Firstborn

It was in this mood of strangeness that she saw the arch.

The rover never brought them close. But it loomed over the horizon, tall, impossibly slender. She was sure that that immense crosspiece could not have been supported on Earth; it was Martian architecture.

The day wore away. The sunset was long and elaborate, with bands of diminishing color following the small sun toward the horizon. The night sky was oddly disappointing, though, with only a scattering of stars; there must be too much dust suspended in the air. Bisesa looked for Earth, but either it wasn’t up or she didn’t recognize it.

Paula brought her a plate of food, a piping-hot risotto with mushrooms and green beans, and a mug of coffee fitted with a lid.

She leaned down and peered straight ahead, through the window.

Bisesa asked, “What are you looking for?”

“The north celestial pole. People generally ask.”

“Tourists like me, you mean.”

Paula wasn’t fazed. “Mars doesn’t have a bright pole star, like Polaris. But — look, can you see Cygnus, the swan? The brightest star is Deneb, Alpha Cygni. Follow the spine of the swan, up through Deneb, and the celestial pole is about halfway between Deneb and the next distinct constellation, Cepheus.”

“Thank you. But the dust everywhere — the seeing isn’t as good as I expected.”

“Well, Mars is a museum of dust, the climatologists say,” Paula said. “It’s not like Earth. We have no rain to wash the dust out, no sedimentary processes to bake it all into rock. So it stays in the air.”

Mars as a snow globe, Bisesa thought. “I saw an arch.”

Paula nodded. “Erected by the Chinese. They put up a monument like that every place one of their arks came down.”

So that tremendous structure was a memorial to hundreds of Chinese who had died on Mars on sunstorm day.

Bisesa ventured, “Paula, I was a little surprised you came along with us.”

“Surprised?”

“And that you’re mixed up with this secretive business at the pole of Mars. Alexei, yes, I can see it in his personality.”

“He is a bit furtive, isn’t he?”

They shared a laugh. Bisesa said, “But you seem more—”

“Conformist?” That pretty airline-stewardess smile was still in place, illuminated by the dash lights. “I don’t mind if that’s said of me. Maybe it’s true.”

“It’s just that you’re so good at your job.”

Paula said without resentment, “I was probably born to it. My mother is the person most people remember of the Aurora crew, after Bob Paxton — the only one, probably.”

“And so visitors respond to you.”

“It could have been a handicap. Why not turn it into an asset?”

“Okay. But that doesn’t extend to hauling your backside all the way to the north pole for us.” She paused. “You admire your mother, don’t you?”

Paula shrugged. “I never met her. But how could I not admire her? Bob Paxton came to Mars and sort of conquered it, and then went home again. But my mother loved Mars. You can tell that from her journals. Bob Paxton is a hero on Earth,” she said. “But my mother is a hero here on Mars, our first hero of all.” The stewardess smile flicked back on. “More risotto?”

In the murky Martian dark, in the warmth of the cabin, Bisesa fell asleep in her seat.

She woke to a tap on her shoulder. She found she was swathed by a blanket.

Myra was sitting with her, gazing out of the window into dawn light. Bisesa saw they were driving through a landscape of rolling dunes, some of them tens of meters high, frozen waves a kilometer or two apart. Some kind of frost gathered in their lee.

“My, I slept the night through.”

“Are you okay?”

Bisesa shifted, exploring. “A little stiff. But I guess even a chair like this is comfortable in low gravity. I’ll stretch and have a wash shortly.”

“You’ll have to wait for Alexei. He’s shaving his head again.”

“I guess I got hypnotized by the view.”

“White line fever. Or something.” Myra sounded irritable.

“Myra? Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? Christ, Mother, look at that view. Nothing. And yet here you are, sitting up here for hour after hour, just drinking it in.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s you. If there’s something strange, you’re drawn to it. You revel in it.”

Bisesa glanced around. The others were asleep. She realized that this was the first time she and Myra had effectively been alone since the washed-out days after her waking at the Hibernaculum—

there had never been real privacy even on the Maxwell, and certainly not in the elevator spider cabin.

“We’ve never had a chance to talk,” she said.

Myra made to stand up. “Not here.”

Bisesa put her hand on her arm. “Come on. Who cares if the police are listening in? Please, Myra. I don’t feel I know you anymore.”

Myra sat back. “Maybe that’s the trouble. I don’t know you.

Since you came out of the tank — I think I’d got used to living without you, Mum. As if you had died, perhaps. And when you did come out, you aren’t how I remember you. You’re like a sister I’ve suddenly discovered, not my mother. Does that make sense?”

“No. But we haven’t evolved for Hibernacula time-slips, have we?”

“What do you want to talk about? I mean, where am I supposed to start? It’s been nineteen years, half my life.”

“Give me one headline.”

“Okay.” Myra hesitated, and looked away. “You have a granddaughter.”

Her name was Charlie, for Charlotte, Myra’s daughter by Eugene Mangles. Now aged fifteen, she had been born four years after Bisesa went into the tank.

“Good God. I’m a grannie.”

“When we broke up, Eugene fought me for custody. And he won, Mum. He had the clout to do it. Eugene is powerful and he’s famous.”

Bisesa said, “But he was never very human, was he?”

“Of course I had access. But that was never enough. I’m not like you. I don’t want strangeness. I wanted to build a home, for me and Charlie. I wanted — stability. I never got close to that. And in the end he cut me out altogether. It wasn’t hard. They’re hardly ever even on the Earth.”

Bisesa reached for her hand; it was cold and unresponsive.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Well, for one thing you didn’t ask. And, look, here we are on Mars! And we’re here because you’re the famous Bisesa Dutt. You have much more important issues to worry about than a lost granddaughter.”

“Myra, I’m sorry. When this is all over—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Mum. It never is over, with you. But I’ll support you even so. I always will. Look, forget about it. You had a right to know. Well, now you do.” Her face was intent, her mouth pinched. Green light was reflected in her eyes.

Green?

Bisesa sat up with a jolt, and looked out of the blister window.

Under a salmon-pink dawn sky, the rutted tracks snaked across a plain that was painted a deep dull green.

Paula joined them. “Discovery. Slow down so we can see.” The truck obligingly