The strong winds held, and flying along like they were, hydroplaning for most of the day, it took them only four days to sail across their radius of the Hellas Sea. On the fourth afternoon the mast sails feathered in, and the hull fell back into the water, rolling in the whitecaps. To the north land appeared over all the horizon at once; the rim of the great basin, like a mountain range without any peaks: a giant berm of a slope, looking like the inner wall of a crater, which of course it was, but so much bigger than any normal crater that one could only barely see the arcing of the circle — exactly that big — which struck Maya as beautiful, somehow. And as they closed on the land, and then coasted westward toward Odessa (their landfall had still been east of the town, despite their adjustment for the clockwise current) she could, by climbing up the shrouds into the wind, see the beach that the sea had created: a wide strand, backed by grass-covered dunes, with creek mouths cutting through here and there. A handsome coast, and near the outskirts of Odessa; part of Odessa’s handsomeness then, part of her town.
Off to the west, the rugged peaks of the Hellespontus Montes began to poke over the waves, distant and small, very different in character from the smooth northern rise. So they had to be close. Maya climbed up farther in the shrouds. And there it was, on the rise of the northern slope — the topmost rows of parks and buildings, all green and white, turquoise and terra-cotta. And then the big bowed middle of town, like an enormous amphitheater looking down on the stage of the harbor, which came over the horizon white lighthouse first, then the statue of Arkady, then the breakwater, then the thousand masts of the marina, and the jumble of roofs and trees behind the stained concrete of the corniche seawall. Odessa.
She scampered down the shroud like a crew member, almost, and hugged a few of them and Michel, feeling herself grin, feeling the wind pour over them. They came into the harbor and the sails furled into their masts like touched snails. They puttered into a slip, and walked down a gangplank, and along the dock, up through the marina and into the corniche park. And there they were. The blue trolley still clang-clanged on the street behind the park.
Maya and Michel walked down the corniche hand in hand, looking at all the food vendors and the small outdoor cafes across the street. All the names seemed new, not a single one the same, but that was restauranteering for you; they all looked much as they had before, and the city rising up terrace by terrace behind the seafront was just as they remembered it: “There’s the Odeon, there’s the Sinter — ”
“That’s where I worked for Deep Waters, I wonder what they all do now?”
“I think maintaining sea level keeps a good number of them busy. There’s always some kind of water work.”
“True.”
And then they came to the old Praxis apartment building, its walls now mostly ivy-covered, the white stucco discolored, the blue shutters faded. In need of a bit of work, as Michel said, but Maya loved it that way: old. There on the third floor she spotted their old kitchen window and balcony, and Spencer’s there beside it. Spencer himself was supposed to be inside.
And they went in the gate, and said hello to the new concierge, and indeed Spencer was inside, sort of: he had died that afternoon.
It shouldn’t have mattered so much. Maya hadn’t seen Spencer Jackson in years, she had never seen that much of him, even when he lived next door; never known him at all well. No one had. Spencer was one of the least comprehensible of the First Hundred, which was saying a lot. His own man, his own life. And he had lived as part of the surface world under an assumed identity, a spy, working for the security gestapo in Kasei Vallis for almost twenty years, until the night they had blown the town away and rescued Sax, and Spencer as well. Twenty years as someone else, with a false past, and no one to talk to; what would that do to one? But then Spencer had always been withdrawn, private, self-contained. So maybe it hadn’t mattered as much to him. He had seemed all right in their years in Odessa, always in therapy with Michel of course, and a very heavy drinker at times; but easy to have as a neighbor, a good friend, quiet, solid, reliable in his ways. And he certainly had continued to work, his production with the Bogdanovist designers had never flagged, neither during his double life or after. A great designer. And his pen sketches were beautiful. But what would twenty years of duplicity do to you? Maybe all his identities had become assumed. Maya had never thought about it; she couldn’t imagine it; and now, packing Spencer’s things in his empty apartment, she wondered that she had never even tried before — that somehow Spencer had managed to live in such a way that one did not even wonder about him. It was a very strange accomplishment. Crying, she said to Michel, “You have to wonder about everybody!”
He only nodded. Spencer had been one of his best friends.
And then in the next few days an amazing number of people came to Odessa for the funeral. Sax, Nadia, Mikhail, Zeyk and Nazik, Roald, Coyote, Mary, Ursula, Marina and Vlad, Jurgen and Sibilla, Steve and Marion, George and Edvard, Samantha, really it was like a convocation of the remaining Hundred and associated issei. And Maya stared around at all their old familiar faces, and realized with a sinking heart that they would be meeting like this for a long time to come. Gathering from around the world each time one fewer, in a final game of musical chairs, until one day one of them would get a call and realize they were the last one left. A horrible fate. But not one that Maya expected to have to endure; she would die before that, surely. The quick decline would get her, or something else; she would step in front of a trolley if she had to. Anything to avoid such a fate. Well — not anything. To step in front of a trolley would be both too cowardly and too brave, at one and the same time. She trusted she would die before it came to that. Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it. Maybe the final survivor of the First Hundred wouldn’t be such a bad thing anyway. New friends, a new life — wasn’t that what she was searching for now? So that these sad old faces were just a hindrance to her?
She stood grimly through the short memorial service and the quick eulogies. Those who spoke looked somewhat perplexed as to what they could say. A big crowd of engineers had come from Da Vinci, Spencer’s colleagues from his design years. Clearly a lot of people had been fond of him, it was surprising, even though Maya had been fond of him herself. Curious that such a hidden man could evoke such a response. Perhaps they had all projected onto his blank-ness, made their own Spencer and loved him as part of themselves. They all did that anyway; that was life.
But now he was gone. They went down to the harbor and the engineers let loose a helium balloon, and when it reached a hundred meters Spencer’s ashes began to spill out, in a slow trickle. Part of the haze, the blue of the sky, the brass of sunset.
In the days that followed the crowd dispersed, and Maya wandered Odessa nosing through used-furniture shops and sitting on benches on the corniche, watching the sun bounce over the water. It was lovely to be in Odessa again, but she felt the funereal chill of Spencer’s death much more than she would have expected. It cast a pall over even the beauty of this most beautiful town; it reminded her that in coming back here and moving into the old building, they were attempting the impossible — trying to go back, trying to deny time’s passing. Hopeless — everything was passing — everything they did was the last time they would ever do it. Habits were such lies, such lies, lulling them into the feeling that there was something that was lasting, when really nothing lasted. This was the last time she would ever sit on this bench. If she came down to the corniche tomorrow and sat on this same bench, it would again be the last time, and there would again be nothing lasting about it. Last time after last time, so it would go, on and on, always one final moment after the next, finality following finality in seamless endless succession. She could not grasp it, really. Words couldn’t say it, ideas couldn’t articulate it. But she could feel it, like the edge of a wave front pushing ever outward, or a constant wind in her mind, rushing things along so fast it was hard to think, hard to really feel them. At night in bed she would think, this is the last time for this night, and she would hug Michel hard, hard, as if she could stop it happening if she squeezed hard enough. Even Michel, even the little dual world they had built — “Oh Michel,” she said, frightened. “It goes so fast.”