Venus of Dreams (30 page)

"Some have had more preparation. Others were worse off than you—I certainly was when I came to a school for the first time. You've been using mnemopills, haven't you?"

She wondered how he had found out; maybe he had only guessed. "I got them from the physician," she said. "She wouldn't have let me have them if they were harmful." She did not say what everyone knew; that if the school's physicians didn't hand them out, the students would have no trouble getting them elsewhere.

"They won't do much good. Oh, they can help you on a test, but how important is memorizing when you'll be able to call up anything you've forgotten? It's your understanding of what you learn and how you use it that's important. You've got to expect the unexpected if you want to terraform a world."

Iris lowered her eyes. Perhaps he knew that she had tried suppressants as well, though they had been less successful than the mnemopills. She had found that she didn't work as well when too calm; she had missed the rush of joy she felt when she was sure that she had done a good piece of work or had finally grasped some difficult concept.

Esteban folded his arms. "Well, what did you want to talk to me about this evening? It must be important to take you away from your studies."

"I wanted to ask—we'll have a month off at the end of June. I wanted to know if it would be all right if I went back to Lincoln then. My mother's expecting me, and I could see my son. Chen may be in Lincoln then as well."

"Do you want to go back?"

She thought of Benzi. Would she be able to leave him a second time, or would she find that he had finally claimed her heart? Angharad would no doubt do her best to keep Iris from returning to the school; she would play on her daughter's longing for home. On the other hand, Chen and Julia would be there to help her resist Angharad's pleadings. Her homecoming would only renew an old struggle.

"I don't know if I want to go back," Iris said at last. She caught herself; her old Plains accent had crept back into her voice. "It may just make it harder to return here."

"You're right about that. We've found that when students go home for visits during their first year, it is harder for them. Some don't want to return, and the school loses them. Others feel even more alienated from their families and old friends, and if they haven't formed strong friendships with other students, they're even more lonely than they were before." Esteban paused. "What you do is up to you, of course, but if it'll make it any easier, you can always tell your people that the Institute advised you against such a trip now."

"Thanks, Esteban."

"Don't thank me. It still has to be your decision. It's just that, in your case, you might not want to come back to the Institute."

Iris shook her head. "You're wrong. I'd come back. I worked too hard to get here. You think I still feel guilty about leaving my son and my household, and maybe I do, but I wouldn't give up my studies for them."

"Your bonds with those in Lincoln are still stronger than those with the people here."

"I have my studies," she answered.

"Without the companionship of people you care about, work can be lonely. You'll need to work with others if you're sent to Venus. You'll need to think of them almost as your family, and of the Project as your home. I don't doubt your devotion, but you seem to be using your work partly as an escape. You fear the claims others might make on you, and you're afraid that they'll interfere with your goals. I'm not surprised that you feel that way, but friendships here will only strengthen you in your purpose. All of you want the same thing, after all. The people here are not like those you left behind on the Plains."

"I have a bondmate," she said, "as you know. It's enough that he shares my dream."

"I'd guess that you fear his claim on you also."

There was a way to escape her fears and guilts. The Institute knew that some of the students would eventually choose to leave; she would not be missed. It would be easy to go home and not return. Angharad would be pleased, and Iris's duties in her household would not leave her too much time to reflect on the school and what she might have lost. As the years passed, she would come to believe that she was more important to Lincoln than she would ever have been to the Project. She would feel no more guilt, and might even be of help to any children in the town who wanted to learn. Angharad had hinted that Eric's business was not doing as well as he had expected; Iris was sure that he might welcome her advice.

Chen, of course, would be disappointed if he learned she would not join him on the Islands after all, but that would pass. By the time he left the Plains for good, it was likely that their love would have faded. He would be consoled if she promised to send Benzi to him when the boy was older. She could leave her dream to her son; the dream would not die completely.

"You're thinking," Esteban said, "of how easy it actually would be to give it all up."

He would be a good Counselor someday; it almost seemed that he could read thoughts. "Esteban." She was silent for a moment. "I don't know how to say this. I feel like a fake. I feel as if I'm impersonating someone else, that I'm not really what I'm pretending to be."

A smile appeared on Esteban's shadowed face. "Believe me, that's a common feeling here. Many of your fellow students share it."

"I'm never myself, except when I'm alone. Even then, I feel as if I'm losing myself. Sometimes I wonder if the cyberminds or some Linker made a mistake, and I'm here by accident."

Esteban laughed. "No one comes here by accident."

"Mistakes can happen."

"Not that kind of mistake. Look, you worked hard to get here. You had to set yourself against your family to have what you wanted. The Project, and what it means, must have become something of an obsession for you. Now, for the first time, you're in daily contact with others who are like you, and you don't like what you see in them—the drive, the ambition, the willingness to push everything else aside for our common goal. You're not afraid that you can't measure up, you're afraid that you will. You don't really think the cyberminds made a mistake, you're afraid that you have."

"Maybe I did," she said.

"You don't believe that, and neither do I. But I will say this, Iris. If you let these doubts fester too long, no amount of success in your courses will take you to the Islands or Anwara, but if you keep in sight what we're all here for, no failure or disappointment will stand in your way. It's time you drew closer to others here, and through them, accept what you are and have to become."

Esteban's voice was gentle, but his words seemed cold nonetheless. Had he been her Counselor in Lincoln, he might have been advising her to make her peace with her household and neighbors; because she was here, he was telling her to loosen those old ties. She thought of what Anthony had said, that they were only being turned into tools of the Mukhtars.

Anthony was wrong. The new world was what mattered, and those who built it would never be slaves. She clung to that thought.

"I've decided one thing," she said to Esteban. "I'm not going back to Lincoln this summer. I could use the time to review my work anyway. Thanks for talking to me."

"I hope I helped."

"You did." She stood up.

"Going back to your room to study?"

She shook her head. "I think I'll talk to them." She gestured at the group of students in the distance. "I've seen most of them around—I suppose I ought to get to know them better."

Esteban nodded. She took a breath as she began to cross the garden.

The flute player put down his instrument as she approached; his companions were watching her. "Salaam," one young man said.

"Salaam," Iris replied. "Is it all right if I listen?"

"Of course," one slender young woman replied. "Tim always likes an audience. Have a seat." She gestured at the ground; Iris seated herself. "Maybe he'll play the song he wrote, the one for Venus. Tim thinks that if the Islands don't have enough places for geophysicists when he's through, they might still make room for one who's also a musician."

The flute player smiled, then lifted his instrument. A piercing note hung in the air; as he played on, Iris seemed to hear the sound of the Cytherian winds.

Seventeen

Eric sat in the darkened common room and scowled at the wall as he drank. His mother hadn't looked happy when he arrived for supper. Once, Constance had pressed him to come by more often; now, she didn't seem to want him around. How could he explain to her that he could no longer stand to see Fatima and Jehan glowering at him in silence or nattering at him about his accounts? He was doing his best to pay off his debt to the two shopkeepers, and now even Constance was unwilling to give him credit.

Eric sipped from his bottle. Another message from Iris had come that afternoon, and he supposed that the women, who were out in the courtyard, were discussing that. Angharad would cluck over the message and worry about the strained look on Iris's face and the weary sound of her voice. LaDonna would say that the school was giving Iris too much work and that the strain would make her ill and wither her ovaries. Sheryl would say that Iris should be home with her son and that Benzi was forgetting her already, and Wenda would no doubt have some ambiguous words of wisdom to offer for the occasion.

Since the summer, Iris's messages had become even more infrequent. A month might pass with no word, and then a new message, shorter than the last, would appear on the screen in the common room. Iris would speak briefly of courses, sometimes of a new friend or teacher. She and her fellow student Chantal Lacan had gone to the Museo de Bellas Artes. Her teacher Miro Demara had looked at her computer model tracing the causes of a cooler than normal summer in North America, and had pronounced it an adequate piece of work. She and several students from the Plains had decided that the Cytherian Institute should do more to prepare new students; Iris and her friends had personally contacted each of the recently chosen students from the Plains to tell them what to expect. That idea had proven to be so successful in helping the new students adapt that others had decided to do the same for those in their Nomarchies.

Eric shifted his head toward the window and watched the lightly falling snow. How would he cover his debts during the time Fatima's store was closed? Why hadn't Iris, who was so clever, taken those inactive winter months into account when she had advised him to throw in his lot with the shopkeeper?

Iris's talk was now flavored with high-sounding, obscure phrases; her voice had taken on a clipped, accented tone unlike the flat sound of Plains talk. There was always an excuse for not returning home during a break in her studies—a friend had promised to tutor her, Esteban had advised her to review her own work, she and other students concentrating on meteorology and climatology were going to spend a brief period with specialists on one of the orbiting platforms and she would be a fool to reject the opportunity. Always, she talked about keeping up with her studies, about how much preparation she had lacked—as if the household were to blame for that.

The women had begun to refrain from inviting her back, from asking her to make some time for her household and her son. What was the use? They would only hear another excuse, and Eric knew that they might no longer welcome a visit from a young woman who was becoming a stranger. Even Angharad and Julia now seemed content to take credit for Iris's accomplishments from a distance rather than to have her actually present in Lincoln, where whatever odd urban habits she had picked up might be an embarrassment. If it hadn't been for her baby, some had implied, it might be better if she never came back at all.

She should have come back. If she knew so much, she might have been able to tell him how to save his failing business. What could he gain from the few brief messages she had sent, messages she had probably rattled off while thinking about some damned lesson? She kept asking for a reply, but what could he say to her? To reveal his true situation fully, to tell her how useless her suggestions were, would humiliate him.

Eric gulped down more whiskey. Lately, it seemed to take him longer to reach the state of numbed oblivion he desired. The town had lost interest in his merchandise almost as soon as Iris was gone, and Chen, during his visits, wanted to spend most of his time with Benzi instead of carving. Eric had struck the child once, when no one was around, grinning as he listened to Benzi's wails until shame at the act had overwhelmed him. But he couldn't blame Chen for his troubles. The man had given Eric a share of money people in other towns had paid for a couple of carvings, even though Eric had nothing to do with acquiring those commissions. Eric, though shamed, had accepted that charity.

Iris was to blame, he thought darkly, Iris with her gab about selling beautiful things and increasing demand. Now, he had a shopful of items Fatima'd had to pay for and no place to sell them, while Iris romped around Caracas and played with her computer projections or whatever the hell they were and sat in seminars gabbing nonsense and, for all he knew, dallied with the male students of many lands. She had talked him into this. He never would have thought of it himself. He had been foolish enough to think she was helping him; all she had done was to puff herself up with her imagined good deed before going off to be a student.

Oh, she was too fine for Lincoln now. She probably thought that he was selling a lot of old junk; she probably laughed about it when she went to the Museo with her friends. He could almost hear her laughing now. What did she expect him to do, run to every arriving floater like a beggar to plead with passengers to come to his shop?

Fatima and Jehan would throw him out soon. He imagined himself having to return to his old life, having to wander from town to town to spend lonely nights in a stranger's room or on a bed in a noisy hostel, having to endure the rough teasing, and worse, of those workers who would quickly sense his weakness. He had hated his old life before; now, it seemed even more oppressive, because he had believed that he had escaped it.