Child of Venus (18 page)

Ragnar looked away. “You had to protest right next to Dyami's
monument,” Mahala burst out. “At least you could have picked somewhere else.”

“It was near the Habber residence,” Ragnar responded. “We
figured—”

“Enough.” Dyami leaned forward on his cushion, resting his arms on his knees. “Let me explain something to you. One of the Habbers who saw you today is a woman named Tesia. She was in love with Sigurd Kristens-Vitos for many years, the Administrator who once held the position Jamilah al-Hussaini holds now, Liaison to the Project Council. And Sigurd loved Tesia, too, despite the disapproval of many who thought he might be compromising his position by being so close to a Habber. You may know Sigurd's name—it's one of those on the monument. I came to know him here. He died here in Turing as a prisoner.”

Frania bit her lower lip. Ragnar lowered his eyes.

“Sigurd could have escaped, with Mahala's grandfather Malik and the others who were able to get away with the Habbers when they were expelled from the Islands. He could have gone with Tesia. He chose to remain behind instead, to stay and do what he could to save the Project, because he thought it was his duty, and that decision cost him his life. Imagine how Tesia must have felt, remembering that, when she saw your sign.”

“I didn't know,” Ragnar said.

“She went back to her Hab after she learned about Sigurd's death,” Dyami went on. “Balin didn't think she'd ever come back here. She did, but it's been hard for her. I don't know if she'll want to stay now.”

“I'm sorry,” Ragnar said. This time, he sounded sincere.

“They're doing what they can—all that they feel they can do, anyway. The ones who grow closest to us know they'll live long enough to eventually lose anyone they come to love here. They might decide that it's easier in the end, less painful, to have nothing to do with us. These protests will certainly encourage them to think that way.”

“And we just have to get along the way we are,” Ragnar muttered.

“And hope things might change.” Dyami sighed. “I sympathize with you, Ragnar, and with all of those young people, but what you did won't accomplish anything.”

Ragnar glanced at Mahala. She tried to smile, to show him that she was not angry with him now. In a way, what she wanted was not all that different from what the protesters were demanding—a chance to do more, an opportunity to escape the domes, at least for a while. Even Dyami had admitted that he sympathized with the protesters.

Dyami stood up. “Now I'll have to call your parents. They'll find out about this eventually, so they might as well hear it from me. I'll have to apologize to them for not supervising you more closely.”

“It wasn't your fault.” Ragnar got to his feet. “I'll talk to them, too, and tell them so.”

“Then come along.”

At their next meeting, the Turing Council decided to enter a reprimand on each child's record, along with assigning the children the task of tending the gardens around the Habber residence for the next month. Since Ragnar would be going to Hypatia soon, his punishment was to weed the gardens before he left. None of the children, or their parents, asked for a hearing to challenge the punishment, and no one thought Ragnar had gotten off more easily than the others. He might not have to lose as much free time working in the gardens, but he would be moving to a new settlement with a blade mark on his record, something not likely to win him new friends there quickly.

Frania offered to help Ragnar with the weeding; he refused. He no longer sought her out and spent the last two days of his visit working at a carving he refused to show anyone. He gave it to Dyami on the morning he and Solveig were to leave; it turned out to be a carving of Dyami's face.

“Why, thank you,” Dyami murmured.

“I didn't do such a good job on it,” Ragnar said.

“But you did.”

“Your cheekbones are a little broader.”

Solveig hugged Mahala, then Frania. “I'm going to miss you,” the blond girl said.

“We're coming with you to the bay,” Mahala said.

“Don't. It'll just make it harder.”

Amina and Dyami were to walk with them as far as the refinery. Dyami shouldered the children's duffels; Mahala and Frania followed them as far as the creek. Solveig turned and waved one last time after crossing the footbridge. Mahala stared after the four until they rounded a bend and were hidden by trees.

“He said he'd make a carving of me,” Frania said, “but I guess he forgot.”

“It's all right, Frani. He probably thought he should do something for Dyami first. I'll bet he'll do one of you next time.”

“If he comes here again.”

“He will.” He would, Mahala thought, if only to learn more from Dyami, who had promised to show him how to make and cast molds. It irritated her to know that was Ragnar's main reason for wanting to come here at all. She glanced at Frania and caught the look of longing in the girl's large hazel eyes.

Both Sef and Risa came to Oberg's bay to greet Mahala. She kept silent when Risa told her of how much everyone had missed her and of how the entire household had made a special supper for her. It seemed that Benzi had decided to visit as well; he had arrived only a few hours earlier.

Hoa was pregnant, and Kyril just as noisy as ever, except when his mother, Barika, was holding him. Noella and Kolya mentioned that Irina, Kolya's daughter, would soon be visiting them, traveling there from her home in ibn-Qurrah. Paul and Grazie were planning to go to Kepler to see their son Patrick. Risa was muttering about retiring from the Oberg Council, but the others were soon arguing with her to stay on and run for reelection.

Mahala ate her fish and vegetables and munched on Sef's baked bread while the others chattered of Oberg's affairs. Oberg did not feel like her home anymore. She wondered if Frania was feeling the same way about ibn-Qurrah and already missed the other girl's quiet, gentle presence.

Benzi, who had been nearly as silent as she, was the first to excuse himself. “Think I'll take a walk,” he said. “Mahala, why don't you come with me?”

She smiled at him, happier than she had expected to be for a chance to get away from the others. “I'd like that.”

“Go ahead,” Risa said. “It's your first night home—I won't ask for any help with chores until tomorrow.”

Mahala followed Benzi outside. They walked along the pathway that stretched past the neighboring houses. She could see the blurred images of people inside greenhouses; a few boys raced past her toward the lake. The houses seemed too close together here, the darkness alive with muffled conversations and distant shouts, without the silences and spaces of Turing.

“Have you been happy in Turing?” Benzi asked.

“Yes, I have.” The words sprang to her lips quickly. “I think Frani's happier there, too.”

“I heard about the latest demonstration, the one your young friends were involved in.”

“They got black marks for that,” Mahala said.

“I know. I think your people feel we should be more upset about those protests than we are.” He slowed his pace. “Mahala, I haven't told this to Risa yet. I wanted to tell you first. I'm returning to my Habitat soon, but I will come back to Venus—I promise.”

“You're leaving?”

“Temporarily.”

“But why?”

“That's hard to explain.” He was silent for a while. “Part of it is that staying among you for too long is disorienting to us—I need to go back for a while. But I also think that, at the moment, I can do more for you Cytherians there.”

“How?”

“That's something I can't tell you yet, but—let's just say that I miss some of the times I spend communing with our cyberminds.”

“You sound almost as if the minds are your friends.”

“They are. They are much more than friends.” He stopped and turned back toward Risa's house. “If you ever need to get a message to me, go to Balin. I'll respond as soon as I can.”

Something in his voice disturbed her. He sounded almost as if he were worried, or afraid. He, along with Dyami, had taken a hand in shaping her life. Benzi had tried to guide her family in the same way his people were trying to guide the Project, for some mysterious purpose of his own.

“Maybe you'll forget us,” she said. “You don't think
about us all that much even when you're here. How often do you see us? Why can't
you—”

“Mahala.” He knelt and took her by the arms. “Please trust me.”

“That's what you all want us to do—trust you. We're supposed to think that all you want is to help, that you know what's best for us. How do I even know you'll come back?”

“Because I'm promising you that I will.”

“Benzi.” Her voice caught. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”

“Don't think of what you're supposed to do—think of what you
want.”

“I can't have what I want here.”

“What is it that you want?” Benzi asked.

“To leave. Not for good, not for the rest of my life, just long enough so that I can see other things and then come back and want to stay, long enough so that—I don't know how to say it.”

“You may be able to have what you want.”

“You're just saying that, Benzi.”

“I'm not. We're more alike than you think. You might be surprised at how many others have hopes much like your own. Follow your path, Mahala, but don't look so far ahead that you miss seeing too much of what lies along the road. Do you understand?”

“You're telling me not to get impatient.”

“That's part of it. That was one of the more difficult things I had to learn when I was first living among Habbers.”

They walked back to the house. “I'll miss you,” Mahala said as they approached the greenhouse. “That must sound funny—it's not as if I see you all that much anyway.” She paused. “Are you going to tell Risa now?”

“Tomorrow. It'll be easier to tell her and Sef alone.”

“Farewell, Benzi.” Mahala swallowed. “I wanted to say it now.”

“Farewell, Mahala—only until I come back.”

She reached for his hand, clasped it tightly, then heard him sigh as they walked toward the house.

 

Islands

 

9

The airship carrying Mahala from Oberg to Turing was one of the newer dirigibles, with walls and a sliding door to separate the pilots from the passenger and cargo section. The design struck her as both useless and as an affectation. People traveling on airships knew better than to distract the pilots while they were monitoring their controls; all such a barrier did was increase the psychological distance between the pilots and the passengers. We may all be fellow Cytherians in the settlements and on the Islands, the wall seemed to say, but on this airship, your lives are in our hands and we are much too important to be bothered with you.

That she now could not view the Venusian landscape on the large screen above the pilots' console was a minor inconvenience. She had opened a channel to the airship's sensors and was picking up their data and images on her pocket screen.

Mahala had noticed a few small patches of lichens and moss on her way back to Turing. Six months ago, during the trip to Oberg, the brown and olive-green patches had been even smaller against the rocky landscape, not visible at all except with a magnified image. Ishtar Terra was still barren, but thin layers of a genetically engineered moss, nourished by the heat and able to survive in darkness, now clung precariously to the sides of hills and ridges and the cliffs below Turing.

The Cytherian environment outside the domes had continued to change during the fifteen years of Mahala's life. If a way could be found to lock more of Venus's excess oxygen into the surface rocks, instead of having to ferry it up to the Bats, more seeding of the outside might be possible. For now, the shallow oceans fed by the constant acidic drizzle remained sterile, and the only life except for the moss that could survive was the algae that fed on Venus's clouds of sulfur dioxide. The Project ought to get more aggressive, she thought, whatever it cost and however many life-forms failed; eventually more would evolve on their own and thrive.

In the Freyja Mountains, the domes for two more future settlements, al-Farghani and Yang, were being constructed. With a steadily dropping surface temperature and atmospheric pressure, these domes did not have to be quite as strong as the older ones, but would be built to the same specifications anyway; the engineers were taking no chances. This world was still hostile, seismically active, and with more newly awakened volcanoes; better to have as much protection for the settlers as possible. Their home, as Dyami often said, required constant intervention, constant vigilance, underlined by the assumption that there would always be a human civilization capable of maintaining the Cytherian biosphere. In the meantime, all they had were their embryonic biospheres, the environments of their domes.

Mahala released her harness, then followed the other airship passengers to the exit. A woman who had come aboard in al-Khwarizmi had pestered her with questions for a while, with inquiries about Risa's latest meetings with the Island Administrators, as if Mahala would know anything about that, and whether or not there was any truth to the rumor that fewer Cytherians would be allowed to study at Earth's Cytherian Institute in the future.

The other passengers had soon been eavesdropping on the conversation, although Mahala had no answers to offer the woman. Meetings with Administrators, she had explained, were not a subject her grandmother would discuss with her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, but Risa Liangharad could be counted on to defend the interests of the settlers. Mahala hoped that the number of students traveling to Earth remained the same, or even increased, since she still harbored hopes of studying at the Institute herself.