She cocked her head, looked curiously at him. Suddenly he was afraid; they were their pasts, they had to be or they were nothing at all, and whatever they felt or thought or said in the present was nothing more than an echo of the past; and so when they said what they said, how could they know what their deeper minds were really feeling, thinking, saying? They didn't know, not really. Relationships were for that reason utterly mysterious, they took place between two subconscious minds, and whatever the surface trickle thought was going on could not be trusted to be right.
( Kim Stanley Robinson )
[ Red Mars ]
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