Eventually Coyote turned off the headlights. Their car rolled out into the dim aubergine black of night; they were on a steep road, apparently spiralling down the wall of the mohole. Their instrument panel lights were like tiny lanterns, and looking through his reflected image Nirgal could see that the road was four or five times as wide as the car. The full extent of the mohole itself was impossible to see, but by the curve of the road he could tell that it was a big hole, perhaps a kilometre across. Are you sure were turning at the right speed? he said anxiously.
I am trusting the automatic pilot, Coyote said, irritated. Its bad luck to discuss it.
The car rolled down the road. After more than an hours descent there was a beep from the instrument panel, and the car turned into the curving wall of rock to their left. And there was a garage tube, clanking against their outer lock door.
Inside the garage a group of twenty or so people greeted them, and took them past a line of tall rooms to a cavernlike chamber. The rooms that the Bogdanovists had excavated into the side of the mohole were big, much bigger than those at Prometheus. The back rooms were ten metres high as a rule, and in some cases two hundred metres deep; and the main cavern rivalled Zygote itself, with big windows facing out onto the hole. Looking sideways through the window Nirgal saw that the glass seen from the outside looked like the rock face; the filtered coatings must have been clever indeed, because as the morning arrived, its light poured in very brightly. The windows view was limited to the far wall of the mohole, and a gibbous patch of sky abovebut they gave the rooms a wonderful sense of spaciousness and light, a feeling of being under the sky that Zygote could not match.
Through that first day Nirgal was taken in hand by a small dark-skinned man named Hilali, who led him through rooms and interrupted people at their work to introduce him. People were friendly You must be one of Hirokos kids, eh? Oh, youre Nirgal! Very nice to meet you! Hey John, Coyotes here, party tonight! and they showed him what they were doing, leading him back into smaller rooms behind the ones fronting the mohole, where there were farms under bright light, and manufactories that seemed to extend back into the rock forever; and all of it very warm, as in a bathhouse, so that Nirgal was constantly sweating. Where did you put all the excavated rock? he asked Hilali, for one of the convenient things about cutting a dome under the polar cap, Hiroko had said, was that the excavated dry ice had simply been gassed off.
Its lining the road near the bottom of the mohole, Hilali told him, pleased at the question. He seemed pleased with all Nirgals questions, as did everyone else; people in Vishniac seemed happy in general, a rowdy crowd who always partied to celebrate Coyotes arrivalone excuse among many, Nirgal gathered.
Hilali took a call on the wrist from Coyote, and led Nirgal into a lab where they took a bit of skin from his finger. Then they made their way slowly back to the big cavern, and joined the crowd lining up by the kitchen windows at the back.
After eating a big spicy meal of beans and potatoes, they began to party in the cavern room. A huge undisciplined steel drum band with a fluctuating membership played rhythmic staccato melodies, and people danced to them for hours, pausing from time to time to drink an atrocious liquor called kavajava, or join a variety of games on one side of the room. After trying the kavajava, and swallowing a tab of an omegendorph given to him by Coyote, Nirgal ran in place while playing a bass drum with the band, then sat on top of a small grassy mound in the centre of the chamber, feeling too drunk to stand. Coyote had been drinking steadily but had no such problem; he was dancing wildly, hopping high off his toes and laughing. Youll never know the joy of your own g, boy! he shouted at Nirgal. Youll never know!
People came by and introduced themselves, sometimes asking Nirgal to exhibit his warming toucha group of girls his age put his hands to their cheeks, which they had chilled with their drinks, and when he warmed them up they laughed round-eyed, and invited him to warm other parts of them; he got up and danced with them instead, feeling loose and dizzy, running in little circles to discharge some of the energy in him. When he returned to the knoll, buzzing, Coyote came weaving over and sat heavily beside him. So fine to dance in this g, I never get over it. He regarded Nirgal with a cross-eyed glare, his grey dreadlocks falling all over his head, and Nirgal noticed again how his face seemed to have cracked somehow, perhaps been broken at the jaw, so that one side was broader than the other. Something like that. Nirgal gulped at the sight.
Coyote took him by the shoulder and shook him hard. It seems that I am your father, boy! he exclaimed.
Youre kidding! An electric flush ran down Nirgals spine and out of his face as the two of them stared at each other, and he marvelled at how the white world could shock the green one so thoroughly. They clutched each other.
I am not kidding! Coyote said.
They stared at each other. No wonder youre so smart, Coyote said, and laughed hilariously. Ah ha ha ha! Ka wow! I hope its okay with you!
Sure, Nirgal said, grinning but uncomfortable. He didnt know Coyote well, and the concept of father was even vaguer to him than that of mother, so he wasnt really sure what he felt. Genetic inheritance, sure, but what was that? They all got their genes somewhere, and the genes of ectogenes were transgenic anyway, or so they said.
But Coyote, though he cursed Hiroko in a hundred different ways, seemed to be pleased. That vixen, that tyrant! Matriarchy my assshes crazy! It amazes me the things she does! Although this has a certain justice to it. Yes it does, because Hiroko and I were an item back in the dawn of time, when we were young in England. Thats the reason Im here on Mars at all. A stowaway in her closet, my whole fucking life long. He laughed and clapped Nirgal on the shoulder again. Well, boy, you will know better how you like the idea later on.
He went back out to dance, leaving Nirgal to think it over. Watching Coyotes gyrations, Nirgal could only shake his head; he didnt know what to think, and at the moment thinking anything at all was remarkably difficult. Better to dance, or seek out the baths.
But they had no public baths. He ran around in circles on the dance floor, and later he returned to the same mound, and a group of the locals gathered around him and Coyote. Like being the father of the Dalai Lama, eh? Dont you get a name for that?
To hell with you man! Like I was saying, Ann says they stopped digging these 75° moholes because the lithosphere is thinner down here. Coyote nodded portentously. I want to go to one of the decommissioned moholes and start up its robots again, and see if they dig down far enough to start a volcano.
Everyone laughed. But one woman shook her head. If you do that theyll come down here to check it out. If youre going to do it, you should go north and hit one of the 60° moholes. Theyre decommissioned too.
But the lithosphere up there is thicker, Ann says.
Sure, but the moholes are deeper too.
Hmm, Coyote said.
And the conversation moved on to more serious matters, mostly the inevitable topics of shortages, and developments in the north. But at the end of that week, when they left Vishniac, by way of a different and longer tunnel, they headed north, and all Coyotes previous plans had been thrown out the window. Thats the story of my life, boy.
But the lithosphere up there is thicker, Ann says.
Sure, but the moholes are deeper too.
Hmm, Coyote said.
And the conversation moved on to more serious matters, mostly the inevitable topics of shortages, and developments in the north. But at the end of that week, when they left Vishniac, by way of a different and longer tunnel, they headed north, and all Coyotes previous plans had been thrown out the window. Thats the story of my life, boy.
On the fifth night of driving over the jumbled highlands of the south, Coyote slowed the rover, and circled the edge of a big old crater, subdued almost to the level of the surrounding plain. From a defile in the ancient rim one could see that the sandy crater floor was marred by a giant round black hole. This, apparently, was what a mohole looked like from the surface. A plume of thin frost stood in the air a few hundred metres over the hole, appearing from nothing like a magicians trick. The edge of the mohole was bevelled so that there was a band of concrete funnelling down at about a 45° angle; it was hard to say how big this coping band was, because the mohole made it seem like no more than a strip. There was a high wire fence at its outer edge. Hmm, Coyote said, staring out the windshield. He backed up in the defile and parked, then slipped into a walker. Back soon, he said, and hopped in the lock.
It was a long, anxious night for Nirgal. He barely slept, and was in an intensifying agony of worry the next morning, when he saw Coyote appear outside the boulder car lock, just before seven a.m. when the sun was about to rise. He was ready to complain about the length of this disappearance, but when Coyote got inside and got his helmet off it was obvious he was in a foul temper. While they sat out the day he tapped away at his AI in an absorbed conference, cursing vilely, oblivious to his hungry young charge. Nirgal went ahead and heated meals for them both, and then napped uneasily, and woke when the rover jerked forward. Im going to try going in through the gate, Coyote said. Thats quite the security they have on that hole. One more night should see it either way. He circled the crater and parked on the far rim, and at dusk once again left on foot.
Again he was gone all night, and again Nirgal found it very difficult to sleep. He wondered what he was supposed to do if Coyote didnt return.
And indeed he was not back by dawn. The day that followed was the longest of Nirgals life without a question, and at the end of it he had no idea what he was going to do. Try to rescue Coyote; try to drive back to Zygote, or Vishniac; go down to the mohole, and give himself up to whatever mysterious security system had eaten up Coyote; all seemed impossible.
But an hour after sunset Coyote tapped the car with his tik-tik-tik, and then he was inside, his face a furious mask. He drank a litre of water and then most of another, and blew out his lips in disgust. Let us get the fuck out of here, he said.
After a couple of hours of silent driving Nirgal thought to change the subject, or at least enlarge it, and he said, Coyote, how long do you think we will have to stay hidden?
Dont call me Coyote! Im not Coyote. Coyote is out there in the back of the hills, breathing the air already and doing what he wants, the bastard. Me, my name is Desmond, you call me Desmond, understand?
Okay, Nirgal said, afraid.
As for how long we will have to stay hiding, I think it will be forever.
They drove back south to Rayleigh mohole, where Coyote (he didnt seem to be a Desmond) had thought to go in the first place. This mohole was truly abandoned, an unlit hole in the highlands, its thermal plume standing over it like the ghost of a monument. They could drive right into the empty sand-covered parking lot and garage at its rim, between a small fleet of robot vehicles shrouded by tarpaulins and sand drifts. This is more like it, Coyote muttered. Here, weve got to take a look down inside it. Come on, get into your walker.
It was strange to be out in the wind, standing on the rim of such an enormous gap in things. They looked over a chest-high wall and saw the bevelled concrete band that rimmed the hole, dropping at an angle for about two hundred metres. In order to see down the shaft proper, they had to walk about a kilometre down a curving road cut into the concrete band. There they could stop at last, and look over the roads edge, down into blackness. Coyote stood right on the edge, which made Nirgal nervous. He got on his hands and knees to look over. No sign of a bottom; they might as well have been looking into the centre of the planet. Twenty kilometres, Coyote said over the intercom. He held a hand out over the edge, and Nirgal did too. He could feel the updraught. Okay, lets see if we can get the robots going. And they hiked back up the road.
Coyote had spent many of their daytime hours studying old programs on his AI, and now with the hydrogen peroxide from their trailer pumped into two of the robot behemoths in the parking lot, he plugged into their control panels and went at it. When he was done he was satisfied they would perform as required at the bottom of the mohole, and they watched the two, with wheels four times as tall as Coyotes car, roll off down the curving road.
All right, Coyote said, cheering up again. Theyll use their solar panel power to process their own peroxide explosives, and their own fuel as well, and go at it slow and steady until maybe they hit something hot. We just may have started a volcano!
Is that good?
Coyote laughed wildly. I dont know! But no ones ever done it before, so it has that at least to recommend it.
They returned to their scheduled travel, among sanctuaries both hidden and open, and Coyote went around saying We started up Rayleigh mohole last week, have you seen a volcano yet?
No one had seen it. Rayleigh seemed to be behaving much as before, its thermal plume undisturbed. Well, maybe it didnt work, Coyote would say. Maybe it will take some time. On the other hand if that mohole was now floored with molten lava, how would you be able to tell?
We could tell, people said. And some added: Why would you do something as stupid as that? You might as well call up the Transitional Authority and tell them to come down here to look for us.
So Coyote stopped bringing it up. They rolled on from sanctuary to sanctuary: Mauss Hyde, Gramsci, Overhangs, Christianopolis At each stop Nirgal was made welcome, and often people knew of him in advance, by reputation. Nirgal was very surprised by the variety and number of sanctuaries, forming together their strange world, half secret and half exposed. And if this world was only a small part of Martian civilisation as a whole, what must the surface cities of the north be like? It was beyond his graspalthough it did seem to him that as the marvels of the journey continued, one after the next, his grasp was getting a bit larger. You couldnt just explode from amazement, after all.
Well, Coyote would say as they drove (he had taught Nirgal how), we may have started a volcano and we may not have. But it was a new idea in any case. Thats one of the greatest things about this, boy, this whole Martian project. Its all new.
They headed south again, until the ghostly wall of the polar cap loomed over the horizon. Soon they would be home again.
Nirgal thought of all the sanctuaries they had visited. Do you really think well have to hide forever, Desmond?