Child of Venus (60 page)

“Balin,” she said, and took his hand.

“It's harder to get drawn into the trap here,” he said. “I still have my Link, I can escape whenever I please, but that's more difficult when you have ties to others and various obligations. On a Hab—well, it's very easy to retreat. The net of the Hab will maintain you physically, and in your mind you can have whatever you desire. There are hundreds of thousands of Habbers who have forgotten that there is a reality outside of the one they and their Links have created for themselves.”

Mahala shuddered. “It sounds,” she said, “like a kind of living death.”

“If you saw the dreamers, you wouldn't feel that way. Don't imagine rows of ghoulish half-dead physically degenerate creatures. What you would see are people who would look as though they were meditating or as if they're asleep, all of them wearing the same serene expression on their faces.”

“Is that what Habbers mean when they speak of bringing themselves into balance?” Mahala asked.

Balin shook his head. “No, that's a way of shedding disturbing thoughts without losing your memories completely. It's a discipline of sorts, while the other is an escape. It is unfortunately true that some find the escape much easier and more pleasant than the discipline.”

“And there's nothing your people can do to stop this?” she asked.

“How should we do that? Have human beings ever been able to prevent others of our kind from all kinds of destructive indulgences? Trying to stop them can cause even more problems than allowing others to do as they please, even if it means ultimately losing those people.” They turned back toward the hill that led to Dyami's house. “That is another reason for keeping the spacefaring Habitat within this system for a time, so that those most susceptible to the trap can be weeded out before that Hab departs.”

As the airship dropped toward the lighted open bay of Sagan, Mahala continued to gaze at the screen. The next time she saw an image of the bay from an airship, she would be leaving this settlement for the last time. Saying farewell to Dyami had brought her close to changing her mind; it had been a struggle to keep from turning back, from deciding that her life belonged to this world and its future after all.

Dyami had known what she was thinking. “You think that you may be making a mistake,” he had told her as they walked together to Turing's airship bay. “You're thinking of staying on Venus. And if you do, you may feel, for a few years anyway, that you made the right decision. But I have a feeling that deep regrets would overtake you later on, when that starfaring Hab begins its journey and you realize that you won't be one of the voyagers.”

“This won't be the only voyage,” Mahala replied. “It will only be the first.”

“In the long run, that may be likely. In the short run, during my lifetime, for instance, I have my doubts. I've been reading some of Malik's writings since his death. History is an area I hadn't explored much until recently, and your grandfather made some interesting points. He argued that the Venus Project, and the great efforts that were required for such a monumental and long-term project, had shackled other possible developments. So many of Earth's resources flowed toward the terraforming of Venus that anything that wouldn't further that end was held back. For example, we have interplanetary travel, our torchships and freighters and other such vessels, because those were necessary to the Project. But interstellar travel and the disciplines connected to its realization, astronomy and astrophysics and the development of relativistic propulsion systems, were ignored, except by the Habbers, who didn't have to be restrained by our practical considerations. If it hadn't been for the aid of the Habbers, we wouldn't even have come this far with the Project.”

“You're saying,” she said, “that we'll be shackled to the Project for some time to come.”

“I'm saying that, even with Earth's new policy, even with full cooperation and communication between Earthpeople, Cytherians, and Habbers, there's only so much we can do. There are indications that the Habbers may, now that they're free to do so, show us more ways to speed up the process of terraforming. They may become as shackled to this Project as Earth has been. We may all come to feel that any future interstellar expeditions should be postponed for a while.”

That, Mahala thought, was apart from the possibility that Earth might be torn apart during this period of transition. The Project might be left entirely to the Habbers and the Cytherians. They might be forced to choose between finishing their work here or abandoning it for the stars. She pondered what Balin had told her about the Habbers who had retreated into their imagined sensory worlds; more Habbers might join them in their black hole of dreams, which might even in time pull in everyone.

“I'll miss you,” she had said to Dyami then. “I think I may miss you more than anyone else here.”

“I'll miss you, too,” he said. “If I were younger, if my life hadn't left me with some of the scars I still have, I would have made the choice that you've made.”

The airship had landed. She heard the sound of the cradle's clamps as the cabin was secured and waited as the roof closed and air began to cycle into the bay. She left her seat, shouldered her duffel, and followed the other passengers out of the dirigible, still thinking of Dyami as she descended the ramp. He and Risa had both been telling her that they had accepted her decision, that they were at peace with their farewells and willing to let her go.

She had passed the row of cradles and was nearing the open doorway when someone called out her name. She turned to see Ragnar coming toward her. She had seen little of him after returning here from Earth, but had heard from others about some of his recent pursuits. He was devoting himself to more study of physics, with Solveig, a couple of specialists in physics, and a Habber all helping to guide him in his studies. A group of Administrators from the Cytherian Institute, now undergoing a transformation that would turn that university into the Interstellar Institute, had offered him a commission to design a sculpture to commemorate the new era. In the meantime, he was occupying himself by designing houses; even within the limits of the housing materials and prefab components allotted to Sagan, the people of this settlement would, through Ragnar's efforts, be able to leave their dormitories and tents for dwellings with gardens and greenhouses that would complement the open, grassy spaces and the wooded regions of young trees, instead of living in homes that had been hastily thrown up wherever there was space for them on the blank landscape.

“Greetings, Ragnar,” Mahala said, happy at the sight of him. His blond hair had grown longer and was tied back from his face. The haunted, haggard expression that had become so characteristic of him was gone; he had stopped mourning Frania at last. “I didn't know you had bay duty.”

“I don't,” he said. “I was waiting for you.” She glanced
at him in surprise as he took her duffel from her. “Solveig told me that you might be coming
back here today, and Dyami confirmed that when I sent a message to him.”

“I didn't know Solveig was back here already.” Mahala had thought her friend would be spending more time saying her farewells to her parents in Hypatia.

“She's been here for ten days. She says she'll come by and see you after her shift.”

A path of flat white flagstones led to the main roadway that now encircled Sagan's east dome. On the other side of the road, the path branched into three paths. Ragnar took the middle path, leading her north toward her dormitory. They passed six houses that stood around a common greenhouse and garden; two of the houses had roofed courtyards outside their entrances, as Ragnar's former home in Turing did.

“We're going to be having some interesting discussions fairly soon,” he continued. “The Habbers are already running models showing ways in which they might create molecular machines that would be able to metabolize Venus's carbon dioxide rapidly. I haven't described that very well, but then I'm still filling in the gaps in my education.”

“I know a little about it,” Mahala said. Chike had been sending her records of some of the projections, clearly fascinated by the possibilities. Converting carbon dioxide to some useful form of carbon, either metabolizing the oxygen or converting it to a less volatile form—not only would the process of terraforming be speeded up, but it might also be possible to shut down the Bat operations altogether. There was the hope that people would be freed from those dangerous tasks, since Habbers and Project engineers were already designing AI-operated systems for those operations; the Project would no longer have to save on costs by putting those workers at risk.

Chike had mentioned possible new uses for the Bats, as laboratories and places for research; it might be advisable to study any newly created molecular forms of life or molecular machines—and the distinction between the two was becoming harder and harder to draw—on the two satellites, where any potentially problematic organisms could be isolated and studied. It had occurred to Mahala after getting his messages that Chike had not spoken of the interstellar expedition at all.

“I knew things were going to change,” Ragnar continued, “but I
didn't think they would start changing so quickly. I just wish—” His voice caught,
and she knew that he was remembering Frania.

“Everyone seems so involved in what's going to happen here,” Mahala said, “that our interstellar effort seems all but forgotten.”

“Not quite. I know of at least forty people here who have already put in for the journey, and they're only the first. You're still going, aren't you?”

“Yes. I won't say I didn't have my doubts, but I've made up my mind.”

They had come to the wooden footbridge. Ragnar halted and set her duffel down. “Solveig wanted me to tell you this. I told her that she should talk to you herself, but maybe it's better if I prepare you for what she's going to say. She's decided she's not going to go, that she wants to stay here.”

She heard his words, not feeling the truth of them yet, grateful for the numbness that kept what he was telling her at bay. In all her thoughts of what she would be losing, of the people she would be leaving behind, she had always seen Solveig at her side, traveling with her to the Habitat and what awaited them both beyond this system. She had never imagined that she might have to say a farewell to Solveig.

“No,” she heard herself say, as if from a distance. “No.”

“It's true, Mahala. She struggled with it, she couldn't make up her
mind, but when she did—”

“She can't mean it. This is what she always wanted. Maybe she just needs to think about it some more before she leaves here.”

Ragnar said, “You should be saying that to Solveig, not to me.”

Anger flared inside her. “You don't care at all, do you? You don't
care about anything—” A look of sympathy and concern crossed his face, and she wanted to
call back her words.

“I care,” he said, and picked up her duffel. “Chike's not going, either,” she said. “Did he tell you that?”

“He doesn't have to tell me. I know.” She followed Ragnar across the bridge.

Mahala had asked Ragnar to share a meal with her and Solveig, but he muttered an excuse about a darktime shift in External Operations and left them at one of the tables in the recently planted flower garden outside the dormitory. More of the dormitory residents were taking their meals here, according to Solveig, carrying their food from the common room's kitchen out to the garden. Time spent on cultivating the flowers might have been spent on more practical tasks, but the sight of the budding rosebushes, rows of violets, and the bright yellow blossoms of an unfamiliar flower eased the knots of tension and sorrow inside Mahala.

Solveig spoke of all the considerations that had led to her decision. There had been too many farewells; she had soon lost the stomach for them. The new era would mean opportunities for her to work and to study aboard an orbiting observatory. She had learned that she was more attached to this world than she had realized and wanted to be part of the Project's next phase.

Mahala forced herself to finish her small meal of parsley and grain salad and vegetables. Solveig poured her another glass of wine; her friend had spent some credit on a bottle of the wine, a local product made from a rapidly maturing strain of grapes. The wine was too sweet and no match for the Earth wines she had occasionally sampled and had learned to appreciate at Allison's tavern in Lincoln, but the pink liquid soothed her a little.

“Maybe the dream was more enticing than the reality,” Solveig said.
“When I thought it might never happen, I wanted it more than anything. When this kind of
journey seemed a possibility, I longed to be part of it. And then the decision was upon me,
and—” She looked down for a moment. “I knew then that I couldn't go.”

“All the farewells,” Mahala said.

“Not just that. I haven't forgotten that time you found me by the lake, after Ragnar and Frani's bondmate ceremony. It suddenly came to me that I might become like that again aboard that Hab, alone and adrift, that the darkness inside me might swallow me up completely.”

“You don't know that.”

“I know it,” Solveig said softly, “and as soon as I understood that, I knew that I couldn't go. You know what I'm like—it hasn't been easy for me to form attachments, to grow close to other people. I value those connections I made too much now to let go of them. And there's something else.” She lifted her head. “This won't be the first such expedition. There will be others, I'm sure of that. Maybe in time I can be part of one of them, and if not, I can be content knowing that someone else has realized that dream.”

“You might change your mind later,” Mahala said, feeling the hollowness of that hope.