“Yes,” she said, thinking back. Such power of recall they had in these amazing hours! That car had been a crucible, they had all metamorphosed in it, in their own ways. “I suppose I did. It wasn’t fair, you were just trying to help her. And that look on your face. . . .”

They stood there, looking back at the scattering of low structures that was Underhill.

“And here we are,” Sax said finally.

“Yes. Here we are.”

Awkward instant. Another awkward instant. This was life with the other: one awkward instant after the next. He would have to get used to it, somehow. He stepped back. He reached out and held her hand, squeezed it hard. Then let go. She wanted to walk out past Nadia’s arcade, she said, into the untouched wilderness west of Underhill. She was experiencing a rush of memory too strong to concentrate on the present. She needed to walk.

He understood. Off she went, with a wave. With a wave! And there was Coyote, over there near the salt pyramids so brilliant in the afternoon light. Feeling Mars’s gravity for the first time in decades, Sax hopped over to the little man. The only one of the First Hundred’s men who had been shorter than Sax. His brother in arms.

• • •

Stumbling here and there through his life, step-by-step shocked elsewhere, it was actually quite difficult to focus on Coyote’s asymmetrical face, faceted like Deimos— but there it was, most vibrantly there, pulsing it seemed with all its past shapes as well. At least Desmond had more or less resembled himself throughout. God knew what Sax looked like to the others, or what he would see if he looked in a mirror— the idea was dizzying, it might even be interesting to test it, look in a mirror while remembering something from his youth, the view might distort. Desmond, a Tobagonian of Indian descent, now saying something difficult to comprehend, something about rapture of the deeps, unclear if he was referring to the memory drug or to some nautical incident from his youth. Sax wanted so much to tell him that Hiroko was alive, but just as the words were on the tip of his tongue, he stopped himself. Desmond looked so happy at this moment; and he would not believe Sax. So it would only upset him. Knowledge by experience is not always translatable into discursive knowledge, which was a shame, but there it was. Desmond would not believe him because he had not felt that hand on his wrist. And why should he, after all?

They walked out toward Chernobyl, talking about Arkady and Spencer. “We’re getting old,” Sax said.

Desmond hooted. He still had a most alarming laugh— infectious, however, and Sax laughed too. “Getting old? Getting old?”