Dream of Venus and Other Science Fiction Stories

by Pamela Sargent

  Karim did not doubt the purpose of his mission, only the reasons Mukhtar Hassan had given for choosing him to carry it out. He was fluent in Anglaic, but several other members of the Council knew that language well, and most educated people had at least some familiarity with the tongue. His wife had grown up in the Atlantic Federation, which could be useful, but the fact was that Greta’s presence on this trip was not really necessary.

  The truth, he admitted to himself, was that he and his allies were losing their influence on the Council to a group of younger, more practical men. More farmland was being lost to climatic changes, and more coastal areas to the rising oceans fed by the melting polar icecaps. The Council had to see that Earth’s people were fed, clothed, housed, and trained for the work to which their individual talents were best suited, and to indulge in other dreams was a luxury they could not afford, especially a dream as grandiose as the one Karim harbored. People with the task of healing their own wounded planet could not be distracted by the vision of transforming another world, especially one that presented the challenges of Venus. Even Mukhtar Ali bin Oman, once a strong ally of Karim’s, had seen which way the sands were drifting and had begun, however gently and shamefacedly, to mouth the phrases of the doubters.

  The Council had not sent him here only to soothe the North Americans, a task any of the Mukhtars could have performed and for which at least a few of them were better suited than he. His mission was also a warning to him, and Hassan’s words, however artfully phrased and ambiguous, had delivered that warning: You will have a chance to think and reconsider your thoughts while we will be free of your efforts to win more supporters for your cause. If you return and insist on pressing for your dream again, we can find another mission for you, perhaps one not as pleasant. And if you persist after that, then, God willing, it may be time to relieve you of some of your responsibilities.

  Karim did not fear expulsion from the Council or exile, or even the disgrace such a punishment would bring to his family; the stronger among his brothers, sisters, and cousins would eventually overcome the dishonor, and the weaker would glean what crumbs they could for themselves, as they always had. It was powerlessness that he feared, being deprived of any influence, unable even to hope that the Council, soon or in times to come, might come to share his vision.

  “We can’t go on this way, you know,” he murmured through his linking band to the mind of the Beverwyck, “just trying to repair the damage and living in the fantasy that we are the future, that human history has at last passed into our hands. We’re certainly better off than we were a century or two ago, but maybe our past sufferings have so marked us that we’re willing to settle for what we have and be grateful we have survived.”

  “Human beings have not only survived on this planet,” the AI said, “but also in space.”

  “The habitat-dwellers have survived in space,” Karim replied. “Some among my brothers on the Council would say that they have already diverged from the stream of human history, and others would call them cowards and traitors to their kind. But they are looking outward, beyond simply conserving what they have, while we stopped looking outside ourselves some time ago. Maybe when we were a poor people and still fighting for the scraps the more powerful threw to us, that was necessary. When we were salvaging what we could from this world and doing the work of rebuilding, we had no choice but to concentrate on practical matters. But if we never look to anything greater....”

  “...your culture will stagnate,” the AI interrupted. The mind had heard him say that often enough, aloud and through the band, during the trip from Atlantic City, and now it repeated his words. “It will again become a backwater. You are immersing yourself in your mind-tours in order to convince yourself that the great endeavor you dream of is possible.”

  “Oh, I can convince myself,” Karim said, “or at least I can do so intermittently. It’s how to convince others that’s the problem.”

  * * * *

  He was aboard a small shuttlecraft, moving away from the space station orbiting Venus toward the parasol shading the planet from the sun. Constructing the parasol had cost both resources and lives, but now, after nearly a century of effort, a hyperthin umbrella of aluminum would allow the hellish planet to cool.

  As his craft approached the parasol, Karim could make out a series of slats designed to reflect sunlight outward and away from Venus. To design the parasol, to build it, to stabilize it so that the vast umbrella would neither drift closer to the sun nor threaten Venus, had been the greatest feat of construction ever undertaken by humankind, and yet it was only a first step in the work of terraforming Venus.

  “And also only the first step,” a voice added, “in mastering the tools we may need to restore Earth’s biosphere.” The disembodied alto voice speaking to him was that of the shuttlecraft’s AI, and yet it sounded oddly familiar.

  It would take some two hundred years for Venus’s surface temperature to drop enough to allow for surface settlements, and even then the first settlers would need to live in protected and closed environments. An effort to terraform Mars would have proceeded more quickly; if Karim had not lived to see the end of such an effort, his children or grandchildren surely would have. But the refugees from Earth, the habitat dwellers, had claimed Mars for themselves, making habitats of its two satellites, bases from which they occasionally ventured forth to explore the Red Planet.

  Once Karim had resented the claim of the habitat dwellers to Mars, but he had eventually come to understand that Venus might be better soil for the flowering of his dream. Venus might have been another Earth, might have more closely resembled humankind’s home world during the first five hundred million years of their planetary histories; to terraform Venus would be to restore her to what she might have been. Human settlers born there in the distant future would not become exiles from their home planet, since Venus’s gravity was close to that of Earth, but any Martian settlers would be exiles; their bodies, adapted to the gentler gravitational pull of Mars, would cut them off from ever being able to return to Earth.

  His shuttlecraft passed through the umbra of the shadow cast by the parasol, and then a spear of light caught him. Karim covered his eyes reflexively as the viewscreen darkened, then peered at the screen again.

  “One of the parasol’s fans has begun to drift away from the shade’s main body,” his craft’s AI said softly as more light filled the screen. “Do not fear. This craft is not in danger.”

  But the Venus project is, Karim thought apprehensively. The fan would have to be replaced; more resources and lives would be lost to that work. That of course was assuming that the parasol did not become unstable and begin to drift away from its L1 point between Venus and the sun. If it moved closer to the sun, more of the planet would eventually be left unshaded; closer to Venus, and the metallic umbrella would be caught and torn apart by fierce winds—if the sulfuric acid of the poisonous atmosphere did not dissolve the parasol first. He trembled in his seat. They might have to rebuild the entire shield.

  “My calculations tell me—” the shuttlecraft’s mind began.

  “No,” Karim replied, and the shuttlecraft suddenly vanished.

  For a moment, he did not know where he was, then recognized the familiar surroundings of the Beverwyck’s sitting room. He felt the pangs of disappointment and loss.

  “You asked me,” the Beverwyck’s mind whispered through his band, “to provide you with an emotional sense of a past in your sketches, so that you would experience each mind-tour as an achieved reality.”

  “Yes, I remember that now.”

  “But I did not anticipate that you would become so disoriented. May I suggest that—”

  “I don’t want any suggestions,” Karim said, then called up his next scenario.

  He followed a path of white flagstones past a grove of slender willows. Greta was waiting for him outside a small pavilion. As he came up to her, she took his arm. They kept to the path that led to the edge of the island, passing
a greenhouse and then another pavilion. Five people sat at one of the tables under the pavilion, sipping tea from cups and eating from a large bowl of fruit. One man raised his hand to Karim and Greta, silently inviting them to join the group; Karim smiled and shook his head.

  Overhead, the wide disk of yellow light at the center of the dome that covered the island was growing dimmer; the silver light of evening would soon be upon them. This artificial island, and the others that now drifted in the upper reaches of Venus’s atmosphere, had been built on vast platforms made of metal cells filled with helium and had then been enclosed in impermeable domes. Few people lived on this island, no more than a few hundred, and there were even fewer on the other islands, but more would come, more of the specialists and workers needed for the next stage in terraforming the planet below.

  The path ended at a low gray wall, about one meter high, that marked the edge of the island. This wall now encircled the entire island, but Karim could recall coming to the island’s edge years ago, just after arriving here from Earth, to peer through the transparent dome at the darkness beyond: Venus cloaked in the parasol’s shadow. There had been no wall then, only the blackness, and for a moment he was suddenly afraid that he might step off the island’s edge and through the dome, to fall through the thick and poisonous clouds. The wall had been built to prevent that feeling of vertigo that so many of the first arrivals had felt, and Karim now often took evening walks to the island’s edge with Greta.

  Another team, a group of engineers, was scheduled to arrive here soon; Karim had heard that several hours ago, just after first light. They were already inside the space station that orbited Venus, where the freighters and passenger torchships from Earth had to dock. From the station, a shuttlecraft would carry them to the one Venusian island that functioned as a port, where they would board an airship bound for this island. Here, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, helium-fueled dirigibles were the most convenient form of transportation between islands.

  “...vulnerable,” Greta was saying, and he had the odd sensation that she was reading his thoughts.

  Karim turned toward his wife. “What were you saying, my dear?”

  She gazed at him in silence with her long dark eyes, then said, “Our airships are useful, but they also leave us vulnerable. Consider this—we can only leave these islands on shuttlecraft, and can only travel to Earth from our Venusian space station. That means a risk of being completely cut off from Earth at two points, our island port and at the space station, and then we’d have only our airships, which have to remain in the atmosphere. We could be trapped here, cut off completely from the outside.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Karim said, distressed that she would spoil the mood of their stroll with such concerns, “but a very distant one. We’ve built enough redundancy into our systems to—”

  “I wasn’t thinking of a systems failure,” Greta said. “I was thinking of a siege, or a blockade.”

  Karim almost laughed. “A blockade?” He shook his head. “But why? For what possible reason? The Mukhtars want only success for this project.”

  “Yes, that’s true at the moment. But what if those who follow us here begin to hope for a looser hand on the reins? We’re here to make a new world, and part of that is allowing that world to develop in its own way. We’re terraforming a planet, probably one of the most revolutionary undertakings of our species, so we shouldn’t be surprised if that provokes people to entertain rebellious ideas in the future. Some here already talk of being free from many of Earth’s restrictions. The Mukhtars might not care for such independence, and they could easily enforce their will. All they would have to do is cut us off completely by allowing no shuttlecraft to enter or leave our port.”

  “They wouldn’t risk destroying their own project,” Karim objected, “not after spending so many resources on getting us this far.”

  “But they wouldn’t be destroying the project. The parasol would still shade Venus, and seeding the atmosphere could proceed. All they’d have to do is wait out the island settlers, who would eventually have to bow to Earth’s will or else face a slow death, and it would be a slow death, Karim. They could survive for a while on greenhouse crops, and the life support systems can be maintained, but sooner or later crucial components of our systems would fail, ones the islanders would be unable to replace. After all of the sacrifices Earth has made for this project, to ensure that their culture will take root on another world, do you really believe that they will ever let us go our own way?”

  She was voicing some of his own fears. He pressed his hands against the dome, felt the surface yield, and found himself sitting in a chair, his hands gripping the armrests.

  “Where am I?” he called out.

  “Aboard the Beverwyck,” a voice replied, and then he remembered. “I suggest,” the AI continued through his band, “that you reset your mind-tour specifications, Mukhtar Karim. You can enjoy your scenarios while still remaining somewhat aware that you are experiencing a mind-tour. You do not have to put yourself into a temporary amnesia, to forget that you are living here and not there.”

  “Ah, but then the experience would not be nearly as convincing.”

  “It does not have to be convincing, only diverting.”

  “I prefer the sense of reality.” In his scenarios, however briefly and imperfectly, he could capture the conviction that the terraforming he dreamed of could succeed. He needed to hold to that conviction even more now.

  * * * *

  Karim had suggested that, after the welcoming ceremony and his meeting with the mayor of New York City, he and Greta invite Lauren, her brother Zack, and her bondmate Roberto to dine with them at the New World Trade Center’s rooftop restaurant.

  “No, Karim,” Greta had replied. “Forgive me, but I don’t think that would be at all appropriate. It might offend some people’s sensitivities. There are certain episodes in our history we’ve never forgotten, even if they did happen over a century and a half ago.”

  He understood, given the long memory of his own people, and had settled for giving the Beverwyck’s owners the day off and permission to use his credit while they dined at the restaurant by themselves.

  A small city hovercraft was sent to take him and Greta to City Hall. The mayor, Donata Grenwell, met him with three members of the city council, then led him to her office while the council members took Greta on a tour of the building. Karim and the mayor sipped coffee while Donata spoke of the city’s need for more engineers to design and supervise the construction of more dikes, and for more physicians and vaccines against the viruses and tropical diseases that afflicted so many in New York. Karim assured her that the Council of Mukhtars would do everything possible to help her.

  Donata Grenwell stood up, and seemed about to lead him to the door, then hesitated. “I wish—” she began as she adjusted the scarf around her head that she had worn in deference to his people’s customs.

  “Yes?” he said, waiting.

  “I wish there was something else to do besides just shoring up what we have, repairing the damage.” She gazed at him steadily with her pale gray eyes, then looked away. “How we used to push ourselves in the old days. I’d hear the stories from my grandmother—she was just barely old enough to remember. Always on the move, she said, always impatient, knowing nothing would stay the same from one year to the next, always having to keep up with everything and be fast on your feet, always having something to look forward to and be optimistic about. That’s how it was for us once.”

  “I understand,” Karim murmured.

  “But the Council of Mukhtars has more important things to worry about,” Mayor Grenwell said. “You have to keep things going and keep them from getting any worse, and if we manage to accomplish that much, it’ll be a job well done.”

  “God willing,” Karim said, “but I wonder if we can do that without also looking forward and dreaming of something new.”

  The mayor arched her brows, looking surprised, then
showed him to the door.

  * * * *

  Two aides to the mayor took him and Greta on a short tour of the lower Manhattan waterways and canals. Their watercraft, a small flat-bottomed boat with a canopy to shade them from the sun, wound its way among canals crowded with waterbuses, gondolas, and motorboat taxis; a police boat carrying five officers followed them. The air smelled of sulfur and brine; the shouts of the vendors who had set up shop on docks and small barges were nearly drowned out by the sound of the traffic. Occasionally a small personal motorcraft sped past the slower vessels, rocking Karim’s boat in its wake. The steep cliffs of highrise apartment buildings and commercial establishments loomed on either side of the canals. The beaches south of Brooklyn had been lost to the rising sea before the dikes and seawalls had been raised on higher ground, and the oceans were also gaining on lower Manhattan. As long as the water could be channeled into canals, and the buildings here remained accessible to workers and residents, better to expend their ever scarcer resources elsewhere; so Donata Grenwell had told him.

  They arrived at the pier near the plaza of the New World Trade Center before noon, but already the hot weather of late March was making Karim sweat under his white ceremonial robe and headdress; the humid air seemed as thick as soup. Even Greta, who had grown up in such a climate, looked uncomfortable as she dabbed at her pale damp face with a handkerchief. Karim picked up the wreath of lilies he had brought with him and stepped onto the dock, with Greta just behind him. The wreath had been his wife’s recommendation, and now he felt the rightness of her advice.

  The police in the boat behind them disembarked; the lieutenant walked with Karim and Greta across the wide plaza toward the glassy buildings on the other side. Other people were gathered in the plaza, some talking among themselves, but most silently watching him and his party pass. Karim was nearly at the memorial, a latticework of metal and twisted beams that surrounded a black wall bearing thousands of names, when the apparition he had been expecting to see began to take shape.