This time out, however, his observations were broken repeatedly by thoughts of John. John Boone had worked for him for the last several years of John’s life, and they had had many a conference as they discussed the rapidly developing Martian situation; vital years; and through them John had been always happy, cheerful, confident— trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverent— no, no, not exactly— he had also been abrupt, impatient, arrogant, lazy, slipshod, drug dependent, proud. But how Sax had come to rely on him, how he had loved him— loved him like a big brother who had protected him out in the world at large. And then they had killed him. Those are the ones the killers always go after. They can’t stand that courage. And so they had killed him and Sax had stood on watching and hadn’t done a thing. Frozen in shock and personal fear. You didn’t stop them? Maya had cried; he remembered it now, her sharp voice. No, I was afraid. No, I did nothing. Of course it was unlikely that there was anything he could have done at that point. Before, when the attacks on John had first started, Sax might have been able to talk him into another assignment, gotten him some bodyguards, or, since John would never have accepted that, hired some bodyguards to follow him in secret, to protect him while his friends froze and stared in shocked witness. But he hadn’t hired anyone. And so his brother had been killed, his brother who had laughed at him but who had loved him as well, loved him before anyone else thought of him at all.

Sax wandered over the fractured plain, distraught— distraught at the loss of a friend 153 years before. Sometimes it seemed there was no such thing as time.

• • •

Then he stopped short, brought back to the present by the sight of life. Small white rodents, sniffing around on the green of a sunken meadow. They were no doubt snow pika or something like, but in their whiteness they looked enough like lab rats to give Sax a start. White lab rats, yes, but tailless— mutant lab rats, yes— free at last, out of their cages and into the world, wandering over the intense green meadow grass like surreal hallucinatory objects, all ablink and sniff-whiskered as they checked out the ground between grass clumps for tasties. Munching away on seeds and nuts and flowers. John had been greatly amused at the myth of Sax as the hundred lab rats. Sax’s mind, now free and scattered. This is our body.