They passed through the lock and up onto the flat, wind-scoured surface of the still-dark canyon floor. The canyon was more like a plain, more immense than any she had ever seen on Earth. Here, where the sub-canyons of Capri Chasm and Gangis Chasm intersected, the floor of the Mariner Valley was nearly two hundred kilometers wide; wide enough that the distant two-kilometer wall bounding this trisection of the floor seemed more like a line of distant mountains dancing at a desert’s edge. She turned almost due west, toward the mouth of Gangis Chasm, knowing as she had known for so long, with such aching certainty, that this was where her destiny lay.
“Kismet,” Shiraz said absently, not even looking at her.
“Kind of florid; isn’t it?” She managed a smile.
He managed laughter. “Perhaps there is a monolith waiting for us, after all.”
The headlight spilled out like bright fluid, highlighting the stone-studded ground. The dim brown of the undifferentiated surface still in darkness stretched to the far canyon wall, which became a gleaming band of gold as the sun rose behind them. Petra glanced at the side mirror; seeing the unnatural cylindrical hummock of their buried lab silhouetted with the low, conical hills that lay scattered like a case of hives over the flatness. She looked out again at the slowly brightening plain, and at Shiraz’s dark, tense profile at the corner of her sight. She had meditated often enough on the symbolism of his name, finding it more than fitting in her aggravation— Mitradati, from Mithra, the mace-wielding Persian god of war, the paternalistic Protector of his People…Now suddenly she remembered another of Mithra’s aspects: god of the light that precedes the dawn. She let her mind probe the possibilities, searching for one that might be a symbol, of hope.
The jouncing vibration of their progress increased uncomfortably; she eased her foot on the accelerator. In Mars’ lighter gravity every bounce and swerve was accentuated, but the jarring that followed it was gentler than on Earth. She remembered her first painful ride, years before, in a dune buggy: the grotesque, frivolous Earthside hybrid that had become so indispensable to her work in the desert, and to the exploration of Mars…remembering the stark fantasy of the desert, and the tennis ball-sized bruises the seatbelt had left on her hip-bones. She felt suddenly, unbearably homesick.
Why me?...why us? Why were they doing this; why couldn’t they at least understand…Because it doesn’t have to let us understand anything. She tried to focus her resentment against the straitjacket bonds that held her free will prisoner. Even terror, even fear—anything to give her strength. But emotion dissipated the way the paper-thin film of frost sublimed as the ground warned. It was useless, it was pointless.
The day opened onto the full rust-red brilliance of the endless Martian desert. The dusty sky was salmon pink now around the horizon, deepening rapidly to a black-red zenith. The cloud of fine dust lifting behind them became an auburn haze against the sunlight. She turned southward, slightly, to take them through the gap of flat desert pavement between a tremendous black-sand dunefield to her left, and the kilometers-long slope of slumped earth and talus that fanned from the canyon’s north rim on her right. Above the jumbled slope she could see the pit in the profile of the sheer canyon wall, where the rim of a shallow crater had fallen away with the collapsing cliff-face.
She could picture the canyon and the cratered plains that lay above it as they looked from the air. She had seen them coming here from the polar base, from the southeastward descending arc of the shuttle’s trajectory from pole to equator. She pictured the chain of magnificent volcanoes that were the Tharsis Mountains lying beyond the far end of the Valley, four thousand kilometers to the west—those mountains that dwarfed any on Earth, as the great rift valley itself almost defied her attempts to comprehend its scale. She had been deeply moved by the wonders of this alien world, where geology existed on such a grand scale: loved its strangeness and its familiarity, with the breadth of emotion that belonged to all who loved the faces and forces of the natural world, and the depth of emotion that belonged to those who truly understand them. And never more than now: Where am I going? Will I ever see them again?
Or ever see Earth again…The limonite-stained cliffs were much closer on their left, now; the red, convoluted walls reminded her of the Near East, her journey to Petra, the City in the Rock—her namesake. She saw in her mind the ancient city, hidden in a cleft of red sandstone, its temples and dwellings built from and into the rock itself: a timeless thing, a part of the earth…And the sun-bleached mudbrick villages that had not changed in a thousand years, or two, or three; that lay drowsing on parched hillsides an hour’s drive from some twenty-first century metropolis. An hour’s drive, in an air-conditioned time machine…She had spent three years in Israel, as the geologist for a Harvard-sponsored archeological crew, and they had been in Tel Aviv during Israel’s Fiftieth Anniversary celebrations, laughing, drinking, dancing, embracing and being embraced by joyful total strangers.
Yesterday and today…and tomorrow: She was here on Mars, now, as a part of this project that celebrated the turning of a new millennium. Enough honor for a lifetime…But I’m not ready for it to end! Will there really be a tomorrow? And what kind will it be—none that I ever imagined…She saw suddenly in her mind the smiling, freckled face of Fred Haswell, astronomer; who has been so much a part of this place, become so much more than just a friend to her, before his stay here had ended four months ago. Now, not knowing whether she would ever see him again, or touch him or feel a man…Oh, Lord; this is no time to get horny! She bit her lip.
“A penny for your thoughts?” Mitradati said.
She looked away instead of at him; at the menhirs of dark volcanic stone that crouched like confused giants along their path, casting long shadow-fingers across the black sand. There were red anti-shadows stretched in opposition, where the ground was free of sand in the wind’s lee. “I ... I was watching my whole life pass before my eyes, I think.” She felt herself begin to blush, and kept her face turned away.
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do before you die?” Softly.
“I guess so. But I hope not.” Her gloved hands tightened on the wheel. “There—isn’t much else to think about. Or to say. Is there?” She looked back at him, at last.
“No.” He shook his head, leaned back against the headrest, his own hands closing over his elbows. “Turn up the heater, will you? I’m feeling rather cold.”
She turned up the heater. Up ahead, beyond the field of black sand, she could see another, smaller avalanche of dirt and rock spilling down from the opposite wall of the canyon. She looked back at him as his gaze left her. Mind control makes strange bedfellows. She sighed, studying his profile again, his close-cut, curly hair, the bushy, drooping moustache that had so fascinated her the first time she saw him. She smiled unhappily, looking away again, paying attention once more to their progress up the canyon. Her interests and his were similar; their heritage, reaching back over thousands of years, was similar. But their personalities were still poles apart. Or were they too much alike—?