“They’ll be alive and probably healthy, but they’ll be trapped in the clouds forever,” Marthe said, “just like Pascal, you, me and Alexis. Can we go where we want? To Earth or the other colonies? We’ll never be able to afford to leave. La colonie will have less and less habitats, and more and more families will be forced into living subsistence lives in trawlers. That’s for your children and your grandchildren.”
Marthe tapped the display.
“This is scary. This is risky. But I have a chance to offer Pascal and Alexis and even myself the stars,” Marthe said. “The wealth of the asteroids with the safety of a planet means we could turn Venus into a paradise. Towns and cities in the clouds. Space for us to live and thrive.”
Marie-Pier had pursed her lips.
“But I’m scared,” Marthe said, “not just of succeeding. I’m scared that we will find out, after all we’ve thought and planned—that we can’t do it. That would kill me more than anything Venus could offer.”
“Hope is terrible sometimes,” Marie-Pier said.
FORTY-THREE
PASCAL WAS HYPER-AWARE of Gabriel-Antoine as they went into his room. Gabriel-Antoine brushed his teeth, washed himself with a sponge as Pascal turned away, hot-faced and awkward. He wanted the light off. He needed to have his face smooth. He wanted to be invisible. But he also wanted to touch Gabriel-Antoine. Feet padded up behind him. A hand touched his shoulder.
“You okay?” Gabriel-Antoine asked in a low voice.
Pascal nodded, then looked back and smiled nervously. Gabriel-Antoine’s face was close.
“I’m going to clean up,” he said, and felt his whisper flounder and fade.
Gabriel-Antoine didn’t follow him to the head. Pascal shut off the lights.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel-Antoine whispered.
“Just a sec.”
With shaking hands and clenched eyes, Pascal lightly lathered his face, and stroke by stroke, scraped away stubble with the straight razor. It was the worst sound in the world, and he couldn’t imagine Gabriel-Antoine not being disgusted with him. It wasn’t a sound Pascal could run from. He felt the sound. His skin felt it. His bones felt it like a fork scratching across a plate. He was so aware of Gabriel-Antoine that his hands shook until he cut himself.
“Hey, cutie,” Gabriel-Antoine said. “You already shaved this morning.”
“I’m almost done.”
“Leave it on.”
Pascal’s stomach turned. “I’m almost done.” But he wasn’t. He lathered his chest and arms quickly, scraping himself smooth with swift strokes. But Gabriel-Antoine was listening. Thinking he was strange. As strange as Pascal really felt.
“I’m, uh, really happy we went down,” Gabriel-Antoine said into the awkwardness. “You don’t know what that was for me.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t see the stars,” Pascal said.
“One day I will,” Gabriel-Antoine said.
His voice was closer, although Pascal hadn’t heard him approach. In a panic, he wiped off the last of the lather, and self-consciously touched his face and neck, looking for ugly stiff patches he might have missed. Then, his chest and stomach and arms. Tiny patches of soft stubble found his fingers and he felt uglier.
“You believe us?”
“One day we’ll see them together,” Gabriel-Antoine said from just behind him.
Pascal’s hands trembled so much that he dropped the case of tooth polish instead of shutting it. Gabriel-Antoine’s fingertips touched Pascal’s arms, sliding up the smoothness, making Pascal shiver. Pascal jammed the toothbrush into his mouth and tried to move casually. Gabriel-Antoine’s mouth was behind Pascal’s ear.
“I’ve seen the stars my whole life without seeing them,” Gabriel-Antoine said.
Gabriel-Antoine’s warm chest pressed against Pascal’s unshaved back. He dropped the toothbrush and turned against him. They were of a height and their noses were close. Pascal swallowed his toothpaste.
“You really didn’t use that line before?” Pascal whispered.
Gabriel-Antoine shook his head. His grin was bright in the gloom. The sounds of quiet conversation in the main area drifted in through the curtain, along with weak light.
“You seem to have a lot of words to turn someone’s heart,” Pascal said.
“I only want to turn yours.”
Whether it was true or not, Pascal wanted it to be. Gabriel-Antoine was handsome. Smart. Funny. Daring. And they’d gone to the surface together. Pascal felt his nervous heart beating so fast he wanted to scrunch into a ball, and he didn’t want any of this to end. He neared his mouth to Gabriel-Antoine’s and touched hesitantly. Gabriel-Antoine responded, pressing back more tentatively than his words. And Pascal pressed back at him, harder, putting his arms around him. After a few moments they parted. Pascal was hardening. He pulled away in embarrassment. Gabriel-Antoine leaned against the wash station beside him and stroked a thumb across Pascal’s smooth face.
“You want to help me build the caps?” Pascal said, to fill the air with something other than his awkwardness. It sounded stupid.
Gabriel-Antoine nodded, an inscrutable gesture in the three-quarter darkness.
“It’s upside down,” Gabriel-Antoine said. “Wind and stars beneath the ground. It’s magic. You’ve shown me the magic Venus has been hiding from us. And my life has been upside down since you walked in.”
“Sorry,” Pascal said, smiling sheepishly.
“I was tired of life being right-side up. I didn’t know it but I’d been waiting for some angel to come along and save me from fixing ovens.”
Pascal laughed low. “I’m no angel.”
Gabriel-Antoine neared again, pressing his chest against Pascal’s, and his lips to his.
“You have wings,” he whispered. “You make me feel like a live wire.”
“I feel like I’m close to getting electrocuted,” Pascal said, resting his forehead against Gabriel-Antoine’s.
“The tough cutie from the lower clouds in danger?” Gabriel-Antoine scoffed. “I feel like I want to protect you, but that you could keep me alive down here with one hand behind your back.”
“I’ll protect you.”
Gabriel-Antoine’s hand slid down Pascal’s flat stomach, looking for the hardness down there, but Pascal’s hand caught his wrist.
“I just want to make you feel good,” Gabriel-Antoine whispered.
Pascal shook his head against Gabriel-Antoine’s.
“You like men, don’t you?”
“I like men,” Pascal finally whispered.
“So do I. You like me, don’t you?”
“I like you.”
“Then let me make you feel good.”
Gabriel-Antoine’s hand tried again, but Pascal was strong enough to hold him back, barely. Then his other hand shot out, tickling, and Pascal twisted and caught the other hand too, and they were stalemated, breathing harder, trying not to make any noise that would be heard in the main area.
“I don’t like me,” Pascal finally whispered in terror, “down there.”
“I’ve seen you,” Gabriel-Antoine said. “You’re beautiful.”
Pascal shook his head. His heart pounded in his throat. He didn’t want this night to end. He wanted to be more to Gabriel-Antoine. He didn’t want to poison anything forming between them with all the blackness and wrongness inside of him. He gently released both of Gabriel-Antoine’s hands.
“Let’s move to your hammock,” Pascal said. “Teach me to make you feel good.”
“That’s a bit one-sided.”
“This is what I can do. Please be patient. Please. This is what I want.”
“Okay, chéri,” Gabriel-Antoine whispered in his ear before he began nibbling and kissing there.
They walked awkwardly, a four-legged thing clinging desperately to itself, before Gabriel-Antoine fell back into his hammock.
FORTY-FOUR
“WHAT DO YOU mean by that?” Émile said into the microphone. Thérèse’s
grainy expression in the monitor reacted a second later, melting from belabored patience into boredom. The delay from the Phocas’ habitat to wherever Thérèse was bunking today wasn’t from the radio signal. The processors and antenna were lo-fi pieces of shit.
“I feel like you pull me away from what’s important to me, Émile.”
“I’m a...” he said, then lowered his voice. He was in Gabriel-Antoine’s workshop, but it wasn’t soundproof. “We’re both artists. Things aren’t going to be easy.”
“Are you?” she said after a second’s delay. A look of pity crept into her eyes.
“Fuck you...” he said. “Fuck you and your stupid... acid burns! Who gives a shit about what the fuck you burn on your body? Stupidest fucking ‘art’ I’ve ever heard of. Acid is acid.”
The pity in her eyes was still there. “Goodbye, Émile.”
The transmission ended. He swore and was about to grab something, anything, and smash it into something else, but everything looked valuable and neat in the little workshop, and Madame Phocas was swearing too, out in the main room.
Émile was about to swear back at her, but realized she was really worked up at someone else. He was going to clock whoever it was if they didn’t stop pissing the old lady off. He wrenched open the door. Madame Phocas was arguing with a guy at the open doorway that led from the gondola up through the envelope of the Marais-des-Nuages. The new arrival stood there, genuinely perplexed, as the old lady got her second wind.
“Get off this habitat, you piece of government shit!” she said in a reedy voice, before succumbing to a coughing fit. “Bring a goddamn warrant if you want to try to set foot here!”
Émile put his hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off.
“I’ll take care of this, ma tante,” he said.
“I’m just here to talk to Monsieur D’Aquillon, ma tante,” the government guy said.
Grand-papa Phocas had struggled up from his hanging chair and was trying to straighten his back to face the newcomer. He was red-faced and Louise ran to help him stand.
“You brought him here?” Madame Phocas demanded, poking Émile in the ribs.
“I don’t know this guy from crisse! Calm down, ma tante! I’ll kick his ass if he doesn’t leave, but sit down, ostie!”
Grandmaman Phocas didn’t seem used to being spoken to that way and her thin lips pressed tight. Émile didn’t wait for her response but marched to the door. He stepped into the stairway in the envelope, closing the heavy pressure door behind him.
“Who the crisse are you?” Émile said.
“I’m Laurent Tétreau,” the man said, holding out his hand. Émile took it warily. “We met at Réjean’s party.”
Émile had a fuzzy recollection. “Did I punch you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I’m an assistant to Dauzat and Labourière in l’Assemblée. I mentioned before, I think the D’Aquillons are getting a shitty deal under the leadership of Marthe and your papa. It’s a shame you got caught in it. You’re probably the one who could make peace.”
“Oh yeah.” Émile looked back at the metal door and patted his suit pockets. “You got a cigarette? They don’t let me smoke around here.”
Tétreau produced a pocket flask. “I don’t smoke, but is this good enough?”
Émile hadn’t had a drink since yesterday. After the latest shitty conversation with Thérèse, the prospect perked him up. Tétreau unscrewed the top, took a sip and passed it to Émile. He drank too, cautiously, not sure of where he stood with this guy.
He was surprised. It wasn’t bagosse. It was smooth. It warmed his throat and chest, instead of burning. “Is this real whiskey?” he asked. There was even a trace of sweet—rare—and a hint of sulfur, like everything on Venus.
“It’s an Irish recipe we’re been adapting to Venus,” Tétreau said. “We’ll never get it perfect, because the chemistry is different, but we built casks out of the sides of trawlers.”
Émile held up the flask. “Can I?”
“Drink it all. I’ve got a few bottles in my bunk.”
Émile’s mouth watered and he sipped slowly this time. “Shit,” he said wonderingly. There were more flavors than he could name, good ones, uncertain ones, but it kicked as hard as bagosse.
“You’re a hard man to find,” Tétreau said.
“Splitting my time between here and the Causapscal-des-Vents.”
“Yeah, I had to track your suit’s transceiver.”
Émile spotted the badge on the outside of Tétreau’s suit. Not just a constable. A lieutenant. He lowered the flask. The suspicions bred into him surfaced.
“I thought the cops weren’t supposed to use transceiver data unless they needed to.”
Tétreau shrugged. “Who cares, right? I just wanted to talk, and we got to share a bit of real whiskey.”
It was hard to argue with his reasoning. Émile sipped.
“What have you got on the Phocas family to get ma tante all freaked out?” Émile said, hooking a thumb behind his shoulder.
“We know Gabriel-Antoine Phocas is hoarding a lot of metal scraps and tools,” Tétreau said. “Some official channels have been pressuring him about it. Hoarding’s no good.”
“So why not bust him?”
Tétreau shrugged. “Some small-time stuff is okay to let go. Little crimes excite people, like they’re pulling one over on the inspectors.”
“I don’t know what I can do to help you,” Émile said.
“Like I said before, I think you’re being wasted. You ever thought about joining the constabulary?”
“Me?” Émile demanded. “I punched a constable once. And they don’t give good jobs to families like ours.”
“It’s not about family,” Tétreau said. “You’re a big guy who can fly up here as well as in the depths, right? We don’t have enough coureurs on the force. Constables get first pick of bunks. Better rations, too.” Tétreau tapped the flask meaningfully with a fingernail.
“What do I have to do?”
“It’s a part-time job,” Tétreau said. “We get called up when we’re needed. We knock some heads. It’s always better to have another big guy on our side.”
Émile laughed low. “My Pa would have a stroke if he heard I joined the constabulary.”
“You and your Pa don’t get on anyway. Marthe doesn’t treat you great. She’s downcloud with your Pa, right? The two of them are just going to get each other angrier and angrier about something they can’t change. It should have been you to go sort things out with the rest of the family. I don’t know why they treat you like they do, but I’m not going to make that mistake.”
Émile sipped. He would love to see Pa’s face when he heard the news that the constables wanted his son, and not the way he expected.
“I mean, they got you being errand-boy over here?” Tétreau said. “Why isn’t Gabriel-Antoine taking care of his own habitat?”
The whiskey, so good, took on a bitter taste.
“Phocas is with them,” he said. “Him and my little brother flew down after Marthe had gone.”
“Why?”
Émile shrugged. “Something about extracting metal out of trawler tail cable.”
“There’s almost no metal in trawler tails. Is that another pipe-dream?”
They didn’t really tell him. He wasn’t part of the family. Not in that way, when it counted.
“One of many,” Émile said, tipping the whiskey up.
“Think about the constables,” Tétreau said as Émile handed him back the flask. “I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
FORTY-FIVE
MARTHE CLOCKED IN only a few hours of hammock time. After Marie-Pier turned in, she smoked at the kitchen table. She slept fitfully and got up before anyone else. The smells of hard sulfur-laced wood, of sweating bodies and growing green things dragged her back in time.
She remembered Pa, much younger, maman and Chloé, both still alive. She remembered Émile as a teenager, w
orking the trawlers with Pa. She almost always remembered Jean-Eudes as big, even though she was taller now. As just a little girl, she’d taught Jean-Eudes to count and read with the patience of very young children, an effortless patience she couldn’t imagine anymore.
She remembered Pa’s fights. With the government. With Émile. Sometimes with maman. Even as a teenager, Marthe had been his confidante. They’d stay up late, talking about politics, about raising the family. She might have been as happy living down here, riding the winds, helping raise Pascal, Jean-Eudes, and Alexis.
But in those late-night conversations, Pa hadn’t just taught her to roll cigarettes. He decided that she would go to the upper atmosphere to live on the Causapscal-des-Vents. She would represent the family in l’Assemblée. It had pissed off Émile. It had scared the shit out of her. But Pa was right too. They both knew she would be good in l’Assemblée, even if they were both nervous about it. There were things she was good at, things she could do that Pa couldn’t.
But she wondered if she’d left too early, before she’d learned everything she’d needed. Marthe still woke up beside walking disasters like Noëlle. For that matter, so did Émile. What had they missed? What hadn’t Pa been able to show them? Maybe they’d left home too early, or maybe something hadn’t translated from Québec to Venus.
Pa and maman had been born on Earth and they’d stayed together until Venus took maman away. George-Étienne and Jeanne-Manse had even left la colonie for the lower cloud decks to keep their little Down syndrome baby. And against all odds, they’d made a family.
Sleep eluded her not just for these thoughts, but because of time lag. The high flotilla raced on winds that circled the planet every four days. But in the deep habitats of the coureurs, not only might there be a hundred or more hours of day and an equal amount of night, but the day-night rhythms were distended. Day and night blurred.
In the depths, clouds made high noon arrive yellow and diffuse. And nighttime was always lit by spongy red light scattered all the way from the terminator. Les coureurs and les colonistes from the flotilla meant different things by the words “night” and “day.”
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