The House of Styx

by Derek Künsken

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  “WE NEED TO stop collecting the charge, or we have to put it somewhere,” Marie-Pier repeated to him.

  George-Étienne stood with Marie-Pier and Gabriel-Antoine on one of the four trawlers forming the buoyancy frame. The trawler cables bowed out more and more. The charge on the cable holding the Causapscal-des-Vents was building.

  “The cables aren’t designed for that much weight,” Marie-Pier said, “and the strength of the cables is weakest in their conducting state.”

  George-Étienne chewed at the inside of his cheek. Sweat rolled through the stubble on his chin.

  “What if we power the Causapscal-des-Vents off the charge?” he asked.

  “Oui,” Gabriel-Antoine said, “but if we run too many things, someone might see it.”

  “Oxygen,” Marie-Pier said. “Use the electricity to crack carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. It takes a lot of power but doesn’t have any moving parts. Nothing to make noise or create electrical static.”

  “The trick will be wiring it up,” George-Étienne said. “If we land on the Causapscal-des-Vents now, we’ll likely get a shock strong enough to knock us out. Any ideas?”

  “There’s no place for the charge to go right now,” Gabriel-Antoine said, “even if we could ground it.”

  “The other bobs,” Marie-Pier said.

  “What?”

  “The four surrounding trawlers are conducting properly,” she said. “Their electroplaques will soak up additional charge.”

  “To a point,” George-Étienne said.

  “To a point.”

  “But by then, one of us could get to the Causapscal-des-Vents and run a line from the cable to the electrical system,” Gabriel-Antoine said.

  “The dangerous part is all of it,” Marie-Pier said.

  “Are you joking?” George-Étienne asked.

  She shook her head. He wasn’t sure what to think of her right now. She handed him a coil of cabling and clipped a different one to his chest harness.

  “Lower yourself down to the cable on this trawler and tie that around,” she said. “Then come back up. I’ll do the same on the other three.”

  “This’ll carry a charge?” George-Étienne said dubiously, hefting the coil of cable.

  “Enough for now.”

  “How do we connect it to the central cable holding up the Causapscal-des-Vents without electrocuting ourselves?” he asked.

  Gabriel-Antoine judged the cable for a few moments and pulled a small steel hammer from his tool pockets. Then he explained. It wasn’t the best plan George-Étienne had ever heard, but they were close to losing everything, and he had none of his children around him to help. George-Étienne clambered down the rope and swung on the line until he could grab the trunk of the central cable under this trawler. It was thicker than he was and tingled as he wrapped his legs around it. He moved quickly, tying a loop around it and let go, swinging back out into space before the uncertain currents started seizing up his leg muscles.

  Marie-Pier flitted over to the next trawler head like she was born for the depths and George-Étienne felt a weird pride, not through the artificial marriage that they’d made, but from the simple fact that such a competent woman had agreed to partner with him in any sense. He’d spent a lot of his life second-guessing himself. That this dream of his was worth others risking their livelihoods and lives gave him an inner solidity he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  “And you?” he said, turning to Gabriel-Antoine.

  The young engineer was shifting nervously. And he was still just looking down at George-Étienne’s youngest child. Gabriel-Antoine faced him, a bit distracted, but after a few moments, he looked up at the clouds that pressed down on them, like he’d just realized he was twenty kilometers from open sky. It took time to adjust to the depths. The sky and stars were far away, but radar and radio made la colonie feel far too close sometimes.

  “I’m here,” Gabriel-Antoine said.

  George-Étienne handed him the coil of cabling and then the small hammer which he’d left on top of the trawler head. The younger man tied the cabling around the T of the hammer and tested its weight.

  “How are you going to make it hold?” George-Étienne asked.

  “It should hold itself,” Gabriel-Antoine said, positioning himself for a throw.

  Gabriel-Antoine heaved with a loud grunt that sounded through their helmets and through the hot, thick atmosphere. The hammer carried the cabling on a wide arc that swung short of the cable holding up the Causapscal-des-Vents. Gabriel-Antoine cursed as he pulled it up. Little arcs of blue electricity licked between it, the side of the trawler, and Gabriel-Antoine’s gloves.

  Their suits were rubberized as much as Venusian acid and heat chemistry allowed and laced with grounding wires, but they couldn’t block more than small charges. If they’d designed the suits to handle the big charges, the suits would be so bulky as to be dangerous or the conduction of electricity would melt parts of the suits, creating new problems. They had to take some small shocks at times to live down here. But the more Gabriel-Antoine pulled up the cabling, the less charge it had left.

  The engineer steadied himself as the wind came up and the trawlers lurched unnaturally. A single trawler could ride the wind like a boat on slow ocean waves. But the buoyancy frame they’d made caught the wind in counter-intuitive ways, and the Causapscal-des-Vents was a big awkward windbreak right now. George-Étienne’s wind legs were not much steadier.

  Gabriel-Antoine swung the hammer on the end of the cabling faster and faster and then finally released it with a loud heave. It fell through the air, long and wide. As it came to the end of its length, it swung around, describing an arc that crossed the cable holding up the habitat. A loud snap and a burst of electricity sounded as the cables touched. The hammer orbited the cable in a tightening spiral that ended abruptly when the hammer touched the cable and stuck.

  “Woo!” Gabriel-Antoine shouted, pumping the air with his fist. The cable and bob beneath their trawler stopped bowing outward and hung straight, now swinging gently in the wind like a pendulum as it came to a new rest.

  “The hammer stuck,” George-Étienne said.

  “The cable is magnetized for now,” Gabriel-Antoine explained.

  Marie-Pier had finished tying an extra loop of cabling to the adjacent trawler and was moving to the third. Gabriel-Antoine flew to that trawler while George-Étienne flitted quickly to the last one and did the same. As the grounding cables were tied, he and Gabriel-Antoine heaved them with ferro-magnetic weights, trying to catch the middle cable. It was harder than it looked, and it took them a few tries to loop around the new connections.

  “It’s not real grounding,” Gabriel-Antoine said. “The whole structure of the four trawlers and the habitat is collecting a big static charge as they move through the clouds. But at least everything has the same charge now. We’ll still need to discharge it soon, or drain it off.”

  “Let’s drain quick,” George-Étienne urged. The dangerous part.

  “If I get shocked senseless, you’ll catch me,” Gabriel-Antoine said to him.

  His voice had a tremble of nervousness. No one had ever done this.

  “Bien sûr,” George-Étienne said.

  Gabriel-Antoine flexed his knees a few times, as if working up the courage to jump. Seeing his youngest son laid low, watched over by a young man with tender feelings, made George-Étienne feel his age. Until a few months ago, he would have guessed that his best years were behind him. Not so much now, on the edge of a dream he could give to his children. He put his hand on Gabriel-Antoine’s shoulder.

  “Go,” George-Étienne said, “for the whole family.”

  Gabriel-Antoine stepped to the edge of the slope. George-Étienne followed, banking wide and staying high so that he could dive after Gabriel-Antoine quickly if he fell.

  He watched Gabriel-Antoine swoop down over the roof of the Causapscal-des-Vents, stalled a little too high, and dropped awkwardly to the f
lat surface between the emergency balloons. The crack of an electrical discharge shone between boot and habitat. Static swamped the radio band in George-Étienne’s helmet and Gabriel-Antoine flopped to the roof like a marionette.

  “Is he okay?” Pascal asked.

  Gabriel-Antoine silently lifted his fists in the air. George-Étienne felt himself laughing.

  “C’est bon,” George-Étienne said. “He took a good shock, but he’s okay.”

  Suddenly his earpiece sounded with radar pings and his blood went cold. The colonie had not fallen for Marthe’s distraction. George-Étienne landed on the Causapscal-des-Vents and started deflating emergency bags. Gabriel-Antoine rose beside him and began to do the same. The radar reflections of the emergency oxygen bags would be easy to spot. Up above, Marie-Pierre was pulling out the extra covering of nets over the four trawlers in the float harness to reduce their radar reflectivity. Radar pings sounded again, but his suit wasn’t equipped to tell him how close the searchers were.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  TÉTREAU PATCHED A private message through control comms down to one-five-six. Woodward was watching the display, as if not listening. He knew some of the other pilots but not as well, and didn’t know anyone in the Bank plane helping in the search for the radiation signature.

  “Réjean, this is Tétreau. How’s it going?”

  “I’m a kilometer above the bottom of the lower cloud deck,” Réjean’s voice crackled back. “I’m ready to piss my pants.”

  Woodward crossed her arms.

  “I’m in sight of one of the deep coureur habitats. It’s ugly as fuck.”

  “Control, give me helmet cam on one-five-six,” Tétreau said.

  After a moment, the screen on Tétreau’s station showed a gloomy yellow haze through a cockpit window. A living habitat floated in the foreground. He’d seen pictures before. This seemed smaller than the ones they made now, green-brown with stringy black plants growing off it like dirty hair. Beneath the main head hung a gantry that looked too flimsy to stand on. It didn’t give off any light.

  “Whose is it?” Woodward said. In the screen, the plane jerked to a stop. “What’s happening?”

  “They can’t land a plane down there, so they blow float balloons to stop,” Tétreau said. “I don’t know who lives there.”

  The screen showed Réjean’s plane coming to within forty meters of the habitat. Other planes had as well. The cockpit window opened and Réjean’s helmet cam moved wildly as he inflated a personal balloon and a propellered drone ferried him to the habitat.

  Other pilots were ahead of him, holding tasers and even guns awkwardly as they crossed the distance. Two drones with Bank of Pallas insignia painted on their sides were in the picture too on little one-person dirigibles that looked more maneuverable. He hadn’t known the Bank had that tech. One of the Bank guys held back, holding a tall whip antenna. The other approached the habitat with Réjean and the other pilots.

  Woodward was probably looking at the crappy equipment on the constables as much as Tétreau was evaluating the shiny armored survival suit and sidearm of the Bank guard waiting on the gantry. He had no authority here and couldn’t go first. He was an observer and backup. Arsenault was first and Réjean second. Then, a clearer image showed on Nasmith’s screen, from the helmet cam of the Bank guard.

  “Let’s go,” Arsenault said to Réjean and another constable. “You two follow after we’re in.”

  “Crisse. Crisse. Crisse,” Réjean was saying in his helmet microphone. Arsenault handed Réjean the clicking Geiger wand and unholstered his taser. Then he started opening the airlock. The Bank cam watched the door close, while the static on Réjean’s feed became worse. Arsenault worked the controls.

  “You nervous?” Arsenault asked.

  “No,” Réjean said, an octave higher.

  “Going in,” Arsenault said. “Follow as soon as the airlock has greened.”

  Arsenault spun the other wheel and pushed the door open. The two of them spilled onto a darkened room with a curving wooden floor. Arsenault slammed the door behind them, spinning the wheel closed so that backup could get here quick. Réjean’s helmet cam darted nervously left and right, making it hard for Tétreau to make much out. His taser trembled as he swept the dark. Arsenault shone a shaky hand lamp and advanced.

  “This is Sûreté de la Colonie,” Arsenault called on a speaker on his suit. “Come out. We have a warrant.” The Bank guard’s helmet cam showed them coming into the dark habitat. “And backup,” he added.

  No one came out. Réjean was waving the pinging Geiger wand, towards what looked like a back room.

  “I don’t recognize the layout,” Woodward said in her clumsy English accent. “Is that normal?”

  Tétreau shrugged. “The coureurs can grow as many internal walls as they want and then cut out the ones they don’t. I’ve only ever been in a couple. They were newer.”

  Réjean screamed. The Geiger wand dropped and his light shine wobbled with jerky movements. Someone was tackling him. Réjean’s helmet cam watched his taser needles spike the ceiling. Through the Bank guard’s helmet cam, they saw Arsenault slamming his fists into the man in the half-dark, failing to dislodge him. Réjean kicked and kicked.

  “Ostie d’tabarnak de gouvernement!” the attacker said, getting enough of the upper hand to knock down Arsenault too.

  Thunder sounded in both helmet cams, with bright flashes of light. The man stilled and rolled off Réjean, collapsing on the floor. Réjean scrambled away on his back. He had blood all over his suit. He patted himself all over, looking for the leak or the stab entry wound. There was nothing. Arsenault helped him stand. A bearded man lay on the floor, gasping as he bled away. Réjean kicked him. The Bank guard held a smoking gun in his hand and he was looking at Réjean.

  “Find the radiation,” he said in English.

  Tétreau held himself still and Woodward didn’t say anything either. Réjean’s helmet cam showed the trembling Geiger wand, leading them to a dark bedroom. Arsenault’s light showed a small workshop. A lead box in one of the sloping corners pinged louder. Arsenault carefully lifted the lid and the wand went crazy. He shut it.

  “Grégoire Tremblay,” the other constable said of the dead man on the floor.

  “Who’d he get this from?” Arsenault asked.

  Réjean’s helmet cam pointedly didn’t swivel back to give Tétreau a view of the idiot Bank guard who’d killed the only one who could answer.

  SIXTY-NINE

  THIS WAS THE hardest flying Émile had ever done: swooping forward, jerking on a cable attached to his floating sister, stalling, recovering from the stall, and climbing until he was yanked back again. Every few pulls, he tried the radio, but hadn’t been able to raise anyone. The clouds of Venus were an ocean too big and he was a speck, pulling over and over in a shapeless world of hot, melting colors. Through it all, they’d gained a few kilometers. They had risen from the haze into the clouds at forty-eighth rang. The storm still batted them around with inscrutable updrafts and cross-winds, but the temperature had dropped to eighty degrees and the pressure to one and a half atmospheres. A drizzle of sulfuric acid began to fall just as the engine of his wing-pack began to sputter.

  With a panicked twist, he turned in the air, circling Marthe tightly as he tried to grab a hold of the cable holding them together. His engine gave out before he got a good grip. He fell to the end of his line and his weight briefly pulled down Marthe’s motionless form and the balloons.

  He swore, folding back his wings and at least righting himself on the end of the line. He was hanging about twenty meters below her. They weren’t sinking anymore, although the speed of their rise was hard to measure against the sputtering winds mixing the clouds.

  He forced himself to be calm and let himself dangle as he ran a check of the engine. All the telltales were red. It wouldn’t start. A few things could chew up an engine that fast, and all of them were different ways in which concentrated sulfuric acid could get past the c
arbon casing and into the working parts. Acid would melt the smart circuitry, the electrical connections, and even wreck the battery chambers. It might be repairable, but not hanging under his sister at the edge of a storm forty-nine kilometers above the surface of Venus.

  Calvaire!

  He took a deep breath, checked the attachment of the cable. Falling and cooking wasn’t a quick death.

  He opened the latches over the straps of his wing-pack and tugged the release loops. The straps made a zipping sound as they slid off his shoulders and his wing-pack fell behind him. He twisted his neck and then body and caught sight of the wing-pack shrinking beneath him. It became fuzzier, blurring, becoming one with the clouds. There was never closure, no instant of “was” turning into “was not”. Not with his wing-pack, not with Chloé, and not with Thérèse. Not even with the Causapscal-des-Vents. Things just drifted out of sight.

  He didn’t have the spare D-rings and straps to set up a climbing harness. He heaved himself up twenty centimeters with just his arms. Then twenty more. The cable was slippery with acid, but he heaved twenty centimeters again. After a meter, he could wrap his legs around the cable too and give himself a bit more leverage.

  Nineteen meters to go.

  The wind picked up, howling outside his helmet in the sonorous closeness he’d not heard in five years. Sound was a washed-out, slow thing up in the flotilla. Supposedly fifty-fifth rang was the same pressure that humans had evolved in. He’d listened to sounds at fifty-fifth. It didn’t feel natural to him, no matter what evolution said. He’d grown up at two-and-a-half atmospheres of pressure and close to a hundred degrees Celsius, where noise felt close and rich. He’d tried describing this to Thérèse and she’d just thought it incomprehensible and perhaps charming.

  He kept climbing. Arm over arm, a hundred kilos of bone and muscle, and another twenty of suit and air tank. Climbing out of Venus.