Blue Mars (m-3) by Kim Stanley Robinson

Author:Kim Stanley Robinson [Robinson, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_space
ISBN: 0-553-10144-7
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam Dell/Random House
Published: 1996-03-18T05:00:00+00:00

PART NINE

Natural History

Afterward Nirgal went with Sax up to Da Vinci, and stayed with the old man in his apartment. One night Coyote dropped by, after the timeslip when no one else would have thought to visit.

Briefly Nirgal told him what had happened to the high basin.

“Yeah, so?” Coyote said.

Nirgal looked away.

Coyote went to the kitchen and started scrabbling through Sax’s refrigerator, shouting back into the living room through a full mouth. “What did you expect on a windy hillside like that? This world is not a garden, man. Some of it going to get buried every year, that’s just the way it is. Another wind come in a year or ten and blow all that dust off your hill.”

“Everything will be dead by then.”

“That’s life. Now it’s time to do something else. What were you doing before you set in there?”

“Looking for Hiroko.”

“Shit.” Coyote appeared in the doorway, pointing a big kitchen knife right at Nirgal. “Not you too.”

“Yes me too.”

“Oh come on. When you going to grow up. Hiroko is dead. You might as well get used to it.”

Sax came in from his office, blinking hard. “Hiroko is alive,” he said.

“Not you too!” Coyote cried. “You two are like children!”

“I saw her on the south flank ofArsia Mows, in a storm.”

“Join the fucking party, man.”

Sax blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Fuck.”

Coyote went back into the kitchen.

“There have been other sightings,” Nirgal said to Sax. “Reports are fairly common.”

“I know that — ”

“Reports are daily!” Coyote shouted from the kitchen. He charged back into the living room. “People see her every day! There’s a spot on the wrist to report sightings! Last week I see she appeared in two different places on the same night, in Noachis and on Olympus! Opposite sides of the world!”

“I don’t see that that proves anything,” Sax said stubbornly. “They say the same sort of thing about you, and I see you’re still alive.”

Coyote shook his head violently. “No. I am the exception that proves the rule. Anyone else, when they are reported in two places at once, that means they are dead. A sure sign.” He made a stop thrust to forestall Sax’s next remark, shouted “She’s dead! Face it! She died in the attack on Sabishii! Those UNTA storm troopers caught her and Iwao and Gene and Rya and all the rest of them, and they took them to some room and sucked the air or pulled the trigger. That’s what happens! Do you think it never happens? Do you think that secret police haven’t killed dissidents and then disappeared the bodies so that no one ever finds out? It happens! Fuck yes it happens, even on your precious Mars it happens, yes and more than once! You know it’s true! It happened. That’s how people are. They’ll do anything, they’ll kill people and figure they’re just earning their keep or feeding their children or making the world safe. And that’s what happened. They killed Hiroko and all the rest of them too.

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