You should go have a look around, really. A walkabout. Look very closely. Take a look even at the ice seas, a close look. But not just that. That is in the nature of a confrontation. Confrontation is not necessarily bad, but first just a look, eh? A recognition. Then you should think about going up into the hills. Tharsis, Elysium. A rise in altitude is a voyage into the past. Your task is to find the Mars that endures through all. It’s wonderful, really. So many people don’t have such a wonderful task as that, you can’t imagine. You’re lucky to have it.

And you?

What?

What is your task?

My task?

Yes. Your task

. . . I ‘m not sure. I told you, I envy you having that. My tasks are . . . confused. To help Maya, and me. And the rest of us. Reconciliation . . . I would like to find Hiroko . . .

You’ve been our shrink for a long time.

Yes.

Over a hundred years.

Yes.

And never any results at all.

Well. I like to think I have helped a little.

But it doesn’t come naturally to you.

Perhaps not.

Do you think people get interested in studying psychology because they’re troubled in the mind?

It’s a common theory.

But no one has ever been shrink to you.

Oh I’ve had my therapists.

Helpful?

Yes! Quite helpful. Fairly helpful. I mean— they did what they could.

But you don’t know your task.

No. Or, I . . . I want to go home.

What home?

That’s the problem. Hard when you don’t know where home is, eh?

Yes. I thought you would stay in Provence.

No no. I mean, Provence is my home, but . . .

But now you’re on your way back to Mars.

Yes.

You decided to come back.

. . .Yes.

You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?

No. But you do. You know where your home is. You have that, and it’s precious! You should remember that, you shouldn’t be throwing away such a gift, or thinking it’s a burden! You’re a fool to think that! It’s a gift, damn you, a precious precious gift, do you understand me?

I’ll have to think about that.

1

She left the refuge in a meteorological rover from the previous century, a high square thing with a luxurious window-box driver’s compartment up top. It was not unlike the front half of the expedition rover in which she had first traveled to the North Pole, with Nadia and Phyllis and Edmund and George. And because she had spent thousands of days since then in such machines, she at first had the impression that what she was doing was ordinary, contiguous with the rest of her life.