“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
And at the end of the voyage they were to settle in Odessa, now a seaside town like Hell’s Gate. Living there they could sail out any day they wanted when the weather was nice, and it would be just like this, windy and sunny. Bright moments in time, the living present which was the only reality they ever had; the future a vision, the past a nightmare — or vice versa — anyway only here in the moment could one feel the wind, and marvel at the waves, so big and sloppy! Maya pointed at one blue hillside rolling by in a long irregular fluctuating line, and Michel laughed out loud; they watched more closely, laughed harder; not in years had Maya felt so strongly the sense of being on a different world, these waves just didn’t act right, they flew around and fell over and bulged and wriggled all over their surfaces much more than the admittedly stiff breeze could justify, it looked odd; it was alien. Ah Mars, Mars, Mars!
The seas were always high, the crew told them, on the Hellas Sea. The absence of tides made no difference — what mattered most when it came to waves was gravity, and the strength of the wind. Hearing that as she looked out at the heaving blue plain, Maya’s spirits bounced up in the same wild way. Her g was light, and the winds were strong in her. She was a Martian, one of the first Martians, and she had surveyed this basin in the beginning, helped to fill it with water, helped to build the harbors and put free sailors at sea on it; now she sailed over it herself, and if she never did anything again but sail over it, that would be enough.
And so they sailed, and Maya stood in the bow near the bowsprit, hand on the rail to steady her, feeling the wind and the spray. Michel came and stood with her.
“So nice to be off the canal,” she said.
“It’s true.”
They talked about the campaign, and Michel shook his head. “This anti-immigration campaign is so popular.”
“Are the yonsei racist, do you think?”
“That would be hard, given their own racial mix. I think they are just generally xenophobic. Contemptuous of Earth’s problems — afraid of being overrun. So Jackie is articulating a real fear that everyone already has. It doesn’t have to be racist.”
“But you’re a good man.”
Michel blew out air. “Well, most people are.”
“Come on,” Maya said. Sometimes Michel’s optimism was too much. “Whether it’s racist or not, it still stinks.
Earth is down there looking at all our open land, and if we close the door on them now they’re likely to come hammer it open. People think it could never happen, but if the Terrans are desperate enough then they’ll just bring people up and land them, and if we try to stop them they’ll defend themselves here, and presto we’ll have a war. And right here on Mars, not back on Earth or in space, but on Mars. It could happen — you can hear the threat of it in the way people in the UN are trying to warn us. But Jackie isn’t listening. She doesn’t care. She’s fanning xenophobia for her own purposes.”
Michel was staring at her. Oh yes; she was supposed to have stopped hating Jackie. It was a hard habit to break. She waved all that she had said away, all the malevolent hallucinatory politicking of the Grand Canal. “Maybe her motives are good,” she said, trying to believe it. “Maybe she only wants what’s best for Mars. But she’s still wrong, and she still has to be stopped.”
“It isn’t just her.”
“I know, I know. We’ll have to think about what we might do. But look, let’s not talk about them anymore. Let’s see if we can spot the island before the crew.”
Two days later they did just that. And as they approached Minus One,. Maya was pleased to see that the island was not at all in the style of the Grand Canal. Oh there were whitewashed little fishing villages on the water, but these had a handmade look, an unelectrified look. And above them on the bluffs stood groves of tree houses, little villages in the air. Ferals and fisherfolk occupied the island, the sailors told them. The land was bare on the headlands, green with crops in the sea valleys. Umber sandstone hills broke into the sea, alternating with little bay beaches, all empty except for dune grass flowing in the wind.
“It looks so empty,” Maya remarked as they sailed around the north point and down the western shore. “They see the vids of this back on Earth. That’s why they won’t let us shut the door.”
“Yes,” Michel said. “But look how the people here bunch their population. The Dorsa Brevians brought the pattern up from Crete. Everyone lives in the villages, and goes out into the country to work it during the days. What looks empty is being used already, to support those little villages.”
There was no proper harbor. They sailed into a shallow bay overlooked by a tiny whitewashed fishing village, and dropped an anchor, which remained clearly visible on the sandy bottom, ten meters below. They ferried ashore using the schooner’s dinghy, passing some big sloops and several fishing boats anchored closer to the beach.
Beyond the village, which was nearly deserted, a twisting arroyo led them up into the hills. When the arroyo ended in a box canyon, a switchbacked trail gave them access to the plateau above. On this rugged moor, with the sea in view all around, groves of big oak trees had been planted long ago. Now some of the trees were festooned with walkways and staircases, and little wooden rooms high in their branches. These tree houses reminded Maya of Zygote, and she was not at all surprised to learn that among the prominent citizens of the island were several of the Zygote ectogenes — Rachel, Tiu, Simud, Emily — they had all come to roost here, and helped to build a way of life that Hiroko presumably would have been proud to see. Indeed there were some who said that the islanders hid Hiroko and the lost colonists in one of the more remote of these oak groves, giving them an area to roam in without fear of discovery. Looking around, Maya thought it was quite possible; it made as much sense as any other Hiroko rumor, and more than most. But there was no way of knowing. And it didn’t matter anyway; if Hiroko was determined to hide, as she must have been if she was alive, then where she hid was not worth worrying about. Why anyone bothered with it was beyond Maya. Which was nothing new; everything to do with Hiroko had always baffled her.
The northern end of Minus One Island was less hilly than the rest, and as they came down onto this plain they spotted most of the island’s conventional buildings, clustered together. These were devoted to the island’s olympiads, and they had a consciously Greek look to them: stadium, amphitheater, a sacred grove of towering sequoia, and out on a point over the sea, a small pillared temple, made of some white stone that was not marble but looked like it — alabaster, or diamond-coated salt. Temporary yurt camps had been erected on the hills above. Several thousand people milled about this scene; much of the island’s population, apparently, and a good number of visitors from around Hellas Basin — the games were still mostly a Hellas affair. So they were surprised to find Sax in the stadium, helping to do the measurements for the throwing events. He gave them a hug, nodding in his diffuse way. “Annarita is throwing the discus today,” he said. “It should be good.”
And so on that fine afternoon Maya and Michel joined Sax out on the track, and forgot about everything but the day at hand. They stood on the inner field, getting as close to events as they wanted. The pole vault was Maya’s favorite, it amazed her — more than any other event it illustrated to her the possibilities of Martian g. Although it clearly required a lot of technique to take advantage of it: the bounding yet controlled sprint, the precise planting of the extremely long pole as it jounced forward, the leap, the pull, the vault itself, feet pointing at the sky; then the catapulted flight into space, body upside down as the jumper shot above the flexing pole, and up, and up; then the neat twist over the bar (or not), and the long fall onto an airgel pad. The Martian record was fourteen meters and change, and the young man vaulting now, already winner for the day, was trying for fifteen, but failing. When he came down off the airgel pad Maya could see how very tall he was, with powerful shoulders and arms, but otherwise lean to the point of gauntness. The women vaulters waiting their turn looked much the same.