Child of Venus (38 page)

“That's my offer,” Tasida Getran said. “I think you'll find the work interesting, and I'll be getting a good assistant just when I need more help.”

Mahala sat with Tasida near the creek that ran down to the lake. “I'm flattered that you think that much of me,” Mahala replied. The physician had recently finished setting up an office and examination room near the tunnel that led into the south dome. Patients could get to the small building easily from almost everywhere in Turing, and the extra space would be useful if anyone needed to remain there for observation.

“It isn't flattery,” Tasida said. “I looked at your record. You still have a few things to learn, but you'll do just fine as a paramedic, and you'll be learning something that'll be useful no matter what you do later on. Don't think I'll make it easy for you, either.” A smile crossed Tasida's freckled face. “But you'll have some time to pursue more lessons, if that's what you want.”

“It is what I want.” Mahala wondered if, in spite of Tasida's promise, she would have much time for additional study. There would be emergencies that required immediate attention as well as people who relied on physicians and paramedics to fill the function of Counselors. “There's no reason I have to give up my studies just because I'm no longer a student.”

“I'll give you medical works to look at, but your background in biology is better than that of most paramedics, and you'll learn a lot through experience.” Tasida paused. “You're taking this turn of events very well.”

Mahala shrugged. She would not admit it aloud, but one reason for trying to make the best of things now was her hope that the Project Council might change their minds again and decide to readmit some of the students who had been expelled. They had unexpectedly sent her to Anwara, had sent her back to Island Two as precipitously, and had asked her to leave school without warning; the Council and Administrators might act just as suddenly to readmit her to a school in the future. It was a faint hope, but a plausible one.

“I don't think Solveig is taking her disappointment nearly as well,” Tasida added.

“What makes you say that?” Mahala asked.

“I've dealt with a lot of patients. Often I can sense when something might be bothering them that they don't want to discuss. I think she's holding it all in.”

“Solveig's the kind of person who keeps things to herself,” Mahala said. “I used to think that was because she was just a more even-tempered person. Almost every student I know resorted to moods or implants at some point, to stay awake to finish a project or to stay calm during examinations or discussions with advisers, but Solveig never did.”

“Did you?” Tasida asked, looking amused.

“A few times. It was usually the university-level students who were specializing in medicine who supplied the rest of us with the stuff.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” Tasida said. “It isn't really cheating—moods and implants and memory enhancers aren't going to make up for not knowing the material. They'll help somebody perform at top capacity, but they won't increase ability. And you'd have to be really excessive in your use of such things before they'd do you too much harm.” Tasida paused. “Anyway, I always thought that any medical students dealing in those aids were getting some useful lessons in how to prescribe treatments responsibly for their patients, especially since the stupid and the careless and the greedy dealers were likely to get caught sooner or later. And I don't see what's so wrong about trying to enhance and improve your basic physiological equipment. The Habbers certainly don't worry about such changes.”

Mahala wrapped her arms around her legs, a bit surprised at Tasida's frankness. “You're being awfully open with me.”

“I had better be open with you. You'll have to back me up, and I'll have to rely on you, possibly in the middle of a life-threatening emergency. I have to be completely honest with you, as you'll have to be with me.”

“Then I might as well admit,” Mahala said, “that I used to think that we might eventually have to change ourselves in a lot of ways, genetically or somatically, if we're ever to be able to live outside the domes, even after Venus is completely terraformed.”

“That's not exactly an original thought. I've entertained such notions myself, as have many other people. But they aren't the kinds of thoughts I share with most of my patients. People may be the products of generations of genetic scans and analysis and in vitro somatic changes and gene surgery, and a small number of them were removed from an ectogenetic chamber at birth instead of getting pushed out of a mother's womb, but many of them are very quick to tell me that they don't want any treatment that's unnatural.”

“I can imagine,” Mahala said.

“Now I find myself wondering if Solveig Einarsdottir avoided implants and mood alterers not because she didn't need them, but because she was afraid of them, afraid that they might open up too much inside her that she'd rather not confront.”

Mahala shook her head. “Not long ago, she told me that she wouldn't know what to do if she thought there was no chance of being a specialist in astronomy and astrophysics. Oh, she can still keep up with her studies, but the things she really loves are fields the Project doesn't seem to find particularly useful right now. So she's lost the only work she ever really wanted to do.”

“Yes, I suppose she has,” Tasida said, “and her brother Ragnar is
finding it increasingly hard to do what he wants to do, too.” She stood up. “Get
yourself settled, attend Frani's bondmate ceremony, even take a few days to visit your
grandparents in Oberg. As you know, my equipment isn't quite as good as what you'd find
on Anwara or the Islands, but I'll expect you at my office in exactly fourteen days at five
hours, just before first light.”

“I'll be there,” Mahala said as she got to her feet.

Two days after Mahala had returned to Turing, Solveig's parents arrived, came to Dyami's house, and announced that they would be staying with their son in the house he was building until the ceremony. Dyami had offered to have the couple make their pledge in his home; Frania and Ragnar had decided on a small ceremony, but the simple plan had grown more complicated. Einar and Thorunn had decided to come to Turing to see their son make his pledge instead of only sending Ragnar their congratulations, a few of Frania's fellow pilots had invited themselves, and now Dyami was preparing for at least fifty people to show up in his common room.

Mahala and Solveig spent the four days after their arrival in Turing preparing small pastries and dumplings and arranging plates of vegetables and fruits for the expected guests. Two airship pilots had come to the house carting a gift from Risa's household: several bottles of Oberg's most famous libation, Dinel's Cytherian Whiskey. By the evening before the ceremony, Mahala had been too busy even to have a real conversation with Frania, but the pensive look she often saw on her friend's face made her wonder if Frania was having doubts about her pledge. Ragnar had not come to Dyami's house during the days before the ceremony, apparently because he was either working his shifts or finishing another room of his house, which he had decided to build in Turing's west dome instead of in the more recently completed east dome. He had perfectly good excuses for staying away, but perhaps he was also having his doubts about his commitment.

Solveig, having stored the last tray of pastries in the kitchen, had gone to bed early in the room she was sharing with Mahala and Frania. Dyami and Amina were arranging the cushions and tables they had borrowed from other households against the walls, while Tasida set out a few vases of the flowers one of her patients raised to trade for credit or services. Mahala was about to prepare for sleep when she saw Frania leave the bathroom, cross the common room, and go outside.

Mahala hesitated for a moment, then followed her. As the door closed behind her, Mahala watched Frania walk down the slope toward the lake.

She's only sixteen, Mahala thought, and Ragnar's barely eighteen; they don't know what they're doing. Older people could say all they wanted to about the virtues of finding a bondmate early, when one's feelings were most intense, before experience and disappointment in love made it harder to form strong attachments, but such promises also meant closing off other possibilities in life, or so it seemed to her. Early attachments, the challenges and rewards of rearing children, working at tasks that might have been handled largely by robots so that people could feel that they had a real part in the Project—all of it seemed a way of keeping people here from dwelling too much on whether their lives on Venus had any real purpose apart from propagating their genes and their species. A population had to be maintained, against that far off day when its descendants would leave the domes and live under an open sky.

Mahala descended the hill, keeping behind Frania until her friend halted and looked up at her.

“Mahala,” Frania called out.

“Frani.” She hesitated; maybe Frania wanted to be alone.

“Come on, Mahala—I could use some company right now.”

Mahala came down the slope. The two walked toward the lake, then seated themselves under the trees overlooking the shore.

“This whole ceremony is getting away from me,” Frania said. “First Ragnar and I were going to make our promises at his house with Dyami and Amina as witnesses. Then Dyami offered to let us have a ceremony at his house, and then Amina thought you and Solveig might want to come, and then Ragnar predicted that his parents would decide they just couldn't miss this, and the whole thing kept growing and growing after that.”

“You'll have something to look back on,” Mahala said.

“I hope I'm not making a mistake,” Frania said more softly. “First Ragnar insisted on a pledge, and then he wanted to put it off, and then he changed his mind and asked me if we could have the ceremony as soon as possible. And after that, I kept thinking that maybe we should call it off and wait a while longer.”

“Have you told him?”

Frania shook her head. “I couldn't do that now.”

“Look,” Mahala said, “maybe it's normal to feel this way. You're making a pledge to share your life with someone else.”

“Ten years of my life, anyway.”

“You'll probably renew your bond after that, the way most people do.
Letting a pledge lapse isn't that easy when you have children and other members of a household
involved, along with dividing up belongings and deciding where one of the partners is going to live,
so—”

“I thought of telling Ragnar we should wait,” Frania said, “and maybe I should have right away. But if I do it now, with all of these guests coming and his parents staying with him and Solveig being here—it would humiliate him. He'd never forgive me.”

“But it might be worse if you go into this thinking it's a mistake. Going through a hearing to break your bond would be a lot more trouble than calling everything off now.” Mahala put a hand on her friend's arm. “What is it, Frani? Are you thinking you might not love him enough for this?”

“Oh, no. I can't imagine not caring for him. It's Ragnar I'm worrying about, not my own feelings. He's so unhappy—I can see it even when he tries to hide it. He does his work with the diggers and crawlers, but he resents every bit of time it takes away from his drawing and designing and sculpting. And he can't earn any credit with his artwork that he could use later, so he could take longer breaks from his shifts.”

Mahala frowned. “I would have thought he could make a lot of credit with his pastime.”

“There are some people who asked him to make things for them,” Frania said. “Two months ago, Li Po—one of the workers on his team—asked Ragnar if he would make a small metal sculpture of his two children. He told Ragnar he would give him holo images to look at and that he could come over to his home anytime if he needed to have his boy and girl model for the sculpture. Ragnar did some sketches and cast the molds over at the refinery, but he never finished it.”

“Why not?” Mahala asked.

“He lost interest. Of course Li Po had given him some credit to buy materials and for his time, and the children were complaining about all the time they'd had to sit still modeling. Ragnar paid him back, but Li Po won't ask him for anything again. And there are others who had similar things happen when they asked Ragnar to make things for them.”

“I see,” Mahala said. She suddenly felt a rush of pity for Ragnar, along with tinges of her old feelings for him, but pushed those feelings aside. “Maybe what he should do is make whatever objects he likes and then make sure that others happen to see them sitting around in his house. That way he could sell or trade finished items to people later on.”

“That might work,” Frania said, a note of hope in her voice. “I
could tell him—” She sighed. “I wonder if he would even listen to me. Sometimes I
think he's making this pledge just to get it over with. He knows that I'll be gone for
stretches of time—pilots always are. He can have a bondmate and have all of that settled
without having to actually live with me all the time. He can go to his shifts and spend the rest of
his time on his art. I should be grateful for that, knowing that he probably won't miss me
that much while I'm away.”

“Can you live like that?” Mahala asked.

“Yes.” Frania's voice was low, but determined. “I'll have to. After a while, I'll get used to it, and so will he.” She stood up. “We'd better get to sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

Frania and Ragnar held hands while reciting their pledge to be bondmates. The custom was for the couple to memorize the clauses of their pledges and then recite them in front of witnesses. As was also the custom, someone who could read always stood by with the text of the promises on a pocket screen, in order to prompt the couple should they forget any of the agreed-upon clauses. Frania had asked Amina to take on that role, but she and Ragnar rattled off their pledges without a single lapse.