Venus of Dreams (34 page)

"You were his Counselor. You should have known."

"I couldn't know that."

"And you couldn't even defend yourself, reason with him, or stop him some other way. That button was in front of you. You could just press it and make sure you were safe." Chen moved his hand a little to the left and poised it over the button. "It must have been easy."

"You don't know what you're saying."

"But I do. I know how you felt." Chen lowered his hand toward the button in front of him. "The light's on, you know. Seems you came in with a weapon. Of course. You still have Eric's, don't you? You picked it up and hid it and forgot to get rid of it. Guess you were planning to do that now."

The Counselor froze; his eyes shifted wildly.

"And you must be getting angry by now," Chen went on in a low voice. "You might even try to lunge at me, get me away from this desk. Maybe I ought to shield myself."

"You can't do it," David said quietly. "Do you really think you could get away with it?"

"Maybe I don't care whether I do or not."

"Listen to me! I couldn't help it!" David wrung his hands. "He was acting so wild. You didn't see what he was like. I set up the shield, and then he tried to leap at me—I couldn't stop it."

"You knew what could happen as soon as you turned the shield on. Look at it this way. Eric didn't know what was coming, but you do. At least you can prepare yourself."

David leaned forward slightly, clearly trying to decide if he could reach Chen before the button was pressed. Then he sank into one of the chairs and covered his face. "I didn't mean to do it," he moaned. "It was out of my hands."

Chen got up and walked around the desk. He had seen himself punching the other man, beating him into a blubbering submission; now, his anger had fled, and he saw how useless his gesture had been. He was as guilty as David.

"You're safe," he said to the Counselor. "I have what I want. I've got friends here. I don't want them to know what I've done."

David looked up. "You really ought to seek some counseling yourself," he said. "I could file a complaint against you, you know."

"Yeah, you could. You'd be taking a chance, but maybe they could come for me before I talked about what I know. But two threats from two different men in one day—the Administrators might wonder just what kind of Counselor you are."

"I didn't mean it. You can see that, can't you? I failed him. I know that. I keep running it over in my mind, thinking of what I could have done. I didn't mean it."

Chen strode from the room. David had not meant for this to happen; Chen had not intended it when he had followed Nancy Fassi's request. But Eric was dead all the same.

June 540

From: Laing Chen, Hostel 8,

 San Antonio, Nueva Republica de Texas

To: Iris Angharads, Cytherian Institute,

 Caracas, Nomarchy of Nueva Hispania

We'll be leaving tomorrow, in the morning. A shuttle will take us up to the L-5 port and we'll leave for Venus from there on a torchship. I wanted to see you, but—

I have to be honest. I think I could have found some time to see you, but I didn't want to take you away from your studies. And even if I'd stayed on Earth, we wouldn't have had many chances to be together. There's pain in me now. I didn't want you to see me like this. I should be talking to you instead of just sending this message, but I didn't want to take you away from work or wake you up if you're sleeping. I always liked to watch you sleep, you look so peaceful then. So by the time you hear this, I'll probably be on the shuttle.

The taps against the glass door were distracting him. Chen turned around and glanced at an angry man with a bristling moustache, then put his screen on hold and pressed the door open.

"How long you going to be, anyway?" the man said.

"Not much longer."

"I've got a message to send too."

"There's another screen over there." Chen gestured with one arm, pointing at the opposite side of the room, which was filled with two rows of cots and reclining men.

"And another hog using it," the man replied. "Are you going to wrap this up, or do I have to haul you out of there?"

Chen rose slightly from his seat. "Guess you'll have to haul me out." He showed his teeth. "But then you'd miss your chance at the other screen."

The man turned his head, then began to bound across the room to the screen that was now free.

Chen sighed as he closed the door and tried to think of what he would say next.

They buried Eric before I left Lincoln. I don't know what Angharad told you. I know they all understood that you couldn't come home for that. Angharad told me that she didn't want you to come home. I think you'd want to know that. She said you shouldn't come home to face something so sad, that it'd give you bad memories of your home to take back with you.

This is hard, Iris. I have to tell you everything, because I promised them all I'd do it, and they just couldn't bring themselves to sit down and send you a message about it all. I know Angharad told you how Eric died, about the stroke. His body was taken to Omaha the day after, because the researchers there thought they might be able to find something out. David convinced Letty that it hadn't been her fault and that the people in Omaha would have a better chance of finding out why there weren't any warning signs or whatever. Then David told Constance that Eric's death, and what they found out about it, might give them a way to avoid such things in time. Constance said David advised her to have another child as soon as she could. I think she will. Iris, I—I have to stop for a minute.

David had come to the house often. His voice had been smooth and soothing, his manner gentle. His voice had faltered slightly only when he met Chen in the hallway or the common room.

At first, David usually averted his eyes guiltily from Chen's accusing gaze. After a few days, he was able to meet Chen's eyes without flinching. Toward the end, his own eyes had held anger and an unspoken accusation. Chen was as guilty as he, David's look said; Chen had given him the tools that had made his deed possible.

David had won, he knew. He had, in his mind, shifted some of the guilt to Chen, and could find a way to bear his own.

Anyway, Eric's ashes were sent back to Lincoln at the end of that week. Constance insisted on that. She said she wanted him home.

It was raining when we buried him. First, we went to the church, and the priest said mass. Almost everyone in Lincoln was there, and a lot of them had to stand outside. Why so many had to come, I don't know. Maybe it was the shock of having someone so young die of something like that. I brought Benzi. I had to say good-bye to Eric. Maybe someday I can tell you why I—forget that. I'll just say my place was there. Benzi behaved himself. He didn't know what was going on, but he sat still and didn't cry.

Chen had sat in one of the front pews, with Benzi on his lap, wedged in among the members of Angharad's household. He remembered the heat, the closeness of the bodies, the creaking of wood as people knelt or rose and then sat down again. A silver urn near the altar held Eric's ashes. Chen bit the inside of his mouth until it bled. They were all guilty, whether they knew it or not; their indifference to Eric, their insistence that he adjust to Plains ways, had pushed him into despair. They had not cared if his business failed and Eric had to return to a life he had hated; they were all to blame.

Those angry thoughts, oddly enough, had eased Chen for a moment until he glanced at the pew across from his and caught David's sardonic look. His brown eyes seemed to gaze into Chen's soul, as if he knew what Chen was thinking; David, he was sure, was thinking the same thing, mentally shifting more of his own guilt onto others.

Chen's face burned with shame at his own weakness. He could not bring himself to look at the urn that held the ashes of his dead friend.

After the mass, Fatima got up and said a few words about Eric and the shop, and I'd tell you what else she said, but I wasn't really listening because I kept thinking she could have helped him out more when she knew the trouble he was having with his business. I don't know. That isn't fair, I guess. Then Julia talked about what he was like as a boy, and then Constance went up to the altar and stood there for a while. She kept opening and closing her mouth while she looked at us, and I was sure she wasn't going to be able to talk—no one had expected her to try. Angharad was just about to get up and lead her away, and then—

Constance said that she wouldn't cry for Eric. She said that he had never wanted to leave Lincoln in the first place, that he'd wanted to stay, and now he would always be there.

She started crying then. She said she was crying for herself, because if Eric were still alive, she would have been just another person trying to force her son to be what she thought he should be instead of comforting him. Then she said she was glad he was dead, because at least now he wouldn't have to leave, and she started cursing herself because she had never really understood him.

By this time, the priest and Angharad were trying to lead her away, but Constance wouldn't move. She said that she knew why Eric had died and that all the doctors in the world would never see it, that he had died out of grief of not being able to keep the little he had. She said she knew that David was going to tell him he couldn't keep his business.

Then she started saying that it wasn't right that some had to live in one way, and others in a different way. She said that Lincoln was dying, that all the farms were dying, that they were all fools for trying to keep them going, that one day the whole town would die of grief. By then, some people were whispering that she didn't know what she was saying. Finally, the priest calmed her down and got her back to her seat.

We buried Eric outside, at the edge of the field. Constance wanted that too—she didn't want him in the town mausoleum. She said that would be like filing him away on a shelf.

I spoke to her before I left. She was a little better then, more like herself. She mentioned you, said you might be addled but at least you had what you wanted. Then I said good-bye to them all. They knew they probably wouldn't see me again.

I guess you know why I couldn't take Benzi with me. I wanted to, but the new Counselor advised against it. I forgot to tell you that before. A new Counselor was sent to Lincoln just before I left.

Perhaps David had lost, after all. No one knew where he'd been sent, or even if he was still a Counselor. A woman named Diane Derryville, another smiling tool of the Mukhtars, had taken his place.

She had advised Chen about his son, had said that it would be better for him to stay in a familiar place for now, that it would be easier for him to leave later on, when he was older and his mother came back for him. She had been sitting behind the Counselor's desk; Chen had found it hard to concentrate on her words.

The Counselor's going to contact you. She's going to set up some sort of program for you and Benzi, something with bands and images and so on so that you both feel you're actually having physical contact. She said they hadn't tried it before with parents and children, so I guess it's an experiment or something. She said they'd cover the cost as long as you're doing well enough at the Institute.

Two men had been waiting outside the glass door for a chance to use the screen. Chen glanced at them and saw that three other men, who had been playing dice in another corner of the room, had moved their game closer to him. The two waiting men had already been drawn into the game. The dice rolled across the floor; the man who had rolled them grimaced and shook his head.

Iris, I won't see you again until you come to the Islands. I know you will, I know you'll get through. We'll have to see how things work out then. Don't forget me, whatever happens. We still want the same thing, don't we? I love you still.

Chen stood up and stared at the blank screen. His last words had been a bit too hollow.

He could not face her. He imagined careless, damning words about Eric and his own role in Eric's death spilling from his lips in Iris's presence. He had not even been able to bring himself to talk to her directly over the screen. She might need him now, might have wanted to weep with him over Eric; he would not have been able to bear that.

His love for her was poisoned. He was relieved that she would not be traveling to Venus for some time. On the Islands, he might be able to forget Eric. There would be nothing present to remind him of his deed. He could tell himself that many lives had been lost to the Project, and that Eric's, however indirectly, was simply another such loss.

But Iris would join him eventually. He would then have to look at a face that would remind him of Lincoln and what he had brought to the people there. It would be just if Iris somehow saw what was inside him, and came to hate him. It would be fair if she turned away from him for good.

Another man was tapping on the door. Chen opened it and walked away from the screen.

Iris raced through the Caracas port. She had wasted at least an hour at her room screen checking on the next suborbital flights to San Antonio before realizing that she might have a better chance of getting aboard one if she were here.

She was panting by the time she reached the wing where the suborb passengers were waiting. A young girl was lurking near one of the consoles. "Do you need help?" the child asked in Spanish. "Do you want a guide?"

Iris tightened her grip on her bag; the child was nearly as tall as she. "I don't need your help." The girl wandered off as Iris went to the console and checked the flights again. The next would leave for San Antonio in an hour; it was full. The one after that would get her to San Antonio too late; Chen's shuttle would be gone by the time the suborb arrived. She gazed at the flight information rolling up on the small console screen and listened as a voice repeated it, then abruptly slapped a button.

"I want to talk to a clerk," she said.