Back on land they went out on drives. Once they went out to see the Pont du Card, and there it was, same as ever, the Romans’ greatest work of art — an aqueduct: three tiers of stone, the thick lower arches foursquare in the river, proud of their two thousand years’ resistance to running water; lighter taller arches above, then the smallest on top of them. Form following function right into the heart of the beautiful — using stone to take water over water. The stone now pitted and honey blond, very Martian in every respect — it looked like Nadia’s Underbill arcade, standing there in the dusty green and limestone gorge of the Card, in Provence; but now, to Michel, almost more Mars than France.

Maya loved its elegance. “See how human it is, Michel. This is what our Martian structures lack, they are too big. But this — this was built by human hands, with tools anyone could construct and use. Block and tackle and human math, and perhaps some horses. And not our teleoperated machines and their weird materials, doing things no one can understand or even see.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if we could build things by hand. Nadia should see this, she would love it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Michel was happy. They ate a picnic there. They visited the fountains of Aix-en-Provence. Went out to an overlook above the Grand Canyon of the Card. Nosed around the street docks of Marseilles. Visited the Roman sites in Orange, and Nimes. Drove past the drowned resorts of the Cote d’Azur. Walked out one evening to Michel’s ruined mas, and into the middle of the old olive grove.

And every night of these few precious days they returned to Aries, and ate in the hotel restaurant, or if it was warm out, under the plane trees in the sidewalk cafes; and then went up to their room and made love; and at dawn woke and made love again, or went down directly for fresh croissants and coffee. “It’s lovely,” Maya said, standing one blue evening in the tower of the arena, looking over the tile roofs of the town; she meant all of it, all of Provence. And Michel was happy.

But a call came on the wrist. Nirgal was sick, very sick; Sax, sounding shaken, had already gotten him off Earth, back into Martian g and a sterile environment, inside a ship in Terran orbit. “I’m afraid his immune system isn’t up to it, and the g doesn’t help. He’s got an infection, pulmonary edema, a very bad fever.”

“Allergic to Earth,” Maya said, her face grim. She made plans and ended the call with curt instructions to Sax to stay calm, then went to the room’s little closet and began to throw her clothes out onto the bed.

“Come on!” she cried when she saw Michel standing there. “We have to go!”

“We do?”

She waved him off, burrowed into the closet. “I’m going.” She threw handfuls of underwear into her suitcase, gave him a look. “It’s time to go anyway.”

“It is?”

She didn’t reply. She was tapping at her wristpad, asking the local Praxis team to arrange transport into space. There they would rendezvous with Sax and Nirgal. Her voice was cold, tense, businesslike. She had already forgotten Provence.

When she saw Michel still standing motionless, she exploded — “Oh come on, don’t be so theatrical about it! Just because we have to leave now doesn’t mean we won’t ever come back! We’re going to live a thousand years, you can come back all the time if^you want, a hundred times, my God! Besides how is this place so much better than Mars? It looks just like Odessa to me, and you were happy there, weren’t you?”

Michel ignored that. He stumbled by her suitcases to the window. Outside, an ordinary Arlesian street, blue in the twilight: pastel stucco waHs, cobblestones. Cypress trees. Tiles on the roof across the street were broken. Mars-colored. Voices below shouted in French, angry about something.

“Well?” Maya exclaimed. “Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

Look, not choosing to take the longevity treatment is suicide.

So?

Well. Suicide is usually considered to be a sign ofpsychological dysfunction.

Usually.

I think you’ll find it’s true more often than not. You’re unhappy at least.

At least.

And yet why? What now is lacking?

The world.

Every day you still walk out to see the sunset.

Habit.

You claim the destruction of the primal Mars is the source of your depression. I think the philosophical reasons cited by people suffering depression are masks protecting them from harder, more personal hurts.

It can all be real.

You mean all the reasons?

Yes. What did you accuse Sax of? Monocausotaxophilia?

Touche. But there’s usually a start to these things, among all the real reasons — the first one that started you down your road. Often you have to go back to that point in your journey in order to start off in a new way.

Time is not space. The metaphor of space lies about what is really possible in time. You can never go back.

No no. You can go back, metaphorically. In your mental traveling you can journey back into the past, retrace your steps, see where you turned and why, then proceed onward in a direction that is different because it includes these loops of understanding. Increased understanding increases meaning. When you continue to insist that it is the fate of Mars that concerns you most, I think it is a displacement so strong that it has confused you. It too is a metaphor. Perhaps a true one, yes. But both terms of the metaphor should be recognized.

I see what I see.

But the way it is, you are not even seeing. There is so much of red Mars that remains. You should go out and look! Go out and empty your mind and just see what is out there. Go out at low altitude and walk free in the air, a simple dust mask only. It would be good for you, good at the physiological level. Also it would be reaping a benefit of the terraforming. To experience the freedom it gives us, the bond with this world — that we can walk on its surface naked and survive. It’s amazing! It makes us part of an ecology. It deserves to be rethought, this process. You should go out to consider it, to study the process as areoformation.

That’s just a word. We took this planet and plowed it under. It’s melting under our feet.

Melting in native water. Not imported from Saturn or the like, it’s been there from the beginning, part of the original accretion, right? Outgassed from the first lump that was Mars. Now part of our bodies. Our very bodies are patterns in Martian water. Without the trace minerals we would be transparent. We are Martian water. And water that has been on the surface of Mars before, yes? Rupturing out in artesian apocalypse. Those channels are so big!

It was permafrost for two billion years.

Then we helped it back onto the surface. The majesty of the great outbreak floods. We were there, we saw one with our own eyes, we nearly died in it —

Yes yes —

You felt the car as that water swept it away, you were driving —

Yes! But it swept Frank away instead.

Yes.

It swept the world away. And left us on the beach.

The world is still here. You could go out and see.

I don’t want to see. I’ve seen it already!

Not you. Some previous you. Now you’re the you living now.

Yes yes.

I think you’re afraid. Afraid of attempting a transmutation — a metamorphosis into something new. The alembic stands out there, all around you. The fire is hot. You’ll be melted, you’ll be reborn, who knows if you’ll still be there afterward?

I don’t want to change.

You don’t want to stop loving Mars.

Yes. No.

You will never stop loving Mars. After metamorphosis the rock still exists. It’s usually harder than the parent rock, yes? You will always love Mars. Your task becomes seeing the Mars that always endures, under thick or thin, hot or cold, wet or dry. Those are ephemeral, but M.ars endures. These floods happened before, isn’t it true?