The House of Styx

by Derek Künsken

  She found one of the ceramic plates that Pascal had sawn from the space probe. It was pockmarked and weathered. It was riddled with wiring that seemed chaotic but that Pascal said was alien circuitry. She believed him. There was wealth in knowledge, in resources, and although an antique and surreal concept to Venusians, there was value in land. She left the piece of hull on the table as she rolled another cigarette. She considered all that piece of ceramic meant to them, lines of possibility spinning out into futures she couldn’t know, futures among the stars that Alexis might grow old in, and his children in their time.

  Marie-Pier and Gabriel-Antoine were not family, but they needed that kind of bond to build this bridge to the stars. If circumstances blew the D’Aquillons apart from the Hudons and the Phocas, they would all lose. They needed to make a family, but it wasn’t the kind of family Pa knew how to build. They needed to make a political family.

  An hour later, people slowly woke up and began joining her at the table. Pa was gentlemanly and courteous to Marie-Pier, less so to Gabriel-Antoine, who was obviously smitten with Pascal. Gabriel-Antoine was glowing and Pascal was shy and quiet at the table, hiding a half-smile. Did they have the makings of a family? If they did, she still might not be the right one to make it. But if Pa tried to negotiate, he would blunder about, the way he might hammer the corrosion off a lock. And Pascal was too uncertain of himself to weld different political interests together. Marthe crushed out her last cigarette. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, gesturing to the piece of hull on the table.

  Pa slid a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee in front of her. He took up the hull fragment, ran his scarred fingers across its pitted outer surface and smooth inner surface, and handed it to Marie-Pier.

  “Ceramic minerals,” he said, “and iridium, platinum, silver, gold and other metals. We’re going to grind them up for some quick resources to help bootstrap us.”

  “That’s small potatoes, though, Pa,” Marthe said. “If we do more than sell scrap—if anybody finds out we may have found traces of alien technology—Venus will become the new gold rush, fought over by the Banks. We lose it all. La colonie loses it all.”

  “Are you thinking of a broker?” Marie-Pier asked. “Someone not traceable to Venus?”

  Marthe shrugged. “Can you imagine anyone who would fit the bill?”

  Marie-Pier pondered the heavy fragment in her hands.

  “I’ve thought through all the risks I can think of,” Marthe said, “and I still want to do this. I think rolling the dice is worth it.”

  Gabriel-Antoine poured himself a cup of coffee and put one foot on the bench, leaning over the table. He took the hull fragment from Marie-Pier and turned it in the light, seeing things that the others probably didn’t.

  “I’m not going to lie,” he said. “I’m bored up at sixty-fifth rang. I’d love to take on a big engineering project. I’d love to figure out what this is and how it works.”

  Marie-Pier was still pensive.

  “Sometimes I think the D’Aquillons have been kicked around not just by the government,but by the colonistes too,” Marthe said. George-Étienne stared at his hands. Marthe rubbed his shoulder. “The D’Aquillons stick together. We don’t trust easy. We put a lot of weight on family. Not just blood. Any of us would have dived into the clouds to save Mathurin, my late brother-in-law. Jean-Eudes would have done it.”

  Jean-Eudes looked sheepish and teary at once. Pascal nudged him with a shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile.

  “Émile, for all his differences with Pa, would have jumped after Mathurin too,” Marthe said, “because family is family.”

  She jerked her head at her little brother.

  “Show us the stars, Pascal.”

  Pascal came to them awkwardly and unrolled the display over the table as Gabriel-Antoine moved dishes out of the way. Alexis, unaccustomed to the seriousness of the tone, and the strangers, snuck behind the bench and draped his arms around George-Étienne’s neck, peeking from behind his grandfather’s head.

  “I don’t know why we found the stars,” Marthe said, “but we can’t reach them ourselves, and we’re offering to share them with you. But do you trust us to be straight with you? And what are we really offering? A corporation? A business partnership with the sharing of dividends? Those don’t make any sense here. We can’t involve the government or the Bank. And notarized pieces of paper don’t make trust.” She paused. “The only thing I can think of to make a real partnership is marriage.”

  George-Étienne’s head jerked up. Marie-Pier’s cheeks pinkened. Gabriel-Antoine, still cocky, looked back at Pascal.

  “Your sister moves fast, eh?” Gabriel-Antoine said. Pascal flushed to his hairline. Gabriel-Antoine winked at him. He grinned at Marthe. “You and I don’t swing the right ways, Marthe. Who’s proposing to me?”

  “I’m talking about three families, Gabriel-Antoine,” Marthe said.

  “Polygamy?” he said.

  “Not exactly,” Marthe said. “Marriages bind families, because they have something at stake together. A joining of the D’Aquillons with the Phocas family and the Hudon family would be a real alliance, something serious.”

  “Hard to imagine,” Marie-Pier said.

  “You, Pa, and Gabriel-Antoine enter into partnership, to join the three families into a single house,” Marthe said. “The three of you share the leadership of the house, or it goes through turns. Pa, then Marie-Pier, then Gabriel-Antoine. The ages happen to work out for a succession of leadership every ten to fifteen years.”

  “Not you?” Gabriel-Antoine asked.

  “Pa is the head of the D’Aquillon family until he doesn’t want to be,” Marthe said.

  Gabriel-Antoine’s face was turning serious. Marie-Pier’s lips twisted in thought. Jean-Eudes had taken an uncertain step closer to Pascal. George-Étienne looked at her with melancholy.

  “I just want to give my children something,” George-Étienne said, reaching up to give Alexis’s arm a squeeze. “Something more than they’re getting now.” Alexis didn’t understand what was going on, but he squeezed his grandfather back.

  “Something for Maxime and Florian,” Marthe said to Marie-Pier. “And something for Louise and Paul-Égide,” she said to Gabriel-Antoine. “And all their children in turn.”

  “Are you looking for George-Étienne and I to make children?” Marie-Pier asked.

  George-Étienne reddened again.

  “Don’t ask me to help!” Gabriel-Antoine laughed.

  “We’ll raise our families together as a house,” Marthe said. “Work together. Pool our resources. Share.”

  “Sounds like a tribe,” Marie-Pier said.

  “Families come in all shapes,” Marthe said. “Gabriel-Antoine, don’t you need help to give you more time to do real engineering?”

  “Oui,” he said.

  “We can help raise Louise and Paul-Égide and give Alexis a brother and sister at the same time. And we can help you care for your grandparents.”

  Marie-Pier was quiet.

  “It’s a big step,” Marthe said to her. “I think we can trust you, and I think you think you can trust us. And you’re right. We’re risking a lot. And without you, I don’t know how we’d do this. If we go for it, it’ll be hard. We’re talking years of sending out drones to mine the asteroids of that other system, building habitats, growing food, manufacturing, industrializing, all in a place that has never seen a Bank flag. It’ll be a new start. We’ll be the first humans to leave the solar system.”

  Marie-Pier looked around at them all, then back to the strange alien technology in her hands.

  “Sink the Causapscal-des-Vents on purpose, eh?” she said. “And carry down four of my trawlers with it? The stresses might break one or all of them, and then your habitat really will be falling into the abyss.”

  “We have engineers to make the plan,” Marthe said, giving Pascal a quick, reassuring smile.

  “And if they find out? The Bank and the government?” Ma
rie-Pier continued. “That’ll be hard to explain.”

  “We’ll have to be fast,” Pascal said.

  “If they find out, I join George-Étienne in the doghouse,” Marie-Pier said. “Maybe they take the Coureur des Tourbillons. Maybe I go to prison. And my children and my brother start from zero, begging for bunks in the common habitats.”

  “You don’t know that they won’t be begging for bunks in ten years,” George-Étienne said. “La colonie can’t afford metals. Habitats are going to fall on their own. And if this works, your children will be some of the richest people on Venus.”

  Marie-Pier took a deep breath. “I’m not used to these kinds of risks.”

  “We’ll take care of you and your children,” Marthe said. “That’s what family does.”

  Gabriel-Antoine nodded slowly. “I will too. My grandparents are old. I don’t know what I can give Louise and Paul-Égide other than a stake in a black-market repair racket. And they probably would like a brother.” He winked at Alexis who smiled from behind his grandfather.

  Marie-Pier regarded the young engineer, one of her prospective ‘husbands,’ for a long time. But she reserved a longer look for George-Étienne. He looked back at her evenly, not challenging, not pushing. Marthe was proud of him. The future of his whole family was riding on the decision of this woman.

  “What do you think, Jean-Eudes?” Marie-Pier asked. Jean-Eudes reddened and smiled shyly.

  Marie-Pier extended a hand to George-Étienne and clasped it. Then she shook hands with Gabriel-Antoine. Then the two men shook.

  “What do we call ourselves?” Gabriel-Antoine asked. “I don’t want to change my name.”

  “We keep our family names,” Marthe said.

  “But we have to call the house something,” Pascal said, taking a step closer. “To belong. We’re founding this house in the Hadesphere, but our bridge to the stars is in the Stygian layers of Venus. Maybe we should be the House of Styx.”

  “Venus protect fools in the wind,” Marie-Pier said.

  George-Étienne and Gabriel-Antoine smiled and repeated the curse and invocation used by mothers in the clouds for decades.

  FORTY-SIX

  AFTER NINE O’CLOCK at night, Gaschel’s office was mostly empty. She was reading the interesting bit of Tétreau’s report about the visit of Gabriel-Antoine Phocas and Marie-Pier Hudon to the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs. For extracting metals from trawler cables? She’d never heard of anything like that. There couldn’t be more than trace amounts recoverable. Unless they’d found some new process. Or unless they hadn’t been open with the brother.

  She was also scanning the terse reports of non-sightings from the planes and drones that Dauzat and Tétreau had sent out. The planes had covered about half the equatorial zone so far. She was impatient. Woodward was impatient. Gaschel had been in Woodward’s office earlier in the day, receiving ham-fisted threats about debt interest, but there wasn’t much Gaschel could do to make things go any faster. Labourière knocked at her glass door. He had a beautiful black woman with him. Gaschel signaled them in.

  “Noëlle Lalumière, Madame la Présidente,” Labourière said.

  The Lalumière woman looked a bit awed by the office and by Gaschel. Labourière retreated and shut the door. Gaschel came around the desk, shook hands and guided her to a small seating area.

  “Thank you for meeting me, Mademoiselle Lalumière.”

  “They said I wasn’t in trouble.”

  “You’re not,” Gaschel said, pouring the younger woman a glass of water. She had juices and spirits to offer, but she didn’t want to give this woman more reason than she already had to brag about this meeting to anyone. “I’ve asked you here discreetly as part of a criminal investigation.”

  Lalumière’s brown eyes widened and she leaned forward. She didn’t touch the water.

  “It’s about your girlfriend.”

  “Délia?”

  Gaschel squirmed.

  “I’ve maybe been misinformed?” Gaschel said. “I’m talking about Marthe D’Aquillon.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. I don’t hang with criminals.”

  “It’s an investigation,” Gaschel said. “We don’t know if she’s involved, or if her family is.”

  “I don’t know Émile, but he’s a dick.”

  “You have some influence over Marthe?” Gaschel asked.

  Lalumière considered the question, looking away, then pushed aside a coil of curly black hair. “Maybe.”

  “There’s a reward involved if this goes as far as a conviction,” Gaschel said. “Any conviction. Right now our investigations have led us to three families. Some other lines of evidence put the D’Aquillon family at the top of our list.”

  “How much?”

  “How would you like to live on the Forillon, or theBaie-Comeau?”

  Lalumière’s eyes narrowed. “What are you looking for?”

  “No one can know you’re helping us,” Gaschel said. Lalumière nodded. “Has she talked to you of any political plans? Does it seem that she’s angry enough to do something illegal? Or her family?”

  “She can get mad,” Lalumière said.

  “Marthe is down at the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs with her family. I’d love to know what she is doing there. I’d also like to know exactly where the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs is in case we need to make arrests. They probably communicate by maser. If you’re in Marthe’s habitat, and you can find out where it’s been pointed or where it’s going to be pointed, that will help a lot.”

  “I can do that,” Lalumière said.

  “Good,” Gaschel said, smiling at the young woman.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THE COMMS LIGHT blinked on and the buzzer sounded. Émile jerked up, knocking over a bottle and a pile of dirty plastic dishes. He’d fallen asleep at the galley table. He stepped over the clutter on the floor. It was a message from the Causapscal-des-Profondeurs by tight maser. He didn’t usually answer those, but Marthe was down there. She was probably calling to ask if he’d cleaned the habitat. He flicked the toggle.

  “Quoi?” he said.

  “How tight is this?” Marthe’s voice said quietly.

  He sighed, rubbed his eyes, bent to look at the controls. He turned a knob. Marthe’s maser beam looked to have been scattered to a diameter of about eight centimeters, more than tight enough for no one to be able to intercept. He focused his beam on hers.

  “You’re at eight. Am I good? What do you want?”

  “You’re at six,” Marthe said. “The carrier wave is clean at two hundred twelve watts. I wanted to talk.”

  “Are you whispering?”

  “A little. We have guests.”

  “Phocas? Yeah, I know.” The line was quiet for a moment. Marthe might have been counting to ten, or composing her thoughts, or swearing to herself. He put two fingers between the blinds to peek out at the blinding brightness of sun on puffy yellow-white clouds extending past the horizon.

  “We’ve got an idea that will really help the family,” she said. “It’s not safe, and it’s not something we want to share with everyone else.”

  “You and Pascal are turning black sheep?”

  “We might need your help,” she said. “You want in?”

  He scratched his belly, found the bottle, uncorked it and rinsed and swallowed. “Does Pa know we’re having this conversation, or is that why you’re quiet?”

  “Think about it, Émile.”

  He was thinking. About his holier-than-thou sister, his jackass father, and his little brother under both their thumbs.

  “What’s the idea?” he asked.

  “Let me know your answer. We’ll talk when I come back up.”

  “Tell Jean-Eudes and Alexis I said hi.”

  “I will.”

  Émile stood for a while, wondering what they might be cooking up, why Marthe thought it was a good idea to try to convince Pa to change his stripes. A knocking and hissing sounded way up in the envelope; the airlock on the roo
f of the Causapscal-des-Vents. Then footsteps on the stairs. Other than Marthe, only Thérèse knew the lock code.

  His inside went mushy at the thought of her. What did she want? Crawling back. Or just exploring if there was a way back together. How did he want to play this? He gulped a mouthful of bagosse and used it to rinse out his mouth. He picked up some of the dishes as the lower airlock spun. He stood straight, then leaned back casually.

  “Oh fuck, it’s you,” he said.

  Noëlle stood in the stairwell, helmet off, hair tied tightly back. Her expression was as unimpressed as his must have been. Then she looked around the mess of the kitchen and living area, the tumbled stacks of unwashed everything. He might have felt a tiny bit self-conscious if this had been Thérèse.

  “Where’s Marthe?” She stepped in, looking around.

  Émile picked up a jar that might have a bit left. He swirled it, sniffed. It smelled vile. He upended it into his mouth and swallowed in distaste.

  “Downcloud,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Downcloud,” he repeated.

  “Causapscal-des-Profondeurs.”

  Noëlle looked for a place to sit and seemed to think better of it. Then she realized how hot it was and began fanning herself.

  “Tabarnak,” she said. “Normally it’s too cold here.”

  “I’m fixing it,” he said. He waited. “What do you care? You’re not with Marthe.”

  Her withering look was impotent. “Where exactly is Marthe?”

  He shrugged. “Down. I just masered with her.”

  Noëlle looked at the comms equipment. “So she’s not far? Can I maser with her? You can just set it up.”

  “I’m not setting it up,” he said, crossing his arms.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s busy. And you’re boning Délia the beauty queen anyway. And my Pa’s a dick and I don’t want to chance him picking up.”

  “I just wanted to talk to her,” she said. “Things with Délia aren’t good. And I want to talk things out with Marthe.”