Child of Venus (23 page)

Frania walked home with her, as happy and excited as though she had won admission herself. “By the time you're on Island Two,” the other girl said, “I should know about my pilot training. Have they told you anything yet about where you're going to live?”

“They gave me a list of places. Solveig might be able to help me out.” Mahala slowed her pace as they neared the house. The dome was beginning to darken; accepting congratulations had kept her at school longer than usual, and she was not anxious to rush home. Ragnar would be there, reminding her of what she would have to leave behind.

Amina hugged Mahala as she came through the door. “I'm so pleased for you,” she said. “We'll have to give you a proper send-off when the time comes and figure out what you should take with you.” Amina had gone to an Island school herself.

Amina stepped aside; Dyami embraced Mahala. “I already have a message from Risa,” he said. “She's ready to call everyone she knows on Island Two to ask about where you should live, and she also wants to talk to you.”

Mahala smiled. “I can imagine. She probably has at least two hours' worth of advice to give me.” She glanced past him at Tasida and Ragnar, who had just left the kitchen. Tasida was grinning; Ragnar's eyes, seeming more gray than blue, gazed at her steadily, betraying no unhappiness.

“Maybe you should call her now,” Dyami said, “before Balin arrives. Supper will give you an excuse to cut things short if Risa starts giving you too much advice.”

Mahala spoke to Risa on the large screen, while the others set out supper. As she had expected, her grandmother had counsel to offer. The school was offering some of the students single rooms, which might be more conducive to studying than living with a family. A couple of Administrators had offered to have Mahala reside in their quarters, which were certainly the most comfortable ones available, but Risa had politely turned them down; Mahala might otherwise be getting above herself. Sef interrupted to say how proud he was, and then the rest of the household offered congratulations. Grazie, according to Kolya and Noella, had done her best to spread the news to everyone in Oberg.

“I have to go,” Mahala said as Dyami went to the door to greet Balin. “We're just about to eat.”

“If there's any way you can visit us before you leave,” Risa said, “we'd love to have you. Of course, you'll probably be too busy packing what you'll need there. Do take some of your best clothing with you—Islanders tend to dress up a little more than we do.”

“I will.”

“I really am happy for you, dear. Not that apprenticing yourself or learning a practical skill would have been anything to sneer at, but I know this is what you want.”

Mahala said farewell and blanked the screen.

“I heard,” Balin said as she went to the table. “Congratulations.” The Habber's eyes seemed more solemn than usual, his manner even more subdued. “This is getting to be a fairly eventful time for all of us. I came over here with some news of my own.”

Dyami lifted his brows. “What is it?” Amina asked.

“Benzi's coming back here, to Venus. His message came to me rather suddenly, just after he informed the Administrators of the fact. He said nothing about what he'd be doing here, only that he expected to stay for a while.”

“It'll be good to see him again,” Dyami said. Mahala clasped her hands together; Benzi was keeping the promise he had made to her after all.

“There's more I have to tell you,” Balin went on. “Malik Haddad will be accompanying him to the Islands.”

Mahala nearly dropped her spoon. Why, after all this time, had the grandfather she had never met decided to come back? She looked around at the others, who seemed just as surprised as she was.

“Well.” Dyami set down his cup. “Is Malik Haddad coming here temporarily or permanently?”

“He chose to become one of us,” Balin replied, “so I must assume he'll eventually leave Venus again, as we all do.”

Dyami leaned forward; he and Balin gazed at each other in silence. Frania nudged Mahala. “Nothing happens for ages,” the brown-haired girl said, “and then everything happens all at once.”

Mahala poked at her food, too overcome to eat, uncertain about how she felt. Too much was changing, she thought, and too fast, before she had time to think about what it might mean. She felt that her future, whatever that might be, was hunting her, and there was nowhere to hide.

After supper, Ragnar sat down at his small table; Mahala had forgotten that he now had some time off from work. He beckoned to Frania, who quickly sat down in front of him. The boy began to mold clay with his hands, glancing from time to time at Frania's face. Mahala felt a pang as she seated herself near Ragnar, thinking of what lay ahead—her studies, a new place to live, expectations that she might fail to meet, and a grandfather who would be a stranger. It might have been easier to face it all knowing that Ragnar was waiting here for her.

The adults sat together, drinking tea as they murmured among themselves, and then Dyami led Balin to his room. Mahala stared after them as Dyami's door slid shut. Something was wrong; she could feel it. Her uncle never went to bed without saying good night, and he had not said anything about planning a celebration for her ever since Amina had suggested that idea at supper.

Frania yawned. “Can't you stay still?” Ragnar asked.

“I'm exhausted.” The other girl blushed slightly, looking apologetic.

“Then go to sleep.” He scraped at the clay with a chisel.

“Good night, Ragnar,” Frania said as she stood up. He grunted, intent on his clay. Mahala lingered for a few moments, but he seemed unaware of her. He had not said whether he would meet her outside before first light.

At last she went to her room. As she prepared for sleep, she told herself that she could not expect Ragnar to wait in the absence of any promise from her. She had not given him the pledge he wanted because she was afraid she could not keep it, so she could not hope that he would wait patiently for her in the meantime.

Mahala slept, waking from habit at the time when she usually met Ragnar. Frania was asleep, her long hair fanned around her head. Mahala pulled on trousers under her shift, then crept toward the door.

Ragnar was not in the common room. Perhaps he was waiting for her in the usual place. She crossed the darkened room, hurried outside, and was halfway down to the lake when she saw him walking along the shore, shoulders slumped, his hands inside his trouser pockets.

He turned as she came toward him. “I wasn't expecting you to meet me,” he said.

“I came anyway.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have bothered. It might be easier if we break it off now.”

“I thought maybe you'd try to make me change my mind.”

“Shit, Mahala—don't toy with me now.” He halted and stared out at the lake. “Balin's going back to his Hab.”

“What?”

“He and Dyami must have thought I was asleep,” he said. “I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't help it. They came out of Dyami's room, and your uncle said something about always knowing Balin would have to leave, but not really believing that he ever would. Then Balin was saying he'd stayed too long as it was, that he was in danger of losing his balance. Dyami asked him if he was ever coming back, and Balin said he didn't know. I didn't hear what they said after that, because they were at the door by then. I figured I'd better go on pretending I was sleeping until Dyami went back to his room.”

This news should not surprise her. Balin had already spent more years on Venus than nearly any other Habber. She had known that he would leave eventually, but had refused to dwell on that.

“Benzi's coming back,” she said. “Balin might return later on.”

“What's Dyami supposed to do in the meantime? By the time he sees Balin again, if he ever does, Balin will still be the way he is, but Dyami'll be older, maybe a lot older.” Ragnar let out his breath. “That's probably one of the reasons Balin's leaving.”

“Because it's hard for him to watch someone he loves age when he doesn't?”

“You sound more sentimental than I thought you were,” Ragnar said. “That wouldn't be the only reason, maybe not even the most important one. The Habbers can't get too attached to us or they might think of changing the way things are for us here, and they can't let themselves do too much of that, because there's no way of telling where it might lead.”

Mahala recalled what Balin had said a few nights ago. She had come in after weeding a few tiers of beans in their greenhouse to overhear Balin say, “Isn't it obvious why we're here?”

“Because of your curiosity, of course,” Dyami had replied. “A way to remain connected with the home world and your own humanity. A way to keep an eye on Earth and the Mukhtars. That's what we've always thought.”

“There are other reasons to involve ourselves with the Project,” Balin had continued. “You're working to make this planet habitable. We build our Habitats in space. But the one assumption we share is that we believe we will always be able to maintain those environments, that the knowledge and civilization that created them will never be lost. Because if it ever is, our Habs would become dead shells, and Venus would grow hot and poisonous and unlivable again.”

Balin's words had evoked a sudden vision of the Parasol falling into a decaying orbit, of lava and hot gas melting the lithosphere and forming new crust, of domed settlements disappearing during a catastrophic resurfacing, of moss-covered cliffsides sinking into vast subduction trenches. It came to Mahala then how shortsighted they were, to think only in spans of hundreds of thousands of years, or millions, when the life of a planet had to be measured in billions. But the Habbers; who lived such greatly extended lives, might be growing more accustomed to such extreme long-term thinking. Balin might be even older than she knew, with a mind becoming as layered as the strata of an ancient cliffside.

“Perhaps we won't maintain them ourselves,” Dyami had said. “Maybe that task will pass to the children of our artificial intelligences.”

Ragnar spoke again, interrupting Mahala's thoughts. “If I were your uncle, I would have asked Balin to find a way of taking me with him.”

“Dyami couldn't have gone with him, and you know it.”

“I would have asked Balin anyway, faced him with it, made him give me a yes or a no. Maybe Dyami did that, after they went outside.”

“I doubt it,” Mahala said. “He wouldn't leave Venus even if he could. He went through too much to give up on the Project now.”

“The Project.” Ragnar spat. “I'm heading back to the house. I should pick out something to give Balin as a farewell present.”

“I'll come with you.” She slipped her arm through his. “Ragnar, I do care about you. I wish I weren't going to Island Two now.”

“Don't tell me that, Mahala. You wanted to go, and you're going. Don't ruin things for yourself by being sorry about it now.”

They climbed toward the house in silence. As they approached, the door slid open. Dyami stood in the doorway; Mahala went to him and slipped her arms around him, pressing her head against his chest.

 

11

The airship bound for Island Two rose slowly from Turing's open bay through the still and stagnant atmosphere. There were few passengers aboard, only Mahala, two Linkers she did not know, and three Islanders who had been visiting relatives in Turing. They sat in the seats up front, just behind the two pilots; this was an older airship, with no partition separating the passengers from the crew.

The passengers had greeted one another politely but distantly, exchanged a few words, then settled down in their seats. In the back of the airship cabin, crates of cargo, most of them filled with bolts of merino wool to be traded on the Islands for imported goods from Earth, had been lashed to many of the seats; a few households in Turing had a profitable trade going with Islanders for the prized wool. Mahala checked the straps of her safety harness, then watched the large screen above the pilots as the airship climbed toward the Islands. By the time Turing's domes had shrunk to small bright spots in the misty blackness below, her fellow passengers were asleep.

The airship moved south as it rose toward the Islands that floated just north of Venus's equator in the upper atmosphere. Lulled by the silence outside the vessel, Mahala drifted into a dream: She was in Turing again, standing near Dyami's house on a slope overlooking the lake, knowing that she was leaving the settlement and would never return. She had to turn back, she suddenly realized; her place was there, not on an Island, not in a place far from her home.

It was the whine of the wind outside that woke her. The airship cabin shook, buffeted by the wind. The other passengers slept on, but Mahala tensed in her seat. The pilots, their bands around their heads, would be monitoring the sensors, alert to any sign of trouble. Outside, the wind just below the Islands would be shrieking, whipping around the planet at nearly three hundred kilometers an hour; riding that fierce wind earned the pilots their credit. Mahala forced herself not to think of the few airships that had crashed, crippled by failing pumps, leaking helium cells, or sensor malfunctions, ships that had failed to ride the wind, reminding herself that almost all of the vessels made it safely to port.

In the distant future, the wind would die, and the Islands would slowly fall toward Venus, finally coming to rest on the surface of a transformed world. But for now, the wind raged, and in its scream Mahala heard the cry of Venus as her child, the new world, struggled to be born.

Solveig was waiting for Mahala just outside Island Two's airship bay. She rushed forward and grabbed Mahala's hands.

“I just found out a couple of hours ago,” Solveig said. “I'm going to be your student adviser. I didn't know if they'd put you in my group, but at the last minute, there you were on my list.” She reached for one of Mahala's duffels. “You're the first one to get here. The other new students won't arrive until tomorrow.”