Maya had last visited Hell’s Gate back in 2121, during her first piste tour of the basin, working for Deep Waters, and traveling with— with Diana! that was her name! Esther’s granddaughter, and a niece of Jackie’s. That big cheerful girl had been Maya’s introduction to the young natives, really— not only by way of her contacts in the new settlements around the basin, but in herself, in her attitudes and ideas— the way Earth was just a word to her, the way her own generation absorbed all her interest, all her efforts. That had been the first time Maya had begun to feel herself slipping out of the present, into the history books. Only the most intense effort had allowed her to continue to engage the moment, to have an influence on those times. But she had made that effort, had been an influence. It had been one of the great periods of her life, perhaps the last great period of her life. The years since then had been like a stream in the southern highlands, wandering through cracks and grabens and then sinking into some unexpected pothole.

But once, sixty years before, she had stood right here, under the great bridge that carried the piste from cliff to cliff over the mouth of Dao canyon— the famous Hell’s Gate bridge, with the city falling down the steep sun-washed slopes on both sides of the river, facing the sea. At that time there had been only sand out there, except for a band of ice visible on the horizon. The town had been smaller and ruder, the stone steps of the staircase streets rough and dusty. Now they had been polished on their tops by feet toiling up them. The dust had been washed away by the years; everything was clean and had a dark patina; now it was a beautiful Mediterranean hillside harbor, perched in the shadow of a bridge that rendered the whole town a miniature, like something in a paperweight or a postcard from Portugal. Quite beautiful in an autumn’s early sunset, all shadowed and florid to the west, everything sepia, the moment trapped in amber. But once she had passed through this way with a vibrant young Amazon, when a whole new world was opening up, the native Mars she had helped to bring into being— all of it revealed to her, while she was still a part of it.

The sun set on these memories. Maya returned to the Praxis building, still located up under the bridge, the final staircase to it as steeply pitched as a ladder. Ascending it with pushes on her thighs to help, Maya suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. She had done this before— not only climbed these steps, but climbed them with the sense that she had climbed them before— with precisely the same feeling that in a yet earlier visit, she had been an effective part of the world.