Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [266]
• • •
But she refused to say any more about it. She would not tell the story of her dive. The others did and then it was her turn, somehow, and the people on the boat were looking at her like vultures, eager to gulp down her experiences. She drank her champagne and sat silently on the upper deck, watching the broad-sloped waves. Waves looked odd on Mars, big and sloppy, impressive. She gave Michel a look to let him know she was all right, that he had done well to send her under. Beyond that, silence. Let them have their own experiences to feed on, the vultures.
The boat returned to DuMartheray Harbor, which consisted of a little crescent of marina-platted water, curving under part of the apron of DuMartheray Crater. The slope of the apron was covered with buildings and greenery, right up to the rim.
They disembarked and walked up through the town, had dinner in a rim restaurant, watching sunset flare over the water of Isidis Bay. The evening wind fell down the escarpment and whistled offshore, holding the waves up and tearing spray off their tops, in white plumes crossed by brief rainbow arcs. Maya sat next to Michel, and kept a hand on his thigh or shoulder. “Amazing,” someone said, “to see the row of salt columns still gleaming down there.”
“And the rows of windows in the mesas! Did you see that broken one? I wanted to go in and look, but I was afraid.”
Maya grimaced, concentrated on the moment. People across the table were talking to Michel about a new institute concerning the First Hundred and other early colonists— some kind of museum, a repository of oral histories, committees to protect the earliest buildings from destruction, etc., also a program to provide help for superelderly early settlers. Naturally these earnest young men (and young men could be so earnest) were particularly interested in Michel’s help, and in finding and somehow enlisting all of the First Hundred left alive; twenty-three now, they said. Michel was of course perfectly courteous, and indeed seemed truly interested in the project.
Maya couldn’t have hated the idea more. A dive into the wreckage of the past, as a kind of smelling salts, repellent but invigorating— fine. That was acceptable, even healthy. But to fix on the past, to focus on it; disgusting. She would have happily tossed the earnest young men over the rail. Meanwhile Michel was agreeing to interview all the remaining First Hundred, to help the project get started. Maya stood up and went to the rail, leaned against it. Below on the darkening water luminous plumes of spray were still blowing off the top of every wave.
• • •
A young woman came up beside her and leaned on the railing. “My name is Vendana,” she said to Maya, while looking down at the waves. “I’m the Green party’s local political agent for the year.” She had a beautiful profile, clean and sharp in a classic Indian look: olive-skinned, black-eyebrowed, long nose, small mouth. Intelligent subtle brown eyes. It was odd how much one could tell by faces alone; Maya was beginning to feel she knew everything essential about a person at first glance. Which was a useful ability, given that so much of what the young natives said these days baffled her. She needed that first insight.
Greenness, however, she understood, or thought she did; actually an archaic political term, she would have thought, given that Mars was fully green now, and blue as well. “What do you want?”
Vendana said, “Jackie Boone, and the Free Mars slate of candidates for offices from this area, are traveling around campaigning for the upcoming elections. If Jackie stays party chair again, and gets back on the executive council, then she’ll continue working on the Free Mars plan to ban all