Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [171]
So their voyage was no longer the same, Jackie imparting her usual spin to things. She argued with Nirgal and Nadia; she casually rubbed up to Art, charming him at the same time she judged him, just as an automatic part of acquaintanceship. She would pull off her shirt to sponge down in Nadia’s shelters, or put a hand to his arm when asking questions about Terra— then at other times ignore him completely, veering off into worlds of her own. It was like living with a big cat in the rover, a panther that might purr in your lap or bat you across the compartment, but either way stalk about in a perfect nervous grace.
Ah, but that was Jackie. And there was her laugh, ringing through the car at things Art or Nadia said; and her beauty; and her intense enthusiasm for discussing the Martian situation, so that when she discovered what they were doing on this trip, she immediately fell into it. Life was heightened with her around, no doubt about it. And Art, though he goggled at her when she bathed, had what Nirgal suspected was a sly edge to his smile as he enjoyed her mesmerizing attentions; and once Nirgal caught him giving a look to Nadia that was positively amused. So though he liked her well enough, and liked looking at her, he did not seem hopelessly smitten. This was possibly a matter of his friendship with Nirgal; Nirgal couldn’t be sure, but he liked the idea, which had not been a common one in either Zygote or Sabishii.
For her part, Jackie seemed inclined to dismiss Art as a factor in the organizing of a general meeting, as if she would take it over herself. But then they visited a small neomarxist sanctuary in the Mountains of Mitchel (which were no more mountainous than the rest of the southern highlands, the name being an artifact of the telescope era) and these neomarxists proved to be in communication with the city of Bologna in Italy, and with the Indian province of Kerala— and with Praxis offices in both these places. So they had a lot to talk about with Art, and they obviously enjoyed it, and at the end of the visit one of them said to him, “It’s wonderful what you’re doing, you’re just like John Boone.”
Jackie jerked her head around to stare at Art, who was sheepishly shaking his head. “No he’s not,” she said automatically.
But after that she treated him more seriously. Nirgal could only laugh. Any mention of the name John Boone was like a magic spell to Jackie. When she and Nadia discussed John’s theories, he could understand a little why she felt that way; much of what Boone had wanted for Mars made excellent sense, and it seemed to him that Sabishii in particular was a kind of Boonean space. For Jackie, however, it went beyond a rational response— it had to do with Kasei and Esther, and Hiroko, even Peter— with some complex of feelings that touched her on a level that nothing else did.
• • •
They continued north, into lands even more violently disarranged than those they had left behind. This was volcanic country, where the harsh sublimity of the southern highland was augmented by the ancient craggy peaks of Australis Tholus and Amphitrites Patera. The two volcanoes bracketed a region of lava flows, where the blackish rock of the land was frozen in weird lumps, waves, and rivers. Once these flows had poured over the surface in streams of white-hot fluid, and even now, hard and black and shattered by the ages, and covered with dust and ice flowers, the liquid origins were completely evident.
The most prominent of these lava remnants were long low ridges, like dragon tails now fossilized to solid black rock. These ridges snaked across the land for many kilometers, often disappearing over the horizon in both directions, forcing the travelers to make long detours. These