Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson Page B

debris of time, left in a pattern of deposition that I fail to understand. On occasion I will stumble on one of these artifacts—a trolley bell in the street, and I see an Alexandrian’s smile—a whiff of ammonia, and suddenly I am reacquainted with my first daughter’s birth—but the process of deposition, the process of recovery, both are mysteries to me. And each little epiphany reminds me that there are things I have forgotten forever—things that might explain me to myself, which explanation I sorely need—and I clutch at the fragment knowing I might never stumble across it again.
    So I have decided to collect these artifacts, with the idea that I had better try to understand them now, while they are still within my reach—working as the archaeologists of old did so often, against rising waters in haste, while the chance yet exists: hurrying to invent a new archaeology of the self.
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    What we feel most, we remember best.
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    The Tharsis Bulge—the bulge is five thousand kilometers across and seven kilometers high, and formed early in Mars’s history. The stresses caused by this deformation in the crust were instrumental in the formation of the large volcanoes, the equatorial canyon system, and an extensive system of radial fractures.
    We came on the site in a hundred field cars, a caravan that lofted a plume of umber dust over the rocky plain. The site looked like any other youngish crater: a low rampart we could drive right up, and then a flat-topped symmetrical rim-hill, surrounded by the hummocky slope of the ejecta shield. Few craters look impressive from the outside, and this was not one of the exceptions. But my pulse quickened at the sight of it. It had been a long time coming.
    I put on a thermal suit, and ordered those of my students in the car to do the same, as I needed companions for a hike to the rim. Gritting my teeth I walked up to the car containing Satarwal and Petrini, and knocked on their door window. The door popped open with a hiss and there they were, faces poking out like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee: the codirectors of my dig. Blandly I told them I was going up to the rim with a few students to have a look around.
    Satarwal, flexing his boss muscle: “Shouldn’t we set camp first?”
    â€œYou’ve got more than enough people for that. And someone needs to go up there and confirm that we’re at the right crater.”
    Giving excuses: a mistake. “We’re at the right crater,” said Satarwal.
    Petrini grinned. “Don’t you think we’re at the right crater, Hjalmar?”
    â€œI’m sure we are. Still it wouldn’t hurt to see, would it. Before the whole camp is set.”
    They glanced at each other, paused to make me stew. “Okay,” Satarwal said. “You can go.”
    â€œThanks,” I said, bland as ever. Petrini shot a look at Satarwal to see how the head of the Planetary Survey would take this sarcasm; but Satarwal hadn’t noticed it. Stupid policeman.
    With a jerk of the head I led half a dozen students, and staff toward the rim. It was midafternoon, and we hiked up the gentle slope with the sun over our shoulders and the quartet of dusk mirrors almost overhead. It felt good to walk off the exchange with Satarwal and Petrini, and I left my group behind. They knew better than to catch up with me when I walked that fast. Those two clowns: I blew frost plumes as solid as cotton balls into the chill highland air at the thought of them. This was my dig. I had worked for twenty years to get the site off the Committee’s proscribed list; and I would have worked a hundred years more and never gotten their permission, too, if a friend hadn’t been put on the Committee. But it pleased him to sanction the dig for the season directly following the end of my stint as chairman of the department. So that the new chairman, Petrini, was made