Child of Venus (43 page)

“So the best we can hope for,” Josef Feldshuh muttered, “is to go on the way we are, doing our work and bringing up our children and living out our lives. Is that what you're saying?”

Dianna shook her head. “Of course not. There is the alien signal. We can hope to be part of that. People who are courageous, cooperative, intelligent, and adaptable—those are the qualities they'll need.”

“Along with something else,” Mahala said. “They'll have to be people who are willing to leave this system knowing that they may be leaving everything they know for good, that even when they come back, everyone they remember will be long gone. The kind of people—the kind of civilization— that they return to, assuming they even want to come back, may be completely unrecognizable.”

Suleiman leaned forward. “They'd come back to share whatever they discover—that's one of the expedition's purposes.”

“But they could send back smaller vessels, even probes and cyberminds with records of what they've found,” Mahala said. “They wouldn't have to come back themselves. Maybe, after a while, they won't want to come back, and the longer they continue on their voyage, the fewer reasons they'll have for ever returning.”

“Maybe the Habbers aren't being honest about what they're really after,” Gino said. “Maybe they intend for it to be a one-way trip. We don't know what they want—can we really trust them? They all got away from Venus as fast as they could during the uprising, didn't they?”

“Gino could be right,” Chike said. “Whatever the people planning this voyage hope for now, their goals could change later on. The spacefarers might decide not to return after they're light-years away from this system.”

“In other words,” Gino added, “what's in this space voyage for us?”

“The opportunity to contact another civilization,” Suleiman said. “The chance to see our species embark on a new stage in its history, to gain more knowledge about the universe, knowledge we might have had long before now if Earth hadn't had to rebuild and reclaim all that was lost centuries ago. But maybe I should be more specific than that. Maybe having the chance, however small, to become a space-farer will be enough for some of you. Maybe that's what you must look forward to now, as those who came before you looked toward settling this world and making homes here. And those of you who are left behind can still look forward to the messages those spacefarers might send back about the alien intelligence we know is out there, to knowledge that will enlarge our view of the universe. And there's something else.”

Suleiman looked around, as if wanting to make certain that he had everyone's attention. “When the voyagers do return, and I believe that they'll hold to that purpose, Cytherians who are alive today can know that their children might actually return to see the Project's fulfillment—their own children and grandchildren, not distant descendants. People alive now can hope that people who remember them, instead of unknowable descendants who may be nothing at all like us, may come back here to stand on the surface of a terraformed Venus.” His thin lips curved into a smile. “That's something else to inspire us all, isn't it?”

By the time Mahala left Gino's house with Chike, the discussion of the inspirational value of the space expedition had degenerated into a venting of personal discontents. Gino was finding his work as a maintenance worker in the ceramics plant increasingly tedious and was thinking of volunteering for Bat duty for no better reason than to have a change in his routine and to earn more credit. Josef's brief time as a member of the Turing Council was already making him exasperated with the petty complaints people brought to his attention. Mahala had nodded and listened and remained largely silent, as had Chike.

She held Chike's hand as they walked. He had become her closest friend while living in Turing, as close to her as Frania had once been, as Solveig was now, perhaps even closer. He was living in a small dormitory in the east dome with a few other young men who were waiting until they found bond-mates before erecting their own homes.

Chike had never even hinted that he might ask for a pledge from her, although the people closest to both of them seemed to assume that they would become bondmates in time. She did not know if she loved him, but mulling over whether she truly did or not seemed pointless. He was kind; he challenged her intellectually; she cared deeply about his welfare and his happiness. He saw her as an intelligent, responsible, and decent person, so she tried to live up to his impression of her and that probably made her a better person than she might have been otherwise. Maybe that was what love was.

“What did you think?” Chike said as they climbed the hill to Dyami's house.

“I don't know,” she replied. “Sitting around and talking doesn't do any harm, but it doesn't do much good, either.”

“Everybody there wants a chance to be a spacefarer,” Chike said, “whatever complaints they may have otherwise.”

Mahala shook her head. “The interstellar expedition will need specialists, astronomers and physicists, people with Solveig's interests, people with a lot of training and education.”

“They'll need all kinds of people. You're not talking about a crew on a smaller vessel like a torchship—these spacefarers will have to become a community. We don't know how they'll be selected or what the criteria might be.”

“We don't even know who's doing the selecting,” she said. “The Habbers? I don't think the Mukhtars and the Project Council would settle for that. And they've been conspicuously silent about their plans ever since that first announcement.”

“They're probably just waiting until they have more to say.”

“And you think there's something to accomplish in the meantime by sitting around talking about it.”

“All I know is that I want to be one of those spacefarers, Mahala, and so do
you. Maybe exchanging ideas with people who have the same ambition will help us think of ways to
achieve it.”

They had come to Dyami's house. Chike sometimes stayed over with her, since Solveig did not mind sleeping in the common room when they wanted to be together. But Solveig would already be asleep, and Mahala had to be up in a few hours to see patients.

“I wonder how many of the people we know would actually go if given the chance,” she said.

“Some of them wouldn't. Most of them might even turn down the chance in the end. But they'd still know that others were going.”

The ship, or worldlet, would be a Habber vessel. Ever since the announcement, she had pondered the probable duration of the journey. The spacefarers would be a kind of community, as Chike had said. Some assumed that this meant that children, and perhaps more than one generation, would grow up inside the voyager and come to consider it their home.

But there were other possibilities that might not be openly acknowledged but which had been in her mind for some time. Habbers would be among the voyagers; they might even constitute most of the spacefarers. In any case, whatever their numbers, they could hardly expect to have a stable, functioning community aboard their vessel while living out their greatly extended lives in the midst of much shorter-lived companions. Those who became spacefarers would not only be gaining a chance to explore the universe; they were also likely to gain a life span that might be measured in centuries.

If a new era was truly coming for her world, for Earth, and for the Habbers, how much longer would Earthfolk and Cytherians remain content with their shorter lives?

“I don't think many would refuse to go,” Mahala said, “not with a chance at a lifetime of hundreds of years. That's also what's at stake here. Longer life spans for all the voyagers are almost a necessity for such a mission to succeed.”

“I know. It's easier to tell yourself that you don't mind having a reasonably good century and a quarter or so if you know that's all there's going to be. I don't know how many people would settle for that if they had a real chance for more.”

She thought of the patients whom she scanned and treated and advised on their habits and occasionally counseled. The work had its satisfactions. Relieving chronic pain, replacing prematurely worn out or damaged organs, doing gene therapy on an afflicted fetus or infant, ridding people of infections and taking precautions so that contagious infections would not spread—everything she did, however frustrating and exhausting it might be sometimes, made life better for those around her. But there were times when it seemed that she and Tasida were only practicing an imperfect, stunted art, a medicine that a Habber might view as barely superior to the chants and spells of a shaman.

“When you think about it,” she said, “you have to wonder why the Habbers decided that this interstellar mission should be a unified undertaking, why they didn't just decide to go by themselves.”

“It could be simply that they're as naive as they seem,” Chike said,
“and thought this was the best way to do it. Maybe it's what you claimed once, that they
fear becoming too different from the rest of the species and need other people among them now.
Mahala—” He paused. “You might as well know. Gino asked me if your Habber
relatives had told you anything, if you might know something we don't. I told him you
didn't know anything, that they hadn't contacted you in a while, so now he knows that
you don't have any influence with them. I thought you ought to know that.”

“It's all right. You can tell them that Benzi hasn't had a message from me in almost a year, since he never bothered to reply to the ones I sent.” She did not even know if Malik was still aboard the Habber ship orbiting Venus or had returned to his Hab. “Nothing I do can possibly improve Gino's chances at being chosen to be a spacefarer. Strange how things turn out. Once I got trouble from others for my Habber connections, and now they may actually improve my social status.”

He laughed, then kissed her.

The announcement came over a public channel, just as Mahala was preparing to leave for Oberg. The statement was delivered by one of Masud al-Tikriti's aides. The two domes of Sagan, one of the new settlements in the Akna Mountains, were ready to receive their first settlers. Prefabricated dormitories had been set up as temporary living quarters, and workers and specialists of all kinds were needed. Cytherians between the ages of twenty and fifty were preferred, but all settlers looking for more space and a role in establishing a new community were encouraged to apply. Fifty Habbers were also planning to join the settlers, and other Habbers would soon be joining them to assist in the landscaping of the dome environments and in subsequent tasks.

Dyami blanked the wall screen. “Nothing unusual about that,” he said, “except the number of Habbers. There won't be more than a thousand settlers in the domes during the first year. One Habber or more for each twenty settlers is a higher percentage than usual.”

Mahala stood up. She was twenty now; maybe it was time for her to move out of Dyami's house. He had welcomed Amina and then Tasida; he had made a home for her, for Frania, and had given Ragnar and then Solveig a place to stay. He had originally built his house as a refuge for himself and then had willingly opened up that refuge to others. He deserved some of the solitude he had once sought.

“Maybe I should apply for a place in Sagan,” Mahala said. “Haroun Delassi is almost through with his apprenticeship to Tasida, so he might be willing to take my place as her assistant.”

Dyami looked up at her from his cushion. “Tasida tells me that you could be a fine physician yourself. Maybe it's time you took the test and became a specialist.”

“I should try for that. I'd still rather work with an older physician for a while, though.”

“It might be interesting for you,” Dyami said, “being in the new settlement. With the number of Habbers that will be there, it sounds a bit like Turing used to be when I first came here. There were two hundred Cytherians, and about fifty Habbers, and we lived in the simplest of prefab shacks and dormitories, and whenever we weren't working, we sat around with the Habbers and discussed all manner of subjects. I suppose you could call those talks seminars, in a way. I always felt that I had learned more by going to Turing than to the Island school that had accepted me, and when I think back on those early days now, it seems the happiest time of my life.”

That had been before the followers of Ishtar, before her mother and those around her, had turned Turing into a prison. Her uncle had never spoken so openly about that time to her, about what had been taken away from him.

“Balin taught me some mathematics,” he continued, “and I used him as
one of my models when I began to sculpt Sometimes he came to the refinery when I was casting molds
after my shift, and we'd talk until—” His voice trailed off, and she heard in it
how much he missed Balin.

“Solveig might want to move to Sagan, too,” Mahala said.

“She wouldn't have any young students to teach. There won't be any children there until the settlement's further along.”

“If she wants to go there badly enough, she probably wouldn't mind doing any land of work they choose to give her.”

“You should think about it while you're visiting Risa and Sef,” Dyami said. “It might be very rewarding for you. I could almost wish I was going to Sagan myself.”

“You could apply,” Mahala said. “You're only forty-four,
and—”

“I'd only be trying to recapture something that's past, Mahala. I've made a life for myself here.”

She went to him and hugged him. At last he let her go and got to his feet. “Come on,” he said, “you're going to be late for your airship, and it's almost time for my shift at the refinery. I'll walk with you that far.”

Three airships were cradled in Turing's bay. Mahala walked into the bay, then set down her duffel just inside the open entrance. At her left, a tall brown-haired woman was engaged in a spirited discussion with Wendolyn Marliss, the paramedic on duty. Mahala nodded sympathetically at Wendolyn, remembering her own experiences during her times on duty in the bay. Bay medical duty was usually easy work, often requiring no more than a quick look at medscan results and verifying that a passenger was cleared for travel, but occasionally someone arrived who was incubating a virus or bacterium that, at least theoretically, might prove virulent and spread among people in other domes who had not been exposed to it before.