Lucille clung to Jamie, there in the doorway of their Berkeley home, as if she wanted never to let him go. Then his father appeared, smiling calmly from behind his pipe.
No one would recognize Professor Jerome Waterman as the fiery young champion of Native American history. His hair was iron-gray and thinning so much that he combed it forward to cover his high forehead. His face showed what Jamie might be like in thirty years, fleshy, puffy from a sedentary life. Dark-rimmed glasses. Open-necked sports shirt with its manufacturer’s logo embroidered discreetly on the chest. There was no more fire in Jerry Waterman’s dark eyes. It had been a long time since he had been in a fight more strenuous than arguing with a dean over class size. He had won his youthful battles and over the years had become more like his former enemies than he could possibly admit to himself.
"I can only stay overnight" were the first words Jamie actually spoke to his parents.
"On the phone you said they were sending you to Mars?" His mother looked more frightened than proud.
"I think so. It looks that way."
"When will you know for sure?" his father asked.
They walked him into the book-lined library, where the bright sunshine was blocked from the window by a tall azalea bush that threatened to undermine the house’s foundation one day.
"Monday, I guess. I won’t have a chance to get away once they make their final decision."
The house was much as Jamie remembered it: comfortable, disordered, books and journals scattered everywhere, upholstered chairs and chintz-covered sofas that bore the imprint of his mother’s and his father’s bodies. Mama Bear has her chair and Papa Bear has his, Jamie remembered from childhood.
He sat on the edge of the library sofa, tense and nervous. Mama and Papa took their individual chairs, facing him.
"You really want to go?" his mother asked for the thousandth time in the past four years.
Jamie nodded.
"I thought that priest was the one they picked," said his father.
"He came down with a gall bladder attack. Too much wine, I guess."
None of them so much as smiled.
The afternoon and evening inched along. Jamie could see that his mother did not want him to go, that she was desperately trying to think of some argument, some reason that would keep him safely near her. His father seemed bemused by the whole matter; pleased that his son was at last finding some measure of success, but uncertain about the wisdom of the entire effort.
Over dinner his father said, "I’ve never been able to satisfy myself that Mars is worth all the money we’re spending on it."
Jamie felt a wave of relief wash through him. It was easier to debate national policy than to watch his mother struggling to hold back tears.
They went through all the arguments, pro and con, that they had disputed back and forth with his every visit home. Without rancor. Without polemics. Without raising their voices or stirring their blood. Like a classroom exercise. As he discussed the question of Mars in calm debater’s logic Jamie realized that his father had become the compleat academic: nothing really touched him anymore; he saw everything in the abstract; not even the obvious pain of his wife, sitting across the table three feet from him, could shake him out of the comfortable cocoon he had woven around himself.
My god, Jamie thought, Dad’s gotten old. Bloodless and old. Is that the way I’m going to be?
It was not until long after dinner was finished, as he started upstairs toward the bedroom he had slept in since childhood, that his mother asked:
"Must you leave tomorrow? Can’t you stay just a little longer?"
I can’t take another day of this, Jamie knew. As gently as he could he told his mother, "I’ve got to be at the space center first thing Monday morning."
"But you don’t have to leave so soon, do you?"
He hesitated. "I want to see grandfather Al."
"Oh." The one syllable carried a lifetime of grief and distaste.
His father overheard them and came into the hallway. "You’d rather be with your grandfather than with your mother?" he asked sharply.
Jamie was surprised at that; almost glad of it.
"He’s the only grandparent I’ve got left. It doesn’t seem right to go without saying good-bye to him."
Jerome Waterman huffed, but said nothing more.
3
Jamie had to be satisfied with a commercial flight from Oakland International to Albuquerque. Al was waiting for him at the airport. With a rental helicopter and pilot.
"What’s this all about?" Jamie asked as he clambered into the little glass-bubble chopper.
Al was grinning broadly, his leathery face a geological map of happiness.
"You only got a few hours here, right? Thought we’d take a run up to Mesa Verde instead of sittin’ around the house."
"Mesa Verde?" Jamie yelled over the whine of the copter engine start-up. "You’re not going mystical on me, are you?"
Al laughed. "Maybe. We’ll see."
The first snow of the season was already on the mountains and Jamie felt cold in his lightweight windbreaker as he and Al trekked through the well-marked trail from the helicopter landing pad to the rim of the canyon.
"I should have brought a couple of coats," Al muttered. He was in a worn old denim jacket and jeans.
"It’s okay. The sun’s warming things up."
The sky was cloudless blue. Big dollops of wet snow were melting out of the ponderosas and pinons, dropping like scoops of ice cream to splatter on the gravel trail. Jamie’s high-tech Reeboks were getting soaked. Al wore his usual boots, tough and comfortable. And his drooping, broad-brimmed hat protected his head from the falling snow. Jamie, bareheaded, had to keep an eye on the trees and dodge the falls.
The air was thin up this high. Jamie heard his grandfather wheezing. He had seen the Anasazi ruins before, of course, but for some reason Al wanted him to see them once again before he took off for another world.
They reached the crest of the high ridge, walked along the edge for a few silent, puffing minutes, then stepped out from behind a stand of pine.
Across a bend in the ridge, a hundred feet down, the old ruins huddled in a cleft of the ancient solid stone. Even to this day the adobe brick dwellings were protected from the wind and snow by the overhanging rock. Reddish brown sandstone, Jamie knew. Almost the same color as Mars.
"Your ancestors built that village five hundred years before Columbus was born," Al said quietly.
"I know," said Jamie.
"Son, when you go to Mars, you’ll be taking them with you. The Old Ones. They’re in your blood."
Jamie smiled at his grandfather. "By god, Al, you are going mystical."
His grandfather’s face was entirely serious. "It’s important for a man to know who he is. You can’t be in balance without that. You can’t know where you’re heading for if you don’t know where you’ve come from."
"I understand, Grandfather."
"Your father…" Al hesitated. The old man had never called him his son as long as Jamie could remember. "Your father turned his back on all this. He wanted to be accepted by the whites so badly! He turned himself into an Anglo. I don’t blame him. It’s my own fault, I guess. I didn’t teach him half of what I’ve taught you, Jamie. I was too busy then, with the store and all. I didn’t take the time to raise him like I should have."
"It’s not your fault, Al."
"I think it is. I wasn’t as good a father to him as I’ve been a grandfather to you. I can see why he felt he had to take the path he did. But I want you to remember who you are, son. You’ll be traveling where no one has gone before. You’ll be facing dangers no one’s ever dealt with. It’ll go better for you if you remember all this, keep it in your mind always."