Venus of Dreams (37 page)

"There's time," he replied. She reached up, touching his dark beard; he took her hand. "It's only for a year or so," he finished.

"Unless you're given a chance to do even more study. Then it might be longer."

Edris shook his head. "They've just about guaranteed me a place on the Islands by then, and there will be many I can learn from there." Edris was going home, and then on to Tashkent for a year of additional study. Iris had not bothered to request more training; even if her work had been more than adequate, there was Chen to consider, and her son. She frowned at that thought.

Edris put down his bag, placing it between his legs so that one of the tough-looking children lurking nearby would not try to grab it. "Maybe it's better this way. You have your child to concern you now, and a bondmate to join. You made him a promise."

"I was too young to make that promise, and he might have forgotten his own." She was sure that wasn't true even as she spoke; Chen's infrequent messages, however brief, never failed to express how much he missed her.

"You were not too young. If so, then you were too young to commit yourself to the Project also."

She lowered her eyes. That was, of course, the real reason she would keep her pledge to Chen. If one pledge were broken, those on the Project might have doubts about whether she could keep her commitment to their vision. Chen had to be aware of that as well. Having a bondmate on the Islands had weighed in her favor; Chen's own status there might be a bit higher with a specialist from the Institute as his bondmate. Their bond was still too useful to them both to break.

"I have my own promise to keep now," Edris said, sighing. "I expect my village is already planning a feast for me. My father will summon all of his friends and my mother will cook my favorite foods. The mullah will come to our house and speak of what a marvel I am and forget all the dire warnings he gave me about what happens to a man who forsakes his village. He'll be watching to be sure I heed the call to prayer and to see what evil habits I've picked up. And then we'll all plan my wedding to Nahid."

Iris rested her head against his chest and put her arms around his waist. They had spoken of all of this when they met and then had never talked of it again.

"I hope you'll be happy," she murmured, meaning it. He was the only student, except for Esteban, who had learned of her formal bond to Chen; she had never even mentioned that to Chantal. She had told Edris about the bond the first night they had made love, not wanting to deceive him. Now, she wondered if knowing of that bond had kept Edris at her side for the past year. He had been free to love her, while knowing that she could not take him from the woman he had promised his parents he would marry.

"Nahid is kind and gentle. She'll become my wife and wait for me to finish my studies and then follow me to the Islands because it's what I want. They'll put her to work tending hydroponic vats or maintaining machinery because that's all she's trained to do—she never cared for learning. She'll bear whatever children we're allowed to have, and she may miss the village, but she won't complain. Sometimes, I wonder if, by keeping my promise, I'm not being crueler to her, but if I turned from her now, her life there would be harder. Some would wonder why I refused to take her as a wife. Her family would be shamed, and there would be bad blood between her father and mine."

"She may change," Iris said. "The Islands aren't like your village. When she sees there are other ways to live, she may be happy you took her away from that life."

"I hope so. I knew she would become my wife, but I never thought of what that would mean for her until I came here. I want a true woman with me, not a child I have to lead."

"She may not let you lead. She might change more than you expect. Perhaps she wants to leave the village and hides it, knowing that she can do that only through you. I made a bond with Chen when I believed he would take me away from Lincoln. I cared for him, but if he hadn't shared my dream, I would never have made the pledge. Nahid may want her own life on the Islands."

Edris cupped her face in his hands. "And then I could come to you. Is that what you think?" His smile was sad. "Let's keep our memories, and not ask for more. I know you too well, Iris. You're not a woman who can love only one man. You give everything of yourself to one, but only for a time. Maybe that's better than sharing only a part of yourself for years."

She thought of Chen. He would not reproach her for having had Edris as a lover; Chen himself would not have spent their years apart without companionship. But with Edris, she had a mental life that Chen, however interested he was in her studies and thoughts, could never really share. It was when she and Edris talked of the Project and their studies and sat together in front of a screen, not when they were making love, that she had felt most disloyal to Chen.

"I must go," Edris said. He seemed about to kiss her, then stopped to pick up his bag instead. "Farewell."

"On the Islands—" she began to say.

"You and Chen must greet us there."

She watched as he walked away through the crowd.

She boarded a floater heading for Yucatán; from there, she would get on another floater making a stop at San Antonio and then go on to Des Moines, and the Plains. She had explained to her mother in her last message that she had waited too long to make her plans, and that there was no space on any suborbital flight to a Plains city. She had refused to dwell on her real reasons for preferring this longer trip.

The floater's two hundred seats were nearly full; a few other students were among the floater's passengers. Iris made her way along the aisle and nodded at the students she knew by sight, then saw a familiar face near the back of the cabin. She hurried toward an empty seat and sat down, then turned toward the young woman next to her.

"Alexandra," Iris said.

"Iris! I thought it was you."

Iris stowed her bag under the seat. "God, I'm tired. Takes too long to get around that port."

"You're telling me."

"No rooms for us this time, I guess."

"That's fine with me. The Institute was paying last time, don't forget. Anyway, I might want to stop over in Yucatán." Alexandra's voice seemed brittle. "You remember Richard Matties, don't you?" Alexandra gestured at the young man next to her; Richard had grown a moustache. Iris recalled the down that had been on his upper lip before, when they were all traveling to Caracas for the first time.

Alexandra had changed as well. She no longer wore her braids; her pale hair had been clipped close to her skull, and she had darkened her lashes and eyelids with a black, sooty substance. Iris had rarely seen the two during her last year at the Institute; the Plains students, who had banded together at first, feeling lost and unprepared, had eventually gone their separate ways.

Alexandra, who had shared her hopes so long ago, had rarely spoken to Iris after their first months at the Institute, and Iris had not sought her company. She wondered if Alexandra had felt the same way she had, embarrassed at the presence of one who had known her before the Institute had changed her. The Institute had done its work, implanting devotion to the Project along with a cool, studious manner; there was little of the Plains left in any of them.

Alexandra measured Iris with a glance, then smiled more warmly. There was no cause for awkwardness now; hadn't they both succeeded? Iris smiled back as the blond young woman spoke of her plans; after her visit with her family, she would go on to Tokyo for a year of work in embryology, but had a good chance of getting to the Islands after that. Richard, a metallurgical engineer, would be going to one of Earth's space stations for a while. They sighed with envy when Iris said she would be going directly to the Islands.

"Have you missed it?" Richard asked. "Home, I mean."

"Not much," Iris answered. "Well, I missed my son," she added as an afterthought.

"I didn't miss it at all," Alexandra said fiercely. "I wish we hadn't all been advised to make these damned trips. Oh, my mother won't give me any trouble, or my sister, either, but what am I going to say to them? I'll go out of my mind listening to their gab about their stock and their accounts."

"But they wanted you to go to a school."

"Oh, they didn't exactly put obstacles in my path, but to say they wanted it is putting it too strongly." Alexandra drawled the words; she, too, had lost her Plains accent.

"Well, it's only for three months," Richard said.

"Three months of listening to people jabber at me about when I'm going to settle down and have a child and think of my line. Well, I don't want a child, and to hell with my line. My sister can worry about that." Alexandra's lip curled.

Iris shifted in her seat. Alexandra had certainly taken on some new attitudes. "Kind of strange," she said, "your being an embryologist and saying you don't want kids."

"It's not strange at all. Maybe my work satisfies those instincts. If I ever have a child, it'll be for me or the Project's future, not just for my line." Alexandra leaned back. "Well, are you two going to stay over with me in Yucatán? We could take a tour, maybe stop in San Antonio for a couple of days too. It might be the last chance we have to see those places. What do you say?"

"Fine with me," Richard answered.

Iris found herself nodding in agreement, relieved at being able to postpone her arrival in Lincoln. She would have to send Angharad another message, another excuse. Her mother was probably all too used to her excuses by now.

She did not want to go home. Her household would try to pretend that she hadn't changed, that everything was as it had been. At the same time, they would probably speak of their pride in her, not understanding that she had been a mediocre student at best. They would also be trying not to think of the day when she would have to leave for good.

Iris waited inside the floater until the few cartons designated for Lincoln had been unloaded. Then she took a deep breath, picked up her bag, and walked down the aisle toward the ramp.

She felt the hot and sticky summer air as she descended; already, she missed the clear mountain air around the Institute. Angharad was waiting below; the women with her were all wearing light tunics and cotton pants. Iris suddenly felt out of place in her shorts and shirt. Her eyes were sore; she stifled a yawn. She had not had much sleep during her days with Alexandra and Richard, days filled with tours and sightseeing while they avoided talking about the homecomings they all dreaded.

LaDonna smiled as she took Iris's bag. Angharad grabbed her daughter by the shoulders and kissed her quickly. "Welcome home," she said as she fingered her daughter's collar and gazed at her pin, which bore the image of a cloud. "Aren't you grand. What do they call you again? I've forgotten."

"A climatologist," Iris answered, "Weather patterns." Angharad beamed with pride; Iris felt like an imposter. "It isn't quite so grand," she blurted out. "I'll just be mapping the patterns, studying the mathematical simulations, looking for the best sites for domes, studying the currents. Others will do the planning. I'll have to take direction from them." She fell silent. Angharad would never understand her talk of limitations and failure; she would want to believe that her daughter was doing great deeds, that there was some purpose in losing her. To Angharad, anyone with a specialist's pin was an imposing figure.

"What's that green stuff around your eyes?" LaDonna asked. "And do you actually walk around in outfits like that?" she continued before Iris could answer the first question. "It looks like something you'd wear for a man in your room. Leave something to his imagination first, I always say."

Iris stepped back. Julia was pushing Benzi forward. "Say hello to your mother," the older woman said. "Go on, child."

Benzi stared up at Iris with Chen's brown eyes. She knelt. "You remember me, don't you?" The little boy nodded solemnly, but refused her outstretched hand. "See, I'm just like the images you saw. We'll have fun while I'm here. I've seen how clever you are—you can show me all the new things you've been learning with your band." She reached toward his dark brown hair.

Benzi drew back. "You're going to take me away," he said, looking as though he were about to cry.

"Not right away. I'll be here for your fifth birthday, probably even for the fall festival. I'll tell you all about where we're going, we'll see images of it together. You'll like it, really you will. You'll be with your father again, too, and I know he'll be happy to see you. You don't remember him, but when you were just a baby—"

Benzi retreated toward Julia and clutched at her leg. "Come, now," the woman said. "Behave yourself. We've shown you Chen's image. You remember him perfectly well." Benzi buried his face in Julia's trouser leg. "Now, stop it. What's your mother going to think?"

"It's all right," Iris said. She wanted to hold the boy, but was afraid he would shy away from her touch.

"He'll get over it," Julia said.

Iris passively accepted another hug from Angharad, then began to follow the others toward town. She forced herself to smile, feeling as if her face would crack.

"Took you long enough to get here," Sheryl said as she walked at Iris's side. "You'd think the school would show more consideration, make special plans so you could get here sooner and have more time with us."

"They did their best," Iris mumbled.

"Erica should be waking up from her nap. Looks a lot like her brother, she does. How that girl can cry! Constance spoils her a little—too much, if you ask me. Laiza's coming over for supper later. Bet you two have a lot to talk about. Maybe she'll bring her daughter along."

The town had not changed, yet it seemed smaller and shabbier than she remembered. She walked on, retracing the familiar path to her home.

Iris stretched out on the bed, watching Benzi as he played a game on her old screen. She was an intruder in the room, which was now his. He had refused her efforts at conversation, but was tolerating her presence. She watched him, trying to remember that he was her son.