“Oh yes. In this area there is. It’s well-known for that— the first bioregion robust enough for bears. The bay is liquid to the bottom, you see. The Ap mohole is at the center of the crater, so it’s like a bottomless lake. Iced over in winter of course, but the bears are used to that from the Arctic.”

“The winters are long.”

“Yes. The female bears make dens in the snow, near some caves in dike outcroppings to the west. They don’t truly hibernate, their body temperatures drop just a few degrees, and they can wake up in a minute or two, if they need to adjust the den for heat. So they den for as much of the winters as they can, then live in there and forage out till spring. Then in spring we tow some of the ice plates through the mouth of the bay out to sea, and things develop from there, bottom to top. The basic chains are Antarctic in the water, Arctic on the land. Plankton, krill, fish and squid, Weddell seals, and on land rabbits and hares, lemmings, marmots, mice, lynx, bobcat. And the bears. We’re trying with caribou and reindeer and wolves, but there isn’t the forage for ungulates yet. The bears have been out just a few years, the air pressure hasn’t been adequate until recently. But it’s a four-thousand-meter equivalent here now, and the bears do very well with that, we find. They adapt very quickly.”

“Humans too.”

“Well, we haven’t seen too much at the four-thousand-meter level yet.” He meant four thousand meters above sea level on Earth. Higher than any permanent human settlement, as she recalled.

He was going on: “ . . .eventually see thoracic-cavity expansion, bound to happen. . . .” A man who talked to himself. Big, bulky; white fur in a fringe around his bald pate. Black eyes swimming behind round spectacles.

“Did you ever meet Hiroko?” she said.

“Hiroko Ai? I did, once. Lovely woman. I hear she’s gone back to Earth, to help them adapt to the flood. Did you know her?”

“Yes. I’m Ann Clayborne.”

“I thought so. Peter Clayborne’s mother, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“He’s been in Boone recently.”

“Boone?”

“That’s the little station across the bay. This is Botany Bay, and the station is Boone Harbor. A kind of joke. Apparently there was a similar pairing in Australia.”

“Indeed.” She shook her head. John would be with them forever. And by no means the worst of the ghosts haunting them.