Kim Stanley Robinson - Icehenge

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ICEHENGE

by KIM STANLEY ROBINSON (1984)

[VERSION 1.1a (Jan 09 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the

version number by 0.1 and redistribute.]

Reprinted from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by permission of Alfred A.

Knopf, Inc.

Parts of this novel have appeared in substantially different form under the titles:

November 1982 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. "On the North

for Damon Knight

and Kate Wilhelm

Part One

EMMA WEIL 2248 A.D.

"A ship is floating in the harbour now,

A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;

There is a path on the sea's azure floor,

No keel has ever plough'd that path before;

The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;

The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;

The merry mariners are bold and free:

Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?"

--SHELLEY, "Epipsychidion"

THE first indication I had of the mutiny came as we approached the inner limit of the

first asteroid belt. Of course I didn't know what it meant at the time; it was no more than

a locked door. The first belt we call the dud belt, because the asteroids in it are basaltic

achondrite, and no use to miners. But we would be among the carbonaceous chondrites

soon enough, and one day I went down to the farm to get ready. I fed a bit more light to

the algae, for in the following weeks when the boats went out to break up rocks there

would be a significant oxygen depletion, and we would need more chlorella around to

help balance the gas exchange. I activated a few more bulbs in the lamps and started

fooling around with the suspension medium. Biologic life-support systems are my work

and play (I am one of the best at it), and since I was making room for more chlorella, I

once again became interested in the excess biomass problem. Thinking to cut down on

surplus algae by suspending it less densely, I walked between long rows of spinach and

cabbage to the door of one of the storage rooms at the back of the farm, to get a few more

tanks. I turned the handle of the door. It was locked.

"Emma!" called a voice. I looked up. It was Al Nordhoff, one of my assistants.

"Do you know why this door is locked?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I was wondering myself yesterday. I guess there's classified cargo

in there. I was told to leave it alone."

"It's our storage room," I said, irritated.

Al shrugged. "Ask Captain Swann about it."

"I will."

Now Eric Swann and I were old friends, and I was upset that something was going on

in my area that he had failed to tell me about. So when I found him on the bridge, I came

straight to the point.

"Eric, how come I'm locked out of one of my own storage rooms? What have you got

in there?"

Immediately he blushed as red as his hair, and hung his head. The two rocketry and

guidance officers on the bridge looked down at their consoles.

"I can't tell you what's in there, Emma. It's classified. I can't tell anyone until later."

I stared at him. I know I can intimidate people if I look at them hard enough. His blush

got deeper, his freckles disappeared in the general redness, his blue eyes gave me a

watery stare. But he wasn't going to tell me. I curled my lip at him and left the bridge.

That was the first sign: a locked door, a secret reason for it. I thought to myself, We're

taking something for the Committee out to Ceres, perhaps. Weapons, no doubt. It was

typical of the Mars Development Committee to keep secrets. But I didn't jump to any

conclusions; merely stayed alert.

The second sign was one I probably would have missed, had I not been alerted by the

first. I was walking down the corridor to the dining commons, past the tapestry lounges

between the commons and the bedrooms, when I heard voices from a lounge and stopped.

Just the voices sounded funny, all whispery and rapid. I recognized John Dancer's voice:

"We can't do anything of the sort until after the rendezvous, and you know it."

"No one will notice," said a woman, perhaps Ilene Breton.

"You hope no one would notice," Dancer replied. "But you can't be sure that Duggins

or Nordhoff wouldn't stumble across it. We have to wait on everything until after the

rendezvous, you know that."

Then I heard steps across the velcro carpet behind me, and with a start I began to walk

again, past the door of the lounge. I looked in; John and Ilene, sure enough, among

several others. They all looked up as I appeared in the doorway, and their conversation

abruptly died. I stared at them and they stared back, at a loss for speech. I walked on to

the dining commons.

A rendezvous in the belt. A group of people, not the superior officers of the ship, in on

this event and keeping it a secret from the others. A locked storage hold.... Things were

not falling together for me.

After that I began to see things everywhere. People stopped talking when I walked by.

There were meetings late at night, in bedrooms. I walked by the radio room once, and

someone was sending out a long message through the coding machine. Quite a few of the

storage room doors were locked, back behind the farm; and some of the ore holds were

locked as well.

After a few days of this I shook my head and wondered if I were making it all up.

There were explanations for everything I had noticed. Shipboard life tends to become

cliquish on the best of runs; even though there were only forty of us, divisions would

spring up over the year of an expedition. And these were troubled times, back on Mars.

The consolidation of the various sectors under the central coordination of the Committee

was causing a lot of dissatisfaction. Sectionalism was rife, subversive groups were

everywhere, supposedly. These facts were enough to explain all the little factions I now

noticed on the Rust Eagle. And paranoia is one of the most common shipboard

disorders... seeing patterns is easy in such a heavily patterned environment.

So I began to discount it all. Perhaps we were carrying something to Ceres for the

Committee, but that was nothing.

Still, there was something about the atmosphere of the ship in those days. More people

than usual were jumpy and strained. There were mysterious glances exchanged... in an

atmosphere of mystery. But here hindsight may be influencing me. The facts are what I

want here. This record will help me to remember these events many years, perhaps

centuries, from now, and so I must set down the facts, the sharpest spur to the memory.

In any case, the third sign was unmistakable. By this time the sun was nearly between

us and Mars, and I went to the radio room to get a last letter off to my fool of a father, in

jail temporarily for his loud mouth. Afterwards, I went to the jump tube, and was about to

fall down to the living quarters when I heard voices floating down the tube from the

bridge. Had that been my name? I pulled myself up the rail to the steps that led to the

bridge, and stayed there, eavesdropping again. A habit of mine. Once more, John Dancer

was speaking.

"Emma Weil is pro-Committee all the way," he said as if arguing the point.

"Even so," said another man, and a couple of voices cut over so that I didn't hear what

he said.

"No," Dancer said, interrupting the other voices quickly. "Weil is probably the most

important person aboard this ship. We can't talk to her about any of this until Swann says

so, and that won't be until after the rendezvous. So you can forget it."

That did it. When it was clear the conversation was over I hopped back to the jump

tube and fell down it, aiding the faint acceleration-gravity with some pulls on the rail. I

ticked off in my mind the places Swann would most likely be at that hour, intent on

finding him and having a long talk. It is not healthy to believe yourself the focus of a

ship-wide conspiracy.

I had known Eric Swann for a long time.

Before the turn of the century, every sector ran its own mining expeditions. Royal

Dutch looked for carbonaceous chondrite; Mobil was after the basaltic chondrites in the

dud belt; Texas mined the silicate types. Chevron had the project of pulling one of the

Amors into a Martian orbit, to make another moon. (This became the moon Amor, which

was turned into a detention center. My father lived there.) So each sector had its own

asteroid crew, and I got to know the Royal Dutch miners pretty well. Swann was one of

the rocketry and guidance officers, and a good friend of my husband Charlie, who was

also in R and G. Over the course of many runs in the belt I talked with Swann often, and

even after Charlie and I divorced we remained close.

But when the Committee took over the mining operations in 2213, all the teams, even

the Soviets, were thrown into a common pool, and I saw all of my friends from Royal

Dutch a lot less often. My infrequent assignments with Swann had been cause for

celebration, and this present assignment, with him as captain, I had thought would be a

real pleasure.

Now, pulling around the ship I was the most important person on, I was not so sure.

But I thought, Swann will tell me what's going on. And if he doesn't know anything about

all this, then he'd better be told that something funny is happening.

I found him in one of the little window rooms, seated before the thick plasteel

separating him from the vacuum. His long legs were crossed in the yoga position, and he

hummed softly: meditating, his mind a floating mirror of the changing square of stars.

"Hey Eric," I said, none too softly.

"Emma," he said dreamily, and stretched his arms like a cat. "Sit down." He showed

me a chunk of rock he had had in his lap. "Look at this Chantonnay." That's a chondrite

that has been shocked into harder rock. "Pretty, isn't it?"

I sat. "Yes," I said. "So what's happening on this trip?"

He blushed. Swann was faster at that than anyone I ever saw. "Not much. Beyond that

I can't say."

"I know that's the official position. But you can tell me here."

He shook his head. "I'm going to tell you, but it has to wait a while longer." He looked

at me directly. "Don't get angry, Emma."

"But other people know what's going on! A lot of them. And they're talking about

me." I told him about the things I had noticed and overheard. "Now why should I be the

most important person on this ship? That's absurd! And why should they know about

whatever it is we're doing, and not me?"

Swann looked worried, annoyed. "They don't all know.... You see, your help will be

important, essential perhaps--" He stopped, as if he had already said too much. His

freckled face twisted as his mouth moved about. Finally he shook his head violently.

"You'll just have to wait a few more days, Emma. Trust me, all right? Just trust me and

wait."

That was hardly satisfactory, but what could I do? He knew something, but he wasn't

going to tell it to me. Tight-lipped, I nodded my good-bye and left.

The mutiny occurred, ironically enough, on my eightieth birthday, a few days after my

talk with Swann. August 5, 2248.

I woke up thinking, now you are an octogenarian. I got out of bed (deceleration-gee

entirely gone, weightless now as we coasted), sponged my face, looked in the mirror. It is

a strange experience to look inside your own retinas; down there inside is the one

thinking, in that other face... it seems as if, if you could get the light right, you could see

yourself.

I grasped the handholds of my exerciser and worked out for a while, thinking about

birthdays. All the birthdays in this new age. One of my earliest memories, now, was my

tenth birthday. My mother took me to the medical station, where I had to drink foul-

tasting stuff and submit to tests and some shots -- just quick blasts of air on the skin, but

they scared me. "You'll appreciate this later," my mom said, with a funny expression.

"You won't get sick and weak when you're old. Your immune system will stay strong.

You'll live for ever so long, Emma, don't cry."

Yes, yes. Apparently she was right, I thought, looking into the mirror again, where my

image seemed to pulse with color under the artificial lights. Very long lives, young at

eighty: the triumph of gerontology. As always, I wondered what I would do with all the

extra years -- the extra lives. Would I live to stand free on Martian soil, and breathe

Martian air?

Thinking these thoughts I left my room, intent on breakfast. The lounges down the

hall from the bedrooms were empty, an unusual thing. I walked into the last lounge

before the corridor turned, to look out the small window in it, with its view over the

bridge.

And there they were: two silver rectangles, like asteroids crushed into ingots of the

metals they contained. Spaceships!

They were asteroid miners of the PR class, sister ships of our own. I stared at them

motionlessly, my heart thudding like a drum, thinking rendezvous. The ships grew to the

size of decks of cards, very slowly. They were the shape of a card deck as well, with the

mining cranes and drills folded together at their fronts, bridge ceilings just barely bulging

from their sides (tiny crescents of light), rocket exhausts large at their rear, like beads on

their sides and front. Brilliant points of light shone from the windows, like the fluorescent

spots on the deep-sea fish of Earth. They looked small beside an irregular blue-gray

asteroid, against the dead black of space.

I left the lounge slowly. Turned and walked down the corridor--

In the dining commons it was bedlam.

I stopped and stared. Of the entire crew of forty-three, at least twenty-five must have

been in the commons, shouting and laughing, six or seven singing the Ode to Joy, others

setting up the drinks table (Ilene maneuvering the mass of the big coffee pot), John and

Steven and Lanya in a mass hugging and laughing -- sobbing, tears in their eyes. And on

the video screen was a straight-on camera shot of the two ships, silver dots against a blue-

gray asteroid, so that it looked like a die thrown through the vacuum.

They all had known. Every single one of them in the room. I found myself blinking

rapidly, embarrassed and angry. Why hadn't I been told? I wiped my eyes and got out of

the doorway before I was noticed by someone inside.

Andrew Duggins flew by, pulling himself along the hall rails. His big face was

scowling. "Emma!" he said, "come on," and pulled away. I only looked at him, and he

stopped. "This is a mutiny!" he said, jerking his head in the direction of the commons.

"They're taking over the ship, and those others out there too. We've got to try and get a

message off to Ceres -- to defend ourselves!" With a hard yank he pulled himself away,

in the direction of the radio room.

Mutiny. All of the mysterious events I had noticed fell together, into a pattern. A plan

to take over the ship. Had Swann been too afraid of the possibility to discuss it?

But there was no time for a detailed analysis. I leaped off the floor, and with a strong

pull on the rail was after Duggins.

Outside the radio room there was a full-fledged fight going on. I saw Al Nordhoff

striking one of the ship police in the face, Amy Van Danke twisting furiously in the hold

of two men, trying to bite one in the throat. Others struggled in the doorway. Shouts and

Amy's shrieks filled the air. The fight had that awkward, dangerous quality that all brawls

in weightlessness exhibit. A blow that connected (one of Al's vicious kicks to the head of

a policeman, for instance) sent both parties spinning across the room....

"Mutiny!" Duggins bellowed, and diving forward crashed into the group in the

doorway. His momentum bowled several people into the radio room, and an opening was

cleared. I shoved off from the wall and grazed my head on the doorjamb going in.

After that things were blurry, but I was angry -- angry that I had been deceived, that

Swann and the general order of things were being challenged, that friends of mine were

being hit -- and I swung blindly. I caught one of the policemen on the nose with my fist,

and his head smacked the wall with a loud thump. The room was crowded, arms and legs

were swinging. The radio console itself was crawling with bodies. Duggins was

bellowing still, and hauling figures away from the mass on the radio controls. Someone

got me in a choke hold from behind. I put heel to groin and discovered it was a woman --

put elbow in diaphragm and twisted under her arm, nearly strangled. Duggins had cleared

the radio and was desperately manipulating the dials. I put a haymaker on the ear of a

man trying to pull him away. Screams and spherical droplets of blood filled the air--

Reinforcements arrived. Eric Swann slipped through the doorway, his red hair flying

wild, a tranquilizer gun in his hand. Others followed him. Darts whizzed through the air,

sounding like arrows. "Mutiny!" I shrieked. "Eric! Mutiny! Mutiny!",

He saw me, pointed his gun at me and shot. I looked at the dart hanging from my

forearm.

...The next thing I knew, I was being guided down the jump tube. Leaving it at my

floor. I saw Swann's face swimming above me. "Mutiny," I said.

"That's true," Eric replied. "We're going to have to put you under arrest for a few

hours." His freckle-face was stretched into a fool's grin.

"Asshole," I muttered. I wanted to run. I could outrun all of them. "I thought you were

m'friend."

"I am your friend, Emma. It was just too dangerous to explain. Davydov will tell you

all about it when you see him."

Davydov, Davydov? "But he was lost," I muttered, fighting sleep and very confused.

"He's dead."

Then I was in my bed, strapped securely. "Get some sleep," Swann said. "I'll be back

in a few hours." I gave him a look planned to turn him to stone, but he just grinned and I

fell asleep in the middle of it, thinking, Mutiny....

When I woke up again, Swann was by my bed, tilted in the no-gee so that his head

hung over me. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Bad." I waved him away and he pushed off into the air above the bed. I rubbed my

eyes. "What happened, Swann?"

"A mutiny, you've been calling it." He smiled.

"And it's true?"

He nodded.

"But why? Who are you?"

"Did you ever hear of the Mars Starship Association?"

I thought. "A long time ago? One of those secret anti-Committee groups."

"We weren't anti-Committee," he said. "We were just a club. An advocacy group. We

wanted the Committee to support research for an interstellar expedition."

"So?"

"So the Committee didn't want to do it. And they took us to be part of the anti-

Committee movement, so they outlawed us. Jailed the leaders, transferred the members to

different sectors. They made us anti-Committee."

"Didn't all that happen a long time ago?" I asked, still disoriented. "What has that got

to do with this?"

"We regrouped," he said. "Secretly. We've existed underground for all these years.

This is our coming out, you might say."

"But why? What good does it do you to take over a few asteroid miners? You aren't

planning to use them as starships, are you?" I laughed shortly at the idea.

He stared at me without answering, and suddenly I knew that I had guessed it.

I sat up carefully, feeling cold and a touch dizzy. "You must be joking."

"Not at all. We're going to join the Lermontov and the Hidalgo, and complete their

life-support systems' closure."

"Impossible," I breathed, still stunned at the very idea.

"Not impossible," he said patiently. "That's what the MSA has been working on these

last forty years--"

"One of those ships is Hidalgo?" I interrupted. My processing was still impaired by

the drugs he had shot me with.

"That's right."

"So Davydov is alive...."

"He certainly is. You knew him, didn't you?"

"Yes." Davydov had been the captain of Hidalgo when it disappeared in the Achilles

group three years before. I had thought him dead....

"There's no way I'll go," I said after a pause. "You can't kidnap me and drag me along

on some insane interstellar attempt--"

"No! No. We're sending Rust Eagle back with all the non-MSA people from the three

ships."

I let out a long sigh of relief. Yet sudden anguish filled me at the thought of the mess I

was suddenly in, of the fanatics who now had control of my life, and I cried out, "Eric,

you knew this was going to happen out here. Why didn't you arrange to keep me off this

flight?"

He looked away from me, pushed himself down to the floor. Red-faced, he said, "I did

the opposite, Emma."

"You what?"

"There are MSA people in the expedition scheduling office, and" -- still staring at the

floor -- "I told them to arrange for you to be aboard Rust Eagle this time."

"But, Swann!" I said, struggling for words. "Why? Why did you do that to me?"

"Well -- because, Emma, you're one of the best life-support systems designers there is

on Mars, or anywhere. Everyone knows that, you know that. And even though our

systems designers have got a lot of improvements for the starship, they still have to be

installed in those two ships, and made to work. And we have to do it before the

Committee police find us. Your help could make the difference, Emma."

"Oh, Swann."

"It could! Look, I knew it was imposing on you, but I thought, if we got you out here

ignorant of our plans, then you couldn't be held responsible. When you return to Mars

you can tell them you didn't know anything about the MSA, that we made you help us.

That was why I didn't tell you anything on the way out here, don't you see? And I know

you aren't that strong a supporter of the Committee, are you? They're just a bunch of

thugs. So that if your old friends asked you for help that only you can give, and you

couldn't be held culpable, you might help? Even if it was illegal?" He looked up at me,

his blue eyes grave.

"You're asking for the impossible," I told him. "Your MSA has lost touch with reality.

You're talking about travel across light-years, for God's sake, and you've got five-year

systems to do it with!"

"They can be modified," Swann insisted. "Davydov will explain the whole project

when you see him. He wants to talk with you as soon as you'd like to."

"Davydov," I said darkly. "He's the one behind this madness."

"We're all behind it, Emma. And it isn't mad."

I waved an arm and held my head in my hands, as it was pulsing with all the bad

news. "Just leave me alone for a while."

"Sure," he said. "I know it's a lot to take in. Just tell me when you want to see

Davydov. He's over on Hidalgo."

"I'll tell you," I said, and looked at the wall until he left the room.

I had better tell about Oleg Davydov here, for we were lovers once, and for me the

memory of him was marked with pain and anger, and a sense of loss -- loss that no matter

how long I lived could not be recouped or forgotten.

I was just out of the University of Mars, working at the Hellas Basin, in the new

settlement near the western edge of the Basin where underground reservoirs and aquifers

had been discovered. It was a good supply of water, but the situation was delicate, and

the use of the water caused ecologic problems. I was set to work with others to solve

these problems, and I quickly proved that I was the best among the systems people there.

I had a grasp of the whole Hellas set-up that seemed perfectly natural to me, but was (I

could see) impressive to others. And I was a good middle-distance runner -- so that all in

all, I was a confident youth, perhaps even a bit arrogant.

During my second year there I met Oleg Davydov. He was staying in Burroughs, the

big government center to the north, doing some work for the Soviet mining cartel. We

met in a restaurant, introduced by a mutual acquaintance.

He was tall and bulky, a handsome man. One of the Soviet blacks, they call them. I

guess some of their ancestors came from one of the USSR's client countries in Africa.

The color had been pretty well watered down over the generations, and Davydov had

coffee-and-cream-colored skin. His hair was black and wooly; he had thick lips under a

thin, aquiline nose; a heavy beard, shaved so that his lower face was rough; and his eyes

were ice blue. They seemed to jump out of his face. So he was a pretty good racial mix.

But on Mars, where ninety-nine percent of the population is fish-belly white, as they say,

any touch of skin color is highly valued. It made one look so... healthy, and vital. This

Davydov was really extremely good-looking, a color delight to the eye. I watched him

then, as we sat on adjacent stools in that Burroughs restaurant, talking, drinking, flirting a

little... watched so closely that I can recall the potted palm and white wall that were

behind him, although I don't remember a word we said. It was one of those charmed

nights, when both parties are aware of the mutual attraction.

We spent that night together, and the next several nights as well. We visited the first

colony in the area, The Can, and marvelled at the exhibits in the museum there. We

scrambled around the base of the Fluted Cliffs in Hellespontus Montes, and spent a night

out in a survival tent. I beat him easily in a footrace, and then won a 1500-meter race for

him at a Burroughs track. Every hour available to us we spent together, and I fell in love.

Oleg was young, witty, proud of his many abilities; he was exotically bilingual (a

Russian!), affectionate, sensual. We spent a lot of time in bed. I remember that in the dark

I could see little more than his teeth when he grinned, and his eyes, which seemed light

grey. I loved making love with him... I remember late dinners together, in Burroughs or

out at the station. And innumerable train rides, together or alone, across the sere rust

deserts between Burroughs and Hellas -- sitting by the window looking out at the curved

red horizon, feeling happy and excited.... Well, those are the kind of times that you only

live through once. I remember them well.

The arguments began quite soon after those first weeks. We were an arrogant pair and

didn't know any better. For a long time I didn't even realize that our disagreements were

particularly serious, for I couldn't imagine anyone arguing with me for very long. (Yes, I

was that self-important.) But Oleg Davydov did. I can't remember much of what we

argued about -- that period of time, unlike the beginning, is a convenient blur in my

memory. One time I do remember (of course the rest could be called up as well): I had

come into Burroughs on the late train, and we were out eating in a Greek restaurant

behind the train station. I was tired, and nervous about our relationship, and sick of

Hellas. Hoping to compliment him, I made some comment about how much more fun it

would be to be an asteroid miner like he was.

"We aren't doing anything out there," he said in response. "Just making money for the

corporations -- making a few people on Earth rich, while everything else down there falls

apart."

"Well, at least you're out there exploring," I said.

He looked annoyed, an expression I was becoming familiar with. "But we aren't, that's

what I'm saying. With our capabilities we could be exploring the whole solar system. We

could have stations on the Jovian moons, around Saturn, all the way out to Pluto. We

need a solar watch station on Pluto."

"I wasn't aware of that fact," I said sarcastically.

His pale blue eyes pierced me. "Of course you weren't. You think it's perfectly all

right to continue making money from those stupid asteroids, and nothing more, here at

the end of the twenty-second century."

"Well?" I said, annoyed myself by this time. "We're all going to live for a thousand

years, so what's your rush? There's time for all of your great projects. Right now we need

those asteroids."

"The corporations need them. And the Committee."

"The Committee's just organizing all of our efforts for our own good," I said.

"They just make the trains run on time, eh?" he said, taking a deep swallow from his

drink.

"Yes," I said, not understanding what he meant. "Yes, they do."

He shook his head with disgust. "You're an all-American girl, all right. Everything is

oh kay. Leave the politics to the others."

"And you are a true Soviet," I retorted, struggling away from him in our dining booth.

"Blaming your problems on the government...."

And we went on from there, senselessly and for no reason but pride and hurt feelings.

I remember him making a grim prediction: "They will make a happy American Kremlin

up here, and you won't care, as long as your job is secure." But most of what we said was

less logical than that.

And a long, miserable week later, a blur of bitter fights, one of those times when you

have ruined a relationship though you don't know how, and wish desperately that time

could be reversed and the unknown mistake undone, he left. The Soviet mining people

wanted him in space again and he just left, without saying good-bye, though I called his

dorm again and again in those last few days. And then I knew -- I learned it, in the course

of long black walks over the broad basin, standing alone on that rocky plain -- that I

could be spurned. It was a hard lesson.

In a few years I was out among the asteroids myself, working for Royal Dutch. I heard

stories about Davydov getting in trouble with the Soviet mining command, but I didn't

pay much attention. It was a matter of pride to ignore anything I heard about him. So I

never got the full story of what had happened to him.

Then, many years later -- just three years before this mutiny, in fact -- the Hidalgo

disappeared out in the Trojans, breaking radio contact with the famous last words, "Now

wait just a minute." No wreckage was ever found, the matter was hushed up by the

Committee censors, and no explanation was ever offered. Looking over the list of crew

members I saw his name at the top -- Oleg Davydov -- and the pain flooded through me

again, worse than ever before. It was one of the worst moments of my life. We had parted

in anger, he had left me without even saying good-bye, and now, no matter how many

years the gerontologists gave me, I would never be able to change those facts, for he was

dead. It was very sad.

...Thus, when Eric Swann came to take me across to the Hidalgo, to see Davydov

again, I did not know exactly what I felt. My heart beat rapidly, I had to strain to make

casual, terse conversation with Eric. What would he look like? What would I say to him,

or him to me? I didn't have the slightest idea.

Well, he looked very much like he had sixty years before. Perhaps a little heavier,

bearlike with his dark hair, his broad shoulders and chest and rump. His ice-blue eyes

surveyed me without any visible sign of recognition.

We were on the empty bridge of the Hidalgo. At a nod from Davydov, Eric had

slipped away down the jump tube. In the breathy vented silence I walked around the

bridge slowly, my velcro slippers making little rip rip rip noises. My pulse was fast. I

discovered that I was still angry with him. And I felt that he had personally deceived me

with the news of his death. Or perhaps it was the mutiny--

"You look much the same," he said. The sound of his voice triggered a hundred

memories. I looked at him without replying. Finally he said, with a stiff, slight smile,

"Has Eric apologized for our kidnapping of you?"

I shook my head.

"I am sorry we shocked you. I hear you fought hard against the takeover. Eric

probably explained that we kept you ignorant for your own protection."

So smooth, he was. It just made me mad. He squinted at me, trying to gauge my

mood. Hard without a voice.

"The truth of the matter is," he went on, "the success of all the MSA's years of effort

depends on the creation of a fully closed life-support system in the starship. I believe our

scientists will be able to do it, but Swann has always said your ability with BLS systems

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ICEHENGEbyKIMSTANLEYROBINSON(1984)[VERSION1.1a(Jan0904).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]"TeaatthePalazofHoon"copyright1923andrenewed1951byWallaceStevens.ReprintedfromTheCollectedPoemsofWallaceStevensbypermissionofAlfredA.Knopf,Inc.Partsofthisnove...

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Kim Stanley Robinson - Icehenge

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