“I am surprised,” Dyami said then, “that Malik didn’t come here with you.”
Mahala looked up from her bowl of fruit. “Didn’t he send you a message?”
“No, he didn’t. Risa mentioned that she had seen him briefly, and you had implied that he might come here with you. I didn’t want to ask you about it before, but when you didn’t say anything;—”
“He sent a message just before I left Oberg saying that he decided not to come with me. I thought he might have sent you the same message.”
“Well, he didn’t, so I must assume that he’s not coming at all.” Dyami looked disappointed. Of course, Mahala thought. He must have been hoping that Malik might have a message for him from Balin.
They finished their supper. Mahala helped Frania clear the dishes. The two girls sat up for a while after Dyami and Amina had gone to sleep; Frania seemed anxious to tell Mahala about her plans. She would finish her apprenticeship as a pilot and was even hoping for a chance to train for being a torchship pilot. She would have to live on an Island if she was assigned to shuttle duty later on, but she would prefer a home in one of the settlements, and there was a good chance she would have that wish granted because most of the pilots preferred shuttle duty to airship piloting. A home in a settlement, rather than on an Island, would give her more time with Ragnar and any children they might have.
“Ragnar’s a digger and crawler worker,” Mahala said. “How can he live on an Island if that’s where you end up? He’s needed here, not there.”
“There are other things he can do. The Islands need workers, too. He could train as an apprentice to a mechanic. He told me that he was already learning about homeostat repairs and life-support systems.”
“He’d have to go through another apprenticeship.” Mahala said.
“He’s willing to do it. Besides, if we’re bondmates and I have to be on the Islands, the Counselors would want to keep us together. If Ragnar needs to learn another skill or do another apprenticeship for that to be possible, I’m sure that he could get permission.”
Ragnar seemed to have his life planned, or perhaps Frania was planning it for him. Mahala had no way of knowing what he thought anymore.
“I’ve been talking about myself ever since you got here,” Frania continued. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
Mahala described some of her courses and teachers, then mentioned a few of her fellow students. Her life seemed unfocused next to Frania’s.
A question suddenly came to her. “Frani,” she said, “this may seem a strange thing to ask, but what would you do if you had the chance to travel somewhere—well, besides Venus and Anwara and Earth?”
Frania laughed softly. “There isn’t anywhere else, at least not any place we’re ever likely to go, unless you want to count Mars and the Habitats.”
“Would you welcome the chance to see a Hab?”
“I wouldn’t mind visiting one or seeing Mars, for that matter. If I had the chance, I’d take it.”
“What about leaving this system altogether?”
“Oh, Mahala. That wouldn’t be like traveling to another place. People would have to leave without knowing what they would find and whether they would ever get back. I think that if human beings were going to do something like that, they would have done it a long time ago, but Earth doesn’t have the means, and the Habbers seem content to stay where they are.”
“Things could change.”
“They won’t change that much. Not for us, anyway.” Frania yawned. “I was going to wait up for Ragnar, but I’m exhausted.”
“Go to sleep,” Mahala said. “You’re supposed to rest during your time off.”
“You’re right.” Frania walked across the room, still yawning, and rolled out one of the futons, then wandered toward the bathroom. Dyami had told Mahala that she and Frania could sleep in the common room, since Ragnar was sleeping in their former bedroom while working his darktime shift.
Apparently Frania and Ragnar were not sharing a room yet, although they probably would be before much longer.
Now that she had been away from the Islands for a while, Mahala was beginning to see her student’s life on Island Two as someone else might see it She was flailing around, picking up a smattering of knowledge in different fields while getting a grounding in biology. If the student Counselors had known about her desire to study at the Cytherian Institute, they could legitimately ask whether that desire grew out of her devotion to her world or only from her longing to see new places. They might wonder why she had agreed to live with Benzi, a Habber, during her earliest days on Island Two instead of in student quarters. The Counselors could question her commitment, even whether she had any true commitment at all. If she passed a few more months following her present course, a Counselor might call her in for a discussion, even suggest that she leave school and choose an apprenticeship.
A vision came to her of what she might want to do, although her dream was formless and vague. Venus was being changed, but not rapidly enough for people alive now ever to hope to live outside the domes. Planetary engineering, she thought, could work both ways. A planet could be made habitable by human beings; people might also be transformed so that they could live on other worlds. Biological transformations could make it possible for present-day Cytherians, or their children, to venture outside the domes for periods of time, perhaps even to live entirely outside them. There was something that would be worth her dedication, that would be a true life’s work.
But to accomplish that, she knew, was beyond the Project’s capacities. Even if it were not, many would find the idea of adapting people to the still-alien Cytherian environment completely contrary to the Project’s aims. Venus was to be a world that would not cut its inhabitants off biologically or socially from their home planet; changed people would have even less reason to feel any loyalty to Earth. She thought of what Xelah Barringer might say about her hopelessly naive ideas, notions that many others had probably entertained.
The Habbers might be capable of such a feat of genetic engineering; rumors had circulated for some time that the Habbers had altered themselves more radically than was apparent, that there were some living in the Habs who were hardly human at all.
The ceiling lights dimmed, then went out. Mahala heard footsteps behind her and turned her head to see the shadowy form of Frania. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” Frania asked.
“I’m going to sit up for a while.”
“Good night, then.” Frania stretched out on her futon and pulled her coverlet over herself.
Mahala felt restless. She sat there, gazing at the trees outside the house, then got to her feet, crossed to the doorway, and went outside.
She walked downhill in the direction of the lake. Usually everything was quiet at this hour, but in the distance, she heard what sounded like the song of a bird. She halted to listen, heard voices, and then more of the high-pitched musical notes. Someone was playing a flute. Mahala moved away from the sound and continued down the slope until she came to the lake.
She sat down and gazed out at the calm, almost motionless dark surface of the lake. Now that she had at least a vague notion of what she might want to accomplish, she might try to find a way to reach for it within the restrictions of her life. Specializing in biology, and genetics in particular, was clearly the first necessary step, and it was likely that she would be steered in that direction anyway. Perhaps she should not think any further ahead than that until her vision became clearer to her.
One possibility was becoming increasingly obvious, and she was certain that she was not alone in coming to this judgment. Those who had envisioned the Project had assumed that the earliest settlers, the first Cytherians, would be content to live out their lives knowing that they would never see Venus become a green and growing world. They had forgotten that people tended to become more impatient and more restive when what they wanted seemed within their grasp, however unrealistic their hopes might be.
Mahala drew u
p her legs and rested her arms on her knees. Maybe Malik’s lectures in history were not so useless after all. She considered what she knew about her grandfather. He had come to Venus as an exile from Earth, one whose ideas had troubled Earth’s governing Council of Mukhtars. She wondered how many of his unpopular ideas he still harbored.
“Greetings, Mahala,” a familiar voice said.
She looked up to see Ragnar emerge from the nearby trees. “I thought you were working the darktime shift,” she said to him.
“I am. I asked my team leader if I could leave early. I’ll make up the time tomorrow.” He sat down next to her. “I guessed I’d find you here.”
“You think that you know me so well.”
“I know Frani pretty well. She said that she was going to meet you. I’ll bet that as soon as she saw you, she told you all about becoming my bondmate and then begged you not to tell anyone else. I didn’t even tell Solveig about our plans yet or our parents.”
“And when were you going to let Dyami and Amina know about your pledge?”
“After you left,” Ragnar said. “I thought that might be easier on you, but since Frani’s obviously already told you, there’s no point in keeping it to ourselves.”
“You got over me awfully fast.” She had not meant to say that. “How can you do this to her?”
“What am I doing to her, Mahala?”
“You don’t love her.”
“How do you know?”
She was silent.
“If you had agreed to be my bondmate,” he said in a lower voice, “I wouldn’t have gone to Frani even if our agreement had allowed us to have other companions and bed partners, because it wouldn’t have been fair to her. But you didn’t, and you left, and after you were gone I started looking forward to when Frani would be back here on leave. She sent me a message every day, even if it was only a few words, and when she was here, I felt happier being around her. Maybe it isn’t what I felt for you, but it’s enough, it’s a kind of love.”
“I was right to say no to you, then,” Mahala said. “You didn’t care about me as much as you thought you did.”
“You’re wrong, Mahala. I still love you. That love would have grown if it had a chance. And if you cared about me, you’d be glad I found someone who can make me happy, someone I can care about this way, someone you care about.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “It’s just kind of sudden, that’s all.”
“It seems that way to you, but it doesn’t to me,” Ragnar said. “I’ve had almost half a year of working with diggers and crawlers and trying to master sculpting and casting molds and wondering if my whole life was going to be hours of tedious tiring work in exchange for a few moments of doing what I really want to do—what I have to do.” He paused. “It’ll be different with Frani as a bondmate. It won’t be such a lonely life.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. You think I’m just turning to her because it’s better than being alone, but I care about her, I trust her, and she’s never done an unkind thing to me. It might last longer than any bond I could have had with you.”
The words stung, but there was truth in them. She thought of what she knew about her great-grandmother Iris Angharads. Iris’s bond with Mahala’s great-grandfather, Liang Chen, had endured until the heroic end of Iris’s life, but she knew from Benzi that there had been a long estrangement between the two during Iris’s student days at the Cytherian Institute and then later, after the two had come to the Islands. Being separated physically for long periods had only increased the emotional distance between them. Ragnar might have found a way to follow her to Island Two, but following Mahala to the Cytherian Institute, if she won a chance to attend, would have been close to impossible.
That would not have been fair to Ragnar, she thought, trying not to think of the fact that, with a bondmate, especially a bondmate as solitary and unconventional and with as many black marks on his record as Ragnar, her chances of being chosen for the Cytherian Institute might have been almost nonexistent.
“I am happy for you, Ragnar,” she said, trying to believe her own words. “How long a bond do you two want?”
“I said I’d promise twenty years, but Frani said that if I changed my mind after a few years, she didn’t want me to get another mark on my record.” He shook back his hair. “So we agreed on ten, with a provision to promise ten more if we have a child.”
“That’s good,” she murmured. “It’s better for a child to know the parents have a bond of some duration, that they’ll be together at least until the child’s an adult.” She sounded like a Counselor.
They were silent for a time, gazing out at the quiet waters of the lake.
“How are things going with you?” he asked.
Frania had sent him daily messages; she had sent him none at all. “To be honest,” she said, “I’m still trying to figure that out. I haven’t even decided on what kind of specialist I might want to be.”
“You can always let a Counselor decide that for you.”
“If I don’t start concentrating on a particular field pretty soon, somebody else will decide it for me.” She sighed. “I moved in with Solveig just before I left. I don’t know if she told you or not.”
“No, she didn’t. We don’t send each other many messages.” Ragnar got to his feet. “I have to get some sleep,” he said. “Are you coming back to the house with me?”
“I’ll stay here for a while.” She did not want Frania to wake and see them come inside together; the other girl might wonder if they had done more than talk. And, she told herself, the two might want a few moments to themselves. That thought pained her.
“Good night, then.”
Ragnar left her. A pang of longing filled her for the life she had once had here in Turing. She toyed for a moment with the notion of leaving school and coming back here to live. Dyami would make a place for her; there would be work in the community greenhouses, the ceramics plant, or the refinery. She could live out her life knowing that Venus would one day be a true home for humankind without dwelling on what she might do to bring that time closer.
It was a fantasy, of course, no more than a hope at recapturing her childhood; she knew, even as she imagined that kind of life for herself, that her true life waited for her on Island Two, and perhaps elsewhere.
14
Mahala returned to Island Two a day early, to find that Solveig had come back the day before that. Solveig said nothing about her visit to the surface, although Mahala knew that her friend had been staying with her parents when Ragnar had called to tell them of his pledge to Frania. Solveig had more urgent business on her mind.
There was a rumor that the Counselors were going to call in all of the first year students, and most of the older ones, for consultations. No one knew what that meant. Normally, a student was not called in for counseling until the end of each year of study, unless there were signs of a serious problem. Few looked forward to these sessions, since that was when students were either directed toward specific studies or advised to leave school altogether, advice that amounted to expulsion.
Solveig had delivered this news only a few minutes after Mahala had entered their new quarters. They had been given a space slightly larger than Solveig’s former room, and Solveig had already moved Mahala’s belongings there.
“And that isn’t all,” Solveig continued as Mahala unpacked and hung her clothes on a rod. “The Administrators have suddenly canceled Malik Haddad’s next series of lectures, and no one knows why.”
Mahala frowned. “Not many students were going to those lectures anyway.”
“Oh, nobody will stop him from giving his talks if he insists. He just won’t be given a room in which to deliver them or be able to offer them as part of our course of study. If students want to meet with him, they’ll just have to arrange to do that on their own or call up the lectures he’s already recorded.”
That probably meant that even fewer students would go to Malik’s lectures
if they thought that the cancellation was a sign of official disapproval.
“He’s my grandfather,” Mahala said. “I can’t exactly avoid him altogether, even if it does mean a black mark on my record.”
“No one’s going to blame you for seeing a family member, and it’s not as though you see him that often anyway. It might be more of a mark against you if you ignored him. That might show a certain lack of family feeling.” Solveig chuckled. “That’s the problem, isn’t it. Everything here is a test. We can never be sure what it is they expect of us, or want from us, outside of working hard at our studies. We can think that we’re doing everything we should and still be killing our chances to advance without even knowing what our specific mistakes are.”
Mahala finished hanging up a tunic and sat down on a cushion in one corner. “How did your trip go?” Solveig asked.
“Fine,” Mahala replied. “Malik came to see Risa one evening. They sat outside and talked for a while, and she doesn’t seem angry with him now. Dyami’s household is the same as it was, but I can tell he’s missing Balin.” She paused. “Your brother and Frani told me about the pledge they’re going to make.” It was easier to say than she had expected.
“I know,” Solveig said. “My parents were surprised. My mother always assumed he would eventually ask you to be his bondmate.”
He did ask me, she almost said, but restrained herself. “Obviously your mother was wrong.”
“Thorunn thinks they’re too young to be promising each other a bond, not that Ragnar would ever consider her opinion.” Solveig sat down across from Mahala. “There are other rumors going around about the Council of Mukhtars. I’ve heard that they’ve sent messages about appointing another Liaison to the Project Council here and that some on the Council may resign. Nobody seems to know why.”
“Maybe that has something to do with why our Counselors want to see us,” Mahala said. Most Cytherians would view any such changes with suspicion and uneasiness; changes, even changes they chose for themselves, meant more uncertainty for everyone here and in the settlements. “Maybe it’s why they canceled Malik’s lectures, too.”
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