Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [228]
“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “I can’t stand not to know, but I’m afraid to know. I don’t want to know. Especially if it’s true.”
“See how you feel about it,” Michel suggested. “Try it and see. Given that both alternatives are painful, it might be you prefer action to the alternative.”
“Well.” She sniffed, took a single glance across the room. From the room on the other side of the mirror, an ax murderer stared out at her. “My God I am so ugly,” she said, revulsion making her nauseated to the verge of vomiting.
Michel stood, went to the mirror. “There is a thing called body dysmorphic disorder,” he said. “It’s related to obsessive-compulsive disorders, and to depression. I’ve noticed signs of it in you for a long time now.”
“It’s my birthday.”
“Ah. Well, it’s a treatable problem.”
“Birthdays?”
“Body dysmorphic disorder.”
“I won’t take drugs.”
He put a towel over the mirror, turned to look at her. “What do you mean? It may be a simple lack of serotonin. A biochemical insufficiency. A disease. Nothing to be ashamed of in that. We all take drugs. Clomipramine is very helpful for this problem.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“And no mirrors.”
“I’m not a child!” she snarled. “I know what I look like!” She leaped up and tore the towel off the mirror. Insane reptile vulture, pterodactylic, ferocious— it was impressive, in a way.
Michel shrugged. He had a little smile on his face, which she wanted to punch, or kiss. He liked lizards.
She shook her head to clear it. “Well. Take action, you say.” She thought about it. “I certainly prefer action to the alternative, in the current situation we’re in.” She told him about the news from the south, and her proposal to the others. “They make me so angry. They’re just waiting for disaster to strike again. All but Sax, and he is a loose cannon with all his sabotages, consulting with no one but these fools he has— we have to do something coordinated!”
“Good,” he said emphatically. “I agree. We need this.”
She regarded him. “Will you come to Hellas Basin with me?”
And he smiled, a spontaneous grin of pure pleasure. Of delight that she had asked! It pierced her heart to see it.
“Yes,” he said. “I have some business to finish here, but I can do that quickly. Just a few weeks.” And he smiled again. He loved her, she saw; not just as a friend or therapist, but as a lover too. And yet with a certain kind of distance, a Michel distance, some kind of therapist thing. So that she could still breathe. Be loved and still breathe. Still have a friend.
“So you can still stand to be with me, even though I look like this.”
“Oh Maya.” He laughed. “Yes, you are still beautiful, if you want to know. Which you still do, thank God.” He gave her a hug, pulled back and inspected her. “It is a trifle austere. But it will do.”
She pushed him away. “And no one will recognize me.”
“No one who doesn’t know you.” He stood. “Come on, are you hungry?”
“Yes. Let me change clothes.”
He sat on the bed and watched her as she did, soaking her up, the old goat. Her body was still a human body, amazingly enough, demonstrably female even at this ridiculous posthumous age. She could walk over and squash a breast into his face and he would suckle it like a child. Instead she dressed, feeling her spirits scrape off the bottom and begin their rise; the best moment in the whole sine wave, like the winter solstice for the paleolithics, the moment of relief when you know the sun will come back again, someday. “This is good,” Michel said. “We need you to lead again, Maya. You have the authority, you see. The natural