Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [127]
“Humans too.”
“Well, we haven’t seen too much at the four-thousand-meter level yet.” He meant four thousand meters above sea level on Earth. Higher than any permanent human settlement, as she recalled.
He was going on: “ . . .eventually see thoracic-cavity expansion, bound to happen. . . .” A man who talked to himself. Big, bulky; white fur in a fringe around his bald pate. Black eyes swimming behind round spectacles.
“Did you ever meet Hiroko?” she said.
“Hiroko Ai? I did, once. Lovely woman. I hear she’s gone back to Earth, to help them adapt to the flood. Did you know her?”
“Yes. I’m Ann Clayborne.”
“I thought so. Peter Clayborne’s mother, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s been in Boone recently.”
“Boone?”
“That’s the little station across the bay. This is Botany Bay, and the station is Boone Harbor. A kind of joke. Apparently there was a similar pairing in Australia.”
“Indeed.” She shook her head. John would be with them forever. And by no means the worst of the ghosts haunting them.
As for instance this man, the famous animal designer. He clattered about the kitchen, pawing at things shortsightedly. He put the soup before her and she ate, watching him furtively as she did. He knew who she was, but he did not seem uncomfortable. He did not try to justify himself. She was a red areologist, he designed new Martian animals. They worked on the same planet. But that did not mean they were enemies, not to him. He would eat with her without malice. There was something chilling in that, overbearing despite his gentle manner. Obliviousness was so brutal. And yet she liked him; that dispassionate power, vagueness— something. He bumbled around his kitchen, sat and ate with her, quickly and noisily, his muzzle wet with the clear soup stock. Afterward they broke pieces of bread from a long loaf. Ann asked questions about Boone Harbor.
“It has a good bakery,” Whitebook said, indicating the loaf. “And a good lab. The rest is just an ordinary outpost. But we took the tent down last year, and now it is very cold, especially in the winter. Only forty-six degrees latitude, but we feel it as a northern place. So much so that there is some talk of putting the tent back up, in winter at least. And there are people who say we should leave it on until things warm up.”
“Till the ice age is over?”
“I don’t think there will be an ice age. This first year without the soletta was bad, of course, but various compensations ought to be possible. A cold couple of years, that’s all it will be.”
He waggled a paw: it could go either way. Ann almost threw her chunk of bread at him. But best not to startle him. She controlled herself with a shudder.
“Is Peter still in Boone?” she asked.
“I think so. He was a few days ago.”
They talked some more about the Botany Bay ecosystem. Without a fuller array of plant life, animal designers were sharply limited; it was still more like the Antarctic than the Arctic in that respect. Possibly new soil-enhancement methods could speed the arrival of higher plants. Right now it was a land of lichen, for the most part. The tundra plants would follow.
“But this displeases you,” he observed.
“I liked it the way it was before. All Vastitas Borealis was barchan dunes, made of black garnet sand.”
“Won’t some remain, up next to the polar cap?”
“The ice cap will go right down to the sea line in most places. As you say, kind of like Antarctica. No, the dunes and the laminate terrain will be underwater, one way or another. The whole northern hemisphere will be gone.”
“This is the northern hemisphere.”
“A highland peninsula. And it’s gone too, in a way. Botany Bay was Arcadia Crater Ap.”
He looked at her through the spectacles, peering. “Perhaps if you lived at high altitude, it might seem like the old days. The old days, with air.”
“Perhaps,” she said cautiously. He was circling the chamber, shambling about with heavy steps, cleaning big kitchen knifes at the sink. His fingers ended in short blunt claws; even clipped they made it hard for him to work with small objects.