LITMIR.BIZ

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nodded, liking the idea. ‘Friends.’

      She freed her arm, and with a brief squeeze of his shoulder got up to leave. He still trembled slightly under her hand.

      ‘Wait – what’s your name?’

      ‘Desmond.’

      2. HELPING HIM

      Thus in Underhill Maya always knew her stowaway Desmond was out there in the farm, getting by in circumstances almost as prisonlike as those he had suffered on the Ares. For days and months at a time she forgot this as she mangled her relationships with John and Frank, irritating Nadia and Michel, who were both nearly worthless to her, and irritating herself just as often or more – feeling incompetent and depressed, she didn’t know why – having difficulty adjusting to life on Mars, no doubt. It was miserable in a lot of ways, to be cooped up in the trailers and then the quadrangle, with only each other. It wasn’t that much different from the Ares, to tell the truth.

      But every once in a while Maya would see a movement in the corner of her eye, and think of Desmond. His situation was worse than hers by far, and he never complained, did he? Not that she knew, anyway. She didn’t want to bother him to find out. If he came to her, fine; if not, he would be observing from his hideaway, would see what he saw. He would know what kind of trouble she was facing, and if he cared to speak to her, he would come to her.

      And he did. Every once in a while she would retire to her cubicle in the quadrangle of barrel vaults, or then to the larger one out in the arcade that Nadia built, and there would come that scritch-tap-scritch which was their private signal, somehow, and she would open the door and there he was, small and black and buzzing with energy and talk, always in an undertone. They would share their news. Out in the greenhouse it was getting strange, he said; Hiroko’s polyandry was catching, and Elena and Rya were also enmeshed in multiple relationships, all of them becoming some kind of commune. Desmond obviously remained apart from them, even though these were his only associates. He liked to come by and tell Maya all about them; and so when she saw them in the ordinary course of life, looking innocuous, it brought a smile to her face. It taught her that she was not the only one having trouble managing her affairs; that everyone was becoming strange. Everyone but Desmond and her, or so it felt as they sat there in her cubicle, on the floor, talking over every one of their colleagues as if numbering rosary beads. And each time as their talk wound down she would find some reason to reach out and touch him, hold his shoulder, and he would clasp her arm in his vicelike grip, quivering with energy, as if his internal dynamo was spinning so fast he could barely hold himself together. And then he would be off. And the days after that would be easier. It was therapeutic, yes; it was what talks with Michel should have been but weren’t, Michel being both too familiar and too strange. Lost in his own problems. Or overwhelmed by everyone else’s. Once, out walking with him to the salt pyramids they were constructing, he said something about the growing oddity of the farm team, and Maya pricked up her ears, thinking, If only you knew. But then he went on: ‘Frank is thinking they may have to be investigated by some kind of formal, I don’t know, tribunal. Apparently material has gone missing, equipment, supplies, I don’t know. They can’t account for their hours properly to him, and people back in Houston are beginning to ask questions. Frank says some down there are even talking about sending up a ship to evacuate anyone who has been actively stealing things. I don’t think that would do anyone any good, things are tenuous enough as it is. But Frank, well, you know Frank. He doesn’t like it when there are things going on outside his control.’

      ‘Tell me about it,’ Maya muttered, pretending to worry only about Frank. And you could pretend anything with Michel, he was oblivious, more and more lost in his own world.

      But afterwards it was Desmond she worried about. The farm team she didn’t care about at all, serve them right to be busted and sent home, Hiroko especially, but really all of them, they were so self-righteous and self-absorbed, a clique in a village too small to have cliques; but of course cliques only ever existed in contexts too small for them.

      But if they did get rousted as they deserved, Desmond would be in trouble.

      She did not know where he hid, or how to contact him. But from her conversations with Frank about Underhill affairs she judged that the problem of dealing with the farm team was going to develop slowly; so instead of searching for Desmond, as she had in the Ares, she merely walked around in the greenhouse late in the night, when she normally would not have, asking Iwao questions about things she would not usually show an interest in; and a few nights later she heard the scritch-tap-scritch at her door, and she rushed to let him in, realizing from his initial downcast glance that she was wearing only a shirt and underwear. But this had happened before, they were friends. She locked the door and sat down on the floor next to him, and told him what she had heard. ‘Are they really taking things?’

      ‘Oh yeah, sure.’

      ‘But why?’

      ‘Well, to have things that are their own. To be able to go out and explore different parts of Mars, and have things to keep their trips under the radar.’

      ‘Are they doing that?’

      ‘Yeah. I’ve been out myself. You know, they say it’s just a trip to Hebes Chasma, and then they get over the horizon and set off to the east, mostly. Into the chaos. It’s beautiful, Maya, really beautiful. I mean maybe it’s just because I been cooped up so long, but I love being out there, I love it. It’s what I came for, here at last. In my life. I have a hard time convincing myself to come back.’

      Maya looked at him closely, thinking it over. ‘Maybe that’s what you all ought to do.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Take off.’

      ‘Where would I go?’

      ‘Not just you – all of you. Hiroko’s whole group. Take off and start your own colony. Go off where Frank and the rest of the police couldn’t find you. Otherwise you may get busted and sent home.’ She told him what she had heard from Michel.

      ‘Hmm.’

      ‘Could you do it, do you think? Hide them all, like you’ve hidden yourself?’

      ‘Maybe. There’s some cave systems in the chaoses east of here, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen.’ He thought it over. ‘We’d need all the basics. And we’d have to disguise our thermal signal. Send it down into the permafrost, melt our water for us. Yeah, I suppose it could be worked out. Hiroko has been thinking about it already.’

      ‘You should tell her to hurry up then. Before she gets busted.’

      ‘Okay, I will. Thanks Maya.’

      And the next time he dropped by in the middle of the night, it was to say goodbye. He hugged her and she held onto him, clutching. Then she pulled him onto her, and instantaneously, without any transition, they were getting their clothes off and making love. She rolled over onto him, shocked at how slight he was, and he flexed up to clasp her and they were off into that other world of sex, a wild pleasure. She did not have to play it safe with this man, who was the perfect outsider, an outlaw, her stowaway, and at this hard point in her life, one of her only real friends. Sex as an expression of friendship; it had happened to her before, a few times when she was young, but she had forgotten how much fun it could be, how friendly and pure, neither romantic nor anonymous.

      Afterwards she observed, ‘It’s been a while.’

      He rolled his eyes, leaned up to gnaw on her collarbone. ‘Years since a time like that,’ he said happily. ‘Since I was about fifteen, I think.’

      She laughed and squished him under her. ‘Flatterer. I take it your Hiroko doesn’t give you enough attention.’

      He made a disgusted noise. ‘We’ll see how it goes in the outback.’

      That made her sad. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she said. ‘Things won’t be the same around here with you gone.’

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