Old Venus

by George R. R. Martin

  “I don’t remember this,” Ash said.

  “It’s good country,” Arkady said. “Interesting. But the damn, gutless executive committee has decided the area is off-limits.”

  “Are you breaking rules?” Ash asked.

  “Yes. This is the perfect time to explore, with a National Geographic videographer along.”

  “And with the CIA putting poisonous spies in our lodge,” Boris growled.

  Ash had a bad feeling. But Arkady ran the most reputable tours on the continent.

  They bumped among more outcropping of cream-yellow rock.

  “This looks right,” Boris said, glancing at his GPS, which was in Cyrillic. Ash could not read it.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “An impact crater,” said Arkady. “Or something else.”

  Boris hit the brakes.

  Next to the road was a low wall made of yellow limestone. It curved gently, apparently part of a huge circle. The section in front of them had been dug out. Heaps of dirt lay in front of it. Off to either side, the soil had not been excavated, and the wall was a mound, covered with low plants and vines.

  “I wasn’t expecting the excavation,” Arkady said. “I suppose we have the CIA to thank.”

  “Who built this?” Ash asked.

  “Not us,” Arkady replied. “And not the CIA. It shows up in early satellite surveys, along with three other circles, all in this area and all arranged in a broad arc. One circle is broken, only half there. The rest are complete. None has been investigated. In theory, they are impact craters from a body that broke apart before it hit.

  “Remember that our colony was run from Earth. The apparatchiks in Moscow said exploration could wait. This wasn’t a scientific settlement. It was military and economic. By the time we were ready to look around, the CIA was in the area. The government decided to leave them alone. We didn’t have the power to confront the Americans.”

  They all climbed out and walked to the wall. It looked to be made of the same stone as the outcroppings. But it was a single piece, as far as Ash could tell, and the surface was slick. Ash ran her hand along it. As smooth as glass. When she pulled her hand away, she saw blood. The edge of the wall was knife-sharp.

  “Here,” said Arkady, and handed her a red handkerchief.

  “What’s that for?” Ash asked. “The revolution?”

  “At the moment, it’s for your hand. Use it.”

  Ash wrapped the handkerchief around the bleeding fingers. Maggie was recording her, she noticed.

  The wall—the part aboveground at least—was more than a meter high, too tall to sit on comfortably, if one was human, and too tall to step over comfortably.

  “Amazing,” Jason said. “If humans did not build this, then it is proof of intelligent life on Venus.”

  “There isn’t any,” Ash put in. “The brightest things on the planet are animals like Baby. He’s bright, but he doesn’t build walls.”

  “It can’t possibly be natural,” Jason said.

  “I agree,” Arkady replied. “I also agree with Ash. I do not think this was built by anything native to Venus.”

  Maggie was panning, making a record of the entire length of the wall.

  In back of them, a voice asked, “Who the hell are you?”

  Ash turned, as did the others. A soldier in full body armor stood in the road between the two trucks. He was carrying a terrifying-looking, very-high-tech rifle. Ash saw that first, then she noticed that he was standing above the road, his boots not touching the surface.

  “You are a hologram,” Boris said.

  “Yes. But there are gun emplacements all around you. Take a look.”

  Ash did. Red lights, sighting lasers, shone on top of neighboring rocks. As far as she could tell, they were aimed at her.

  “If you doubt me, I can melt something,” the hologram said. “Your robot.”

  “She is autonomous,” Jason replied quickly. “A citizen of the United States and an employee of National Geographic.”

  “Shit,” said the hologram. “Stay put. I have to consult. If you move, the guns will fire.” The soldier vanished.

  “Are you still recording?” Jason asked Maggie.

  “Yes, and I’m uploading my images to the nearest comsat. This place is about to become famous.”

  “That will make life uncomfortable for the CIA,” said Arkady in a tone of satisfaction.

  “And the useless Petrograd executive committee,” Boris added.

  “And for us,” Ash put in. “You have just pissed off the most dangerous organization in the solar system.”

  The hologram reappeared. “I have backup coming. Stay where you are. I’ve been informed that your robot is emitting radio signals. Stop that!”

  “Very well,” Maggie said. She didn’t add that it was too late.

  They waited, staying where they were, even though a fine rain began to fall. Inside the truck cab, Baby squawked for food.

  “Later,” Ash called.

  “Hungry!”

  At last, a car appeared, bumping down the track. It stopped, and a pair of men climbed out, dressed entirely in black, with shiny black boots. They wore computer glasses with opaque lenses and dark, thick frames.

  “Who are you?” one asked.

  “Arkady Volkov Wildlife Tours,” Arkady said.

  “National Geographic,” Jason added.

  “Ashley Weatherman Fashion Art,” Ash put in.

  “Shit,” the man said, then added, “Follow us, and don’t try anything funny. There are guns in the forest. Any trouble, and they will melt your trucks.”

  They climbed into the trucks. Arkady handed Ash a first-aid kit, and she sprayed a bandage on her fingers. The antiseptic in it made the cuts sting. Venusian microbes did not usually infect humans, but there were Earth microbes spreading across the planet, and some of them were nasty.

  The car turned and went back the way it had come. The trucks followed. As they began to move, Ash looked back. The hologram soldier was still in the middle of the road, rifle in hand, watching. Then the second truck rolled through him, and he was gone.

  “I apologize,” Arkady said. “I thought we could look at one crater and get out safely, with a few images that might—I hoped—endanger the CIA’s control of this region.”

  “Were you expecting to find an alien artifact?” Ash asked.

  “The longer we looked at the craters the more suspicious they have looked,” Boris said. “We were looking at the CIA, of course. We would not have examined the satellite images so closely otherwise.”

  Ash leaned back and drank more tea. Next to her, Baby gnawed on a chow stick. Of course she was worried, but she couldn’t imagine the CIA taking out National Geographic. Even monsters had their limits.

  The rain grew heavier. Looking out, Ash saw a group of fire scorpions resting on a tree trunk, sheltered by foliage. They weren’t large, but their exoskeletons were bright red, a warning of serious poison.

  “I don’t think I will draw Maggie’s attention to them,” Arkady said. “The CIA might not want us on the radio. A pity. They look handsome, and they are very poisonous. Tourists always enjoy deadly animals.”

  A half hour later, they reached a cliff made of the same yellow stone as the outcroppings. It rose above the forest, running as far as she could see in both directions. The road ended in front of it. The car stopped, and they stopped as well. Everyone climbed down.

  “Leave the rifles in the trucks,” one of the men said. “And you can leave that thing too.” He waved at Baby in his cage.

  “He gets lonely,” Ash said.

  One man went ahead of them, opening a door in the cliff face. It looked human-made, but Ash was less sure of the opening it closed. Rectangular, very tall and narrow, it didn’t look like the kind of doorway humans would cut. They filed through, followed by the second man, who closed the door and locked it. Inside was a corridor, as tall and narrow and rectangular as the opening. Lights were stuck along the walls.
These were clearly human. As for the corridor itself—the stone was polished and as slick as glass. There were fossils in it. Ash made out shells, gleaming behind the glossy surface, as well as long things that might be worms or crinoids, though this world did not have crinoids. If she’d had another life to live, she would have been a biologist or paleontologist, though she had a low tolerance for the finicky work required of both. Maybe it was a better idea to shoot fashion models and megafauna.

  Baby muttered in his cage.

  The corridor ended in another narrow doorway, this one without a door. Beyond it was a rectangular room with polished-stone walls. Like the hall, it was narrow and tall. It contained a table and chairs, all 3-D-printed. Ash recognized the style. Human Office Modern.

  “Okay,” said one of the men. He took off his glasses, showing pale blue eyes with dark, puffy skin below them. “What is this about? We have a deal with the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet.” He looked at the other man, who still wore glasses. “Mike, get coffee, will you?”

  “Sure,” Mike answered. “Don’t say anything exciting till I get back.” The voice was contralto.

  Ash took another look. Mike was either a woman or an FTM, though it was well hidden by the boxy suit and heavy-rimmed computer glasses. Not that it mattered. A female CIA agent was as dangerous as a male.

  Mike left, and they sat down. Arkady and Boris looked grim. Irina and Alexandra looked worried. The Nat Geo journalist had an expression that combined fear and excitement. Maggie’s gleaming lens face revealed nothing.

  “Who built this?” Arkady asked.

  “We don’t know,” the man replied. “We found it.”

  “Are there artifacts?” Arkady asked.

  “Aside from the circles and these tunnels? Nothing we have found.”

  “This is a site of systemwide historical importance,” Boris said. “Evidence that someone, not human, was on Venus before we came. You sat in it, keeping the people of Petrograd—and the scientists on Venus and Earth—from investigating. Not to mention the tourists we could have brought in, improving our economy.”

  “It meant we didn’t have to set up camp in the forest,” the man said. “It’s dry in here, and there’s a lot less animal life—or was, till recently. Believe me, this place isn’t interesting. Just corridors and rooms, going a long way back into the cliff. All empty, except for the debris left by animals. Bones and dry leaves and dried-out feces.”

  Mike came back with a tray, carafe, and coffee cups. He or she poured coffee. There was a slight chill in the room, and it was pleasant to hold the warm cup and sip the hot coffee. Ash’s cut fingers still stung a little.

  “The question is, what will we do with you?” the first man said.

  “National Geographic will be concerned if we vanish,” Jason said. He sounded anxious.

  “Accidents happen in the outback,” Mike said in his or her high voice.

  “I was recording and uploading my images, until your hologram told me to stop,” Maggie put in. “The material went to the nearest comsat, which belongs—I believe—to Petrograd. I assume the comsat sent it on to our office in Venusport. The message was encrypted to prevent piracy. But our office can decode it. They will have done so by now.”

  “They know about the circle,” Jason added. “And the robot you put in the lodge.”

  “What robot?” the man asked.

  “The bug. The scorpion. It had wires.”

  Mike was leaning against a wall, cup in hand. The nameless man looked over, frowning.

  “Not ours,” Mike said. “Petrograd must be spying on itself.”

  Baby stirred in his cage. Ash reached a finger to scratch him and—in the same movement—undid the lock on the door. No one seemed to notice except Baby, who looked interested and alert.

  She wondered about ventilation and ways to escape, looked around and saw a rectangle cut in the stone of one wall just below the ceiling. It was long and narrow with vertical bars made of the same stone as the wall. As she watched, a pair of antennae poked out between two of the bars. The animal followed. A scorpion, of course. The pale gray body suggested it was a cave scorpion, as did the lack of obvious eyes.

  She watched as its front legs scrabbled to get a grip on the slick stone. It failed and fell, landing with an audible “tock.” The nameless man spun in his chair, then was up and stamping the scorpion over and over. It wasn’t even that big, Ash thought. No more than twenty centimeters.

  The man remained bent over for several moments. “Oh God, I hate them.”

  “They are carrion eaters,” Arkady said. “Living off the debris of pterosaur colonies that nest on cliffs and in shallow caves. Their bite does little harm to humans.”

  “I hate them,” the man repeated.

  “He has a phobia,” Mike said. “Cave scorpions don’t bother me.”

  The nameless agent straightened up. “The tunnels connect with caves. The damn things have discovered they can live off us. They’re all over.”

  “But hardly a serious problem,” Arkady said.

  “We also have fire scorpions,” Mike put in.

  The nameless agent twitched at the name. Mike smiled slightly. Ash had the impression he enjoyed his colleague’s fear.

  “That is a problem,” Boris said. “But you shouldn’t have them. They live in the forest, not in caves.”

  “They’ve bred with the cave scorpions,” the nameless man said. His voice sounded constricted, as if fear had robbed him of breath.

  “They can’t have,” Arkady said. “They are different species, living in different environments.”

  The two men exchanged glances and were silent.

  After a moment, Boris said harshly, “You were not satisfied with robot scorpions. You have played with DNA and created a new species in violation of numerous laws.”

  “Not the laws on Earth,” Mike said.

  “You are on Venus,” Boris pointed out. “And in Petrograd.”

  “I don’t think we need to talk about this.”

  “Yes, we do,” Arkady replied. “And not just here. You are in very serious violation of several treaties. Venus and Earth need to know about this.”

  The nameless agent pulled out a handgun, aiming it at Arkady. The gun was shaking. Ash could see that clearly. The gun, the shaking hand, the room, the other people were all unnaturally sharp and clear.

  “Go,” she said to Baby. The pterosaur was out in a moment, flapping onto the agent’s head and clawing. The gun went off with a loud—very loud—sound. Arkady dove at the man, taking him down. The gun spun across the floor, away from Arkady and the nameless agent.

  “Stop that,” Mike said.

  Ash looked toward him. His coffee cup lay on the yellow floor, in the middle of a brown pool of coffee, and he had a gun out, pointing it at Arkady.

  Never mix with the CIA. But it was too late for that warning.

  “No,” said Alexandra. Ash was trying not to move, but she could see the ex-cop from the corner of her eye. The woman had a gun, held steadily and pointed at Mike. This was ridiculous.

  “Get the damn animal off Brian,” Mike said.

  The nameless agent was on the floor, Arkady lying across him, and Baby still on his head, biting and clawing.

  “Stop,” Ash called. “You can stop now, Baby.”

  The pterosaur flapped back to his cage, settling on top and folding his downy wings.

  “This is stupid,” Mike said. “I’m not going to shoot anyone in here, and I hope to God this lovely lady is not going to shoot me. You guys look like idiots on the floor. Get up.”

  The two men did. Arkady looked rumpled, which was his usual condition. Blood ran down the face of the nameless agent. He wiped it with one hand, making a smear.

  “We’re pulling out,” Mike added. “Petrograd knows this.”

  “Why?” asked Boris.

  “Why do they know? We told them.”

  “Why are you pulling out?”

  “The sco
rpions. The things are deadly, and Brian’s right. They’re all over.”

  “Am I right?” Boris said. “Did you create them?”

  Mike was silent.

  “They must have wanted something that could live in sewers and the crawl spaces of buildings,” Arkady put in. “And that was toxic. It sounds like a weapon that could be used against Petrograd.”

  “They are telling us too much,” Boris said. “They must be planning to kill us.”

  “Not while I hold this gun,” Alexandra said.

  “We’re pulling out, as I told you,” Mike said. “And there is no proof that we made the scorpions or intended to use them for anything. You Soviets are way too paranoid.”

  “How many people are left here?” Arkady asked.

  “Dozens,” said the agent named Brian.

  “Don’t be a fool. We saw no one coming in, and no one has responded to the sound of gunfire. Either you are alone, or your colleagues are not close.”

  “Three,” Mike answered. “They’re in the back rooms, destroying the equipment. When they’re done, we’ll take the last VTL.”

  Boris pulled a roll of duct tape from his vest. He tossed it to Arkady. “Tape them up.”

  “No,” said Brian. “What if more scorpions come?”

  “Too bad,” Boris said.

  The man bolted for the room’s doorway. Baby flapped onto him, clawing and shrieking, “Bad! Bad!”

  Brian stumbled. Boxlike Irina grabbed his arm and pulled him around, then drove a fist into the man’s midsection. He bent over, coughing, and collapsed onto his knees. Fortunately, because Ash hated vomit, he did not throw up.

  “That’s some punch,” Mike said in his or her pleasant voice.

  “She used to be a stevedore,” Arkady said. “Now I will tape you up, and you will hope that none of your new, mutant scorpions arrive.”

  “I’m not phobic,” Mike replied. “And I’m not going to shoot it out with you. We don’t know what these walls are made of, but you can’t scratch them. Anything that hits them is going to bounce off.” He put his gun on the table. “We’ve been lucky so far. The last ricochet didn’t hit anyone. I think the bullet went out the door. There’s no reason to think we’ll be lucky a second time.”