But Simon wasn’t the only one in the world like that, Michel had pointed out. That quality rested in the others as well, intermixed and less pure, but still there. Why could she not love that quality of obdurate endurance in other people, in every living thing? They were only trying to exist, like any rock or planet. There was a mineral stubbornness in all of them.

Wind keened past her helmet and over the shards of lava, humming in her air hose, drowning out the sound of her breath. The sky more black than indigo here, except low on the horizon, where it was a hazy purple violet, topped by a band of clear dark blue . . . oh who could believe it would ever change, up here on the slope of Ascraeus Mons, why hadn’t they settled up here to remind themselves of what they had come to, of what they had been given by Mars and then so profligately thrown away.

Back to the rover. She continued on up.

• • •

She was above silver cirrus clouds, just west of the volcano’s diaphanous summit banner. In the lee of the jet stream. To ascend was to travel into the past, above all lichen and bacteria. Though she had no doubt they were still there, hiding inside the first layers of the rock. Chasmoendolithic life, like the mythic little red people, the microscopic gods who had spoken to John Boone, their own local Hesiod. So people said.

Life everywhere. The world was turning green. But if you couldn’t see the greenness— if it made no difference to the land— surely it was welcome to the task? Living creatures. Michel had said to her, you love stones because of the stony quality that life has! It all comes back to life. Simon, Peter; on this rock I will build my church. Why could she not love that stony quality in every thing?

The rover rolled up the last concentric terraces of lava, working less strenuously now as it curved over the asymptotic flattening of the broad circular rim. Only slightly uphill, and less so every meter; and then onto the rim itself. Then to the inner edge of the rim.

Overlooking the caldera. She got out of the car, her thoughts flicking about like skuas.

Ascraeus’s nested caldera complex consisted of eight overlapping craters, the newer ones collapsing down across the circumferences of the older ones. The largest and youngest caldera lay out near the center of the complex, and the older higher-floored calderas embayed its circumference like the petals of a flower design. Each caldera floor was at a slightly different elevation, and marked by a pattern of circular fractures. Walking along the rim changed perspective so that distances shifted, and the floors’ heights seemed to change, as if they were floating in a dream. Taken all in all, a beautiful thing to witness. And eighty kilometers across.