Venus of Dreams (4 page)

She knew why she could not sleep. Another teaching image, a man named Muhammar, had appeared with Bari that afternoon. He had said that he would be guiding her in some of her studies, and Bari had looked pleased, saying that this meant that Iris had done well. Iris had run to Julia with the news, longing to share it, but even her grandmother had frowned before offering a few words of praise.

Iris pressed her lips together. She now knew enough about customs in other places to realize that such news would have been cause for celebration elsewhere. No one in her household cared. They all knew her secret now; Angharad, knowing it couldn't be kept, had been the first to reveal it, saying somewhat defensively that the studies might help her to manage the farm when she was grown.

Most of the women had been amused, though Iris supposed that mockery was better than outright hostility. Eric, the only child in the household who was her age, kept asking her silly questions she could not answer and then made fun of her when she did not reply. "Why don't you ask the image?" he would say as he sneered, or "I thought you knew everything by now." He had nearly baited her into hitting him that morning; only the thought of Angharad's warning had kept Iris from striking out.

She sat up and peered out at the courtyard. The women below had spread blankets on the grass; most of them wore sweaters over their long dresses or tunics. The house homeostat had been erratic lately, one of the reasons why the dust that the system usually cleared from the air was beginning to form a film on Iris's furniture. The women would have to retreat to the common room later that week unless the man visiting them managed to repair the homeostat soon. Iris reminded herself to dust her room in the morning.

Wenda poured herself more whiskey. She was the oldest of the women, nearly ninety; she had been a friend of Julia's grandmother. Her silver hair gleamed in the courtyard's soft light; her stocky body was still sturdy. Rejuvenation might give the old woman another three or four decades of life, and she had always been strong. She had not only survived her old friend but had also outlived Julia's mother, Gwen; the people of Lincoln, unaccustomed to seeing death carry off anyone before the age of ninety, still talked about Gwen's tragic end. Disease might be forestalled or evaded, but a foolish accident had taken Gwen's life.

Wenda passed the bottle to Sheryl; the slender, dark-haired woman poured her whiskey daintily, as if measuring how much she could swallow without getting drunk. Angharad whispered to LaDonna, who giggled and then murmured to Constance. The three young women had always been close, more like sisters than friends; LaDonna had left her old commune in Lincoln to live here.

Sheryl handed the whiskey to Lilia, who took only enough for a swallow. At fourteen, Lilia was old enough to sit up with the women, though she rarely had much to say; she had the large brown eyes and tentative manner of her mother Elisabeth, who was absent from the gathering. Iris had seen Durell, the man who was repairing their homeostat, enter Elisabeth's room after dinner.

Iris didn't like Durell, who had stood aside with a grin on his face while Eric taunted her about her lessons. Iris didn't usually care for the presence of men in the house. The women would begin to act silly, batting their eyes and whispering invitations to their beds, and the handsome Durell was worse than most men. He strutted around the house, using any excuse ro remove his shirt and reveal his muscular, dark brown chest. He joked with Eric, called the boy a "little man," and laughed and clapped whenever Eric wrestled with LaDonna's son Tyree, even though Tyree was younger and smaller.

Sheryl looked up at the north wing of the house. "Elisabeth's light just went on," she said.

Constance craned her neck. "Do you think they're getting up?" She jumped to her feet, shaking back her long, blond hair. "Maybe a man like that's ready for more than one woman." She rolled her slim hips. Angharad, giggling, tugged at her friend's trouser leg as Constance sat down again.

"I wish I didn't have this belly," LaDonna said. She rested her back against a slender tree trunk, rubbing a hand over her abdomen; she was pregnant, and her second child would be a girl. "He wouldn't be with Elisabeth now." LaDonna was telling the truth; with her feathery black hair, blue eyes, and rosy, clear skin, she was the most beautiful of them all.

"If I were twenty years younger," Wenda said, "and not repenting of my sins, he wouldn't be with any of you." She rolled her eyes. "Maybe I should try my luck anyway. He might like a woman who knows a few things."

"She just turned out the light," Constance said, heaving a sigh. "I know Elisabeth. She'll keep him there all night." The blond woman grinned. "She could at least have given Lilia a crack at him." Constance poked the girl while Lilia blushed and covered her mouth. "You can't fool me—I've seen you looking at him when you think no one's around."

Lilia shook her head.

"Come on. Now that Jacob's left town, you're looking, aren't you?"

Iris tried not to laugh. Lilia had talked of nothing except Jacob when the boy had been living next door; he had been her first love before he had taken up a man's life of traveling from town to town. Most men wandered, finding work as mechanics or repairmen in other Plains towns; some even left the Plains or Earth itself. Jacob had promised to come back in the spring; Lilia had told Iris that. Now she was ogling Durell, who wasn't nearly as kind and gentle as Jacob. Lilia was a fool.

Lilia hung her head; her pale bangs hid her eyes. "Durell's all right," she said in soft, slurred tones, "but I'm too young for him. I haven't even had my ceremony yet."

"A mere technicality," Wenda said, tripping a bit over the long word, "but it's probably best to respect custom." The old woman chortled. "Didn't see such modesty when Jacob was around, though."

"Maybe I should try my luck with Durell," Angharad said. "I've been missing a man lately."

"When don't you miss one?" Constance asked, to a chorus of laughter.

"I've been thinking," Angharad continued. "There's no reason not to have another child now, as long as our Counselor has no objection. I was putting it off until Iris got older, but maybe I shouldn't. I might like a pretty dark-skinned daughter."

Iris wanted to scream, unable to bear the thought of a sister who might be like Durell. How could her mother even think of it?

"Another daughter?" Wenda shook her head. "That might not be wise. You'd have to turn the farm over to one of them eventually, and the other might resent it."

"But a girl could stay here with us," LaDonna said. "I'm glad this one's going to be a girl. Tyree will have to leave us when he's older, but I'll still have his sister, and she's bound to be a lot like him, after all."

The other women were silent for a moment. LaDonna had reminded them all of an awkward fact; LaDonna, who could have chosen almost any man, had become pregnant by the same man who had fathered Tyree. No one could understand such unconventionality; it made no sense. Having two children by only one man was almost like having a bond with him.

"I think you ought to wait," Constance said. "You know what it was like with Iris and my Eric born so close together. We wouldn't want to lose the labor of two women at the same time. We were exhausted trying to keep up with everything."

"You're right," Angharad replied. "I've got time. I'm twenty-four now—I could even wait until Iris is grown, see how things are then. I don't know." An odd, unhappy look came over Angharad's round face; her brown eyes seemed to be staring into a secret place only she could see. Iris had caught that look on her mother's face when Angharad had not realized she was present. "I wonder." She shook her head and smiled again.

"You sound worried." Old Wenda waved an arm. "What are you thinking—that Iris will grow so addled by her learning that you'll need another daughter to tend to things here?"

Iris held her breath, wishing that Julia were awake and in the courtyard to say something in her defense.

"Of course not," Angharad answered. "Iris isn't addled. She's better behaved than a lot of children." She glanced at Constance; Eric sometimes beat the walls with his fists or shrieked when he was denied a game or treat, and since he wasted his own allotment, his mother often had to refuse his requests for part of hers. "Iris will do very well." The eavesdropping girl loved her mother at that moment, wishing Angharad would say such things to her more often when they were alone. "Besides, it's a stage. She'll get tired of it soon enough, especially when it starts getting hard. When she gets old enough for a man, she'll find other things are more interesting."

The women chuckled. Iris's eyes stung. Was that true? She couldn't believe that she would ever want someone like Durell, loud and boorish and full of himself. A man would never take her away from her studies. She would prefer not to have a man at all. She tensed, surprised at the thought. There were a few women in Lincoln who had only other women as lovers or took no lovers at all, and though they were tolerated, most of the townsfolk disapproved of them.

"You're probably right to let her go through it and get past it," Sheryl murmured. "Best to let children do some of these things instead of forbidding them." Sheryl, who had no children of her own, always seemed to know what other women should do with theirs. "Children are drawn to the forbidden. Anyway, it's probably just a game to her."

Iris pressed her nose against the raised windowpane, then drew back, afraid someone might look up and see her even though her light was out. Bari had praised her, yet Sheryl was calling her studies only a game.

"Maybe she'll be chosen," Lilia said in a high, quavering voice.

"Chosen!" Constance slapped her thigh. "Mother of God, Iris chosen! Wouldn't that give Lincoln something to talk about! We'd certainly seem grand then—why, we'd be invited to every party in town." Constance struggled to control herself. "Chosen! Why, if that happened, she might even become a Linker!" She shrieked with merriment.

"It's nothing to laugh about," Sheryl said, covering her own smile with one hand. "Linkers are strange folk—they're almost more like Habbers than other people."

"Shut your mouth," Angharad said, clearly shocked by Sheryl's words. "They may have Links, but they're nothing like Habbers." She looked around uneasily, seeming to think that a Linker might suddenly appear in the courtyard—as if such a person were likely to have any business there. "They go out of their way to show that they aren't." Iris wondered how her mother could possibly know that.

"When I was a child, a boy from Lincoln was chosen," Wenda said. "Once his mother got over the shock, she couldn't stop bragging. Of course, she knew the boy would end up leaving Lincoln anyway, and there was a rumor that she had a Linker cousin." The old woman paused. "That's really the point, you see. Some think anyone can be chosen, but it isn't true. You need strings somewhere." Wenda shrugged. "As it was, it brought only grief to the boy's mother."

"Who was she?" Angharad asked.

"Berinthia Sheilas."

Sheryl's mouth fell open. "Berinthia! You mean that old fool had a son who was chosen?"

Wenda nodded. "She was different when she was younger. Oh, she was quick then—clever and smart. But she loved her son too much, and loving a son like that is a waste. Being chosen changed him. He never returned, not even when she died. A woman of her house told me once that he had joined the Habbers finally." She sighed. "No one would speak of him after that."

Angharad shook her head. "Why should anyone here be chosen? We're needed here, on the Plains. If you think about it, we're just about the most important people in the world, aren't we? We feed most of it, and it's our tongue people of different lands use to speak to each other. Didn't our ancestors rule everything in the days before the Nomarchies?" She held out her glass for more whiskey. "We hardly need to prove our worth."

Iris had heard her mother make similar statements before, often in the same insistent tone. The past of her people was a source of pride, but was also an excuse to leave things as they were, for it was an achievement that could never be equaled.

"It might be better," Wenda said, "if you discouraged the girl a little. By encouraging her, Julia doesn't have the interests of this commune at heart." Wenda swallowed more whiskey, then began to sway a little; the gesture, Iris knew, usually preceded one of the old woman's pronouncements. Many saw Wenda as a soothsayer of sorts, and she had learned something of the outside world. Wenda could read omens in the most trivial of events, and was often right. She could predict, through long experience, a better than usual crop or a long drought; it stood to reason that she might be able to predict other things as well.

"It's that star she was born under," Wenda continued. "It's a sign. As people seek to change that world, so Iris tries to remake herself. But Venus has claimed many victims."

Iris wished that she dared to lean out of the window and shout an objection. Why wasn't anyone speaking? Didn't they see that this statement was different from what Wenda had said about that omen before?

Angharad nodded. "Oh, Iris will give it up. There'll be more to do when LaDonna's child is born, and it's time Iris learned more of our real work. She won't have time for those studies of hers then. I think I can let her have the rest of the winter."

No, Iris said to herself. I won't give it up, you can't make me give it up.

Wenda had said that she was like Venus, trying to remake herself; Julia had told her that she might become something different. The two, without knowing it, now agreed on the meaning of that omen; could that be evidence that they were right about it? Bari, Iris knew, would call such thinking silly and superstitious, but it gave Iris hope. She might even travel to Venus sometime. It wasn't impossible; workers were often needed, and she might learn something that would make her useful to the Project. Wasn't the Project, after all, a little like farming, sowing the seeds of life on barren ground?

Angharad spoke of past glories, but seemed to forget that her ancestors had dreamed of more than feeding the world. Iris had learned a little about their accomplishments; why wouldn't her mother want her to be more like them? She would come home eventually. She would have tales to tell the people of Lincoln about her ventures, and the town might take pride in having one of their own as a small part of such an enterprise. Her life would be a long one, perhaps as long as Wenda's. Why should she spend it all in one place?