alien plant life appears in the infraview. Sleep cuts through them sporadically, rips in the fabric of their drugged minds that thirst stitches whole again-until another dose of olfacts slashes them free.
When dawn arrives as an enormous apocalypse that ignites a landscape of ferrous peaks and reefs of blowing dust, the olfacts are gone. No condensation at all beads on the blackglass interior, but Buddy swabs it anyway. In the parching chill, Mei's caked lips catch on her dry teeth, and she finds she cannot speak when she tries to. Asleep or comatose, Grielle lies with one blind eye halflidded as if peeking out at the last dying stars, the planet's tiny
lobe-shaped moons.
The rovers and the dune climber chum onward mindlessly. A blustery wind licks powder from the nearby crater ridges, and a pouring haze of sand obscures vision. When the fog lifts, the fiery world is still there. The badland blazes under the space-cold pandemonium of heaven, its tortured pinnacles,
crater-mutilated plains, and red dunes indifferent to human trespass.
6
Solis
ON THE HORIZON OF THE BARREN PAN, SOMBER HEADLANDS appear out of the morning glare, the promontories of ancient impact craters. A city shines beyond the protective bulwark of these rouge bluffs. Lens towers burn fiercely, collecting their solar harvest, and the vaulting spans, shield hangars, derrick arcades, and rhombohedral rooftops with their gleaming gold-foil facets give light in fierce spikes like a field of stars.
Solis is the human history of Mars. At the west end, some of the geodesics from the first Mars colony are preserved in a historical park. Surrounding it
are the hydroponic grange sheds of the Anthropos Essentia, the oldest residents. Their bower-and-dome architecture dominates the flats of two intersecting
craters whose rufous cliff walls have been sculpted into administrative offices. On the other side of them, in three nearly concentric craters, the clade cantonments spraddle in many levels of glass galleries, pyramids, and pavilions. The crofts of prism turrets and rhomboidal steppes at the east end are the
latest edifices, the megastructure Hall of All constructed to house the millions of humans who want to live free of the Maat and their minions, the Commonality.
As the pilgrims first spot the silver starpoints in the amber aureole of sunrise that are the solar foils of Solis, flyers already begin to loft out of the city and circle in-scout-class andrones programmed to evaluate all travelers who come over the rim of the wasteland.
The flyers find two dusty rovers and a dune climber grinding slowly over the reddish black badlands. A deep- space patrol-dass androne lies dormant atop the roof of the following rover. When they land, the vehicles stop and three pilgrims emerge, parched, shrunken with hunger, and glassy-eyed. The first one out, Grielle Aspect falls deliriously onto her knees, a worshipful smile on her salt-pale lips. Thinking she is collapsing from dehydration, several
simple-minded andrones begin emergency procedures. Two of them wrap Grielle in a pressurized sling and, despite her protests, pack her face and arms in glucose infusers. Meanwhile, others approach Mei Nili and Buddy.
Buddy leads an androne to the second rover, opening the hatch to reveal Shau
Bandar's frozen body, furred in powder-blue carbon dioxide ice.
'And this is Mr. Charlie.' Mei presents the battered plasteel capsule to the androne before her. 'Can you tell if he is all right? He took a heavy blow.'
The flesh-masked androne smiles and takes the capsule. 'Solis welcomes you.' 'Please, can you tell if he's been damaged?' Mei repeats, dazed.
'Please come with me,' the androne requests. 'You may enter SoIis and ask your questions to the people there.'
Grielle is hurriedly hammocked between two flyers, and the andrones who have treated her mount their wings, run a short distance, and lift her into the bright sky.
Mei looks back at Buddy. 'Buddy and I have to go together,' she tells her escort.
'I am sorry,' the androne mutters quietly, sounding sincere and gesturing toward wings of opalescent gossamer standing on the pebbly plain. 'Your companion is not admittable to Soils. He must remain outside.'
'What do you mean?' Mei breaks away from the androne who is leading her. 'Buddy's coming with me. He's a human-an old one.'
'I am sorry.'
She approaches Buddy, who looks at her wistfully. 'We part here,' he says.
Head tilted, she stares closely at him, searching for traits she could not have missed in their harrowing days in the wilds-the static blur of a semblor, the clade signs of pupil shape and finger count. He seems profoundly
human-though he has always displayed the quiescent alertness of a human biot-an organic androne. 'Who are you?' she insists.
'Forgive me for telling you this way, but I am of the Maat,' he confides. 'We are not permitted to enter Solis.'
Mei blinks back her surprise. 'You're joking!'
'Go with Mr. Charlie,' he counsels, pointing to the androne with the plasteel capsule in his arms. 'And take Shau with you. I'll stay with Munk and see that he's revived.'
A dizzy astonishment shoves through her as she tries to remember anything at all exceptional about this man. From the time the water cycler broke down three days ago, he suffered too, and she scowls with disbelief. 'I-I thought you had powers.'
