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By Root 2189 0

in its history, to read it like a text, written by its own long past; that was Ann’s vision, achieved by a century’s close observation and study, and by her own native gift, her love for it. Something to behold, really— something to marvel at. A kind of resource, or treasure— a love beyond science, or something into the realm of Michel’s mystical science. Alchemy. But alchemists wanted to change things. A kind of oracle, rather. A visionary, with a vision just as powerful as Hiroko’s, really. Less obviously visionary, perhaps, less spectacular, less active; an acceptance of what was there; love of rock, for rock’s sake. For Mars’s sake. The primal planet, in all its sublime glory, red and rust, still as death; dead; altered through the years only by matter’s chemical permutations, the immense slow life of geophysics. It was an odd concept— abiologic life— but there it was, if one cared to see it, a kind of living, out there spinning, moving through the stars that burned, moving through the universe in its great systolic/diastolic movement, its one big breath, one might say. Sunset somehow made it easier to see that.

Trying to see things Ann’s way. Glancing furtively at his wristpad, behind her back. Stone, from Old English stán, cognates everywhere, back to proto-Indo-European sti, a pebble. Rock, from medieval Latin rocca, origin unknown; a mass of stone. Sax abandoned the wristpad and fell away into a kind of rock reverie, open and blank. Tabula rasa, to the point where apparently he did not hear what Ann herself was saying to him; for she snorted and walked on. Abashed, he followed, and steeled himself to ignore her displeasure, and ask more questions.

There seemed to be a lot of displeasure in Ann. In a way this was reassuring; lack of affect would have been a very bad sign; but she still seemed quite emotional. At least most of the time. Sometimes she focused on the rock so intently it was almost like watching her obsessed enthusiasm of old, and he was encouraged; other times it seemed she was just going through the motions, doing areology in a desperate attempt to stave off the present moment; stave off history; or despair; or all of that. In those moments she was aimless, and did not stop to look at obviously interesting features they passed, and did not answer his questions about same. The little Sax had read about depression alarmed him; not much could be done, one needed drugs to combat it, and even then nothing was sure. But to suggest antidepressants was more or less the same as suggesting the treatment itself; and so he could not speak of it. And besides, was despair the same as depression?

Happily, in this context, plants were pitifully few. Tempe was not like Tyrrhena, or even the banks of the Arena Glacier. Without active gardening, this was what one got. The world was still mostly rock.

On the other hand, Tempe was low in altitude, and humid, with the ice ocean just a few kilometers to the north and west. And various Johnny Appleseed flights had passed over the entire southern shoreline of the new sea— part of Biotique’s efforts, begun some decades ago, when Sax had been in Burroughs. So there was some lichen to be seen, if you looked hard. And small patches of fellfield. And a few krummholz trees, half-buried in snow. All these plants were in trouble in this northern summer-turned-winter, except for the lichen of course. There was a fair bit of miniaturized fall color already, there in the tiny leaves of the ground-hugging koenigia, and pygmy buttercup, and icegrass, and, yes, arctic saxifrage. The reddening leaves served as a kind of camouflage in the ambient redrock; often Sax didn’t see plants until he was about to step on them. And of course he didn’t want to draw Ann’s attention to them anyway, so when he did stumble on one, he gave it a quick evaluative glance and walked on.

They climbed a prominent knoll overlooking the canyon west of the refuge, and there it was: the great ice sea, all orange and brass in the late light. It filled the lowland in a great sweep and formed its own smooth horizon,