Well— still. Here they were, sitting on the Da Vinci sea cliffs. There was no need to get too overwrought about these matters, not really. As Nanao would have said, what now is lacking? They had eaten a good lunch, were full, not thirsty, out in the sun and wind, watching a kite soar far above in the dark velvet blue; old friends sitting in the grass, talking. What now was lacking? Peace of mind? Nanao would have laughed. The presence of other old friends? Well, there would be other days for that. Now, in this moment, they were two old brothers in arms, sitting on a sea cliff. After all the years of struggle they could sit out there all afternoon if they liked, flying a kite and talking. Discussing their old friends and the weather. There had been trouble before, there would be trouble again; but here they were.

“How John would have liked this,” Sax said, haltingly. So hard to speak of these things. “I wonder if he could have made Ann see it. How I miss him. How I want her to see it. Not to see it the way I do. Just to see it as if it were something— good. See how beautiful it is— in its own way. In itself, the way it all organizes itself. We say we manage it, but we don’t. It’s too complex. We just brought it here. After that it took off on its own. Now we try to push it this way or that, but the total biosphere. . . . It’s self-organizing. There’s nothing unnatural about it.”

“Well. . . .” Michel demurred.

“There isn’t! We can fiddle all we want, but we’re only like the sorcerer’s apprentice. It’s all taken on a life of its own.”

“But the life it had before,” Michel said. “This is what Ann treasures. The life of the rocks and the ice.”

“Life?”

“Some kind of slow mineral existence. Call it what you will. An areophany of rock. Besides, who is to say that these rocks don’t have their own kind of slow consciousness?”

“I think consciousness has to do with brains,” Sax said primly.

“Perhaps, but who can say? And if not consciousness as we define it, then at least existence. An intrinsic worth, simply because it exists.”

“That’s a worth it still has.” Sax picked up a rock the size of a baseball. Brecciated ejecta, from the looks of it: a shattercone. Common as dirt, actually much more common than dirt. He inspected it closely. Hello, rock. What are you thinking? “I mean— here it all is. Still here.”

“But not the same.”

“But nothing is ever the same. Moment to moment everything changes. As for mineral consciousness, that’s too mystical for me. Not that I’m automatically opposed to mysticism, but still. . . .”

Michel laughed. “You’ve changed a lot, Sax, but you are still Sax.”