Venus of Dreams

by Pamela Sargent

  “I think you know what I wanted to talk to you about,” Alexandra said. “Iris is gone, but you can still have the child you two were planning to have. I have your genetic material in our facility and, under the circumstances, you would have no problem petitioning for the use of an ectogenetic chamber. I’ve been waiting for you to tell us what to do.”

  He had forgotten the child. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “If she were born within the next two years, she’d have some time here before people start moving to the surface. She’d be old enough then for a little training before she leaves, but still young enough to adapt quickly.” Alexandra paused. “Iris sometimes talked to me about that child. I know she worried about whether or not she could bring up another child. She used to say that she might only fail again as a parent, but at the same time, she wanted her line to continue. That means a lot to most of us, to those of us who come from Earth’s Plains.”

  Chen was silent.

  “You’d find consolation with a child, Chen. Iris would have wanted it.”

  He turned away. “I don’t know. Part of me agrees with you, but the other part —” He could not put his feelings into words. The child would be an ever-present reminder of his loss.

  “You needn’t decide this right away,” Alexandra murmured, “but I can’t act without a request from you. Please consider it.”

  “Very well.” He could promise that much.

  Alexandra returned to her friends. Chen stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. He had not carved anything since Iris’s death; now, he longed for a piece of wood and the feel of his chisels in his hands. He had promised Iris that he would carve her face. A lump rose in his throat as he realized he could no longer recall her face as it had been the last time he saw her; he kept seeing the girl he had met in Lincoln.

  He bowed his head, giving in to the pain as his tears rolled silently down his cheeks.

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  Part Five

  Thirty-Five

  An airship floated out from the bay of Island Two. From Island Three, another ship followed it; within a few more minutes, ten ships, one from each Island, had begun their journey to the domed settlement called Oberg.

  The passengers who would be the first Cytherian settlers had spent part of the past years learning new skills that they might need on the new world. Those who knew little about plants had learned how to farm and how to tend hydroponic gardens, while those people less familiar with components and machinery had learned how to operate tractors, seeders, and sensor devices, for the first settlers would need a wide number of skills. They had all endured long conversations with Counselors, hours of probing and scanning by physicians, questions about what they had learned and the uses to which they would put their knowledge, and lectures by Administrators about the fulfillment of Earth’s glorious destiny. The new settlers had put up with it all willingly, proud to have been selected for this first group, but the most important part of their preparation had been their years on the Islands, where they had learned to live and work together for this day.

  When the passengers from Island Two first boarded their airship, they had been full of talk about the world they would build. Some talked of a world of great cities, while others spoke of small villages or large houses surrounded by land. But now, as the airships drifted north and prepared to descend to the Maxwell Mountains, the passengers had grown silent, perhaps thinking of the years of labor ahead of them and the deprivations they were likely to endure.

  Chen was sitting near the back of an airship cabin, in the midst of a group of families with young children. In a short while, he would be inside Oberg, his new home. A second dome, Tsou Yen, would be ready in another year; a third and fourth, Galileo and al-Khwarizmi, had been completed and were now being tended by botanists, microbiologists, and soil specialists. He would see many more domes rise on the mountain slopes and plateaus. More Islanders would arrive, and a steady stream of people from Earth would travel to the Islands to add their talents to the Project and to prepare themselves for a life below.

  He wondered if another settlement would be named for Karim al-Anwar in place of the dome that had been destroyed. That man, however, hardly had to be honored with a settlement’s name. His dream had brought them all here; the whole planet was his monument.

  A small hand tugged at his sleeve. Chen looked down at his daughter and smiled. Risa Liangharad would be eight soon. Her tilted eyes were dark brown and her hair was nearly as black as Chen’s, but her round, strong-boned face was Iris’s. Sometimes, when Risa stuck out her chin or stared fixedly at the letters on her screen, he had almost imagined that he was seeing Iris as a child.

  The news of Risa’s birth had mended the breach with Angharad. Iris’s mother had not even wondered too much at the way in which Risa had entered the world, and had accepted it as some sort of bizarre but miraculous event. Part of Iris would live; Angharad’s line would continue.

  How could he ever have considered not bringing Risa into the world? He patted his child’s hand, then leaned over to touch the bag under his seat protectively. Inside the bag, captured on a panel of microchips, were Iris’s messages, records, school papers, notes — everything he had managed to salvage from the cybermind banks that had held it all. Angharad had transmitted some of the material from Earth; Iris’s teachers at the Cytherian Institute and her friends on the Islands had helped him find the rest. Once, it had pained him to look at the old images and hear Iris’s voice; now, he was glad to have them preserved. He had saved part of Iris for himself, and his daughter.

  In the seats on Risa’s right, two children were getting restless; their father, who was sitting next to them, shook a finger in warning. A woman just across the aisle to Chen’s left leaned across and gazed at the fidgeting boy and girl. “Would you like to hear a story?” the woman asked.

  The children’s mother, looking weary, nodded. “They’ve heard all of mine,” she said as she wiped a hand across her pale brow. “Maybe they’ll listen to yours.”

  “Is it about Venus?” the boy asked. He was almost as dark as his father and his black hair, like his sister’s, had been braided into thin plaits that made swirling patterns against his skull.

  “No, it’s about Earth, and something that happened long ago.” The woman, Chen noticed, was speaking in the flat tones of the Plains. He peered at her more closely. He had met all of the first group of settlers, the ones here and those on the other ships when he had visited the other Islands. He had sat with them in meetings; he had learned many of their names and had grown friendly with a few. Yet he could not place this woman right away. He gazed at her narrow, plain face, and then recalled that she was a physician; he had seen the snakes of the medical symbol pinned on her collar. She wore no pin now; none of the specialists among the passengers did. Such distinctions, among the settlers, no longer seemed important.

  “Who wants to hear about Earth?” the boy said.

  “Jabē, don’t be rude,” the boy’s father said in a deep, resonant voice. “Listen to the story, and keep still.”

  “I want to hear the story,” Risa said as she bounced a little in her seat.

  The physician loosened her harness a little as she turned toward them and shook back her long, reddish-blond hair. Chen could still not recall her name, though he was sure that he had heard it. “It happened long ago,” she began, “before the rise of the Nomarchies, before the Resource Wars. It happened back in a time when kings and queens ruled, and people could speak to the spirits of the dead.”

  The boy looked skeptical, but his sister had stopped fidgeting.

  “In a village outside a king’s castle, there lived a man and a woman in a hut made of wood and stone. Like all the villagers, they farmed the land, and because they had good land and worked hard, all the people always had more than enough to eat, even after giving the king his share.”

  “Was the king a farmer too?” Jabē asked. “Why didn’t he grow his own f
ood?” he went on, not waiting for an answer to the first question.

  “He didn’t grow his own crops because he was a king,” the woman answered. “His job was to rule the village and counsel the people and protect them from the soldiers of other kings and queens.”

  “Why couldn’t the people do all that themselves?” the boy said. “I would have gone someplace where there wasn’t any king.”

  “Times were different then,” Jabē’s mother said as she shot him a warning glance. “They had kings, and we have Mukhtars.”

  “He was a good king,” the woman continued. “He took only his share and no more. In this village, the man and the woman had a baby daughter. They were happy about that, because they’d wanted a child for a long time. She was a beautiful child, with hair as bright as the sunlight and eyes as black as night, and at first, her parents thought only that she was beautiful, but as she grew, they discovered that she had another gift as well. She could hear the thoughts of people, even before they spoke them out loud. She could know what anyone was thinking, both the good thoughts and the evil ones, but because the villagers were good people, their thoughts did not often disturb her.”

  The story was a familiar one to Chen; he could recall hearing Angharad tell one like it to Benzi in almost the same words.

  “She heard their thoughts?” Jabē asked, looking dubious. “What was she, a Linker? Why didn’t her parents have Links too?”

  “Be quiet,” Risa said. “Linkers don’t hear thoughts anyway. They listen to cyberminds, and they can get messages right inside their heads, but they don’t hear thoughts.”

  “They didn’t have Linkers in those days,” the boy’s mother said. “That was probably back in the time when one cybermind could be as big as a house without being able to do more than add a lot of numbers. You wonder how people got along.”

  “Oh, this was even before that,” the storyteller said. “This young girl was named Marianne, and she grew into a beautiful young woman. With her gift, she was able to help the village. If a young man loved a young woman, but was afraid to speak to her of his love, Marianne could touch his thoughts and, by telling the one he loved of his feelings, could bring them together. If there was a dispute over a promise not kept, Marianne could discover which of the parties spoke the truth. All knew that she could read their souls and that she was just, using her power only when it would help them. They came to honor her as the wisest and fairest among them.”

  Risa seemed entranced; even Jabē and his sister seemed more interested.

  “One day, the king’s son came to the village, and knew that he loved Marianne the moment he saw her. He took her away from the village and brought her to his father’s castle, and the villagers sorrowed at losing her, but took some joy at knowing that her gift would now be of use to their king.” The woman paused. “At first, Marianne longed for her old home, but in the castle, she wore fine robes and ate from plates of gold and could listen to the thoughts of others who visited from other kingdoms. She soon forgot her old life. Then the old king died, and his son became the king, and Marianne sat at his side and saw that everyone now bowed to her as well.”

  The storyteller frowned. “Marianne had much — rooms of gold and jewels, gifts from every part of Earth. But having those things no longer satisfied her, for she knew other kingdoms were even richer and that she had the means to acquire their riches for herself. She began to speak to the young king of the thoughts she saw in the minds of those who came to him from other lands, how she could tell whose soldiers were weak and how easy it would be to take what other kingdoms had with their own soldiers, for another kingdom’s generals would not be able to hide their battle plans from her. At first, the young king refused to listen, but Marianne would not keep silent, and he saw that, with her, he could rule all the world.”

  The woman was silent for a moment as her small audience waited for the rest of the tale. “One day, Marianne and the king rode out from the castle with their soldiers to the field where they were to do battle with another king’s soldiers. And then, just as the battle was about to begin, Marianne realized that she had lost her power. She could hear no thoughts except her own. Many fighting men and brave women lost their lives on that field, and the young king had no way of knowing the thoughts of the other king’s generals. He lost the battle, and was driven back to the castle with his surviving soldiers. A great rage possessed him then as he thought of those who had died fighting for him, and he expelled Marianne from his castle, saying that she would die if his eyes ever beheld her again.”

  Risa sighed sadly.

  “Marianne wandered for a long time, unable to hear even the simplest thought. At last, she came to her old village again, and wept at the memory of her wickedness and the loss of her power. Her parents hardly knew her, for her face had grown old and the shine of her bright hair had faded, but they reached out to the daughter they loved and took her back into their home.”

  “Serves her right,” Jabē muttered.

  “What a sad story,” Risa said.

  “That isn’t the end,” the storyteller said. “One day, Marianne awoke. She heard the thoughts of her mother as she saw her baking bread and the thoughts of her father as he sanded a piece of wood. She went outside and heard the thoughts of those who were passing by in the road. Her gift had returned to her, and with it, some wisdom. She remained in the village, and thought of the castle and its riches no more.”

  Chen looked down at Risa. Though he had heard the story before, its ending no longer satisfied him. “I don’t think that’s all that happened,” he said.

  “Have you heard this tale before?” the storyteller asked.

  He nodded. “The mother of the woman I loved used to tell it.”

  “That is the ending.”

  “I have another ending,” he said. “I think that Marianne returned to the castle, and that, when the king saw that she had grown wise, he forgot his rage and took her back, and, after many years, her gift helped her bring peace to all of the kingdoms.”

  The storyteller smiled as she shook her head. “That sort of spoils the point of it, don’t you think?”

  “No,” Chen said. “It makes another point, that’s all.” He gazed at his daughter and thought of Iris.

  The roof of Oberg’s bay slid open, revealing rows of cradles. Each ship dropped down and alighted; when they were all clamped to their cradles, the roof began to close. The passengers and pilots waited as air cycled into the bay.

  “Welcome to Oberg,” a woman’s voice was saying over the comm. “Please wait inside your ships until the wall separating them from the rest of the bay has been lifted. It is no longer necessary to wear a suit in the bay. Supplies will be provided for you all when you are inside. We are pleased to be welcoming you to Earth’s newest outpost.” Most of the passengers in Chen’s ship were paying little attention to the voice; they had been told the same thing before leaving the Islands.

  Soon the new settlers, carrying duffels and bags, were filing out of the ships. Voices echoed through the wide bay as people jostled one another and parents herded children into the line.

  When Chen and Risa finally reached the dome’s entrance, a woman wearing a Linker’s jewel handed Chen a pack. “Your tent,” she said, “and some rations for the next two days. If you need more water, it’s available there, at that building.” She pointed to a long, one-story stone structure not far from the entrance. “Toilets and bathing facilities are there as well. You may use the toilets at any time, and shouldn’t have to wait long until one is available, but times will be given to you for use of the showers.”

  Other Linkers were giving the same talk to other settlers. Risa frowned up at the Linker; the woman patted her on the head. “It’s only for a little while, until residences are ready.”

  Chen took Risa’s hand and drew her away from the crowd. Before them stretched a seemingly endless plain of grass broken only by the slender trunks of young trees, all of it illuminated by the dome’s
golden light. Microbes and earthworms had prepared the soil, and the growing plants were enriching the air. Chen sniffed, smelling the scent of a new world. He thought of the time when the dome would open to the outside, and wondered if Risa would live to see that day, when Venus lost its hostility to human life.

  Chen had come home. He could almost forget that he was a man in his sixties; he felt young, as if he were just beginning his life instead of entering its last few decades.

  A few of the nearly five hundred new settlers had already begun to pitch their tents on the plain; idle machines rested next to the foundations of new houses. The panes of a large greenhouse reflected the light; farther away, under the dome’s center, wings were already being added to the old shelter. The air, enriched by the Habbers’ sturdy, genetically altered plants, was warm and clean. It was hard to remember that outside, in the upper cloud layers, the great storms still raged and the rains still fell through the mist; that still-poisonous liquid, collected in receptacles and channeled under the dome’s wall to be cleansed and chemically altered, would help feed the streams that flowed through the wrinkles of the plain.

  Chen’s arm was jostled. The storyteller was standing next to him; she glanced at Chen flirtatiously in a Plainswoman’s manner. “I know I’ve seen you before,” Chen said. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Bettina Christies. My friends just call me Tina.”

  “I’m Liang Chen, and this is my daughter, Risa Liangharad.”

  Bettina lifted a brow. “I thought that’s who you were,” she said in her flat Plains voice. Chen tensed a little; mercifully, the woman did not go on to utter awed or respectful comments about his past exploits. “Hello, Risa. Did you like my story?”

  The child nodded. “But I liked Chen’s ending better.”

  “I can tell you more stories sometime, and maybe your father will provide some more endings for them too.” Bettina glanced at Chen significantly. “Maybe later, when I’ve set up my tent. Care to pitch yours next to mine, Chen?”