The House of Styx

by Derek Künsken

  “Pa, we don’t know what this is,” Pascal said. “It looks like one big circuit. If we cut it up, it won’t work anymore. This discovery might be one of the most important ones in human history!”

  “It doesn’t work now, Pascal,” his father said, putting his hand on Pascal’s shoulder. “Look, family comes first. Always. In forty years, do we really want Alexis to be riding around in trawlers like I did, or do we give him something better? I hope to hell that in ten years, you’re doing something better than me. But we’re never going to get any better, la colonie isn’t going to get any better, without some sort of boost. This might be it. We’ll never get confused or lost if we stick to what’s important, Pascal. Family first.”

  Pascal huffed a sigh in his helmet, briefly fogging the area in front of his mouth. George-Étienne understood la colonie and its politics and where the D’Aquillons fit. “Family first,” Pascal repeated.

  “Take it apart. Photograph everything you can. Be a real scientist. And then we’ll trade the pieces. If this is what we think it is, I’ve got buyers for this now. Tomorrow. After, we’ll go back for more of these. And then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  SIXTEEN

  FRANÇOIS-XAVIER LABOURIÈRE’S OFFICE wasn’t far from the hall where l’Assemblée met. It looked out onto the greenhouse layer outside the Baie-Comeau, so it seemed to be bursting with light and green. Marthe had been here once or twice with other delegates during negotiations. This time she was alone. So was Labourière. She wasn’t in the habit of seeing the présidente’sChief-of-Staff, so it seemed the présidente was annoyed enough to have her right hand deal with Marthe. She slid the door shut and sat in one of the plastic chairs in front of his small desk.

  “Water?” he asked, unscrewing a dark jar over two cups.

  She shrugged. He poured. Labourière was about fifty, lean, careful with his words and gestures, except for smoothing back his receding hair when he was nervous. He wasn’t smoothing now. He smiled and toasted silently. She took her cup and drank. The sulfur was so faint that the water tasted almost pure.

  “We probably should have given you more notice of the decision around the Causapscal-des-Vents,” he said. “The math is a bit inescapable and we only got the final projections the day before.”

  “I would like to see those projections,” Marthe said. “I’m surprised Gaschel didn’t present them.”

  “I’ll send them your way.” He leaned back and drank again. “I hope some of the shock is wearing off.”

  “Pa doesn’t know. We’re not in comms range yet. So there’s still shock to come.”

  “Let us know how we can help you through this process.”

  “I’m not going through a process,” she said. “I’m protecting my home from somebody’s bad decision.”

  “I’ve heard some of the noise you’ve been making. Some of it is understandable. Some of it is needlessly making people nervous without changing anything. In the end the Causapscal-des-Vents served over twenty-nine years, nine more than it was rated for, and now has to be used to keep newer habitats running.”

  “The life expectancies of habitats are guesses by engineers in Montréal. How long did they give the Matapédia before it sank? Pointe-à-la-Croix is three years older than the Causapscal and it’s not being disassembled.”

  “Pointe-à-la-Croix has six people on it and is running a hydroponics surplus,” Labourière said calmly.

  “Our productivity is down because you’ve been starving us for parts. And although there are two of us, my brother Pascal just turned sixteen and he’s likely to come up from forty-eighth. And Émile is getting serious with some girl and is probably getting married,” she lied.

  “If your little brother wants to come up, we’ll find him a good bunk. And if your older brother gets married, we’ll find him a couples’ spot. When those things happen. Right now we’ll make sure you and Émile get good places to stay.”

  Labourière was calm. Marthe was good at showing calm when her blood was up. She wanted to hit something—him, the présidente. But family came first, and that almost always meant sacrifices. They sacrificed for Jean-Eudes. She could sacrifice by pretending to be calm. She sipped her water.

  “I’ve seen the bunk wait lists,” Marthe said. “Me and Émile would get separated and one of us would get stuck on Pointe Penouille.”

  “You won’t end up on Penouille.”

  “String-pulling?”

  Labourière reached for the water jar, thought better of it, then smoothed back his straight, graying hair.

  “You’re valuable, Marthe. I could probably get you and Émile spots on the Forillon.”

  Her, valuable? She almost laughed in his face.

  Forillon was supposed to be a habitat that had aged well, a second-generation dirigible that housed about twenty people. It wasn’t part of the main flotilla; it floated seven thousand kilometers westward along the top of the clouds. Cushy spot.

  “It’s not a sure thing that the Causapscal-des-Vents is to be scrapped. I think I’ll wait and see about bunking.”

  “I can put you and your brother into the Forillon now,” he said. “But the wait list is the wait list. I can’t keep the spots open while you try to delay things.”

  “As soon as we come into comms range of the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs, I’ll tell Pa. I’ll probably have to go down for a few days to see how he wants to handle this.”

  “I’d rather deal with you than your father.”

  She did laugh this time. Her father would be harder to deal with, but she could get them a better deal than he could. The thought didn’t make her feel particularly loyal.

  “I bet. He’ll let me know what he thinks and I’ll come back and tell you. In the meantime, I’m waiting for the committee schedule to open up. If you want things to go faster, get me scheduled at a committee meeting.”

  They argued a bit, but in the end, he couldn’t deny her a chance to have this discussed in committee. She finished her water and left.

  SEVENTEEN

  THEY DIDN’T HAVE any lead to shield them from radiation, but the probe’s shell was heavy. Pascal did a slow examination of the probe, mapping out the radiation. The count outside the probe was almost uniformly negligible. The ceramic must have been heavily doped with lead. Only through the pitted, glassy lens at the front did radiation shine out. Pascal began cutting through the probe with a circular saw. Dust flew off the gantry and rained darkly in the wind behind him.

  He took pictures as he went, trying to map as much as he could of the lines of conducting metal, but his heart sank when he’d cut out a plate thirty centimeters on a side. Looking edge-on, the hull of the probe was filled to bursting with complex patterns of fine metal wiring. There was no way to map this without cutting it into thousands of sections and photographing each one. He hadn’t the tools for that. Whatever it was, whether the toy of an alien intelligence or the epitome of human genius, he was destroying it for scrap. Very, very expensive scrap. He and his father would need to save one or two of these probes for proper scientific study later.

  His father joined him by the time he’d sawed out seven such sections.

  “They’re filled with metals!” George-Étienne said.

  “Gonna be hard to get the metal to market,” Pascal said, sawing the section over the source of radiation, about two thirds of the way to the stern of the probe.

  “We already grab volcanic dust from the clouds,” George-Étienne said. “People expect us to be selling dust. If we grind these up, people will think we’ve had a lucky few months.”

  Pascal checked the depth of his cut, brushed at it, then resumed.

  “There’s nothing like this anywhere on Venus, Pa,” Pascal said. “If they look at the dust they’ll see it hasn’t been acid-worn.”

  George-Étienne cracked two pieces together experimentally. They didn’t break.

  “So we grind them up and separate the metal from the ceramic dust.”

  He whacked th
e pieces together again with no more success.

  “It’s going to take mechanical grinding, Pa.”

  The eighth plate came loose. Pascal hung up the saw and passed the Geiger counter around the cut. It clicked a lot. He removed the plate, revealing a fist-sized ceramic block, pitted in a pattern he didn’t recognize. The detector’s clicking came so fast that it was a continuous buzz. Pascal blocked the source with the plate again and the counts diminished.

  “What is it?” George-Étienne said wonderingly.

  “I checked the detector’s manual,” Pascal said. “A counter like this can’t distinguish between different materials, but uranium is common enough in space, and plutonium is a decay product. Could be cobalt or thorium too.”

  “That’d run a power plant for years,” George-Étienne said. “Or power the engine of a thermal fission rocket. We wouldn’t need the Bank for shipping. Can you imagine not needing the Bank?”

  “We’ve got to do something safe with it until we can get some lead.”

  Pascal started making a box out of the plates he’d cut, fastening the sides with carbon filament. He pried the fist-sized piece of radioactive material out and used tongs to put it in his makeshift box before covering it. The radiation counter ticked slowly outside the box. George-Étienne helped by wrapping a bit of thin trawler skin around the box to hold it together better.

  “The bathyscaphe is thick enough that if we put this in there, the radiation shouldn’t make us sick,” Pascal said.

  “I’ll fly it over.”

  They used the Geiger counter to look for more stray radioactive particles, scooped them into the box and sealed it. George-Étienne shouldered into a wing-pack and plunged into the clouds with their prize.

  EIGHTEEN

  BEING PRÉSIDENTE DE l’Assemblée coloniale was usually a thankless job. Doctor Angéline Gaschel had led the tiny Venusian nation for ten years. She had four thousand souls to care for, a predatory Bank as an ally, and equipment that wore down far more quickly than in any other place in the solar system. Any chance of becoming self-sufficient depended entirely on risky investments with overwhelming price tags. She’d mapped out a vision for the next forty years of Venus, ending in a home they could joyfully give their grandchildren. But that depended on how well she could shepherd the nation through the next years.

  The présidente, along with a number of other key government personnel, lived on the Baie-Comeau, a huge floating habitat owned jointly by la colonie and the Bank. Art by schoolchildren and plans for new habitats and industries decorated the clean lines of the hallways. Today, she was fully suited and sealed as she stepped onto the busy roof port, where small drone dirigibles constantly carried supplies to and from the Baie-Comeau. The human traffic was almost as busy. One of the port workers helped her into her wing-pack, careful not to knock the bottle of brandy she carried.

  She checked that no one was beneath the plank, double-checked her engine status, then leapt into the space above the clouds. The gee-forces gripped her as she swooped up and attained level flight. The Venusian branch of the Bank of Pallas was four kilometers astern, in the center of the main flotilla. It was a smaller habitat, housing some thirty off-worlders who staffed the branch office, along with offices for an additional ten to fifteen local Venusian staff for periods of heavier work.

  Along with the Bank of Ceres, the Lunar Bank, and the Bank of Enceladus, the Bank of Pallas was a major economic power in the solar system, around which political, legal and even police powers had accreted. Without the Bank of Pallas, La République du Québec would never have been able to afford to become a space-faring nation. Without the Bank of Pallas, Venus would never have been able to declare independence. Partnerships with Banks were complex. Venus needed the Bank of Pallas, and with its investment already made, the Bank of Pallas wanted Venus to succeed. Few people understood the nature of debt and the two-way obligations and incentive structures that they created. Much of Gaschel’s job was managing that relationship.

  She landed on the roof and was buzzed down. Below the airlock in the stairwell, she shed her helmet and wings with one of the Bank security people. The stairwell led down to another pressure door and into a hallway with glass doors to the main lobby. The Bank employed a dozen Venusian citizens in good economic development jobs. From one of the offices, her niece waved to her and returned to her work. Cultivating the right relationships early was another key to stability. One day, perhaps one day soon, her niece would become a delegate in l’Assemblée, and maybe in her time would become présidente, ensuring stability of policies and a skilled hand in managing the relationship with the Bank. The next set of doors swung open on their own and Gaschel walked through to the offices of Leah Woodward.

  Woodward was a black-haired woman with a confident smile and a PhD in Economics. She’d been one of the youngest supervisors in the Branch Office on the asteroid Hygeia. At thirty-four, she was among the youngest Branch Managers in the solar system, although Gaschel wondered how much profit or business Woodward could squeeze from Venus to propel her career forward.

  “Madame la Présidente,” Woodward said, moving around her desk to shake Gaschel’s hand.

  Although Woodward had been here eighteen months, and had implants that gave her an extensive linguistic range, hearing her speak French was not pretty. Gaschel answered in the accented English she’d learned in Montréal during medical school.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Woodward. Thank you for the invitation,” she said, holding out the bottle. “I brought you an experimental variety of brandy. Our biochemists have been trying to see if blastulae can be turned into food or even soil. In one of their experiments, they made brandy by accident.”

  Woodward took the bottle formally, smiling.

  “We’ll have to try it over supper,” she said, and waved Gaschel through to her suites.

  In the small dining room, a cook had just placed a steaming pot in the middle of the table. A window gave a distorted view, fish-eying the clouds through hydroponic gardens and the curved plastic-and-teflon skin of the branch office. At the base of the wall, though, water had pooled a meter deep; in the brown murk, small shrimp and crab scavenged.

  Woodward uncorked the bottle and sniffed experimentally.

  “What are you going to call it?” she asked in English.

  Gaschel pulled her eyes away from the bright green of the leaves outside the window.

  “I don’t even know if it’s worth calling it anything,” Gaschel said. “Some people seem to love it. Some call it vile.”

  Woodward filled two shot glasses.

  “You could say that about Venus,” she quipped.

  “I’ve come to love it,” Gaschel said.

  “Me, too.”

  They toasted and sipped warily. Neither spoke. It was potent and bitter.

  “You still love it?” Gaschel asked.

  Woodward nodded. “It’s an interesting flavor,” she said, smacking her lips and smelling again. “On Hygeia, they produce a rough aguardiente a bit like this.”

  Gaschel tried hers again, then set down the glass. “They may need to keep working on the recipe.”

  “Still, for pure novelty, it might sell in some markets,” Woodward said. “Who has ever tasted Venusian food or drink? The delta-V isn’t prohibitive, especially if you have steady imports. Outbound traffic could carry something to sell.”

  “Let’s look into it.”

  “You may like this better,” Woodward said, lifting the lid on the pot. Garlic and seafood smells mixed in the room. “This is our first Venusian shrimp harvest, with our own vegetables and herbs.”

  Gaschel’s mouth watered and she sat, accepting a bowl. She hadn’t smelled anything so good in months. Years. She hadn’t eaten shrimp in thirty years. The taste bloomed a tiny longing in her for the Montréal of her youth. They each silently, almost reverently, took a second helping, and there was no small talk. Only when they sat back over empty bowls, with water in their glasses, did the co
nversation resume.

  “I listened to the session of l’Assemblée,” Woodward said.

  “Did you enjoy it?” asked Gaschel guardedly.

  “It’s a tough situation. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I don’t expect Marthe D’Aquillon to roll over, but the policy rationale is sound. We’ll have the metal to reduce our imports so that we can cover our other credit.”

  “The asteroid will pay for itself after a few years, and then generate income for Venus,” Woodward said. She played a slow finger along the edge of her glass. “But maybe you don’t need the asteroid that much?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Or perhaps not in partnership with the Bank of Pallas?” Woodward looked at her meaningfully.

  “I don’t take your meaning, Miss Woodward.”

  “I’m wondering if you might have been looking for credit and supplies from another source,” the branch manager said. “My directors wouldn’t be happy if they found out you were working with one of the other Banks.”

  “What other Banks?” Gaschel said, her stomach going suddenly cold and heavy. “We’re not working with anyone else. Just the Bank of Pallas.”

  “You don’t have a lot of fissionables,” Woodward said.

  “I know.”

  “We detected radiation coming from Venus.”

  “If it’s new, it might have been spit out of a volcano recently. We can see about sending something down there to try to recover it.”

  “A little bit of radioactivity in a magma flow wouldn’t penetrate the clouds. This was hard enough to set off the radiation detectors on the branch office. We didn’t have the detectors oriented to look downward. By the time we reoriented, the signal was gone. It had been moving.”

  Gaschel’s mind spun. “On the surface?”

  “In the clouds.”

  “What?” Gaschel demanded. Both her hands gripped the table of their own volition.