heard her indrawn breath. “Oh, Maris—” Radiant with color and light she walked among them, while he wondered again at the passionless artistry of the earth. Amethyst and agate, crystal and mimicked wood-grain, hexagonal trunks split open to bare subtleties of mergence and secret nebulosities. She knelt among the broken bits of limb, choosing colors to hold up to the sun.
He sat on a trunk, picking agate pebbles. “They’re sort of special friends of mine; we go down in time together, in strangely familiar bodies…” He studied them with fond pride. “But they go with more grace.”
She put her colored chunks on the ground. “No… I don’t think so. They had no choice.”
He looked down, tossing pebbles.
“Let’s have our picnic here.”
They cleared a space and spread a blanket, and picnicked with the trees. The sun warmed them in the windless hollow, and he made a pillow of his jacket; satiated, they lay back head by head, watching the cloudless green-blue sky.
“You pack a good lunch.”
“Thank you. It was the least I could do”—her hand brushed his arm; quietly his fingers tightened on themselves—“to share your secrets; to learn that the desert isn’t barren, that it’s immense, timeless, full of—mysteries. But no life?”
“No—not anymore. There’s no water, nothing can live. The only things left are in or by the sea, or they’re things we’ve brought. Across our own lifeless desert-sea.”
“Though inland far we be, our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither.‘” Her hand stretched above him, to catch the sky.
“Wordsworth. That’s the only thing by him I ever liked much.”
They lay together in the warm silence. A piece of agate came loose, dropped to the ground with a clink; they started.
“Maris—”
“Hmm?”
“Do you realize we’ve known each other for three-quarters of a century?”
“Yes…”
“I’ve almost caught up with you, I think. I’m twenty-seven. Soon I’m going to start passing you. But at least—now you’ll never have to see it show.” Her fingers touched the rusty curls of his hair.
“It would never show. You couldn’t help but be beautiful.”
“Maris… sweet Maris.”
He felt her hand clench in the soft wave of his shirt, move in caresses down his body. Angrily he pulled away, sat up, half his face flushed. “Damn—!”
Stricken, she caught at his sleeve. “No, no—” Her eyes found his face, gray filled with grief. “No… Maris… I—want you.” She unsealed her suit, drew blue-silver from her shoulders, knelt before him. “I want you.”
Her hair fell to her waist, the color of warm honey. She reached out and lifted his hand with tenderness; slowly he leaned forward, to bare her breasts and her beating heart, felt the softness set fire to his nerves. Pulling her close, he found her lips, kissed them long and longingly; held her against his own heart beating, lost in her silken hair. “Oh, God, Brandy…”
“I love you, Maris… I think I’ve always loved you.” She clung to him, cold and shivering in the sunlit air. “And it’s wrong to leave you and never let you know.”
And he realized that fear made her tremble, fear bound to her love in ways he could not fully understand. Blind to the future, he drew her down beside him and stopped her trembling with his joy.
In the evening she sat across from him at the bar, blue-haloed with light, sipping brandy. Their faces were bright with wine and melancholy bliss.
“I finally got some more brandy, Brandy… a couple of years ago. So we wouldn’t run out. If we don’t get to it, you can take it with you.” He set the dusty red-splintered bottle carefully on the bar.
“You could save it, in case I do come back, as old as your grandmaw, and in need of some warmth…” Slowly she rotated her glass, watching red leap up the sides. “Do you suppose by then my poems will have reached Home? And maybe somewhere Inside, Ntaka will be reading me.”
“The Outside will be the Inside by then… Besides, Ntaka’s probably already dead. Been dead for years.”
“Oh. I guess.” She pouted, her eyes growing dim and moist. “Damn, I wish… I wish.”
“Branduin, you haven’t joined us yet tonight. It is our last together.” Harkané appeared beside her, lean dark face smiling in a cloud-mass of blued white hair. She sat down with her drink.
“I’ll come soon.” Clouded eyes glanced up, away. “Ah, the sadness of parting keeps you apart? I know.” Harkané nodded. “We’ve been together so long; it’s hard, to lose another family.” She regarded Maris. “And a good bartender must share everyone’s sorrows, yes, Soldier—? But bury his own. Oh—they would like some more drinks—”
Sensing dismissal, he moved aside; with long-practiced skill he became blind and deaf, pouring wine.
“Brandy, you are so unhappy—don’t you want to go on this other voyage?”