Venus of Dreams (46 page)

Specialists and Habbers, he knew, could forget their differences while working together, and might even have drawn closer if they weren't always warned against it. Many specialists seemed to ask for little except the chance to do their work, and prolonged their physical youth as long as possible in order to keep their minds flexible and clear. Some of them almost seemed like children, living in the present, giving little thought to the time when their minds, in spite of rejuvenation, would age, and those with more supple minds would replace them.

Iris was gazing past him. "People who build a world," she went on, "who are strong enough to do that, are not going to stand aside and let that world be taken from them by anyone."

"Dangerous talk, Mother," he said. "Better not let the people on your team hear you. I mean, aren't we all working for Earth?" His lip curled. Whenever he thought of Earth, he saw a dead hand grasping his insides, refusing to let go.

Iris reached over and patted his arm; he did not draw away. "I'd like to know," she said gently, "that people of my line will settle Venus. I promised your grandmother that I'd try to bring that about."

Benzi kept his face still. The line again, that list of ancestors that only reminded him of everything he wanted to escape. Iris hadn't been thinking of her line when she left Earth; why did she speak of it so often now?

"Then have another child," he said. "You could choose a daughter this time. I'm sure your Counselor would at the least give you permission to store your genetic material or an embryo until there's space for the child. Chen would be willing."

"There's nothing between us now."

"Then it would have been kinder to break the bond when he left you. Leaving things as they are is cruel—it gives him hope."

"We made a promise, and the pledge will end before too long."

"So you keep to the form of that pledge, and violate its spirit. You let Chen think you might come to love him again."

"You foolish boy. I love him now. I haven't forgotten what he once meant to me. But he asked for too much." She bowed her head. "He agreed to the contract, he accepted the provisions. We never promised that there would be no others during the twenty years of our pledge, only that we would make no bond with them. I won't break the bond." She was silent for a moment. "You say he loves me, but don't forget that he chose to leave."

"You didn't try to stop him. He would have stayed."

"I gave him what I could. He loves the girl he made that pledge to, and I'm not that girl any more. I gave you what I could, but it seems it wasn't enough for you, either."

He could say nothing to her. You didn't want to have me, he thought. I was just a means to an end. Had you been chosen for a school sooner, you might never have had me at all. Iris had never told him that, but Benzi had come to know enough about her old life and her reasons for becoming Chen's bondmate to deduce it. I was your way out of Lincoln, he thought, until you were given another way and didn't need me. Now I'm only another link in your line, a bridge between you and the ones who'll settle Venus.

In all this time, he had never formed a true bond with his parents, one that was felt rather than only a matter of record. He had tried not to let that pain him. Occasionally, he could even feel relieved that such a feeling did not exist, for its lack would make what he had to do a little easier. People were together for a while, and then the time came for them to go their different ways; Iris had said so herself, when Chen had left her.

"Well, better that things are this way," Iris said quietly. "Marc is thinking of having me move to Island Eight for a while."

Benzi rested his chin on his hand. "Is this a move up or down the ladder, Mother?"

"Down, I'm afraid. He wants me to be our team's liaison there with the geologists. What it means is that I'll be out of his way, and won't threaten his position."

So this was her reward for her years of work. Marc's claim on Iris's time had always taken precedence over Benzi's demands, and, as a child, he had often thought of Marc as his true rival. Perhaps Iris was not so important to her team as she had claimed. Benzi had often wondered if her work was merely an excuse to avoid the son she had never really wanted.

"Anyway," Iris said, "I'll be away, and you won't have to see me as often."

He had said almost the same words to her when she had told him to give up his plans to be a pilot. He had the sudden sensation that it was their similarities, rather than their differences, that separated him from Iris. He was already regretting that he had decided to accompany his mother and Te-yu.

He stood up; "We'd better go. Te-yu will be ready soon."

Twenty-Two

The cradle, clutching the small airship, moved forward into a lock. As the wide door opened, the floater was released from the cradle and drifted out into the endless Venusian night.

The two pilots had donned their bands; their eyes were focused on the panels and small screens in front of them. The airship, except for a few boxes that had been secured in the aisles, was empty. Iris sat in the front of the cabin with the pilots and watched the large screen overhead as the airship floated north.

The ship's outside lights shone out over a dark formlessness upon which Iris could project her dreams. In times to come, when the Parasol was dismantled and the sun's light again shone on Venus, a world shaped by men and women would be revealed. The lifeless, sterile ocean far below, an acidic ocean that might have boiled away in the still-intense heat but for the high atmospheric pressure, would teem with life.

Buoys carrying probes floated on the shallow ocean; other probes rested on the flatlands of Aphrodite and the mountains of Ishtar Terra, on the slopes of Theia and Rhea, and along the ocean's shore. Other probes rode on the Venusian winds or orbited the planet. From the data they gathered, Iris and the other climatologists could, with the aid of the cyberminds, create their models and from them make their forecasts and predictions.

From an airship, Iris could not possibly duplicate the work of the probes, but, in the past, her trips had been useful. She had recommended new sites for probes, alerted to them by her odd instinct, and thus her team's picture of this world had grown a little more complete. At the Institute, other students had joked that a climatologist would study a computer model before planning a picnic, but would never go outside to look at the sky or study the behavior of birds and animals preparing for a storm. Iris had taken the joke to heart.

She rested her head against the back of her seat. Why couldn't her son share her vision? So often, his dark eyes had a haunted, unhappy look; in his small room at the pilots' quarters, his viewscreen image showed no Earth landscape, but a starry sky. Why didn't he see that nothing else he might do could possibly equal the accomplishment of settling this world? The first Cytherians would set the pattern for those who came later; their dreams would dominate, and they would be legends to those who followed. It would no longer matter what failures or disappointments they had suffered in their earlier lives.

The airship dropped slowly as the dirigible's empty cells took in some of the tenuous atmosphere. Iris would need only a small sample of atmosphere from the haze above the cloud level; when one cell was filled, Te-yu would take the ship up to Island Eight. If the wind below caught them, they would be in danger, but Te-yu was skilled; she would not let them drop too far.

"Let me hear some sound," Iris said.

Te-yu pressed a button. Iris could barely hear the distant whine of the wind; there was something new in the sound, a high pitch she had not heard before.

Iris shook her head. Marc had called her superstitious, and maybe he was right. Her observations, unlike those of a probe or a drone, could be shaped by imaginings and vague intuitions. She would have enough real work to do soon. Within the next few months, the pyramids on Venus's equator would send out their pulse of power. She and the other climatologists had already calculated how the increased speed of rotation that would result might affect the air patterns and the weather below, but even if their models turned out to be accurate, more study would be needed to determine good sites for the domed settlements.

Her fingers fluttered against her armrests. She had almost forgotten that she was likely to be on Island Eight by then, reduced to being nothing more than a link between her colleagues and the geologists. She would simply have to find a way to make her new post an opportunity; close contact with the geologists might help her in her own work. She would have to find some way to continue being useful. Otherwise, when Benzi's apprenticeship was over, and later, when her bond with Chen lapsed, the Project might have no reason to keep her here at all.

Marc, she saw, had her in a bind. If she continued to be valuable to him, he would go on claiming credit for her work. If she slacked off, he might not bring her back to Island Two, since he would have an excuse to recommend her dismissal then.

She could have borne that. She might even be able to stand a return to Earth, where there had to be many Institute graduates waiting for her place here, if Benzi had shared her goal.

Another thought was troubling her as well. The engines inside the pyramids below might fail; the pulse might not speed up Venus's rotation as planned. That fear was rarely discussed, but she knew that it troubled other minds. Earth might cut back on the Project then, might even disband the Institute and scatter its students to other schools. Any thought of settling soon might have to be postponed or reconsidered if the giant installations failed at their task.

Earth would have a convenient scapegoat if such a failure occurred—the Habbers, whose people had built the structures and engines. The Habbers might be forced to leave the Islands; some might even believe that they had deliberately sabotaged that stage of the Project. If the Habbers left, the Project would be set back for decades, or even longer; they needed the Habbers' help, whether Earth wanted to admit it or not. Even she, who disliked the attraction the Habbers seemed to hold for her son, knew that.

Iris listened to Venus. The ship's sensors kept the sound low, but the whine had grown louder. Yet it seemed that the wind was beginning to die, as it would in the centuries to come.

"This is about as low as I care to go," Te-yu said.

"Fine."

Benzi was hunched over a section of panels; he straightened suddenly. "One pump's still on," he said in a flat voice. He did not have to speak; Te-yu, Iris saw, was already aware of that. The young female pilot pressed a button under one small screen alive with flickering symbols.

"It's still pumping atmosphere into one cell," Benzi said. "I think the pump's jammed."

"Better run all the pumps," Te-yu replied. "We've got to stop dropping."

Two screens filled with red symbols; the cry of the airship's alarm drowned out the sound of the wind. Te-yu cursed. "Another pump's jammed. Better not run the others. We're still dropping toward the cloud layer." The pilot's high, musical voice was oddly calm; she leaned over her communicator and opened the switch. "Island Two, Island Two, do you hear? This is Hong Te-yu. My ship's dropping, two of our pumps are jammed. Two people are aboard with me, my copilot, Benzi Liangharad, and one passenger, Iris Angharads. Advise."

"We hear you," a man's voice said over the comm.

"Advise."

"Have you opened the other pumps to push atmosphere out?"

"You must think I'm an idiot," Te-yu muttered. "We tried that already. Now we've got two jammed pumps." She glanced at another screen. "A circuit just failed—the ship isn't overriding. Who the fuck was supposed to keep this ship in repair?"

"What are you doing down so low?"

Te-yu whispered a few words in Chinese. "Listen," she continued in a louder voice, "once those cells are full of atmosphere, maybe we can keep from dropping any farther. In the meantime, get a fix on us and try to get us out of here."

"We'll do our best."

"Just do it." Te-yu slapped the comm switch. "This, my friends, is what happens when Earth gets stingy with new components. This balloon's going to take us for a ride." She hit another button, shutting off the alarm.

Iris stared up at the screen above them; the darkness seemed thicker and more inpenetrable. She lowered her eyes to a small screen, reading the numbers. They were now little more than sixty kilometers above the planet's surface; the winds were only about ten kilometers below them. She did not want to think about what those winds could do to this ship.

"This is my fault," she said helplessly.

"Come on, Iris," Te-yu said. "I don't need you nagging at yourself. Seems this crate was due for some problems anyway. Better suit up, just in case."

Iris got up and put on the suit she had carried aboard; the suit wouldn't provide much protection, but at least getting into it gave her something to do. By the time she had sat down again, Benzi had put on his own suit and was controlling the airship as Te-yu donned her own. His helmet hid his face; Iris was relieved that she couldn't see him. She should have insisted that he stay behind. She tried to steady herself; Te-yu might need her son's help.

"Listen," Te-yu said. "We're running out of alternatives here. There's no choice now—I've got to turn on all the pumps and hope they start pumping out instead of in." Her voice sounded hollow over the suit comm.

The ship lurched abruptly; Iris clutched at the harness holding her in her seat. The airship's alarm sounded again. The wind caught them, sweeping the vessel west through the swirling clouds; the ship's outside lights danced dizzyingly.

"Pumping out now," she heard Benzi say, but the pumps had begun working too late. The alarm seemed louder; the ship lurched once more.

Iris could no longer hear the winds; perhaps the sensors had now been damaged. The ship veered as it rode the wind, then shuddered; Iris strained at her harness. Her ears throbbed as she sucked in air.

"Helium leak," her son said. "Shit."