Old Venus

by George R. R. Martin

  But as the Lens neared completion, so, it seems, has the disassembly of Venerian civilization. Based on what Jor sees now, in the streets and mudflats, it could be a matter of weeks … possibly days.

  He had asked Abdera: “Where will you go when reloquere comes?”

  “With my clan.”

  “Where will they go?” Sometimes she is too literal. On the other hand, he realizes that she is the one speaking a different language.

  “Into the Bright Sea.”

  “All of you?”

  “There are many skiffs, most of them stored for a long time.”

  “And then?” He thinks she’s joking.

  “Return to the land wherever it forms.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “It is. But it’s necessary.”

  The subject changed then, and for some time thereafter Jor concentrated on Abdera’s somewhat grim acceptance of reloquere.

  Only now does he recall her hint that she had been through it before.

  But there is no word. And he has no way of reaching her.

  In the afternoon, Jor is called to TA headquarters, the oldest of the four towers in the Terrestrian compound, to see the five bombers in their holding cell.

  Venerian premales are shorter, broader, brighter green than females like Abdera. Unlike her, they wear the garb of sea farmers … clothing that seems to be fashioned from scales, like a knight’s armor.

  Jor begins to think of them as teenaged boys … mischievous, trying to prove themselves, not terrorists. This is silly, he realizes, and not just because he has fallen into D’Yquem’s conceptual trap.

  Even if these young creatures did try to harm the Lens, their questioning has been harsh: Jor can see signs of bruising and branding. It appears that one of them has a broken arm.

  “Have they said why?” he asks Hollander.

  “They just sing and pray,” the security man tells him.

  Jor is exhausted. He goes.

  The next morning, Jor is up earlier than usual—and he always rises earlier than most, no matter how hungover—and upon arriving at his desk finds two flimsy documents, the coin of the realm in the Lens offices: first, a secret report that all five of the Venerian premales died in custody the night before.

  Which is terrible news.

  The relationship between TA and the Venerian council of clans is comfortably colonial—from Authority’s point of view. After all, Terrestrians possess spaceships, therefore power.

  In practice, however, the balance frequently shifts. Venerians are technologically savvy, armed, and, as their own recent history shows, willing to fight.

  Why have they allowed Terrestrians to establish Venus Port at all, much less build the Lens—which surely suggested an even larger footprint? The official answer was technology transfer: Terrestrians were paying for time and territory with information—hence the colonial smugness.

  This was another question Jor had put to Abdera in their early days, only to receive what he could only describe as an amused shrug. “You gave us land near one of your largest cities,” he had said.

  “Not very much of it. And we use very little, as you’ve seen.”

  “What do you think of the Lens?” Jor had never asked her; when they met, the tower was already rising. Permissions had been obtained from the clans.

  She had smiled—a humanoid gesture—and slithered up and down his body in a Venerian one, the total effect being quite … arousing. “If it will bring more attractive, rich human males, how could I dislike it?”

  Jor wasn’t ready to accept this glib answer. “It will bring all kinds of humans, and while many will be richer and more powerful than me, none will be more attractive. Some of them will be cruel and greedy and dangerous.”

  Now she was serious. “I know.” Then she offered the Venerian equivalent of a shrug. “It really doesn’t matter.”

  She did not need to say why: Sunset.

  “Don’t you think of us as invaders?”

  “Some do.”

  “But not you.”

  And here he was rewarded with a smile of unrestrained Venerian amusement. “Only sexually.”

  Which is another aspect of their relationship that binds them—at least Jor to Abdera. Their lovemaking is frequent, satisfying, innovative … and frequently (by Jor’s standards) almost public. Which adds to the excitement.

  He was sexually experienced before meeting Abdera, of course, but entered that phase of their relationship as ignorant as a fundamentalist bride. He had heard nothing about Terrestrian-Venerian sexual relations beyond the usual ignorant rumors.

  But, in the twilight, garments gone, the classic moves dominated. Abdera was more aggressive than women in Jor’s past … but he found that he enjoyed it.

  Jor believes that this intimacy gives him greater insight into Venerian character and customs. And while it is true that he has learned several phrases and knows more about Venerian food and drink … he realizes on this grim day that he is no better informed than Tuttle or the others in TA.

  And with five premale Venerians dead in TA custody, he feels overwhelmed, unsure, and outnumbered.

  Only then does he find a second message—from Abdera, in her charming, flowery style: “We must meet by midday or I will perish from the shame of my actions. The landing.”

  Although most Terrestrians, especially those newly arrived from Earth, argue the point, Venerians are more advanced than humans. The assumption that they are somehow equivalent to European civilizations of the late Middle Ages grows out of ignorance and xenophobia, and a mistaken belief that an advanced civilization requires a large population.

  There are, Jor knew, fewer than 100 million Venerians. Naturally they have fewer, smaller cities. Their economy is largely directed toward sea farming in the Twi-Land waters, especially Bright Sea—which is why Venus Port was built where it was. (Venerian sea farming was so extensive, involving the actual herding of aquatic creatures we still did not truly understand, that the word “fishing” seemed inadequate.)

  But they have electronics, their own communication system, weather forecasting, science, art, and wildly sophisticated politics, which one would expect from a clan-based society.

  Their interpersonal relationships are immensely complicated by their proliferation of genders, from post-male/female (once they are no longer fertile and breeding, Venerians essentially lose their sexual identity and plumbing), to active male and female and the prepubescent versions of both, though Venerian puberty seems quite protracted, likely another result of the long life spans.

  The only advantage Terrestrians truly seem to possess is space travel, and even here superiority is suspect: the antipodal clans dominating the southern hemisphere’s Twi-Lands have smaller seas and a clear history of aviation and other technological development. It is rumored that these clans had developed space travel … many thousands of years in the past … and have even traveled to Earth! (This rumor led to dozens of wild speculations about shared Terrestrian-Venerian evolution … Jor always assumed the Venerians are a branch of the main Terrestrian trunk, but in truth it could just as easily have been the other way around.)

  But they had abandoned the whole business, so the story goes. Abdera claimed that while it might be, she didn’t know. “Our clans don’t share.”

  Given that until shortly before they met those clans had been actively at war, Jor believes her.

  And these are just the Venerians Jor knows, the clans of the Bright Sea.

  Before he leaves for what he hopes will be a completely distracting several hours, Jor makes one final pass through his in-box, where he finds a plain note saying, “Northern Jungle today.” It is just the sort of anonymous message he receives daily, some from his team or underlings, but just as frequently from Tuttle’s inner circle.

  During his first years on the second planet, he had largely worked with crews hoping to tame the Northern Jungle, to use another Terrestrian name that was wildly inadequate.

 
The Terrestrian Authority, in its master plan, had hoped to create a land route to the Highlands, the rounded, mineral-rich mountains to the north, unreachable by sea skiff. (Air transport was possible but uneconomical, given the size and number of cargo planes that would have to be built after their materials had been sent across interplanetary space; D’Yquem had once shown Jor the figures and the projected profit point was five hundred years in the future.) This meant a brute force assault on … trees with wood so rugged it broke saws.

  The Northern Jungle did not want to be conquered. And it wasn’t.

  Then the Lens was approved and the TA happily attacked in a new direction. “No wonder the Venerians sat back and smiled as we hacked up their jungle,” D’Yquem said.

  Jor waits for his visiphone to warm up, feeling appreciative toward D’Yquem, who had lobbied hard with the TA staff and even with parties back on Earth to acquire six of the devices, planning to link them to his computational device.

  Four of the machines had been scooped up by the TA, where, as far as Jor knew, they were being used as paperweights or dust collectors. D’Yquem had the fifth.

  The material available on the visiphone is limited, primarily financial documents such as ledgers and budgets, but D’Yquem had equipped it with the ability to display images, too.

  Jor searches for the Northern Jungle Road, finding half a dozen images that date back to his time as a tree-topper and ’dozer driver. But then a new one appears, showing a location much like those of a dozen years past.

  He wishes for the ability to place two images side by side; lacking that, his eyes are good enough to tell him.

  Every trace of the road has vanished. All the heaping mounds of chopped and rotted wood, leaves, and vines are gone. If not for the label on the image stating that it was Authority Roadway #1, and the fact that he recognizes a particular trio of peaks in the distance, Jor could believe that he is viewing some other part of the Northern Jungle—or the southern one.

  A minor question … who took this picture? He looked at the logging data at the bottom of the screen: D’Yquem himself!

  Jor realizes that if the Venerians are that serious about returning a remote location like Authority Roadway #1 to its original state … they must be serious about their Sunset of Time.

  The final image shows him something even more surprising: Abdera.

  Jor walks to the landing very slowly, though with the Terrestrian traffic light and the reloquere work largely complete, there is no reason.

  Other than fatigue. Shock. Betrayal.

  He reminds himself that seeing D’Yquem and Abdera together means nothing, even if the location is remote. Even if D’Yquem made it clear that he barely knew the Venerian female.

  Jor’s “girlfriend.”

  The landing was where Jor had first seen Abdera, and where they had spent most of their public time. It was a port to rival New Orleans or San Francisco, those being the two earthly equivalents best known to Jor, with skiffs of many shapes and differing sizes arriving to be unloaded with an elegance that suggested a ballet.

  Surrounded by the aromas of sweet, then spicy, then unknowable cooking from small ancient shops lining the uneven quay, kelp and weed and sea beasts were swiftly transferred from skiff to warehouse to shop to land-bound transport with few words and optimum action from the teams of mature male and female Venerians.

  It was always a setting that soothed Jor’s mind, calmed his jittery nature. If only Earth had been like this—

  This day, however, is different. Not only is he troubled by his suspicions about Abdera and D’Yquem, but the landing seems subdued, empty. The number of skiffs is perhaps a third what it should be. The buzz of activity—never high—seems nonexistent.

  There are fewer Venerians.

  “I long to go back to the skiffs.” Abdera’s voice, behind him. She has performed her usual trick of appearing by magic.

  “I never knew you were on them,” Jor says. “In them.”

  She links arms. “All of us work the skiffs at a certain stage in our lives. No matter our differences, we always have the Bright Sea.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “It is actually insanely difficult work that kills more of my clan than anything else.” She turns to him. “But it binds us.”

  Jor cannot raise the subject of D’Yquem. He doesn’t want to hear the answer. “Why did your clansmen try to destroy the Lens?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “You must have some information or insight.”

  “Jordan, you and I have more in common than I do with a Venerian male.” It takes Jor a moment to realize that Abdera is talking about emotional commonality, not physical or biological.

  “Don’t you even know them?”

  “Yes, they were members of my clan. Yes, I knew their names. Yes, I have farmed with them. But I had no interaction with them, no exchanges of words or gestures—we have not shared a skiff. I don’t know what motivated them. And why does it matter? They’re dead now.”

  “I had nothing to do with that—”

  She puts her arms around him. “I know you better than that. I know you would be fierce in protecting the Lens, but you are not a killer.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “There is no need. Greater powers will balance the scale.” Suddenly she is staring out to sea. A human woman would shade her eyes, Jor thinks. Of course, Abdera is Venerian—and there is no sun to require shading. “And I could have warned you.”

  “You knew about the attack?”

  “Not the specifics. But you can’t keep secrets within the clan; I knew there would be an action at the Lens.

  “Among the other secrets that can’t be kept within the clan is my relationship with you …” She turns back to him. “The seniors locked me up.”

  “How did you get out? Oh.” The torn sari.

  “It was more humiliating than painful. It was also … difficult emotionally. I was betraying my clan.”

  “I wish you had. We’d have been saved a lot of pointless trouble.”

  “Yet your Lens survives.”

  “You disapprove? After all this time?”

  “My clan welcomed you, allowed you to build. I made you a friend.”

  “So you don’t disapprove. Then—”

  “It’s Sunset. It approaches.” She indicates the flattened, empty waste that Venus Port is becoming. Her whole manner says: the Sunset changes everything.

  “What about us?” Jor points to the four Terrestrian towers and, visible beyond that, the blunt noses of three ships at the spaceport.

  Jor senses that Abdera is withdrawing. Nevertheless, he presses. “We’re still going to be here. So … what about us?”

  “I think,” she says, “that our joy is ended.”

  And then she turns to walk away.

  Jor could follow her. But he feels paralyzed.

  He does not go to 13-Plus that night. He has no wish to confront D’Yquem, not without hearing Abdera’s side of things.

  And he cannot act as if he knows nothing.

  Fortunately, he has a good supply of brue in his quarters in the third tower.

  That night, thrashing in bed between drunken collapse and sleep—or in that darker moment after waking up, head throbbing, mouth dry, eyes aching—Jor thinks about those hours at the controls of a D-9 caterpillar, one of only three on Venus, attacking the brush and branches. Or even his time as a topper, climbing high on the giant trees armed only with a handsaw.

  In spite of the crude, drunken, incompetent companions, the sizzling heat and humidity (the D-9 had a pressurized, climate-controlled cab); native Venerian animals that burrowed under the rudimentary road and undermined it when they weren’t dropping things on it; vicious bugs the size of small aircraft that never seemed to move except in swarms the size of buildings; roots that seemed to grow back within minutes of being cut, and the mud … the endless, thick, sucking madness of the Northern Jungle’s mud, the squalling ra
in—

  Jor thinks of those days as free and happy.

  He is a Lennox, Chicago-based engineers and builders for two centuries. He has many memories of his father Miller pointing from the front yard of their home on the North Shore to the city skyline, identifying seven different buildings from the Lennox shop. “There is room for more,” he said then, offering the challenge to Jor’s older brothers Liam and Karl.

  As the third of three brothers, Jor’s problems at school and his utter lack of interest in the family trade made him a candidate for emigration to Venus.

  Where, finally away from his family, he had no expectations to fulfill … only a simple job to do, chopping, ’dozing, and adding to the vast heaps of green trash by the side of the road.

  The next morning is spent personally supervising repairs to the Lens dish on the high platform. He also recalibrates the aiming and steering controls, confirming their functionality—Sunset of Time be damned. The work is all-consuming, exhausting, and frustrating, driving all thought of Abdera from his mind.

  On the plus side of the ledger, as always his hangover is vaporized by the exertion. By the end of the extended workday, Jor is spinning and sputtering as usual … and frantic to return to the 13-Plus and the inevitable confrontation with D’Yquem.

  He prepares to descend from the instrument platform, where some riggers are grimly raising replacement panels while others totter precariously atop ladders and crude scaffolding trimming the jagged ends of the hole caused by the blast. Only then does he take a moment to look west, toward the endless swampy plains that lead to Nightside … at the mounds of excess material excreted (there is no better word) by the Terrestrian occupation.

  They seem smaller. Squinting in the twilight, he thinks he can see humanoid figures moving near and even atop the heaps. At this distance, with his eyes, it is impossible to know whether they are Terrestrian or Venerian.

  Surely not the latter, not after the attack—

  “Oh no, TA’s resolve popped like a soap bubble,” D’Yquem says, twenty minutes later.

  “They’re letting the Venerians take everything?”