Venus of Dreams

by Pamela Sargent

  He reached into his pocket and took out the carving he had finished. Iris’s face gazed out at him from the wood; her eyes looked past him to another place. Her upper lip was curled in a cold smile. She had looked like that the last time he had spoken to her.

  “May I see that?”

  He gazed into the long, pale face of a blond woman; a Linker’s gem shone on her forehead. He held up the carving.

  “Did you do that?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll buy it from you.” She held her wristband to her lips, ready to make the purchase. “Just tell me your name, Nomarchy of residence, and the price, and we’ll put it into your account.”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “Ah, a bargaining ploy. Name your price, Citizen. I can afford it.”

  “It’s not for sale.”

  She tilted her head. “Too bad. Do you do a lot of that?”

  “When I can. It’s a hobby.”

  “You have talent. I have friends who’d pay a lot for something original and handmade. I don’t suppose you’d change your mind later.”

  Chen was silent as he thought of the cost of his trip. He could use the money, and Eric might need some help as well. He would hardly have to force the credit on Eric, who was deeply in debt to Fatima, but he wondered if Eric would pay the shopkeeper or simply spend the credit at the tavern.

  “It’s a gift,” he said at last. “I can’t sell it.”

  “I’ll be at the Tamanaco for three days,” the woman said. “If you like, just come there and ask for Arla Goddell — that’s my name. Just tell the clerk that you’re the craftsman from the port. Maybe you could do another for me. I must rush.”

  As the woman hastened away, Chen saw that Iris was approaching him. Her face was taut, her green eyes more prominent. He stood up and she stepped back, not seeming to see his outstretched arms.

  “What are you doing here, Chen?”

  “What kind of greeting is that?”

  She eyed him warily; then her face softened and she kissed him awkwardly on the cheek, bumping her nose against his. “Well,” she said.

  “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t get here before now. You didn’t have to wait — you could have met me at the Institute. There’s an express right over there.” She pointed down the hall. Next to a doorway, signs in several languages were posted, while a woman on a screen repeated the information on the signs for those who could not read.

  She took his arm, not even glancing at the carving as he put it into his pocket. He picked up his duffel and let her lead him toward the tubeway entrance.

  An escalator carried them down to a platform, where they waited with other passengers until the magneto-train whispered through the tubeway to their side. Iris elbowed her way through the crowd and found a seat near the back of one car. He glanced at the back of her neck as she sat down; her thick brown hair was still short, and she was wearing light green shorts and a sleeveless green blouse. A couple of men across the aisle were staring at her muscular bare legs.

  Chen sat down next to her. “I thought you’d want to see Benzi, as you always do,” she said. “You came at a bad time. I have a lot to do.”

  “You always have a lot to do.”

  “You should have given me more warning.”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  The train shot out of the tubeway and hummed as it passed flickering towers, then hurtled past adobe houses and patches of green. In the distance, Chen could now see the mountains around the city. His view was suddenly obscured by more towers even higher than the last. Iris gazed out the window, her face turned away from him.

  “You haven’t said much in your messages lately,” Chen said. “You used to tell me a little about your friends here, and now you hardly mention them. Is Alexandra Lenas still here?”

  “I don’t see much of her any more.”

  “Does that older student Esteban still give you advice?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Sometimes,” she said at last.

  “I wondered. You haven’t talked about him for a while.”

  “He grew up on Basic. I don’t know if I ever told you that. He used to work in the port as a guide to get credit for lessons. A Linker found him there and became his patron, decided he should be sent to a school.” Her voice held a trace of an accusatory tone, as if she were wondering why Chen had not shown such industry and ambition. She touched his hand lightly. “I am glad you came, really,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t know how much time we’ll be able to have alone.”

  “Better a little than none at all.” He paused. “How’s that boy you met when you first came here, the Linker’s son?”

  She shifted a little in her seat, then leaned back. “Anthony? He left the school a month ago.”

  “Why?”

  Iris looked grim. “He had to. Oh, no one asked him to leave, but he soon saw he wasn’t welcome. You know, he had some rather odd ideas, kept talking about how the Project was part of a historical discontinuity instead of being a natural outgrowth of Earth’s development. He used to argue about that in some of our discussions, and the rest of us would keep pointing out that it was the Habbers who broke with the past, not us, that we seek to redeem it instead.”

  Chen nodded, not sure he understood what she was talking about but waiting for her to continue. “Does it matter what you think, one way or the other?” he asked.

  “It matters that we consider what the Project is for,” Iris answered. She had grown more animated and seemed to have lost her unease for the moment. “It isn’t enough just to know that we might have the technical means to transform a world. It isn’t even enough to realize that what we find out there may someday help us here, though that’s important too. A lot of people don’t realize it, but the future progress of all the Nomarchies hinges on that Project. Earth might stagnate without it. But once Venus is settled, a new culture there can revitalize Earth, the way younger, newer cultures changed old ones in the past. Differences move history forward.”

  “I see,” he said, remembering similar comments he had heard on the Islands. “But the Habitats are something new too. Why couldn’t they —”

  “We may need the Habs for certain things, but they’re still a break, a discontinuity. They’ve given up the good of human history along with the bad. They pretend human beings are nothing more than a rational mind, and we’re not. Their worlds are constructs of consciousness, planned and controlled. Their way can only lead to sterility. A planet is more like an organism, with both a rational mind and an autonomic nervous system, and it also offers something outside of ourselves for us to explore. No matter what we accomplish on Venus, no matter how much control we gain over its environment, there will always be that other, outside of ourselves, that we can’t control, and that will both make us stronger and give us a sense of our true place in the universe. Habbers live in a closed environment that they dominate. They live in an illusion.”

  Chen considered her words, sure that he had at least grasped the main point. The Habbers he had known did not seem to fit her description; they had been only too aware of being specks on the sea of space. But Iris had more knowledge than he possessed; she had to understand these matters better than he could.

  Iris was staring out of the window again. “What about Anthony?” Chen asked. “You didn’t finish telling me about him.”

  “Oh.” She fidgeted, looking distinctly uneasy. “I guess my talk must bore you.”

  She would never have said that before, he thought with a pang. She had already forgotten how often he had questioned her about her lessons, how much enjoyment he had taken in hearing about what she had learned even when he could not understand everything she would say.

  “It wasn’t just his questions,” she went on. “We’re supposed to ask questions, it’s part of our training. But Anthony acted as though he already had the answers. He claimed that we didn’t really understand what the Proj
ect would lead to, that once Venus was settled, it might even become something separate from the Nomarchies — as if it could. It would need Earth’s help for centuries. Anthony was sort of simple-minded, in a way — he kept saying that there was a contradiction at the heart of the Project, that we wanted Venus to diverge and yet be part of us as well. He didn’t seem to see —” She paused.

  “It’s not something you’ll find out with talk,” Chen said.

  Iris shrugged. “Well, that wasn’t why he left. It wasn’t even that he started wondering whether or not the Project was being pushed too fast. That was another thing that bothered him, the plans to build domes on the surface as soon as possible instead of waiting — oh, he would harp on that.”

  “He isn’t the only one. Some people on the Islands wondered about that.”

  “Well, it’s either taking a chance on domes or waiting for centuries. People are getting impatient — they’ve waited long enough. You can understand that, Chen. You’re waiting yourself. We have materials now that are strong enough for domed settlements there. If we couldn’t do it, we wouldn’t risk it. After all, it may be our lives that are at stake. We need space for settlers soon.”

  He took her hand. At least they still shared that vision. She let her palm rest in his, then drew her hand away. “I do run on,” she said. “You can see why my messages are so short. If I let myself go, I’d just go on and on forever, and God only knows what that would cost. Anyway, Anthony began to get kind of disruptive — haranguing us in discussions, pestering other students, trying to bring others around to his point of view.”

  Chen frowned, feeling more ignorant than ever. “But if you’re supposed to ask questions, then what was wrong?”

  “He wasn’t just asking questions.” She sighed. “He was also trying to find out what all of us thought. I can’t prove it, but we began to wonder if he’d been sent there to find out which of us might not be suitable for the Project. You know — a spy.”

  Chen kept his face still.

  “It was little things that bothered us.” Iris’s eyes were cold. “A few months ago, Anthony got an increase in his allotment. We all have the same allotment, we have to get extra credit from our families or from work — as if anyone would have the time for a job. The rumor was that he’d done some job for a Counselor, even though he didn’t appear to be doing any extra work. Then he began to get a few extra privileges, a couple of days off, a trip home when the rest of us were advised to stay at the Institute.”

  “Was his work better than anyone’s?” Chen asked.

  “Oh, he was better prepared than most of us when he came, but there were others doing as well at their studies. Then we heard that he’d been telling some of the Administrators about students who agreed with some of his notions. By the time he got smart enough to see how much we resented him, it was too late — no one would talk to him. He lost every friend he had, the few who remained.” She scowled. “That’s why he left. He must have realized that he wasn’t useful any more. I heard he might be going to another school. I suppose he’ll be spying there too.”

  “And I guess you didn’t stay friends with him, either.”

  She lowered her eyes suddenly. “No,” she said sharply. “I had reasons to be sure I kept my distance. I didn’t want anyone thinking — well, you can see.”

  A formless doubt fluttered at the edges of Chen’s thoughts. “But you don’t know if he was really doing anything, do you?”

  “Oh, Chen. Why else would he have left?”

  “Because he lost his friends. Because you didn’t trust him. It’d be hard to stay.”

  Her mouth twisted. “That wouldn’t have stopped him if he were innocent. He could have complained, and brought things out into the open. He would have gone on if he’d really cared about the work. I went on with my lessons even when the rest of Lincoln thought I was a fool for doing them.”

  Her words were hard and merciless. Julia encouraged you, he thought. A Linker tried to help you, your friends still talked to you, and later, you had me. He felt a twinge of sympathy for the Linker’s son he had never met. Whatever his transgression, Anthony’s punishment seemed cruel, and the fact that Anthony had chosen to leave without a fight showed how effective the punishment had been. There had been nothing against which he could have filed a protest.

  The window darkened as the train entered another tubeway. “We’re almost there,” Iris said.

  A platform, protected on all sides by transparent shielding, carried them up past the lattices of the Institute’s pyramid. Occasionally, Chen caught a glimpse of the green land below; Caracas gleamed in the valley, its towers pointed toward the cloudless blue sky.

  Iris had greeted two of the other platform passengers. She stood with them now in one corner as they spoke in soft voices, then waved at another young woman as she boarded the platform. That young woman surveyed Chen; he was suddenly conscious of his gray worker’s garb, and looked away.

  He did not look up again until the platform stopped and the other passengers left. Iris had known them, yet she had not even introduced him, and he had not heard his name mentioned in her murmurings to the others. He was invisible; somehow, he had disappeared and his bondmate had forgotten him.

  She touched his sleeve, startling him. “Just one more level.” The platform stopped and they stepped out onto a surface lined with palm trees and hibiscus bushes. The level, protected by high railings, was open to the air; the trees fluttered in the wind.

  “Sometimes, somebody tries to jump,” Iris said. Chen stepped back from the railing. “But if you climb on the railing, the sensors signal and a servo’s sent out to restrain you immediately.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The person’s taken to one of the physicians. If it’s just a momentary depression, something’s prescribed and a Counselor’s called in. If it’s more serious, the student gets a leave for treatment, unless his work’s going really badly — if it is, then he’s advised to leave. It happens once in a while — there’s a lot of pressure. It’s hard to think you might fail.”

  “You wouldn’t do anything like that — jumping, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t want that on my record. It’d be bound to hurt my chance to get to the Islands.”

  He followed her past a few shell-shaped dwellings of pink and white stone until she stopped in front of one. “This is mine. If you get lost, just remember that I’m on the eighth level and this is the eleventh one in from the platform on the north side. That way, someone can always direct you. Or you can just tell the servo my name.” Her voice was impersonal, as if she were a tour guide.

  She led him inside. A few students were sitting in the front room eating an early supper; the young men were shirtless while the young women wore sleeveless shirts and shorts. One woman looked up and nodded at Iris before turning back to her reading screen. One student was tall and blond, another looked African, a third had a flat, broad, copper-colored face, while a fourth looked like one of Chen’s people, yet their similar clothes and slumped posture as they perused their reading screens made them seem alike. The Institute had already begun to mold them, smoothing away their differences.

  They walked through the room toward a ramp; Chen thought he heard one of the women giggle. Iris stopped in front of the first door at the top of the ramp, took his hand, pressed it against a panel, then put her own palm next to it, “That’s so you can get in when I’m not here,” she murmured, though she hardly had to explain that; she was treating him like a stranger again. “And the front door will now open for you too”

  The door slid open. The room was small and bare. Iris’s clothes hung on a thin rod; her bed was a small platform.

  “What’s that?” He gestured at the room’s only ornament, a blue crystal on a shelf above her screen.

  “A mood stone. When I hold it, it soothes me.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “It was a gift.” She did not say
who had given it to her. “I guess we should eat soon. You’d better use your own account, though — my allotment only covers what I eat, and I don’t have much credit.”

  He dropped his duffel. “Iris.” He reached for her. She drew back for a moment, then rested against him, her head on his shoulder. “It’s been too long.”

  She stroked his hair, then freed herself. “Listen, I promised to meet someone about now, before I knew you were coming, but I won’t be long. I’ll just be outside. You can rest if you want, and then we’ll have supper.”

  She had retreated from the room before he could ask her why she didn’t want him to meet her friend. He sat down on the bed. Perhaps he was making it harder on her by reminding her of her home; maybe her teachers would regard him as a distraction, and disapprove of his visit. He should have thought of that before.

  He waited, growing hungry. He thought of walking around the level, but the journey had tired him. At last he stood up and left the room; he strode down the ramp and passed another student on her way to her room.

  The front room was now empty except for one young man slouched over his portable screen. He looked up at Chen and shook back his long blond hair. “Looking for Iris?”

  Chen nodded.

  “I thought I saw you come in with her. She’s just out there. I’m Edwin Barris. Are you an old friend of Iris’s?”

  “Yes,” he answered, unwilling to say more, not knowing what Iris might have told Edwin about him or what the young man might be to her. “I’m Liang Chen.”

  Edwin grinned. “You’re her son’s father, then. She’s mentioned you.” He stood up. “You actually worked on the Project. She told us that too.”

  “For a while.”

  “I wish I could talk to you about it, but I have to study. Too bad you didn’t come here when we have more time off. Things get more interesting then. That’s what it’s like here — wild or dead. Not too wild, though. Wouldn’t want anyone to think we couldn’t be good, cooperative sorts on the Islands.” Edwin grimaced, and Chen became aware of the strain and fatigue in the young man’s face. “Staying for a while?”