Child of Venus

by Pamela Sargent

  Earth probably looked as promising or as challenging as building a new life in a Venus settlement. It seemed only a matter of time before would-be emigrants stopped coming to those camps.

  Then this conference was announced, and suddenly people were streaming to the three camps again, thousands more than had been going there decades ago. More people than ever are ready to give up their lives on Earth for a chance to leave the home planet for good.

  The difference is that many of them don’t want to go to Venus. Many of them want to become spacefarers instead.

  This subject has taken up most of our sessions. There are so many other matters to discuss, and we still haven’t come to any consensus on what to do about those camps. Mukhtar Tabib and Administrator Masud want them closed. Constantine Matheos and Jamilah al-Hussaini have recommended stationing some Counselors at each camp, presumably to find ways to keep the situation from spiraling out of control, and also want a commission to study the problem and “make recommendations.” In other words, they obviously don’t know what to think.

  Well, I don’t know what to think, either.

  The Habbers, though, know exactly what they think. Benzi was speaking for the Habber delegates who are here, but he strongly implied that others would agree with him. (Other Habbers? The Habber cyberminds? None of us among the delegates are now sure of where to draw the line between them.) In any case, the Habbers say they would welcome anyone from those camps who is willing to leave the solar system aboard their interstellar vessel.

  They are still insisting on that. The delegates finally had to agree to set the whole issue aside for now.

  July 1, 657:

  No meeting today. Another group of Habbers arrived to “observe some sessions,” even though we all know that they could do that through their Links with the Habbers who are already here. A few Linkers who are aides to the Council of Mukhtars are coming tomorrow, for the same stated reason, which makes as little sense in their case. Perhaps this is just more diplomacy, coming here personally. The only other explanation I can think of is that there are some things these Linkers want to discuss privately among themselves, with their Links closed.

  The people of Lincoln, the shopkeepers in particular, will welcome these new delegations. At the same time, some people here are complaining that the meetings should be held in public. Teresa seems quite insulted that even she, as the mayor, hasn’t been invited to participate, and others are wondering why the sessions aren’t being made available on public channels. I told Teresa that nothing had been resolved yet, and that she hadn’t missed much, but I’m not sure she believed me.

  Benzi left Teresa’s house at dawn to meet the arriving Habbers and didn’t return until evening. At last I was able to speak to him alone in the courtyard after dark. “Don’t you realize,” I told him, “that if everybody from the camps who wants to be on your space vessel is allowed to go, there won’t be room for a lot of the people who will be essential?”

  “Mahala, I’m disappointed in you,” he replied. “We’re speaking of a Habitat, a space-going worldlet. We’re talking about a community of hundreds of thousands in an environment that will have space for even more than that.”

  “You’ll need specialists. Most of the people in those camps are workers. Some of them are probably people who lived on basic credit and whatever they could con somebody out of or steal.”

  “We can train them and educate them.”

  “I don’t care what you say—you can’t possibly take everybody who will want to go.”

  Benzi smiled. “You’re wrong, Mahala. As I said, we’ll have more than enough room. You think people will be begging to go, that millions of Earthfolk and Cytherians and Habbers will choose to go on this voyage.”

  “Millions do want to be part of it. You know that.”

  He shook his head. “They dream of it, and they’ll go on dreaming of it, but in the end they won’t go. Our problem is not going to be deciding which people should be part of this voyage and which to turn away. Our problem is going to be finding enough people who will choose to make the journey, and who will help make it what it should be rather than a cosmic disaster.”

  I looked at him questioningly.

  “What I mean is not a technical disaster, although that might happen, unlikely as it may be. I mean a cultural catastrophe, or tragedy, an encounter that might destroy whatever we find or destroy us.”

  July 17, 657:

  Exaggerated accounts of the Battle of Lincoln, as the more dramatically inclined are calling Commander Lawrence’s failed attack on the conference, have been all over the public channels. According to one rumor, a group of mind-tour producers wanted to create a depiction of the events, either for the historical record or simply as an exciting simulated adventure; they were quickly discouraged from doing so. The authorities probably would have preferred not to have word of the incident get out at all, but that would have required closing off Lincoln and finding ways to keep the people here from talking. Rumors might have gotten out anyway, and turning an entire community into a kind of prison would not have been an appropriate way to mark the new era.

  This evening, Amaris and Gisella came home with a story about a town in the North Mediterranean Nomarchy that had been taken over by Guardians. Within a few minutes, the entire household was in the common room watching reports on the screen. The town was a place called Tivoli, and order was restored within three hours, but not before a Habber in residence there had been killed.

  Now everyone is wondering if there will be other incidents—and what the Habbers will do if they lose any more of their people.

  I also find myself wondering if it’s possible for a cybermind to become disgusted enough not to want to have anything to do with us. Or to wonder why it should want to gather any group of human beings together to meet an alien culture when cyberminds could make that journey by themselves.

  August 11, 657:

  We have agreed to make records of our private meetings and discussions available to all regional Administrative Committees on Earth, and to the Administrators’ Committees and the surface settlement Councils of Venus; they are then to decide how much they wish to make public. They are being strongly encouraged to release as little about the sessions as possible (a euphemism for “if you put too much of this on the public record, you will suffer harsh consequences”), and advised (a euphemism for “ordered”) to make only a brief summary available in both Anglaic and Arabic.

  My own brief summary would be as follows: We’ve held a lot of meetings and discussed issues ranging from the future role of the Guardians to whether or not the Habbers should give us more information about themselves, their culture, and the details of their lives. We’ve had some very interesting discussions, and we haven’t come to an agreement on a damned thing except to agree to give out as little information as possible.

  The Habbers went along with our resolution, even though they obviously didn’t like it. I suppose they were thinking that we had to agree on something before more people began to wonder if this conference is a complete waste of time. The irony here is that the Habbers were pushing for detailed records of all the meetings to be made public, just as earlier they were saying that they would be willing to answer any questions about themselves and their society that anyone wanted to pose, even to prepare a mind-tour of a Habitat for distribution. It’s the Mukhtars and Linkers of Earth who want to restrict information and who would also prefer that the Associated Habitats remain as mysterious as they always have been to the vast majority of Earthfolk.

  Sooner or later, some Administrator may ignore the directive about releasing complete records of this conference. Somebody will decide that our supposed new era was about more openness and that openness is preferable to secrecy.

  August 20, 657:

  For the first time in our lives, we Cytherians who have never known anything but our dome environments are trying to endure seasons and changes in weather. Had the weather remained as it was
in late spring, we might have adjusted more easily. As it is, I have come to dread leaving the comfortable dry air of the house and walking even the short distance to the town hall for our meetings.

  Arrangements might have been made to convey us to the town hall in vehicles. The possibility of enclosed walkways had also been discussed and then rejected. The Council of Mukhtars, perhaps wisely, had decided that as long as we were in Lincoln, it would be best to follow the ways of its citizens. If they were able to endure the extremities of their climate, then so could the delegates. Maybe the Mukhtars were also thinking of how impotent and enfeebled we would look if we couldn’t deal with a little physical discomfort.

  In early morning, the outside air is hot enough to make me sweat even when I walk at a slow and relaxed pace. At midday, the heat is so intense that one wonders how the people who lived here centuries ago, without homeostats and the other amenities of our lives, ever survived. Then there are all the insects—mosquitoes and other annoying mites that seem to be everywhere in the evenings. Harriett recommended that I wear a hat with a protective veil of netting when the insects are out, as the Plainswomen do, and keep the rest of myself covered, and a dose of antihistamine medicine reduces the swelling and itching of the bites, but I have found that a few of the wretched things can penetrate any barrier and deliver enough bites to make one’s life miserable. I avoid being outdoors in the evenings whenever possible.

  Harriett tells me that a Plains winter will be yet another adventure, assuming that we’re still here then, and it seems as though we will be.

  August 21, 657:

  I knew that Teresa Marias and other townspeople had been grumbling about being excluded from the conference. I sympathized with them, even though I kept my opinion to myself. Here they were, doing everything they could to make the delegates, along with all of the other groups of Habbers and Linkers and aides to the Project Council who keep coming into Lincoln for short visits as “observers,” as comfortable as possible, and not only are they not admitted to the sessions, but they don’t even get a full summary of our meetings.

  I didn’t expect Mayor Teresa to do what she did today.

  It happened an hour after our morning session began. The room where we meet is set up with three large tables near the center of the room, and in the back, a longer table where Mukhtar Tabib, Jamilah al-Hussaini, Constantine Matheos, and Masud al-Tikriti are seated. Commander Helgas (Edmund Helgas is still known by that name, whether or not it’s actually the one he was born with) and a few of his people are always present, partly to provide security and partly to offer any opinions of their own; some of them are seated at each table. The rest of us are free to sit where we like, and there’s enough room so that any visiting observers can sit at the tables with us. In other words, without the observers (who don’t just sit there observing, but usually have something to say), we would be rattling around in a nearly empty room, a fact that probably impressed itself on Teresa.

  We were in the middle of discussing the situation at the camp of would-be emigrants outside Tashkent, where the Guardian officer in charge has been predicting that there will soon be riots if the people there aren’t promised either immediate passage to Venus or more comfortable quarters in their encampment, when the door opened and Captain Dullea entered the room.

  “The mayor of Lincoln is outside,” the captain announced, “and there are several townspeople with her, and they demand to be admitted.”

  Everyone turned toward the Mukhtar’s table. Whatever the rest of us thought, we knew that Mukhtar Tabib would decide what to do about that. I was worrying about what Teresa and the others would do if he refused to let them in and how the Guardians in the hallway might react.

  Mukhtar Tabib seemed unperturbed. He stroked his beard for a moment, as if deep in thought—or perhaps consulting with others through his Link—and then said, “Are they likely to disperse quietly, Captain?”

  The officer shook his head. “The mayor seems quite angry. We may have to stun a few of them to get the others to leave.”

  “Then let them in.”

  Most of the visiting Linkers shook their heads as the door opened. The Mukhtar stood up as Teresa hurried into the room, followed by Shirl the physician, Allison the barkeep, and several other illustrious citizens.

  “Salaam,” Tabib murmured before Teresa could get a word out. “I am most pleased to welcome the mayor of Lincoln to this meeting.”

  Teresa halted for a moment, then kept going until she was right in front of the Mukhtar. “If you were that pleased to welcome me,” she replied, “you would have invited me here long before now.”

  The Mukhtar smiled. “I have been remiss, my good woman. There is something I should have explained to you before, and perhaps to the Cytherian delegates as well, even though it must be obvious to almost everyone else in attendance.”

  “Explain away,” Teresa said, “that is, if you think it’s worth your while to bother explaining things to a simple Plainswoman.” I had to admire my kinswoman for not allowing him to intimidate her, even while fearing that she might push him too far.

  “Please be seated.” Mukhtar Tabib waved a hand in the direction of the other townsfolk. “All of you, please sit down. Let me inform you that these proceedings are being recorded, and that I am willing to make my statements public afterward if that is what you desire.”

  Teresa looked away from him and toward the townspeople who were standing just inside the door. Clearly she was taken aback by this concession; I suppose that she had expected more resistance. She motioned to the others, who came to the tables and sat down; there were more than enough seats for all of them.

  “Satisfy my curiosity, Mayor Teresa Marias,” the Mukhtar said. “What did you intend to do if we had refused to admit you?”

  Teresa had taken a seat near me. She pushed back her wide-brimmed hat, then leaned forward and rested her arms on the tabletop. “There wouldn’t have been much I could do,” she said, “and you could probably hush up whatever you did to us by just cutting off our channels to the outside, but that wouldn’t have looked good for your conference, especially after that battle we had here this spring. You could always move this confab somewhere else, but that wouldn’t look good, either, and one point of this whole business is to look good.”

  “Very astute of you,” the Mukhtar said. “Now allow me to tell you what you don’t seem to understand, and then you can decide for yourselves how much you wish me to make public. To put it as simply as possible, I am trying to prevent disaster, trying to make certain that we don’t end up in an even worse state than our ancestors were in at the end of the Resource Wars centuries ago. Because if we fall that far, I very much doubt that we will ever again be able to regain the technology that we have now.”

  The Mukhtar went on to explain what he meant as simply as possible. Earth had been able to rebuild itself after the Resource Wars, but social stability had been bought at the cost of suppressing certain developments or directing the human capacity for innovation elsewhere. Better for those who were impatient with the pace of change on Earth to leave and build their Associated Habitats; better to use the Venus Project as the moral equivalent of war and as a way to inspire Earth’s billions, than to engage in actual conflict. There had been mistakes along the way, and times when the people of Earth and Venus and the Habitats had come perilously close to war, but the dangers threatening them all had been averted.

  The day of reckoning was now upon us, according to Mukhtar Tabib. The new era promised us peace with the Habbers, more support and faster progress for the terraforming of Venus, life spans that might be indefinitely prolonged, and humankind’s first voyage beyond the confines of the solar system to look for the source of an alien signal. The new era might also offer us social disruptions on a scale human beings had never experienced before, even during the time of rapid technical innovation and social dislocation that had led to the Resource Wars. Everything would change; little would remain the same.
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  All of this was probably obvious to the Linkers who were present, and perhaps to the Habbers as well. Had I given more thought to the issues Tabib raised, I most likely would have come to the same conclusions. Malik might have enlightened me about this historical context if he were still alive; I felt myself mourning for him again.

  My fellow Cytherians wore expressions ranging from acceptance to disbelief to anger. The people of Lincoln who had come there with Teresa looked frightened. They knew what the Mukhtar was saying—that their way of life was dying, that it would pass before too much longer, and that all they could hope for was that the change would be peaceful and not violent.

  Mukhtar Tabib was silent for a few moments, perhaps assessing our varied expressions. “In other words, Mukhtar,” Teresa said at last, “you’re trying to keep the lid on.”

  “Astutely put,” the Mukhtar said. “You saw what happened last May, with Commander Lawrence and his rogue Guardians. You may think of the Commander as a madman, but let me assure you that he is not. He saw what might happen and tried to stop it. He’s only a small example of what might happen later on if we don’t... keep the lid on for a while.”

  Benzi was gazing intently at the Mukhtar; he almost looked worried. Perhaps he was thinking that Tabib had made a mistake in trying to explain himself to the Plainspeople sitting with us. I did not think it was a mistake. What happened during this time of transition would depend as much on the good will and cooperation of people like Teresa as it would on the directives of the Council of Mukhtars.

  “I knew changes were coming,” Teresa murmured, “when the Counselor came here some years back and told us that we were going to have a school in Lincoln.”