Blue Mars Part 42

The outlines of it were coming clear, however. One part of it would be a drug c.o.c.ktail, a mixture of protein-synthesis enhancers, including even amphetamines and chemical relatives of strychnine, and then transmitters like serotonin, glutamate receptor sensitizers, cholinesterase, cyclic AMP, and so on. All of these would be there to help in different ways to reinforce the memory structures when they were rehea.r.s.ed. Others would be included from the general brain plasticity treatment that Sax had received in the period following his stroke, at much smaller doses. Then it seemed from the experiments in electrical stimulation that a stimulus shock, followed by a continuous oscillation at very rapid frequencies phased with the subject's natural brain waves, would serve to initiate the neurochemical processes augmented by the drug package. After that subjects would have to direct the work of remembering as best they could, perhaps moving from node to node if possible, with the idea that as each node was recalled, the network surrounding the node would then be flushed by the oscillations and reinforced accordingly. Moving from room to room in the theater of memory, in essence. Experiments with all these various aspects of the process were being run on volunteer subjects, often the young native experimenters themselves; they were remembering a great many things, they said with a kind of stunned awe, and the overall prospect was looking more and more promising. Week by week they honed their techniques, and homed in on a process.

For the work of recollection to best succeed, it was becoming clear from the experiments that context was an important component. Lists memorized underwater in diving suits could be recalled much better when the subjects returned to the seafloor than when they tried to remember them on land. Subjects hypnotically induced to feel happy or sad during memorization of a list were better at remembering the list when again hypnotized to feel happy or sad. Congruence of items in the lists helped, as did returning to rooms of the same size or color when remembering them. These were of course all very crude experiments, but the link between context and power of recollection was demonstrated by them strongly enough to cause Sax to think hard about where he might want to try the treatment when they finalized it; where, and with whom.

For the final work on the treatment Sax called up Bao Shuyo and asked her to come join them in Acheron for some consulations. Again, her work was much more theoretical, and very much more fine-grained, but after her work with the fusion group in Da Vinci, he had a healthy respect for her ability to help in any problem that involved quantum gravity and the ultramicrostructure of matter. Just to have her run through what they had done and comment on it would be valuable, he was sure.

Unfortunately, Bao's obligations in Da Vinci were heavy, as they had been ever since her much-heralded return from Dorsa Brevia. Sax was put in the unusual position of manipulating his home labs in order to extricate one of their best theorists, but he did it without compunction, getting Bela's help to put the arm on the current administration, to twist their arms as hard as ever he could. "Ka, Sax," Bela exclaimed during one call, "I never would have guessed that you would turn out to be such a fierce headhunter."

"It's my own head I'm hunting," Sax replied.

Usually tracking someone down was as simple as contacting their wristpad, and looking to see where the person was. Ann's wristpad, however, had been left on the rim of the Olympus Mons caldera, at the descent station near the festival grounds at Crater Zp. This struck Sax as peculiar, since they had worn wristpads of some kind or another since the very beginning in Underhill, Ann as much as anyone, as he recalled. Hadn't she? He called Peter to ask, but Peter did not know, of course, having been born well after the Underhill years. In any case, to go without a wristpad now was to borrow a behavior from the neoprimitive nomads wandering the canyonlands and the North Sea coast- not a lifestyle he would have expected Ann to take any interest in. One couldn't live in anything like the Paleolithic style up on Olympus Mons, indeed it required the kind of continuous technological support that was no longer necessary in most places, with wristpads an integral part of it. Perhaps she only wanted to get away. Peter didn't know.

But he did know how to contact her: "You have to go in and find her."

At Sax's expression he laughed. "It isn't so bad. There's only a couple hundred people in the caldera, and when they're not staying in one of their huts, they're on the cliff walls."

"She's become a climber?"

"Yes."

"She climbs for- for recreation?"

"She climbs. Don't ask me why."

"So I just go look at all the cliffs?"

"That's how I had to do it when Marion died."

The summit of Olympus Mons had for the most part been left alone. Oh there were a few low boulder hermitages on rim overlooks, and a piste had been built on the northeast lava flow that broke the escarpment ring surrounding the volcano, for easy access to the festival complex at Crater Zp; but other than that, there was nothing to show what had happened to the rest of Mars, which from the rim of the caldera was entirely invisible, under the horizon of the encircling escarpment. From its rim Olympus Mons appeared to be the world entire. The local Reds had decided against putting a protective molecular dome over the caldera, something they had done over Arsia Mons; so no doubt there were bacteria, and perhaps some lichens that had blown over on winds and floated down into the caldera and survived; but at pressures little higher than the original ten millibars, they were not going to flourish. Probably the survivors were mostly endochasmoliths, so there would be no sign of them. It was a lucky thing for the Red project that Mars's stupendous vertical scale kept air pressures so low on the big volcanoes; a free and effective sterilization technique.

Sax took the train up to Zp, and then a car on up to the rim, a taxi van driven by the Reds who controlled access into the caldera. The car came to the edge of the rim, and Sax looked down.

The caldera was multiringed, and big: ninety kilometers by sixty, about the same size as Luxembourg, Sax recalled hearing. The main central circle, by far the largest, was marred by overlapping smaller circles to the northeast, center, and south. The southernmost circle cut in half a slightly older, higher circle to the southeast; the meeting of these three arcuate walls was considered one of the finest climbing areas on the planet, Sax was told, with the greatest height anywhere in the caldera, a drop from 26 kilometers above the datum (they used the old term rather than sea level) down to 22.5 kilometers on the southernmost crater floor. A ten-thousand-foot cliff, the young Coloradoan in Sax mused.

The floor of the main caldera was marked by a great number of curving fault patterns, concentric with the caldera walls: arcing ridges and canyons, across which ran some straighter escarpments. These features were all explicable, they had been caused by recurrent caldera collapses following the sideslope drainage of magma from the main chamber under the volcano; but as he looked down from their perch on the rim, it seemed to Sax a mysterious mountain- a world of its own- nothing visible but the vast embayed rim, and the five thousand square kilometers of the caldera. Ring on ring of high curved walls and flat round floors, under a black starry sky. Nowhere were the encircling cliffs less than a thousand meters tall. As a rule they were not completely vertical; their average slope appeared to be just steeper than forty-five degrees. But there were steeper sections all over the place. No doubt the climbers flocked to the very steepest sections, given the nature of their interest. There looked to be some very vertical faces out there, even an overhang or two, as right under them, over the confluence of the three walls.

OLYMPUS MONS CALDERA.

"I'm looking for Ann Clayborne," Sax said to the drivers, who were rapt with the view. "Do you know where I could find her?"

"You don't know where she is?" one asked.

"I've heard she's climbing in the Olympus caldera."

"Does she know you're looking for her?"

"No. She's not answering her calls."

"Does she know you?"

"Oh yes. We're old- friends."

"And who are you?"

"Sax Russell."

They stared at him. One said, "Old friends, eh?"

Her companion elbowed her.

They called the spot they were at Three Walls, sensibly enough. Directly under their car, on a little slump terrace, there was an elevator station. Sax peered at it through binoculars: outer-lock doors, reinforced roofing- it could have been a structure from the early years. The elevator was the only way down into this part of the caldera, if you did not care to rappel.

"Ann resupplies at Marion Station," the elbower finally said, shocking her codriver. "See it, there? That square dot, where the lava channels from the main floor cut down into South Circle."

This was on the opposite rim of the southernmost circle, which Sax's map named "6." Sax had trouble making out any square dot, even with the binocular's magnification. But then he saw it- a tiny block just a bit too regular to be natural, although it had been painted the rusty gray of the local basalt. "I see it. How do I get there?"

"Take the elevator down, then walk on over."

So he showed the elevator attendants the pa.s.s the elbower had given him, and took the long elevator ride down the wall of South Circle. The elevator ran on a track affixed to the cliffside, and it had windows; it was like dropping in a helicopter, or coming down the last bit of the s.p.a.ce elevator over Sheffield. By the time he got down to the caldera floor it was late afternoon; he checked into the spartan lodge at the bottom and ate a big leisurely dinner, thinking from time to time what he might say to Ann. It came to him, slowly: a coherent and it seemed convincing self-explication, or confession, or cri de coeur cri de coeur, piece by piece. Then to his great chagrin he blanked the whole thing. And there he was on the floor of a volcanic caldera, the blinkered circle of sky dark and starry above. On Olympus. Searching for Ann Clayborne, with nothing to say to her. Very chagrined.

The next morning after breakfast, he pushed his way into a walker. Although the materials were improved, the elastic fabric necessarily clasped the limbs and torso just as tightly as their old suits had. Strange how the kinetics of it evoked trains of thought, flashes of memory: the look of Underhill as they were building the foursquare dome; even a kind of somatic epiphany, which seemed to be a recollection of his very first walk out of the landing craft, with the surprise of the close horizons and the textured pink of the sky. Context and memory, again.

He walked out across the floor of South Circle. This morning the sky was a dark indigo very near black- marine blue, the chart said, an odd choice of name considering how dark it was. Many stars were visible. The horizon was a round cliff, rising on all sides: the southern semicircle three kilometers tall, the northeast quadrant two kilometers, the northwest quadrant one kilometer only, and shattered. Astonishing sight, actually- the roundness of it. Thermodynamics of cooling rock in magma chambers, magma throats. Out in the middle the encircling walls were a dizzying sight. The walls looked much the same height in all directions, a textbook example of foreshortening's ability to telescope the perception of vertical distances.

He tromped on at a steady pace. The caldera floor was fairly smooth, pocked by occasional lava bombs and late meteor hits, and curving shallow grabens. Some of these had to be circ.u.mvented, a beautifully apt word in this case, as they were were circ.u.mvents, he was circ.u.mventing. But for the most part he could tramp directly toward the broken spill of cliff in the northwest quadrant of the caldera. circ.u.mvents, he was circ.u.mventing. But for the most part he could tramp directly toward the broken spill of cliff in the northwest quadrant of the caldera.

It took six hours of steady walking to cross the floor of South Circle, which was less than ten percent of the caldera complex's total area- all the rest of which was invisible to him for the entire hike. No sign of life, nor of any disturbance to the caldera floor or walls; the atmosphere was visibly thin, everything equally sharp to the eye, right around the primal ten millibars, he judged. The untouched nature of things made him feel uncertain about even his bootprints, and he tried to step on hard rock, and avoid dust patches. It was strangely satisfying to see the primal landscape- quite reddish- though the color was mostly an overlay on dark basalt. His color chart was not good at odd mixes.

Sax had never descended into one of the big calderas before. And even many years spent inside impact craters did not prepare one, he found- for the depth of the chambers, the steepness of the walls, the flatness of the floor. The sheer size of things.

Midafternoon he approached the foot of the northwest arc of the wall. The meeting of wall and floor came up over his horizon, and to his slight relief, the block shelter appeared directly before him; his APS setting had been quite accurate. Not a complicated bit of navigation, but in such an exposed place it was pleasant to be precisely on line. Ever since his experience in the storm so long ago, he had been a bit wary about getting lost. Although there would be no storms up here.

As he approached the hut's lock doors, a group of people appeared from out of the bottom of a stupendously huge steep gully in the vast broken cliff face, debouching onto the crater floor about a kilometer to the west of the refuge. Four figures, carrying big packs on their backs. Sax stopped, the sound of his breath loud in his helmet: he recognized the last figure immediately. Ann was coming in to resupply. Now he was going to have to think of something to say. And then remember it too.

Inside the hut Sax unclipped his helmet and took it off, feeling a familiar but most unwelcome tension in his stomach as he did. Every meeting with Ann it got worse. He turned around and waited. Finally Ann came in, and took off her helmet, and saw him. She started as if she were seeing a ghost. "Sax?" she cried.

He nodded. He remembered when they had last met; long ago, on Da Vinci Island; it felt like a previous life. He had lost his tongue.

Ann shook her head, smiled to herself. She crossed the room with an expression he couldn't read, and held his arms in her two hands, and leaned forward and kissed his cheek gently. When she pulled back, one of her hands continued to clutch his left arm, sliding down to the wrist. She was staring right into him, and her grip was like metal. Sax was speechless again, although he very much wanted to speak. But there was nothing to say, or too much, he couldn't even tell which it was; his tongue was again paralyzed. That hand on his wrist; it was more incapacitating than any glare or cutting remark had ever been.

A wave seemed to pa.s.s through her, and she became somewhat more the Ann he knew, looking at him suspiciously, then with alarm. "Everyone's okay?"

"Yes yes," Sax said. "I mean- you heard about Michel?"

"Yes." Her mouth tightened, for a second she became the black Ann of his dreams. Then another wave pa.s.sed through her, and she was this new stranger, still clutching his wrist as if trying to snip his hand off. "But now you're just here to see me."

"Yes. I wanted to"- he searched wildly for a finish to the sentence- "...to talk! Yes- to, to, to, to, to ask you some questions. I'm having some trouble with my memory. I wondered if I, if we could travel up here, and talk. Hike"- he gulped-"or climb. You could show me some of the caldera?"

She was smiling. Again it was some other Ann. "You can climb with me if you want."

"I'm not a climber."

"We'll go up an easy route. Up w.a.n.g's Gully, and over the great circle to north circle, I've wanted to get up there while it's still summer anyway."

"It's Ls 200, actually. But I mean, it sounds good." His heart was beating at about 150 beats a minute.

Ann had all the equipment they needed, it turned out. The next morning, as they were suiting up, she said to him, "Here, take that off." Pointing at his wristpad.

"Oh dear," Sax said. "I- isn't it really part of the suit's system?"

It was, but she shook her head. "The suit is autonomous."

"Semiautonomous, I hope."

She smiled. "Yes. But no wristpad is necessary. Look- that thing connects you to the whole world. It's your manacle to s.p.a.cetime. Today let's just be in w.a.n.g's Gully. It will be enough."

It was enough. w.a.n.g's Gully was a broad weathered chute, cutting up through steeper cliff ridges like a giant shattered culvert. Most of the day Sax followed Ann up smaller gullies within the body of this larger one, scrambling up waist-high steps, using his hands most of the time, but seldom with the feeling that a fall would kill him, or do much more than sprain an ankle. "This isn't as dangerous as I thought it would be," he said. "Is this the kind of climbing you always do?"

"This isn't climbing at all."

"Ah."

So she went up slopes steeper than this. Taking risks that were, strictly speaking, unjustifiable.

And indeed, in the afternoon they came to a short wall, cut by horizontal fissures; Ann began to climb it, without ropes or pitons, and gritting his teeth, Sax followed. Near the top of a geckolike ascent, with his boot tips and gloved fingers all jammed into small cracks, he looked back down w.a.n.g's Gully, which suddenly seemed very much steeper in its entirety than it had in any given section, and all his muscles began to quiver with some kind of fatigued excitation. Nothing for it but to finish the pitch; but he had to risk his position time after time as he hurried higher, the holds getting slimmer just as he was becoming of necessity hastier. The basalt was very slightly pitted, its dark gray tinged rust or sienna; he found himself hyperfocused on one crack over a meter above his eye level; he was going to have to use that crack; was it deep enough for his fingertips to gain any purchase? He had to try to find out. So he took a deep breath and reached up and tried, and as it turned out it was not really deep enough at all; but with a quick pull, groaning involuntarily at the effort, he was up and past it, using holds he never even consciously saw; and then he was on his hands and knees next to Ann, breathing very heavily. She sat serenely on a narrow ledge.

"Try to use your legs more," she suggested.

"Ah."

"Got your attention, did it?"

"Yes."

"No memory problems, I trust?"

"No."

"That's what I like about climbing."

Later that day, when the gully had lain back a bit, and opened up, Sax said, "So have you been having memory problems?"

"Let's talk about that later," Ann said. "Pay attention to this crack here."

"Indeed."

That night they lay in sleeping bags, in a clear mushroom tent big enough to hold ten. At this alt.i.tude, with its superthin atmosphere, it was impressive to consider the strength of the tent fabric, holding in 450 millibars of air with no sign of untoward bulging at any point; the clear material was nice and taut, but not rock hard; no doubt it was holding many bars of air less than would test its holding capacity. When Sax recalled the meters of rock and sandbags they had had to pile on their earliest habitats to keep them from exploding, he couldn't help but be impressed by the subsequent advancements in materials science.

Ann nodded when he spoke of this. "We've moved beyond our ability to understand our technology."

"Well. It's understandable, I think. Just hard to believe."

"I suppose I see the distinction," she said easily.

Feeling more comfortable, he brought up memory again. "I've been having what I call blank-outs, where I can't remember my thoughts of the previous several minutes, or up to say an hour. Short-term-memory failures, having to do with brain-wave fluctuations, apparently. And the long-term past is getting very uncertain as well, I'm afraid."

For a long time she didn't reply, except to grunt that she'd heard him. Then: "I've forgotten my whole self. I think there's someone else in me now. In partway. A kind of opposite. My shadow, or the shadow of my shadow. Seeded, and growing inside me."

"How do you mean?" Sax said apprehensively.

"An opposite. She thinks just what I wouldn't have thought." She turned her head away, as if shy. "I call her Counter-Ann."

"And how would you- characterize her?"

"She is... I don't know. Emotional. Sentimental. Stupid. Cries at the sight of a flower. Feels that everyone is doing their best. c.r.a.p like that."

"You weren't like that before, at all?"

"No no no. It's all c.r.a.p. But I feel it as though it's real. So... now there's Ann and Counter-Ann. And... maybe a third."

"A third?"

"I think so. Something that isn't either of the other two."

"And what do you- I mean, do you call that one anything?"

"No. She doesn't have a name. She's elusive. Younger. Fewer ideas about things, and those ideas are- strange. Not Ann or Counter-Ann. Somewhat like that Zo, did you know her?"

"Yes," Sax said, surprised. "I liked her."

"Did you? I thought she was awful. And yet... there's something like that in me as well. Three people."