But she could find out. And did; and there in that boulder car, waiting for Desmond’s windstorm, she held Michel in her arms and squeezed him so hard she worried for his ribs. “My friend.”
“Yes.”
“The one who understands me.”
“Yes?”
Then the wind came down. They staggered into Kasei on their Ariadne thread, forced their way into the depths of the stronghold, and at every step of the way Maya became more frightened and angry—frightened for her life—angry that there was such a place on Mars, and such people to make it, disgusting despicable cowards and tyrants, who had killed John, killed Frank, killed Sasha in Cairo, in desperate circumstances very like these—she could be dead on the ground bleeding at the ears like Sasha at any moment, among these bastards who had killed all those innocents in ’61, the forces of repression there and now here in the concrete walls, all in an ear-shattering boom and shriek that added to her fury—so that when she saw Sax wired onto the rack she tore him loose with a scream, and when she saw that Phyllis Boyle was there, as one of the torturers, she snapped and threw one of the explosive charges into the chamber; a murderous impulse, but never had she been so angry, it was like being outside oneself entirely. She wanted to kill somebody and Phyllis was the one.
Then afterward when they regained the cars, and met with the others south of Kasei, Spencer defended Phyllis and shouted at Maya, accused her of cold-blooded murder, and shocked by his assertion of Phyllis’s innocence, she only had the instinct to shout back at him, to hide her shock and defend herself—but feeling like a murderer there in front of them all. “I killed Phyllis,” she said to Desmond when he joined them, and they had all stared at her, all those men, as if she were a Medean horror—all but Desmond, who stepped to her side and kissed her cheek, something he had never before done in front of other people. “You did good,” he declared, with a hand’s electric touch to the arm. “You saved Sax.”
Only Desmond. Though to be fair Michel had been stunned by a blow to the head, and was not himself. Later he too defended her action against Spencer’s remonstrations. She nodded and huddled in his arms, frightened for him, vastly relieved when he returned to normal; holding him as he held her, with the clutch of people who had looked over the edge together. Her Michel.
So she and Michel became partners, their love, begun in the dark of Antarctica, forged in the crucible of that storm, in the rescue of Sax and her murder of Phyllis. They hid back in Zygote, now a terrible confinement to Maya. Michel helped Sax regain his speech, and Maya did what she could too. She worked on the idea of the revolution, with Nadia and Nirgal, Michel and even Hiroko. She lived her life; and from time to time they saw Desmond on one of his pass-throughs. But of course it was not quite the same, even though she loved seeing him as much as ever. He watched her with Michel very fondly; a friendly look, exactly, like one who enjoyed seeing her happy at last. There was something in that she did not like; some smugness; the friend who knew better, perhaps.
In any case, things changed. They drifted apart. They were still friends, but it was a more distant thing. It was inevitable. So much of her life was caught up in Michel, and in the revolution.
Still, when the Coyote appeared out of nowhere, it made her smile. And when they heard of the attack on Sabishii, and the disappearance of the whole lost colony’s membership, it had been a different kind of pleasure to see Desmond again, coming through and telling them what he had seen—relief; a negative pleasure; the removal of great fear. She had thought he too had been killed in the attack.
He was shaken, and needed her comfort—took it—was comforted—unlike Michel, who remained remote from her throughout this disaster, withdrawn into his own world of grief. Desmond was not like that; she could comfort him, wipe the tears from his narrow stubbly cheeks. Thus, by being comforted, by making it seem possible, he comforted her too. Looking at the two bereaved lovers of Hiroko, so different, she thought to herself, True friends can help each other when the time comes. And take help too. It’s what friends are for.
And so Maya lived with Michel in Odessa, and they were partners—as married as anyone—for decade after decade of their unnaturally extended lives. But often it seemed to Maya that they were more friends than lovers, not “in love” in the way that she dimly remembered being with John, or Frank, or even Oleg. Or—when Coyote came through and she saw his face at the door—the memory sometimes came to her of that shocking encounter with her stowaway on the Ares, her discovery of him in the storage attic, their first conversation—making love before he took off with Hiroko’s group, and the few times after that—yes, she had loved him too, no doubt about it. But now they were just friends, and he and Michel like brothers. It was good to have such a family of the remaining First Hundred, the first hundred and one, with all that had happened between them, twining together to make the familial bond. As the years passed it became more and more of a comfort to her. And as the second revolution approached, like a storm they could do nothing to avoid, she needed them more than ever.
Some nights, as the crises intensified and she had trouble sleeping, she read about Frank. There was a mystery at the center of him that resisted any final summation. In her mind he kept slipping away. For years she had been afraid to think about him, and then after Michel had advised her to face her fear, actually to research the matter, she had read as much about him as anyone could; and all it had done was confuse her memories with other people’s speculations. Now she read in the hope of finding some account that would resemble what she ever less certainly remembered, to reinforce her own memory. It did not work, but it seemed as if it should, and so she went back to it from time to time, the way one will push a sore tooth with a tongue to confirm that it is still sore.
One night when Desmond was there staying with them, she had a dream about Frank, and then she got up and went out to read about him, feeling curious yet again. Desmond was asleep on a couch in the study. The book she was reading suddenly took up the matter of John’s assassination, and she groaned at the memory of that awful night, reduced now in her mind to a few blurred images (standing under a streetlight with Frank, passing a body on the grass, holding John’s head in her hands, sitting in a clinic) all now overlaid by the countless stories she had heard since.
Desmond, disturbed by dreams of his own, groaned and staggered out and passed her on the way to the bathroom. He too had been in Nicosia that night, she recalled suddenly. Or so one of the accounts had said. She looked in the book’s index; no mention of him. But some accounts had him there that night, she was sure of it.
When he came back out, she steeled herself and asked him. “Desmond—were you in Nicosia the night John was killed?”
He stopped and looked down at her, his face a blank—an uncharacteristic, too-careful blank. He was thinking fast, she thought.
“Yes. I was.” He shook his head, grimaced. “A bad night.”
“What happened?” she said, sitting up straight, boring into him with her gaze. “What happened?” Then: “Did Frank do it, like they say he did?”
Again he looked at her, and again she thought she saw his mind racing, in there behind his eyes. What had he seen? What could he recall?
Slowly he said, “I don’t think Frank did it.” Then: “I saw him up in that triangular park, right around the time they must have attacked John.”