Venus of Dreams (20 page)

Now Angharad was muttering about calling in Counselors again, but Iris still remembered the two weeks she had spent with Jon Ellas. She could not allow herself to fall into that besotted state again. She had kept her mind clear for her work, had even made enough progress to get a message from Celia praising it. The praise might gain her little, but it was good to have the encouragement.

LaDonna looked up from her embroidery. "Well, look who's here," she said as Iris sat down. "No studying tonight?"

"I finished early." Iris began to rub Nicky behind the ears; the tawny cat stretched, showing his white stomach.

"Iris must know everything there is to know by now," LaDonna said to Chen, though the man was already aware of her odd pursuits. He had never joined in the teasing; he had even looked impressed and a little awed when Constance had recounted the tale of Celia's visit and the grant. But then, Chen rarely spoke. His room was down the hall from her own, on the other side of Angharad's room, though he had spent most of his nights with LaDonna. Iris had passed him a couple of times in the hall on her way to the bathroom, and though he had always smiled at her kindly, he had never spoken to her.

Nicky purred as she scratched his stomach; Chen grinned at the cat. The man's unusual face, with its odd, almond-shaped eyes, attracted Iris, and he was quieter and more courteous than many of the men who came to Lincoln. If she invited him to her room, Angharad would be pleased and might stop hinting about specialists and abnormality. Perhaps Iris could satisfy her needs with him without clouding her mind. She frowned as she let her arm drop. Thinking about Chen in that way seemed unfeeling somehow; at any rate, with LaDonna's attractions, he might not even be interested in her.

The cat nudged her hand, then scrambled up and stalked off into the shadows. "What do you learn about?" Chen asked.

Iris gazed at him, surprised. He was watching her, actually looking curious. "Lots of things," she said as she plucked nervously at the blue sleeve of her pajamas. "The sciences, mostly, but some history too."

"Iris has been taking prep lessons," LaDonna said.

"So I heard."

"And other things too," Iris said. "I've even learned about the Venus Project, along with everything else. It must be wonderful to work there, see a whole world being changed. Not that I could ever go, of course—I couldn't leave the farm." She had added that for LaDonna's benefit. "But it's interesting to learn about—"

Her voice trailed off. Chen's eyes had narrowed; he leaned forward, and the intense look on his face startled her. "I was there," he said, "on the Islands."

Iris held her breath, hardly knowing what to say. He had been to Venus. It's a sign, she thought wildly. She had never imagined meeting someone who had actually worked on the Project.

"They needed more space on the Islands. They can only support so many, and the people there want to have kids and so forth. Usually, there's enough people who want to leave after a while, but they had to send some others back that time, and I was one of them."

"How interesting," LaDonna murmured.

"I want to go back some day," Chen said. He said the words calmly, but the veins stood out on his muscular neck, and his body seemed tense. "I was told I'd be given—that I'd get to go back."

"That's wonderful," Iris said. "How lucky you are. I wish—" She closed her mouth, afraid to say more in front of LaDonna.

The dark-haired woman shook her head. "I never understood why that Project was started. It seems like a lot of effort for little return. We could use those resources here."

"We can use what's learned there," Iris replied. "That's worth more than the resources. And having a new world to settle someday—that'll mean a lot to Earth. It'll mean a new culture we can learn from eventually—it'll renew us."

"I suppose they tell you such things in lessons." LaDonna smiled tolerantly as she resumed her sewing.

"I was happy there," Chen said. "In a way, I still think of the Islands as my home."

"I've seen everything about it with my band," Iris said, "what Venus was like before, how the Parasol was built, what the Bats are needed for, why they had to build those big pyramids on the equator."

"I used to wonder about those."

"They'll increase the speed of Venus's rotation. Right now, it turns only once every two hundred forty-three days—"

"I know that," Chen said. "I was there, I know what the installations are supposed to do. I just was never quite sure of why they were built, why we couldn't just leave it the way it is."

"Oh." Iris was a bit taken aback; she had assumed, too quickly, that Chen might know little more than the members of her household. "They were going to, in the beginning. The Parasol could protect it. I mean, here on Earth, we have a magnetic field to protect us from solar radiation, because, as Earth rotates, its core generates that field. Venus doesn't have that land of magnetic field, but if you left part of the Parasol in place, you could protect the planet. But you'd still have a problem with the weather."

Chen nodded. "One side would get very cold when it's turned away from the sun." He shrugged. "Still, people can survive that. They'd find ways to live with it."

"But you also wouldn't have a Coriolis effect. The clouds wouldn't move in Earthlike patterns to create Earthlike weather, you see—the wind patterns wouldn't be similar. Well, at the beginning of the Project, they considered bringing in an asteroid, a large one, to strike the surface at an angle, and that certainly would have been easier than building those pyramids, but the computer projections showed that wouldn't produce enough energy to speed up the rotation. Even if it did, the kinetic energy would have damaged the planet. Something would have had to be done about the heat the energy would have produced, and the impact might have set off quakes for centuries afterward. As it is, when the tectonic plates start shifting—when the ground begins to move and shift—there'll be quakes anyway, but the settlers can be prepared for those."

"You know a few things," Chen said; there was no mockery in his voice.

"That's why the equatorial installations were such a clever idea. Those gravitational pulse engines inside them will produce a large enough antigravitational pulse to speed up the rotation. It might tear the engines apart, but the surface won't be as greatly damaged."

"If the engines work," Chen said.

"Oh, they should. The computer models show that." Iris glanced at LaDonna, who seemed bored by the conversation. "The people who thought of it were really quite clever."

Chen leaned back against the tree. "It was Habbers who did the work. Their robots did, anyway. Earth couldn't have done it alone."

Iris was startled. "I didn't know that."

"No reason why you should, I guess. Probably didn't put that fact into the history lessons, but all the Islanders know it. Those installations couldn't have been built without the Habbers."

"But why would they help the Nomarchies? I know some Habbers live on the Islands, but I thought they only observed things. Why would they help?"

"They have reasons. Maybe they want to find out a few things from doing it. I don't know. It's hard to understand Habbers."

She folded her arms. "Did you ever meet a Habber?"

"A few," He took another sip of whiskey, obviously reluctant to say more.

LaDonna put down her cloth and embroidery hoop, then yawned, arching her back as she stretched out her arms. "Getting late. She cast a sidelong look at Chen, who was ignoring her, then stood up. "Coming to bed?"

Chen shook his head.

"Well, if you'd rather talk—" LaDonna arched her brows, then smirked at Iris before leaving the courtyard.

They were alone. Iris blushed, wondering if Chen expected an invitation from her. "Why are you learning about the Project?" he asked.

"You're going to think it's silly."

"No, I won't."

"I'd love to go there, be a part of it all. Of course, I know I won't." It still hurt to admit that.

"I don't think it's silly."

"Don't say anything to anyone. They'd really laugh at me then."

"I don't know why they laugh at you at all."

She gazed at him gratefully. "They don't, a lot of the time, but whenever someone's staying here, they start in sooner or later. Maybe they think a man'll make me see sense. My mother thinks I'm addled. She was so angry with me when I started taking lessons. She says it won't do me any good when it's time to take over the farm."

"Maybe it won't. But you might not be on the farm. You could get sent to Venus."

"Do you really think so?" she asked.

"Maybe. I'll tell you this—they need people there who really care about the Project, and they aren't so easy to find. There are Islanders whose families were there almost from the beginning, a few of them even before the Islands were built, when they had to stay on Anwara. But there aren't as many of them as you might think. Sometimes their children or grandchildren wanted something else, I guess. Sometimes people just can't last on the Islands. They make things as nice as they can, but it's still a long time in one small area with a lot of the same people, and the only change you get is when you're working on a Bat."

Iris twisted a blade of grass in her fingers. "Well, I'm used to being stuck in one place."

"Anyway, when they pick the first settlers, they'd have to come from the Islands. It isn't just that they'd deserve it the most, it's that they'd know what to expect. They'll be closed in on the surface settlements for a while, but they'd feel—" Chen paused. "If you were a worker, you could apply. Know anything about mechanics or maintenance or airships, anything like that?"

"No."

"Then they probably couldn't use someone like you. You'd have to be a worker or else a specialist of some kind, and specialists have to go to a school."

The small hope he had aroused in her died. "Well, that won't happen."

"How old are you, Iris?"

"Almost sixteen," she said, exaggerating a little; her birthday wasn't until spring.

"I know a few on the Islands who weren't picked for schools until they were your age or even older. It happens sometimes—depends on if they think they'll need you. One thing Earth can't waste is brains."

Alexandra had said the same sort of thing. Iris wrapped her arms around her legs. It was easy for him to say kind things and give her false hope while he was here; he would not be around to see her hopes dashed. "They can't afford to waste farmers, either," she said bitterly.

"I don't know. Things could change. The Islands have to grow most of their own food, and we—they don't have as much space to do it, so they had to find different ways—hydroponics, cloned animal tissue, things like that. They could do the same things here, and then they wouldn't need as many farmers."

"You know a few things yourself, Chen."

He looked away for a moment. "I can't read," he said softly, "so I have to listen and look and learn that way. Sometimes I'd sit and overhear people talking and listen until they saw me there. I mean, Linkers and people like that don't usually sit around explaining things to me themselves. I couldn't understand everything, but I could pick up a little—Linkers, Habbers, it didn't matter who. Sometimes I'd make a carving for one of them, and they'd talk to me. It's funny. Some of the Habbers took more trouble if I asked a question than the Linkers or others did. I used to wonder why. I think it's because, in a way, the Habbers think we're all the same. They don't much care if you're a Linker or whatever. We're all just people trying to hang on to old ways the Habbers gave up long ago, and the Linkers aren't any different from the rest of us. The Habbers went into space and took what they wanted and changed themselves when they had to. The way they look at it, we're the ones they left behind." He brushed his black hair from his forehead. "I never said all this to anybody before. I never thought anyone would understand."

"I understand, Chen."

"You know—" He waved an arm. His eyes gazed past her; his brow was furrowed. She seemed to feel his expression on her own face, almost as if she were touching his thoughts. "The Linkers don't see. They listen to the cyberminds, but they don't see. Everything that doesn't fit into the pattern they want gets left out, and you can't do that. It's like the devices I work on. If one module or microchip or anything isn't there, it might go on working for a while, but it'll fail, and one device can affect a lot of other things." He shook his head. "I'm not saying it right. I just don't have the words."

"But you do. You just said it very well."

"They don't see people. They see pieces that have to go in certain places for everything to work."

"They might be right about that. What would we have without them?"

"Maybe they were right once." Chen closed his bottle of whiskey and set it down next to the tree. "But now—I don't know. Look at this house. They all do the job they're supposed to do and drink and talk and, instead of learning something with their bands, they just take mind-tours or whatever. They don't see, either."

"Maybe they're better off," she said. "Even now, I sometimes think I was foolish for wanting to do more."

He grabbed her wrist. "Don't say that. I didn't even get your chance. Where I came from, I didn't even have a band to learn on because my parents needed the one we had. There were too many of us. I was lucky to get what I did. No matter what happens, you'll have what you know. That's something, isn't it?"

She nodded.

He let go of her wrist and touched her hand gently; she shivered. "I think I understand you," he said. "Listen, I can talk to you, and you can tell me what you know, and I can try to learn it and remember it." He took a breath. "Should I come to your room?"

She did not reply.

"I don't have to, if you'd rather not." He bowed his head. "I think I like you more than anyone here."

She swallowed. "I'd better tell you, Chen. My mother thinks there's something wrong with me. I've only had one man in my bed since becoming a woman." Her throat tightened at the admission. "She thinks there were two because I spent a couple of nights with Constance's son Eric before he went away, but we didn't make love. You might be disappointed." Part of her was hoping that this would discourage him; at the same time, she feared his rejection.