Old Venus

by George R. R. Martin

  She pulled off her boots and put a stick of chow in Baby’s cage. The pterosaur dug in.

  Of course, the animal was not a real pterosaur. Life on Earth and Venus had been evolving separately for hundreds of millions—maybe billions—of years. But it had skin wings stretched over finger bones, a big head, and a small, light body. Pale yellow fuzz covered it, except around its eyes, where its skin was bare and red. A crest of feathers adorned Baby’s head, down at present. When up, the feathers were long and narrow, looking like spines or stiff hairs; and they were bright, iridescent blue.

  Some people—mostly middle-class—used the Latin names for the local life. But people on the hill called them after the Earth life they most resembled.

  “Bored,” the animal said.

  “We’re going into the outback,” Ash said. “Flying, Baby. Hunting. Food.”

  “Fly!” Baby sang. “Hunt! Food!”

  She scratched the pterosaur’s muzzle, which was full of needle teeth. The head crest rose, expanding into a brilliant, semicircular array.

  Venus was surprising, she had learned in school. No one had expected flying animals as intelligent as birds. Famous words, repeated over and over—No one had expected.

  She pulled a beer out of the electric cooler, sat down in the chair next to Baby’s cage, and unfolded her tablet. One tap brought up Arkady’s address. As usual, it was irritating. A glowing red star appeared on her screen. “You have reached the home of Arkady Volkov. He is out at present, making plans for a new revolution, but if you leave a message—”

  “Cut it out, Arkady,” Ash said. “You are down at the local bar, getting pissed.”

  The star was replaced by Arkady: a swarthy man with a thick, black beard and green eyes, surprisingly pale given his skin and hair. “Do not judge others by yourself, Ash. I am sitting at home with a modest glass of wine, trying—once again—to understand the first three chapters of Capital.”

  “Why bother?”

  “Education is always good. The ruling class denies it to workers because it’s dangerous to them. As a rule, one should always do what the ruling class finds dangerous.”

  Easy for him to say, living in Petrograd, where his opinions were tolerated because a ruling class did not officially exist. Even there, most people found his ideas out-of-date. Oh, silly Arkady, he believes the old lies.

  “Did you call to banter?” Arkady asked. “Or to argue politics? In which case I will find something offensive to say about anarchism.”

  “Neither,” Ash said, and told him about the job.

  He looked dubious. “I wasn’t planning to go out in the near future. There are things in Petrograd that need to be dealt with. Do these people pay well?”

  Ash gave him the figure.

  Arkady whistled. “Who are they?”

  “National Geographic. They want to do a story on charismatic megafauna. I want to take them into a real wilderness, where they won’t run into surveyors or test plots or mines.”

  “I will do it,” Arkady said, and lifted his glass of wine to her. “Capitalists have so much money. How many people?”

  She gave details, as she had learned them from Hong Wu.

  “Two vehicles,” Arkady said. “Ural trucks modified for passengers. Rifles. I can provide those. We’ll need two drivers and a cook, all of whom should be good with guns. That means we will have to hire the cook in Petrograd. Your cuisine is better, but your shooting is worse, and most of you do not know how to handle a Pecheneg.”

  In theory, a rifle could take down anything on Venus, but only if the shot was well placed. There were times when the best thing to do was to rip the animal apart, and a Pecheneg could do that. Arkady was fond of them. They were solid and reliable, like the legendary AK-47 and the Ural 6420, the last version of the truck made before the USSR fell. It had been designed for use on Venus as well as in Siberia; and it could go through almost everything.

  “I know someone here in Petrograd who does an excellent borscht—a man could live on borscht and bread—and can make more than adequate Central Asian food. She was in the police force and can both fire a Pecheneg and fieldstrip it.”

  “It’s a deal, then,” said Ash.

  —–—

  She met the National Geographic team in the Venusport airport. The journalist was as expected: a tall, lean man in a jacket with many pockets. His dark eyes had a thousand-kilometer stare. The videographer was a surprise: a round sphere that rested on four spidery metal legs. Its head was atop a long, flexible neck—a cluster of lenses. “You are Ash Weatherman?” the machine asked in a pleasant contralto voice.

  “Yes.”

  “I am an Autonomous Leica. My model name is AL-26. My personal name is Margaret, in honor of the twentieth-century photographer Margaret Bourke White. You may call me Maggie.” It lifted one of its legs and extruded fingers. Ash shook the cool metal hand.

  “And I am Jasper Khan,” the journalist said, holding out his hand, which was brown and muscular.

  More shaking. This time the hand was warm.

  “Baby,” said Baby.

  “And this is Baby. Don’t try to shake. He nips.”

  “A pseudorhamphorynchus,” Jasper said.

  “Not pseudo,” Baby said.

  “How large is his vocabulary?” Maggie asked.

  “More than five hundred words. He keeps picking up new ones.”

  Maggie bent its neck, peering into the cage. “Say cheese.”

  “Not in vocabulary,” Baby replied, then opened his mouth wide, showing off his needle teeth.

  “Excellent,” said Maggie. A bright light came on, and the Leica extended its—her—long neck farther, curling around the cage, recording Baby from all sides. The pterosaur did not look happy.

  “You will be famous, Baby,” Ash said.

  “Want food.”

  The plane took off on time, rising steeply into the almost-always-present clouds. Ash had a window seat, useless after the clouds closed in. Baby was next to her on the aisle; and the National Geographic team was across the aisle.

  Six hours to Aphrodite Terra. Ash fed a chow stick to Baby. The pterosaur held it in one clawed foot and gnawed. Ash felt her usual comfort in travel and in getting away from Venusport. Petrograd might be retrograde and delusional, the last remnant of a failed idea. But she liked Arkady, and nothing on the planet could beat a Ural 6420.

  She dozed off as the plane flew south and rain streaked her window, then woke when the descent began. A holographic steward came by and warned them to fasten their seat belts. She had never unfastened hers, but she checked the one around Baby’s cage.

  She looked out as the plane dropped below the clouds. Another grid city like Venusport, but smaller, with no tall buildings. A failure, slowly dying according to people on Earth and in Venusport. Cracked, gray runways crossed shaggy native grass.

  They landed with a bump and rolled to a stop in front of the terminal. Ash undid her belt and Baby’s, then stood, feeling stiff.

  Arkady was at the gate. On Earth there was security, which grew more intense as violence grew. Here on Venus, people were less desperate; and it was possible to wait at a gate with an AK-47 over one shoulder. It wasn’t the original version, of course, but a modern replica with some improvements, but not many. It remained as simple and indestructible as a stone ax and as easy to maintain. The best assault weapon ever made, Arkady said.

  Baby opened his wings as far as he could in the cage. “Arky!” he cried.

  The Russian grinned and waved.

  Introductions followed. The two men were wary of each other, in spite of vigorous handshakes and broad smiles. Arkady was warmer toward the robot. “A pleasure,” he said, clasping the extruded fingers. “The Urals are waiting. We can head out at once.”

  “Excellent,” the Autonomous Leica said.

  They picked up the rest of their baggage at the carousel, then went into the rain. The Urals were across the drop-off-pick-up road. Two massive vehicles, each with
four sets of wheels. The front truck had a box. The one in back was a flatbed, with a Pecheneg fastened to the bed. A tarp covered it, but Ash knew what it was.

  Arkady escorted Maggie and Jasper to the flatbed, then pointed at the truck in front. Ash climbed into the backseat. The driver made a friendly, grunting sound.

  “This is Boris,” Arkady said as he climbed in. “Irina and Alexandra are in the second truck.”

  The trucks pulled out. Rain beat on the windshield, and wipers flashed back and forth. They bumped out of the airport and along rough, wet streets. Petrograd was around them: low, dreary-looking, concrete buildings, dimmed by the rain.

  Arkady opened a thermos of tea and handed it back to Ash. She took a swallow. Hot and sweet.

  “Do you want to show them anything special?” Arkady asked.

  “They want charismatic megafauna and maybe something else. I keep wondering why they hired me. Do they want to write about Venusian culture as well?”

  “The replica of America on Ishtar Terra, and the remains of the USSR on Aphrodite Terra,” said Arkady in a genial tone. “It might make a good story. At least they did not ask for mostly naked natives. We don’t have any, except in saunas and swimming pools.”

  The city was not large. They were soon out of it and rolling through agricultural land: bright green fields of modified Earth crops. The rain let up though the cloud cover remained. By midafternoon, they reached the forest. The fields ended at a tall wire fence. Beyond were trees. Green, of course. Chlorophyll had evolved only once—on Earth—and been imported to Venus. But the native forest’s green always seemed richer, more intense and varied to her. Purple dotted the ragged foliage of the low bottlebrush trees. The foliage of the far taller lace-leaf trees was veined with yellow, though this was hard to see at a distance.

  The trucks stopped. Arkady climbed down and opened the gate, then closed it after the trucks were through, climbed back into the cab, and flipped on the radio. “Large herbivores can break through the fence and do sometimes,” he told the truck in back. “Fortunately for us, they do not like the taste of Terran vegetation, though they can metabolize it. Unfortunately for us, the only way for them to learn they don’t like our food is to try it.”

  “Ah,” said Jasper.

  “I got images of your opening the gate,” Maggie said. “Bright green fields, dark green trees and you with your AK-47. Very nice.”

  The trucks drove on. The road was two muddy ruts now, edged by an understory of frilly plants. The air coming in her partly open window smelled of Venus: rain, mud, and the native vegetation.

  Animals began to appear: pterosaurs, flapping in the trees, and small reptiloid bipeds in the understory. Now and then, Ash saw a solitary flower, cone-shaped and two meters tall. Most were a vivid orange-yellow. The small flying bugs that pollinated them were not visible at a distance, but she knew they were there in clouds. Now and then Maggie asked for a stop. Ash had her camera out and did some shooting, but the thing she really wanted to capture—the robot—was invisible, except for the lens head, pushed out a window at the end of Maggie’s long, long neck.

  Midway through the afternoon, they came to a river. A small herd of amphibianoids rested on the far shore. They were larger than the street pigs in Venusport, maybe five meters long, their sprawling bodies red and slippery-looking. Their flat heads had bulbous eyes on top—not at the back of the head, where eyes usually were, even on Venus, but in front, close to the nostrils and above the mouths full of sharp teeth.

  Maggie climbed out her window onto the flat bed of the second truck. She braced herself there, next to the Pecheneg, and recorded as the trucks forded the river. The water came up to the trucks’ windows, and the riverbed was rocky, but the trucks kept moving, rocking and jolting. Nothing could beat a Ural!

  “A gutsy robot,” Arkady said.

  Alexandra answered over the radio. “She has four sets of fingers dug into the truck bed, right into the wood. A good thing. I don’t want to fish her out of the river.”

  Ash aimed her camera at the amphibianoids as the animals bellowed and slid into the river, vanishing among waves. Maggie was more interesting, but she still couldn’t get a good view.

  The trucks climbed the now-empty bank and rolled onto the road. The Leica climbed back into the cab. “Not mega, but very nice,” Maggie said over the radio.

  An hour or so later, they reached the first lodge, a massive concrete building set against a low cliff. Vines hung down the cliff, and pterosaurs—a small species covered with white down—fluttered among the vines.

  There was a front yard, protected by a tall fence. Once again, Arkady climbed down and opened the gate. The trucks rolled in. Arkady locked the gate behind them. Boris shut down their truck and grabbed an AK-47, climbing down to join Arkady. They looked around the yard, which was full of low vegetation, mashed in places by previous safaris. Nothing big could hide here, but there were always land scorpions.

  An AK-47 seemed excessive to Ash. Good boots and stomping worked just as well. But the citizens of Petrograd loved their guns; and there was no question that the experience of crushing a land scorpion, especially a big one, was unpleasant.

  Finally, Boris unlocked the lodge’s door, which was metal and so heavy it could be called armored, and went in. She knew what he was doing: turning on the generator, the lights—ah, there they were, shining out the open door—the air, the temp control, the fence.

  Baby shifted in his cage. “Want out. Hunt. Eat.”

  “Soon.”

  “Pterosaur chow is crap,” Baby added.

  She reached a finger through the cage’s bars and rubbed his head. His large eyes closed, and he looked happy.

  Boris came out and waved.

  “All clear,” Arkady called. “The fence is electric and on now. Stay away from it.”

  Ash opened the cage. Baby crawled out and rested for a moment in the open window. Then he flapped out, rising rapidly. The small pterosaurs in the vines shrieked. She felt the brief doubt she always felt when she let Baby go. Would he return?

  “Did it escape?” Jason asked over the radio.

  “He’s going hunting.” Ash climbed down. The air was damp and hot. By the time she reached the lodge, her shirt was wet.

  “I want all the food inside,” Arkady said. “Also all the weapons and any personal belongings you want to preserve. The fence will keep most things out, but it’s not one hundred percent secure.”

  She put the cage down and went back to help unload the trucks. Irina was a broad, boxlike woman, as solid and useful as a Ural. Alexandra was surprisingly slim and elegant, the chef who’d been a cop and could fieldstrip a Pecheneg. She moved like a dancer, and Ash felt a terrible envy. Did women ever stop feeling envy?

  Maggie recorded them as they worked, while Jason took notes on a tablet. Ash felt mildly irritated by this. Couldn’t he help with the boxes? But he was a paying customer and an employee of a famous news source.

  Once they were all inside, Boris shut the door, bringing down a heavy bar.

  “Bathrooms are down the hall,” Arkady said. “Paying customers go first. Dinner will be in an hour.”

  “An hour and a half,” Alexandra said.

  “I am corrected.”

  When she got back from her shower, Ash noticed that the virtual windows were on, showing the yard, lit now by spotlights. Beyond the fence was the dark forest. A hologram fire burned in the fireplace. Wine and a cheese plate were on a table in front of the fire.

  She poured a glass, then went to help Alexandra and Irina with dinner. It was sautéed vegetables and fish from the Petrograd fishponds.

  They ate around the fireplace.

  “Someone has been here,” Boris said, as they ate.

  “It must have been another safari,” Arkady said mildly. “They all have the access code.”

  “I checked. No safaris have been this way since the last time we were here, and the security system has recorded nothing. But I know how I arran
ge canned goods. They are no longer in alphabetic order. I think it’s the CIA.”

  “What?” asked Jason, and pulled his tablet out.

  “There is a CIA post in the forest,” Arkady said. “They spy on Petrograd, though we’re barely surviving and no danger to the American colony or anyone. We ignore them because we don’t have the resources to confront them. But they are present—and not far from here. Boris might be right. They could have tinkered with the security system. I don’t know who else could have.”

  “Why do you hang on if you are barely surviving?” Jason asked. “The USSR fell, in part because it exhausted itself trying to settle Venus. All the republics have become capitalist states, but you remain here, stubbornly Soviet.”

  “Not all change is good,” Boris said. “And there is more to life than selfishness.”

  “Surely you would do better if you had the assistance of the American colony on Ishtar.”

  Arkady said, “The capitalists on Earth are investing in what interests them, which is not the lives of ordinary people. We in Petrograd are a dream that has failed, or so we are told. Ishtar Terra is a—what can I call it?—a vacation spot, a rare-earth mine, and a place for the rich to flee to if they finally decide that Earth is uninhabitable.”

  “Life in Ishtar Terra is more comfortable than life here,” Jason pointed out.

  “We survive.”

  “Be honest, Arkady,” said the boxlike woman, Irina. “People get tired of shortages and go to Ishtar Terra. It’s a slow but continual drain. In the end, Petrograd will fail.”

  “We don’t know that,” Boris put in. “Even our setbacks are not entirely bad. Our food shortages have brought our rates of heart disease and diabetes down; and our fuel shortages mean we walk more, which is healthy.”

  Irina did not look convinced. Nor did Jason Khan, though Ash could not be sure. He was an oddly opaque man. Maybe she would find out what he was thinking when the article finally came out. At present, the Leica was easier to understand.