Old Mars

“You’ll like it.”

“My mom’s afraid that I won’t want to come back.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I promised her I would.” There was a hesitation. “But I lied. I don’t know how I’m going to feel after college and med school, maybe a residency spent down the gravity well.”

“Maybe it would have been better to be honest?” Tilda suggested.

“She cries all the time. Just think what she’d do if I’d said that.”

They crossed over a canal, and on sudden impulse, Tilda said, “Let’s land.”

“Why?”

“I want to drop a rock into a canal. I haven’t done that.”

“You hoping something will crawl out?” Ali teased.

“No, of course not. I just … look, just go with it, okay?”

“Okay.”

They found a level area not far from the sharp cut of the canal and landed. In Mars’s low gravity they were able to take long, floating strides that quickly carried them to the edge of the canal. It was obvious that it wasn’t natural. The edges were clean, as if cut by a laser, and the walls were impossibly straight. Tilda knew that early explorers had lowered probes into the canals but nothing had been found. Just sheer walls of fused glass. Why had the Martians made them? What purpose had they served?

Initially, the fear that something lived in those deep cuts had discouraged colonization, but years passed and nothing ever emerged from the canals, and necessity replaced fear. The home world, gripped in climate change and lacking enough cropland for her teeming billions, needed a new breadbasket. So the doomsayers had been overridden, and the settlers had arrived.

Tilda knelt on the edge of the canal and picked up a rock. Dropped it over the edge. Waited for what seemed like endless heartbeats. Predictably, nothing happened.

“It’s so strange they left no written records,” Ali said.

“I think O’Neill is right, and music is how they passed information,” Tilda answered, referring to a theory formulated by Mars’s most famous xenoarchaeologist.

“Seems supercumbersome. What if you were a Martian that couldn’t sing? Would you be like a mute?”

Tilda laughed, happy to find herself able to laugh after so many weeks of tension. “That’s a really interesting question.”

“That’s me, all interesting questions, and no answers,” Ali said. He had a nice smile. “What do you want to do now?”

“I should probably get back,” Tilda said halfheartedly.

“And I’ve got a pressure tent, and Mom put up a lunch for us. How about the Face? We can quote ‘Ozymandias’ to each other.”

The flight took another hour. From the air, the Face was massive and easily discerned, the blank eyes frowning up at the red sky, mouth set in an uncompromising line. Once they landed, it appeared as just sheer red cliffs. Something that could be seen from space had to be too large to grasp from ground level.

“Wonder how they carved it?” Ali asked, as they set up the tent.

“Must have been aerial,” Tilda said. “Lasers from above to cut away the rock.”

“I’d hate to be the guy who missed the dotted line,” Ali said as he hit the oxygen canister. Tilda set up a small heater, and, with a sigh of relief, removed her helmet.

Mrs. Al-Jahani was a wonderful cook, and she had packed baba ghanoush and curried chicken, both choices wrapped in tender pita bread. There was baklava dripping with honey for dessert. Fortunately, bees had taken well to the life in the Martian domes. Which was good, they had pretty much vanished on Earth.

Ali seemed nervous as he packed up the picnic basket. “I was thinking, I’m going to be in Paris. You’ll be at Cambridge. Not that far apart. Maybe we can … get together.”

“I’d like that,” Tilda said, and suddenly the handsome, dark-haired Ali presented himself as potential boyfriend material. She’d have to think about that, but right now it gave her a warm, tingly glow.

They replaced their helmets, and broke down the tent, and stowed it back in Ali’s ultralight. They then went to the side of the Face. Somewhere in the recent past, some human had carved steps into the side of the mammoth statue. Tilda felt guilty as she clambered up but ultimately shrugged and accepted it. She hadn’t done it, and it was too late to undo it.

On top, they walked across the massive chin, across the cheek, and stood looking down into the notch of the left eye.

“I wonder who he was,” Tilda said softly.

“And that’s why they should have left written records,” Ali said. He paused, then added, “Hey, you want to come back to our place for supper?”

Tilda thought about the morose silence that held court at the McKenzie table and nodded happily. “I’d like that, thanks. I’ll radio home and let them know once we get in the air.”

“Which we’d better do,” Ali said, squinting at the distant, setting sun.

Noel-Pa gave her permission, but his voice sounded stretched and thin. She hoped that he and Daddy-Kane hadn’t had another argument.