“I fought for you,” Celia had told her. “I disagreed, I thought you deserved another year at least. I know why you didn’t do as well. I told them they didn’t understand your circumstances, that it was surprising you’ve done as well as you have. They don’t understand the obstacles you face. I told my colleagues that you deserved another chance, and they said that this was all that they could give you. They calculate everything, costs and returns on what was spent, and it shouldn’t be like that.”
Iris reached out with one hand and pulled her shirt over her shoulders, not wanting the sun to burn her. The Linker’s words ran together in her mind.
“Listen to me, Iris,” Celia had continued. “I’m more like you than you realize. I’m a shopkeeper’s daughter, and I was chosen. I know what it’s like when everyone around you mocks you for what you have to do, how it feels when you want something different. You’re being tested. I shouldn’t tell you that, perhaps, but it’s true. To take an entire allotment away from one who shows talent could provoke resentment, and of course we can’t have that, so we’ll leave you something. Some in your position will take what we offer, others will take it and pay for more with their own funds, and still others will be discouraged, and give up. You may be thinking that you should abandon your studies now, and make your peace with your household while you still can.
“I can’t say this to your family, but I can say it to you. Don’t give up, don’t ever give up. No one can take away what you’ve already learned, what’s in your mind, and no matter what happens, you’ll always have that refuge and that joy and know that you did your best. That’ll make up for everything else in time — please believe that. Things may change. Even the Mukhtars know that it’s time to take chances again, that they’ll smother the world in caution if they don’t. Don’t give up.”
Iris had coded the message and had filed it away in her private records, knowing that she might need to hear it often, yet she wondered if the message was also part of a test. Maybe Celia, who had stood up for her, was only trying to cover herself, lest she look like a fool for pleading Iris’s case.
Iris sighed. Alexandra’s allotment had not been cut. Envy gnawed at her insides. She bit her lip. Alexandra would agree with Celia; the blond girl would be angry with Iris if she gave in now. Somehow, she feared Alexandra’s scorn even more than she feared the Linker’s.
A shadow fell across her; she sat up. Eric was standing over her. She buttoned her shirt as the boy sat down and wrapped his arms around his legs; a lock of straight brown hair fell across his eyes.
“I heard the message,” he said, “about your lessons.”
She was silent.
“At least they didn’t cut off the payments completely.” Eric rested his chin on his knees. “Funny, isn’t it? I want to stay, and I have to leave next week. You probably want to leave Lincoln.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. I’ll have to stay anyway.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes. Look, you can still have some of your lessons. Something’s better than nothing. And when you’re older, you’ll get the farm too. You won’t have to be an apprentice and wander all over the place. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.” His mouth twisted. “Too bad you weren’t born a boy. Angharad wouldn’t have cared as much about your lessons then. You would have left Lincoln anyway, so it wouldn’t matter if you were a student or something.”
“Well, I won’t get chosen now.” She paused. “Eric, didn’t you ever — I mean, didn’t you ever want to learn about things?”
“Naah. That’s not for me. I just wanted to have a shop and hang around here, and I can’t even have that. Maybe Constance would have done more for me if I’d been her daughter instead of her son.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Iris responded. “She loves you just as much as if —”
“Don’t give me that shit, Iris. You’re smarter than that. If a lot of men started staying in their towns instead of leaving, then the women would have to share what they’ve got with them, and that’d probably fuck up the economy or something. See, I know a few things too.”
“Yes, you do,” she said. “Look, maybe you’ll find a way later to have a shop. Things could change.”
“Come on. They won’t change for me.”
She watched him solemnly. He was no longer the boy who had teased and tormented her as a child, and she had become the only member of the household who sympathized with his longings. But she had never really spoken to him about her own dreams.
Eric had spent the last couple of nights in her room, which had pleased Constance and had relieved some of Angharad’s worries about her daughter. The two women would never know that she and Eric had only talked and that he had slept on her window seat; embracing him would have been like making love to a brother. The boy had only wanted comfort and someone to listen to his complaints. She and Eric were content, for their own reasons, to let Angharad and Constance believe what they liked.
“Where would you go if you could?” Eric asked.
She knew that she could trust him now. “I’ll tell you where I’d go,” she said. “I’d go to Venus and work on the Project.”
Eric gaped at her. “Why?”
“Because it’s something new, something different. Because it’s the best thing the Nomarchies ever tried to do, the only place where they reached for something noble instead of just trying to keep everything the way it is.”
“I guess that makes sense, when you put it that way,” he said.
“I think you’re probably the only man I’ll ever meet who understands it, then.”
“I don’t know. You might get to Venus someday.”
She laughed. “You know I won’t. The closest I’ll ever get is those images the band shows me.”
Eric let out a breath. “My father’s going to meet me in Omaha and stay at the hostel with me. I’ll get to see him more. That won’t be so bad, will it?” His voice had a hollow, forlorn sound.
“It’ll be fine. Ray’s all right.” Iris did not have a lot of evidence for that assertion, since Eric’s father had stopped at the house only two or three times; she dimly recalled a taciturn young man with a vacant smile.
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll go to a town where somebody needs a shopkeeper, and I’ll be able to tell them I can do some figures, thanks to you. It wouldn’t be home, but it’d be something.”
“I hope so.” She put a hand on his arm, remembering what Celia had told her. “Don’t give up. If you have something to hope for, that makes other things a little easier, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know if it does. Constance says it just makes things look worse.”
“Well, she’s wrong.”
They sat together on the hill, mostly in silence, idling away their time in daydreaming until the sun was lower on the horizon and it was time to go home.
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Nine
Chen walked the streets of Winnipeg, carrying his duffel on his shoulder, and listened to the babble of voices as knots of people passed him. He was used to the noise now; when he had first returned to Earth, he had found the crowds disorienting, the noise deafening.
Hovercars drifted by in the wide street while people carried by moving belts flickered past behind glassy walls. Towers pointed toward the gray, wintry sky; in the distance, he caught the gleam of a latticework’s facets. A gust of cold wind whistled by him; he shivered.
Chen had arrived at the city’s port only a couple of hours ago on the suborbital flight from Little Rock. He had been sent here to rest and spend a little of his credit until he was assigned to another Plains village. He had gone to the nearest port screen, where he had been told that there was no room for him in any of the workers’ hostels, but that a room would be provided for him in a hotel. He had been too pleased by this unexpected news to wonder why such an important city would have a lack of space; having a room to himself would be pleasant for a change, and if it was going to be paid fo
r, so much the better. He would enjoy it while he could; he would probably be sent to a hostel or another town in a couple of days.
The screen had shown him a detailed picture of the hotel and had given him directions to it. He had taken the tubeway train into Winnipeg, then had left it a few blocks from the hotel, wanting to walk the rest of the way. He had not realized how cold it would be. His teeth were chattering by the time he reached his destination.
A glassy door adorned with the hotel’s insignia opened as he entered. The small lobby was modest; simple chairs and sofas stood against the pale blue walls. He glanced at the desk, surprised to see a clerk behind it; that meant that this hotel offered more luxury and service than its interior indicated. A young blond woman sitting in the lobby smiled at him, beckoning him with one finger. Chen looked away awkwardly. After two years of working for the Plains Communes, he had not been able to get used to the manners of their women, the frank looks and suggestive invitations; the women on the Islands had never been quite so bold. The Plainsmen were even worse, exchanging lewd talk about their various encounters with no sign of shame. Chen was no stranger to such talk; the Island workers were often blunt in their speech and had their share of erotic diversions, but Plainsfolk seemed to fall into bed with one another casually, with no thought of love or caring at all. At the same time, however, they seemed oddly intolerant of those who sought love with members of their own sex, and that made no sense in a place where men and women lived such separate lives. There was no doubt about it; Plainspeople were baffling.
Chen walked to the desk and put his left arm next to the small screen’s eye; the band on his arm was scanned as the clerk read the symbols on the screen.
The man gazed at Chen and smiled stiffly. “I see that your room’s already paid for,” he said. “The cost of your meals has also been covered.” The clerk surveyed Chen coldly with eyes as pale as a demon’s. “Do you wish to have your bag carried to your room?”
Chen shook his head. “I’ll carry it up.” He was not used to having a clerk inquire about his needs and wasn’t sure how to respond.
“You may go to that lift, then,” the clerk said, indicating the second of four doors to the left of the desk; a silver arrow on the door pointed toward the ceiling. “You’ll be let off at your floor, and a servo will guide you to your room. I hope you have a pleasant stay with us.” The man smiled again.
“Thank you,” Chen said, bowing a little. He hurried to the lift, feeling conspicuous in his plain clothes and suddenly anxious to be away from the lobby. The door opened, humming slightly as his bracelet was scanned and his identity confirmed.
The transparent platform under his feet carried him up through a wide, lighted corridor; he passed a stream of doors until one opened and the platform came to a gentle stop. He entered a hall carpeted in blue and stepped aside quickly as a man and woman rushed past him to claim the lift. The door slid shut; he was alone. On the door, a painted hand pointed toward the ceiling; next to it, another door had a painted hand pointing toward the floor.
Several servos, small domes on wheels, stood near one wall; one rolled over to him and beeped. Chen held out his left arm so that the servo could scan his bracelet; it beeped again and rolled down the hallway, stopping in front of one door. Chen glanced at the numbers on his door, noting a twelve followed by two fives; though he could not manipulate such symbols, he could recognize their shapes.
The door opened and he stepped inside. The room was small, with a bed and two chairs; a small screen, keyboard, and band sat on a table in one corner. Another door faced the bed; Chen opened it and saw a shower, toilet, and sink. He grinned, surprised at the unexpected luxury of a private bathroom.
Stepping back, he dropped his duffel on the floor and then sat down on the bed, wondering if he should eat first or enjoy a long shower. He had decided on the shower when he heard a chime.
“Administrator Nancy Fassi wishes to enter,” a voice said from the wall. “Will you speak to her?”
Chen tensed, wondering what an Administrator could want with him, then stood up quickly. He shrugged out of his coat, looked around the room, folded the thin cloth garment, and thrust it into a drawer near the bed.
“Will you speak to Administrator Nancy Fassi?” the voice asked again.
Chen smoothed back his hair. “Yes, of course,” he replied. “Please let her in.”
The door opened as a tall, dark-haired woman stepped inside. “Liang Chen?”
He nodded, trying to relax; there was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and she was slouching, as if trying to minimize her height.
“I’m Nancy Fassi.” Do sit down.” She stepped around the duffel he had left on the floor, took off her fur coat, tossed it onto the bed, then went to the screen. “Have you eaten yet?”
“I’m not hungry,” he said as he sat in one of the chairs, his appetite suddenly gone.
“I’ll get us some wine, then.” She gave her order to the screen, then seated herself in the other chair. “Sorry about the room. I would have found you something larger, but this was all they had available.” She rubbed at the gem on her forehead, as if unaccustomed to her Link.
“It’s fine,” he murmured, feeling like an intruder in the room.
“Still better than a workers’ hostel, I suppose,” the Linker said. “Don’t be fooled by those signs on the lifts, by the way. You’re so close to the top floor that, if you need to get to the lobby, you can take the lift going up and then ride it down instead of waiting around for the other one.” Her voice trailed off; her fingers plucked at one sleeve of her blue silk shirt. She seemed almost as uncomfortable as he was; he was now certain that she hadn’t been an Administrator for very long.
“I’ll remember about the lifts,” he said.
“Well. You’ve probably guessed that we didn’t send you here because of a lack of space. As a matter of fact, I have some important things to discuss with you, and fetching you from a hostel would have caused a bit of talk. Here, we can talk privately, and people will think I brought you here as a lover.”
Chen looked down, understanding why the desk clerk had smirked at him.
“Let’s get one thing settled immediately,” Nancy Fassi went on, sounding as though she had regained her composure. “I’ve looked at your records. You do your job well enough, and you’re not inclined to idle chatter. That’s just what we’re looking for.” She paused. “You used to work on the Venus Project.”
He nodded.
“But when you came back, you asked not to be sent to your own Nomarchy. In fact, you said you’d be willing to go anywhere else. Now, we always appreciate a willing and adaptable worker, but why did you make such a request?”
He fumbled for words. “It’s hard to say. I just didn’t want to go back. They have too many workers like me there anyway.”
“You didn’t want to go back because you would have felt trapped again. You’d rather wander around and go where you’re sent until the time comes when you can return to the place you think of as your real home.” Why, he thought, had she asked him the question if she already knew the answer? Nancy tilted her head, watching him with her round black eyes. “Youdo want to rejoin the Project.”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe you’ll get a chance to go back. It depends on you, Chen.”
He sat very still, trying not to let the hope he felt show in his expression. The chime rang again; after a moment, the door opened and a cart carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses rolled into the room. He got up and poured the wine, handing one glass to the Linker before seating himself again.
“I’d like to help you,” Nancy said. “Personally, I think it was a mistake to remove committed people from that Project just so the Nomarchies could reassert their authority over it. It hurts morale. They need the patient ones there, the ones who are willing to spend their lives there shaping a world many of them won’t live to see. It isn’t just another job to such people, and they don’t work as well wh
en they feel that their position may be precarious. They have to feel that their children might benefit from the work. People with that land of commitment to an uncertain, long-term venture are hard to come by.”
Chen felt uneasy. One could never tell, with Linkers, what part of their talk was sincere and what might be a trap for the unwary. “I was angry when I came back,” he admitted. “But they told me I’d get another chance, so I put my anger aside. I tell myself I’d be a better worker there now because I know what it’s like to lose the chance.” That answer seemed to have the sound of sincerity, and for once he had not tripped over the words. He could never admit to the rage he still felt at his loss.
“I certainly think you deserve such a chance,” Nancy said, “but we need you for another task first. I came here to speak with you about a new assignment. We need people like you for this particular job, people who have some familiarity with the Plains but who are also outsiders and less likely to talk. You have even more reason to keep silent than most if you ever want to return to Venus.”
Chen sipped his wine nervously as Nancy leaned back in her seat “We’ve had some problems recently,” she said in a low voice. “A while back, a Counselor was killed in one Plains town, and recently, another was attacked. We had quite a time hushing it up, but luckily, there were few witnesses to either event. You must have heard rumors.”
“A few,” he admitted.
“Stories that can’t be proved, of course. We made sure of that. Even the witnesses are no longer quite sure of what they saw. But this sort of thing can be contagious. Most of the Plains Counselors know the truth, and they’re nervous. If someone strikes out at a Counselor, he’s striking directly at the authority the Counselor represents, and we can’t have that. Counselors are our primary representatives in most of these Plains towns, the one personal contact most people have with the Administrative Committees for whom the Counselors speak. The Council of Mukhtars is worried — our Counselors must be protected.”
Venus of Dreams Page 14
