by Greg Bear
Four hours later, with the living quarters in reasonable shape and our provisions for several days stored and logged in with the arbeiters, Charles and I stopped our rushing about and faced each other. Charles glanced away first, pretending to critically examine the interior furnishings. "Looks like a bunkhouse," he said.
"It's fine," I said.
"Well, it's not luxury."
"I didn't expect it to be."
"I came here once when I was ten, with my dad," Charles said, rubbing his hands nervously on his pants. "A kind of getaway for a couple of days while traveling from Amnesia to Jefferson, through Durrey . . . Klein holdings intrude into the old Erskine BM lands here. I don't know how that happened."
Another moment of uneasy silence. Clearly, Charles did not know how to begin, nor what was expected; neither did I, but as the female in this pairing, it was not my responsibility to initiate, and I did not want to try.
"Shall we see the winery?" he inquired suddenly, holding out his hand.
I took the hand and we began our formal tour of Tres Haut Medoc.
Charles was disarmingly nervous. Disarming, because I had to say little and do nothing but follow him; he gave a gentle, constant commentary on things Martian, most of which I knew. His voice was soothing even as he ran through technical details. In time, I listened more to the tone than the content, enjoying the masculine music of fact laid upon fact, an architecture to shield us for the moment against being alone together.
Ninety percent or more of any Martian station lay underground. Pressurization requirements and protection against radiation flux through the thin atmosphere made this the most economical method of construction. Some attempts had been made in the first ten years to push high-rises and multi-story uplooks through the dirt, but Mars had been settled on a shoestring. Buried or bermed construction was much cheaper. Heat exchangers, sensors, pokeups, entrances and exits, a few low buildings broke the surface, but even now we remained, by and large, troglodytes.
Half of the aquifers on Mars were solid — mineral aquifers — and half liquid. Solid aquifers came in many varieties. Some were permafrosts and heaves, which produced hummocky terrain. Some ice domes on Mars were ten kilometers across, but nearly all heaves had long since lost the water that produced them. The evaporated water either re-condensed at the poles, or was lost across the ages to space. The thin atmosphere was nearly moisture-free.
Tres Haut Medoc sat half a kilometer above a liquid flow, probably the same flow that supplied Durrey. Water seeped through the limestone and pooled in deeper fissures and caves extending as much as ten kilometers below the karst.
Our first stop was the pumping station. The pump, a massive cluster of steel-blue cylinders and spheres melded together like an abstract sculpture, had been working steadily for fifteen Martian years. It extracted its own fuel, deuterium, from the water it pulled out of the ground.
"We hooked this up to the Durrey pipes about nineteen years ago. Earth years," Charles explained, walking around the pump. "Just after the winery shut down and the station was automated and evacuated. A source of revenue to offset our failure." Our footsteps echoed hollow on the frosted stone floor. Air whispered through wall-mounted vents, cool and tangy-musty. "It's the station's only reason to exist now. Durrey wants it, pays for it, so we keep the pump going. While I'm here, I'll justify our visit by filing a report ..."
"And get some replacement arbeiters," I suggested.
"Maybe. The folks who set up the winery were a California family . . . Or were they Australian? I forget now."
"Big difference," I suggested.
"Not really. I know a lot of Australians and Californians now. Except for accent, they're pretty alike. My own family is from New Zealand, actually. How about yours?"
"I'm not sure. German/Indian, I think."
"That explains your lovely skin," Charles said.
"I don't pay much attention to heritage."
Charles led me into the water-settling chambers. The dark pools sat still as glass in their quarried limestone basins, filling two chambers each a hectare in extent and ten meters deep. Somewhere beneath our feet, transfer pumps thumped faintly, sending the water to Durrey's buried pipelines. I breathed in the cold moist air, touched the damp limestone walls.
"Like old bones, that rock," Charles said.
"Right. Sea bottoms."
"Half our towns and stations couldn't exist without limestone flats."
"Why didn't it get turned into marble or something?" I asked, partly to demonstrate I was not totally ignorant of areology.
Charles shook his head. "No major areological activity for the past billion years. Marble takes heat and pressure to form. Mars is asleep. It can't do the job any more."
"Oh." I had not demonstrated anything except my ignorance. Still, that didn't bother me; I was giving Charles every chance to show off, just to see who he really was, what kind of man I had chosen to spend a few days with, alone.
We took a bridge over the farthest pool and down a sloping tunnel. The next chamber held row upon row of corrugated mirror-bright stainless-steel tanks wrapped in coils of orange ceramic pipes. Here the musty-tangy smell was almost overpowering. It stimulated something like racial memory, and I thought of cool dank root cellars on warm summer days, filled with sweet-smelling wooden crates of apples and potatoes, hard-packed dirt floors . . .
"The old vats," Charles said. "Cuve, they were called. Juice from the grapes — "
"I can guess," I interrupted. "I'm something of a wine connoisseur, actually." That was stretching the truth considerably.
"Oh, really?" Charles asked, genuinely pleased. "Then maybe you can explain more to me. I've always wondered why the winery didn't work out."
"Where'd they get their grapes?" I asked, adopting an expert air.
"Cuvee in situ. Grew them in the vats, grape cell suspension . . . Inoculated it, fermented it right where it grew."
"That's why it failed," I said with a sniff. "Worst wine imaginable." So I had heard, at any rate; I had never tried it myself.
"My folks tell me it was pretty bad. Some of it's stored around here, I think . . . Just abandoned."
"For how long?"
"Twenty years at least."
"Terrestrial years," I said.
"Right."
"I prefer Martian years, myself."
Charles took my little feints and jabs pretty well, I thought, not getting irritated, yet not backtracking to flatter me, either.
"Shall we look for them?"
"Yeah," he said. "I remember seeing them when I was a child . . . somewhere down here." He led the way. I lagged a few steps and peered into a glass window in the side of one cuve. Empty blackness. The whole place saddened me. How often had Martians attempted to do something the way it had been done on Earth, half inventing something, half following ancient tradition, and failing miserably?
"You know how we make wine now, don't you?" I asked, catching up with him.
"Pure nano, all artificial, right?"
"Some of it's not bad, either."
"Have you ever tasted Earth wine?" Charles asked.
"Good heavens, no," I said. "My family's not rich."
"I tasted some a few years ago. Madeira. Cost a friend four hundred Triple dollars."
"Lucky man," I said. "Madeira used to be aged in the holds of ships, sent around the Horn." That just about plumbed my knowledge of wine.
"It was pretty good. A little sweet, though."
We pushed aside a thin fiberglass door and entered a storage area behind the vat room. Hidden behind neatly folded piles of filter cloth, a single lonely drum sat in one corner. Charles stooped beside the drum and peered at its label. "Vintage 2152," he said. "M.Y. 43. Never bottled, never released." He glanced up at me with a comic look of fearful anxiety. "Might kill us both."
"Let's try it," I said.
The spigot plug had been turned to the wall. Charles called one of the maintenance arbeiters to bring in a forklif
t and move the drum. The arbeiter did its work, and we were able to tap the barrel. Charles went off to find glasses, leaving me with my thoughts in the cold, empty room.
I stared at the foamed rock walls, then said, out loud, "What in hell am I doing?" I was far from any station or town, with a young man I knew little about, putting myself into what could be a very compromising situation, going against my better judgment, much less my previous plans for just such an occasion . . . when I would have tested and picked out a very suitable candidate for a serious relationship, a significant love-matching.
Clearly, I didn't know my own mind. I liked Charles, he was certainly pleasant, but he was no . . .
Sean Dickinson.
I frowned and pinched my upper arm as a kind of punishment. If Sean Dickinson were here, I thought, we might already be in bed together . . . But I could see Sean waking in the morning, glancing at me with disapproval, taciturn after a night of passion. Was that what I wanted? Experience of sex with the added spice of an illusion of romance, with someone I could never have a future with, and therefore no strings attached?
My face heated.
Charles returned with two thick glasses and I pretended to examine the arbeiter for a moment, blinking myself back into control. "Anything wrong?" Charles asked.
I shook my head, smiling falsely. "It just looks so pitiful." I took one of the glasses.
Charles stretched his neck between nervous shoulders, clearly more unsure about me than I was about him. But he made a brave show, and with a magician's hocus-pocus gesture, turned the stopcock and poured a thin stream of deep red liquid into his glass.
"It wouldn't be polite to offer you some first," he said, and lifted the glass. "It's my family's mistake, after all."
He sniffed the glass, swirled it, smiled at the pretension, and took a sip. I watched his face curiously, wondering how bad it could be.
He showed genuine surprise.
"Well?" I asked.
"Not fatal," he said. "Not fatal at all. It's drinkable."
He poured a glass for me. The wine was rough, demanding a little more throat control to get it down than I really preferred, but it was not nearly as bad as it could have been.
"We're young," Charles decided. "We'll survive. Should we decant a liter or two, have it with dinner?"
"Depends on what dinner is," I said.
"What we brought with us, and whatever I can scrounge from the emergency reserves."
"Maybe I can cook," I said.
"That would be great."
* * *
We ate in the station boss's dining room on an old metal table and chairs that nobody had seen fit to remove. Ten-year-old music played softly over the louder system, rapid hammer-beat kinjee tunes that might have put my parents in a romantic mood, but did nothing for me. I preferred development, not drugdrum.
I will not say the wine liberated me from my cares, but it did induce calm, and for that I was grateful. The food was tractable — gray paste at least five years old — Martian years — that fortunately shaped itself into something palatable, if not gourmet. Charles was embarrassingly appreciative. I had to bite my tongue not to point out that the paste did most of the work. He was trying to be nice, to make me feel good. My ambivalence was a puzzle to both of us.
The air system in the old warren creaked and groaned as we finished our dinner. Outside, the boss's station display told us, the surface temp had dropped to minus eighty Celsius and the wind was whining at a steady one hundred kiphs. I wasn't worried for our safety — we had enough supplies to keep us for a couple of weeks. If we wished to leave, the tractor could get us through anything but a major storm, which wasn't in the offing, according to satcom weather reports.
We weren't in any danger, nobody knew where we were, the wine illumined a Charles more and more handsome with every sip, and still my neck ached with tension.
"Tomorrow we'll go out to the shaved flats in an old melt river canyon," Charles said, lifting his glass and staring at the wine within as if it were rare vintage. He closed one eye to squint at the color, caught my dubious expression, and laughed. His laugh might have been the first thing I fell in love with — easy and gentle, self-deprecating but not humble, accompanied by a roll of his eyes and a lift of his chin.
"What are shaved flats?" I asked.
"Natural fractures in the limestone. Upper layers separate from lower, maybe because of vibration from the wind, and the upper layer begins to fragment. Soon — well, in a hundred million years — frost forms in the cracks, and the upper layer erodes into sand and dust, which blow away, leaving the next layer down . . . Shaved, so to speak."
"Where does the frost come from, this far south?" I asked.
"The shaving stopped about three hundred million years ago. Not enough water frost to matter any more. Some CO2 in the winter. But that's where fossils are. This used to be a pretty good area for ancient tests."
"Tests?"
"Shells. Most no bigger than your finger, but my great uncle found an intact Archimedes snapper about three meters long. Right here, while digging out the tunnels for this station."
"What's an Archimedes snapper?" I knew something about old Martian biology, enough to remember the largest creature of the tertiary Tharsis period, but I wanted to listen to Charles some more. His voice was very pretty, actually, and I had come to enjoy hearing him explain things.
"Big screw-shaped jointed worm with razor-sharp spines. Spun through sea-bottom muds chopping up smaller animals, then sent out stomach tendrils to digest the bits and suck them in."
I grued delicately. Charles appreciated the effect.
"Pretty grim if you were, say, a triple test jelly during mating season," he added, finishing his glass. He lifted it toward me, inquiring without words if I wanted more.
"But I'm not," I said. "So why does it sound awful?"
"More wine, awful?" Charles asked.
"I'm not a triple test jelly, so why does an Archimedes snapper sound horrible?"
"Not used to fresh meat," Charles said.
"I've never had meat," I said. "It's supposed to . . . sharpen your drives. Your instincts."
Charles lifted his glass again toward me. I wondered if he wanted me drunk. That would not be a very sporting desire, a supine woman nearly out of her senses; would that satisfy him, or would he try for all of me, mind as well as body?
"No thank you," I said. "It looks like blood."
"Venous blood," Charles agreed, putting his half-full glass down. I've had enough, too. I'm not used to it."
"I think it's time to sleep," I suggested.
Charles stared at the floor. I focused on his smile and specked an image of Charles and me without blankets, without clothes, in blood-warm rooms, and felt more heat rise that was not due to the wine. I wanted to encourage him, but something still held me back.
If he did not make a move now, he might miss me, and I would not have to decide whether to accept. I wondered how many women had put heavy action on Charles, and how often he had accepted — if ever. It would be awful if we were both inexperienced — wouldn't it?
"We have a lot to do tomorrow," Charles said, turning his eyes away. "I'm pleased you decided to come with me. It's a real boost to my ego."
"Why?"
"I'd hate to rush anything now," he said, so softly I could hardly hear.
"Rush what?"
He filled his glass of wine, then frowned and stuck out his tongue. "I don't know why I did that. I don't want any more. You're very tolerant." His next words came in a rush, accompanied by quick hand gestures as if in a debate. "I'm shy and I'm clumsy and I don't know what to do, or whether to do anything, and the thing I want most right now is to just talk with you, and find out why I'm so attracted to you. But I think I should be doing something else, too, trying to kiss you or ... Of course, I wouldn't mind that." He looked squarely at me, distressed. "Would you?"
I had hoped to be guided through this by someone who could educate me.
"Talking is good," I said.
Charles came forward a little too quickly, and we kissed. He put his hand on my shoulder, hugged me without squeezing, and then, instinct shoving in, began to get more insistent. I gently pushed him back, then leaned forward and kissed him again to show I wasn't rejecting him. His face flushed and his eyes unfocused. "Let's take it easy," I said.
We slept in separate rooms. Through the wall, I heard Charles pace and mumble. I don't think he got much sleep that night. Surprisingly, I slept well.
The next morning, I dressed, came into the kitchen and found the main arbeiter frozen in the middle of the floor. I touched it tentatively. A faint recorded voice said, "I am no longer functional. I need to be repaired or replaced." Then it shut down completely.
I made my own cup of tea and waited for Charles. He came in a few minutes later, trying not to look tired, and I warmed a cup for him.
"Sleep well?" I asked.
He shook his head. "And you?"
"I slept okay. I'm sorry you were upset"
"You're not a Shinktown sweet. Not to me."
"I'm glad," I said.
"But I don't know what you expect."
I took his hand and said, "We are going to spend a wonderful day sightseeing and looking for fossils. We'll talk more and get to know each other. Isn't that enough?"
"It's a start," Charles said.
We ate breakfast and suited up.
"None of this was scrubbed by glaciers," Charles said, pointing to the plain with his gloved hand. We both wore full pressure suits in the tractor cab, but our helmet visors were raised. The tractor motors ramped to a low whine as we climbed a bump in the flat expanse. "They swept by about a hundred kilometers east and fifty west. They left a melt river canyon not far from here, though. It cuts down through a couple of billion years.
"We'll pass through three layers of life descending into the canyon. The topmost layer is about a half a billion years old. The glaciers came about a hundred million years after they died. The middle layer is two billion years old. That's the Secondary and Tertiary, Pre-shield and Tharsis One Ecos. At the bottom, in the shaved flats, is the silica deposit."