Child of Venus (37 page)

Masud hurried past her along the path. Had he looked up, he would have seen her standing there behind the slender tree trunk. But the frowning Administrator seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. His head was down and he was moving swiftly, almost as though he wanted to make certain that no one would see him near the Habber residence.

Why had he come here, she wondered, instead of summoning any Habbers he wished to see to the ziggurat where the Administrators were housed? That was the usual protocol. What could have brought him here, in plain clothes instead of his formal white robe and headdress, without any of the aides who would normally be at his side during any official meeting?

Not that any of this had anything to do with her, she reminded herself. She would have to leave this place. Aime'e's words came back to her; the sick, stunned feeling filled her again, along with helplessness and despair. That would pass, she told herself. By the time she left this Island, she would have to accept what her Counselor and the Project Council had decreed for her, and then thinking about what lay ahead of her would not seem so painful. She had no marks against her; she had family members who would welcome her and do what they could to get her settled. She could find work that would be both interesting and useful, and if she continued her studies on her own, a school might accept her again in the future. She had to look at things that way. As time went on, she might even find contentment and be grateful that the Project Council had dealt with her as it had.

She had come here to see Benzi, but what could she expect from him? Sympathetic, soothing words? A promise to do what he could to help her stay on Island Two? She should not have come here; Benzi could do nothing for her.

She glanced down the path, made sure that Administrator Masud was out of sight, then hurried to the entrance and pressed her hand against it. The door remained dosed. She put her palm against it once more; the entrance opened suddenly.

The large room inside was empty, the only light the softly glowing ceiling. A slender woman with long reddish hair and wearing a long blue robe stood in the center of the room. “Mahala,” the woman said.

“Tesia,” Mahala replied, recognizing the Habber then, even though she had not seen Tesia for some time. “I came here to see Benzi.”

“He cannot see you now.”

“He isn't here?”

“He is here, but he cannot see you at the moment.”

Mahala could not read the expression on the woman's face. “Then I'll come back later.”

“He will not be able to see you then, either.”

Mahala took a breath. “I've just come from a meeting with my Counselor. She told me that I'll have to leave the school here. She advised me to go to a surface settlement, since I have family there. I know Benzi can't do anything about any of that, but I thought he might at least see me.”

Tesia said, “He can't see you now. When he's free, he'll try
to send you a message—”

“Tesia!” Mahala cried out and took a step forward; Tesia backed away from
her. “First we're brought back from Anwara sooner than expected, and now I'm told
to leave here, and—” She struggled to control herself. “I could use a kind word
right now.”

Tesia's angular face softened. “Of course you could, child. I am sorry for your disappointment, but I think you have the capacity not to let this affect you adversely.”

That was the kind of comment that she could expect from a Habber. Benzi probably would have told her the same thing. “I saw Administrator Masud al-Tikriti leaving here before,” she said quickly. “He didn't notice me.”

Something almost imperceptible changed in Tesia's expression; Mahala could almost believe that she had surprised the Habber with her statement.

“Yes,” Tesia said. “He has consulted with us more often
lately— with Benzi and with others.” She fell silent, and Mahala sensed that Tesia would
say nothing more about the Administrator.

“Well.” Mahala looked down. “Please tell Benzi I came by to see him.”

“He knows that now.”

“I see,” Mahala said bitterly. “He'll eavesdrop on our talk through your Links, but he won't bother to come out and talk to me himself.”

“You are mistaken,” Tesia said. “He has this to say to you. He says to you, ‘I understand how disappointed and hurt you must feel now.'” Tesia's voice had changed, dropping in tone, taking on what Mahala recognized as Benzi's inflections. “‘Do what you have to do, Mahala, and make a life for yourself. More may lie ahead of you than you realize. That is all I can say to you at this time.'”

“Platitudes,” Mahala muttered.

“‘It's the only advice I can give you,'” the Habber woman said, still sounding a bit like Benzi. “ ‘Do you know where you're going to go?'”

“Probably back to Turing, at least at first,” Mahala replied. “I was
going to go there anyway, to see Frani Milus and Ragnar Einarsson make their pledge.” She
swallowed hard, thinking that she might at least have had a bondmate to return to now if she had
accepted Ragnar's proposal. No, she thought, that was over long ago, and realized with some
surprise that it was not quite as painful for her to think about Ragnar and Frania living together.

“Benzi probably won't be able to see you before you leave,” Tesia said in her own voice, “but as I said, he'll try to send you a message. You should go now, Mahala. There are probably other things you have to do.”

She was due at a seminar in molecular biology in a few minutes. For a moment, she thought of neglecting all her appointments, the seminars and lectures and the computer models of possible new strains of bacteria, but that would accomplish nothing except to give her more time to brood over her situation. Better, she thought, to finish what work she could while she was here.

“Tell Benzi—” Mahala paused. “Tell him that I'll try to make the best of things.”

“He is happy to hear that. Farewell, Mahala.” She moved toward the entrance and left the residence. As the door slid shut behind her, it came to her that she had not even thought of Chike and what his Counselor might have told him, and felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he had been advised to stay on; she hoped that was so, knowing how unhappy he would be to have to leave school. She realized then how much she would miss him if they were parted.

Solveig stared at the pocket screen in her palm. “There's the list,” she said to Mahala and Chike, who were sitting across the table from her. “All the names of the students who are leaving school are now public, and every single student who came to Anwara with us is listed.”

“Kind of a coincidence, isn't it,” Chike muttered.

“There are some other names, too,” Solveig said, “but it does seem strange that all of the students who were on Anwara have to leave.” She frowned. “I want to check something else now.”

Solveig said a name under her breath, then another. Mahala finished her glass of fruit juice. The table at which they sat was near the wide stone path that led to the Administrators' ziggurat. She wondered if she should feel relieved by the notion that the Project Council might have hidden reasons for expelling them all from school or if she should start worrying about why such powerful people might pay that much attention to her.

“So you're definitely going to Turing,” Chike said at last.

“Solveig and I were going to go there anyway during the break, and my uncle's housemates Amina and Tasida hinted that they might have found some work for me.”

“I was going to stay here,” Chike said. “Either my parents or my brother can find room for me for a while. But I might also be able to get a lab technician apprenticeship in a settle-ment, maybe in a refining and recycling plant.”

“Maybe there's an opening in Turing,” Mahala said, “and if there isn't one in the refinery, they might be able to use someone in the ceramics plant. I'll ask around when I get there.”

“Thanks, Mahala. It might help if somebody there puts in a word for me.”

“You'd be better off here,” she said. His brother, as an aide to an Administrator, might be able to find a better position for Chike than that of a lab technician.

“Probably, but maybe it's time for me to be on my own.” He reached out and touched her hand. He would not say it, but it was likely that he also wanted to have a chance to be closer to her. That thought made her smile.

“Well, here's more strangeness,” Solveig said, still gazing at her screen. “Three students leaving the Island schools are being expelled—excuse me, advised to leave—because they haven't been applying themselves to their studies. Three more are getting black marks for being disruptive, and one for having cheated on an independent study project. But everybody who was on Anwara with us has the same notation on their record all of us got.” She leaned back. “ “This student has earned a commendation for scholarship, discipline, and adaptability,'” she recited, “‘and has been advised to leave school only because it is felt that her particular gifts might be better utilized elsewhere.'” She looked up. “It's exactly the same for all of us.”

“Small consolation,” Chike said.

Mahala studied her friend's face. Solveig had not betrayed any emotion when she had first told Mahala that she would have to leave the school. In the week since then, she had applied herself to her studies as methodically as always and had mentioned in passing that she was considering a position as a teacher's aide. She was burying her disappointment deeply.

“It'd be easier,” Chike said, “if I just knew why we had to leave, but even my brother can't find anything out.”

Benzi had sent only one message, telling Mahala that he wished her well and that he and other Habbers would remain on Island Two for some time to come. She had a feeling that this was all that she would hear from him before she left.

Solveig stood up. “I have just enough time to get to a study group meeting,” she said.

Mahala and Chike got to their feet. “And I've got a seminar,” Mahala said. She could forget for a while that she would be leaving Island Two in less than a month.

 

17

Aboard the airship to Turing, Mahala found herself watching the images of Venus on the large screen in the front of the cabin with new interest. The airship had descended below the fierce winds that swept around the planet. A light but steady yellowish and orange sulfuric rain fell into the darkness below. To the northwest, barely visible on the rust-colored plateau surrounded by the rocky black walls of the Freyja Mountains, the four tiny glowing blisters of Turing's domes were barely visible.

These screen images were more detailed than those she had seen on other screens; perhaps this ship had more sensors gathering information for its computer to use in creating the images. The temperature of the lower atmosphere had dropped to a comparatively mild seventy degrees Centigrade, while precipitation had brought the atmospheric pressure down to less than twenty times that of Earth, far below what it had been in her great-grandmother's time. If the airship in which Mahala was traveling should run into trouble and get trapped on the surface, the passengers could survive for the ten to twenty hours that it might take for a rescue vehicle, one of the scooper ships that carried compressed oxygen up to the Bats, to reach them, open its maw to receive the airship cabin, and ferry them to safety.

The shallow and sterile ocean had flooded more of the Cytherian surface around the landmasses of Ishtar Terra, Aphrodite Terra, and the volcanoes and high places that would eventually become islands. Venus had become much less hellish and deadly since the beginnings of the Project, something for people to keep in mind whenever they were discouraged by the scope of what remained to be done. The domes of the settlements, built to withstand much more lethal conditions, would continue to protect those who lived inside them.

Mahala thought of one of the last discussions she had attended with her fellow students and three of their professors. The subject of the Project's next stage had come up: Hydrogen had been imported to Venus long ago, to aid in the process of precipitation, and oxygen continued to be removed, but there was increasing evidence that importation of large quantities of calcium and magnesium might be needed to help in reducing the atmosphere of carbon dioxide to carbon and oxides. One of the professors, a geochemist, had written out the formulas for the reactions and had implied that some on the Project Council were already seriously considering such a plan. Mining Mercury and bringing the necessary quantities of magnesium and calcium to Venus would require a large-scale, robotic mining operation, with mass drivers to carry the mined minerals Venusward.

The idea had generated a lot of discussion among the students, who were soon busy on preliminary computer models of ways to accomplish the job, methods that might be feasible but were also certain to be costly in labor, resources, and technology. What had been left unsaid was that the Project could not support such an effort now, that Earth's material and intellectual resources would be strained to the limit by such an enterprise, and that the aid of the Habbers would almost certainly be required for the operation.

The Project, in other words, was stalled for the time being—and maybe for a long time to come, whether anybody would openly admit it or not. Maybe that had something to do with the Counselors advising more students to leave school. Perhaps the Project did not need so many specialists, given that educating more young people was not likely to advance the Project at the moment and might only sow more discontent.

Solveig slept on in the seat next to her. Mahala concentrated on the screen images. Better, she thought, to think of how far the Project had come instead of dwelling on how many centuries, even millennia, were likely to pass before Venus was truly habitable. Better to think of what terraforming had accomplished and not to muse on the fact that no one alive now would ever see the green thriving world that their efforts would bring into being. Her expulsion from the Island Two school had not changed the ultimate direction of her life all that much. She had always known that she would have to live working toward an end that she would never behold.