Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [227]
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A knock at the door made her jump, and released her. She hesitated, suddenly ashamed, even frightened. Another part of her croaked, “Come in.”
The door opened. It was Michel. He saw her and stopped in the doorway. “Well?” she said, staring at him and feeling naked.
He swallowed, cocked his head. “Beautiful as ever.” With a crooked grin.
She had to laugh. She sat on her bed and began to weep. She sniffed and sniffed. “Sometimes,” she said, wiping her eyes, “sometimes I wish I could stop being Toitovna. I get so tired of it, of everything that I’ve done.”
Michel sat beside her. “We’re locked in our selves to the end. This is the price one pays for thought. But which would you rather be— convict, or idiot?”
Maya shook her head. “I was down in the park with Vlad and Ursula and Marina and Sax who hates me, and looking at them all, and we have to do something, we really do, but looking at them and remembering everything— trying to remember— we suddenly all seemed such damaged people.”
“A lot has happened,” Michel said, and put his hand on hers.
“Do you have trouble remembering?” Maya shivered, and clasped his hand like a life raft. “Sometimes I get so scared that I’ll forget everything.” She sniffed a laugh. “I guess that means I’d rather be a convict than an idiot, to answer your question. If you forget, you’re free of the past, but nothing means anything. So there’s no escape”— she started to cry again—”remember or forget, it hurts just as bad.”
“Memory problems are pretty common at our age,” Michel said gently. “Especially events in the middle distance, so to speak. There are exercises that help.”
“It’s not a muscle.”
“I know. But the power of recollection seems to strengthen with use. And the act of remembering apparently strengthens the memories themselves. It makes sense when you think about it. Synapses physically reinforced or replaced, that sort of thing.”
“But then, if you can’t face what you remember— oh Michel—” She took in a big unsteady breath. “They said— Marina said that Frank had murdered John. She said it to the others when she thought I couldn’t hear, said it as if it was something they all knew!” She clutched him by the shoulder, squeezed as if she could rip the truth out of him with her claws. “Tell me the truth, Michel! Is it true? Is that what you all think happened?”
Michel shook his head. “No one knows what happened.”
“I was there! I was in Nicosia that night and they weren’t! I was with Frank when it happened! He had no idea, I swear!”
Michel squinted, uncertain, and she said; “Don’t look like that!”
“I’m not, Maya, I’m not. I don’t mean anything by it. I have to tell you everything I’ve heard, and I’m trying to remember myself. There have been rumors— all kinds of rumors!— about what happened that night. It’s true, some say Frank was— involved. Or connected to the Saudis who killed John. That he met with the one who died later the next day, and so on.”
Maya began to weep harder. She bent over her clenched stomach and put her face on Michel’s shoulder, her ribs heaving. “I can’t stand it. If I don’t know what happened . . . how can I remember? How can I even think of them?”
Michel held her, soothed her with his embrace. He squeezed the muscles of her back, over and over. “Ah, Maya.”
After a long time she sat up, went to the sink and washed her face in cold water, avoiding the mirror’s gaze. She returned to the bed and sat, utterly despondent, a seeping blackness in every muscle.
Michel took her hand again. “I wonder if it might not help to know. Or at least, to know as much as you can. To investigate, you know. To read about John and Frank. There are books now, of course. And to ask the other people who were in Nicosia, particularly the Arabs who saw