He stared at the screen. Against the Parasol’s ebony fans, he could see the tiny lights of the northern Bat, and felt guilt as he thought of his father. Lightning flickered on the shadowed planet below, and he remembered his mother, who had mapped Venus’s storms but had not understood the storms raging inside her own son.
Colorful bands of light suddenly appeared above the north pole; Benzi caught his breath at the beauty of the aurorae. The lights became a fan of rainbows; the sun’s corona haloed the edge of the Parasol. Benzi gazed at Venus one last time as the shuttle’s engines thrust them out of orbit.
Several people had left the common room for other parties elsewhere. Iris stood near the door, groggy from hours of drinking wine, expecting Amir to enter at any moment. He would have known she would be here, and even the Administrators could forget their duties for a little while on such a day.
Near her, on the floor, Chantal was sitting with a group of Institute graduates who had wandered into the common room. They were already deep in reminiscences about their Institute days; having dealt with their awkwardness and uncertainty during their first months there, they had gone on to talk of their early blunders in discussions and had then arrived at tales of their first wild journeys into Caracas. Wine, along with the joyful spirit of the day, had lent the stories a cheery flavor; the most appalling and painful events had taken on the air of adventures. The group had now progressed to the Institute’s legends — Kevin Tellford, who had been given Linker training after only a year of study, and Hiro Fukuda, who had roamed the Institute with a mangy dog he had found in Caracas; who had insisted on bringing the dog to discussions, who had left the Institute after a famous party during which he had appeared on everyone’s screens to give a drunken speech on hedonistic ethics, and who had somehow managed to find his way to the Project as a worker.
Iris sipped her wine. Everyone was speaking of the past, it seemed, steeping themselves in it just before Venus’s new era truly began. A knot of celebrants were standing near the screen, speaking to a gathering on another Island. The image on the screen suddenly changed; now, a man was speaking to those nearest the screen, but Iris could not hear his words above the hubbub. A few heads turned; she realized that several people at that end of the room were staring at her.
“Iris?”
She turned. Edris Shaktiar had entered the room. His bondmate Nahid was holding a hand in front of her pretty mouth, and her large brown eyes were wide with concern.
“Iris,” Edris said again. “Haven’t you heard?” He plucked at his beard. “I guess you haven’t. I just heard the story a few moments ago. I thought I should come to you immediately.”
Before Iris could speak, Nahid seized her hand and thrust it into Edris’s. “Not here,” Nahid said; her accent seemed more pronounced than usual. “You tell her outside, Edris, not in front of all of these here.” She patted Iris on the arm. “God help you.”
Chantal was getting to her feet; Nahid drew the blond woman aside. Edris led Iris toward the door quickly. “Steady yourself, my friend,” he muttered as the door closed behind them.
The small hill in front of the residence was a dark slope with the pale band of a stone path; evening had come to the Island. Iris had not realized it was so late. “What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know how to tell you.” They walked away from the spiral, then stopped under a tree. “This is bad news.” Her hand tightened around the glass of wine she still held. “It concerns your son.”
Iris waited.
“He was on the landing Island. It seems he volunteered for this shift there, and —”
She dropped the glass and staggered forward; Edris caught her before she could fall. He’s hurt, she thought wildly, and then: He’s dead.
“He was on a shuttle. The ship —”
“He’s dead!” she cried out.
“No, no. He isn’t dead.”
She straightened up, but still held on to his hand. “He was with a group of pilots,” Edris said. “They took the shuttle up and told another pilot on the Platform that they were going to watch from orbit. No one ordered them back — I imagine that by then everyone was too preoccupied to pay any mind to the shuttle. That shuttle set its course for the Habitat. They must have been planning it for some time, knowing that no one would stop them on this day.”
Iris leaned against the tree. “But why?”
“They want to live with the Habbers. They’ve asked to stay there.”
“No. Benzi couldn’t —”
“He was part of the plan. Iris. The pilot Hong Te-yu was with the group, and also Michael Anastas, the man who rescued you. I didn’t catch the other names, but everyone will know them by now.” The bearded man released her hands.
“They’ll be sent back. They’ll be punished.”
“The Habbers won’t send them back against their will. I heard that before I came to you. They won’t be given up.” His lip curled. “They want to be Habbers and forget their bond with the Nomarchies. I suppose they’d call it a better way instead of what it is — disloyalty.”
Iris covered her face. Hearing that her son was dead could not have made her more enraged. She pushed that savage thought aside. Her son had hidden his thoughts from her; he had thrown away the hopes Chen had held for him.
“There are Habbers here,” she whispered. “We can force the Habitats to give our people back.”
“No, Iris. We have no power over the Habs even with them. If they were threatened, the Habbers might cut all ties with Earth and the Project. We’d lose their industries, their tools, the scientific discoveries they dole out to us. They don’t need us, but it would be hard for us to get along without them, much as we want to deny it. And think of this too. Benzi would have no place with the Project now. You would only see him punished if he returned.”
“He deserves it. He would deserve anything they did to him.”
Edris draped an arm over her shoulder. “What a piece of Habber work this day has been. Their engines move our new world, and at that very moment some of our people leap to them.”
She should have suspected it all along. Benzi had never cared about the Project. She should have realized — Iris stiffened. “I’ll be blamed,” she said. “I’m his mother. They’ll think I knew.” Her fingers clawed at his arms.
“No one will blame you. How can you be blamed? You told me he had severed his tie to you and his father.”
That was why he had done it, then. Rage welled inside her; Benzi had broken the tie to protect her and Chen. She took no consolation in that possibility. He had manipulated them for his own ends and had left them to torment themselves worrying about how they had failed him.
She pulled away. “I must speak to someone.”
“Come inside. Nahid and Chantal will —”
“No. I have to see someone else.”
“Let me come with you.”
“You’d better not, Edris. It might not help you if you’re seen with me now.” She hurried off before he could stop her.
A crowd had gathered in front of the round stone building where the Habbers lived. Iris watched from the trees as a man in the clothes of a worker spoke. “I don’t care what you’ve been told,” he cried. “They must have lured them there with lies, and now they won’t give them back. They want something, don’t you see? They’ll take Venus and the Project for themselves, they’ll let us do all the work and then they’ll just take it for themselves.”
“They have worlds already,” someone shouted out.
“You call what they have worlds? Some place where the ground’s over your head? Thinking they’re better than we are.” The man spun around and hurled a rock at the building. Soon the stone walls were being pelted by an onslaught of small rocks and clods of dirt. A few people rushed the nearest door and pounded against it with their fists, but it did not open.
Iris stepped back into the shadows. The Islands had only a small volunteer force of Counselors to keep order; they had never
needed more. The Habbers would be safe enough inside their building until the mob’s rage was exhausted.
She hastened on through the trees, suddenly conscious again of her own predicament. She was the mother of someone who had betrayed the Nomarchies, who had broken every agreement binding him. Amir would understand. She stumbled out from under the trees onto a wide pathway and saw the ziggurat of the Administrators. A crowd had gathered there as well; a woman on the steps was explaining what was happening at the meetings inside, pausing every so often to listen to her Link. Iris ran up the steps quickly, averting her face from the crowd.
The curving corridor she entered was bare of any ornament except for the calligraphic lettering embossed on each door. She slowed her steps and walked on through the hallway until she came to Amir’s room. The Arabic letters on his door blurred as she stared at them; she wiped at her eyes, then put her hand against the lock.
The door slid open, showing her his familiar room. Amir was sitting on a red cushion. She reminded herself that this was a man who loved her, whom she had come to love in her own way. His dark eyes stared at her blankly, then focused on her face.
She moved soundlessly across the carpet and sat down on one of the cushions nearest him. “I was going to wait for you,” she said at last. “I thought you might be at a meeting.”
“I am at the meeting,” he said tonelessly as he tapped the gem on his forehead. “The others can proceed without me for now, or perhaps they’ll want to hear what you have to say through me.” He brushed a sleeve of his long white robe, then folded his arms. “What have you come to tell me, Iris?”
She thought of the others who might be watching and listening to her. She searched Amir’s face, looking for some sign of the warmth and affection she had so often seen there. His eyes were glassy, his face stern.
“My heart is heavy,” she murmured in Arabic, hoping that the more expressive language they had used in their private moments would elicit his sympathy. “My son has thrust a sword through me. I am wounded, Amir, and filled with anger at the son who has deceived me. I curse him for what he has done. May he, if God wills it, find only misery in his new life, and be haunted by the memories of those he left behind. May he, God willing, feel the stabbing of the blade I feel inside me at this moment.”
“Have you come to denounce him, then?” Amir asked. Her chest constricted; he was speaking in Anglaic. “Are you going to say you knew nothing of this?”
“Of course I knew nothing. I called him my son, but he is not my son. He severed his bond with me. He was lost to me even before he went to the Habbers. You can’t believe that I had anything to do with this.” She realized that Benzi had tried to protect her and Chen in the way he had escaped, but she pushed the thought away.
“Can I really be sure of that? You didn’t fight him when he severed that tie. It could have been part of his plan, a device to protect you and his father. You might have been sure that, in your present position, under my protection, you would be safe enough.”
Amir thought that she had used him. She leaned forward. “Aren’t there ways to know if I’m speaking the truth? There are the bands used to question those suspected of crimes. If you used such a band with me, you’d know.”
He looked away. “You wouldn’t want to go through that. Sometimes such questioning leaves mental scars, makes some people useless for anything except the most undemanding work. Would you risk that to clear your name? What would you have left? You might become useless to the Project then.”
“I would take the chance,” she said, no longer so sure.
“No one here would care to authorize such a thing. Those bands may be useful enough when one is dealing with a simple, brutal mind, but they often fail with more subtle ones. Anyway, if we questioned you, the very fact that it was considered necessary would be enough to cast suspicion on you. Surely you see that.”
She relaxed a little. Did his statement mean that she was safe from doubt? She stared at the geometric pattern of the red and gold carpet, then lifted her eyes to his. He was looking at her the way a falcon might gaze at his prey; he had looked at her the same way when she had first met him, when she hadn’t known if she was going to be praised or punished. She thought: He already knows what’s going to happen to me.
“Amir, I am sorry,” she said. “This Project was what I hoped to be part of for almost all of my life. I wanted my child to be one of the first settlers — I wanted my line to be part of that new world’s history. This doesn’t have to change my dream. I must put it behind me and look to the future. I’m young. There can be other children.” She waited, wishing he would put his arms around her and speak of the hopes they had discussed.
“You dare to speak of that now?” His tone was bitter. She had miscalculated, forgotten that others were listening to them; Amir would not want them reminded of how close he was to her.
“What a day this was to have been,” he continued. “We witnessed the greatest event in Venus’s history so far — our minds were so full of that triumph that we were oblivious to everything else. But your son and the other wretches who were his accomplices thought nothing of that — it was only a distraction to be used to cloak their escape.” He bowed his head. “It was I who told my colleagues that the pilot Michael Anastas and your bondmate Liang Chen should be rewarded instead of punished for their reckless rescue of you and your son. It was I who said that the Project would be better served if we honored the courage and initiative you all showed. You and your son were facing death on the surface below. Do you expect me to believe that, in all the time you were trapped there, he wouldn’t have brought himself to reveal his plans to you, to unburden himself before his death?”
“But he didn’t,” she cried. “He said nothing of that.” Yet she recalled the questions he had tried to ask her, and that he had been about to speak of some matter before Te-yu had cautioned him to be silent. She thought of the times Benzi had come to her with his questions and the times she had dismissed them or had argued with him instead of listening. The Project had always been her son’s rival; maybe she had brought him to hate it.
The signs had always been there — the screen in his room showing a starscape, his talk of the Habbers and their ways. She had simply refused to see those signs.
“Perhaps your son spoke,” Amir said. “Then, when rescue unexpectedly came, you kept his secret. Perhaps you shared what you knew with your bondmate during your little talks, and assured him that you would both be safe because of my feeling for you. You thought of your son, and forgot your duty to the Project. You hid your thoughts from me.”
“It isn’t true!”
“No wonder Michael was so quick to aid you. Two of his accomplices were in danger. He took a risk to save them because he knew that this would strengthen the bonds he had with his other accomplices. His bravery would win their complete loyalty, and your son’s gratitude, and there would be even less risk of a betrayal before they carried out their escape.”
“Amir!”
“Even you would not speak. I’m an Administrator. I spoke up for you, and became your patron. Your son has wounded me too.”
“How I curse my son,” she burst out. “He’s shamed me and called my dream worthless with his deed. I wish he could be brought back here, for I would be the first to call for his punishment. I would stand in front of him and denounce him for choosing the sterile way of the Habs over our way.”
“How desperate you are, Iris. You must be pleased to realize that, with other Linkers now listening to your words, your denunciation is public. I see why you’re here, it’s to plead for yourself and deflect suspicion. What shall we do — send you back to Earth? That might be the right decision, since it would serve as an example to others who might be misled.”
She swayed; Amir’s bearded face blurred.
“But that might cause hard feelings,” he went on. “Some would say that you were bearing what should have been your son’s punishment, and think we were unfeeling a
nd insensitive. The Project cannot move forward if we are not trusted.” His voice seemed distant.
“Amir, you know me. You must see that I’m not to blame.”
“Oh, some will indeed hold you blameless, but they may then wonder how a parent could have turned her child so much against her, since your son seemed so unconcerned with the consequences his action would bring to you. Some will think you knew, and ran to me only out of desperation, thinking that I would shield you. And some who might believe you innocent of any previous knowledge of your son’s deed will wonder why you were so quick to come here to denounce him.”
“Anyone would!” she cried.
“No, Iris. Another would have retreated into solitude and wept for her child, would still have loved him in spite of everything. She might even have prayed for his happiness. That’s what an innocent person would do, for she would know that she had nothing to fear from us. That is what someone who loved her child would do, for she would have wished him well in spite of his traitorous mistake. You are now a woman who, whether guilty or innocent, has failed her son, nurtured a traitor, and shamed the Project. You were lost as soon as you entered this room.”
Her hand struck, missing his face and hitting his shoulder; he grabbed her wrist. “I raised you up,” he shouted. “I spoke up for you, I convinced my colleagues that you had gifts we could use. I argued that we should save your life when your airship was first in danger, and when I came to know you, I even —” He thrust her arm away. “Others will remember that I spoke up for you then.”
She had not stopped to think of how shaky his own position would be now. “Amir,” she said helplessly.
“You came here. You pleaded for yourself. You didn’t once show any concern for me.”
“Have you thought of me? You’ve let me sit here without telling me what you’ll do. What will happen to me?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why, nothing will happen to you. You’ve proclaimed your innocence, haven’t you? You’ve even offered to undergo questioning under an interrogator’s band, something a guilty person would never do. You’ll simply go on, Iris. You can remain our liaison with the people from the Institute, but when they see how powerless you now are to intercede for them, they’ll soon ask the Administrative Committee to appoint someone else in your place. But that must be left up to them, don’t you think?”
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