“How’s Laurette?”
“Pregnant.”
“Grandpère!” Marie-Pier exclaimed, grinning, slapping his arm. “You’re getting old.”
“I’m not the one asking for hormones,” the man said.
“I’ve got a friend.”
“Your friend has expensive needs.”
“You can give me a fair price.”
The man considered Marie-Pier, cast a glance at Marthe and then back.
“Your brother said you figured out how to get forty percent less lignins in your trawler cables.”
“Hard to grow,” Marie-Pier said, “but I’ll have a batch ready. It’ll yield a couple hundred kilos of fiber.”
“You want an ongoing supply of the hormones?”
Marie-Pier nodded.
“Can you manage a hundred kilos of low-lignin trawler cable per month?” he asked.
Marie-Pier seemed startled. Marthe didn’t understand what was being offered or what he would do with it. Lignins, along with carbon nanotubes, made cables hard enough to support the weight of the bob and cable and the heat of the depths. Trawlers with mutations to produce less lignins would be harder to grow.
“I can probably do seventy-five kilos per month,” Marie-Pier said finally. “Nobody else has this.”
“I hear they’re cutting into some of your operation,” he said.
“Some of it,” Marie-Pier said. “What the government takes won’t affect this.”
The man rubbed graying stubble on his chin, and the rasping sounded despite the other noises in the bay.
“All right. Seventy-five,” he said.
They followed him to a fridge and he rummaged among small tied-top carbon-weave sacks, reading the handwritten labels. He finally put two into her hands. Marthe peeked into the bags with Marie-Pier. Dozens and dozens of little misshapen white pellets lay at the bottoms.
“They aren’t pretty, but they’re dosed right,” he said. “Four months’ worth. I’ll expect your shipments to start right away.”
“They will,” Marie-Pier said, kissing him on both cheeks. “Merci.”
Marthe kissed his cheeks again too and they made their way back into the small depot. As soon as the door was closed behind them and she’d assured herself that no one else was in the depot, Marthe leaned close.
“Thank you, Marie-Pier. This means a lot to me.”
“It’s expensive, but your little brother... your little sister is worth it. I was ramping up operations anyway.”
“What did you give him?”
“The lignins in trawler cabling make them useless for feeding bioreactors. Carbon nanotubes we can break down, but not lignins. I’ve engineered trawlers to produce a lot less lignin.”
“You’ll be able to grow something in the clouds that we can use to make real food?”
“I’m halfway there.”
“And you still threw in with us?” Marthe said in some astonishment. Something like this, if the government didn’t get in the way and nationalize it, could make Marie-Pier wealthy—wealthy for Venus, at least.
Marie-Pier looked shy for a moment. “The clouds are our home,” she said. “I can engineer all I want and I’ll still be part of la colonie, still living in the clouds. But I can dream of stars too.”
“I never thought I’d be able to,” Marthe said.
Marie-Pier handed her the little bags.
“No. You hold onto them,” Marthe said. “You’re going to see Pascale before me.”
Marie-Pier put the bags of pills in an inner suit pocket. Then frowned. “Is somebody waiting for you?” Beyond the door to the depot, Noëlle waved.
“I’ll have to take care of this myself,” Marthe said. Her paranoia didn’t feel so paranoid anymore.
“We’ll be in touch.”
Marthe opened the door and stepped through. Noëlle looked uncertain. Marthe grabbed her arm and led her through the arcade.
“Hey!” Noëlle said.
Marthe kept on marching her along. She’d never treated Noëlle like this. Marthe was always the one chasing, persuading, seducing. Maybe the change in behavior surprised Noëlle. It surprised Marthe. At the other end of the arcade, she found an alcove behind the stairwell into the envelope. She pushed Noëlle’s back against the wall. The air smelled of machine oil and ozone.
“Why are you following me?” Marthe said. “First the committee chamber. Now here.”
Noëlle mouthed some words, but couldn’t make anything come out.
“You’re no femme fatale, Noëlle.”
“What?”
“Who asked you to spy on me?”
“No one!”
“The présidente already had me into her office,” Marthe said. “Was it her, or didn’t you even get to see her?”
Noëlle’s dark brown eyes widened.
“What do they want to know? Who I’m seeing? Where I’m going?”
Noëlle’s expression shifted to humiliated anger. “I’m not following you. I saw you and decided to say hi.”
“Seeing as how neither you nor I have ever been herebefore, that’s kind of hard to swallow, ma chère.”
“Why are you here?” Noëlle demanded indignantly. Marthe was enjoying the role reversal, of not looking for approval, for scraps of Noëlle’s affections. There was something bigger than her, their Axis Mundi, and she was more than just some mechanic on a shitty ship. Dreams had power.
“I need a place to live, Noëlle, because they’re taking away my home.”
Noëlle pursed her beautiful lips.
“You don’t have to tell me who sent you,” Marthe said. “Just tell me if you were going to go all the way.”
“What do you mean?”
Marthe’s lips swooped in, smothering Noëlle’s with powerful need, and after a moment of surprise, Noëlle responded, her fingers reaching up to caress Marthe’s cheeks.
Between breathless kisses, Noëlle spoke. “What happened to you?”
In answer, Marthe pushed Noëlle along the wall, to where a tool closet opened easily. She shoved Noëlle in and followed, closing the door behind her. Her femme fatale was hardly dangerous at all, but she was certainly warm in the darkness.
FIFTY-SIX
ÉMILE FLEW OUT to Baie-Comeau just after sunset, the hour-long period when the sunlight no longer touched the flotilla, but still lit the higher-atmosphere clouds into strings of luminescent mist. Vapor arched ten kilometers above him, glowing in soft whites, yellows and even pinks. Piles of puffy clouds above sixty-fifth rang were torn to shreds by intangible winds, suspended in airless, soundless stillness.
The stiffness from the chemical burn on his leg was ebbing. His shoulder ached a little less. His heart did not.
He hadn’t told Marthe about Tétreau’s messages. The Sûreté lieutenant had asked Émile for his decision a couple of times, politely enough. Émile wasn’t sure how much he ought to hustle on the answer. Even if he did say yes, he didn’t want Tétreau to think he was one of those hop-to-it types.
He’d spent a lot of time thinking about Pascal and Jean-Eudes, too. He was still steamed that Pascal hadn’t trusted him with the family secret. He’d trusted a stranger rather than Émile. Would he have even believed Pascal, though? If it had been anyone but Marthe telling him their plan, he’d have called prank on them. But Marthe’s sense of humor was shit.
Émile didn’t want to lay this all on Pascal. The poor guy had been eleven when Émile left. No Émile. No Marthe. No maman. He’d been raised entirely by the old man. Émile knew well enough George-Étienne’s force of will. All defects aside, the old bastard was unrelenting. Eleven-year-old Pascal wouldn’t have stood a chance. Neither would Jean-Eudes. Émile had left them with George-Étienne. He owed them.
His choices shifted and evaporated and reformed faster than he could keep up. Everything had felt like a dead end before he’d met Thérèse; five years of shitty jobs and loser friends while the Causapscal-des-Vents slowly decayed around him and Marthe. And then, all of a sudden, he
was on some new path.
Artists gave a shit about things beyond the day-to-day and getting high. They thought about the eternal and the essential, about philosophical questions. And Thérèse was... Thérèse. And it seemed like being something, someone other than just a hammer and ratchet monkey, fixing plumbing and venting. He didn’t just have one unchanging day after another.
And when Pascal came up, it had been like opening a door long closed. His own little brother, back in his life. Émile had been serious about Pascal coming up to live. They could have shared a room, or even made a single rack space work with two hammocks, if need be. He’d done it before. Having Pascal here would have been making a family again.
And maybe Alexis could come up too. Émile was his goddamn uncle. He could raise his sister’s boy. He hadn’t really thought so far, but hell, there’d even be room for Jean-Eudes. Marthe was a good negotiator. She could get him a rack too. It was one thing for the colonie to tell a family to abort a fetus, but Jean-Eudes was a grown man with rights now. But that dream, the family whole again, had vanished in minutes. Pascal was George-Étienne’s son. And when he disappeared into the clouds with Gabriel-Antoine, the might-have-beens followed him down.
A few weeks ago he’d been at the point of committing to Thérèse. He’d all but given her his whole soul. When he’d offered to take her down, to make a place for her to live in the depths, as a coureur, that hadn’t been talk. He didn’t know where that came from; it hadn’t been all about her.
He was done with needing people’s permission and approval for every little pot to piss in. Offering the depths to Thérèse had been desperate, but sometimes desperation blew away obscuring clouds. The idea of just being a farmer, a herder, came from somewhere. No approvals. No laws. Just muscle and brains against the power of Venus, a trawler of his own, and a family of his own, scrawling lines of poetry while Thérèse made art out of the living things of Venus. But all that had been yanked painfully away, like burnt skin pulled free, exposing the seeping soft pink beneath. It stung.
Even the offer to be a constable was sudden, dizzying and frankly ridiculous. He didn’t know what they were smoking to think he’d be good. He was big, but there had to be more to it than that. Most of the Sûreté had to be more than hired goons taking bribes. But that looked like it would all evaporate too. Maybe Marthe was right and it was a bribe. A dumb idea.
But was it any dumber than what Pascal and Pa had cooked up? Câlisse, this was all nuts. A road to the stars, underground, that they couldn’t touch? This was how he had to make things right with his brothers? Could he even?
The Baie-Comeau’s rooftop, where he’d last crashed with Thérèse, lay beneath, striped with reflective paint and edged with runway lights and flashing lamps on the safety netting. He spoiled his airspeed, flared and landed right in the middle of the roof with only a few extra steps, stiff as he tried to avoid bending his knees too much with the healing skin. He furled his wings and stepped closer to a small crowd of people. Tétreau broke from the group and shook Émile’s shoulder, hand-signaling that he was on channel twenty-four. Émile dialed himself up to twenty-four.
“Thanks for the invitation,” he said.
“No problem,” Tétreau said. “Nothing like a raid.”
“What d’you want me to do?”
“It’s a simple one,” Tétreau said. “We got a tip on somebody sitting on a shitload of stockpiled parts on the Batiscanie. We go in. You watch. Other than domestics or theft, hoarding and black marketing is the major thing we go after.”
“These all Sûreté?” Émile asked.
A lot of people wore the same survival suits as him, a little worn, but obviously woven in the clouds. They carried carbon night-sticks, and a couple had crowbars. Two of them were bigger, close to Émile’s size, in sleek suits that looked lightly armored. Lumpy holsters showed on their waists.
“This is one of the Sûreté crews,” Tétreau said. “A couple are Bank guys, doing a ride-along. They haven’t got much to do otherwise except sit around the branch office.”
Tétreau signaled to one of the Sûreté with chevrons painted onto his chest and arms. The NCO got everyone’s attention, said a few things on another channel, then he led them off the roof and into the sky. Tétreau slapped Émile’s shoulder and they followed, the starlight creating blurred ghosts of the wispy clouds to left and right.
“My main job as an assistant in l’Assemblée is getting busier,” Tétreau said conversationally as the thin air whistled past them. “I probably don’t have enough time to keep up with the Sûreté. Boniface could lead for me, but someone will have to fill in for him as sergeant.”
“Yeah?” Émile said.
“Most of these guys are good enough for raids and following orders, but I don’t know that any of them are good enough to whip the other guys into shape,” Tétreau said. “Boniface tells them where to go and what to do and they do it, but he can’t be lieutenant and sergeant both.”
The Batiscanie resolved in the darkness, tiny running lights coming nearer. Boniface was just a dark figure against back-lit clouds, a green light winking on one wing, red on the other. Three guys formed a triangle ahead of him. The two Bank guys flew farther back. Tétreau and Émile were back and high.
“Why don’t you watch and tell me what you think of the op?” Tétreau said.
“Sure.”
The wing tips banked and the three guys swooped in, one landing quickly on the roof of the Batiscanie, one pulling a close circuit, the third tracing a wide circle. The first clipped his safety wire, dropped his wings and put a screw gun to the hinges of the roof doorway as the second landed. Then the sergeant touched down and the main doorway was open. Their billy clubs were out. Émile itched to be closer.
“Nice landings,” Émile said. “Can I listen on their channel?”
“Fifty-seven,” Tétreau said.
Émile’s radio didn’t even go that high. “Can I land too?”
“Just do what they did,” Tétreau said.
He and Tétreau set down. Émile found himself grinning. The Bank guys circled. Their flying wasn’t so smooth. Maybe not surprising. They were just cycled in for a four-year posting, then off to some other Bank assignment. Lucky bastards.
Émile didn’t bother asking permission; he just went down the stairs. Tétreau followed. The Batiscanie was about twice the size of the Causapscal-des-Vents, with a lot of burnt-out light bulbs, walls stripped of metal, and thickets of exposed wires. Noise sounded through the airlock. Tétreau and Émile jammed themselves in and cycled themselves through. Émile noticed Tétreau wasn’t bothering with neutralizing. So be it.
The airlock opened onto a tight galley, behind which four curtained doorways led astern. The three cops were bunched at two of the openings. Émile still couldn’t hear any of the chatter through his radio because he couldn’t tune to channel fifty-seven, but there was plenty of air, and he cracked the seal on his helmet and lifted it clear. The air smelled of yeast and fermentation.
A couple of people were yelling “Sûreté tabarnak,”“espèce de crisse de colon,” and “rendez-vous!” They were too tightly bunched to swing their clubs effectively. Boniface got knocked back by someone.
Tétreau yelled at them all, pulling them back. Boniface had a bloody nose. Another guy’s club was wet with something. Beyond them, two angry guys and a woman stood in the doorways, holding makeshift clubs made out of bars that looked like they’d been taken out of the structural struts of the habitat. Behind them were illegal stills, scattered metal scraps, tools, and what looked like old or spare parts, more than even Phocas was hoarding.
Émile wondered if he’d be able to take any of them. He was bigger, but unarmed.
Somewhere a baby started crying. The two guys and the woman leapt forward ferociously, striking fast and hard with their improvised clubs, forcing back the three cops, spilling the fight into the slightly wider galley area. Boniface went down, stunned with a loud knock to the head. On
e of the cops pinned the woman. Tétreau joined the fight with a club in one hand and a taser in the other. There was a lot of quick radio talk and shouting. The baby screamed louder. Tétreau had one guy cornered, but the cop with him took a hit to the eye. His opponent pulled a knife.
Émile caught the guy’s wrist and wrenched his arm back. The guy grappled with him over the knife, but Émile swung him into the door frame, once, twice, three times, before twisting his arm back so far that his hand opened senselessly. Émile wrestled him to the floor and got onto his back. The woman’s hands were tied behind her back. The guy in the corner had his hands up. Tétreau was grinning at Émile and tossed him plastic wrist ties. Émile tied the guy’s wrists together and stood. Their last cop opened the airlock and came in.
“Bit more fight than we expected, eh?” Tétreau said, helping Boniface to his feet.
“A bit short,” Émile joked. The adrenaline rush made the ache in his leg feel more distant.
Émile lumbered towards the crying. In a low hammock in a small room, a wet-cheeked toddler fell silent when Émile came into view. Pascal had been this small once, running around their old habitat in a diaper. If things had worked out differently, maybe he and Thérèse might have been minding a toddler in a few years. The thoughts stirred wistful mourning. The child’s lip trembled. Émile neutralized his arms and chest quickly and picked him up. The toddler squirmed and whined.
“Voyons, mon vieux,” Émile said softly. “It’s after your bedtime, isn’t it?”
He bounced the toddler in his arms, but the child wouldn’t settle. A couple of the bound people swore at him.
“Viens,” Tétreau said beside him, reaching for the child.
Émile handed him over. The woman was sitting against the wall, her face bruised, her hands unbound again. She glared at Émile and Tétreau, but Boniface was near her with his club ready. Tétreau gave her the toddler and after a bit of fussing, he settled.
One of Tétreau’s crew was in the back room. “Crisse!” he said. “There must be two hundred kilos of steel in here!”
“Oh man,” another cop said. “Get a load of their still!”
The House of Styx Page 33