The Complete Mars Trilogy. Kim Stanley Robinson

“Hey, John, could you repeat that please?” hooting at the very thought. “You amaze me, John, you always amaze me!” And Hiroko with her private smile, with Michel and Iwao flanking her, grinning at him…

      Michel said, “I think this is what Maslow meant by the term peak experience,” and Iwao groaned and elbowed him, while Hiroko reached out and touched John on the arm with her forefinger, as if to pass along a certain animating touch, a power, a gift.

      They next day they sorted and bagged the party wreckage and took down the tents, leaving the flagstone terraces behind, like strands of cloisonné necklace draped down the side of the old black volcano. They said good-bye to the dirigible crews, and the dirigibles drifted down the slope like balloons slipped from a child’s fist; the sand-colored ones of the hidden colony got hard to see very quickly.

      As he got in his rover with Maya John said good-byes, and as they drove around the rim of Olympus Mons they caravaned with rovers containing Arkady and Nadia, and Ann and Simon and their son Peter. In conversations that day John said, “We need to talk to Helmut, and get the UN to accept us as speakers at large for the local population. And we need to present the UN with a draft of the revised treaty. Around Ls ninety I’m scheduled to go to a dedication ceremony for a new tent city on east Tharsis. Helmut is supposed to be there, maybe we could meet then?”

      Only a few of them could make it, but they were named delegates for the rest, and the plan was agreed on. After that they talked about what the contents of the draft treaty should be, calling around to all the caravans and the dirigibles. The next day they came to the ramp down the northern escarpment, and at its foot they took off each in every direction. “That was a good party!” John said over the radio to each in turn. “See you at the next one!”

      The Sufis rolled by while they were stopped, and they waved from their windows came on the radio to say good-bye as well. John recognized the voice of the old woman who had tended him at the toilet after his dance in the storm; as he was waving at their caravan she said over the radio,

      “Whether it be of this world or of that,

      Your love will lead us yonder at the last.”