Blue Mars

Trying to see things A

There seemed to be a lot of displeasure in A

Happily, in this context, plants were pitifully few. Tempe was not like Tyrrhena, or even the banks of the Arena Glacier. Without active gardening, this was what one got. The world was still mostly rock.

On the other hand, Tempe was low in altitude, and humid, with the ice ocean just a few kilometers to the north and west. And various Joh

They climbed a prominent knoll overlooking the canyon west of the refuge, and there it was: the great ice sea, all orange and brass in the late light. It filled the lowland in a great sweep and formed its own smooth horizon, from southwest to northeast. Mesas of the fretted terrain now stuck out of the ice like sea stacks or cliff-sided islands. In truth this part of Tempe was going to be one of the most dramatic coastlines on Mars, with the lower ends of some fossae filling to become long fjords or lochs. And one coastal crater was right at sea level, and had a break in its sea side, making it a perfect round bay some fifteen kilometers across, with an entry cha

But of course this was not to be noted. No mention at all of the ice, the jagged bergs jumbled on the new shoreline. The bergs had been formed by some process Sax wasn’t aware of, though he was curious — but it could not be discussed. One could only stand in silence, as if having stumbled into a cemetery.

Embarrassed, Sax knelt to look at a specimen of Tibetan rhubarb he had almost stepped on. Little red leaves, in a floret from a central red bulb.

A

“No.” He pulled off a few dead leaves from the exterior of the floret, showed her the brighter ones beneath. “It’s hardening for the winter already. Fooled by the drop in light.” Then Sax went on, as if to himself: “A lot of the plants will die, though. The thermal overturn,” which was when air temperatures turned colder than the ground temperatures, “came more or less overnight. There won’t be much chance for hardening. Thus lots of winterkill. Plants are better at handling it than animals would have been. And insects are surprisingly good, considering they’re little containers of liquid. They have supercooling cryoprotectants. They can stand whatever happens, I think.”

A

But then again, she wasn’t taking the treatment.

The ice sea was a shattered blaze of bronze and coral. The sun was setting, they would have to get back. A

The intense desire to talk with someone, sharp as any pain; this was what people meant when they talked about love. Or rather; this was what Sax would acknowledge to be love. Just the super-heightened desire to share thoughts. That alone. Oh A

But she did not talk to him. On her the plants seemed not to have had the effect they had had on him. She seemed truly to abominate them, these little emblems of her body, as if viriditas were no more than a cancer that the rock must suffer. Even though in the growing piles of wind-drifted snow, plants were scarcely visible anymore. It was getting dark, another storm was sweeping in, low over the black-and-copper sea. A pad of moss, a lichened rockface; mostly it was rock alone, just as it had ever been. Nevertheless.

Then as they were getting back into the refuge lock, A

“Has she had a stroke?” he said. “Has she had a stroke?”

The short woman looked surprised. “I don’t think so. She fainted. Then struck her head.”

“But why did she faint?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at the tall young woman, who sat next to the door. Sax understood that they were the senior authorities in the refuge. “A